Introduction: Phoenician Religion and Cult across the Mediterranean (original) (raw)
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"Phoenician versus Phoenicianism: Scholarly Categories and Collective Identities."
Transformations and Crisis in the Mediterranean, Volume III, “Identity” and Interculturality in the Levant and Phoenician West During the 5th-2nd Centuries BCE, edited by G. Garbati and T. Pedrazzi, 2021
Even as research on ancient Mediterranean identities proliferates, agreement about the definition of “Phoenician” remains elusive – with the undesirable result that scholars are continuing to speak past one another. There are many practical difficulties of studying the subject, such as the limited (if improving) publication of key archaeological sites and very limited record of emic written sources. But there are pressing methodological challenges, as well. We must continue to address the extent to which it is reasonable to associate “Phoenician” with an ethnic group or civilization and how to distinguish between “Phoenician” as a scholarly category and an ancient collective identity. As the TCM project so ably demonstrates, the more precise our approach to how identity worked in the ancient Mediterranean, the better our grasp of how people reacted to change. In this paper, I consider how the field is continuing to disentangle the study of places, objects, and people we call “Phoenician” from the study of Phoenician collective identity – of Phoenicianism. I then offer a short case study of a sub-type of Persian period anthropoid sarcophagi. The purpose of the case study is to illustrate the value in taking alternative, scalar approaches to identity in the archaeological record. My main goals are, first, to show why we must care about the differences between “Phoenician” as a scholarly category and “Phoenicianism” as a modern way to describe an ancient feeling of collective identity; and, second, to suggest that we should not attempt to reconcile these methodologically different and theoretically disconnected ideas about belonging.
Did the Phoenicians avoid representing their deities in anthropomorphic form for ideological or religious reasons? The question of whether Phoenicians employed aniconic (as opposed to iconic) representational techniques has significance not only for the many under-explored aspects of Phoenician religion generally, but also for the question of whether aniconism can be considered a broader trend among the Semitic populations of the ancient Near East. Indeed, past research on aniconic phenomena is often motivated by a desire to understand the larger context of the Hebrew Bible’s proscription of divine images. Does this most famous of image-prohibitions represent a kind of religious or intellectual parthenogenesis, or is it one vigorous form of a broader West Semitic trend toward aniconic cultic expressions? In this book, which focuses on Iron Age and Achaemenid period materials from mainland Phoenicia and the Mediterranean colonies, I argue that that the Phoenicians did participate in an iconographic program that moved toward divine symbols, abstract forms, and even purely aniconic expressions. However, I argue that previous treatments of Phoenician iconography have inappropriately downplayed many examples of native Phoenician anthropomorphic depiction, and a careful examination of the material record shows hitherto unappreciated nuances of Phoenician divine imagery. As pioneering colonizers and traders, the Phoenicians exerted influence in a wide range of contexts, beginning in Egypt and the Near East and extending to Greece, Italy, and the far Western Mediterranean worlds of Spain and Northwest Africa. This monograph is the first of its kind to explore the important question of Phoenician aniconism as a significant topic in its own right, and elevates the complexity of Phoenician divine representation to its proper place alongside other iconographic movements in the ancient world.
Bronze Male Deities: Elements for the identification of a Phoenician Group in Mediterranean
Fenícios e Púnicos, por terra e mar. Actas do VI Congresso Internacional de Estudos Fenícios e Púnicos, vol. 2 (A.M. Arruda ed.). Lisboa, 2013
The emergence of an increasing number of bronze male figurines of Egyptian posture and dress in the South of the Iberian Peninsula has favoured the study of this group and the definition of some of its fundamental characteristics. Moreover, it has enabled us to confirm its extension as a homogenous production series throughout the Phoenician Mediterranean and to ascribe to this group a number of elements which had been related to separate crafts traditions. In the areas concerned, local imitations were produced which were quite differentiable from the truly Phoenician products. The definition of this group, as well as establishing stronger criteria for the assessment of some of the known figurines and the incorporation of new ones, enables us to approach particular aspects of Phoenician craftsmanship, iconography and religion.
Changing Perspectives on the Phoenician Presence in the Mediterranean: Past, Present, and Future
Images, Perceptions and Productions in and of Antiquit, 2023
This paper aims to trace the changing approaches to the Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean, since early work based on Biblical and Classical sources, through “orientalist” representations deeply embedded in European colonial ideologies, and into the institutionalization of Phoenician and Punic Studies in the second half of the 20th century. The development of this field of study is then briefly analysed, and some present challenges to scholarship on the Phoenician Mediterranean are outlined and discussed.