Phoenician Religion Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The present paper is a study on the religious continuities and changes in North Africa from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, therefore from the pre-Roman (“Phoenician-Punic”) to Roman era. Starting from the archaeological and... more

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- Phoenicians, Roman Religion, Phoenician, Carthage (Archaeology)
- by Bruno D'Andrea
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- History of Religion, North Africa Studies, Phoenicians, Roman Religion

La consideración por parte de Posidonio como “mentira” o “invención” fenicia (ψεῦσμα Φοινικικόν) de ciertos elementos del relato sobre la fundación de Gadir recogido por Estrabón (3.5.5.) genera dudas sobre si el oráculo de Melqart pertenece a la tradición fenicia original o es un préstamo griego posterior. En la presente contribución se revisa el papel del oráculo de Melqart en las tradiciones sobre los orígenes de Tiro y Gadir, constatando su antigüedad y arraigo en ambas comunidades, que debían compartir una narrativa fundacional muy similar. Una nueva lectura del pasaje de Justino (44.5), habitualmente asociado a la fundación de Gadir, pero que interpretamos como el reflejo de la creación de una subcolonia gaditana con la participación, a través de su oráculo, del Melqart de Tiro, lleva a confirmar la importancia de este elemento en las leyendas sobre los orígenes de las comunidades que asumían un origen tirio. Ese componente oracular y fundacional es el que podría explicar, por otra parte, la caracterización como "archegetes" del Melqart de Tiro.

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.

- by Brian R. Doak
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- Iconography, Phoenicians, Aniconism, Ancient Near Eastern Art

A well-known statue of enthroned goddess from Soluntum might be seen as an example of the persistence of ancient oriental iconography in Hellenistic Sicily. Although in 1831 the finding spot of the statue was clearly indicated by its discoverer, in the 20th century this datum was forgotten. Scholars suggested that the statue could come from a different place, where the archaic town of Soluntum originally rose. Nowadays the discovery of the statue in a shrine of Hellenistic Soluntum is generally accepted. For reconciling the dating with the finding spot, scholars argue that the simulacrum had been moved to the new Hellenistic city after the destruction of archaic Soluntum.
This paper a) suggests a new hypothesis about the statue; b) underlines some new aspects of the finding spot; c) proposes a new dating of the enthroned goddess from Soluntum, by introducing it in the Punic context of the Hellenistic age.

- by Nicola Chiarenza
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- Religion, Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, Phoenicians

Following destruction and economic collapse of the Bronze Age, Crete reemerged as an international center of trade in the Iron Age as it reestablished wider-based continuous exchange patterns and took advantage of the Phoenician expansion of commerce into the Mediterranean. The 9th century B.C. Tripillar Shrine in Temple B at Kommos and its associated Near Eastern Egyptian faience figurines, along with Phoenician storage jar fragments found at the site demonstrated a strong association with the industrial quarter at Sarepta, which included the Shrine of Tanit-Ashtart and a large pottery workshop.

- by Nicola Chiarenza
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- Phoenicians, Mediterranean Studies, Ancient Mediterranean Religions, Phoenician
- by Iva Chirpanlieva and +1
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- Phoenicians, Greek Pottery, Phoenician Punic Archaeology, Pottery consumption
- by Bilal Annan
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- Near Eastern Archaeology, Phoenicians, Hellenistic History, Levantine Archaeology

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird der phönizisch-punische kultische Ausdruck, mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny, gemeinhin als Andeutung eines hohen priesterlichen Amtes verstanden, behandelt. Im Besonderen erhält das dritte Wort mtrḥ eine neue Deutung, wobei dann der gesamte Ausdruck als der priesterliche Agent verantwortlich sowohl für das rituelle Beweinen wie auch die vorgestellte Vergöttlichung eines Liebhabers der Aschtarte verstanden wird, also als ein Hinweis der „Adonis“-Legende in phönizisch-punischer Überlieferung.

- by Robert Martin Kerr
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- Religion, Comparative Religion, Semitic languages, History of Religion

During the XXV season of excavations carried out by Rome «La Sapienza» University Expedition to Motya, a terracotta mould was found in the Sacred Area of the Kothon. The mould shows a quarter of a silenus bringing the handle of a vase. The iconographic analysis and the stylistic parallels allow to date the mould and to set it in the cultural context of Motya. The iconological analysis suggests the possible relations between the subject of the mould and the deities worshipped in the Sacred Area of the Kothon.

- by Nicola Chiarenza
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- Iconography, Phoenicians, Mediterranean Studies, Ancient Mediterranean Religions

Starting from the archeological and epigraphic evidences collected by the Author in a monograph recently
published (The Tophets of North Africa from the Archaic Period to the Roman Age. Archaeological studies,
Pisa-Rome 2014), this paper proposes a synthesis of data relating to the Phoenician and Punic sanctuaries
called Tophet and some reflections on the development of the ritual practices of these sanctuaries in the period
following the conquest of North Africa by Rome.

- by May Haider
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- Phoenician, Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean, Symposium, Attic pottery

During the Iron Age, the newly formed ethnicities of the southern Levant developed religions that centered around a unique deity, or deities, as part of the formation of their national identities. While all of these ‘new’ religions have Bronze Age Canaanite origins, it seems that the official stance of their worshippers was to distance themselves from their shared Canaanite heritage. On the Phoenician coast, a similar process occurred as each individual city-state rallied around a deity or deities with unique civic aspects such as Melqart at Tyre. However, unlike the rest of the southern Levant, Phoenician religion and cult is marked by almost rigid continuity of certain Bronze Age traditions. One of the best examples for such continuity is manifested in temple architecture. Phoenician temples shared many characteristics that allow us to define these cultic structures as adhering to a certain type. This temple type appeared in the southern Levant as early as the Early Bronze Age, and can be found throughout the region during the second millennium BCE. However, during the Iron Age, the distribution of these temples is confined almost exclusively to the coast and its immediate hinterland. And while Phoenician temples underwent changes during the late Persian period, some of their unique architectural features endured well into the Roman period suggesting to the persistence of at least some cultic traditions and to the endurance of the Phoenico-Canaanite religion.

During the Late Iron age, the Phoenician coast was under the hegemony of the Achaemenid Empire and the local material culture seems mostly dominated by esthetical and iconographical “borrowings” from several other near eastern neighbors and civilizations in the Mediterranean. Egyptian and Greek influences on the Phoenician artistic remains is flagrant yet also so peculiar. The local civilizations of the Levant seem quite selective in what they borrow and how they borrow it. The recent archaeological data and studies allow us to say that while looking at the Phoenician civilizations of the Late Iron Age we seem to be facing a sophisticated uprising society in the shadow of a prosperous Mediterranean world, conscious of its own culture but also of the cultures of its neighboring societies.