Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 9. TΟ ΠΕΡΙΩΝΥΜΟΝ ΤΡΙΧΟΡΔΟΝ

Persian setar (seh-tar = tri-chord = 3-string): Indian sitar’s “relative”

● Flamenco and Rebetiko, Guitar and Bouzouki
● Modal and Tempered Music ● Ross Daly
● Tanburs ● Ashiks ● Foustalieris and Iován
Tsaoús ● Entertainment and Edutainment

Michales Loukovikas

FLAMENCO AND REBÉTIKO’s lead instruments have been the guitarra and bouzouki respectively: the sound of these two instruments has become an absolutely necessary condition – sine qua non, as they say – for the two genres in their interpretation. Yet, the guitar and bouzouki may be evaluated as rather unsuitable for such musical idioms.

Rebétiko and flamenco: modal music genres accompanied by tempered instruments.

In terms of melodic themes, rebétiko and flamenco come under the category of modal music: that is, each song is based not on a simple musical scale but rather on a mode (“harmony”, or “echos”), with its own character, mood, and ethos, and with a variety of intervals that greatly outnumber the tempered-equal intervals of Western European music. In the accompaniment, however, both genres are dominated by the Occidental concept of chords and melodic phrases played on tempered instruments: the bouzouki and guitar’s frets are positioned according to these equal intervals, allowing the performance of just the notes of the piano. This contradiction, undoubtedly, creates various problems, imposes restrictions – but at the same time imparts a raw beauty to music when it flourishes at the borderline of distinct cultural areas. Its interpreters act like rope-dancers while balancing themselves between two worlds.

Bouzouki

The development of the guitar in its final phase, from the Renaissance onwards (seen in Chronicle 7), ran parallel to the development of Occidental music, with polyphony, counterpoint, and all the rest. The relationship between instrument and music, therefore, has been harmonious. The bouzouki, on the contrary, as a newcomer, has suffered from split personality. Even if it cannot be played with the classical guitar techniques that have crept into flamenco, it has gradually moved willy-nilly on the westernizing way of rebétiko, while major and minor scales have been substituting the multitude of modes.

Radical changes in the orientation of a musical genre are clearly reflected on its instruments. Although Music never reveals her face, the transformations of an instrument are clearly visible to the naked eye. Thus, we’ve seen the bouzouki undergoing a mutation and turning from a three-string (tri-chordon) into a four-string and electric instrument, while at the same time its tuning has changed, adopting that of the guitar just to facilitate virtuosities. This four-double-string… “guitarized” bouzouki was introduced by the superstar Manoles Chiotes (who was originally a guitarist), although it was not his own invention. Note that these developments occurred while rebétiko was on its deathbed.

Bouzouki mutated before and after the rebétiko era:
it was at first “mandolinized”, and then “guitarized”,
turned into a four-string and electric instrument.

Lavta with movable frets

That was the second mutation of the instrument. The first one happened before rebétiko moved into the spotlight, when the bouzouki, as a “prodigal son”, broke away from the tanbur family where it was raised, becoming a… Franco-Levantine: it lost both its tanbur-like appearance, and its movable frets enabling tunings according to the intervals of the mode to perform. They were replaced by the far fewer fixed metallic frets that permit the performance of just the tempered intervals. This metamorphosis was accompanied by other structural changes also modeled on the mandolin. In short, the instrument was at first… “mandolinized”. It continued “speaking” Greek, one might say, but with a foreign “accent”… ⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Considering the fixed frets and their tempered intervals, the only way to approach the original sound of old rebétiko, i.e. the sound of modal music, is to use several tunings called düzenia,* depending on the mode. The only bouzouki player I’ve listened to using such tunings “live” (not in some special event or during a musicological program) has been another… guitarist, Demetris Mystakides. Thus while the rest of his program favoured vocal duets, the düzenia required ison (drone) – i.e. music had moved away from Occidental-style “harmony” towards Oriental echos and ethos.
  * Düzen: tuning, harmony (in Turkish).

Nevertheless, there is a type of bouzouki still in use that has remained true to its origins and is proud to be a brother of the tanbur. It is the Arabic bouzouki, the buzuq, or bozuq, played in the region of ancient Phoenicia: in Lebanon and the surrounding area. The country of the cedars is where the great modern virtuoso of the instrument has emerged: the gypsy-born Matar Muhammad,⁽²⁾ who might turn even “four-string” Chiotes… pale, even though he had allegedly earned Jimi Hendrix’s admiration for his playing!

• ⁽²⁾ Note that Matar’s repertoire featured the Greek spongers’ song Dirlada. The song was included in The Fool’s Garden album (1969) by Dionyses Sabbopoulos – who was taken to court in 1973 for its credits. Despite the rebétiko composer Iannes Papaiohannou’s testimony that he’d known the song for years as traditional, despite the fact that by 1970 it was already an international hit recorded by Dalida in French and Italian as Darla dirladada, the court ruled that next to the song title on The Fool’s Garden cover and disc, a phrase should be written (in parenthesis): “Adapted by Sabbopoulos; composed by P. Ghines or traditional”… You could take your pick! The song was also recorded in Serbian, Finnish, Hebrew, etc. Other interpreters in Hellenic included Domna Samiou, Nikos Xylouris, and Marinella.

Crusades and Lebensraum – Urban, Hitler and Zionists

It seems as a modern version of the age-old competition – but also emulation and exchange – between Phoenicians and Hellenes during the colonizing phase in the Mediterranean: the former on the southern coastline, the latter by the northern shores – without excluding reciprocal incursions. This very competition went on (and still goes on) with other protagonists: Punics and Romans, Arabs and Byzantines – until the Crusaders appeared on mare nostrum upsetting the status quo. You can see how old the idea on “spheres of influence” is, where the concept of Lebensraum (vital, living space) recently emerged as a fatal malignant tumour.

● Pope Urban II made probably the most influential speech of the Middle Ages on November 27, 1095, giving rise to the Crusades, by calling Christians to war against Muslims. The chronicler Robert the Monk put this into the mouth of the pope:

“… this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population… and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators… Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves… Dieu li volt [It is God’s will]!”

● How identical the papal words were to Adolf Hitler’s: “We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources”, he shouted. Germany has “a tightly packed racial core”, and thus the Germans are entitled to “greater Lebensraum than in the case of other peoples.” As for Urban’s “wicked race”, the Nazis interpreted it as referring mainly to the Eastern European Slav population… There was, therefore, a long history of equivalent mentality between the “Holy See” and fascism; it wasn’t just a case of… love at first sight! (See also Chronicles 23–24).

● Adding to this historical irony, some of the Nazis’ victims, the Jews, under Zionist leadership, have embraced verbatim and wholeheartedly Urban’s call and Hitler’s Lebensraum theory and practice, encroaching on the lands of that old “wicked race”…

Tanbur, Pandura and Tríchordon

What is the origin of this instrument and of its various variants? It is apparently located in Assyria, as Pollux has already said about the pandura (see Chronicle 7, conclusion). How come that these various variants developed in Levante and Hellas, without influencing the rest of the Arabs, nor the Turks that found themselves in between in the meantime? We may just speculate on that; especially since the word “bouzouki”, according to Nicolas Andriotes’ Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek, is believed to have been Turkish in origin (büzük).⁽³⁾ We can see in this case, too, one of etymology’s so many oddities: an instrument’s godfather not to care much about it.

• ⁽³⁾ In fact, when the Turks say büzük, they mean a kind of bağlama; and when they say bağlama, they mean a kind of saz… (Some Greeks ordered from Constantinople “some little baglamás”… You can imagine their astonishment when they finally saw what they had bought!) So, the Greek terms bouzouki and baglamás are loans from Turkish referring to different, although related, instruments of the tanbur family, extending as far as India with the drone instrument, tanpura. Note, in addition, that the term tambour also denotes some kinds of drums. In the percussion category we have more derivative terms such as tambourine, tambora, tabor…
  ● The term büzük-bouzouki probably originates from a large Persian lute, the tanbur e bozorg.

Ross Daly

Unfortunately, we do not know how exactly the tambourás was played in Greece in the 19th century. Its playing, however, should have been quite different from that of the bouzouki or (at least today’s) Anatolian saz, though there are people who try hard to convince us of the opposite, for they introduce themselves as “masters of the tambourás”, while the instrument they play is in fact the saz – an instrument of the tanbur family in the form it has acquired in Asia Minor. Ross Daly describes the efforts to resurrect the tambourás:

“In recent years there has been much talk in various music high schools, educational institutions, schools of music and so-called conservatories about an instrument that is mentioned in Greek history, called tambourás. The instrument has not survived to this day. There has been no ongoing tradition since ancient times that, as they say, the tambourás originates. We can find old Byzantine theoreticians’ descriptions, folkloric descriptions, or references in books, we know more or less how it was tuned, what its form was; but we have never listened to it live.”

● The tríchordon: a three-string instrument of the lute family, also known as pandura, pandurís or pánduros. It was probably the only instrument with a neck used by the Greeks. In the Hellenistic times the term pandura was used to refer to a whole family of similar instruments played with a plectrum. Sachs says: ”it had a long arm…, small body, frets, and three strings”. According to Pollux: ”tríchordon, which the Assyrians called pandura; for it was their own invention”. We are told by Pythagoras that ”the pandura was made by the Red Sea Troglodytae with white laurel that grows by the sea”. In his Manual, Nicomachus writes that the monochord was called phánduros. Hesychius uses the term pandurís for the instrument and pánduros for the performer; pandúrion[, he claims, is] a diminutive of the word pandura. But Photius says: ”pandúrion, i.e. a Lydian instrument played with the fingers without a plectrum”. In his Dictionary Zonaras notes: “pandúrion… a kind of cithara”. (Solon Michaelides, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Music).

Muse playing a tríchordon-pandurís

“There is an instrument played today in Turkey that is considered as closely related to the tambourás: it’s the saz. Some say it’s one and the same instrument. First of all, it is not – and anyone can see that by a simple comparison of the two instruments. Besides, the style, the music an instrument plays, its construction – everything – are all in one. You cannot separate one thing from the other.

“What we have now as a result is a whole army of young people who have learned how to play the saz in recent years not through some kind of training or tradition, but completely self-taught and off-hand. They present themselves as tambourás masters though it’s obvious they have not the slightest idea. The people here know nothing about the saz, tambur, ney, not even the oud, although the Greeks have participated in the development of Anatolian culture. There have been numerous excellent Greek oud players; the best example may have been Yorgo Bacanós [Badjanós], the leading oud player in Istanbul in the mid-20th century: every Turkish oud player now drinks water to him. But, unfortunately, this tradition did not take root in Greece, and there was no follow-up.

“After this tradition had died out for some decades, with the revival of rebétiko in the early 70s, and even more around the 80s, when the people became interested in the Smyrnaic style,⁽⁴⁾ every bouzouki player bought an oud, as well; and started tinkering with it as if playing a bouzouki. This is one thing; another thing is to be initiated in the living tradition of this instrument in Turkey or Arabia where the oud is played now.

• ⁽⁴⁾ Smyrnaic (from Smyrna) and Piraeotic (from Piraeus): the two main styles of rebétiko.

Oud

“I cannot consider all these bouzouki players that were suddenly interested in the oud as successors of the tradition carried over by Bacanós, Agapios Tomboules, Lambros [Leontarides], the lyra player, or Lambros [Sabbaides], the qanun player. All these musicians carried a living tradition but, unfortunately, while they were alive, no one was interested in it; that’s why they left no successors.

“One could say, of course, the tambourás survived in Crete through Stelios Foustalieris’ bulgarí. However, Foustalieris changed completely his instrument, while he was deeply influenced mainly through his contact with rebétiko. His playing may be helpful; but this is not enough to revive an entire tradition. Let’s utilize whatever we have at our disposal; but without all that nationalist hot air specifically about this instrument that has become a symbol: ‘the tabourás of Makryiannes’!⁽⁵⁾ Some persons use it like a gun!”

• ⁽⁵⁾ General Iannes Makryiannes was a leader of the Greek struggle for independence (1820s).

Crete’s exchange with Constantinople and Smyrna, and also the wider area of Anatolia and the Balkans, was continuous until the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922. That’s how several tunes, and also the bulgarí, an instrument closely resembling the cura (tzurá), arrived there. But which cura? Here, too, the terms are confusing. The tzurás for the Greeks is the middle-sized instrument of the three that make up the bouzouki triad, while the smallest of the family is the Lilliputian baglamás, a typical prison instrument: due to its size it can be easily hidden. However, the smallest of the Anatolian tanburs is not the bağlama but the cura! Babel…

The pandura tradition in Asia Minor is autochthonous,
indigenous, at least since the Hittite and Assyrian times.

Different words, obviously, indicate differences not only in terms of dimensions, construction in general, but also in relation to the root of either the instruments or their users. Settling down in Anatolia, the Turks should have had instruments of the tanbur family, as we can presume based on the origin of these terms. But the peoples of Asia Minor had already been using similar instruments, such as the pandura, since time immemorial: at least since the time of the Hittites and the Assyrians. The tanburs, therefore, have been autochthonous there and their tradition has been Anatolian rather than Central Asian (Turkish).⁽⁶⁾

Âşık Veysel

• ⁽⁶⁾ I insist that the Ashik tradition has been Anatolian, not Turkish (Central Asian). During the international Musicological Symposium at Delphi in 1988 e.g., Reinhold Schlötterer analyzed the structure of Âşik Veysel’s song, Black Earth, pointing out that this melody corresponds to the ancient Hellenic musical system. Still, he hastened to add that we should not draw arbitrary conclusions claiming that the Anatolian music was actually dependent on ancient Greek culture. Besides, he concluded, Hellenic music had received antecedent idioms from Asia Minor. As we can see, Schlötterer compared ancient Greek and Anatolian cultures. He never intended to take into account in his analysis some Central Asian culture. Conclusion: Veysel’s source of inspiration, albeit in this song, was the ancient tradition of Greece and Asia Minor, not that of Central Asia. Therefore, the Ashik tradition is autochthonous, born and bred in Anatolia.

Ashiks, Alevis, Bektashis

We tend to forget this fact as we are under the false impression that the erudite Constantinopolitan tradition’s origin, on the one hand, has been Arabo-Persian (and Byzantine, of course, but we also forget) and, on the other hand, that the Anatolian folk music is “purely Turkish”… Would you expect anything else? It’s more than obvious that these advocates of “purity” – in sound and also race – are a global phenomenon. And if in this case the “purists” are Turks, OK (so to speak). But what if they are foreigners?

“At the court of the Ottoman sultans”, commented Alain Gheerbrant, who recorded and released songs of Âşık Veysel, “the official arts were so encumbered by flowery Arabo-Persian art poetry as to become less and less understandable to the common people. At the same time, the ashiks, often illiterate itinerant folk poets, maintained a tradition of poetry in song on Turkish soil. Since the 12th century, their poetry, worded in rigorous language and free of foreign influences, could be heard from the shores of the Mediterranean as far away as China.

“The Ottoman Empire disappeared; the popular tradition did not. Although there may no longer be any ashiks in Khorasan, they are still present in Anatolia. Âşık Veysel was not only the most brilliant of them all, he was also one of the greatest contemporary poets of the Turkish language. The tradition from which he drew his inspiration dates from the great semi-legendary figures of yesteryear, such as Yunus Emre (13th century) and Pir Sultan or Kaygusuz Abdal (16th century). His work shall remain, alongside that of his predecessors, in the collective memory of the rural peoples of Anatolia.

“His influence is also plain to see elsewhere, for the ‘Kemalist’ revolution has placed Turkey on the road to recovering its identity. A reconciliation was needed for that to take place: for the literate to abnegate their caste, set apart by jealousy, and recognize and hear the illiterate élites. Today’s Turkey has reached that understanding: one needs only to open a novel by Yaşar Kemal or view a few scenes from a Yilmaz Güney film to understand that Âşık Veysel, the aged, sightless bard, opened the eyes of all contemporary thinkers and artists, those who have carried the voice of their people beyond their nation’s borders eliminating the barrier of misunderstandings, preconceptions, and platitudes that impede all positive interaction between cultures.

Statue of Pir Sultan Abdal, who was
martyred and hanged for his beliefs

“Veysel, like all the ashiks, was of the Alevi–Bektashi faith, and therefore voluntarily alien to the rigid code of the Sunni Muslims. His philosophy, a fusion of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks of Asia Minor and the generous warmth of his Central Asian ancestors, was one of tolerance and freedom. He preached unity, understanding, and equality between all men and women, based on a religion that was turned inwards towards the earth, rather than outwards towards the sky”…

What a “flowery” garden… Had we not known Turkey, we would have thought it’s a heavenly land of the angels! Was the French researcher really serious, or did he tell one white lie after the other winking meaningfully at us? After all, why should he mention two prominent Kurds, such as Yaşar Kemal and Yilmaz Güney, who were jailed by the “‘Kemalist’ revolution”? And they were not the only ones. The most important persons of the arts and letters in Turkey have been treated collectively as subversive elements. Let alone how the Sunni state dealt with Alevis and Bektashis. What is, indeed, the use of such texts, except perhaps to serve public relations and personal gain?

● The Alevis, who live… persecuted in Turkey (indiscriminately and at all times: in the Ottoman, Kemalist or Islamist periods), should not be confused with the Alawites in Syria, who form a ruling minority. Alevis are grouped together with Shias (Shiites), though their religion, a syncretism of Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Shamanist beliefs, differs from both main branches of Islam. They usually gather for their ceremonies in houses rather than mosques, drinking wine, listening to music and dancing: an ashik plays bağlama singing their didactic “spirituals”, while both men and women dance whirling like Dervishes. Unlike Muslims, whose ceremonies are performed in Arabic, the Alevis use mainly Turkish, or Kurdish, if they are Kurds. At least half the Alevis think they are not Muslims. Sunnis accuse them of “heresy, heterodoxy, rebellion, betrayal, immorality”. Alevis, on the other hand, preaching love and respect for all, tolerance towards other religions and ethnic groups, equality between men and women, and respect for working people, consider Sunnis as “reactionary, bigoted, fanatic, anti-democratic”, opposing free and independent thinking. Alevis now see themselves as an offset to Sunni fundamentalism. Take into account that 1/4 to 1/3 of the inhabitants of Turkey are Alevis. Native Alevis in Greek Western Thrace are thought to number 3000 people.

Bektashi hymns

● Alevism is associated with Bektashism, as both groups honour Haji Bektash Veli (13th century). Bektashis had a strong presence not only in Asia Minor but also in the Balkans, especially in Albania, “North Macedonia” (Vardar Banovina, or ancient Paeonia), Bulgaria, and Greece, primarily in Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and Crete. It seems only in Bosnia they failed to take root. Influenced by Sufi mysticism and also accused of pantheism, they share some ideas with Shias, and are not dogmatic. Sultan Mahmud II abolished various orders (Bektashi, Janissaries, etc.) in 1826. Mustafa Kemal banned Dervish Sufi orders and shut down their lodges a century later, in 1925. While Enver Hoxha acted accordingly, outlawing religious practice in Albania. Kemal and Hoxha acted on the basis of their ideas and interests. One would surely expect that the rest of the Balkan leaders, except, of course, those who are under Ankara’s aegis, would do the same taking advantage of the Sunni-Bektashi conflict, given that the great majority of the Balkan Muslims have been Bektashis. Yet, acting stupidly as bigots in power, they too turned against them, handing them over to the Turkish leaders. It’s what we describe as “politicians with foresight”!

Although most Balkan Muslims are Bektashis, the Balkan states did not take advantage of the Sunni-Bektashi conflict, and turned against them, as well…

A Hittite with a small pandura

LET’S GO BACK to the tríchordon-pandura and its long history in Asia Minor. There is ample evidence that instruments of the tanbur family have been played by Anatolians since age-old times. Christian Poché says:

“Asia Minor was from earliest antiquity the favoured land of the long-necked lute, as shown by the Hittite archaeological finds… Long before Arabic Spain, this geographical area served as a link between Orient and Occident, and as such transmitted through the ages these types of long-necked lutes that in classical Europe gave birth to the pandura, colascione, mandora…

“In Turkey, these lutes take on different names according to their dimensions, the populations who use them and the way they use them. The Turkmen term baglama or baglamaq, literally ‘tying’ (of strings around an instrument) is the one found most often, as opposed to the other widespread term, saz, a Persian word which designates the music, the act of playing it on any instrument, especially the long-necked lute. A third term, of probable Indo-Iranian origin, also serves in support of the musical vocabulary: tambura.⁽⁷⁾ Like the preceding ones, it designates a fretted instrument of six strings in pairs, whose terminology finds more favour among the Kurdish populations.”

• ⁽⁷⁾ Personally, I think that the term tambura probably originates from the Assyrian pandura or a similar Hittite word. If so, the term must be Mesopotamian-Anatolian and not Indo-Iranian.

A Greek islander with a tambourás (18th century)

Thus, with the exception of the Kurds, the term tanbur is avoided in Turkey in relation to this long-necked lute because a related but very different instrument, called tambur, is used in the erudite Arabo-Persian music of Constantinople. There are two variants of this instrument: plucked (the older version) or bowed (yayli tambur), depending on the way it is played – with a plectrum or a bow. In Greece, of course, the term baglama in relation to the same long-necked lute is also avoided for the same reason, so as not to be confused with the well-known homonymous small instrument, the bouzouki’s little brother.

The Bulgarí

Unfortunately, the etymology of the terms relating to the several variants of the tanbur does not explain what the origin of the word bulgarí may be. Excluding the possibility of a Bulgarian origin, there’s only one alternative: the word vulgar referring to the common people, the “lower” classes – anything “debased”. This possibility, together with the characterization of the Greek demotic as “vulgar”, shows how class, racist, or sexist language may sometimes become – well, not language itself but man, the one who uses it…

● Words are boats and their etymology is a map of their voyages together with the peoples using them. On second… searches for bulgarí’s genealogy, my first guess proves to be in a way correct: after all, there is a “Bulgar connection”! The instrument may not originate from Bulgaria but from Anatolia among the Turkomans or Oguzes around the Taurus; it may not be directly linked with similar Balkan lutes, such as the tambura, tamburica or bugarija; but its name derives from the Bulgars, the proto-Bulgarian tribes of the Volga Bulgaria region, with whom the Turkomans-Turkmens had contacts. These Bulgars, on the contrary, had no contacts with the (European, Slavic-speaking) Bulgarians for more than a millennium.

The bulgarí spread in the Mediterranean, especially to Crete and Egypt. Guillaume André Villoteau, a French musicologist, mentioned in 1807 a tanbour boulghari or guitare de Bulgarie among other instruments of the tanbur family he saw in Cairo: bağlama, sharki, and bozuq (replaced later on by the buzuq). The bulgarí was either brought to Crete by Anatolian refugees in the 1920s or, most probably, was already in use at least since the 19th century among both Christian and Muslim populations. Stelios Foustalieris e.g. bought his first bulgarí in 1924, having seen the instrument being played by older musicians. It is still in use mainly as a lead instrument and not for accompaniment, a role that was gradually taken over by the laouto.

The bulgarí has 16-22 movable frets, but some musicians, e.g. Foustalieris replaced them with fixed frets. It’s the main instrument of the tabachaniotika, a style close to rebétiko, supposedly developed by “Turco-Cretans”. The tabachaniótika are urban folk songs influenced by Anatolian, Syrian, or Andalusian–Maghrebian music. Ross Daly and Pericles Papapetrópoulos are now bulgarí’s most accomplished performers.

Iován Tsaoús and Foustalieris

At any rate, Foustalieris’ vulgar or Bulgar bulgarí, together with the instruments performed by Iannes Eidjirides (or Etseirides), the famous Iován Tsaoús, were the only kinds of tambourás that Grecian discography actually recorded. But what a pity! These instruments seem to have little in common with those played by the fighters of the Greek War of Independence: the bulgarí is a Cretan peculiarity, while Iován Tsaoús’ instruments are Anatolian – hence unsuitable for restoring the Hellenic tambourás and its sound.

Iován Tsaoús

Iován Tsaoús, i.e. Sergeant John, was born in Pontus and worked with famous musicians and singers, playing even in the sultan’s Court, as they say. On the contrary, when he fled to Greece after the catastrophe of ’22, “he never played on stage because he seemed to disagree with the way the musicians functioned: he remained an ‘edutainer’ of his friends.”⁽⁸⁾ This is what Panaiotes Kounades says at least; which means that he did not like the role of an entertainer, as he was used to a different situation in Asia Minor and Constantinople, where musicians functioned otherwise:

• ⁽⁸⁾ Edutainment (edu-cation + enter-tainment) is so weak and pale compared to the Hellenic term ψυχαγωγία (ἀγωγὴ ψυχῆς = soul leading, training, education of the soul) – but what can I do?

“Arabo-Perso-Turkish music,” the qanun player Nikos Stephanides commented, “in earlier times was performed by musicians playing saz, bouzouki and tambourines in folk songs; while serious music was performed by an ensemble called ince saz (fine instruments) consisting of the following: tambur (pandura), psalterium [psaltery] – qanun in Greek, Arabic and Turkish – violin, oud, ney (reed flute). The ensembles had singers called hanendes. They had beautiful voices and played tabors – tambourines – keeping the various rhythms of the melodies being performed.

“When the ensemble played and the hanende sang, everyone was silent in the venue. Even the waiters did not move from their positions. Only during the breaks, when the ensemble stopped playing, the public discussed or ordered the waiters whatever they wished for. If they wanted the ensemble to play a song, they put a card with the order and a corresponding tip inside an envelope, and the waiter carried it to the artists so as to perform the piece he wanted. Such was the order inside the venues, which in those old times were equipped neither with loudspeakers nor with amplifiers and, although the musicians played with a natural sound, the audience were able to listen even in the large venues, where they oftentimes numbered more than 500-1000 persons, because they were completely silent”…

Panaiotes Tountas

When you are accustomed likewise – playing high-standards music with such partners and in front of such audience – how is it possible to restrict yourself to the role of an entertainer? Iován Tsaoús, therefore, chose to open a… tailor’s shop, which he later turned into an ouzo tavern, playing for his pleasure and not for the entertainment of the patrons of an establishment. Fortunately, he met Panaiotes Tountas, the greatest composer of the Smyrnaic style, and also artistic director of phonographic companies; so he recorded a number of his own songs and some other compositions, mainly by Tountas. These few recordings (about twenty in all) took place in just two years (1935-36), because when the Metaxas dictatorship imposed censorship on lyrics and music (and music!), Iován Tsaoús abandoned the idea to continue, as some others did, as well, such as Vangelis Papázoglou, Giorgos Batis, and Anestos (Artemes) Deliás (see Chronicle 13).

But anyway, less is more: these moments in the studio – however few – reflect the virtuosity of the musician who became a kind of “master” of the Piraeotic rebétiko protagonists: Batis, Deliás, Markos Bambakares, Stratos Paioumtzēs – that is, the “Famous Quartet of Piraeus”. They learned from him the names and techniques of the musical “routes” (modes), the art of improvisation (taqsim), and also the several tunings, the düzenia. All the above, combined with his unusual personal style and “eccentric” instruments that the bouzouki players of rebétiko did not dare to touch, let alone play, created a myth around the name of Iován Tsaoús, or… “Sgt. Iován”.⁽⁹⁾

• ⁽⁹⁾ Sgt. Pepper, who “offered” the Beatles their masterpiece, was an imaginary person. But on the contrary, Sgt. Iován, in Greece, was real. Unfortunately, no one has ever had the idea to form a… Sgt. Iován’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!

Canción Malagueña, by George Apperley (1931)

In our “modern” world, unfortunately, the musicians have no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment circuit (clubs, festivals, etc.). That is, there has been no parallel “edutainment” circuit on a professional basis. In Andalusia, on the contrary, at least until the 60s, there was such a circuit for flamenco artists. Up to the latest development of the genre into concert and theatrical flamenco,⁽¹⁰⁾ these artists were divided into two major categories: the commercial entertainers worked primarily in tablaos, while the authentic “edutainers” were employed in juergas, the feasts organized by flamenco aficionados.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Concert and theatrical flamenco: having as protagonists the guitarists and dancers respectively: yesteryear’s leading artists, according to flamenco’s traditional hierarchy, the singers, have been sidelined – together with cante jondo and duende that avoid concert halls or theatres…

There’s been no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment
circuit for the musicians: there’s been no parallel edutainment circuit.

Stelios Foustalieris

The other tambourás master, Stelios Foustalieris or Foustalierakis, together with his partner, the excellent singer Iannis Bernidakis or Baxevanis, belonged to the large batch of musicians and singers, who appeared in Rethymnon during the interwar period. The instruments accompanying the lyra at that time were the bulgarí and mandolin, according to Lambros Liavas. They were later replaced by the laouto. But Foustalieris managed to turn bulgarí into a solo instrument and worked with two Anatolian musicians playing the oud and santur. They were among those who sought refuge in the island after the catastrophe of 1922. So they should have imparted to him musical elements from the original cradle of his instrument. Unfortunately, there are no recordings from this collaboration.

Later he came into direct contact with the sound of the Piraeotic rebétiko. It was in the period of 1933-37, when he lived in Piraeus and also met Batis, Markos, Stratos and many other musicians of rebétiko, as well as Tountas, with whom, of course, he collaborated in discography. But here, too, the output was meagre: just 24 discs.

We wonder if the two tambourás masters, Iován Tsaoús and Foustalieris, finally met; if there was some exchange of knowledge and expertise. Having so many acquaintances in common, one would expect that this meeting did happen. But there is no available information.

Iován Tsaoús died 49 years old, in 1942, during the German occupation of Hellas that “wiped out” the vast majority of the élite of Greek musicians and singers: the Anatolian refugees. Apparently they failed to go through one more calvary so soon. On the contrary, Foustalieris passed away 50 years later, in 1992, when he was 81. Being… “the last of the Mohicans” among the select few traditional masters of tambourás, we suppose he attracted the attention of the authorities. This would have happened in almost any country; but not in Balkan Greece…

While Foustalieris was still alive, in 1987, I had a discussion on the radio with Sakis Papademetriou and Ross Daly – who concluded as follows:

“Crete, compared perhaps with other parts of Greece, somehow maintains its tradition in a better shape, in the sense that it’s been renewed. But because there have been neither significant studies on music nor recordings, each passing decade brings terrible losses. In the few years that I’m there, I’ve met old musicians who in the meantime have died and with them many archives have been lost. There are very few now left.

Stelios Foustalieris, Giorges Gogas, Kostas Mountakis and Ross Daly.

“Foustalieris, the last bulgarí player, is still alive. He’s around 75, but no one has gone there with a tape recorder to tell him: ‘Play – and when you get tired, stop!’ However, no private individual can do such a thing because Foustalieris will be afraid he’ll be exploited. In such cases, an official state agency can easily surpass any problems and Foustalieris, as a man with an old mentality, will warmly respond. At least something like that, now that there is still time”…

● Time’s passed, Foustalieris has died, the rest of the masters follow, but there have been no recordings – an undertaking of minimal expense. “Hellas, the eternal”…

● On second dispassionate thought, I wonder whether – as a daydreamer – I ask “too much” from a country that has not given a damn about the essence of Makryiannes’ Memoirs. Why then should they care about the way he used to play his tambourás? Let alone about Foustalieris and his own bulgarí…

● So, our only hope is to see the fulfillment of a verse, albeit paraphrased, of a most beautiful old song, Staphidianós, played superbly by Foustalieris on his bulgarí, having beside him an amazing Baxevanis:

“The good old Foustalieris song will never fade away”…

• >> Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”
• << Chronicle 8. A HYBRID’S HYBRIS…

Next Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE” ● Linguistics à la Turca ● İsmail Beşikçi and the Kurds ● Egyptian, Graeco-Byzantine, Arabo-Persian, Turkish Music ● Assimilation Through Religion and Language ● Arabic Music Schools

Ross Daly playing tarhu

Chronicle 19. PHOENICIA’S STROKE OF FORTUNE

Chronicle 19. PHOENICIA’S STROKE OF FORTUNE

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 19. ΦΟΙΝΙΚΗ: Η ΕΥΝΟΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΤΥΧΗΣ

● Phoenicians and Sea Peoples ● Minoan Eruption on Thera ● Trojan War and Bronze Age Collapse (B)

Michales Loukovikas

PARADOXICALLY ENOUGH, “A CRITICAL TURNING POINT in history, an important element mentioned by many sources, and yet given consideration by virtually none, is the simple fact that – in the midst of a cataclysm which destroyed almost every city in the area of the eastern Mediterranean – the Phoenician cities remained untouched… accorded a special status by the invading peoples”.

Such is the standpoint of Sanford Holst, a specialist on Phoenicia, in his analysis on Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians: A Critical Turning Point in History, adding equally unequivocally:

“There was a relationship or partnership of some nature between the Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians”…

“A critical turning point in history mentioned by many sources, and yet given consideration by virtually none, is that, in the midst of a cataclysm destroying almost every city in eastern Mediterranean, Phoenicia remained untouched, accorded a special status by the invading peoples… There was a relationship or partnership between the Sea Peoples and Phoenicians”. (Sanford Holst)

Warship and winged hippocamp
on a Phoenician coin

However, as he is “Philo-Phoenician”, he tries to minimize the importance of the Minoans in his text regarding the Origin of the Phoenicians, Interactions in the Early Mediterranean Region. Reversing historical periods, he opts to portray the Minoans as the Phoenicians’ “pupils”, and uses the usual “beautiful” phrases as a cover-up:

“Around 2000 BC”, he maintains (but in reality, circa 3000 BCE), “the beautiful Minoan civilization arose on Crete, accompanied by many indications of ‘Eastern influence’. By that time the Phoenicians had long been established as major sea traders on the Mediterranean. [!] That the Minoans received influences from them and others in the form of specific pottery, architectural practices, social practices, legends and language are very much in evidence”…

Such assertions, by the way, were made by the great archaeologist Leonard Woolley, but eventually, they backfired and were discarded as entirely erroneous (see Chronicle 27. An Archaeologist’s Waterloo).

Ship with dolphins: wall painting replica
from Minoan Thera (17th century BCE)

The Phoenicians may be the “darlings” of most historians; but none would ever dare to claim that their civilization was older than that of the Minoans. Consequently, the latter were the real masters, and their good pupils, as it turned out, were not the Mycenaeans but the Phoenicians, when the Cretans voyaged to Canaan very often for trade.

“The Phoenicians began to develop as a seafaring, manufacturing, trading nation when the Cretans – the first masters of the Mediterranean – were overthrown by the Greeks”, R. A. Guisepi points out in his text on The Phoenicians.

The Minoan Eruption on Thera

They probably ventured out on the open sea some time before, in the early 16th century, trying to profit from the misfortunes of the Cretans (mainly due to the Minoan eruption), but in vain: the Minoans were still standing, and afterwards they were succeeded by the Mycenaeans…

“The Late Minoan I period as a whole [1600-1450 BCE] represents the zenith of Minoan civilization”, W. Sheppard Baird contends in his study about The Bronze Age Eruption of Santorini and Late Minoan IB Destruction Event, and then explains: “Their cultural and maritime economic influence throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea would never be exceeded. This was a time of great social and political cohesion and commercial and industrial prosperity. Their only economic rival in the Mediterranean was the Egyptians. The Minoans at this time ruled the seas with the largest navy and commercial fleet ever seen in the Mediterranean. Then it all came crashing down with the incredible eruption of the Theran marine volcano”…

● The Minoan eruption was one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history (and probably the second biggest after Tambora, Indonesia, in 1815 CE), devastating Thera, nearby islands and parts of Crete. The eruptions, generating tsunamis and preceded by earthquakes, provided a basis for or inspired Plato’s Atlantis story and the Titanomachy in Hesiod’s Theogony. The exact date has been difficult to determine. The initial date of 1500 BCE appeared to be incorrect, as radiocarbon dating analysis indicated that the eruption occurred at least a century before, c. 1627-1600. A volcanic winter after the eruption provoked the collapse of the Xia dynasty in faraway China, following “yellow fog, a dim sun, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals”. Heavy rains and storms that ravaged Egypt have been attributed to short-term climatic changes caused by the eruption. W. Sheppard Baird suggests the idea that at least one pyroclastic surge of superheated steam travelled at a very high speed over 110 kilometers of sea water to incinerate large areas of Crete spreading destruction, havoc and death. The Mycenaean conquest of the island occurred about 150 years after the catastrophe; therefore, many archaeologists speculate that it induced a grave crisis in the Minoan civilization that made things far easier for the Mycenaeans. The internal political conflict hypothesis is also presented here. It is a realistic scenario because of the instability the catastrophe provoked. It could also be a factor that might have paved the way for the Mycenaeans. Their operation in Crete lasted from c. 1450 to 1375 BCE, when Knossos finally fell.

An island volcano similar to that of Thera

W. Sheppard Baird refers to this “big bang” on Santorini, even when he is more concentrated on The Origin of the Sea Peoples:

“When the Theran volcano exploded in the Aegean”, he suggests, “it would have been difficult enough for the surviving Minoans to resurrect the Mediterranean trade routes amid the incredible devastation. The effective Minoan policing of the old trade routes from piracy that was in place before the eruption might have never again been achieved”. Describing the aftermath of the Sea Peoples’ raids, he concludes: “By this time all of the great Bronze Age powers that had existed before the volcanic eruption, except the Egyptians, lay shattered, depopulated, and would never recover. In sharp contrast, the Phoenicians survived completely unscathed and invigorated. It was the beginning of the ‘Age of the Phoenicians’ in the Mediterranean. What did they do? They headed straight for the gold, silver, and tin of southern Iberia to establish trading outposts [emporia] and colonies.”

Mycenaeans and Hittites vs. Phoenicians and Sea Peoples

Seal of Tarkummuwa, king of Mera, surrounded by Hittite hieroglyphs and cuneiform script: this bilingual inscription provided the first clues for deciphering Hittite hieroglyphs.

Not “what did they do?” but “how did they make it?” should be the first question to ask – followed by the crucial query: “Who were the Phoenicians’ adversaries?” Sanford Holst explains:

“The Phoenician people had been dominant sea traders in the Mediterranean prior to 1500 BC [in fact, they had attempted unsuccessfully to establish themselves as such after the Minoan eruption]. Then the rise of the Mycenaeans caused sea trade to fall into the hands of that new power. This pushed the Phoenicians backward from the west. The growth of Ugarit as a major sea trader located just north of the Phoenicians exerted additional pressure from that direction. Immediately beside that powerful city were the Hittites.”

Hattusa, Lion Gate

The Phoenicians’ adversaries, therefore, were the Mycenaeans and the Hittites, including Ugarit. A war between Egypt and Hatti in the early 13th century was inconclusive and the Hittites kept all the lands they had taken. Then the great pharaoh Ramses II died in 1213 BCE, and the Sea Peoples appeared on the scene four years later, waging their first doomed raid against Egypt, “the breadbasket which had been supplying the Hittites with wheat via Ugarit”. The hungry Sea Peoples wanted bread and the breadbasket was Egypt, but this did not serve the Phoenicians’ interests. It was urgent for them that the Sea Peoples’ attention be turned elsewhere: to the Aegean and Anatolia, to the Mycenaeans and Hittites…

The hungry Sea Peoples wanted bread, the breadbasket was Egypt, but
this did not serve the Phoenicians’ interests. The Sea Peoples’ attention
should be urgently turned elsewhere: to the Aegean and Anatolia…

“What led to the special treatment the Phoenicians seem to have been given by the Sea Peoples? What services could the Sea Peoples possibly have received from these maritime traders?”, Sanford Holst wonders.

The answer is, of course: bread – if not something more than bread. As for the… “circuses”, well, the investing Phoenicians hoped that they would be rewarding enough; how fruitful they were in fact, not even the most optimistic Phoenician could ever dream of or imagine… Holst has the story unfolding:

The Sea and Land Peoples’ raids

“With the Hittites threatening their northern border, the Phoenicians would reasonably have supported whichever groups among Sea Peoples wanted to shift attacks away from the failed effort at Egypt and toward a more promising one against the Hittites. Though the Hittites themselves had no excess food to offer, they stood between the Sea Peoples and an achievable goal: the land of Canaan, which was second only to Egypt as a source of wheat. In addition, by going through the Hittite land and Canaan, the Sea Peoples would bring a force numbering hundreds of thousands to confront the wheat-rich Egyptians – rather than the handful of warriors who had failed on the first attempt.

“But a problem had to be overcome. The Mycenaeans continued to hold the Aegean and attacked the Anatolian people from the seaward side. To deal with this, warriors and ships in the Sea Peoples confederacy poured from Anatolia and the Black Sea into the Aegean, where they ravaged the Mycenaeans. Following this widespread disruption the Mycenaean cities withered and eventually died. When the Aegean had been thus cleared, the people of western Anatolia were able to turn their full attention to the Hittites.”

“The Mycenaeans continued to hold the Aegean and attacked the Anatolians from the sea. To deal with this, the Sea Peoples poured into the Aegean and ravaged the Mycenaeans [until their] cities withered and died. When the Aegean had been thus cleared, the Western Anatolians were able to
turn their full attention to the Hittites.” (Sanford Holst)

Hector‘s corpse brought back to Troy (detail); Roman
relief from a marble sarcophagus (ca 180–200 CE)

Holst apparently alludes to the Trojan War. If so, it explains why the fighters on the Trojan side, as Homer says, sounded just like the Tower of Babel builders – that is, speaking various languages and thus needing to have orders translated to them by their commanders. It seems, therefore, that the fall of Troy did not seal the end of the war. The Sea Peoples counter-attacked, bringing the war on Hellenic soil.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ So, were the Greeks a part of the Sea Peoples? The answer is evidently negative: “No, they were not!” Or were they? We need to elaborate on that in our next Chronicle.

Let’s compare Eberhard Zangger’s view:

“The Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect the Greek effort to counter those raids.” Hence the Iliad may well reflect this conflict.

“The Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated
allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect
the Greek effort to counter those raids.” (Eberhard Zangger)

“In 1182 BC Ugarit fell [burned to the ground and left unoccupied thereafter] and the flow of wheat from Egypt was cut off”, says Holst. “Approximately two years later the Hittite empire died. Now nothing stood in the way of the Sea Peoples’ exodus.⁽²⁾ With their wives, children and household possessions in two-wheeled carts, the Sea Peoples – now more properly the Land Peoples – flowed across on their path of destruction and, observing their special relationship with Phoenicia, they by-passed that land. Flowing down through Canaan they destroyed the cities they encountered. Many settled beside the wheat fields and took some of the land for themselves and their families. A very large number of the Land and Sea Peoples continued onward and eventually arrived at the border between Canaan and Egypt. There a great battle was fought and the Sea Peoples were finally stopped.”

The “Horses of St. Mark” in Venice: a tiny part of the incalculable booty pillaged by Venetians and Franks…

• ⁽²⁾ Writing “exodus”, Holst clearly sought “Biblical” connotations. The historical connotations though are more compelling: it is irresistible the urge to compare or find parallels between the Sea Peoples and the First Crusade (1096–1099 CE), especially the so-called People’s, or Peasants’, or Paupers’ Crusade – although, if we wish precision, we need to describe it as the Unruly Mob’s Crusade. If, on the contrary, we try to find analogies with the Phoenicians’ conduct, we need to “flash forward” to the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), branded as the “Cursed Crusade”, as it was originally intended to conquer Muslim Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt; but instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders mercilessly sacked Christian Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which was partitioned among the plunderers, establishing the Latin Empire. The Venetians in this Crusade acted just like the Phoenicians in the Sea Peoples’ raids during the Bronze Age collapse. One day we may get to know who the Phoenician “Enrico Dandolo” was, and how he contributed to this collapse…

● Just a tiny portion of the incalculable booty pillaged by Venetians and Franks in the city is the “Horses of St. Mark” in Venice, a work that some attribute to Lysippos. Napoleon stole later the… stolen horses but, after Waterloo, they were returned to their… legitimate looters!

The Egyptians won the battle but, as we have seen, lost the war. Who else did? The Mycenaeans, the Hittites, Ugarit, and also the peoples of Canaan – except the Phoenicians. Even the militaristic Assyrians can be counted among the losers being obliged to withdraw to their borders for protection. In short, all the great powers of the day. As for the winners, apart from the Sea Peoples themselves, there is no doubt:

“Under the destructive force of the Sea Peoples’ attacks, all of the
Phoenicians’ powerful adversaries had been destroyed. The Phoenician
cities were untouched by this devastation that happened around them,
which left these people in an advantageous position.” (Sanford Holst)

The battle of the Egyptians with the Sea Peoples

“The Phoenicians seem to have gained more than anyone else from the mass migration of the Land and Sea Peoples”, Holst sums up. “Under the destructive force of the Sea Peoples’ attacks, all of the Phoenicians’ powerful adversaries had been destroyed. The Phoenician cities were untouched by this devastation that happened around them, which left these people in an advantageous position.

“The historical record shows their active cities quickly began to expand their domain by placing trading posts in Cyprus, the Aegean, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, Algeria, Morocco and Spain. Among the cities they created were these in Morocco: Lixus (modern Larache), Sala (Rabat), Mogador (Essaouira) and Tingis (Tangier); in Spain: Gadir (Cádiz), Malaka (Málaga), Ibisa (Ibiza); in Algeria: Icosia (Algiers); in Tunisia: Utica and Carthage; in Sardinia: Karalis (Cagliari); in Sicily: Panormus (Palermo);⁽³⁾ in Cyprus: Kition (Larnaca). The Phoenicians gave rise to a powerful and wealthy sea-trading empire which stretched from Morocco to the Levant.”

• ⁽³⁾ One of too many similar cases: colonies supposedly founded by the Phoenicians but known by their Greek names as the Canaanite toponyms (if there were such names) were forgotten…

● Therefore, Sanford Holst is absolutely right to underline that “this element turns out to be one of the keys which help to unlock the mystery of the Sea Peoples – an event which changed the course of history.”

Carthage reconstructed

“Age of the Phoenicians”

THE RESULTING POWER VACUUM WAS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY for the Phoenicians to take advantage and emerge as true heirs of the Minoans, rising as a great maritime power. Their zenith in history (1200–800 BCE) coincides with the dark ages of all their antagonists. Enjoying almost complete freedom of movement for such a long time, they methodically built their trading empire; and when the tide of history brought the great powers back (Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians), subjugating Phoenicia from the 9th to the 6th centuries BCE, they were prepared to shift the hub of the empire from the Near East to the centre of the Mediterranean, from Canaan to Tunisia.

Under Persian yoke, many Phoenicians migrated to colonies, such as Carthage. There they might realize their dream to become a real empire, achieving military supremacy, as well, which was rather infeasible in the narrow strip of Phoenicia. As for the Hellenes, they gradually woke up from their dark age and, starting in 900 BCE, rushed to make up for lost time founding their own colonies not only in the Mediterranean, but also in the Black Sea, where the Phoenicians never dared to enter. Studying a map of 550 BCE, the Greek superiority is obvious. The Phoenicians faced a very serious problem: lack of manpower. But they enjoyed a crucial strategic advantage: the control of the Pillars of Heracles,⁽⁴⁾ the Strait of Gibraltar,⁽⁵⁾ where Carthage would impose a blockade to secure its monopoly with metal-bearing Iberia, the lost city of Tartessos, and the Atlantic, North and South. Using e.g. gold obtained by their expansion of the African coastal trade in the mid-4th century BCE, the Punics minted gold staters bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which some have interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with America (or Atlantis?) shown to the West.

Hellenic and Phoenician colonies (in blue and in red respectively) 550 BCE

• ⁽⁴⁾ The Pillars of Heracles of the Hellenes were the Strait of Gibraltar. But in earlier times, when they had not gone so far, this phrase referred to the “strait” between Tunisia and Sicily. Thus the Phoenicians, and later the Punics, sought to control both the “internal” and “external” Pillars.

• ⁽⁵⁾ Gibraltar is the European Pillar of Heracles on Spanish soil but controlled by Britain. The term means “Rock of Tariq” (Gibr al-Tariq), from the name of Tariq ibn Ziyad who led the vanguard of the Arabs that invaded Iberia in 711 CE.

● However, long before the Spaniards, the British and the Arabs, the Visigoths and the Vandals (hence the name of Andalusia), the Punics and the Romans, the Phoenicians or the Greeks, long before the Celts, even the Iberians and locals, the rock was occupied by the Neanderthals. The evidence in Gorham’s cave, between 125,000 and 25,000 years ago, makes it their last known holdout. Similarly on the opposite, African Pillar, Ceuta, in Moroccan territory but controlled by Spain, the oldest traces of human presence go back 250,000 years.

The Punic coin with the exergue supposedly depicting the ancient world, ca 341 BCE

That was the background of Phoenicia’s sea trade enterprise that spread across the seas from 1550 to 300 BCE. The Phoenicians were remarkable in seamanship and famous as “traders in purple”, due to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the murex snail, once profusely available in the eastern Mediterranean, though exploited to local extinction, and used, inter alia, for royal clothing. In fact, the word Phoenicia derives from the Hellenic words φοῖνιξ and φοινός, i.e. purple, passing to Latin as Punic.⁽⁶⁾ They called their country Canaan, which may also mean Land of Purple. If so, Canaan and Phoenicia are synonyms. Hecataeus said Phoenicia was formerly called Χνᾶ (Khnā). However, the Greek term did not correspond to a cultural identity that would be recognized by the Phoenicians themselves. It is uncertain if and to what extent they viewed themselves as a single ethnicity. It was a civilization organized in city-states, similar to Hellas. They would come into conflict and one city might dominate the others, though they could collaborate in leagues or alliances, as well. In terms of language, life style and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart from other Semitic cultures of Canaan as markedly different.

The Minoan “Phoenician” purple

• ⁽⁶⁾ Seeking information on purple in Wikipedia, you are redirected to the so-called “Phoenician” or “Tyrian” purple, extracted from a spiny sea snail: Murex, or Bolinus, or Haustellum, brandaris. Despite being established as such, nevertheless, purple must have been a Minoan invention; the Phoenicians appropriated it, together with several Cretan innovations, and brought them huge profits after the Bronze Age collapse. As the most expensive and finer dye, purple has long been considered a royal and divine symbol and privilege: the higher one was in political or religious hierarchy, the more purple clothes one was allowed to wear. Therefore, it also meant the purple royal robe and, thence, royal power.*

* Medicine “took revenge” on all those “blue bloods”, terming as purpura (porphyra) a skin disease with red spots. (Etymology of the word purple: < Latin purpura <Greek porphyra (πορφύρα) < of unknown origin; it seems, however, it is perhaps the only Minoan word still in use).

A horse head on a Punic coin (replica)

● Archaeologists have found substantial numbers of murex shells in Crete, dating to the 20th – 18th centuries BCE. Thus, the Minoans must have pioneered the extraction of purple, centuries before the Tyrians, and the Phoenicians in general. An important site was the now uninhabited islet of Chryse (Golden), also known as Gaidouronesi (Donkey isle), 15 km south of Crete off Hierapetra, where archaeologists excavated a Minoan settlement dating to 1800-1500 BCE, with purple dye workshops and many artifacts. The Minoans developed various purple dye tones (from blue to red) depending on the method of processing. Accumulations of crushed murex shells have been found in other parts of the Mediterranean, e.g. Apulia, Magna Gaecia. It seems that Laconia was the place with the best purple production in Europe, the islet Meninx (Djerba) in Africa, and Tyre in Asia.

Apart from purple, the Phoenicians exported textiles, glass, and wine to Egypt, where grapevines would not grow, and obtained Nubian gold, Iberian silver, and British tin. However, what was once thought to be direct trade is now believed it was indirect. Timothy Champion suggests it was under the control of the Celts of Britanny.⁽⁷⁾ In any case, the recovery of the Mediterranean economy after the Bronze Age collapse was largely due to the work of Phoenician traders, who re-established long distance commerce.

• ⁽⁷⁾ This is a very simple but quite interesting idea: Why should any trading sailor, be it Minoan or Mycenaean, Phoenician or Carthaginian, take the risk of travelling around Iberia and then up to Britain, when tin from Cornwall or Brittany could be transported overland through Gaul-France? It is the reason why Carthage tried in vain to prevent the founding of the colony of Massalia: even with Gibraltar blockaded, tin from Cornwall or Brittany was available in the Mediterranean, and Carthage could not impose an all-out monopoly.

While trade and colonies spread, the Mediterranean was split into two with the Phoenicians sailing along and finally dominating the southern shores, while the Greeks were active along the northern coast. This arrangement did not exclude mutual intrusions, as the examples of Cyrenaica and Sardinia indicate. The two cultures clashed rarely, mainly in Sicily (due to its strategic position, opposite Carthage, at the “internal Pillars” of the Mediterranean), and finally settled into two spheres of influence. When the Punics took over, things changed dramatically.

Melqart on a Phoenician silver tetradrachm

Despite the exergues, which supposedly depict America (or Atlantis), what we can see on the other side of the Phoenician “coin” is a certain kind of cultural deficiency. Their art lacks some unique characteristics that might differentiate it from its contemporaries. This is due to its being highly influenced by foreign cultures: primarily Egypt, Assyria, or Hellas. Their art was an amalgam of foreign models and perspectives. In addition, although they are credited for the spread of their “abjad”, from which all major alphabets originated, they used this script mainly for their trade business.⁽⁸⁾ And apart from their inscriptions, they have left almost no other written sources – or they have not survived. We even ignore the name of their “Lord of the Sea”, their “Poseidon” – quite strange for a society of sailing merchants where such a deity is so very important.

• ⁽⁸⁾ The precursor to the “Phoenician alphabet” was likely of Egyptian origin as the Middle Bronze Age abjads from Canaan resemble hieroglyphs or, far more specifically, an early abjad found in central Egypt. In addition to being preceded by proto-Canaanite scripts, the Phoenician abjad also followed the Ugaritic “alphabet” of Mesopotamian origin. Hence, the consonantal Semitic “alphabets” should have originated in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The same could be said about the Minoans, whose deities we also ignore, if we do not take into account that they represent an older civilization, whose script is still undeciphered. Note that there was a god of the sea and the rivers, named Yam (Yaw), in the Canaanite Pantheon. Was he worshipped by the Phoenicians? It seems that, except Baal (Baal-hamon and his consort Tanit were the patrons of Carthage), the Phoenicians specifically honoured Melqart, patron of Tyre, the founder of most colonies, including Gadir (Cádiz) and Carthage. Gradually, due to mutual influence, Melqart was identified with Heracles. But for sure, none of these gods could substitute Yam-Poseidon. Therefore, the mystery (a people of seamen without a god of the sea) is here to stay…

Semiramis, by Eliseo Fattorini (19th century)

● If we search for the entry “Phoenician mythology” in Wikipedia, we are redirected to a certain Sanchuniathon, a purported author of three lost works in the Phoenician language, supposedly surviving only in partial paraphrase and summary of a Greek translation by Philo of Byblos, according to the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius. All we know about Sanchuniathon’s work comes from Eusebius, citing the only surviving excerpts from his writings, as summarized and quoted from his supposed translator, Philo. The hypothetical date of the alleged writings take us back to a time before the Trojan War, around the time some other hypothetical persons lived, such as Moses, “when Semiramis was queen of the Assyrians”. Thus Sanchuniathon is placed in the mythic context of an antiquity from which no Hellenic or Phoenician writings have survived. Paradoxically enough, however, the “writer” is made to refer disparagingly to… Hesiod, who lived in the 8th century BCE! Some have suggested that Eusebius’ intent was… “pious” (“eusebeia” means “piety” in Greek): he desired to “discredit polytheism”; others that it was a forgery by Philo himself. Anyone can draw his own conclusions about the real motives of the forgers, whoever they were. At any rate, you are certainly quite astonished when finally a search for “Phoenician mythology” is redirected to a hoax – “pious” or not…

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Next Chronicle 20. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES ● Bronze Age Collapse Due to Famine ● Trojan War and Anatolian Sea Peoples ● Merneptah Stele and Exodus ● Hittites and Luwians

Twelve Hittite gods of the Underworld in a sanctuary of Hattusa