Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0419
Christina Luke, Semih Çelik
Whereas it has often been argued that conflict and Western imperial ambitions and ensuing Ottoman defensive policies guided the direction of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeology in Anatolia and the Middle East, here we offer a perspective of high-profile American-Ottoman mutual partage diplomacy. This view stems from the relationship between Princeton University and the Imperial Museum in Constantinople. From a multiscalar approach that includes microlocal and macroimperial histories, we demonstrate how this American alliance trumped Ottoman citizenship and transcended physical and political jurisdictions. “Princeton’s Gift to Turkey”—the excavation, transfer, and installment of the Orpheus mosaic from the northwest corner of the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem to the Imperial Museum—triggered a lasting relationship between Osman Hamdi Bey and Howard Crosby Butler. Underwritten by financial means and technological capacity, this alliance foreshadowed the transformative period at Late Ottoman Sardis.
{"title":"“Princeton’s Gift to Turkey”: Exploring the Political Matrix of the Orpheus Mosaic from Jerusalem and Late Ottoman Sardis","authors":"Christina Luke, Semih Çelik","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0419","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Whereas it has often been argued that conflict and Western imperial ambitions and ensuing Ottoman defensive policies guided the direction of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeology in Anatolia and the Middle East, here we offer a perspective of high-profile American-Ottoman mutual partage diplomacy. This view stems from the relationship between Princeton University and the Imperial Museum in Constantinople. From a multiscalar approach that includes microlocal and macroimperial histories, we demonstrate how this American alliance trumped Ottoman citizenship and transcended physical and political jurisdictions. “Princeton’s Gift to Turkey”—the excavation, transfer, and installment of the Orpheus mosaic from the northwest corner of the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem to the Imperial Museum—triggered a lasting relationship between Osman Hamdi Bey and Howard Crosby Butler. Underwritten by financial means and technological capacity, this alliance foreshadowed the transformative period at Late Ottoman Sardis.","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138618664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0468
Dominic Pollard
{"title":"South by Southeast: The History and Archaeology of Southeast Crete from Myrtos to Kato Zakros","authors":"Dominic Pollard","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0468","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138610718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0438
Alex Rodriguez Suarez
This article looks at bells and bell casting in Lebanon from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The topic, which has not received much scholarly attention, sheds light on a fascinating aspect of the material culture of the Christian communities in Lebanon. Through a combination of written sources and artifacts the article traces the history of bells and their production in the territory of the Republic of Lebanon. The core of the study is a catalog of ten bells, found in churches and monasteries across Lebanon, which were examined in 2020. Because of their location—usually on top of bell towers/gables—these musical instruments cannot be surveyed easily. Their analysis is a remarkable opportunity to visualize the materiality of bell ringing and its evolution throughout a period of about 200 years.
{"title":"The Materiality of the Religious Soundscape: Bells and Bell Casting in Lebanon","authors":"Alex Rodriguez Suarez","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0438","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article looks at bells and bell casting in Lebanon from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The topic, which has not received much scholarly attention, sheds light on a fascinating aspect of the material culture of the Christian communities in Lebanon. Through a combination of written sources and artifacts the article traces the history of bells and their production in the territory of the Republic of Lebanon. The core of the study is a catalog of ten bells, found in churches and monasteries across Lebanon, which were examined in 2020. Because of their location—usually on top of bell towers/gables—these musical instruments cannot be surveyed easily. Their analysis is a remarkable opportunity to visualize the materiality of bell ringing and its evolution throughout a period of about 200 years.","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138609915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0471
Jennifer M. Webb
{"title":"All Things Cypriot: Studies on Ancient Environment, Technology, and Society in Honor of Stuart Swiny","authors":"Jennifer M. Webb","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0471","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138607981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0390
Ahmed H. B. Al-Shorman, Zeidoun al-Muheisen, Raghad M. Khalayleh, Jihad A. Al-Daire
Throughout history, ceramic building material (CBM), such as bricks, tiles, and hypocaust tiles, along with decorative elements, have been of immense significance. To determine the mineralogical content, chemical composition, and physical property of such materials, as well as pottery sherds, excavated from the archaeological site of Khirbet Edh-Dharih in southern Jordan, a range of analytical techniques that include petrography, XRD, AAS, and SEM-EDX were utilized. The findings indicate that during the periods studied the potters followed the tradition of sourcing local raw materials and utilized relatively advanced manufacturing techniques. However, the late Byzantine–early Umayyad potters deviated from this norm by blending noncalcareous clay with coarsely crushed quartz in higher proportions and firing them at elevated temperatures. This resulted in a clay with a lower water absorption capacity, lower porosity, and higher bulk density, thus improving its durability.
{"title":"The Mineralogical, Chemical, and Physical Properties of Ceramic Building Material: Khirbet Edh-Dharih in Southern Jordan (First Century BC–Seventh Century AD)","authors":"Ahmed H. B. Al-Shorman, Zeidoun al-Muheisen, Raghad M. Khalayleh, Jihad A. Al-Daire","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.4.0390","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Throughout history, ceramic building material (CBM), such as bricks, tiles, and hypocaust tiles, along with decorative elements, have been of immense significance. To determine the mineralogical content, chemical composition, and physical property of such materials, as well as pottery sherds, excavated from the archaeological site of Khirbet Edh-Dharih in southern Jordan, a range of analytical techniques that include petrography, XRD, AAS, and SEM-EDX were utilized. The findings indicate that during the periods studied the potters followed the tradition of sourcing local raw materials and utilized relatively advanced manufacturing techniques. However, the late Byzantine–early Umayyad potters deviated from this norm by blending noncalcareous clay with coarsely crushed quartz in higher proportions and firing them at elevated temperatures. This resulted in a clay with a lower water absorption capacity, lower porosity, and higher bulk density, thus improving its durability.","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138612261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0360
Jolanta Młynarczyk
As announced in the introduction (1–6), Dalit Regev’s New Light on Canaanite-Phoenician Pottery focuses on groups of pottery that were not recognized as Canaanite-Phoenician before the research undertaken by Regev. Her aim is to examine the continuity “from Bronze to the Iron Age and beyond” of the “Canaanite-Phoenician” pottery tradition. The main research material were the “Canaanite-Phoenician” vessel forms in the eastern Mediterranean, while the western Mediterranean is considered to have produced “different interpretations of the Eastern forms” (1). Instead of a “narrow conservative definition” of Phoenician pottery, understood as ceramics made in Phoenicia during the Iron Age, the author proposes a much wider definition, considering as Phoenician pottery the local pottery groups around the Mediterranean made with Phoenician forms, techniques, and traditions. An obvious example is Punic pottery produced by Phoenicians settled in North Africa.It is also clear that the predecessors of Phoenician pottery in the Levant was the Canaanite pottery of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Regev rightly points out that the development of Phoenician pottery, including its predecessors and its continuation in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, are excellent example of longue durée. This is especially true for the “Red Slip group” and “some of the coarse-ware shapes” (amphorae) (3). However, when it comes to the section on the ware (“Phoenician vessels, whether coarse or fine, were often made of the same ware” [4]), the author clearly does not distinguish between the fabric (a matrix composed of clay minerals and inclusions added by the potter) and the ware (composed of two elements: the fabric and specific surface treatments). A ware can be shared by different fabrics. Unfortunately, this defect is perpetuated throughout the book.Chapter 1 (7–18) presents the Phoenician vessel assemblage and its distribution. The first part treats “the pottery groups and etymology” ([7]; apparently meaning “terminology”) and attempts to define the nature of the Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean. The four important topics considered by the author are: existence of multiple workshops, aspects of commercial networks, Phoenician rituals and their attributes, and processes of cultural changes such as Hellenization. This section of Chapter 1 is accompanied by figures 1–5, illustrating the corpora of “Canaanite-Phoenician” pottery in individual periods: the Bronze Age (fig. 1), Iron Age (fig. 2: lacking captions for nos. 44–62), Persian period (fig. 3), Hellenistic period (fig. 4), and Roman period (fig. 5, where, however, nos. 2 and 6 are Byzantine/early Islamic rather than Roman).The second part of this chapter is entitled “The Phoenician Assemblage and Distribution”; it mentions Phoenician shapes in both fine and coarse ware (13) of which the latter should more properly be described as plain ware, if we bear in mind that there exists the important category of so
{"title":"New Light on Canaanite-Phoenician Pottery","authors":"Jolanta Młynarczyk","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0360","url":null,"abstract":"As announced in the introduction (1–6), Dalit Regev’s New Light on Canaanite-Phoenician Pottery focuses on groups of pottery that were not recognized as Canaanite-Phoenician before the research undertaken by Regev. Her aim is to examine the continuity “from Bronze to the Iron Age and beyond” of the “Canaanite-Phoenician” pottery tradition. The main research material were the “Canaanite-Phoenician” vessel forms in the eastern Mediterranean, while the western Mediterranean is considered to have produced “different interpretations of the Eastern forms” (1). Instead of a “narrow conservative definition” of Phoenician pottery, understood as ceramics made in Phoenicia during the Iron Age, the author proposes a much wider definition, considering as Phoenician pottery the local pottery groups around the Mediterranean made with Phoenician forms, techniques, and traditions. An obvious example is Punic pottery produced by Phoenicians settled in North Africa.It is also clear that the predecessors of Phoenician pottery in the Levant was the Canaanite pottery of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Regev rightly points out that the development of Phoenician pottery, including its predecessors and its continuation in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, are excellent example of longue durée. This is especially true for the “Red Slip group” and “some of the coarse-ware shapes” (amphorae) (3). However, when it comes to the section on the ware (“Phoenician vessels, whether coarse or fine, were often made of the same ware” [4]), the author clearly does not distinguish between the fabric (a matrix composed of clay minerals and inclusions added by the potter) and the ware (composed of two elements: the fabric and specific surface treatments). A ware can be shared by different fabrics. Unfortunately, this defect is perpetuated throughout the book.Chapter 1 (7–18) presents the Phoenician vessel assemblage and its distribution. The first part treats “the pottery groups and etymology” ([7]; apparently meaning “terminology”) and attempts to define the nature of the Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean. The four important topics considered by the author are: existence of multiple workshops, aspects of commercial networks, Phoenician rituals and their attributes, and processes of cultural changes such as Hellenization. This section of Chapter 1 is accompanied by figures 1–5, illustrating the corpora of “Canaanite-Phoenician” pottery in individual periods: the Bronze Age (fig. 1), Iron Age (fig. 2: lacking captions for nos. 44–62), Persian period (fig. 3), Hellenistic period (fig. 4), and Roman period (fig. 5, where, however, nos. 2 and 6 are Byzantine/early Islamic rather than Roman).The second part of this chapter is entitled “The Phoenician Assemblage and Distribution”; it mentions Phoenician shapes in both fine and coarse ware (13) of which the latter should more properly be described as plain ware, if we bear in mind that there exists the important category of so","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135685825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0323
Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar
ABSTRACT This article reviews the possible cause for the underwater deposition of a series of Phoenician bronze figurines dated between the eighth and seventh centuries BC and discovered on the southwestern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, around the Islet of Sancti Petri (Cadiz) and on the coast near the city of Huelva. These figurines have been interpreted as votive offerings thrown into the waters near the ports of Cadiz and Huelva by Phoenician seafarers and merchants at the end of their voyages as an expression of gratitude to the god Melqart. Instead, I propose that these objects may have been thrown into the waters as part of religious rituals intended to appease the waters of the ocean following the occurrence of catastrophic marine floods, such as those that apparently affected the seaboard of the Gulf of Cadiz in the middle of the first millennium BC.
{"title":"Battles beneath the Sea: Phoenician Votive Offerings as a Possible Religious Response to Extreme Marine Events in the Gulf of Cadiz","authors":"Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0323","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article reviews the possible cause for the underwater deposition of a series of Phoenician bronze figurines dated between the eighth and seventh centuries BC and discovered on the southwestern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, around the Islet of Sancti Petri (Cadiz) and on the coast near the city of Huelva. These figurines have been interpreted as votive offerings thrown into the waters near the ports of Cadiz and Huelva by Phoenician seafarers and merchants at the end of their voyages as an expression of gratitude to the god Melqart. Instead, I propose that these objects may have been thrown into the waters as part of religious rituals intended to appease the waters of the ocean following the occurrence of catastrophic marine floods, such as those that apparently affected the seaboard of the Gulf of Cadiz in the middle of the first millennium BC.","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135685975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0143
Hélène Sader
abstract:The article argues that there is one Phoenician religion and one Phoenician pantheon in spite of the fact that there was no such thing as a Phoenician “state” or “nation.” It also argues that in the absence of Phoenician religious texts the archaeological evidence can partly fill the gap left by this absence. As a case study for the contribution of archaeological discoveries to the understanding of Phoenician religion, the article presents the cult sites with standing stones that were recently exposed at the site of Tell el-Burak, south of Sidon. This aspect of Phoenician religion is not attested in the contemporary written record and was discovered for the first time at this archaeological site. The article discusses its origin and transmission, and suggests that it may have reached Phoenicia through trade and may have been associated with local industries.
{"title":"Phoenician Religion in the Homeland: New Insights from Recent Archaeological Discoveries","authors":"Hélène Sader","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0143","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The article argues that there is one Phoenician religion and one Phoenician pantheon in spite of the fact that there was no such thing as a Phoenician “state” or “nation.” It also argues that in the absence of Phoenician religious texts the archaeological evidence can partly fill the gap left by this absence. As a case study for the contribution of archaeological discoveries to the understanding of Phoenician religion, the article presents the cult sites with standing stones that were recently exposed at the site of Tell el-Burak, south of Sidon. This aspect of Phoenician religion is not attested in the contemporary written record and was discovered for the first time at this archaeological site. The article discusses its origin and transmission, and suggests that it may have reached Phoenicia through trade and may have been associated with local industries.","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135685827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0139
Meir Edrey
The religion that the Phoenicians practiced is still largely unknown, mainly due to the dearth of original Phoenician written sources. The only canonical religious Phoenician text we know of, the creation myth, written in the sixth century BCE by Sanchuniathon, a priest from Beirut, is almost entirely lost to us. Only a few quotes were preserved in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea (Praeparatio evangelica), dated to the fourth century CE, and to a lesser extent in Porphyry’s treaties (Adversus Christianos), dated to the third or fourth century CE. And none of these are direct quotes but instead are quotes from a heavily Hellenized Greek translation of the original text composed by another priest, Philo of Byblos, during the first century CE (Baumgarten 1981; Edwards 1991: 213; Markoe 2000: 119; Ribichini 2001: 121). However, even if this text had been better preserved, it would have been relevant only for a narrow chronological time frame within the long history of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians, since religion, like other aspects of human life, evolves and changes in accordance with the geopolitical reality. The situation becomes even more complex once the Phoenicians settle parts of the Mediterranean basin, coming into contact with new populations, cultures, and ideas, and a hybrid culture somewhat different from that of the homeland is formed. And although over six thousand Phoenician and Punic inscriptions from various periods were found over the years, the majority reveal little information about Phoenician religion other than names of deities, clients, and rituals (Clifford 1990: 55; Ribichini 2001: 120).When turning to exterior sources, the situation is seemingly far better. The Ugaritic mythological and ritualistic texts provide a solid base for the understanding of the Canaanite pantheon (Cross 1973; Pardee 2002), the Hebrew Bible offers useful information on the prominent deities in Phoenicia, and various classical authors provide us with a relatively abundant amount of information on Phoenician deities, rituals, and myths. However, we must remember that these texts are often both biased and anachronistic, and therefore we cannot rely on them too heavily (Clifford 1990: 55; Schoville 1998: 170–71).Fortunately, archaeology can help us fill in some of the blanks, and it provides us with an ever-growing database on Phoenician religion as it evolved throughout the ages, mainly through epigraphic evidence such as theophoric names and dedicatory inscriptions. The available evidence seems to indicate that during the first millennium BCE, the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon narrowed significantly, and instead of an extended family of deities, the focus was on a divine triad or, more likely, a divine pair. According to Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.1.18), Hiram I built temples for Jupiter, Heracles, and Astarte in Tyre, who can be identified with El, Melqart, and Astarte, and yet unlike the latter two, El is hardly mentioned in Phoenicia.1 The far
{"title":"Introduction: Phoenician Religion and Cult across the Mediterranean","authors":"Meir Edrey","doi":"10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0139","url":null,"abstract":"The religion that the Phoenicians practiced is still largely unknown, mainly due to the dearth of original Phoenician written sources. The only canonical religious Phoenician text we know of, the creation myth, written in the sixth century BCE by Sanchuniathon, a priest from Beirut, is almost entirely lost to us. Only a few quotes were preserved in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea (Praeparatio evangelica), dated to the fourth century CE, and to a lesser extent in Porphyry’s treaties (Adversus Christianos), dated to the third or fourth century CE. And none of these are direct quotes but instead are quotes from a heavily Hellenized Greek translation of the original text composed by another priest, Philo of Byblos, during the first century CE (Baumgarten 1981; Edwards 1991: 213; Markoe 2000: 119; Ribichini 2001: 121). However, even if this text had been better preserved, it would have been relevant only for a narrow chronological time frame within the long history of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians, since religion, like other aspects of human life, evolves and changes in accordance with the geopolitical reality. The situation becomes even more complex once the Phoenicians settle parts of the Mediterranean basin, coming into contact with new populations, cultures, and ideas, and a hybrid culture somewhat different from that of the homeland is formed. And although over six thousand Phoenician and Punic inscriptions from various periods were found over the years, the majority reveal little information about Phoenician religion other than names of deities, clients, and rituals (Clifford 1990: 55; Ribichini 2001: 120).When turning to exterior sources, the situation is seemingly far better. The Ugaritic mythological and ritualistic texts provide a solid base for the understanding of the Canaanite pantheon (Cross 1973; Pardee 2002), the Hebrew Bible offers useful information on the prominent deities in Phoenicia, and various classical authors provide us with a relatively abundant amount of information on Phoenician deities, rituals, and myths. However, we must remember that these texts are often both biased and anachronistic, and therefore we cannot rely on them too heavily (Clifford 1990: 55; Schoville 1998: 170–71).Fortunately, archaeology can help us fill in some of the blanks, and it provides us with an ever-growing database on Phoenician religion as it evolved throughout the ages, mainly through epigraphic evidence such as theophoric names and dedicatory inscriptions. The available evidence seems to indicate that during the first millennium BCE, the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon narrowed significantly, and instead of an extended family of deities, the focus was on a divine triad or, more likely, a divine pair. According to Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.1.18), Hiram I built temples for Jupiter, Heracles, and Astarte in Tyre, who can be identified with El, Melqart, and Astarte, and yet unlike the latter two, El is hardly mentioned in Phoenicia.1 The far ","PeriodicalId":43115,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135685980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.11.2-3.0354
Megan Daniels
The Phoenicians have received growing attention in scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean in recent decades (most recently in Anglophone scholarship: López-Ruiz 2021; Sader 2019; Quinn 2018). Yet, as C. López-Ruiz notes, “the study of the Phoenicians is still extremely fragmented, striving to find a space of its own” (2021: 4). These peoples have frequently fallen through the rifts created by the artificial bifurcation of “West” and “East,” of classics and Near Eastern or biblical studies, and of Indo-European and Semitic. Another contributing factor to this fragmentation is the lack of “direct textual transmission” of Phoenician literature, with most knowledge conveyed to us via Greco-Roman sources and archaeological evidence, as noted in the volume under review (165).The recent turn toward more globalizing histories of the Mediterranean Iron Age has somewhat rehabilitated the Phoenicians as active agents in the creation of the interconnected cultural and economic currents that shaped this ancient world (e.g., Hodos 2020). Yet the study of the Phoenicians—their language, culture, history, and archaeology—remains hyper-specialized and rather inaccessible to broader scholarly communities due to the issues described above. The current encyclopedia project, the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Phoenician Culture (EDPC), aims to remedy these sticking points by providing “a compact repertoire that is as complete as possible, of easy and immediate consultation, organized according to criteria that aim to be consistent” (ix). The EDPC in its entirety contains over 2,000 entries by around 200 different authors from 20 countries, as per the publisher’s overview.The volume under review is volume II.1: Religion—Deities and Mythical Characters. The first volume in this series focused on historical figures in the Phoenician world. Another volume on religion will appear in the near future as volume II.2: Cult and Ritual and will be a close compliment to II.1. Later volumes will deal with topics such as language and written sources, archaeological sites and toponyms, and social, political, and economic life. As the editors note, each volume in this series strives to be “in one sense independent, but at the same time inseparable from the others.” (ix) The volumes thus contain a consistent system of tagging individual lemmata within and between volumes to create entries that are concise but inherently interconnected and comprehensive, to allow researchers the fullest reading possible on each topic. This complex tagging system naturally causes one to wonder whether the entire EDPC will one day be digitized in such a way that turns the tags into navigable hyperlinks between entries and volumes (volumes I and II.1 are currently available as eBooks but are not linked to one another via any type of content management system).Volume II.1 focuses on Phoenician deities directly attested in the Levant, primarily in the first millennium BCE (xii). Perhaps the greatest challen
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