Innholdsfortegnelse for AH 53 i Ancient History Magazine

I have been thinking about putting together an issue of Ancient History on the Phoenicians for quite some time. As part of the interview process for this job, I had to put together an in-depth plan for an issue of AH, and that issue was to be on Phoenicians. What you see here is not quite a one-to-one reflection of my original plan. After all, the proposed issue was an ideal scenario, one which did not involve finding people to write the various articles nor that required consideration of the images that would be needed. However, despite that, there is still a lot of overlap, as well as elements that I had not initially considered. My motivation for putting this issue together remains the same as when I first proposed…

Hailing from the Levant, the Phoenicians were famous as traders and explorers whose travels spread throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, reaching Spain, the western coast of Africa, and perhaps even further. Unfortunately, we do not know how the Phoenicians referred to themselves – if, in fact, they did (see LópezRuiz, this issue). We currently know them by the Greeks’ name for them, which may derive from the Greek for purple (phoinikes), after the purple dye that was produced by the murex sea snail that inhabited the Phoenician coastline. Indeed, it has been argued that the Greek word for Phoenicia (phoenix) itself meant ‘land of purple’. Much like the Greeks, Phoenicia was never a unified state but a collection of city states, and they referred to themselves as the occupants of…

Ancient accounts of colonization tend to place the indigenous inhabitants of the area in competition – if not open conflict – with the colonizers. Consequently, ancient colonies can seem ethnically homogenous, distinct from the surrounding populations. However, the archaeology of ancient colonies tends to demonstrate some form of cultural exchange, such as the presence of locally-made fibulae in graves, for example, which has previously been taken to demonstrate the existence of Greek-Sicilian marriages in Sicily, although this is based on the notion that pots – or fibulae, in this case – equal people. In later Greek and Roman sources, the Phoenician colonies were typically referred to as being Libyphoenician (e.g. Polybius, 3.33; Strabo, 17.3.19), suggesting a degree of intermixing between locals and incomers substantial enough to leave an observable mark.…

The Romans' engineering skills are most well known, arguably, from their military uses. The remains of Roman fortresses and the courses of Roman roads are, perhaps, the most definite and widespread testament of the skills of Roman military engineers. When we look at evidence such as Trajan’s Column, however, Rome’s legionaries did far more than build roads and forts. From bridges to canals and siege works of all kinds, there was seemingly nothing Roman engineers could not accomplish. One need only look at Hadrian’s Wall or the remnants of the siege works at Masada to be amazed or read through the relevant sections of Vitruvius’ De Architectura. There are many other examples. Although the Roman legions had specialized engineering troops – counted among the immunes, who were spared normal fatigue…

Just across the Euboean Strait from Oropos there was Eretria, who, according to the thirdcentury historian Nicocrates, had founded Oropos (FGrH 376 F1). Traces of this relationship have been found in the linguistic legacy of the town; Oropos is the Eretrian version of the river Asopos that flowed through Boeotia. To its south there was Athens, its inhabitants always enviously peeking across the ridges of Mount Parnes. To its west, there were the Boeotians, the Thebans first and foremost. A volatile history The political history of Oropos can be summarized in one word: volatile. Between the mid-sixth century and the early third century BC, control over the region swapped between the Athenians, Eretrians, Boeotians and, rarely, the Oropians a staggering eleven times. Sometimes these changes were the result of external…

The broader, fertile Egyptian flood plain, with rich faunal, floral, and mineral resources, and a navigable river between Aswan and the Mediterranean, fostered a larger, wealthier, and more stable population and a unified state. The narrower, stonier, and less agriculturally rich flood plain in Nubia, on the other hand, inhibited the development of a larger state, and the region was divided between several tribal groups that were the weaker partners in any interactions with Egypt. Predynastic period (3500-3000 BC) As early as the late Predynastic period, there were cross-cultural interactions between Egypt and Nubia, incorporating overland, riverine, and possibly Red Sea routes, comprised of Egyptian, Nubian, and other traders, emissaries, and migrants. Unlike later regional interactions, these early interactions were relatively even and informal. In southern Egypt, an expanding kingdom…

The Phoenicians profoundly transformed life in southern Iberia and had an impact across the entire Peninsula from the early first millennium BC. They brought intense urbanization based on rectilinear architecture and urban layouts (rather than the local ‘oval’ dwellings), and new technologies and crops (vine, olive). They also brought the Phoenician script, introducing literacy and spurring the local development of several syllabaries (Palaeo-Hispanic scripts) for local languages. Religion was a structural element to the commercial expansion, reflected in the multitude of sanctuaries established in strategic positions and approached by ship, on promontories, estuary margins, and river banks. These were not simply areas of cultic activity but provided ‘liaison services’ for Phoenician commerce, offered capital, and maintained a depository of geographical knowledge. Phoenician colonies were established on offshore isles and estuary…

There is increasing evidence for Iberian maritime networks pre-dating the arrival of the Phoenicians. This is best exemplified by the appearance of V-notched shields in Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, and the eastern Mediterranean. A round leather shield decorated with concentric ribs around a central boss, bearing a V-shaped notch on the outer rib, was preserved in an Irish bog (Clonbrin, Co. Offaly), and two wooden moulds for this type were found elsewhere, with a radiocarbon-date of 1300−1000 BC for one of them. The V-notch decoration with concentric ribs also appears on Cypro-Geometric III (850–725 BC) bronze shields from tombs in Cyprus and is replicated in miniature votive shields, of clay or copper, dedicated at Aegean sanctuaries in the seventh century BC. The same shield design is used on western Iberian…

After the Late Bronze Age Collapse, the Phoenicians had been in contact with Cyprus since the second half of the tenth century BC, if such contact had been truly severed at all. This is hardly a surprise. The Phoenicians, after all, were a seaward-looking people; with the Mount Lebanon range prohibiting eastward, landward travel, the Phoenicians could only really expand into the sea. Phoenician Cyprus? From the tenth century BC, a Phoenician presence can be discerned on Cyprus. Around this time, the Phoenicians were beginning to explore further into the Mediterranean and the Aegean; Near Eastern imports begin to appear at Lefkandi, an archaeological site on Euboea, and numerous Greek goods have been found at Tyre. From the early ninth century BC, under Ithobaal I, Tyre began to expand its…

Before entering political office, an Athenian underwent a public examination, the dokimasia, to determine whether he fulfilled the legal requirements of full Athenian citizenship. Among the questions were: “[Do you] have family tombs, and where are they?” (Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 55.3). The responsibility of visiting family tombs, along with the performance of customary rites, was of considerable importance to Athenians in Classical times. To guarantee the continuation of such tomb-cult rites, a childless person was willing to adopt an heir to ensure that his remains received appropriate attention from the living. The necessary rituals were predominantly fulfilled by female relatives. After particular rites were conducted at the graveside on the third, ninth, and thirtieth day after the death, later commemorative visits were paid annually. Visiting the tomb was facilitated by…

Alexander the Great is credited with the foundation of many cities in antiquity, most famously Alexandria in Egypt. However, Alexander was the ‘founder’ of Alexandria in much the same way as Romulus was the ‘founder’ of Rome – they both are credited by later literary sources with planning a city destined to be great, laying out its walls personally and in the process having encounters with prophetic birds. Yet historians have been much less willing to accept that Alexandria’s foundation story is as much a mix of fact and legend, propaganda and truth as what we have been told about the earliest moments of Rome. Contemporary Egyptian-language sources and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrate that Alexander did not plan and build a city on the site of Egyptian Alexandria. His successor…

Not all slaves were the same. A highly educated slave who was an integral part of a Roman household had a very good chance of becoming free. Tiro, for example, was a member of Cicero’s household, effectively Cicero’s secretary, who happened to be a slave. Nevertheless, even while he was what Roman law regarded as a ‘talking tool’, Cicero spoke of Tiro with great affection (see Cicero, Letters to Friends 16.16). His servant was a friend before he was a freedman. Individuals such as Tiro may have spent on average less than a decade in servitude before being manumitted. On the other end of the scale, agricultural slaves had little chance of freedom. Laws and limits Roman law recognized several different types of manumission, and the laws affecting manumission changed…

While, much like at the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus, visitors to the Amphiareion would sleep at the sanctuary to be cured by Amphiaraos, they could also sleep there to receive oracular dreams. Herodotus, for example, records how, on behalf of the Mardonius, a man called Mys bribed someone to sleep in the sanctuary of Amphiaraos in order to receive an oracular response (8.133–134). A notable event concerning the oracle at the Amphiareion occurred in the late fourth century BC, after the Oropia had been returned to Athenian control, likely by Alexander III. Athens sent three men to the Amphiareion to ask for the god’s help in resolving a property dispute. Five hills in the Oropia had been divided into lots, with the lots to be shared amongst the ten…

Beginning in the Predynastic period, Egypt likely had contacts with the southern Red Sea region (roughly modern Ethiopia and Eritrea), later equated with an elusive and probably shifting land of ‘Punt’, via Upper Nubia and possibly Red Sea travel. For example, the Fifth Dynasty king Sahure’s mortuary temple depicts cowpeas, which originate from sub-Saharan Africa, while scenes of a Red Sea voyage returning from Punt with males, females, and children, dogs, baboons, and monkeys, and live frankincense trees have recently been discovered by the causeway of his mortuary temple. The Palermo Stone adds that Sahure’s mission to Punt obtained 80,000 measures of myrrh (‘ntyw), 23,020 measures of an unguent, 6000 pieces of electrum (d‘m), and 2900 nodules of malachite (w3d-šsmt). Investigations at a Red Sea anchorage at Mersa Gawasis and…

Modern scholarship has approached the study of Phoenician culture with a mix of admiration and scepticism. On the one hand, the Phoenicians are celebrated for their contributions to civilization, such as the alphabet and their advanced maritime skills. On the other, some scholars have questioned the validity of ‘Phoenician’ as a cohesive identity, arguing that it was an invention of Greek and Roman writers rather than a reflection of how the Phoenicians saw themselves. There is, in fact, one huge obstacle that makes Phoenician identity opaque to our modern eyes: the simple fact that they left behind few self-written records, at least of the type that would answer this question. Besides the abundant but generally short inscriptions (mostly funerary), what we know about Phoenician history comes from Greek, Roman, and…

Ancient religions were, more often than not, syncretic. They would associate a god from one culture with one from their own, if they were similar enough (and such similarities did not need to be very strong). This practice was especially prevalent in the Hellenistic period, after Alexander the Great’s conquests brought the Greek world into close contact with many different cultures, especially in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. Such syncretism was not new in the Hellenistic period, however. In the Early Iron Age there is evidence for the syncretization of the Greek god Heracles with the Phoenician god Melqart. Herodotus, writing in the mid-fifth century BC, notes the association between Heracles and Melqart (2.44). However, rather than simply calling them one and the same, Herodotus actually notes the…

Carthage stands out as the most important Phoenician settlement in the ancient Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were ahead of the Greeks in exploring the seas and engaging with local communities in North Africa and southern Europe. They significantly contributed to the spread of key techniques that led to the beginning of the so-called Axial Age around the sixth century BC, like literacy, iron metallurgy, the muchresistant wheel-made pottery, and the intensive farming of olive trees and vineyards. Additionally, they played a role in the spread of domesticated animals, like donkeys and chickens, that were unknown in the western Mediterranean and improved rural living conditions. The Phoenicians were not a unified group like the Egyptians, Assyrians, or Romans. They never formed a single state, empire, or nation called Phoenicia. Instead, they appear…

It is impossible to manage precise feats of engineering without an equally precise system of measurement and the mathematics to turn those measurements into something coherent. Thankfully, the Romans have left texts showing their homework. For example, the technicalities of constructing a building that will stand for the next two millennia are laid out in the De Architectura of Vitruvius. The practical-minded Romans did not indulge in the joys of pure mathematics for its own sake as the Greeks did. Nevertheless, when the Romans needed Greek mathematics they freely used the discipline – or simply used the Greeks who did. Apollodorus of Damascus was the designer of the Pantheon in Rome, and he indulged in even more complex mathematics in his treatise on siege engines. His Poliorcetica explains both the…

In the modern world, despite the size of cemeteries, attending to a grave is a very personal, even private, affair. In ancient Athens, however, graves were very much public monuments. The grave of Dexileus, a cavalryman who died in the Corinthian War, was almost certainly erected by his family with the intention that it was seen. Rising high above the Ceramicus along the Sacred Way, Dexileus’ grave monument would have stood out. It appears that the epitaph on the monument was also meant to be read by passersby: Dexileos, son of Lysanios, from Thorikos, was born in the archonship of Teisandros, died in the archonship of Euboulides at Corinth, one of the five horsemen. That the epitaph makes a note of Dexileus’ age when he died – around nineteen or…

Dated to 311 BC, and likely erected in the town of Buto in the Nile Delta, the Stele of the Satrap is an important document for understanding Ptolemy’s tenure as satrap of Egypt prior to his assumption of the kingship. Notably, Alexander IV is used for the dating formula at the beginning of the inscription, but the text is about Ptolemy first and foremost. He is referred to as a “great prince of Egypt”, for example, and the identity of the king making offerings to Horus Edjo in the accompanying relief is ambiguous, the cartouche left empty. The bulk of the inscription is concerned with Ptolemy’s actions as satrap of Egypt. Significantly, the stele records how Ptolemy restored several cultic symbols, from sacred statues to scrolls, to Egyptian temples. Additionally,…

Strabo's Geography A Translation for the Modern World Translated by Sarah Pothecary ISBN: 978-0691243139 Princeton University Press (2024) - £55.00 press.princeton.edu Geography is a description of the globe as it appeared to Strabo, an observer living in the tumultuous days of the Late Republic and Early Roman Empire. Born in the province of Asia, and living in Rome and Alexandria, Strabo travelled between each for his research, collecting information about places and people, while supplementing his firsthand experiences with extensive reading. The result is an encyclopaedic work that, along with descriptions of continents and seas, rivers and mountains, cities and sanctuaries, includes history and mythology – facts and ‘alternative facts’. As Peter Frankopan notes in his ‘Foreword’, Strabo writes about matters ranging from “taming an elephant to practicing yoga, or…

PHOENICIANS AND THE MAKING OF THE MEDITERRANEAN By Caroline López-Ruiz Harvard University Press, 2021 ISBN: 978-0674988187 This highly informative book chronicles the Phoenicians’ exploration of the Mediterranean. However, rather than discussing the push and pull factors that drove their exploration, López-Ruiz instead highlights the Phoenicians interactions with the peoples they met on their travels, from the Iberian Peninsula to Cyprus, and how they influenced one another. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PHOENICIANS (REVISED EDITION) By Mark Woolmer Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 ISBN: 978-1350153929 Based on recent archaeological discoveries and research, Mark Woolmer offers an accessible introduction to the ancient Phoenicians. While their overseas exploration is a key part of their history, it is only a small part of Woolmer’s book, which also covers Phoenician society, religion, and material culture, offering readers…