The Oxford handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

[The reviewer apologizes for the lateness of this review.]

The publication of The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean, edited by Carolina López-Ruiz and Brian R. Doak, marks a significant advancement in the growing discipline of Phoenician (and Punic) Studies. The volume is the long-awaited successor to both Sabatino Moscati’s I Fenici, published in 1988,[1] and Véronique Krings’ La civilisation phénicienne et punique: Manuel de recherche, published in 1995.[2] Until now, the Manuel de recherche was the only proper handbook devoted to the subject, and it will surely remain a useful reference work for many years to come. Yet a quarter century has passed since its publication, and the need for an updated compendium has greatly increased with the recent flurry of scholarship on the Phoenicians.

The Handbook collects forty-eight contributions, each with its own bibliography, from both well-established experts and early-career scholars alike. The chapters themselves are distributed over an introductory section and four main parts, titled “Histories” (Part I), “Areas of Culture” (Part II), “Regional Studies and Interactions” (Part III), and “Receptions” (Part IV). Brian R. Doak and Carolina López-Ruiz open the volume with a statement of purpose. “The Phoenicians created the Mediterranean as we know it” (p. 3), the editors explain, but their accomplishments have been marginalized by the successes of others—chiefly the Greeks and Romans—who, in effect, became both the curators and the appropriators of the Phoenician legacy. As a result, Phoenician Studies has always been “a particularly fragmented and scattered field” (p. 4). Scholarship is often relegated to specialized publications and, for historical reasons, has been “highly concentrated in Europe and not necessarily with English as the obvious language of its diffusion” (p. 4). In the mold of Krings’ Manuel de recherche, the Handbook is meant to be “an updated, major point of reference for future research and a new steppingstone for a broad reader­ship to further explore Phoenician culture” (p. 4). The editors delegate the task of pinning down this elusive culture to the following chapters, clarifying that the volume’s goal is to present a “kaleidoscopic” rather than “unitary view” of the Phoenicians, “triangulate[d] through a series of [scholarly] perspectives” (p. 6). Yet, taken together, those perspectives reveal “quite an extraordinary homogeneity that spans material culture, language, and religion—the three pillars that archaeologists and historians traditionally use to iden­tify a culture even when internal narratives are absent” (p. 6).

The following chapter by Philip C. Schmitz is meant to familiarize the reader with the major areas of study in the field and to provide a short bibliography for each. The chapter opens with a prefatory section on the terms “Canaan(ite)” and “Phoenicia(n)” that, despite noting the appearance of the former in Bronze Age cuneiform and Egyptian texts, cites not a single published edition thereof. Schmitz then dwells extensively on the lost or fragmentary Phoenician histories written in Greek before covering the Phoenician epigraphic corpus at an appropriate level of detail. All of the other topics (e.g.biblical sources, personal names, and material sources) receive just a few sentences each, with the corresponding bibliographic entries varying significantly in length, although the author’s brevity is justified in some cases by invoking the later chapters devoted to those areas.[3]

In chapter 3, Nicholas C. Vella reconsiders Sabatino Moscati’s role in the development of contemporary Phoenician Studies, acknowledging his unparalleled contributions to the field but critiquing the manner in which his teams conducted and published their excavations and emphasizing how the decontextualization of artifacts at the 1988 “I Fenici” exhibition “turned the Phoenicians into a mono­lithic entity” (p. 29). Vella then lays out “Eight Ways to Move Forward, or How to Define ‘Phoenicianness,’” such as mapping and evaluating the production of knowledge by earlier generations of archaeologists and investigating the mechanics and societal effects of food production and preparation. One of the most compelling points is the call for renewed bioarchaeological analyses of human remains, with Vella observing that the decomposed mummy of king Tabnit of Sidon, currently on display in Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum, has never been subjected to a rigorous scientific examination (p. 32).

Part I, “Histories,” contains eleven chapters, with the first seven devoted to “The East” (Part I/1) and the last four to “The West” (Part I/2). In chapter 4, Ann E. Killebrew emphasizes the resilience of the EIA Phoenician city-states and their continuation of Canaanite traditions following the collapse of the LBA international system ca. 1200-1150 BCE and concludes that the “entity referred to in Classical and modern sources as Phoenician” emerged from the “dynamic interaction of maritime cultural and commercial exchanges” between those polities and intrusive foreign populations such as the “Sea Peoples” (pp. 51-52).

“Phoenicia in the Later Iron Age: Tenth Century BCE to the Assyrian and Babylonian Periods” by Guy Bunnens guides us through one of the most pivotal, complicated, and neglected periods in Phoenician history. Even though I occasionally disagree with individual historical points, particularly concerning the difficult period between 726 and 681 BCE that encompassed the reigns of the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, and Sennacherib (p. 67),[4] the clarity with which the author has managed to arrange a truly vast and disparate array of textual evidence into a rudimentary yet coherent history of events is nothing short of remarkable.

In chapter 6, María Eugenia Aubet Semmler addresses the chronology, organization, and economic objectives of the Phoenicians’ westward exploits (divided into pre-colonial, colonial, and Punic phases), surveys their more notable foundations (e.g. Utica, Gadir, and Carthage), and offers a brief case study on the indigenous and Phoenician settlements located around the Bay of Málaga.

The informative value of Vadim Jigoulov’s chapter on Achaemenid Phoenicia is limited due to its lack of citations and incomplete historical outline of the period.[5] A subsection on “tertiary” inscriptions (p. 92), for instance, discusses an Athenian decree in honor of king Straton (ʿAbd-ʿAštart) I of Sidon but does not reference a single edition of the text itself,[6] while a separate subsection acknowledges the existence of Aramaic and Akkadian sources without naming any (p. 92).[7] The author also neglects to mention even such a momentous event as the disastrous Sidonian revolt against Artaxerxes III that culminated in the city’s violent subjugation and the execution of Tennes, its duplicitous king, in 346 or 345 BCE.[8]

In chapter 8, Corinne Bonnet argues that the “hellenization” model has failed to account for the nature of local responses to Greek political and socio-cultural influences in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquests and advances the concept of “middle ground” as a more balanced alternative. The following chapter by Julien Aliquot parses the impact of Roman rule with respect to “provincial institutions and cities, which provided a basis for the new order,” and “assess[es] the flowering of Hellenism and the revival of local traditions in light of the Romanization of Phoenicia and its hinterland” (p. 111). Part I/1 concludes with a useful contribution on the archaeology of Phoenicia by Hélène Sader.

Part I/2 turns to Carthage and the west. In chapter 11, Hédi Dridi parses the ancient historiographical traditions concerning the date of Carthage’s foundation and evaluates the foundation narratives recorded by Timaeus of Tauromenium (FGrH III 566 F 82) and Justin (Epit. XVIII 4.iii-6.vii), both conveniently reproduced in translation. The chapter then takes us from the earliest phases of expansion during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE through the Carthaginian defeat at the Battle of Himera by Gelon, tyrant of Gela and Syracuse, in 480 BCE. Chapter 12 by Dexter Hoyos skillfully weaves a complex series of geopolitical events into a predominately socio-cultural history of Carthage from 479 to 265 BCE, focusing on topics such as the city’s policies towards the Libyans and its reception of external artistic influences.

In “The Punic Wars (264-146 BCE),” Christopher de Lisle addresses the historiographical dilemma of having to rely almost entirely upon Romano-centric classical sources for this famous series of conflicts, cautions against thinking of Carthage and Rome “as separated by a vast cultural divide” (p. 170), and defines the idealized construction of power expressed in the fragmentary Carthaginian treaty tradition as “the ability to move freely through the Mediterranean while limiting the movement of others and preventing piratical attacks on themselves and their friends” (p. 170). The chapter as a whole offers readers a nuanced and extremely well-referenced synopsis of the period alongside a novel and perceptive interpretation of Carthaginian treaties as a reflection of elite imperialist ideology.

“Carthage After the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy” by Matthew Hobson argues that overarching models of “Romanization” and “Punicization” cannot account for the heterogeneity of territorial delineations and statuses, municipal institutions, spoken and written languages, and religious practices in North Africa at this time and encourages a more localized approach to questions of development and continuity.

Part II, “Areas of Culture,” is divided into three sections, titled “Language and Literature” (Part II/1), “Religion” (Part II/2), and “Material Culture” (Part II/3). Chapter 15 by Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo presents a short grammar of Phoenician that should be useful for anyone curious about the language’s basic mechanics. However, there are a few problems with the chapter that stem from its rather haphazard formatting and the author’s apparent presumption that readers would have some level of familiarity with Biblical Hebrew, which inter alia may explain why the section on syntax (pp. 218-19) says nothing about word order (usually verb-subject-object).[9]

Chapter 16 by Madadh Richey provides an invaluable guide to the published Phoenician-Punic epigraphic corpus as of the beginning of 2018. While many of the ten thousand or so inscriptions are either short, formulaic, or both, Richey consistently underscores not only the variety of unique textual genres attested but also the continual expansion of the corpus through the discovery and publication of “new” inscriptions. In chapter 17, Richey tracks the history of alphabetic writing from its first attestations (the Sinaitic inscriptions most famously) through the finalization and subsequent dissemination of the standard Phoenician alphabet of twenty-two consonantal graphemes, focusing especially on the development of the Greek alphabet from this Phoenician prototype. The chapter ends with a reminder that the alphabet’s history must be explained “not as that of a self-evident miracle” with immediate and revolutionary effects “but, instead, as that of a fascinating technological artifact, whose ups and downs were tied to forces far beyond its inherent faculties and flaws” (p. 252).

Chapter 18 by Carolina López-Ruiz catalogues the works of Phoenician literature—some written in Phoenician and others in Greek by Phoenician authors about Phoenician subjects—that are known to us from translations, paraphrases, or references in the classical literary tradition. Those works in turn evidence a wide variety of genres, including “mythology (especially cosmogony and foundation stories), city an­nals and historiography, and travel literature, with other technical areas such as agricul­ture, philosophy, and perhaps laws also represented” (p. 267). The author’s evaluation of Carthaginian oaths and treaties as a form of “propagandistic” public literature (p. 264) and her suggestion that “[i]tineraries for navigation (periploi) may have started as a Phoenician genre” (p. 265) are two of the chapter’s highlights.[10]

Paolo Xella’s chapter on Phoenician religion merits praise as an accessible, straightforward, and balanced introduction to a very complicated topic, although it could have included more references to specific textual sources (classical especially).[11] In chapter 20, Mireia López-Bertran adds nuance to a primarily archaeological discussion of Phoenician funerary ritual by reviewing key terminology and elaborating upon the ceremonies that would have accompanied physical burials (e.g. lamentation and funerary feasts).

Matthew M. McCarty’s chapter is devoted to the sanctuaries conventionally referred to as “tophets.” These sites, which so far have only been found in the Central and Western Mediterranean, were home to a rite called MLK (molk) in Phoenician that “has left two distinctive signatures in the archaeological record,” one being “a field of buried urns containing burnt bone and/or vegetal remains” and the other “the presence of carved stone monuments … erected alongside the buried urn” (p. 313). Since the discovery of the Salammbô tophet at Carthage in 1921, there has been an intense scholarly debate over whether sites of this type are evidence of live child sacrifice. According to McCarty, the weight of the literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence supports the basic validity of the “sacrificial hypothesis” (that live child sacrifice did indeed take place) as opposed to the “funerary hypothesis” (that the children unearthed from tophet sites were not live sacrifices but had died naturally and were dedicated posthumously). Yet he argues convincingly that there was not a “monolithic ‘tophet phenomenon,’” suggesting instead that “it is essential to both localize and historicize religious practices, even when they appear quite similar in form” (p. 313).

In chapter 22, Francisco J. Núñez emphasizes the role of both “consumption” demand and “industrial” demand in conditioning the production and distribution of ceramic vessels. The following chapter by Eric Gubel surveys the various arts and crafts that have traditionally been attributed to the Phoenicians. In “Levantine Art in the ‘Orientalizing’ Period,” Marian H. Feldman critiques the east-to-west unidirectionality, the homogenization of Near Eastern cultures, and the underlying assumption of Greek superiority implicit in the “Orientalization” model and, at the same time, casts many of the traditional attributions set forth by Gubel into doubt. Yet Phoenician art is so elusive and challenging a subject that divergent views such as these are simply a matter of course, and both chapters will surely prove useful, however jarring their contradictions may be.

Readers new to the Phoenician world should approach John W. Betlyon’s chapter on coinage with caution. Betlyon fails to explain the comparatively late adoption of coinage by the Phoenician city-states (cf. p. 385),[12] and his discussion of Carthaginian coinage (pp. 397-98) is inexplicably sparse.[13] Moreover, his identifications of various deities (e.g. Melqart as another name for Baʿal-Ḥamōn or “an epithet for a marine manifestation” of Baʿal-Šamêm [p. 392]) should be regarded with skepticism.

In chapter 26, Philip Andrew Johnston and Brett Kaufman provide a balanced historical introduction to Phoenician metalwork that makes good use of the textual sources (e.g. tribute lists from the royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser III [pp. 401-2]) and a concise and clear explanation of complex metallurgical processes such as cupellation (p. 405). They also touch upon industries such as forestry and purple dyeing (pp. 412-14). The following chapters on seafaring and shipwreck archaeology, residential architecture, and agriculture are all informative treatments of their respective subjects.

Part III, “Regional Studies and Interactions,” contains thirteen chapters in total, eleven of which are devoted to a specific region of the Phoenician world from the Levant in the east to Portugal and Morocco in the west. Most of these instructive and insightful contributions offer a diachronic survey of the material and textual evidence for Phoenician contact with or settlement within the region as a whole, often selecting one or two of the best attested archaeological sites for a detailed case study. The main exception is the chapter by Alfredo Mederos Martín, who instead catalogues the numerous Phoenician enclaves along the North African coast by direction (in tandem with the ancient geographical sources).

Two regional studies in particular—“Cyprus” by Sabine Fourrier and “Malta and Gozo” by Nicholas C. Vella and Maxine Anastasi—merit additional praise. The former covers a great amount of historical ground with much clarity and at an admirable level of detail, while the latter employs a thought-provoking conception of space that “pays attention to a Mediterranean made up of challenging micro-regions, reworked and reconfigured by humans often brought together by seaborne activity,” rather than “depict[ing] deceptively long-distance sea routes in a center-periphery model of Phoenician colonization” (p. 565).

“The Gadir-Tyre Axis” by Manuel Álvarez Martí-Aguilar and “Phoenician Exploration” by Duane W. Roller move beyond the geographical and temporal boundaries of the eleven regional studies. The former is one of the volume’s highlights, condensing the author’s previous work on the subject and expanding upon the implications of sustained kinship ties between Tyre and Gadir oriented primarily around the figure of the god Melqart.

Part IV, “Receptions,” closes the Handbook with six informative contributions. “Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible” by Brian R. Doak and “Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman Literature” by Josephine Crawley Quinn discuss an array of external textual sources, unpacking their various biases and laying out the difficulties faced when using them. “Neo-Phoenician Identities in the Roman Empire” by Anthony Kaldellis is another of the volume’s highlights. The chapter concerns Phoenicians during a time when the name itself could refer to any person originating from one of the provinces called Phoenice (none of which mapped exactly onto the boundaries of “ancient” Phoenicia). Referencing a multitude of textual sources, Kaldellis “navigat[es] between two extreme positions, the first being that Phoenician identities were always artificial and imposed from the outside, and the second that ‘authentic’ Phoenician identities survived for long in the empire” (p. 686).

In the second half of Part IV, chapter 46 by Brien K. Garnand—framed around a case study of Carthage, Missouri, and the relationship that the small town cultivated with its Tunisian namesake starting in 1953—examines how scholarly and public perceptions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, positive and negative, have varied from place to place in more recent centuries. The final two chapters cover the reception of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in modern-day Lebanon and Tunisia, respectively. The latter’s comments on Tunisia’s “Carthage-Land” amusement parks are especially intriguing. Part IV is followed by an index of key terms and topics.

From an editorial point of view, the Handbook suffers from a substantial number of simple mistakes (typographic frequently and factual occasionally) as well as the absence of both a standardized system of abbreviations for classical sources and a standardized format for transliterated Phoenician.[14] I also wish that the volume had covered what we may call “Phoenicia before the Phoenicians” (the history of the city-states in the Bronze Age that would become Phoenician in the Iron Age) as thoroughly as it does “Phoenicia after the Phoenicians” (Phoenicia and the Punic world after the fall of Tyre in 332 BCE and Carthage in 146 BCE, respectively, as well as ancient and modern receptions), ideally with a chapter devoted to the Bronze Age. Chapters on Phoenician onomastics and political institutions would have been beneficial as well. 

Nonetheless, the Handbook as a whole is an immense contribution to Phoenician Studies that will easily facilitate seminars at the intermediate-to-advanced undergraduate and graduate levels that would have been extremely difficult to organize at English-speaking universities beforehand. I have no doubt that it will quickly become an indispensable tool for both experienced researchers and younger scholars just beginning to learn about the field.

Authors and titles

Frontmatter
Introduction
Ch. 1, “Introduction,” Brian R. Doak and Carolina López-Ruiz
Ch. 2, “Research Tools,” Philip C. Schmitz
Ch. 3, “Birth and Prospects of a Discipline,” Nicholas C. Vella
Part I: Histories
The East
Ch. 4, “Canaanite Roots, Proto-Phoenicia, and the Early Phoenician Period: ca. 1300-1000 BCE,” Ann E. Killebrew
Ch. 5, “Phoenicia in the Later Iron Age: Tenth Century BCE to the Assyrian and Babylonian Periods,” Guy Bunnens
Ch. 6, “Tyre and Its Colonial Expansion,” María Eugenia Aubet Semmler
Ch. 7, “Phoenicia Under the Achaemenid Empire,” Vadim Jigoulov
Ch. 8, “The Hellenistic Period and Hellenization in Phoenicia,” Corinne Bonnet
Ch. 9, “Phoenicia in the Roman Empire,” Julien Aliquot
Ch. 10, “The Archaeology of Phoenician Cities,” Hélène Sader
The West
Ch. 11, “Early Carthage: From Its Foundation to the Battle of Himera (ca. 814-480 BCE),” Hédi Dridi
Ch. 12, “Classical-Hellenistic Carthage Before the Punic Wars (479-265 BCE),” Dexter Hoyos
Ch. 13, “The Punic Wars (264-146 BCE),” Christopher de Lisle
Ch. 14, “Carthage After the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy,” Matthew Hobson
Part II: Areas of Culture
Language and Literature
Ch. 15, “The Language,” Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo
Ch. 16, “Inscriptions,” Madadh Richey
Ch. 17, “The Alphabet and Its Legacy,” Madadh Richey
Ch. 18, “Phoenician Literature,” Carolina López-Ruiz
Religion
Ch. 19, “Religion,” Paolo Xella
Ch. 20, “Funerary Ritual,” Mireia López-Bertran
Ch. 21, “The Tophet and Infant Sacrifice,” Matthew M. McCarty
Material Culture
Ch. 22, “Pottery and Trade,” Francisco J. Núñez
Ch. 23, “Art and Iconography,” Eric Gubel
Ch. 24, “Levantine Art in the ‘Orientalizing’ Period,” Marian H. Feldman
Ch. 25, “Coins,” John W. Betlyon
Ch. 26, “Metallurgy and Other Technologies,” Philip Andrew Johnston and Brett Kaufman
Ch. 27, “Seafaring and Shipwreck Archaeology,” Jeffrey P. Emanuel
Ch. 28, “Residential Architecture,” Roald Docter
Ch. 29, “Agriculture,” Carlos Gómez Bellard
Part III: Regional Studies and Interactions
Ch. 30, “The Levant,” Gunnar Lehmann
Ch. 31, “Cyprus,” Sabine Fourrier
Ch. 32, “The Aegean,” Nikos Stampolidis
Ch. 33, “The Italian Peninsula,” Jeremy Mark Hayne
Ch. 34, “Sardinia,” Andrea Roppa
Ch. 35, “Sicily,” Salvatore de Vincenzo
Ch. 36, “Malta and Gozo,” Nicholas C. Vella and Maxine Anastasi
Ch. 37, “Ibiza,” Benjamí Costa
Ch. 38, “The Iberian Peninsula,” José Luis López Castro
Ch. 39, “Phoenicians in Portugal,” Ana Margarida Arruda
Ch. 40, “The Gadir-Tyre Axis,” Manuel Álvarez Martí-Aguilar
Ch. 41, “North Africa: From the Atlantic to Algeria,” Alfredo Mederos Martín
Ch. 42, “Phoenician Exploration,” Duane W. Roller
Part IV: Receptions
Ch. 43, “Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible,” Brian R. Doak
Ch. 44, “Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman Literature,” Josephine Crawley Quinn
Ch. 45, “Neo-Phoenician Identities in the Roman Empire,” Anthony Kaldellis
Ch. 46, “Phoenicians and Carthaginians in the Western Imagination,” Brien K. Garnand
Ch. 47, “Phoenician Identity in Modern Lebanon,” Claude Doumet-Serhal
Ch. 48, “Punic Heritage in Tunisia,” Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels and Peter van Dommelen
Index

Notes