Chronicle 9. IBERIA IMPARTIALLY VIEWED

Chronicle 9. IBERIA IMPARTIALLY VIEWED

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 9. ΜΙΑ “ΤΡΙΤΗ ΜΑΤΙΑ” ΣΤΗΝ ΙΒΗΡΙΑ

● Hellenic Emporia on the Nile Delta ● The Mineral Magnet of Andalusia ● “Tin: the Product of Greatest Importance” ● Balearics ● Graeco-Tartessian Friendship Due to Punic Aggression ● Massalia’s Role in Galicia’s Decline ● Carthage and Its Mercenaries

by Michales Loukovikas

 
THOUGH ACCEPTING there were Contacts Between the Ancient Civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and Iberia, Dan Stanislawski rejected the idea of any Aegean presence in the peninsula, and remained faithful to the mainstream scholarly favouritism towards Phoenicians.^(a) Commenting on the “claims that there was contact” between Iberia and Crete, he conceded that it is “a seductive idea” and “a reasonable hypothesis”, but “as yet there is no convincing evidence that the Mediterranean island route to the west was used” by the Minoans.

• ^(a) See the beginning of Chronicle 6 with the first paragraph of Chapter 7 from Dan Stanislawski’s Study in Historical-Political Geography: The Individuality of Portugal (1959). His other studies on Portugal are: Portugal’s Other Kingdom: The Algarve (1963), and Landscapes of Bacchus: The Vine in Portugal (1970).

Minoan fresco fragment of a Dancing Woman at Knossos

Such ‘tangible’, “convincing evidence” in the archaeologists’ hands, i.e. a number of Egyptian trade items found in Spain, is of “a somewhat later period”, after the fall of the Minoans, ca 1400-1200 BCE. Although the possibility of “Phoenician intermediaries” cannot be ruled out, one needs to have in mind that exactly in this “somewhat later period” (late Bronze Age), especially in the western Mediterranean, sea trade was in the hands of those who brought about the fall of the Minoans, that is, the Mycenaeans – who, strangely enough, are not even mentioned by the American professor! Therefore, his assertion that the Egyptian trade items found in Spain “almost surely may be associated with Phoenician intermediaries” is anything but scientific.

Besides, the Aegean presence in Egypt, the country of origin of these trade items, dates back to at least Mycenaean times and more likely even further back into the Minoan age, when a trade settlement was founded in the Nile Delta under the aegis of the Pharaohs, namely Naucratis (Ναύκρατις). It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Hellenic colony in Egypt, acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Egyptian and Greek trade items, art and culture.^(b) When a historian “forgets” the Mycenaeans and Naucratis, it means he wears “Phoenician myopic glasses”! Under the circumstances, Stanislawski, an expert on Portugal, cannot be suspected of pro-Hellenic bias in his narrative about the same fateful events in Iberia related in the previous Chronicles 6, 7, and 8. At the same time, we can test the accuracy of our own testimony:

The Calydonian Hunt, by Naucratis Painter; ca 555 BC

• ^(b) Naucratis, which was located in the Nile Delta, on its westernmost branch, 70 kilometers southeast of its mouth, where Alexandria was later to be built, was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt’s most important harbour in antiquity until the rise of Alexander’s city. Its first period is obscure because of the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and the ensuing “Dark ages” (1100-750 BCE). A Hellenic cultural “renaissance” in the 7th century brought about renewed contacts with the East and its two great river civilizations of the Nile and Mesopotamia. According to Herodotus the shrine known as the Hellenion was a co-operative enterprise financed by nine Greek city-states: four Ionian (Chios, Clazomenae, Teos and Phocaea), four Dorian (Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Knidos and Phaselis), and one Aeolian (Mytilene). Miletus, Samos and Aegina had their own separate sanctuaries. Thus the natives of at least twelve Hellenic cities worked in a collaboration that was not only rare but proved to be lasting.
• The sister port of Naucratis was the harbour town of Heracleion or Thonis, Egypt’s main seaport to Greece, which was only discovered in 2000 by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio. Its ruins are located 2.5 kilometers off the modern coast. The city was built on some adjoining islands connected with bridges and intersected by canals. It submerged into the sea in the 6th or 7th century CE, probably due to major earthquakes and floods. The “Stele of Naukratis” with a Pharaonic decree on it, describes Heracleion as a “harbour in the Sea of Hellenes”, referring to the Mediterranean. Its twin “Stele of Heracleion” was recovered in 2000. The city’s Greek name is linked to a large temple of Khonsu, whom the Greeks identified with Heracles. The city is believed to have been visited by the great hero, as well as Paris and Helen on their flight from the jealous Menelaus, before the Trojan war. Heracleion’s mythic wealth was lauded by Homer, as well.

Campaspe, Alexander‘s courtesan, a prominent citizen of Larissa, by John William Godward (1896)

• An offspring of Naucratis was Athenaeus, a Hellene rhetorician, grammarian, and gastronomist, flourishing in the late 2nd – early 3rd centuries CE. His books have been lost, except a 15-volume synopsis of his 30-volume Deipnosophistae (Banquet Connoisseurs), which mostly survives. It is an immense store-house of information, on matters linked to dining, music, songs and dances, games, courtesans, and luxury. Guests included wealthy persons, patrons of art, and scholars, jurists, musicians, and others, who described the lifestyle, the arts and scientific knowledge of the Greeks. In the course of discussing classic authors, they made quotations from nearly 800 writers and 2,500 works, many of them unrecorded. Thus we are entrusted much valuable information about the ancient world and many authors that would be otherwise unknown.
• An Athenaeus’ contemporary, a bit older, was Julius Pollux (Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης), also born in Naucratis, flourishing in the late 2nd century CE and living a long life of more than 80 years. He was a grammarian and sophist, scholar and rhetorician, whom Commodus appointed a professor-chair of rhetoric in the Athenian Academy – due to his melodious voice, according to Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus. Nothing of his rhetorical works has survived. His valuable extant work is Onomasticon (Ὀνομαστικόν), a thesaurus or dictionary of Attic synonyms and phrases in ten books, arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. It supplies in passing much rare information on many points of classical antiquity – objects in daily life, the theatre, music, politics – and quotes numerous fragments of lost works. Thus, Pollux became invaluable for William Smith‘s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1842), etc.
• Other personages linked with Naucratis were the Naucratis Painter, a vase-painter of the 6th century BCE, and also Rhodopis, a celebrated Thracian hetaera who lived in the same period. Herodotus says she was a fellow-slave of the fable teller Aesop, with whom she had a secret love affair. Charaxus, brother of Sappho, who had gone to Naucratis as a merchant, fell in love with her, and ransomed her from slavery with a large sum of money. Sappho wrote a poem accusing Rhodopis of robbing her brother of his property but, nevertheless, the hetaera became the model for the original version of the Cinderella story recorded later by Strabo.

Celts in Europe

A WESTWARD MOVEMENT

Celtic art in Spain

The earliest passage of Phoenician ships through the Straits of Gibraltar was probably made during the general period of time when the Central European farmers and pastoralists were first entering the Cantabrian region. These events preceded the 1st millennium BC. Later, Greek exploration and trade grew, following the example given by neighboring Phoenicia, perhaps as early as the 9th century and certainly by the end of the 7th century BC. Such contacts can be equated in time with the acceleration of the East-West movement of peoples and cultures which took place in the North with the advent of the Celts, who may have appeared in Iberia as early as 900 BC, and the main force of which was felt by the 6th century. Between the 6th and the 3rd centuries BC, while the lands of the western Mediterranean were developing under the influence of active and aggressive Greeks and Carthaginians, northern Iberia was changing under the influence of Celts of later arrival from beyond the Pyrenees. There was a difference, however, between the early contacts along the Mediterranean coasts and those of the Central Europeans with northern Iberia. It was not opportunity for settlement that drew men along the southern coasts, but trade… It was the attraction of metals that drew the early Greeks beyond the straits of Gibraltar and along the western coasts of Spain.

CONTACTS WITH THE WEST COAST OF IBERIA

It is possible that the early merchant wayfarers sailed up the west coast to trade directly with Galicia. But if they did, the coast of present Portugal represented a gap in their interest, for there is almost no record of them there.^(c) It would seem that Portugal was then, as through so many periods of time before and after, apart from the main stream of events. It possessed no great source of silver such as the mines of Andalusia, nor of copper or tin (with slight exceptions in both cases).^(d) With her metals, Spain was a magnet for the early traders, whereas Portugal attracted casual traders at most…

Egyptian scarabs

• ^(c) There are slight exceptions; e.g., there is the Egyptian scarab of the 7th century BC that was found in a pre-Celtic level at Alcácer do Sal. (DS)
• ^(d) There is no record e.g. of Carthaginian exploitation of the copper of the Alentejo, which Romans later mined at Aljustrel. As all of southern Portugal is poor in tin, silver, and gold, there was little there to distract them from their preoccupation with such places as Andalusia and Murcia. (DS)

 

HOMOGENEITY OF THE IBERIAN MEDITERRANEAN REGION

At the time of their first contacts with the west, the earliest Phoenicians and Greeks encountered a culture area with fundamentally similar characteristics throughout. It extended along the Mediterranean coasts, slopes, and adjacent interior valleys, from the Pyrenees to the Guadiana River… With their usual perspicacity, the Greeks recognized this area as being essentially homogeneous and sharply different in culture from the Celtic territories of the interior and of the north and west peripheries…

EARLY POLITICAL GROUPS AND CONFUSION OF NAMES

Winged griffin of Tartessos, 700-575 BC

Indisputably, one of the important Iberian groups was that of the Tartessians, wealthy farmers and traders in metals. It was their knowledge of the sources of metals that first brought them in touch with the Phoenicians and Greeks. They knew the coasts to the west and northwest of their home, for the tin and gold that they traded came from Galicia. They were also able to furnish silver, copper, and lead, which came to them from the Guadalquivir River basin. It appears that tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. The early centuries of the pre-Christian millennium were times of great opulence along the coast of Galicia. That this wealth was due to tin may be inferred from the fact that the Greeks used the term Cassiterides to identify the area. However, the question as to the ultimate source of tin is moot. In spite of the lack of archaeological evidence it seems likely that, in the earliest years of trading, it came from alluvial deposits along the river banks of Galicia. There is a possibility, however, that Bronze Age connections with French Brittany and with the British Isles had continued and that the Galicians were merely purveyors of tin from those places. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world. There was no tin in all of North Africa, Asia Minor, Caucasia, Cyprus, mainland Greece, and the Greek islands. The mines of Tuscany were small. It is no wonder that both Galicia and the Tartessians were prosperous and that the Phoenicians and Greeks were attracted to the area.

“Tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world.” (Dan Stanislawski)

GREEK EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT

Hellenic ship, mocaic, ca 1st century BC-CE

The earliest Greek ventures may perhaps be dated as of the 9th or the 8th century BC. Possibly Rhodian and Chalcidian sailors were in the western Mediterranean at this time… The line of Ionian names stretching along the islands and coasts of the western Mediterranean and to the Atlantic coast of Portugal – the names with the -oussa termination – can probably be ascribed to this early period. These names are important in dating the arrival of the Greeks in western waters. They mark the island route of the early Greek navigators. Starting from Syrakoussai [Syracuse] in eastern Sicily, they may be followed through Ichnoussa (Sardinia), Meloussa (Menorca), Rornyoussa (Mallorca) and Pityoussa (Ibiza). The latter three, even now, are identified on maps as the Balearics or Pityusas.^(e) The -oussa names extend westward to the straits of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast of Portugal to Ophioussa, in the region of Lisbon, and the general area of Portugal plus Galicia may have been vaguely termed Ophioussa.

The “Balearides” (Gymnesian) and the “Pityusae” Isles on an old map

• ^(e) The Balearics comprise two island groups: the Gymnesians (Majorca and Minorca), and the Pityuses (Eivissa or Ibiza and Formentera). The term “Balearic” derives from the Greek Βαλλιαρεῖς or Βαλεαρεῖς (Baleares in Latin, from βάλλω, meaning “to launch”), referring to the islanders who were skilled slingers and served as mercenaries for the Hellenes, Punics, and Romans. However, Strabo regarded the word as of Phoenician origin, as the equivalent for lightly armoured soldiers the Greeks called γυμνῆτας, hence Γυμνησίαι (from γυμνός, meaning naked). This does not mean they fought naked, but that they used much lighter armament than the hoplites. Nevertheless, according to Lycophron‘s Alexandra, the toponym refers to some shipwrecked Boeotians who were cast nude on the islands (a story evidently invented to account for the name); or to the islanders themselves who were often nude (probably because of the year-round benevolent climate). In the Gymnesian Islands there are megalithic stone monuments (naveta, taula and talaiot) which speak of a very early prehistoric human activity. They are similar, but not necessarily related, to the nuraghe of Sardinia, and the torri of Corsica. One of the earliest cultures on Minorca was influenced by other Mediterranean civilizations, including the Minoan. Those islanders e.g. may have imitated the inverted plastered timber columns found at Knossos (such evidence is probably not “convincing” enough for Stanislawski).There is also a tradition that the Balearics were colonized by Rhodes after the Trojan War. The Pityusic Islands (from the Greek πιτύα, pine tree) are sometimes informally called in English as the Pine Islands, which is identical to the ancient Hellenic name Πιτυοῦσσαι, “pine-covered islands”. In antiquity they were listed in Claudius Ptolemy‘s Geography under the names Ophiusis and Ebyssus, which had a town of the same name. It is the port Ibossim founded by the Phoenicians in 654 BCE, later known to Romans as Ebusus, hence Eivissa (in Catalan) or Ibiza (in Spanish). (ML)

THE PHOCAEAN GREEKS

Herodotus, by Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1806)

Herodotus said that it was Greeks from the city of Phocaea in Asia Minor who were first to navigate in the western Mediterranean waters. It may seem temerous to question the facts of the father of history, but Antonio García does so convincingly.^(f) The Phocaeans, says he, arrived late upon the scene, profiting by earlier maritime contacts. Nor does he accept the statement that the important voyage of Colaeus, the Samian, was a voyage of discovery of Tartessos for the Greeks. This widely heralded 7th century journey was, to him, merely one – although perhaps the most profitable and spectacular up to that time – of many such voyages that had been made by Rhodians, Chalcidians, Samians, and others.^(g)

• ^(f) Antonio García y Bellido, Hispania Graeca. (DS)
• ^(g) Another point of view is expressed by H. R. W. Smith in his review of García’s Hispania Graeca. Smith does not deny the thesis of García but says that he can find no reason to believe that the Phocaeans reached Tartessos prior to the time of Arganthonios, the Tartessian king friendly to the Greeks, or before the voyage of Colaeus. (DS)

Following the Mediterranean island route, the Phocaeans arrived from Asia Minor to Iberia.

Whatever the dating may be – and the archaeological inquiry has far to go – the Phocaeans certainly became the most active and effective Greeks in the area. Their colonization had energy and breadth and was the only one in the western Mediterranean with lasting results… There is no specific evidence that this activity was connected with the decay of Tyre, but there is such a coincidence in time. Tyrian decline had begun by the end of the 8th century BC and was notable during the following century. This was the time of the voyage of Colaeus the Samian (650 BC), the founding of the Phocaean colony of Massalia, present Marseille (600 BC, or approximately then), and the founding of Alalia in Corsica (640 BC, or approximately 40 years prior to Massalia). Some time before the end of the century, Mainake, the most westerly of Phocaean colonies, was founded near Málaga.^(h)

A Satyr on pottery found at Alalia

• ^(h) Within 20 miles to the east, says García; Smith suggests that it might even be at approximately the outskirts of present Málaga. (DS)
• Some dates are different here. The difference in Colaeus’ voyage is not important (650, not ca 640 BCE); but the dating of the founding of Alalia is almost one century earlier (650 instead of 566 BCE). Perhaps, as in other similar cases, the older date denotes the creation of a temporary settlement before the founding of a city. (ML)

This century was one of intimacy between Phocaeans and Tartessians. The reign of Arganthonios of Tartessos began in the 7th century BC. The ancient sources spoke of his 80-year reign but probably, in typical Greek fashion, they dramatized a dynasty or a period by creating a mythical longevity for a single ruler. Whether this represented one ruler or several does not alter the fact that there was frequent and close contact between Tartessos and Phocaea. This was the period of the Phocaean maritime dominance during which the Tartessian king lent money to the Phocaeans to build their fortifications against the threat of the Persians.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GREEKS AND PUNIC PEOPLES IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH IBERIA

The island and bay of Gadir: the Phoenicians’ springboard for attacks against Tartessos

The period of the decline of Tyre was not only important for the Ionian Greeks, but also for the Tyrian colony of Carthage. During the time of Phocaean colonization, Carthage too was expanding. As early as 653 BC it had established the colony on Ibiza of the Balearics, which lay athwart the Greek island route to the west. After 573 BC, when Tyre fell to the Babylonians, Carthage showed increasing independence. Competition for western metals was growing between the two great rivals, Carthage and Greece. It is reasonable to assume that the friendship of Arganthonios (or that of his dynasty), through almost a century of time, was more than mere affection and amiability. It probably represented a form of alliance in which the Tartessians aided the Phocaeans in their struggle against the threat to their mother city. In return, Greeks supported the Westerners against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and the Punic colony of Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the mainland and the Tartessians.

“The [Greco-Tartessian] friendship represented a form of alliance… against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the Tartessians.”
(Dan Stanislawski)

Greek Massaliotes in Iberia

The Greeks were usually neither pacific nor friendly neighbors when the prospect of gain was apparent. In this they differed little from the Phoenicians. However, in their relations with the Tartessians they had no desire, it would seem, for control of land or people, but merely wanted to trade their products, especially olive oil and wine, for Tartessian metals.⁽ⁱ⁾ In fact, the history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable. This was speeded by events in the eastern Mediterranean area…

“The history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable.” (Dan Stanislawski)

Dionysos, by Exekias; Kylix, c. 530

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ Pierson Dixon, The Iberians of Spain, and Rhys Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain, state that the olive tree and the vine were introduced into Spain by the Greeks. Olive oil was exported from Greek Akragas to Carthage in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. No doubt the Greeks traded in wine with Iberia. Wine made from grapes is very old in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians were famous merchants of wine… (DS)
• Why then Carthage bought wine from the Hellenes and not from the Phoenicians, their kindred? Probably because Akragas was very close; for the Punic traders profit was more important than kinship. Or because, as usual, the Phoenician wine could not stand a comparison with the Greek wine… (ML)

 
 

THE ALALIA COLONY AND ITS EFFECTS

Phocaean electrum coin with playing seals

In this part of his narrative, Dan Stanislawski turns his attention to the historic developments in Asia Minor: in 546 BCE Cyrus captured Lydia, causing “a mass migration of perhaps half of the population of Phocaea to their Corsican colony of Alalia”. When the Persians took Phocaea, “all the men in this city of probably 5,000 to 7,000 people had gone. This population figure suggests the large number of available vessels, and points to the commercial importance of the city at that time”. There follows the Battle of Alalia “sometime between 540 and 535 BC” with its disastrous results for the Hellenes and also the Tartessians.

Carthage may then have sealed the straits of Gibraltar, as Carpenter suggests. More likely, the straits had been largely sealed for a long time, but after the battle the land route between Mainake and Tartessos was also blocked. Mainake itself was destroyed by the Carthaginians toward the end of the century, to end its traffic and its competition with the Carthaginian settlement in the location of present Málaga…

ECONOMIC CHANGES IN THE WEST

Artemis, Phocaea’s patron goddess, on a Massaliote silver (so-called heavy) drachma, ca 390-220 BC

As Carthage had inherited the western empire of Tyre, so did Massalia fall heir to that of her mother city, Phocaea. Greek trade became centered here, with the end of Phocaean maritime enterprise in the West of the Mediterranean. Trade through France to Brittany and beyond had been undoubtedly important to the Massaliotes previous to this time, but the record had been obscured by the greater drama of the struggle on the Mediterranean. During the last half of the 6th century BC, during which time Carthaginians grasped complete power in the West, the prosperity of Galicia – presumably based upon tin – declined. This decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to the northwest and ultimately to Britain…

“Galicia’s decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to Britain. The direct land route from Massalia skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen.” (Dan Stanislawski)

Stanislawski offers four possible explanations for the Galician decline; the second one is probably the most important:

Bronze Age gold helmet found in Leiro, Galicia

More likely, the Galicians had for some time been not producers, but purveyors, of tin from French Armorica or the British Isles. If this were true, the direct land route from Massalia would have skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen… At approximately the same period of time there was an increased interest in silver… by the avidity with which the Greeks of Asia Minor sought it for coinage… Perhaps the richest of ancient silver mines was that of Mastia (or Massia), a region second only to Tartessos in commercial importance. The ancient prosperity of the region and of its most important city, also named Mastia (or Massia), the later Cartago Nova, and probably the site of the present Cartagena, was based upon silver mining through several centuries. Great amounts were mined under the direction of Hannibal in the 3rd century BC, and it was still a large operation at the time of Polybius in the succeeding century.

CARTHAGINIAN DOMINATION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN

The Celts lived mainly in Galicia, the Celtiberians in Portugal and half of Spain, the Iberians in the other half (Andalusia to Catalonia), the Basques in Northeastern Spain and Southwestern France

[After the battle of Alalia] Greek commercial activity in Iberia was ended and Carthage was less inhibited in the spread of its control. Tartessos, which had feared the Carthaginians and had allied itself with the Greeks, was left without support and was destroyed.^(j) In the following century, probably 20,000 Iberian mercenaries were fighting in Sicily for the Carthaginians… Celts were also serving as mercenaries in the Carthaginian forces.

• ^(j) If there was no one city of that name, it is not important to the larger fact that the area as a whole was put under the control of the Carthaginians of Gadir (Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain). (DS)

Dido (Elissa, the founder of Carthage), attributed to Christophe Cochet

There was an increasing reliance upon mercenaries from the peninsula, not only from the fringes but from deep within the interior as well. In the late 3rd century BC, Hannibal’s army included Celtiberians from the northern interior, Galicians from the extreme northwest, Lusitanians from Middle Portugal, Vettones from the middle Tagus drainage – and these do not complete the list. Such troops, however, were something other than pure mercenaries; many had been forcibly impressed into service… During earlier centuries no general antagonism in Iberia seems to have been engendered by the Carthaginians. Locally there may have been antagonism, such as probably existed between the Carthaginians and the Tartessians, but for the tribes of the interior the Carthaginians may have had a friendly appeal. They offered an opportunity to fight with pay. It was later, when the Carthaginians had expanded their power and increased their need for troops that their tactics changed with regard to these tribes of the interior, which had long served as a source of manpower. When Hannibal, in desperate need for troops and under economic pressure, forcibly impressed some of them into his armies, the others reacted in bitter opposition. The tribes of the interior were a bellicose lot. An opportunity to fight for pay was not distasteful to them but a demand that they submit to enslavement was another matter. According to Strabo they resisted Hannibal as they later did the Romans for somewhat the same reasons.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of mercenaries were introduced to new lands and cultures of the middle and eastern Mediterranean. Since this process had been going on from as early as the 6th century BC and many men had returned to the peninsula, the effect upon attitudes of the peoples of the Meseta [‘Plateau’, in the heart of Iberia] and even some of the remote western coasts may have been considerable.

The harbour of Carthage

Dan Stanislawski’s impartial view of Iberia is almost identical with the historical panorama of the last three Chronicles: Ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι, as Euclid would say, or quod erat demonstrandum (Q.E.D), or ‘what had to be demonstrated’! There is still one Periplus left, dropping anchor at several emporia in the Mediterranean, to come full circle back to our starting point – a voyage full of surprises with several itinerant artisans, artists, and masters we meet on the way, “members of the Architects’ and Painters’ Guilds”, whose Linear A writing, however, puzzles the famous archaeologist Leonard Woolley…

• >> Chronicle 10. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO
• << Chronicle 8. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST”

Centaur: little figurine in bronze from Campo de Caravaca (Murcia), probably made in Greece, 6th century BCE

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Chronicle 8. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST”

Chronicle 8. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 8. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST”

● Asia Minor, Pontus Euxinus and Magna Graecia ● Tartessos: the Apple of Discord ● The Persian Expansion’s Impact on the Occident ● Differences Between Phoenicia and Carthage, and their Achilles’ Heel ● The Battles of Alalia and Salamis ● The Rise of Macedon and Rome

by Michales Loukovikas
 

Attican hydria (vessel to carry water); 6th century BCΕ

THE WESTWARD EXPANSION of the Hellenes ought to be gradual and cautious. Crossing the Aegean was no problem for it was a Greek sea. After Troy had been destroyed, there was no-one to block the entrance to the Black Sea – only nature. That is why it was euphemistically named Pontus Euxinus, ‘hospitable sea’, to placate Poseidon. The Hellenes became masters of that sea and spread all over. But they knew very well that in the Mediterranean there was fierce antagonism. The Canaanite Phoenicians, who avoided trespassing into the Aegean and the Black Seas,^(a) were found in all other places, having built up their trade web at a time when they were sailing almost alone. Their motive was profit out of exchange. Part of the gains, however, was spent as tribute to the succession of empires ruling Phoenicia.

• ^(a) Of course, I do not mean to say that the Canaanites did not sail in the Aegean; Hellenic ships voyaged to Canaan, as well. The Graeco-Phoenician relations were age-old and their exchanges done on an equal basis. What I mean to say is that the Aegean could never become Tartessos; that a Canaanite merchant voyaging to Hellas was just a trader; the same person in Iberia acted like a monopolist…

Phoenician ship, marble mosaic

The Greeks had more to motivate them: famine, wars and civil disorders drove many to other lands; migrations took place in order to avoid those ills. Population growth and cramped spaces at home, combined with a desire to expand their sphere of economical influence, were what motivated them and that is why they appeared in Italy ca 800 BCΕ. It was the next place to colonize and Hellenize after Asia Minor and the Black Sea. Within the next 150 years, several cities founded colonies along the coast of southern Italy and most of Sicily, controlling trade routes and dominating the Strait of Messina. This zone came to be known as Magna Graecia. The Phoenicians generally avoided military confrontations with the Greeks, unless a strategic land was at stake, e.g. Sicily. To the north, the Hellenes faced another adversary, the Etruscans, who had risen to the status of a regional power in the same period. The mining and commerce of metals led to their enrichment and expansion in the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean. The Greek presence was in fact disturbing their interests, especially since the Phocaeans of Italy founded colonies along the coast of Corsica, Gaul, and Iberia. This led the Etruscans to ally themselves with the Carthaginian Punics,^(b) because their interests too collided with those of the Hellenes.

• ^(b) Especially in this Chronicle, a clear differentiation is necessary between the Canaanite Phoenicians and the Carthaginian Punics so as to avoid confusion: the term Canaanite refers to Phoenicia, Canaan; the term Punic to Carthage; while the term Phoenician covers both, the entire family.

Magna Graecia, Carthage and Etruria

A navigator in Zakantha (Sagunto)

The situation began to change dramatically sometime after 640 BCΕ, when the first Greek trader sailed to Tartessos. Probably it was the first arrival of a ‘historical’ Hellene at Iberia, after the voyages of the Mycenaeans and those of legendary heroes such as Heracles to the peninsula. This sailor was Colaeus (Κωλαῖος), a Samian silver explorer and trader who arrived at Tartessos ca 640 BCΕ, according to Herodotus. In an era when merchants were anonymous, the historian thought Colaeus was important enough to note. Since no other Greek trader had previously sailed to Tartessos, Colaeus was able to obtain a cargo of metal (150 kg of silver) and return it safely to his island, realizing one of the greatest trade profits at the time. The Phocaeans of Massalia followed Colaeus’ route many years later and dropped anchor at Tartessos. Herodotus says that the Phocaeans were the first Hellenes to make long sea-voyages, having discovered the coasts of the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia, and Tartessos. He also notes that Arganthonios, the famous Tartessian king, welcomed the Greeks and urged them in vain to settle there. But why “in vain”? They finally settled there. And why was the king so eager to have them there? The answer to this question would be given by the historical developments.

Phocaean warrior (500-480 BCE)

Hearing that the Persians were becoming a dominant power in the area of their metropolis, Phocaea, he gave them 1500 kg of silver to build a defensive wall about their city. Despite this wall, however, Phocaea was conquered in 546 BCΕ. Rather than submit to Persian rule, most Phocaeans abandoned their city. Some of them fled to Chios, others to their colonies in Corsica and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, with some eventually returning to Phocaea. Many became the founders of Elea ca 540 BCΕ. It is the period when Persia conquered the Hellenic cities on the coast of Asia Minor. Ironically, the Greeks were not alone in this misfortune; the Canaanites suffered even more: Tyre was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 572 BCΕ; then in 539, the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Canaan; Phoenicia declined further and was obliged to pass the baton to Carthage; many Canaanites also moved to the new rising metropolis and other colonies. The consolidation of the great Empire of the Achaemenids would re-arrange the map of the entire Mediterranean, not only in the Orient but also in the Occident. The 6th century proved to be a great turning point…

The consolidation of the great Empire of the Achaemenids would re-arrange the map of the entire Mediterranean, not only in the Orient but also in the Occident. The 6th century proved to be a great turning point…

Prow of a ship on a Punic coin (replica)

If Plutarch‘s Lives were about peoples, one could very well parallel the Minoans to the Canaanites and the Mycenaeans to the Punics; a basic difference was that, unlike the Canaanites who lacked such potential, the Punics opted to expand by conquest. Generally speaking, there are two main differences between an ancient colony and one of our times: First of all, the former was a city founded by a metropolis, not a land conquered by another country; and, most important, the ancient colony was usually sovereign from its inception. Particularly in the Phoenician world, the colonies, although self-governing, had to pay tribute to the metropolis. Carthage e.g. was a dependency of Tyre. This was out of necessity: the Phoenicians lacked the population to establish large self-sustaining cities abroad and most of their colonial towns had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, with Carthage being one of the few exceptions. The settlements were made on the two paths to Iberia’s mineral wealth: a) along the North African coast, and b) on Sicily, Sardinia and the Balearics.^(c) They paid tribute to either Tyre or Sidon, but neither had actual control on them. This rule changed ca 650 BCΕ when Carthage gained independence from Tyre, establishing hegemony over other Phoenician colonies in the West. While some of them willingly submitted, paying tribute and giving up their foreign policy, others in Iberia and Sardinia resisted. Carthage sent troops there and appointed magistrates, retaining direct control over them. It was a policy rigidly enforced during the Punic Wars, when Carthage had become the undisputed ruler of all Phoenicians, and resulted in a number of Iberian towns siding with the Romans. If that was the treatment reserved for their own people, their kindred, one can easily imagine what would happen to all the rest.

• ^(c) What was the purpose of the Phoenician colonies on the ‘second path to Iberia’s mineral wealth’? The first one was the ‘natural’ seaway linking Phoenicia with Iberia sailing by the North African coast. The second path was the ‘natural’ seaway linking Greece with Iberia voyaging from island to island. Therefore, this was not a trade route for the Phoenicians. Its exclusive purpose was to block the Hellenes sailing west: it was of strategic importance.

Dido building Carthage (The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire), by J.M.W. Turner, 1815

According to Greek historians, Elissa, renamed as Dido in Virgil‘s Aeneid, was the founder of Carthage. The city was built on a promontory – a location that made it master of maritime trade in the Mediterranean. All ships crossing the sea had to sail between Tunisia and Sicily, affording the city great power and influence. Founded in 814 BCΕ, it was one of the largest cities in Hellenistic times (by some estimates, only Alexandria was larger). The Punics, unlike other Phoenicians, had a landowning aristocracy who established a rule of the hinterland in Northern Africa and trans-Saharan trade routes. In addition, unlike the Romans, and despite the lack of manpower, Punic citizenship was exclusive, and the goal of the state was more focused on protecting commerce. The citizens were exempt from taxation and were primarily involved in this domain as traders or workers. As a result, Carthage could not afford to wage long wars, as commercial activities slowed down.^(d) The war machine, however, was very efficient. Its navy was one of the largest in the Mediterranean, using serial production to maintain high numbers at low cost, while the army included the now extinct North African elephants trained for war. The city turned west and became the ‘middleman’ between mineral resource-rich Iberia and the East. The eastward expansion along the African coast (through Libya) was blocked by the Greek colony of Cyrene, established in 630 BCΕ. The wars against the Hellenes were due to the vulnerability of the Punic economy to Greek competition, as the products ‘Made in Carthage’ were inferior to Hellenic goods. The Greek colonists posed a twofold threat: a) undercutting the Phoenicians by offering better products; and b) taking over the distribution network.

Dido and the walled city of Carthage, medal, ca 1550 CE

• ^(d) This contradiction is the superpowers’ Achilles’ heel. Carthage, as a commercial empire, would prefer peace, but as a commercial empire, had to conduct wars continuously – and this is what happened in fact, first against the Hellenes and then against the Romans. Moreover, the Punic citizens remained a small, privileged but vulnerable minority until the end because of their refusal to grant privileges to their neighbours in order to integrate them into their society; this in addition obliged them to rely more and more on mercenaries during the wars.

The wars against the Hellenes were due to the vulnerability of the Punic economy to Greek competition, as the products ‘Made in Carthage’ were inferior to Hellenic goods. The Greek colonists posed a twofold threat: a) undercutting the Phoenicians by offering better products; and b) taking over the distribution network.

Punic gold coin with a horse

The empire depended heavily on its trade with Tartessos and Iberia in general, from which it obtained vast quantities of silver, lead, copper and, even more importantly, tin ore, which was essential for the manufacture of bronze. Carthage’s trade relations with the Iberians and the naval might that enforced its monopoly on this trade and with tin-rich Britain allowed it to be the sole significant broker of tin and maker of bronze. This monopoly, one of the major sources of power and prosperity for Carthage, should be maintained at any cost; a Punic sea merchant would rather crash his ship upon the rocky shores of Britain than reveal to any antagonist how it could be safely approached. In addition to being the sole significant distributor of tin, its central location in the Mediterranean and control of the waters between Sicily and Tunisia allowed it to check the eastern nations’ supply of tin, as well. Carthage was also the largest producer of silver, mined in Iberia and North Africa, and, after the tin monopoly, this was one of its most profitable trades. The purple dye was also one of the most highly valued commodities, being worth 15-20 times its weight in gold. Ancient sources concur that Carthage via its trade had become perhaps the wealthiest city in the world. However, without the monopoly on trade with Tartessos and Iberia at large, the Punic Empire was inconceivable. The leaders of Carthage should have been conscious of that when they replaced the Canaanites as overlords of Iberia ca 575 BCΕ. The voyage of the Massaliote Phocaeans to Tartessos might have taken place sometime afterwards. The friendship between king Arganthonios and the Greeks must have greatly annoyed Carthage that felt its monopoly was at stake. It was urgent to take some action against the ‘intruders’, in order to establish itself as the greatest economic and military power in the western Mediterranean.

Without the monopoly on trade with Tartessos and Iberia at large, the Punic Empire was inconceivable.

Trireme, a mosaic from Carthage

This ‘action’ took place in the Tyrrhenian Sea ca 537 BCΕ. It was the historic Battle of Alalia, or of Sardinian Sea. When the metropolis Phocaea fell to Persia, most citizens chose to move to Alalia (Aléria since Roman times), their colony in Corsica. This resulted to a decline of Punic and Etruscan trade there and led Carthage and Etruria to become allies. Their joint fleet of 120 ships, disguised as a pirate force, was defeated by just 60 Phocaean ships carrying migrants to the colony. It would have been a great victory in tactics for the Hellenic side, which destroyed an enemy force twice as large; but the Greeks lost almost two-thirds of their own fleet. Herodotus commented that it was a Cadmean victory – what would soon be also described as a Pyrrhic victory.^(e) Realizing that they could not withstand another attack, the Hellenes evacuated Corsica, and sought refuge in Rhegion. According to a legend, Greek prisoners were stoned to death by the Etruscans, while the (more practical) Punics sold them into slavery. Etruria got hold of Corsica, and Carthage kept Sardinia. The Punics would fight two more major naval battles with Massalia, losing both, but still managing to safeguard Iberia and close the Pillars of Heracles, the Straits of Gibraltar, to Hellenic shipping, thus containing the Greek expansion in Iberia by 480 BCΕ; the Massaliotes, nevertheless, made no gains and just kept control of their Iberian colonies. It seemed as if the status quo remained in place. But in reality, in southern Iberia a great tragedy had just unfolded with the collapse of the Tartessian civilization.

King Pyrrhus of Epirus

• ^(e) Cadmean is a victory involving one’s own ruin; from Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes, who required water from a spring guarded by a water-dragon and all his companions perished. Herodotus could not know the subsequent similar phrase Pyrrhic victory, i.e. one achieved at such a devastating cost that it is a prelude to defeat. It is named after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans twice in 280-279 BCΕ during the Pyrrhic War. The Romans suffered even greater casualties but had a much larger supply of men. Pyrrhus is reported as saying: “Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone”.

Some authors consider that this victory/defeat of the Phocaeans in Alalia and the lack of Greek traders in Tartessos led to the collapse… Here we go again! During all those centuries of development, these authors saw only Phoenicians trading there. But, all of a sudden, the Hellenic commerce became so vital for the Tartessians’ survival that they died out when the Punics cut the “oxygen” off! Some other scholars offer the alternative of an “armed conflict”, but in general terms, for they avoid being precise as to who was fighting whom. There are also versions of the Tartessian tragedy that specify both the perpetrators and time: “The Punics brought about the collapse by 530 BC”. Carthage must have put Tartessos in ‘quarantine’ sometime after the death of Arganthonios in 550 BCΕ. This is the reason why ten years later, with the Punics and Etruscans allied against the Greeks, the Tartessians did not remain ‘prudently neutral’: they stood by the Hellenes – and paid dearly for that. The situation did not allow ‘luxuries’ such as neutralities.

Gadir > Gadeira > Gades > Cádiz: a map of a much later period where the three old islets (Erytheia, Kotinoussa, Antipolis) have become one.

Emboldened by the outcome of the Battle of Alalia, the Punics unleashed such a ‘reign of terror’ that even their own kindred in Gadir turned against them. The Punics besieged promptly the fraternal Canaanite city and captured it. The Gaditans suffered so much and for so long that in 206 BCΕ, during the second Punic War, they rebelled against Carthage and, when their city fell to the Romans, they welcomed the victors. Of course, the new overlords were no better: in just one year the Romans’ presence was shaken by a mutiny and an Iberian uprising against them… There was at least one aspect where the Canaanites proved to be greater than the Punics: Some time after the latter had taken over Gadir, the Persian king Cambyses became master of Egypt and Cyrene in 525 BCΕ. Carthage was then spared a trial of arms against the Persian Empire, since the Canaanites refused to lend ships to the Persians for an African expedition against their own kindred. It seems that at least for the Canaanites, unlike the Punics, blood ties were still important. However, even without losing a war, the Punic Empire may have paid tribute irregularly to the Great King of Kings.

Carthage was spared a trial of arms against the Persian Empire, since the Canaanites refused to lend ships to the Persians for an African expedition against their own kindred.

Bronce Carriazo: a Tartessian bronze plaque found near Seville representing a local goddess of the marshes and assimilated to Astarte and Hathor

Carthage proceeded to destroy Tartessos and drive the Greeks away from southern Iberia, defending its trade monopoly in the western Mediterranean vigilantly, with attacks on the merchant ships of its rivals. Historical reports indicate that Tartessos had little military defense as its success was always based on trade and friendly relations with its neighbours. This is hard to believe, however, for the kingdom was so wealthy that many Iberian tribes would covet this land. There should have been defensive walls and deterrent land and sea forces, that is, army and navy. As regards the date of the catastrophe, in several historical texts we can find one that sets the date as 533 BCΕ that is consistent with what was cited above (“by 530 BC”), and another one sometime later, around 500 BCΕ. We cannot be sure if the two dates refer to the same event or if there was an “armed conflict” between the Tartessians and the Punics that lasted about thirty years. “It is reported”, we can read in one of those texts, “that around 500 BC Tartessos was attacked by the Carthaginians, who destroyed the capital and left it without protection from the sea”. It makes sense if we remember those accounts that Tartessos had a sophisticated system to regulate the river flow, and also its supposed similarity to Atlantis.

Auletris (aulos playing woman), Iberian high-relief of the Osuna sculptures (Seville province, end of 3rd or beginning of 2nd century BCE)

The abrupt disappearance, and the fact that its capital has never been found, led to lots of speculation: how could such an important civilization disappear without leaving traces? If the capital eludes us, there are other Tartessian cities that can ‘speak’ the truth. Balsa and Tavira in the Algarve were violently destroyed in the end of the 6th century, probably together with the capital and other sites, when the Punics proceeded to impose their iron will. It is claimed that Mainake, the Hellenic colony founded near Málaga under the aegis of Tartessos, was destroyed at the same time, too. We also know that during that century many Canaanite colonies were deserted. We cannot be sure if this was connected with Phoenicia’s decline, or Carthage’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ operations, or both. It is a pity that, despite the numerous excavations, it has not been possible to locate with certainty either Mainake or Akra Leuké in Alicante, or even Tartessos, of course. Whatever the result of these efforts, the ancient texts that mention these cities cannot be ignored; otherwise, the story of Tartessos and its demise should be treated as fiction, as well…

“Tartessos was attacked by the Carthaginians, who destroyed the capital and left it without protection from the sea”. (“Tartesso delenda est”)

King Arganthonios of Tartessos

There is a tendency to present the Canaanites as “peaceful colonists”, while the Punics as “warlike colonialists”. We have seen the Phoenicians acting in a manner anything but peaceful whenever they could “manage” the adversary.^(f) In a text about the History of old Onuba (Huelva), apart from numerous open questions and hypotheses,^(g) we have certain interesting data presented. It seems that Tartessos began gradually sinking into crisis and decline in the 8th century BCΕ at a time when there was a co-existence of Phoenician and Hellenic colonies like Gadir and Portus Menesthei, which is identified as a Phocaean site.^(h) The author is impressed by the closeness of the Greek site to the Tartessian capital and notes that the archaeologists in Huelva have observed a decrease in Phoenician pottery, in parallel with an increase in Hellenic ceramics of far better quality. The worsening of the situation in the next century is manifested by the almost total disappearance of open settlements together with the walling of cities. In the 6th century we notice the outbreak of another crisis evidenced by the decrease of mineral exports. Its tragic climax is attested with the destruction of Tartessos by the Punics because it sided with the Hellenes. It is worth noting that the conquerors had no intention to eliminate just the identity features of the conquered, indicating how merciless this confrontation had been, equal to what we now describe as ‘genocide’. The descendant culture of the Turdetani in southern Andalusia marks a return to the socio-economic features of the late Atlantic Bronze Age within the Iron Age conditions of the 5th century BCΕ, which is translated as a regression of at least three centuries.

The map shows only one Greek colony in Iberia: Emporion. The other settlements are all local or Phoenician. So, by what magic wand did the blue of the Hellenic cultural influence spread and how could it penetrate the Phoenician sphere of influence?

• ^(f) Certainly, this mentality has not been a Phoenician peculiarity but a human characteristic: virtually everyone acts likewise. The Hellenes e.g. very often acted as the “bullies” of antiquity (although this feature sometimes saved them, as it happened during the Persian Wars). As regards the Canaanites, let’s go back to Chronicle 5 on the Sea Peoples. We have seen that one of them, “the Tjeker, moving to Canaan, captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCΕ by the expanding Phoenicians, who were checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews.” And, of course, except these minor local powers that blocked Phoenician expansion, there were also superpowers, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. Conclusion: There was absolutely no room for Phoenician expansion in the Levant.

Hellenic helmet, Asta Regia (Jerez de la Frontera), close to Portus Menesthei

• ^(g) The author seems to be obsessed with the Greeks, presenting them as a destabilizing factor, allegedly terrorizing the countryside and promoting their goods by force! He admits, however, that these goods were better in quality (in such cases, the ones who resort to violence are the monopolists with less attractive products in order to avoid free competition). He also makes clear that all his hypotheses are not based on archaeological finds.

• ^(h) Amid all this speculation and conjecture, he claims that the 8th century BC was “a time when Phoenician and Greek colonies, such as Gadir and Portus Menesthei, coexisted”. When did this actually happen? Was it in the 8th or in the 6th century? In the previous Chronicle both versions were presented:

…“the Greek cities on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia probably appeared on the map after the foundation of Massalia ca 600 BCΕ”. However, “the Greeks of the Homeric era – or their products at least – arrived at Iberian ports in the 8th century BCΕ. Those that transported the Hellenic ware and other goods might very well have been the Phoenicians… What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, architectural models, burial habits, and so on.”

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach

After imposing ‘Pax Punica’ in southern Iberia, Carthage turned its attention to another land of strategic importance mostly controlled by the Hellenes: Sicily. The Punics planned the largest overseas expedition thus far: after three years of preparations, they sailed for Sicily. It was the outbreak of the first Sicilian War,⁽ⁱ⁾ which coincided with Xerxes’ expedition against Greece in 480 BCΕ, prompting speculation about a possible alliance between Carthage and Persia. But even without an official pact, Carthage should have timed its expedition with that of the Achaemenids to exclude the possibility of any aid sent from Hellas to Sicily. The outcome of both expeditions was disastrous for the invaders. For the Phoenicians it was a double defeat: not only of the Punics in Sicily, but also of the Canaanites fighting in the naval Battle of Salamis under Persian orders. The repercussions brought sweeping changes in Carthage: an oligarchic Republic was then established, and also an isolationist policy was followed for the next 70 years when Carthage took no action against the Greeks, nor even aided any of their rivals. Economically, sea-borne trade with the East was cut off by the Greeks in Hellas, while the cities of Magna Graecia boycotted Punic merchants. This led to the development of trade with the West and of caravan-borne trade with the East. Focus was shifted on the exploration and expansion in Africa and Europe. This isolationism explains why the two great maritime empires in the 5th century BCΕ, Carthage and Athens, were not engaged in war. In this period Athens began massive exports of pottery to Iberia, especially in the southeast. But again, as in the previous Canaanite era of Iberia, the archaeologists do not know yet what ships transported the ware, Punic or Athenian.

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ Essentially, the three Sicilian Wars or, more properly, the Greek-Punic Wars, were a lamentable continuation of the relentless ‘tradition’ of civil war between Hellenic cities, with Carthage being always involved, changing sides, and finally winning the lion’s share. These wars, the longest lasting conflicts of classical antiquity (600-265 BCΕ), would culminate in the Punic Wars and end with Carthage being razed to the ground by the Romans.

Alexander with Heracles’ lion sculp, cast stone plaque, 1st-4th century CE

While Carthage was engaged in another Sicilian War, the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great saw the defeat of the city-states in Greece and the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. All the Phoenician cities in Canaan had submitted except Tyre that was besieged and sacked in 332 BCΕ. The rise of Hellenistic Greece gradually ousted the last remnants of Phoenicia’s former dominance over the trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean, and its culture disappeared entirely in the motherland. The Punics were the last of the Phoenicians. Alexander was raising a fleet in Cilicia for the invasion of Carthage, Italy and Iberia when he died in 323 BCΕ, sparing Carthage a perilous ordeal. Battles of the Diadochi and the three-way struggle among Antigonid Macedon, Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria were again good news for Carthage avoiding conflicts with the successors. Trade relations were reinstated with Egypt, together with sea-borne access to the eastern markets for the first time since 480 BCΕ. It seemed as if Carthage had also inherited the Phoenicians’ good fortune, since two superpowers, the Persian and Macedonian, could not realize their plans to campaign against its domain. The confrontation with Rome, however, would prove to be inevitable. The Punic Wars were a series of three wars that lasted from 264 to 146 BCΕ. The first one was fought for the control of Sicily. Finally, Carthage evacuated it and paid a large war indemnity. The end of the war found Rome with a large navy able to prevent sea-borne invasion of Italy, control sea trade routes, and invade foreign shores. Sardinia and Corsica were also seized, while Carthage had plunged into another war with its mercenaries. Rome finally emerged as the most powerful state in the western Mediterranean.

The rise of Hellenistic Greece ousted the remnants of Phoenicia’s former dominance over trade routes and its culture disappeared in the motherland. The Punics were the last of the Phoenicians. Alexander was raising a fleet for the invasion of Carthage, Italy and Iberia when he died…

Hannibal’s feat in crossing the Alps with elephants, though many did not survive, passed into European legend: detail of a fresco by Jacopo Ripanda, ca 1510

Carthage spent the years after the war improving its finances and expanding its empire in Hispania (Iberia), preparing for the next war that is most remembered for Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with elephants. He resoundingly defeated the Romans in several battles, but was not able to cause a break between Rome and its allies. Far more important, despite his many pleas, he never received sufficient reinforcements, as Carthage opted to send extra forces only to its source of wealth, Iberia. Thus Hannibal was unable to achieve his goal of ultimately conquering Rome and winning the war. This gave self-confidence to the Romans, while they were fighting simultaneously in Italy, Iberia, Sicily, and also against Carthage’s ally, Macedon. Finally, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated and its control reduced to only the city itself. The resurgence of hostilities fifty years later was linked with anti-Roman agitations in Iberia and Hellas, and the recovery of Punic wealth and power. Cato the Elder gave the motto for the annihilation of Carthage ending all his speeches, no matter what the topic, by saying: “Carthago delenda est” – “Carthage must be destroyed”. Rome presented a series of unacceptable demands, finally claiming that Carthage be demolished and rebuilt away from the coast, deep into Africa. In 146 BCΕ, after a three-year siege, it was systematically sacked and burned to the ground, with the fields salted to make the land completely infertile and useless for future generations.^(j) No Punic war records exist, since the books of Carthage’s library were distributed among the African tribes and none remain on Punic history: Elissa-Dido was finally deprived of her immortal fame…

• ^(j) Ares Alexandrou, Ascent:

…“remain there and look on to the end
look at them, those with keys and others with handcuffs
who’ll be demolishing \ as allies
roofs bridges wells
look at them
while they’ll be levelling down the town you’ve built
and sowing it with salt.”

“Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est”. (Cato the Elder)

• >> Chronicle 9. IBERIA IMPARTIALLY VIEWED
• << Chronicle 7a. “We Don’t Need No Thought Control”

Elissa-Dido was finally deprived of her immortal fame…

Chronicle 5. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

Chronicle 5. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 5. ΟΙ ΑΙΝΙΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΙ ΛΑΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑΣ

● Famine Led to the Bronze Age Collapse ● Trojan War and Anatolian Sea Peoples ● Philistines and Pelasgians ● The Merneptah Stele and Exodus

by Michales Loukovikas
 

The “Great Green” Mediterranean

BEFORE WE GO WEST, we need to sail into the “Great Green” (the Mediterranean to the Egyptians) in search of the Sea Peoples, meeting more migrant bands on the way. Voyaging in space and time, in history, legend and myth, we must go back to the explosive finale of the 17th century BCE, the “big bang” of the Minoan volcanic eruption on Thera-Santorini, for it occurred very close to the period the Sea Peoples initially appeared in Egypt. If we take into account the wrecking of the Minoan navy policing the seas, we can presume that these peoples were nothing but pirates at the time, and we also realize how interdependent the great powers were in the ancient world. Later the Egyptians started identifying various bands of Sea Peoples in their own style, and one of the first mentioned were the Sherden or Shardana, a large group of pirates.

Ancient ship, Egyptian papyrus painting

They disrupted trade in the end of the 13th century and contributed greatly to the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Nonetheless, they are not mentioned in either Hellenic or Hittite legends or documents, suggesting that they did not originate from either sphere of influence. Many scholars relate the Shardana to Sardinia due to the similarity between the two words. Based on the same principle, the archaeologist Margaret Guido proposed that the Shardana might have ultimately derived from Sardis and the Sardinian plain nearby, in Lydia, and perhaps migrated later to Sardinia. It seems that many people, and not only the Trojans that would become Romans, left Anatolia and the Aegean for the Italian peninsula and its islands due to the Bronze Age collapse, rather than before. There is evidence that gives credit to Virgil’s Aeneid – without excluding the possibility of earlier migrations. Recent genetic studies indicate that the populations not only of people, but even of cattle, in various Italian regions, especially in Tuscany, are more related to Anatolia, mainly in the northwest, than to anywhere else.

Etruscans dancing, wall painting in a tomb

A famous passage from Herodotus portrays the migration and drifting of Lydians because of famine:

“Their king divided the people into two groups, so that the one should remain and the other leave the country. His son, Tyrrhenus, was to be the head of those who departed. They went down to Smyrna and built themselves ships. After sailing past many countries they came to the Ombrici, where they founded cities and called themselves Tyrrhenians.”

We can’t but remember that Anatolia faced the same acute problem of famine in the time of the collapse and, as a result, the Sea Peoples, then a coalition of seagoing migrants, closed ranks seeking relief from scarcity. Drought could have easily precipitated socio-economic problems and wars. As regards the story told by Herodotus and its link to the Sea Peoples, several scholars contend that those called Teresh by the Egyptians were none others than the Tyrrhenians, or Tyrsenians, who are often identified with the Tusci (hence Tuscany), the Latin exonym for the Etruscans, or Rasena, as they called themselves. The Tyrsenian linguistic family, together with Etruscan, includes the Lemnian language, spoken on the Aegean island of Lemnos until the 6th century BCE. Another Aegean tongue possibly related to the Etruscan was the Minoan Cretan. A third Aegean island close to Anatolia mentioned as their possible homeland by Thucydides is that of Lesbos. The Romans, as Virgil’s readers, identified the Teresh with the Trojans. This version would serve their interests for the Etruscans were their rivals. If they showed that they had a common ancestry, any further animosity between them would be considered fratricidal. There are some clues to support this view. Several writers, as e.g. Andrea Salimbeti in “The Greek Age of Bronze: Sea Peoples”, note that a Trojan connection in the case of the Teresh or Tursha should be at first taken under consideration:

Hittite chariot

“Troy appears in a Hittite record as Taruisa. It is a reasonable assumption that the people of Taruisa called themselves by some name close to this; stripped of vowels so that it can be compared to the Egyptian spelling”.

The Troad was outside the territory but within the sphere of influence of Hatti. However, another Hittite record points to a different location, for it contains a list of cities, among them Tarsa, most likely Tarsus. These toponyms and corresponding ethnicities would be written down in Egyptian hieroglyphs or in any Semitic script as “T-r-s” or “T-r-sh” – that is, without vowels.^(a)

• ^(a) A very good example of how important the Hellenic innovation with the vowels in the alphabet has been. If the Egyptian script had vowels, as well, the enigma of the Sea Peoples might have long since been solved!

The Asia Minor/Anatolia amalgam: the most important regions and peoples

Anatolian connections have been suggested for other Sea Peoples, as well, like the Lukka (Lycians). Most striking is that the vast majority of them seem to have descended from the Troad. Therefore, some researchers, such as the Swiss geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger, have proposed that “the Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War [e.g. the Iliad] may well reflect the Greek effort to counter those raids.”^(b) Therefore, despite the attempts of many historians to discredit the historicity of the Iliad, the Trojan War is considered a historical event and a key to grasp the underlying causes of these epoch-making developments. “For sure, the Sea Peoples’ movement was one of the largest and most important migrations in history that changed the face of the ancient world more than any other single event before the time of Alexander the Great”, Andrea Salimbeti remarks. This long, ravaging war, in combination with the widespread famine in the entire peninsula, created the explosive conditions leading to the collapse. Under the circumstances, many Trojans, allies or neighbours became refugees, and some survived by their wits and swords. Archeological evidence leads to the conclusion that the Sea Peoples were not pirates anymore, nor raiders plundering and pillaging established cities, but instead a mass of people looking for a place to settle, in search of a home. This was obvious since their first invasion of Egypt under Libyan leadership when they were accompanied by their families and belongings. The Libyan tribes also played a role in the first campaigns against Egypt. Herodotus and Hecataeus mentioned one of them centuries later. It was the Berber tribe of the Maxyes or Mazyes, the Mazaces to the Romans or the Meshwesh to the Egyptians, who also claimed to have a Trojan heritage.

Despite the attempts to discredit the historicity of the “Iliad”, the Trojan War is considered a historical event. “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)

Trojan War scenes on pottery

• ^(b) According to this scenario, the Trojan War was a ‘just’, defensive war on the part of the Greeks, not intended for conquest and destruction of the city controlling the passage to the Black Sea.
• In his Anatolian hypothesis, Eberhard Zangger caused a sensation because of his controversial identification of Troy as Atlantis. Zangger’s point of view is that Plato used an Egyptian version of the story about Troy for his legendary report on Atlantis. He based his argument on comparisons between Mycenaean culture and Plato’s account of the Hellenic civilization facing Atlantis, as well as parallels between the recollections of the Trojan War and the one supposedly fought between Greeks and Atlanteans (a Titanomachy variation). He interpreted the legend of the Trojan War to be the memory of the momentous chaos leading to the Bronze Age collapse, and arrived at the conclusion that Troy must have been much bigger than most scholars had presumed, with artificial harbours inside the modern floodplain. In order to prove it, he prepared a helicopter-based geophysical exploration of the plain of Troy to locate settlement layers and artificial port basins using ground-penetrating techniques. Having granted an exclusive excavation license for Troy to the German archaeologist Manfred Korfmann, the Turkish government rejected Zangger’s request and, as a consequence, he withdrew from science with a lecture in the Heidelberg Academy of Science. It was his “swan song” as a scientist before he turned to more “lucrative” activities as a business consultant specializing in corporate communications and public relations. In my view, his last project was jeopardized not by Korfmann’s… exclusive rights to excavate for Troy [!] (Zangger’s plan did not entail any real excavations) but rather by Turkey’s unwillingness to authorize any disclosure of sensitive military data for the sake of science.

Ilium/Troy: the wider area and, below on the right, the modern coastline in red and, therefore, the floodplain that interested Zangger – next to the strategic straits and the Greek border…

• Geoarchaeology is a multi-disciplinary approach which uses the techniques and subject matter of geography, geology and other Earth sciences (those dealing with our planet) to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge and thought. Geoarchaeologists study the natural processes that affect archaeological sites such as geomorphology, as well as soil and sediments, to contribute to archaeological studies.

A Peleset captive in Egypt, and the particular Phaestos disc symbol (below on the right)

An important Sea People have been the Peleset, identified with the Philistines, the Palestinians:

“One of the theories links them to the Pelasgians who were allies of Troy, and one group of them lived in Thrace”, Andrea Salimbeti explains.^(c) “Those Pelasgians would have migrated south, overrunning and fatally damaging Achaean Greek civilization. Shortly after, many would have gone farther south to Crete.” In addition, there are Biblical references to the Philistines as coming from a place called Caphtor, identified by certain scholars with Crete.^(d) “This theory”, Salimbeti adds, “has been somewhat strengthened by the discovery in Crete of the Phaestos disc. One of the symbols shows the head of a man crowned with feathers – very similar to the feather-topped helmets of the Peleset depicted” at the Temple of Ramses III.^(e)

The Cycladic civilization, one of the most important Pelasgian cultures: here’s a frying pan of 2800 BCE (some imaginative people see on its design a map of Atlantis!)

• ^(c) What was the Philistine language? In Wikipedia we are ‘informed’ of “possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, [which] support the independently-held [?] theory that immigrant Philistines originated among ‘sea peoples’.” And what do we know about the Pelasgian language(s)? “In the absence of certain knowledge about the identity (or identities) of the Pelasgians, various theories have been proposed. Since Greek is classified as an Indo-European language, the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was [also] an Indo-European language”. For further information we are forwarded to the Aegean language family, proposed by Giulio M. Facchetti, due to some alleged similarities between Etruscan and Lemnian, and some other languages of the area, such as Minoan, Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, and Philistine. These languages could constitute a pre-Indo-European phylum stretching from Canaan to the Alps. However, this is not a view held in common; there are attempts to link Eteocretan and Eteocypriot with Semitic. Of course, all the above are nothing but hypotheses, as Facchetti himself admits. What really counts is the idea the ancient Hellenes had about the Pelasgians who had survived even in the classical period in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete and other parts of the Aegean. Those identified as “Pelasgian” spoke a language or languages that the Hellenes described as “barbaric” – that is, incomprehensible to them. A tradition also survived that many parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. Taking this into account, we can relish watching all scholarly theorizations crumbling and crashing down…

The Nile Delta with Pelusium in the East, the Hellenic colony Naucratis in the West, and further on the location Alexandria was to be built. The ancient canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Seas is also shown.

• ^(d) Wikipedia: “Caphtor is a locality mentioned in the Bible and related literature. The people of Caphtor are called Caphtorites (or Caphtorim) and are named as a division of the ancient Egyptians. Traditional Hebrew sources place Caphtor in the region of Pelusium [in the Nile Delta]. Other sources associate Caphtor with localities outside Egypt such as Cilicia, Cyprus or Crete.” The least probable scenario is “hard truth” for certain scholars. A measure of their “credibility”…
• ^(e) Well, it was almost unavoidable: “The similarity [of the Peleset helmet] with Maya and Aztec feather headdresses is truly amazing, given the distance that separated the Mesoamerican culture” from the Mediterranean… Galloping imagination somewhere in the Internet Sea, while far in the distant horizon the land of Atlantis is gradually emerging….

Another ‘Trojan’ Sea People might have been the Weshesh. The scarcity of information led ‘necessarily’ to speculation about possible links between their name and that of Ilion, as the city of Troy was also called by the Greeks, or Wilusa (Wilusiya) by the Hittites – after king Ilus (thence the Iliad). “The W of Weshesh”, Salimbeti notes, “is a modern invention for ease of pronunciation; the Egyptian records refer to Uashesh”. Some scholars associate this people with Assos, also in the Troad, or with Iasos (Iassos) in Caria, or with Issos in Cilicia. Others have theorized that they became part of the Israelite confederacy, as the tribe of Asher. Another people connected with the Hebrews were the Tjeker. Moving to Canaan, they captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE by the expanding Phoenicians, who were checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews. King David (if he was something more than just a mythological figure) supposedly conquered Dor and the Tjeker were mentioned no more.

Achilles and Ajax playing a dice game: an amphora by painter-potter Exekias, ca 540-530 BCE

A possible linguistic connection has been proposed between the Tjeker and the Tekrur, identified with the Teucri, a tribe described by some ancient sources as inhabiting northwest Anatolia to the south of Troy. Tradition offers basically two candidates for a homeland: Crete or Attica. Legend links all three places and goes even further, following two heroes with the same name: Teucer (or Teucrus). According to Virgil, the older Teucer was from Crete but left the island with a third part of its inhabitants during a great famine (how many such stories…). They settled near a river, which was named Scamander after his father. Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims Teucer had gone to the Troad from Attica. Scamander (or Xanthos) was said to have been a river-god, a son of Oceanus. According to Homer, he fought on the side of the Trojans after Achilles insulted him. He was the personification of the river that flowed by Troy. The Hellenes had set up their camp near its mouth, and their battles with the Trojans were fought on its plain. With the arrival of Dardanus there, Teucria was renamed as Dardania (thence Dardenelles), and later Troad (from king Tros). But these toponymic changes would not deter the Trojans to often call themselves Teucrians. Aeneas e.g. is described as “the great captain of the Teucrians”.

The Judgement of Paris (1904), by Enrique Simonet: Aphrodite, the winner in this ancient beauty pageant, stepping forward triumphantly naked, while Hera and Athena stay behind humiliated…

The younger Teucer (or Teucrus) was a son of king Telamon of Salamis, the island of Attica where the decisive naval battle of the Graeco-Persian Wars would be fought. He was half Trojan because his mother was a princess of Ilion. He also fought in the Trojan War, but on the side of the Hellenes, having his half-brother, Ajax, as a co-fighter, while his cousins, Hector and Paris, and his uncle Priam were ‘enemies’. After all, war was a family affair – let alone for Teucer Jr! On his return to Salamis, however, his father accused him for not bringing Ajax’s body back home. He was disowned, exiled, and set out to find a new home. With his departing words that Horace turned into a moving ode, he exhorted his companions to “despair in no way… tomorrow we shall set out upon the vast ocean”.^(f) This speech, related later to the theme of voyages of discovery, is also found in Dante’s Inferno and in Tennyson’s Ulysses. Teucer eventually joined the Phoenician king Belus of Tyre in his campaign against Cyprus, and when the island was seized, Belus handed it over to Teucer as a reward. He founded there the city of Salamis, named after his homeland.

• ^(f) “Wherever fortune may bear us, kinder than my father, / We shall go, o men and comrades! / Do not despair with Teucer as your leader and as protector, / Surely resolved Apollo has promised uncertain / Future to Salamis in a new world. / O men, who with me often have endured / Worse fortunes, now, banish cares with wine; / Tomorrow we shall set out upon the boundless sea!” Horace, Odes.

Leda and the Swan, from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, Paphos, Cyprus (3rd century CE)

The “copper island”, a vital node in the trade networks, experienced two waves of Greek settlement: The initial consisted of Mycenaean traders around 1400 BCE. Towards the end of this period, great amounts of ‘Mycenaean’ pottery were produced in Cyprus. A major second wave, connected with Teucer’s story, took place just after the Bronze Age collapse ca 1100 BCE, with the island’s predominantly Hellenic character dating from this era, due to the ‘invasion’ of Helladic refugees. Apart from Salamis, Teucer is credited as a founder of other cities, as well. A local legend in Galicia, in northwestern Iberia, relates the foundation of Pontevedra to ‘Teucro’. The legend seems to be based more on the conjecture that Greek traders might have arrived there in ancient times. Though legends appear for a certain reason, historians and archaeologists tend to agree that the initial settlement was probably formed when Gallaecia was integrated into the Roman Empire (1st century BCE). Pontevedra, which means “the old bridge”, in reference to an old Roman bridge across the Lérez River, is sometimes poetically called The City of Teucro, and its inhabitants teucrinos – like the Trojans.^(g)

Oil lamp, Tróia, Portugal

• ^(g) It seems as if Tróia, across Setúbal, Portugal, was named after Troy but we do not know why. Tróia peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times when it was an island called Acalá. In the 1st century CE the Romans built a town and named it Cetóbriga. It served as a fishery centre until 412 when it was destroyed completely by an earthquake with tsunami. If the town’s initial name had been Tróia, one could surmise that the Romans, considering themselves as Trojans, decided to build a ‘Troy’ in the vicinity of the city of Odysseus – Olisipo, Lisbon! According to José Pedro Machado, in the Onomastic-Etymologic Dictionary of the Portuguese Language, Tróia is not a toponym found exclusively in the area of Setúbal. There are more ‘Tróias’ in Portugal and a Troya in Galicia. Their ‘godfathers’ were probably inspired by the famous Iliad but used the name of the Portuguese town. Based on an article in the Great Portuguese and Brazilian Encyclopedia, Machado referred to the possibility this name to originate from Cetóbriga: > Cetóbria > Cetróbia > Cetróia > Xetróia > Atróia – though it seems too much of an adventure for a toponym… Or perhaps the name comes not from Troy but from either Troyes or Truyes, two cities of France; or its origin is the Latin phrase ‘Trogia (villa)’, derived from the Celtic name Trogus.

Trojan Horse: its oldest known depiction on the Mykonos vase; ca 670 BCE

Up to now, with the sole exception of Teucer attacking Cyprus in collaboration with the Phoenicians and representing the people who found refuge there (well, at the expense of the locals), we have seen no Hellenes fighting alongside the Sea Peoples, but rather against them, in the Trojan War. It is what Sanford Holst already said in our previous Chronicle:

“The Mycenaeans attacked the Anatolian people from the seaward side. To deal with this problem, warriors and ships in the Sea Peoples confederacy poured from Anatolia and the Black Sea into the Aegean, where they ravaged the Mycenaeans.”

Let us try to verify this in Wikipedia:

“The invaders, that is, the replacement cultures at those sites, apparently made no attempt to retain the cities’ wealth but instead built new settlements of a materially simpler cultural and less complex economic level atop the ruins. For example, no one appropriated the palace and rich stores at Pylos, but all were burned up, and the successors (whoever they were) moved in over the ruins with plain pottery and simple goods. This demonstrates a cultural discontinuity.”

This may demonstrate a logical discontinuity, as well! The author leaves the question of who the invaders were open. However, he/she identifies them with “the replacement cultures”, who were stupid enough to “burn up the palace and rich stores” instead of appropriating them. Quite simply, the invaders had no plan to settle there; they went there just to destroy: they were not “the replacement cultures”.

Captive Sea Peoples in Egypt

The Anatolians predominated among the Sea Peoples but were not alone. Names of tribes with dubious or unknown origin are several in the Egyptian files – like the Shekelesh, probably the Siculi, who moved to Sicily from the Italian mainland.

“There was a gigantic series of migratory waves, extending all the way from the Danube valley to the plains of China”, Michael Grant comments, and Moses I. Finley agrees: “A large-scale movement of people is indicated… The original centre of disturbance was in the Carpatho-Danubian region of Europe… pushing in different directions at different times.”

However, if we have faith in Michael Wood, they were Greeks:

“Were the sea peoples in part actually composed of Mycenaean Greeks – rootless migrants, warrior bands and condottieri on the move? Certainly there seem to be suggestive parallels between the war gear and helmets of the Greeks and those of the Sea Peoples”. Moreover, including the Sherden and Shekelesh among the ‘villains’, he reminds us that “there were migrations of Greek-speaking peoples to [Sardinia and Sicily] at this time”. Troy, he concludes, “was sacked by essentially [!] Greek Sea Peoples”…^(h)

• ^(h) Pity there were… “essentially” no Iberian or Britannic “condottieri on the move”. Or else the… “thinking woman’s crumpet” (as Wood was humorously dubbed by British newspapers for his good looks most appealing to women) would have found Hellenic colonies even on Mars!

Cycladic head: a Pelasgian suspect as an “islander” (more than obvious for he has deformed his features)!

Michael Wood is not alone, too. The identification of the Denyen and Ekwesh with the Danaans and Achaeans respectively are long-standing issues in Bronze Age scholarship, especially as the “suspects” lived “in the isles”…⁽ⁱ⁾ Were the Egyptian scribes so naïve to use two names for one and the same people? What kind of Bronze Age scholars are they if they (pretend to) ignore that Achaeans and Danaans are synonymous terms? Have they not been schooled in the Iliad? Homer mentions the name Achaeans 598 times; Danaans 138 times; Argives 182 times; and Hellenes only once. According to a version of the myth, they were ancestors of the Greeks and their tribes: Hellen, Graecos, Magnes, and Macedon (Makednos) were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of the Great Flood. Sons of Hellen were Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus; sons of Xuthus were Ion and Achaeus. Danaus from Egypt, Pelops from Anatolia, and Cadmus from Phoenicia gained a foothold in Greece and were assimilated and Hellenized. At least for the Danaans, perhaps due to their ‘Egyptian’ origin, there is some “flexibility”: they are either identified with the people of Adana in Cilicia, or possibly related to the land of the Danuna near Ugarit in Syria, or perhaps they are rumoured to have joined Hebrews to form one of the original 12 tribes of Israel, that of Dan.

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ Although even the connection of the Hittite toponym Ahhiyawa or Ahhiya with Achaea is strongly disputed (Wikipedia: “the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars”), the… “Wikipedists” are absolutely sure about the identification of the Achaeans with the Ekwesh. So, if you search information on the latter, you are redirected to the former… As for the phrase “in the isles”, used by the Egyptians when referring to Sea Peoples and quoted by scholars as an argument, it ends up meaning: “Whoever is not a landsman is a suspect”!

The major event in Pharaoh Merneptah‘s reign (1213-1203 BCE) was a war against a confederacy termed the ‘Nine Bows’ acting under the leadership of the king of Libya. The pharaoh states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be sure of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised dead and the hands of all the circumcised. We mention this macabre detail because, as it turned out, the Ekwesh were circumcised, a fact that would certainly have obliged any Bronze Age scholar to ‘acquit’ the Greeks.^(j)

• ^(j) …“a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek,” is what we read indeed in Wikipedia! Perhaps they were circumcised as a… camouflage! Or just to baffle our Bronze Age scholars! What the latter do remember is Virgil’s aphorism: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”; “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” – in our case: bearing circumcision! At least they have been schooled in the Aeneid… Note that not only the Ekwesh, but also the Shekelesh and Shardana were circumcised, as the Egyptians made clear (unfortunately they did not inform… Michael Wood!) Therefore, these two peoples had also been Oriental in origin and settled in Sicily and Sardinia only later. Those who were not circumcised were the Peleset…

The stele ‘appropriated’ by Israel; Merneptah was the first to blame for he usurped it from his predecessor, Amenhotep III: he turned it round and used the rough surface for his text.

• The pharaoh’s victories over the Libyans and their Sea People allies are glorified on the Merneptah Stele, a black granite slab over three meters high, discovered by Flinders Petrie in Thebes in 1896. There is, however, a kind of a footnote in the final two of the 28 lines, which refers to a separate campaign in Canaan. There the king boasts of defeating and destroying four cities, the fourth one being most probably a city and valley in northern Canaan, called Jezreel – a word so similar to… Israel! Certainly that would be far more convenient and beneficial for all: for the whole Jewish diaspora, the emerging Zionism, formally established as a movement the next year after the discovery, for many Christians, especially the clergy, and, of course, Petrie himself! That same day he wondered: “Won’t the reverends be pleased?” and then he prophesied: “This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found.” He was not a fool: if this set of hieroglyphs on Line 27 could be read as “Israel”, it would represent the first documented instance of this name in the historical record, and the only mention in Ancient Egypt!
  Despite the fact that the readings in many places are illegible due to the rough surface and the poor cutting (Petrie’s own translation of the text contains dozens of question marks; only next to the controversial word the mark is missing…), most biblical archeologists accept Petrie’s version. That is how his find was also proclaimed as… Israel Stele: based on a disputed word in the penultimate line of a text dealing with another subject! What a disgrace for Merneptah: a proud pharaoh boasting of a triumph over a handful of poor villagers! In his time, there were no more than about 25 villages in the highlands of Canaan. Archaeologists and historians attempting to trace the origins of these villagers have found it impossible to identify any distinctive features that could define them as specifically Israelite. Archaeologist Paula McNutt says: “It is probably… during Iron Age I [(1200-1000 BCE) that] a population began to identify itself as ‘Israelite’.” The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important, worth-mentioning local power even later, by the 9th century BCE, before falling to the Assyrians in 722. Thus, there was no “Israel” for Merneptah to mention – unless he was as prophetic as Petrie himself…

Departure of the Israelites, by David Roberts (1829)

• This “misspelling” trick was a kind of “compensation” for the Egyptians’ historical “error” not to mention either the celebrated Exodus or the calamitous Biblical plagues. The archeologists are equally to blame for they also failed to find any evidence to support the story of the Hebrews departing Egypt… The consensus among biblical scholars is that there was never any exodus of the proportions described in the Bible. According to the book of Exodus, arguably the most important in the Bible, the population leaving the country would have numbered some 2 million people, compared with an entire Egyptian population in 1250 BCE of around 3 to 3.5 million. Marching ten abreast and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 240 kilometers long! No evidence has been found that Egypt ever suffered such a demographic and economic catastrophe or that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds. The date proposed initially of an Exodus around 1450 BCE is also problematic: digs in the 1930s had failed to find traces of the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities ca 1400 BCE – in fact many of them, such as Jericho, the first one to fall to the Israelites according to the Bible, were uninhabited at the time. A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned their investigation of Moses and the Exodus as “a fruitless pursuit”. According to archaeologist William Dever, there is “no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness.”

Flinders Petrie’s “fine”, “Caucasian”, “dynastic race” just before landing in Egypt…!

• Flinders Petrie, who could possibly “address the issue”, had died a long time ago and was buried on Mount Zion, in Palestine. Furthermore, he remains a controversial figure as a committed advocate of “eugenics” and of the “superiority” of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples, as well as for his affiliation with a variety of fascist groups and anti-democratic thought in England. His views on archaeological issues were equally racist: He contended that the Egyptian civilization was derived from a “fine”, invading “Caucasian” (“white”) “Dynastic Race” which had conquered Egypt in predynastic times of late prehistory and introduced the Pharaonic, dynastic culture to the “inferior” “mulatto” race then inhabiting the country. These views spilled over into disputes with E. A. Wallis Budge. The British Museum‘s Egyptologist declared that the ancient Egyptians were an African people with roots in eastern Africa and their religion was essentially identical to the religions of the peoples of northeastern and central Africa. However, all but a few of his colleagues followed Petrie – a most revealing fact about the dominant ideology at the time, at least among intellectual circles. Thus Petrie and his followers derided Budge’s ideas as impossible and “unscientific”…

The great Pharaoh proudly presented his captives: from left to right the Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Shasu, and Hittite (the… Hellene probably escaped!)

The next round in this protracted war took place some three decades later, during the reign of Ramses III (1186-1155 BCE), the last great pharaoh of Egypt. His inscriptions state that the ‘Nine Bows’ re-appeared as a “conspiracy in their isles”. Most tribes mentioned above were there again; we also learn that there were at least two great battles, one in the sea and the other on the land.

“When it was over”, the Wikipedia article on the Sea Peoples says, “several chiefs were captive: of Hatti, Amor, and Shasu among the ‘land peoples’, and the Tjeker, ‘Sherden of the sea’, ‘Teresh of the sea’ and Peleset or Philistines (in whose name some have seen the ancient Greek name for sea people: Pelasgians).”

Ramses III vs the Sea Peoples

What conclusions can we draw? We are surprised first of all since our scholars were not… surprised at all when they read about a Hittite chief among the captives: Hatti had been a Sea Peoples’ arch-enemy – and one of their greatest victims! But scholars are usually aware of such “details” and are not taken by surprise. Furthermore, the same thing had happened before and the pharaoh’s complaints had been officially forwarded to the Hittite monarch – as long as the Hittite kingdom still existed. OK, but why don’t they bother to explain, instead of wasting their time trying to involve the Greeks in this… “conspiracy theory”? We eventually realize that the destruction of the established civilizations, above all the Hittite and Mycenaean, was a deliberate tactics of the Sea Peoples to garner more strength at sea and amass land forces, as well. After all, the empires belonged to the aristocracies, Hittite or Mycenaean. What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do under the circumstances but to follow the peoples with whom he shared the same aspirations for a better life? But what a pity for our scholars: not even one Greek among the captive chiefs… He probably managed to escape! The other captives were chiefs of the Amorites, who lived in Syria and part of Mesopotamia, and possibly of the Hebrews: Shasu is a term for nomad wanderers, and at least one of their tribes worshipped the Jewish god Yahweh. The rest were captains of ships. The pharaoh concluded his report as follows: “I slew the Denyen in their isles” and “burned” the Tjeker and Peleset… He thus implied some maritime raids of his own, some punitive expeditions elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In the Aegean? Where, what and whose were these “isles”? Whatever the answers, the chain reaction of the raids went on; it was the Egyptians’ turn to destroy – but destruction bears no signature.

The destruction of the established civilizations was a deliberate tactics of the Sea Peoples to garner more strength at sea and amass land forces, as well. After all, the empires belonged to the aristocracies, Hittite or Mycenaean. What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do under the circumstances but to follow the peoples with whom he shared the same aspirations for a better life?

Lady of Mycenae (fresco)

Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the Nile delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in the Odyssey recounting his own return home from the Trojan War. This was not the only such action by Mycenaeans against Egypt, where they went ‘just for the fun of it’, and some gain, of course. Taking into account the turbulence among and within the great Mycenaean royal families, the hypothesis that they may have destroyed themselves completely is long-standing and seems to find support by the reputable historian Thucydides:

“For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and islands… were tempted to turn to piracy, under the conduct of their most powerful men… They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls… and would plunder it… no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory.”

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Mycenaean gold diadem

Chronicle 4. PHOENICIA’S STROKE OF FORTUNE

Chronicle 4. PHOENICIA’S STROKE OF FORTUNE

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 4. ΦΟΙΝΙΚΗ – Η ΕΥΝΟΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΤΥΧΗΣ

● Sea Peoples ● Minoan Eruption of Thera ● Trojan War ● Bronze Age Collapse

by Michales Loukovikas

 

STRANGELY 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 eastern Mediterranean area – the Phoenician cities remained untouched… accorded a special status by the invading peoples”. Such is the conclusion of a specialist on Phoenicia, Sanford Holst, in his analysis “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”…

Warship and winged hippocamp on Phoenician coin

However, being ‘pro-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 postulates, “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”…

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

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 claim that their civilization was older than that of the Minoans. The latter, therefore, were the real masters, and their good pupils, as it turned out, were not the Mycenaeans but the Phoenicians, when the Cretans often voyaged to Canaan for trade. “The Phoenicians began to develop as a seafaring, manufacturing, and trading nation when the Cretans – the first masters of the Mediterranean – were overthrown by the Greeks”, R. A. Guisepi notes in “The Phoenicians”. They probably ventured out in the open sea some time before, in the mid-16th century, trying to profit from the misfortunes of the Cretans.

Young saffron gatherer, detail of a wall painting replica from Acroteri, Thera, 17th century BCE

“The Late Minoan I period as a whole represents the zenith of Minoan civilization”, W. Sheppard Baird writes in his study on “The Bronze Age Eruption of Santorini and Late Minoan IB Destruction Event”. “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”.^(a) “When the Theran volcano exploded in the Aegean”, he notes writing on “The Origin of the Sea Peoples”, “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”. And he concludes describing the aftermath of the Sea Peoples’ raids: “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 and colonies.”

An island volcano similar to that at Thera

• ^(a) The Minoan eruption was one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history (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 the 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 too early as radiocarbon dating analysis indicated that the eruption occurred at least a century before, ca 1627-1600 BCE. 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 rainstorms that ravaged Egypt have been attributed to short-term climatic changes caused by the eruption. W. Sheppard Baird suggests that at least one pyroclastic surge of superheated steam travelled at a high speed over 110 kilometers of sea water to incinerate large areas of Crete spreading destruction and death. The Mycenaean conquest of the island occurred about 150 years after the catastrophe, and 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 present here. It is a realistic scenario because of the instability created by the catastrophe. This could also be a factor that may have paved the way for the Mycenaeans.

Seal of Tarkummuwa, the king of Mera, surrounded by Hittite hieroglyphs and cuneiform script: this famous 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 [that is, 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 four years later the Sea Peoples appeared on the scene waging their first unsuccessful 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 to 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 asks. 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 profitable, not even the most optimistic Phoenician could ever dream of or imagine…

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 to Anatolia…

The Sea and Land Peoples’ raids

Sanford Holst has the story unfolding:

“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.^(b) 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.^(c) In 1182 BC Ugarit fell and the flow of wheat from Egypt was cut off. Approximately two years later the Hittite empire died. Now nothing stood in the way of the Sea Peoples’ exodus.^(d) 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 battle of the Egyptians with the Sea Peoples

“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 died. When the Aegean had been thus cleared, the people of western Anatolia 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)

• ^(b) This is obviously an allusion to the Trojan War. If so, it explains why the fighters on the Trojan side, as Homer says, sounded like the Tower of Babel builders – that is, speaking various languages and thus needing to have orders translated to them by their commanders.
  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.” (See the next Chronicle 5).

“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)

• ^(c) The question raised in the previous Chronicle 3, whether the Hellenes were part of the Sea Peoples, is answered here in the negative form: “No, they were not”. Or were they? We need to elaborate on that in our next Chronicle 5.

The Horses of Saint Mark in Venice: a tiny part of the incalculable booty pillaged by Venetians and Franks; later Napoleon stole the… stolen horses but, after Waterloo, they were returned to their legitimate… thieves!

• ^(d) Using the word “exodus”, Holst clearly sought some “Biblical” connotations. But the historical connotations are more compelling: The similarity or parallelism with the descriptions of the First Crusade (1096-1099 CE) is irresistible indeed; especially of the so-called People’s Crusade, or Peasants’ or Paupers’ Crusade; although, if we like precision, we must describe it as the Unruly Mob’s Crusade. However, if we try to find analogies with the Phoenicians’ conduct, we need to go forward to the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), branded as the “Cursed Crusade”, that was originally intended to conquer Muslim Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders mercilessly sacked the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which was partitioned by the buccaneers that established the Latin Empire. At that time, the role of the Phoenicians was played by the Venetians. One day we may also learn who the Phoenician Enrico Dandolo had been in the Bronze Age collapse…

As we have seen, the Egyptians won the battle but 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 land 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:

Bronze Age Hittite Carving

“The Phoenicians seem to have gained more than anyone else from the mass migration of the Land and Sea Peoples”, Sanford 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: Lixis (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) [one of too many similar cases: cities supposedly founded by the Phoenicians but known by their Greek names as the Canaanite toponyms were forgotten]; in Cyprus: Kition (Larnaca). The Phoenicians gave rise to a powerful and wealthy sea-trading empire which stretched from Morocco to the Levant.” Thus 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.”

“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)

Carthage reconstructed

The resulting power vacuum was the golden opportunity for the Phoenicians to take advantage of and emerge as the true heirs of the Minoans, rising as a great maritime power. Their zenith in history (1200–800 BCE) coincides with the dark ages of their antagonists. Enjoying almost complete freedom of movement for a long time, they methodically built their trading empire; when the tide of history brought the great powers back on the scene subjugating Phoenicia from the 9th to the 6th centuries BCE (Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians), they were prepared to shift the hub of the empire from the Near East to the centre of the Mediterranean, from Canaan to Tunisia. After the Persian conquest, many Phoenicians likely migrated to several colonies, mainly Carthage. There they could realize their dream to become a real empire, achieving military supremacy, as well, something that was infeasible in the narrow strip of Phoenicia. As for the Hellenes, they gradually woke up from their dark age and, starting in 800 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 maintained a crucial strategic advantage: the control of the Pillars of Heracles, the Strait of Gibraltar,^(e) where Carthage would impose a blockade to secure its trade monopoly with metal-bearing Iberia, the lost city of Tartessos, and in the Atlantic, north and mainly south. Using gold obtained by expansion of the African coastal trade in the mid-4th century BCE, Carthage 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

The last of the Neanderthals…

• ^(e) Gibraltar, the European Pillar of Heracles on Spanish soil but controlled by Britain, means the “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. 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 themselves, Gibraltar was used as a settlement of the Neanderthals. The evidence in Gorham’s cave ranging between 125,000 and 25,000 BCE makes the rock 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 to 250,000 BCE.

This was the background of Phoenicia’s sea trade enterprise that spread across the seas from 1550 to 300 BCE. The Phoenicians were famous as ‘traders in purple’, referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the murex snail, once profusely available in the eastern Mediterranean but exploited to local extinction; used, among other things, for royal clothing. In fact, the word Phoenicia derives from the Hellenic words φοῖνιξ and φοινός, meaning ‘purple’, passing to Latin and other languages as Punic. They called their country ‘Canaan’, which may also mean ‘Land of Purple’. If so, Canaan and Phoenicia would be synonyms. Hecataeus said Phoenicia was formerly called Χνᾶ (‘Khna’). The Greek term did not correspond to a cultural identity that would have been 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 be dominated by another, though they could collaborate in leagues or alliances. 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 Punic coin with the exergue supposedly depicting the ancient world, ca 341 BCE

As Canaanites they were remarkable in seamanship. While trade and colonies spread, Phoenicians and Greeks split the Mediterranean into two with the former sailing along and finally dominating the southern shore, while the latter being active along the northern coasts, without excluding mutual intrusions, as the examples of Cyrenaica and Sardinia indicate. The two cultures clashed rarely, mainly in Sicily, due to its strategic position, settling into two spheres of influence. When Carthage took over, things changed dramatically. Apart from purple, the Phoenicians exported textiles, glass, and wine to Egypt, where grapevines would not grow; they obtained Nubian gold, Iberian silver, and British tin. Nevertheless, what was once thought to be direct trade is now believed it was indirect. Timothy Champion thinks it was under the control of the Celts of Britanny.^(f) In any case, it seems that 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 trade.

• ^(f) This is a very simple but quite interesting idea: Why should any trading sailor, be it Minoan, Mycenaean, Phoenician, or Carthaginian, take the risk of traveling 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 a blockade in Gibraltar, Cornwall or Brittany tin was accessible in the Mediterranean, and Carthage could not impose an all-out monopoly.

Semiramis, by Eliseo Fattorini, 19th century

Despite the exergues which supposedly depict America, what we see on the other side of the Phoenicians’ ‘coin’ is a certain kind of cultural deficiency. Their art lacks unique characteristics that might distinguish it from its contemporaries. This is due to its being highly influenced by foreign cultures: primarily Egypt, Assyria, and 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.^(g) 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 merchants and sailors where such a deity is quite important.^(h)

• ^(g) The precursor to the Phoenician ‘alphabet’ was likely of Egyptian origin as Middle Bronze Age abjads from Canaan resemble hieroglyphs, or more specifically an early abjad found in central Egypt. In addition to being preceded by proto-Canaanite, the Phoenician abjad was also preceded by the Ugaritic ‘alphabetic’ script of Mesopotamian origin.
• ^(h) 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 (or Yaw) in the Canaanite Pantheon. Was he worshiped 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. At any rate, 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…

Melqart on a Phoenician silver tetradrachm

Searching for clues about ‘Phoenician mythology’ e.g. 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 translation in Greek by Philo of Byblos, according to the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius. All we know of Sanchuniathon and his work comes from Eusebius, who cites the only surviving excerpts from his writings, as summarized and quoted from his supposed translator, Philo. The hypothetical date of the alleged writings was before the Trojan War, close to the time of 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. Curiously enough, however, he 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 wanted to discredit polytheism (“the end justifies the means”?); and others that it was a forgery by Philo himself. Of course, we can draw our own conclusions about the real motives behind the forgers, whoever they were. At any rate, anyone in search of clues on Phoenician mythology will certainly be quite astonished if he is redirected to a hoax – “pious” or not…

A horse head on a Punic coin (replica)

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