Carthage Must Be Destroyed (62 page)

53
Karageorghis 1998.

54
Aubet 2001, 155.

55
Frankenstein 1979, 269.

56
Postgate 1974.

57
Postgate 1969; 1979, 200–214.

58
Kuhrt 1995, 518–19.

59
Russell 1991.

60
Postgate 1979, 218; Aubet 2001, 90–92; Frankenstein 1979, 272—3.

61
Frankenstein 1979, 286.

62
Aubet 2001, 90–92.

63
Frankenstein 1979, 273.

64
Recent excavations in the south-western Spanish port of Huelva appear to provide strong evidence of Phoenician commercial activity in the ninth century (González de Canales, Serrano & Llompart 2006). For this view see Gubel 2006, 87; Fletcher 2006, 191. For scepticism towards precolonizing Phoenician activity in the central and western Mediterranean see Aubet 2001, 200–211; Van Dommelen 1998, 71—5.

65
Giardino 1992; Van Dommelen 1998, 75—6.

66
Van Dommelen 1998, 76—80.

67
Stos-Gale & Gale 1992, 317–37.

68
Fletcher’s (2004 & 2006) interesting thesis that such cooperation and incorporation into indigenous communities was the work of Sidonian merchants who would eventually be superseded by Tyrian colonizers is attractive but at the moment unproven.

69
Ridgway 1992, 120.

70
D’Oriano & Oggiano 2005. The settlement seems to have been abandoned in the late sixth century BC.

71
Rendeli 2005, 92–7; Ridgway 2004, 16–19. There has been a long and increasingly rancorous debate over the exact nature of Euboean and Phoenician colonization, trade and interactions in the Mediterranean. For a sample of it see Snodgrass 1994; Papadopoulos 1997; S. Morris 1998; Ridgway 1994; 2000, 183–5; 2004, 22–8; Boardman 2005.

72
Tandy 1997, 66–70.

73
Niemeyer 1990.

74
Nijboer 2005.

75
Markoe 1992, 62—73. In contrast to the enormous appetite for silver in the Near East and Etruria, in Greece there is almost a complete absence of decorated silver work in the seventh century BC. Bronze would remain the precious metal most used for offerings at important Greek sanctuaries. A good deal of orientalizing silver work was produced in Etruria during this time, introducing Near Eastern designs and motifs as well as very particular smithing skills such as granulation, punch-work and filigree, which suggest the presence of Phoenician artisans in central Italy. An orientalizing tradition would become important in areas of Etruscan art (ibid., 78).

76
Malkin 2002.

77
Snodgrass 1971, 304–13; Chadwick 1976, 188–93.

78
Popham, Sackett & Themelis (eds.) 1979. Many of the artefacts display clear Egyptian influences. There is no recorded Greek contact with Egypt until the seventh century BC. Another important factor is the lack of Euboean staging posts on the long and arduous journey across the open sea to the Levant.

79
Niemeyer 1984, 19.

80
Coldstream 1982; Hudson 1992, 138–9.

81
Coldstream 1988. Considerable quantities of ninth-century-BC Euboean pottery have been discovered at Tyre (Bikai 1978).

82
Strøm 1992, 48–9, 57–60. Particularly popular in Greece were large bronze cauldrons decorated with winged siren and bull-head attachments, many of which originally hailed from northern Syria (Muscarella 1992, 40–43). Others think that they are more likely to have been offerings from Levantine visitors. There is also some suggestion that these cauldrons may have been transported overland through Asia Minor rather than by sea (Röllig 1992, 97–102).

83
There have been many attempts to prove that Al Mina was an Euboeancontrolled settlement (e.g. Boardman 2002 & 2005). However, although it is certainly the case that a large quantity of Greek pottery was found at Al Mina, the fact is that a far greater amount of Levantine material was also discovered there–although it never received the same attention as the Greek material, since archaeologists were excited by the possibility of having found evidence of one of the first Hellenic colonies in the Near East. Furthermore, the Greek pottery that has been found covers far too narrow a range to be evidence of a functioning Greek colony. The vast majority of the ceramics is made up of drinking vessels, which suggests that Al Mina was actually a centre for the import and export of luxury rather than subsistence goods (Tandy 1997, 65). There is a distinct possibility that at least some of the pots attributed to mainland Greece were the products of Phoeniciandominated Cyprus, where such ‘Greek’ styles were already being turned out. Clay analysis suggests that they may have been manufactured in eastern Cyprus. This would also explain the marked difference in quality between real Euboean skyphoi–deep drinking-cups with two handles and a low foot—and those from Al Mina. There is also a question over whether this particular form of skyphos was being produced during this period on the Greek mainland. There is every reason, therefore, to conclude that these were Near Eastern imitations of Greek pottery (Kearsley 1989). Thus, as we have seen in the West, Al Mina may actually show the real strength of an increasingly independent Phoenician Cyprus. Kearsley’s interpretation of the dating of the ‘Euboean skyphoi’ from Al Mina has been criticized by Popham & Lemos (1992, 154–5), who argue that many of them should be given a much earlier dating, putting the Euboeans at Al Mina by 800 BC. However, as Snodgrass (1994, 4—5) has pointed out, the vast majority of the so-called Euboean skyphoi from Al Mina are dated to after the mid eighth century BC. In fact the first evidence for Greek settlements in the Levant comes from Tell Sukas and Ras el-Bassit in the sixth century BC, but even that evidence is far from convincing (Waldbaum 1997). Furthermore, Al Mina contains none of the particular architectural characteristics associated with the Euboeans, such as thin-wood supported walls, tiled roofs and the apsidal plan (Luke 2003, 23–4). Even more tellingly, there is no evidence of Greek funerary practice in the settlement, or of Greek being spoken there. Only one potsherd has been found with a (poorly executed) Greek inscription upon it. Scholars who have recently studied it point out that the incompetence of the style suggests that the writer was inscribing a non-Greek name or phrase in unfamiliar letters. Analysis of the clay used in the potsherd also suggests that the vessel was not made in Al Mina (ibid., 12, 24). For a convincing set of arguments that Al Mina has to be understood within a north-Syrian context while more generally pointing out the dangers of seeing mercantile activity in the eastern Mediterranean as a bipolar division between Greeks and Phoenicians, see Hodos 2006, 25–88.

84
S. Morris & Papadopoulos 1998.

85
Kopcke 1992, 103–13. Burkert 1992 is the classic study on the relationship between Near Eastern and Greek culture. For the great influence that the Near East had on Greek art see S. Morris 1992. The influence was particularly great on the development of Greek religion in the archaic period. Although a number of the major Greek deities can be traced back to the Mycenaean period, aspects of devotional ritual appear to have hailed directly from the Near East. These included hepatoscopy (the gleaning of omens from the livers of sacrificial victims), purification through blood sacrifice, ecstatic divination where the divinity spoke directly through the mouth of the priest or priestess, and the practice of attempting to soothe the spirits of the dead through gifts and offerings and sometimes invoking them to do others harm through magic spells (Burkert 1992, 46—82). Other fundamental aspects of Greek religious ritual also hailed from the Near East, including the tradition of banqueting at sanctuaries, the use of large altars for the incineration of offerings, and even the building of temples to house the gods and the representation of gods as cult statues (Strøm 1992, 55—6; Burkert 1992, 19–21). In regard to the temples, Kopcke (1992, 110—12) has made the important point that it was the idea of temples rather than the exact architectural/liturgical blueprint that the Greeks received from the Levant. They also adopted the practice of placing offerings in the foundations of religious buildings, which was popular among the Assyrians (Burkert 1992, 53–5). Outside the cultural sphere, some scholars have even speculated that some of the new city states that sprang up around Greece borrowed their political systems from the Phoenicians. Certainly the very particular constitutional set-up at Sparta appears to have been very similar to the governmental systems of the Phoenician cities (Drews 1979).

86
Coldstream 1982, 269–72; Isserlin 1991; Einarson 1967.

87
Hence the Greek words for their letters (
alpha
,
beta
,
gamma
,
delta
etc.) are also of Semitic origin (Burkert 1992, 28—9).

88
It is generally agreed that the Greek alphabet came into existence in the early eighth century BC. However, some have tried to push this as far back as the fourteenth century BC (Bernal 1990). There is a wide collection of studies on the introduction of the alphabet into Greece in Baurain, Bonnet & Krings (eds.) 1991, 277–371. Greek letters appear at Athens, the Greek island of Naxos and Pithecusa by the mid eighth century BC (Burkert 1992, 26). However, there are some scholars who argue that in fact the Greek alphabet was formulated in the eleventh century BC from proto-Canaanite, the written language from which Phoenician was derived (Naveh 1980). As yet there is no evidence of any Greek writing before the eighth century BC. It was generally accepted by later Greeks that their alphabet had been derived from the Phoenician one, hence the name given to it:
Phoinikeia grammata
(‘Phoenician letters’).

89
Burkert 1992, 33–40; Lancel 1995, 351–3.

90
Hudson 1992, 134–5. For weights and measures, see Lydus
Liber de Mensibus
1.9.

91
Lloyd 1975, 54.

92
As well as Thucydides (1.13) there was Diodorus (14.42.1–3) and Pliny
NH
7.207. However, according to Clement of Alexandria (
Stromateis
1.16.76), it was the Phoenicians who invented the trireme, and Pliny the Elder (
NH
7.208) contended that Aristotle believed the Carthaginians to be responsible for the quadrireme. Lloyd is certainly right to contend that it is dangerous to mine Christian polemic for empirical facts, but goes too far in arguing that Clement’s claim that the Phoenicians invented the trireme is ‘historically worthless’ (Lloyd 1975, 49–51; 1980, 197). Some of Clement’s claims are certainly correct.

93
That is when Polycrates, ruler of Samos, sent forty triremes to take part in the Persian naval expedition to Egypt (Herodotus 3.44). The arguments of Lloyd (1975, 52–4) that there is good evidence for the trireme being developed by the Corinthians in the seventh century BC rely on a fragmentary source writing during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus, supported by the somewhat tenuous use of modern precedents to explain why the Greeks take advantage of this technology earlier than the Phoenicians. Furthermore, Thucydides never made the claim that it was the Corinthians who had invented the trireme: merely that they had been the first Greeks to build one before its designer, a certain Ameinocles, went to Samos, where he built a further four of these vessels (1.13).

94
Despite the ingenuous efforts of Lloyd 1975, 55—7. Lloyd’s (1980, 196–7) questioning of Phoenician involvement in the Memphite dockyard of
Prwnfr
during this period does not undermine this wider point. For the Phoenicians supplying timber to Egypt see Basch 1969, 231ff.

95
Basch 1977, 1–8; 1980, 199.

96
There were clearly differences between the Phoenician and the Greek craft. According to Herodotus (8.118–19), the Phoenician triremes had a continuous deck. Plutarch (
Them
. 14.2) also drew a clear distinction between the light, low Greek ships and their taller ‘barbarian’ counterparts with higher poops and decks. The Phoenician trireme also appears to have had a slightly different design of stern, carried shields along the gunwale, and had a differently shaped ram (Lloyd 1975, 48).

97
Plato
Phaed
. 109B.

98
Abulafia 2005, 64–9. For a wide-ranging study of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean that explores these ideas see Horden & Purcell 2000, as well as a collection of well-considered responses to the book in Harris 2005.

99
Homer
Iliad
23.740–45, 6.286–96.

100
Homer
Odyssey
15.415–16. Capomacchia 1991.

101
Homer
Odyssey
15.498–615, 14.287–300.

102
Winter 1995.

103
Van Dommelen 1998, 80—81, 111.

104
Trump 1992, 198–203; Bonzani 1992, 210—20. This transformation of the Nuragic landscape is perhaps best reflected in the change in design and function of the nuraghi. In the first millennium BC, some classic nuraghi –usually consisting of a fortified single tower whose existence appears to have been very much concerned with status and ownership within the community—developed into more complex structures. Extra towers and connecting walls were now added, which suggests that these particular nuraghi had become primarily military fortresses. Often these complexes seem to have developed villages around them, suggesting that the population were now living within a complex, socially stratified community (Ugas 1992, 229—30).

105
See the arguments of Rendeli 2005 for an initial considerable Euboean presence in Sulcis.

106
Giardino 1992, 304.

107
González de Canales, Serrano & Llompart 2006.

108
Lipiński 2004, 234–47. There is no consensus on the meaning of the Nora Stone. Peckham (1972) argued that the stele described Milkaton’s ship(s) being blown away from Spain in a storm and safely landing in Sardinia. Cross (1972b) favoured interpreting it as describing a military expedition to Sardinia and ‘Tarshish’ as a settlement on the island which Milkaton and his troops had captured before the establishment of a truce with the indigenous people of the island. Cross also translated
Pmy
(-
yton
) as Pygmalion, the ninth-century-BC king of Tyre, who had authorized Milkaton’s expedition, rather than as the god Pummay. Cross (1987) takes another very fragmentary inscription found at Nora as evidence for Phoenician activity on Sardinia in the eleventh century BC, but this is rather tenuous.