The Ancients - The Phoenician World

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Imagine you are a traveller sailing to the major cities around the Mediterranean in 750 BC. You would notice a remarkable similarity in the dress, alphabet, consumer goods, and gods from Gibraltar to Tyre. This was not the Greek world—it was the Phoenician. Based in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and other cities along the coast of present-day Lebanon, the Phoenicians spread out across the Mediterranean building posts, towns, and ports. To shine a light on the Phoenician World, with a particular focus on the Phoenician presence in southern Spain, Tristan was joined by Dr Carolina Lopez-Ruiz from the Ohio State University, author of 'Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean.'Phoenicians and the Making of the MediterraneanOrder Tristan’s book today!If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit.To download, go to Android or Apple store.If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating The Ancients content then subscribe to our Ancients newsletter!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, last week we finally got around to talking about the Assyrians, and this week we're talking about the Phoenicians. Finally, these extraordinary people who lived in the region of present-day Lebanon in the eastern Mediterranean, but in the early first millennium BC, they spread out across the Mediterranean and arguably helped create the first global Mediterranean in antiquity.

Now to talk about the Phoenician world, I was delighted to get on the podcast Dr. Carolina Lopez Ruiz, a professor of classics at The Ohio State University. Carolina, she's just written a book all about the Phoenicians and their making of the Mediterranean. It was great to get her on the podcast. We talk about Phoenician colonisation, how we should define Phoenician colonisation in antiquity. We're going to be mentioning famous cities of antiquity such as Tyre, Carthage and Gadir, modern day Cadiz. Cadiz being one of the oldest cities in Europe, a Phoenician settlement. It blows your mind really when you think about that. And then we're going to be focusing in on the Phoenician

presence in southern Spain, in the ancient region of Tartessos. Why was this area of the Mediterranean, the other end of the Great Sea to where the Phoenicians originally came from why was this area so important to the Phoenicians what is the archaeology revealing about it what do we know about Phoenician interactions with Iron Age local populations and how did they change over the many centuries that the Phoenicians were present in southern Spain so without further, to talk all about the Phoenician world, here's Carolina. Carolina, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you, Tristan. It's my pleasure. Now, it's been long enough on the ancients. We're finally getting around to the Phoenicians, the awesome Phoenicians, and their role in the ancient Mediterranean. I mean, Carolina, can we say it's the Phoenicians or these Levantine people who were the architects created the first global Mediterranean?

Well, I would say yes, to be very clear. I think obviously there were many actors in that scenario, but it's becoming more clear that they were definitely meeting those pan-Mediterranean networks very early in the Iron Age. And that they were kind of followed closely by the Greeks. net on which other people, you know, jumped into and interacted with, that they were really crucial actors in connecting existing local and regional networks and creating this really broad road map, let's say, from east to the Atlantic, right, from the Levant to the Atlantic. So I would say that they shaped the Mediterranean in the early Iron Age in a crucial way. Yeah. And if we really delve into the background of this topic, first of all, Carolina, I mean, the origins of the Phoenicians, as it were, in what area of the Mediterranean are we talking as from where the Phoenicians came from?

Who we call Phoenicians and the ancients called Phoenicians were basically people from the coast of modern Lebanon, but really spilling out of those modern frontiers, what today would be northern Israel and the coastal north Syria. So, but that kind of range of the Lebanon mountains and the sea coast. So they are basically the continuation of the Canaanite cultures of the Bronze Age that survived into the Iron Age with a great deal of continuity actually culturally, linguistically, even in terms of institutions and so on. And these coastal cities, Tyre, Byblos, Sidon, right, they are the ones who start this expansion,

let's say, cultural, commercial expansion and colonial eventually colonial eventually yeah so we're talking about that area of the levant in particular and i also realized this is perhaps a trickier question than it might originally seem this who were the phoenicians because carolina please elaborate on this and my ignorance on this but it's not as if it's a a unified state of phoenicia is there no of course not and that's very often brought up, right? Like, well, they never were a unified people and so on. But we're talking about the early first millennium. We're talking about city-states of the same sort that you had in the Levant at that time. Think of the Aramean kingdoms, the kingdoms in Israel, right?

When they were independent kingdoms. It's a very typical type of political organization in the ancient world before the great empires of you know greece rome and so on and we had the same kind of framework in greece itself right city-states independent city-states which were never a unified state or nation a lonely nation right until they were kind of forcefully unified under alexander the great and then under the Romans. So we're really not talking about anything very different than when we talk about Greeks and Greek city-states. They were independent states, but unified culturally in terms of language, religion, and customs,

as Herodotus said of the Greeks. I believe that that can be broadly applied to the Phoenicians, and that explains why we see so much homogeneity really across their networks and why others had a pretty easy time recognizing them and calling them Phoenicians. So, yes, that is what you said is exactly right. Yet we can talk about at least a culture. Yeah. And you mentioned Herodotus there and people talking about the phoenicians so it begs the question what sorts of sources do we have when studying the phoenicians that's a problem

because well compared to other mediterranean peoples other iron age peoples who are not greeks or romans we do have a lot of sources but compared to greeks and romans we have very few sources so when we talk about phoen basically, in terms of elmic sources in their own language, we are talking about inscriptions. Inscriptions, and there are, I think, about 10,000 inscriptions. Most of them are little, tiny inscriptions and funerary, like very formulaic inscriptions from, you know, cemeteries and votive dedications. We have some royal, longer inscriptions, some inventories, some temple tariffs, so to speak,

and some other interesting stuff. But mostly a lot of short documents, about 10,000, but still they are not literature, right? They are inscriptions, which has a limitation as to the type of language and content that you convey in them. And then in later times, we have some authors that are writing in Greek about Phoenician matters, you know, from a Phoenician perspective, like Philo, Byblos or others, but some fragments of ancient historians. But mostly we have lost their literature for historical reasons, mainly the destruction of Carthage and then the

kind of oblivion of the archives entire and wherever else there were archives. So they don't have a manuscript tradition as the Greeks and Romans managed to preserve and put together. Or the Hebrews, right? You have the Hebrew Bible. So the Phoenicians don't have that. They're not alone. Most ancient Mediterranean peoples don't have that. The exception are really the classical and biblical traditions. So we are very limited in terms of discursive sources from themselves, which puts a big hamper on how much we can say about their own identity and perception of themselves. their own identity and, you know, perception of themselves. That's one thing in terms of writing stuff. Then we have tons of archaeology, which is great, because also that is a source that keeps growing. And so there's a very interesting dynamic there, where, you know, you can keep going back to sources, which are mostly external, Greek and Romans talking about Phoenicians, some Near Eastern sources, Assyrian, you know, mentions of the Phoenician cities, biblical, some Egyptian, right?

So you have a lot of external sources. And then you have archaeology. So a lot of recent and ongoing discoveries, epigraphy, that also has the potential to grow because that is found archaeologically, right, inscriptions. So there is a lot of potential to slowly reconstruct their culture using both internal emic sources and external ones and archaeological ones, if that gives you a very brief... Well, I mean, absolutely. I mean, it's good brief to start with, and I'm sure we'll return, especially to the archaeology, when we focus in on certain places of the Mediterranean where we have very good evidence for the Phoenicians,

no doubt southern Spain in due course. But very quickly, first of all, if we talked about the origins of this expansion, this going forwards from the eastern Mediterranean, I mean, do we know why at the turn, at the start of the first millennium BC, we start seeing all this Phoenician expansion westwards? It's hard to tell for sure, but the general idea is that the main driving force was the search for metals, right? Metal resources, exploitation of metals, trading metals. That's a good guess,

because the places where they seem to be drawn to at first, in Iberia, even the Atlantic coast of Iberia, and then Sardinia and Cyprus, they are very rich in metals and particular areas that we can talk about that later about Spain, that give access to very spectacular and rich metal resources. So that's one safe guess as a main driver. Now, why at that point?

Why or who is doing it exactly? Probably tires from literary sources and archaeological data. You can gather that tire was behind the initiative. But why at that point? It's hard to know. It seems that they do it in a pretty organized way because to really settle that far in so many points that are interconnected, you are really supporting a long trade network that you can secure, right? With routes that you can keep using for,

in fact, for centuries. So it seems to be pretty well organized. And that is a different view that we've been arriving at. Then for decades, there was a view that it was an impulse kind of forced by the expansion of the Assyrians in the 8th century, later in the 8th century, but a lot of data has come out from the field proving that the enterprise started earlier in the 9th century, probably in the mid to late 9th century. Well, for sure in the late 9th century, probably a little bit earlier. So that shifts the weight because really the Phoenician cities were not under oppression from Assyria at that point. So this changes the picture. It means they are doing it as an enterprise to become wealthier, to become the gateway for the Levant of all these resources in the Mediterranean, right? And to kind of dominate those markets. So that's kind of where

we are at in a nutshell. So if they have these motives, and let's say these settlers are going from these places you mentioned, like Sidon, Byblos, Arados, Tyre, when they are making these settlements elsewhere in the Mediterranean, this idea of colonization comes up. But colonization today compared to, let's say, colonization in antiquity, how should we define colonization by the Phoenicians? fine colonization by the Phoenicians? Oof, that's such a hard topic to, yes, because it's very easy and kind of inevitable to impose our ideas of kind of Western European colonization onto ancient colonization. So obviously, a lot of historians and archaeologists have been nuancing that and, you know, and making sure we don't do that. But in general, I mean, a big difference is that whether Tire is

behind it, which it seems to be in a more or less organized way and supporting these networks, it is not the sort of colonization where you would think there is like some kind of program of subdue a vast amount of territory and impose an administration, right, that is, you know, organized in that way, sort of as in modern or early modern empire. So it's not a sort of imperialistic colonization, but more closer to the model of trading networks and perhaps more like what the Portuguese did in Southeast Asia or something like that. I mean, it's hard to find very good models for that.

Greek colonization is fairly close. Like there were mother cities, they maintained relations and kind of supported their colonies, right? And they had political alliances, religious affinities, or ethnic, kind of ethnic affinities as well. But they were fairly independent

and fairly limited to a city and an area around it, the Hora, right? An agricultural area. And therefore, their survival also depended on their relations with native groups, which is crucial. And now we are much more emphasizing that aspect of these settlements. Even if we call them colonies for the sake of convenience, they survived only in, you

know, so long as they could maintain i guess productive relations with their surrounding environment and groups or sometimes probably conflicted ones we don't know a lot about it but they depended on that environment it wasn't a full-blown you know colonization in that way yeah and well then let's do some myth busting of this this colonization then carolina these things that seem to come up especially when reading your book Yeah. And well, then let's do some myth busting of this, this colonization, then Carolina, these things that seem to come up, especially when reading your book. Now, first of all, fact or fiction, and I think you've kind of already mentioned this already, but I do want to mention it. These Phoenician settlements overseas, trading posts, or so much more?

Now, trading posts are much more on the other hand, because the ideas we have of definitions, there's been so much emphasis on, well, there were this coastal trading post, very limited in their activity, except for, let's say, Carthage, who develops larger grip on the area and so on. category as trading posts than what we use for Greek settlements, whom we call colonies, and where there's more emphasis on the political organization and the agricultural exploitation of the land and so on. So there is a myth, let's say, going with your prompt, of the Phoenicians being purely interested in coastal activities, therefore not really engaged much with the hinterland, let's say, and with agriculture and all that. And that is really a myth because there is not a lot of difference between Greek and Phoenician coastal colonies. And there is quite a lot of proof of Phoenician exploitation of the land and advancement in agriculture. They were actually famous for

as agricultural innovators, right? Like the agricultural treaties that the Romans used was by a Phoenician, Mago, right? It was translated into Latin and Cato used it, quotes it. Maybe he translated it, I'm not sure. So it's very interesting that we've developed this dichotomy of Greek and Roman settlement is more agricultural and Phoenician more commercial, because that is a cliche that has all sorts of connotations of, you know, the people attached to the land. You know, they are more invested in their citizenry and there is some perception of higher social order or something or moral quality attached to that than the commercial entrepreneurs they are greedy they are just you know they're merchants you know what i mean so there is always more to to this myths than just what you may think yeah i mean do you think there was this desire to try and well to make phoenician settlement phoenician colonization look different to Greek colonization,

Greek settlements across the Mediterranean, therefore, by these ancient writers. Why, as you say, do these myths come about? Yeah, I don't know to what degree we can see this in the Greek and Roman sources, or it's more of a modern, you know, idea of the non-classical culture, the Semitic culture, that it has to be as different as you can make it to the classical ones. Now, when we're talking about Roman propaganda, let's say, and Roman sources about definitions, yes, you can totally see that emphasis. I mean, there is a cliche of, you know, of definition as greedy and more corrupt and more, you know, seafaring people who are more interested in trade and more corrupt and so on, versus the Roman characteristic of attachment to the land and so on. a maritime power as soon as they could. Apparently they kind of did industrial espionage

on the Carthaginians by copying boat-making techniques from a shipwreck, or that goes the idea or the legend, if it was a legend or if it was real. And then they became a maritime power. They kicked the Carthaginians' butts in the First Punic War already by naval battles, and there you go. So yeah, there is a lot of it that is, some of it at least goes back to antiquity,

as especially said in the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians in particular, as alter egos of the Romans. While if you dig a bit deeper in Greek sources, especially, there is a bit of everything. I mean, they're not particularly disparaged as anything very different from greeks in those terms i mean okay fair enough well you mentioned the first punic war greeks and

romans and all that area of the mediterranean just before really delving into the western mediterranean proper and some particular areas just as in more of an overview you said you mentioned iberia already and Carthage, but what sorts of areas were the Phoenicians making settlements in this period? They were all over the place. Actually, some of the earliest settlements are in the far west before Carthage, which is on today's Tunisia, right? Before that, the earliest evidence of Phoenician settlement or intense activity, at least, comes from Huelva in southern Spain, which is around the Straits of Gibraltar, right?

In the mouth of these rivers that are connected to this very rich mining area of Rio Tinto. So that is where the earliest evidence for Phoenician activity has appeared in the last couple of decades. But this is kind of taking, you know, scholarship takes very long to get these things out there. And then in Sardinia, also where there is a lot of great resources. So there is like a first phase in the late 9th century that is really reaching all the way out there. And then they settle in Gadir also, Cadiz, today's Cadiz, also at the end of the

9th century. That seems to correspond to Carthage or maybe a little bit later Carthage at the turn of the 9th century to the 8th. At the same time, on the coast of Morocco, on the Atlantic, there is Lyxos and Mogador. So there are colonies there that go back pretty early. But soon enough during the 8th century, so you already have these extremes, right? You have Githion in Cyprus, 9th century, a place in Crete like Kamos, which already has also indication of Phoenician presence. So then you have this east-west very broad line, and then it starts filling up, right? During the 8th century, you have colonies or settlements, bigger or smaller, all throughout the coast of southern Iberia, all throughout the coast of northern Africa up to Tunisia, all around the coast of Sardinia on the west coast, which is the one with better harboring. And the Balearic Islands a bit later, 7th century, and then on Sicily as well.

Balearic Islands a bit later, 7th century, and then on Sicily as well. Sicily, pretty early on, on the western and northern part of the island, Motia, Lilibeum, Panormus, Palermo, right? Those go back to also this 8th century, maybe Motia a bit earlier, this stage. So there are several stages from very early contact to more settlements, but they're really kind of distributed all over the place, except where the Greeks settle, which follow fairly closely. And it's almost like they distributed, right, these areas, the other part of Sicily, then the Greeks are on Libya, northern Libya, and of course, Asia Minor, the Black Sea. So so different areas completely does that give you a

more or less a absolutely yeah it absolutely does it's really kind of like they're piecing out the Mediterranean together weirdly it's quite it's really interesting I mean in regards to all of that Carolina then so if you were traveling from let's say Tyre and then you go to Motia in Sicily or Carthage in North Africa and then then you go to Gadir, Cadiz in Spain, would you be able to see these similarities, maybe economic institutional links between these Phoenician settlements? I think so, yeah. Yeah, where there is enough evidence,

you have very similar types of barriers, types of construction, cults, right, cultic places that are, you know, where there is worship of the same gods, Baal, Astarte, and so on, with local variants, Baal-Hamon in Carthage, Melkart in Gadir, who is the main god of Tyre, but they're all in the same kind of spectrum of Phoenician religion. So you would see similar customs, you would see, you know, similar traits and specialized types of work that they did. you know, similar traits and specialised types of work that they did. And of course, they would speak the same language pretty much for centuries,

which is well attested in inscriptions in all these places. So, yeah, I think like Greeks going around the areas where there is Greek settlement, they have their networks and they would recognise each other and harbour each other and so on. But that's amazing, Caroline. So you could find a Temple of Melkart in Tyre, on the eastern edges of the Mediterranean, and then find another Temple of Melkart on the far western edge of the Mediterranean at Cadiz, at Cadiz. That's just astonishing to think.

Yeah, and that is one of the, you know, big signs of this axis, right, from Tyre to Gadir that scholars have, you know, talked about. There is an affinity that is linking the institutions and the cities through religious affinity, right, and the religious institution, such as the cult Melkart, who is a god also attached to the city. I mean, his name probably means the king of the city. So it's Baal as the king, as a city king and founder. means the king of the city. So it's Baal as the king, as a city king and founder. So we have one of the few foundation stories.

It's about the foundation of Gadir, transmitted by Strabo, and he exactly mentions this, how the Phoenicians, according to tradition, followed an oracle of Melkart, well, of the god, right, being Melkart. They had three attempts, failed attempts, because the sacrifices were negative until they found the right place, and they put the city on one side of the island

and the temple on the other side of the island. And that is just very indicative of this connection. And in a very similar scheme as what the Greeks did, there was a divine consultation and a divine sanctioning of the whole enterprise, right? I mean, absolutely. And I'm guessing are there similarities, therefore, between that foundation story and their one of Carthage too? Yeah, well, they are a bit different.

Strabo's is less mythologized. Whatever his sources, he seems to be, you know, transmitting a more aseptic account. There is the oracle, but I mean, people did consult oracles and did these things. So where is the foundation story of Carthage with the figure of Elisa and then, you know, then used by Virgil?

I mean, it appears in several sources and it seems to probably go back to some scheme that probably goes back to Phoenician culture, but it's harder to disentangle. And there is a link to the cult of whether Melkart or Baal more generally because it's mentioned that when Elisha set out from Tyre they collected a group of people from Cyprus including a priest of Baal well they call it Zeus or you know Jupiter Job whatever the region so there is a cultic component as well,

but it's not attached to, let's say, an oracle and a foundation of a temple, if that makes sense. Okay, I mean, absolutely fair enough. Just before we really delve into Spain and Gadir and Tartessos, it does seem those names from reading your book and all of that of Tyre, Carthage and Gadir, of all the settlements, these three seem to be the big three in Phoenician studies, as it were. Yes, and according to all the traditions that we have, they are connected to

Tyre. And that is why, again, one could say, well, where is the hard proof? We don't have Tyrian documents saying we sent a colony. But when different types of sources from different periods talk about Tyre as the founder of these cities, and then you actually find in the earliest stages, you find pottery that matches the types of pottery that experts match to Tyrian pottery types at those periods exactly. And, you know, there's all these sorts of indications that they were linked to Tyre. And in fact, in later times, in more historical times, we have more sources from classical authors, of course,

but, you know, they are historical sources talking about their relations they had, how the Carthaginians sent tribute to Tyre, some kind of, even if it was a symbolic thing, they maintained a relationship for centuries. For centuries, indeed, you said that symbolic thing, because by then, surely, Tyre has, it's past its prime, prime it's met a decline it's met figures like the terrible alexander the greys but people are still going there several centuries later yes yes yeah we cannot underestimate

the importance of that symbolic historical link right what it meant for them that was the founding city yeah absolutely absolutely for them. That was the founding city. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Have you heard? History is going to Antarctica and we're taking you with us. I'm going to be part of an incredible expedition to try and locate the missing Endurance shipwreck, Ernest Shackleton's vessel that was crushed by the ice and sent to the depths during his attempt to cross the vast continent from side to side. Whether you're a Shackleton expert or this story is completely new to you, we've got something special for you.

It starts on the 7th of February, when we'll be dropping a captivating mini-series that tells the tale of just how Shackleton and his crew managed to survive months stranded in the coldest place on Earth, with no shelter, no ship and no contact with the outside world. How they made an escape that defies the very limits of human endurance, through the planet's roughest oceans in a wooden rowing boat, walking across mountains and glaciers, all with not enough food or water.

So, make sure you subscribe to Dan Snow's History Hit wherever you listen to your podcast to get the full story. Endurance 22, coming February 7th. One further question on that, because of course, you know, Carthage, Gidea, they are settlements, you know, they've come from Tyre. But in time, don't they create their own settlements as well? I mean, do we still see through the settlements that places like Carthage and Gidea make, sorry, elements of the Levant, Levantine elements in their own construction? Yes, there is quite a lot of consistency across Phoenician settlements, you know, in again, in kind of material terms, in linguistic terms. But for instance, there is a source that talks about the foundation or re-foundation of a city near the Straits of Gibraltar called Cartella, and that the people from Gadir carried the relics of the god from Tyre to this place. A colleague of mine, Manuel Alvarez, has written about this.

And this seems to refer to a later phase of the foundation of Gadir, where Gadir was a founding entity of herself, but still the symbolic element of religious relics connected to Tyre as well. That was involved in a foundation, a re-foundation of a minor settlement so that is fascinating and Carthage also well it started expanding exponentially at a certain point and surely reproducing you know and producing more settlements in Iberia and in North Africa. And I'm presuming therefore from that from those places do we also therefore start to see an explosion an eruption maybe that's too strong a word, but of Phoenician art, shall we say, in all these corners of the ancient Mediterranean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you go to Spanish museums or museums in the Balearic Islands, when you get to the Punic period, let's say 6th century, 5th century, even later, there is so much. And even though as time goes on, you know, you can obviously see variations in the artifacts, but there is a lot of continuity in the symbology. You have, let's say, terracotta figurines, you know, and amulets and decorated ostrich eggs and so on in all these areas of Phoenician and Phoenician slash Punic settlement that go on until Roman times in some places,

until the Romans come in and, you know, and things start changing more. Yeah. Well, let's therefore, we've been talking quite broadly. I appreciate we're talking about hundreds of years of history. So let's delve in, therefore, to a particular region as a case study and delve into the detail of various aspects of it. Southern Spain, Tartessos. Carolina, what is Tartessessos first of all good question

if somebody attended the recent congress on tartessos that happened in spain in november you think how is it possible that we still cannot really agree on why is tartessos and that is because if we have relatively scarce sources for definitions, right, or at least from themselves, we have way fewer for Tartessos. So basically what we call Tartessos is what the Greeks called Tartessos, again, going with their nomenclature, which is a region in southwestern Iberia, roughly equivalent to the Betica of Roman times, the Guadalquivir Valley, right? And surrounding areas. So Andalusia, but kind of Western Andalusia, even mapping on some areas of Southern Portugal and Extremadura even to the north. Anyway, so you can redefine it much more specifically than saying it's an area in Southern Spain

and a culture that kind of flourished around the time when the Phoenicians arrived there. So from the 8th century, especially 8th and 7th centuries, you have archaeological remains of local groups that developed this so-called orientalizing culture, for the lack of a better term. That is a local culture that has absorbed and developed through the adaptation of Levantine and especially Phoenician elements, you know, broadly construed. I mean, there are things that you can kind of see similarities to or influences from Sardinia or from Cyprus, but overall Levantine.

So the Tartistians are kind of, to put it very simply, kind of like the Truscans of ancient Spain. The culture is a bit less grand. We don't have these huge necropolis, but we do have necropolis. They also have tumuli, where local leaders were buried with luxury items, many coming from the Phoenicians or their local adaptations of stuff. So there is a local culture that gets richer, we think, via the interaction with these Phoenicians, probably acting as middlemen in the whole metal business and trade in general. And these groups use this interaction to create an aesthetic and a visual material culture that makes them more visible and makes them look more powerful, right, vis-a-vis their neighbors as well. So,

you know, it's the kind of local context of where you have this sort of interaction. Now, the question is whether Tartessos was ever sort of politically unified or not. Maybe not. Maybe we're talking about separate groups. Maybe there was some sort of unification under one king or one place, as Herodotus seems to imply when he talks about this king of the Tartessians called Argantonios, who was legendary for having lived very, very long in the 6th century. So, I mean, we have classical sources who talk about this, as these Tartessos as an area and Tartessians as a culture or as an ethnic group. That's what they talk about. Then mostly we reconstruct it from archaeology and then how you map the archaeology onto the written sources.

There is, you know, archaeologists will say one thing and historians will say a different thing. And we're trying to meet somewhere in the middle. Well, keeping on the archaeology then, I mean, it seems from what you've written down and everything, that the Phoenician contacts, Phoenician links with this part of the Mediterranean, they seem to even predate the colonies, the settlements themselves. Well, yeah. So as I mentioned before, in this area in Huelva, the findings predate the colonization of the settlement in Gadir.

And yet, whatever was happening in Huelva, the Phoenicians did not settle there in a colony, let's say. They stayed in Gadir where they built a city, right? And we have remains there of urbanized foundations in the late 9th century. So materials go back even to the 10th century. I mean pottery experts are fine-tuning all this, but what I gather is that there is material evidence of commerce and interaction going back even to the 10th century, even up the coast of Portugal. So what's happening is that they have been in touch with these local groups earlier. At some point, those contacts and those early relations lead to a situation where the Phoenicians feel secure enough

to settle a colony, which they do in Gadir, which is not as far as Huelva, but they keep those channels, they have access to those channels, and they are clearly active in the area of Huelva as well. We have even Phoenician barriers in some areas nearby and so on. So it's very, very interesting. And I think archaeology, you know, is going to keep producing more data and hopefully we can piece this picture together.

Well, Carolina, it's so interesting because I did a project recently all about late Iron Age Britain and looking at settlements and the trade with the Roman Empire at that time and how local elites brought in objects from the Roman Empire, which they seen as status goods. Could we be seeing a similar thing in Tartessos in that area with local Iron Age elites bringing in Phoenician material to show off their wealth, to show off their power? Yeah, I think definitely that's what we seem to have. The mystery sort of is what was the configuration of these people, social configuration, cultural configuration, because before this period, there is so much fewer archaeological, right, trace of them. For instance, there is like no burials. What did they do with their dead?

It's not like these people appear all of a sudden and there was nobody there before because all of a sudden you have this flourishing culture, even if you can trace it mostly through burials because that's their, you know, their housing or whatever was not of that, the sort that would survive. Though in some places you start seeing some public buildings

and eventually some wall settlements and so on. But in any case, what I'm trying to say is that, yeah, that it's almost like if you pour paint on an invisible man, you know what I mean? Like all of a sudden you have the shape of it. I believe that they were there. I mean, that these were societies that were complex enough and organized enough that they could handle. I mean, that these were societies that were complex enough and organized enough that they could handle,

you know, deal with definitions in a way that they benefited as well. Right. And that made them transform their culture in a way that they became more visible, more ostentatious and so on, which is a move that you do

also to distinguish yourself from others around you who are not doing that. So I think that's definitely what's going on. Now, other scholars, there's a line of scholars who say, no, there was basically almost nobody there. And what you see are actually Phoenicians kind of settling. And that, I mean, honestly, there's a lot of prehistoric archaeologists who have been

tracing these cultures from the Bronze Age, like the European Atlantic Bronze Age. And there are continuities in pottery and so on. So I think they were there. And what's happening is what you see, in a sense, in Greece. You see this in central Italy. You know, nobody would say there were no Greek speakers in Greece just because the Dark Ages, right? There's no writing. I mean, there's some

material stuff, but no, we know that there were because we have more sources and we have Mycenaean texts and then we have Greek texts. So you kind of construct what's in the middle. But if you think about Greece in the geometric period, the material culture is, you know, could be anything. I mean, it's not very rich and you know generally speaking and it changes a lot when they come into contact with the broader mediterranean in the archaic period it changes dramatically so the same happens in these other areas it's just we know less about these local groups basically these local groups well we will go back to this as we continue the chronological story of Tartessos and the Phoenicians. I mean, you did mention earlier Gadir and when the settlement is founded.

Now, has archaeology revealed much about the layouts, the urban structure, the urban layouts of Gadir during its early years, you know, the first Phoenician settlement, as it were? As a matter of fact, they have found. Hey! Yes, finally! This is sort of recent as archaeological, you know, and scholarly data moves so slowly. It's relatively recent, last decade, let's say. It's barely coming out, like making it into the narrative. But there is this site in the center of the city of Cadiz called the Teatro Cómico, like comic theater. And this was, let's say, an emergency

excavation done in a plot in the middle of the city where they were going to rebuild this theater. So the archaeologists were able to dig a whole block, right? And it was the first time they could get to the bottom of Phoenician Gadir, and the first time that they hit 9th century levels, late 9th century and early 8th century levels. Therefore, the very beginning of Gadir. Therefore, proving that, yes, actually they were there as early and from the beginning, they created a pretty well-organized urban grid. This is, again, this is a few houses. I don't remember how many, but it's, you know, sort of a half a block here, half a block there, a street in the middle. And you have well-built houses with Phoenician, typically Levantine or Phoenician techniques with a base like stone foundation and clay walls filled with rubble.

It's, you know, I'm not that much into the technique. It's called pier and rubble technique, which is very typically Phoenician. Some of these houses had ovens inside, like a full kiln that were exact replicas, let's say, of the ovens found in Phoenicia. And the streets were paved like earth-bitten right paved they found tracks of animals like cow tracks even traces of a cat track very fine very weird

weird stuff and very importantly they found bulae like clay stamps clay seals right used for papyri inside an oven in one of these houses. And these clay seals have imprint, they have traces of the papyrus that was burned, right? So they were attached to the papyrus. And also some of them have iconography, right? Because they are seals. So it's amazing to think that, yeah, there were people using papyrus scrolls in Gadir, and these clay seals come from the Levant. They analyzed the clay and they realized it's not local dirt, and the iconography is Phoenician, Egyptianizing, and so on. So it's just very, it was like a little window, but that brought out so much of that early foundation, that it was well organized it was full-fledged Phoenician of course very soon they would

incorporate local people and families would become mixed and all that I'm not denying that but it is a Phoenician foundation and there is even their corroboration that yes they had literature and scrolls were circulating right it's just we don't have them unfortunately well let's continue the story from there then you know over the next century or couple of centuries or so, Carolina. Because Phoenician influence, literature, settlements, cohabitation with the local people, it seems to go to a new level, explode over the following centuries in the Tartessos area. Yeah, well, you have a lot more settlements, again, all along the coast, but also during the 7th century, you have increasing archaeological evidence, again,

mostly from barriers, but then you have some places that have yielded, like sanctuaries. There's a few, especially in Seville, well, just outside Seville, the Carambolo Sanctuary is pretty spectacular. Well, now it is not because it has been buried under cement, but it was well excavated and there's digital reconstructions and they found a statuette of Astarte, most likely connected to the place, dedicated to Astarte. So in these places, what you see is, first of all, you see a clear Phoenician hand that is kind of the construction techniques. A lot of artifacts are Phoenician or Phoenician-like. But then you have clearly an input of a local culture as well.

And that is local pottery or decoration that is kind of Levantine, but kind of different. So what you would expect of a context of hybrid practices, right? And cultural hybridity going on but yeah and that happens all around and then this levantine influence or phoenician influence goes on later on like even in these kind of developments of local culture that is very inflected by phoenician culture goes on like and appears like in extrem, right, in the 5th and 4th century buildings like Cancho Roano and El Turunelo. These are amazing archaeological sites, which are later, and they are really in the periphery,

way in the hinterland of what would be the core of Tartessos in the Guadalquivir area that I mentioned. So what's happening? in the Guadalquivir area that I mentioned. So what's happening? Some people say, well, this is some local development of Iberian stock, but others, the excavators of the site, my colleagues Sebastián Celestino and Esther Rodríguez say, well, we should mention it as Tartessic

because it really shares the same cultural features, material culture, and so on. So why not think that beyond archaic period there is a continuation of Tartessic culture but again these are all areas still for debate and I'm guessing one such area we can't talk about the Phoenicians and not mention the next two words Carolina the Phoenician alphabet now how influential do we think the Phoenician alphabet is in this area of the ancient Mediterranean? Yeah, one of my favourite topics. Well, the Phoenician alphabet is really a remarkable kind of marker of this cultural process, right?

Because it really seems to be a very important part of the transformation of these different societies. So not everybody adopts the alphabet, but those who do are those who are more in contact with Phoenicians, maybe, or who develop these orientalizing cultures, let's say, that really flourished. So you have in the Levant, the Israelites and the Arameans adopt the Phoenician alphabet after the 10th century, and they create their own version, right? The Greeks adopted in the 8th century, early to mid 8th century, and then the Etruscans adopted, though they probably adopted through the Greeks, but it's basically the same alphabet, but in their own version. And then the Tartessians also adopted and that's it nobody else that we know does this so in the

case of Tartessos it appears around the 7th century so a bit later and it is a weird version though I mean it's kind of experts I mean will agree that there is an element of the Phoenician alphabet but it also they create syllabic signs Some signs are kind of similar to the Cypriot syllabary signs. It's a very particular kind of thing, but they adopt writing as part of this wave. So this is all part of this wave of alphabetic writing, and that is especially picked up by the same culture that really emerged from Greece, Etruria, Iberia as perhaps the more orientalizing and sophisticated ones. Whereas in North Africa there are no local adaptations. There is definition alphabet and it appears everywhere but

there is no local separate script that develops from it which is interesting or neither in Sardinia at this point. So it doesn't happen everywhere and i think that is significant and something to work with as well and why do these adaptations happen in one place and not the other it surely has to have to do with local conditions right and local groups well i mean you took the words right out of my mouth i was gonna say is this evidence as you say if you have evidence in spain of this sort of interaction with the locals but not in North Africa does this really emphasize how the effect of Phoenician settlements on the local populations it really does differ depending on where you go in the ancient Mediterranean yeah absolutely exactly yeah it differs a lot and it produces different adaptations and innovations

in different areas so exactly you I mean the fact that I'm emphasizing this thread of Phoenician cultural influence and technological influence doesn't mean we're not also emphasizing, on the contrary, we are the local agency in that. And that is evident in how different the developments are in each area, in each type of adaptation. So North Africa is a whole question mark because there is such a Phoenician presence and yet, yeah, the local side of this interaction

is very obscure. And it's possible that in general, the societies there were not of the type that would make use of that kind of transformation of themselves, or they were not organized in such a way that that was used for whatever, or they were not interested. But also there is the fact that so much fewer archaeology has been done looking at those periods, right, in North African countries. I mean, that is a big problem as well. So we have to try to balance those factors in. I mean, absolutely fair enough.

Well, a couple more questions before we start wrapping up, Carolina. This has been amazing so far, but my eyes were drawn whilst reading to something called the Warrior Stele. Now, Carolina, what are these? Oh my God. I wish my colleague Sebastian Felicino was here

because he is one of the biggest experts on this stelae. I always, you know, check in with him. So there are these stelae, stones, little megaliths, you know, let's call them stelae, you know, elongated, pretty rough. Some of them, others a bit more polished. This sort of stone thing, they appear all over the Tartessic area, but the broad, I mean, talking about Extremadura as well, southern Spain,

some randomly in other places. And they are very difficult to date because they are all found, most of them found out of context or out of their initial context. They are reused, like one of them is reused in the Cancho Roano building, which is,

you know, much later, 6th century, 5th century. So it's like, I mean, the staging which is reused is one of the later ones. So we know they're earlier than, in the view of Sebastiano and many scholars, they are a remnant or an inheritance of the Bronze Age culture of these peoples, whether we call them Tartessic or pre-Tartessic or whatever they are, but they are in the same region and they have iconography that evolves as well. I mean, usually showing weapons and then at some point showing a horned, like a male figure with horns and a sword. And then some of them show items that seem to reflect this orientalizing right new culture like combs and mirrors which are typically luxury items made of metals or ivory and things like that chariots so it's very interesting if you you know there is a sort of

evolution or chronology that is reconstructed from the iconography so it's very tentative but if that pans out there is a sort of incorporation of near eastern elements on the previous warriors that like some of which have iconography and others don't but we don't know what they were used for where if they were grave markers there is no trace of the graves they They were not found in situ anyway. Are there space, like, territory markers? Are they cenotaphs? I mean, there's all sorts of theories.

But they seem to reflect the fact that there were groups that had elites that represented their power or their territory or their influence with these stone monuments, with certain coherence across a vast territory so that's why they are usually featured as a tartasic type of art complicated complicated complicated as you say i mean but mysteries still abound indeed i mean from what we've been talking about carolina does it really seem let's say as we even move on like to the sixth century that tartessos this has become a real a jewel in the tyrian maritime commerce world it's become this prime place because it seems to be so wealthy

well at that point by the sixth century it appears in greek sources like hecate yeah hecateus even in the garyoneida i mean in epic and then later in herodotus making reference to the sixth century right so he's looking back to the sixth century and the time of the persian expansion so by the sixth century tartessos seems to be known by the greeks as our wealthy peoples in the state, kingdom, you know, that's how they call it, characterized by these wealthy metals and so on. So you can think that, yeah, that reflects what we see on the ground a little bit of that local side and close collaboration with the Phoenician realm, which is very potent at that point. And then by that time, things start changing, like by the turn of the century, 500 or so, that's when Carthage really picks up, right?

Takes off as a regional power and seems to take over those Western networks that before were more like independent Phoenician networks of the earlier Tyrian tradition, let's say. So what happens between the 6th century? As you said, Tartus was doing great and was even known far in the east and by the Phocaeans and so on. What happens between then and the rise of Carthage, when Carthage draws the first treaties with Rome in 509, according to our sources, which is exactly kind of marking that inflection point where the Romans know they have to deal with the Carthaginians if they want to have any say in central Mediterranean trade so Carthage is kind of taking over so there are different theories but I can't get into it if you want or not but there is something going on that yeah go for it absolutely well that has led scholars to talk about the crisis of the 6th century. So sometime in the second part of the 6th century, after this King Arganthonios that Geraldo mentions has died, or whatever happened, there is a point there where there seems to be disruption like on the ground. Let's say archaeologists say that so many settlements get abandoned.

You stop finding the kind of wealth that you found before. There are discontinuities. And then, you know, maybe some part of it has to do with Tyre's own situation. Like maybe Tyre just kind of lost grip of these networks because at that point it became under the Babylonian grip and then later Persian but the Babylonians may have had something to do with it maybe there was something else that happened there may be some indication of a natural disaster but I leave that to other colleagues that would be really cool if they could track that that there may have something may have happened that really affected the harbors and the

logistics for some time, maybe a combination of things. And then Carthage either taking advantage of that configuration of things or in part creating it, maybe. The point is that at the end of the 6th century, this whole world changes a lot because, yeah, the Western Mediterranean seems to become more isolated from the East, more dominated by Carthage. And at the same time, you know, Carthage and Rome really get into a collision course there that will, you know, explode in the 3rd century with the Punic Wars. There. Nicely done. Nicely summarized right there carolina i mean i've got a couple of questions that i'm dying to ask now and that's in regards to you mentioned carthage of course we're talking about the western mediterranean and these settlements in southern spain in tartessos

but do we have evidence for even further exploration even further further travel from Phoenicians, by Phoenicians? Oh yeah, that is one of the few areas where we have some sources from, you know, Greek and Roman sources that talk about this periploid, these explorations from the 6th century, the 5th century. I mean, there are different mentions of various periploids. One of these explorations has its own textual tradition, the Hanno, the expedition by Hanno, where there is a Greek text, maybe, I mean, in theory, based on a Phoenician text, according to what the text itself says. It says that it was, that the Phoenicians, the

Carthaginians set this up in a temple, in the temple doors at Carthage. But whatever the case, this is, for instance, one exploration where a Carthaginian contingent surrounded part of Africa down to somewhere in tropical, you know, somewhere around the equator line, Congo or something. We don't know for sure, but it's very interesting. And then there are other mentions. The most famous one, this idea, this notice that the Phoenicians surrounded Africa. And this would have happened under an Egyptian pharaoh's neho, like commission. And probably, I have to check that, but I think in the 5th century as well, maybe 6th century. Anyway, the circumnavigation of Africa.

5th century as well, maybe 6th century. Anyway, the circumnavigation of Africa. And again, you know, we don't have a lot to go on. Some of these are just random mentions and there are several of them, but we know the Greeks were doing the same. They had traditions of periploi from Massalia and, you know,

there are several of them. And this is a kind of genre that we think that reflects real explorations and that is very interesting because probably the Phoenicians would not want to give away a lot of information of what they were doing, right, to the Greeks or vice versa, which might explain why there's not a lot of details of what they did, the same way that in early modern times, Portuguese and the Spaniard and the British or whatever would, you know, try to keep their trade routes more or less to themselves and so on. So yeah, they did get around. They were

very good navigators and possibly circumnavigated Africa and very likely went all the way up to the British islands. I mean, for trade, up and down the Atlantic coast, for sure. How up? We cannot know. But definitely they were going up and down the coast of Portugal for sure possibly farther up I just find it fascinating perhaps that if you had these Phoenician explorers you know one might you know landing somewhere like the Canary Islands and finding what they found there or something then perhaps one on Orkney or the Channel Islands but it's so interesting to think what they would have found at those places and how it was then reported in turn yeah and there's it's weird because well the canary islands are there's a huge question mark

there as to when the first human settlement starts there and i don't want to even get in like opinions vary so much that you wonder how is it possible but i don't think there is trace of phoenicians there but people who know about navigation say that crossing the Straits of Gibraltar to begin with is very dangerous to do in those ancient boats because of the currents. You need to know very well what you're doing, when you're doing it, know the currents very well. And apparently it's, you know, very complicated and dangerous because if you do it in the wrong moment, you can be taken out by the current all the way up to Galicia or whatever, or all the way down to, yeah, maybe to the Canary Islands. I mean, you can end up who knows where.

So, yeah, they knew what they were doing. And I'm sure many of them got lost too. Carolina, this has been an absolutely amazing chat. And if there are any other questions or any other things you want to mention please do right now i mean my last question to you is and i think it's pretty self-explanatory because of what we've all been talking about but it's really stressed doesn't it how important it is to include the phoenicians when studying the ancient history of the mediterranean and the people of the ancient mediterranean it's not just the greeks and the the Romans going to all of these places and more. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's like we're missing a whole dimension of ancient Mediterranean history if we don't take them into account. And in fact, the Romans and the Greeks took them into account

a lot. And that's why we have sources about them. And not only as rivals and enemies, as in the case of the Romans is most famously, but as cultural agents, as inventors, even as models for political organization, like Aristotle talks about the constitution of Carthage and so on. They are in Homer, they are in Herod, they are everywhere. So if the Greeks and Romans really engaged with them because they were part of the same world, imagine how much we're missing.

But also because I think by trying to reconstruct more and more of this Phoenician world we also gain access in part to these other peoples of the Iron Age right that whom we know even less about that we're interacting with Phoenicians and with Greeks and with others right but you know we can learn more about the Sardinians and the Tartessians and peoples from North Africa and so on. So they are really kind of a bridge into a whole Iron Age Mediterranean

that has still a lot to yield and really gives us a, you know, a much more round knowledge of the ancient world than just the classical sources do. Well, it therefore sounds very exciting for the future of this field then, Carolina. Last and certainly not least,

your book on this topic just released, it is called? Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean. Fantastic. Well, Carolina, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Tristan. It has been my pleasure.

Well, there you go. I hope you've enjoyed our podcast with Dr. Carolina Lopez Ruiz, all about the Phoenician world, with a particular focus on the Phoenician presence in southern Spain. If you enjoyed the pod, then why not consider having a look at Carolina's new book, Phoenicians and the Making of the mediterranean now whilst we're on the topic of books i will also highlight my new book if you find the career of alexander the great extraordinary but want to know why the events that followed alexander that followed his death are even more extraordinary this game of thrones meets lord of the rings but non-fiction as one recent reviewer described it, then why not have

a look at that book, Alexander's Successors at War, The Perdiccas Years. We'll put a link to that in the description below too. Now that's enough from me about books. If you want more ancients content then you know what to do. If ancient history is literally now bursting from your body, which is what we want of course, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter via another link in the description below. And finally, last but certainly not least, if you'd be very kind to leave us a nice rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from, that would be greatly appreciated. See you on Sunday.