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Chapter 6
Tyre and its Colonial Expansion
María Eugenia Aubet Semmler
The results of recent archaeological excavations in the western Mediterranean and Atlantic have prompted an upward revision of the chronology for the earliest Phoenician expansion. The new chronology paints a more complex panorama than was previously acknowledged, but one that ultimately makes better sense of the duration, historical contexts, and organization of the Phoenician colonial system. The initiative for the colonial enterprise has always been attributed to the city-state of Tyre.
Exploring the West
The earliest Phoenician materials in the West, at present, come from the indigenous settlement of Huelva—at the Plaza de las Monjas, discovered in 1997—on the Atlantic coast of Iberia. In this enclave (map 6.1), an important collection of Phoenician ceramics associated with Greek, Nuragic, and Cypriot imports attests to regular presence of Phoenician populations in Tartessos throughout the second half of the ninth century bce (González de Canales et al. 2004, 2008; cf. chapter 38, this volume). This periodization was determined using radiocarbon dates and typological similarities between the oldest Phoenician ceramics and those from Tyre—Bikai’s strata VIII–VI and phase II from the Al-Bass necropolis (Bikai 1978; Núñez 2008).
Map 6.1 (Top) Map of the central and western Mediterranean with precolonial contacts. (Bottom) The first Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean.
Source: M. E. Aubet.
It is noteworthy that the first arrival of Phoenicians in the far West occurred in a clearly pre-colonial context and in a territory—that of Huelva—known for its extraordinary mineral-metallurgical wealth. The most important of these resources were silver, copper, gold, and iron, whose production and distribution since the Bronze Age had favored intensive intercourse between the local population and those of other regions along the Atlantic, which were rich in tin and lead, such as Portugal, Galicia, and Extremadura (for metallurgy, see chapter 26, this volume).
We find a similar pre-colonial phase also in Sardinia, although not as early on as at Huelva. Preceding the first Phoenician colonies, in Sardinia the first signs of Phoenician contact are found in the Nuragic village of Sant’Imbenia (Alghero) at the end of the ninth and early eighth centuries bce. As at Huelva, the first presence of Phoenicians on the island takes place in an indigenous center, which is moreover situated in close proximity to important copper mines and specializes in the mining and production at a large scale of copper ingots intended for export (Oggiano 2000; Rendeli 2012; Mariani 2015).
All signs thus indicate that the origins of the Phoenician diaspora in the West are intertwined with the search for, and exploration of, lands particularly rich in metals. Moreover, the finds from Huelva and Sant’Imbenia underscore the importance of the period between roughly 840 and 800 bce as a point of origin for the Phoenician presence in the West. This is significant for two reasons.
1. The chronology of Huelva, which is currently the earliest, coincides with the arrival of the first Phoenicians on the island of Crete, where the oldest Phoenician pottery appears at Kommos around 850–830 bce (Shaw 2000; Bikai 2000; Gilboa et al. 2015; cf. also chapter 32, this volume). The settlement of Kommos corresponds, ostensibly, to an attempt by the Phoenicians to establish a commercial transit station toward the west, simultaneous with the foundation of Tyre’s first overseas colony at Kition (Cyprus; for Cyprus, see chapter 31, this volume).
2. The new archaeological chronologies for the earliest Phoenician presence overseas are in direct agreement with the dates passed on by ancient Near Eastern historical sources, and in particular those most trustworthy and least legendary. Outstanding among these are the writings of Menander of Ephesus, an author from the third century bce who translated the royal archives of Tyre. These described the reign of a King Ithobaal (or Ethbaal) of Tyre, who ruled between 878 and 847 bce. This monarch founded Tyre’s first external colonies, one at Botrys to the north of Byblos and the other at Auza, in Libya, which has never been located (Aubet 2001: 46–47, 2008: 183–185; Boardman 2010). This historical record for the Tyrian state’s first colonial initiatives coincides, therefore, with the archaeological assemblages obtained in Cyprus, Crete, and the far West.
The findings at Huelva and Sant’Imbenia, therefore, can help to identify the reasons behind the first Phoenician westward navigations, which were clearly originally motivated by the search for metals. Shortly afterwards, the economic objectives would have diversified in the wake of the foundation of the first permanent colonies.
First Colonies and Settlement Dynamics
Radiometric dates and analyses of material culture suggest that the first proper Tyrian colonies were founded shortly after the early exploratory journeys to Huelva and Sardinia: First at Utica (late ninth century bce) and, soon afterward, at Gadir (end of the ninth and beginning of the eighth centuries bce). In Utica, at the mouth of the Bagradas River, the 2005–2007 excavations (Ben Jerbania and Redissi 2014) and work on the town’s acropolis that began in 2010 have uncovered a deep deposit or sacred pit (pit 20017), which was found in relationship with a structure containing an important assemblage of pottery belonging to Phoenician, Nuragic, Greek Geometric, Tartessian, Villanovian, and Libyan traditions. This pottery, in addition to seeds and faunal remains, are dated by 14C to the last quarter and end of the ninth century bce (López Castro et al. 2016).
Until the findings at Utica, the neighboring city of Carthage had been considered one of the most ancient Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean. The absolute dates pointing to the end of the ninth century for the earliest levels of Carthage’s Decumanus Maximus appeared to coincide, moreover, with the “historical” date of its foundation, the year 814–813 bce, according to Classical sources (Rakob 1989; Docter et al. 2005). However, the initial archaeological dating for Carthage was corrected following new soundings in the Bir Massouda neighborhood (Docter et al. 2003), where a series of radiocarbon dates from the earliest strata, as well as the material culture, all pointed to a correlation with the end of period III at Al-Bass (= Tyre IV), which places the foundation of the North African city later, in the first quarter of the eighth century bce, around the year 775 bce (Núñez 2015) (on early Carthage, see also chapter 11, this volume).
The foundation of the colonies at Utica and Carthage, in the Bay of Tunis, indicates that, after their pre-colonial explorations, the Phoenicians undertook an ambitious colonial policy, whose goal was to secure the permanent occupation of strategic lands and, with it, access to an ever more diverse array of resources. Agricultural resources and access to the gold and ivory of the African interior would have been more than enough reason to justify the foundation of Tyre’s colonies in the Bay of Tunis.
Among the most significant recent advances in the study of the Phoenician expansion, the case of Cádiz (ancient Gadir) is of particular importance. The legendary accounts of the city’s foundation and the quasi-mythical status of its famous temple to Melqart—the Herakleion—have always attracted the attention (yet frustrated the efforts) of archaeologists, geographers, and historians.
It was only during the 2006–2010 excavations at the building site of the Teatro Cómico that we finally
caught a glimpse of the ancient Phoenician colony. The earliest level of Phoenician occupation (period II) was found over traces of a local settlement dating to the Late Bronze Age (period I) at the highest point of the island Erytheia, the smallest in the ancient Gaditan archipelago, exactly where the Classical sources situate the Tyrian foundation of Gadir (Gener et al. 2012: 134, 2014: 16–17).
The finds from Teatro Cómico are remarkable for several reasons, which we describe here, especially when they are compared to other archaic colonies:
1. The discovery of several dwellings around a paved street reveal a clear urban character that dates to the earliest phase of the colony, which was clearly a planned settlement with high occupational density (Gener et al. 2012: 143).
2. The Phoenician pottery, of which the most noteworthy includes ridge-necked jugs, pithoi, and plates, as well as a Nuragic jars (Gener et al. 2012: 145–55; Torres et al. 2014), find their closest parallels in Tyre, and specifically in Bikai’s stratum IV and in period III at Al-Bass (Bikai 1978; Núñez 2014). This suggests a working date for the foundation of Gadir around the years 800–780 bce.
3. A group of clay sealings was discovered inside a cooking oven in one of the dwellings, and analysis of the sealings revealed they had been affixed to papyrus documents (Gener et al. 2012: 168–78). The seals, with scarab imprints, demonstrate the regular use in newly founded Cádiz of written papyrus documents, sealed with signatory rings, and probably related to the early collation of archives in the city or temple. What is more, the epigraphic study of ostraca from period II, incised on pottery, reveals the use of personal names or anthroponyms to mark ownership of amphorae and other ceramic transport containers (Zamora et al. 2010). The most significant fact is that these ostraca are incised on local Phoenician pottery, which demonstrates the regular use of Phoenician writing by individuals who were living in Cádiz during its earliest occupational phases.
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