The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz

  A more difficult case is posed by inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, which comprises approximately 1,100 texts spread across western Tunisia (especially Dougga and Maktar), Algeria, and Morocco (corpus in Chabot 1940–1941). The few texts that are datable on historical grounds are from the second century bce. The script includes approximately twenty-two graphemes, many of which have regional variants and/or are of debatable independent character. Scholars have often claimed that this script, too, is modeled on a Phoenician (Pichler 2007) or Punic prototype (Kerr 2010; Casajus 2015). But only four graphemes—the Libyco-Berber {G}, {Z2}, {Š}, and {T}—have morphologies and phonetic employment identical to their Phoenician/Punic analogues. The cases of three other graphemes—{Y}, {N}, and the “tri-bar”—are less certain (Casajus 2015: 71–81). The likelihood that these four certain and three possible correspondences are coincidental is low (Casajus 2015: 81–82, 231–32), but lacking additional data, it is difficult to be certain as to this script’s precise source and date.

  The Influence of the Alphabet

  It was formerly common for alphabetic histories to begin and end by extolling either the Semitic or the Greek “invention” for sparking some great shift in thought, culture, democracy, or the like (e.g., Cross 2003: 343). The alphabet was routinely contrasted with cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing systems. The latter were claimed to be confined by their cumbersome nature to palaces and temples, while the former were imagined to have abruptly opened a world of writing to a broader public. Nowadays, one tends to be more careful, since this flavor of technological determinism is now considered untenable. There is no direct connection between a script’s apparent ease and a society’s literacy or educational systems (Rollston 2006). Similarly, there have been long periods in which alphabetic availability did not immediately yield alphabetic hegemony, for a host of social and political reasons (Sanders 2009: 41–57). This is not to deny that the development of the alphabet was significant. It does, however, encourage one to explain its history not as that of a self-evident miracle but, instead, as that of a fascinating technological artifact, whose ups and downs were tied to forces far beyond its inherent faculties and flaws.

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  Chapter 18

  Phoenician Literature

  Carolina López-Ruiz

  There was, without a doubt, a Phoenician literature. (I use Phoenician for the Phoenician-Punic continuum unless specification is necessary.) Very little of this legacy is extant, but enough to gauge the great loss. Lacking the advantage of a consolidated manuscript tradition cherished by later cultures, Phoenician literature was not systematically preserved, unlike that of the Greeks, Romans, and Israelites. What we have are small pieces of a wreck that bob to the surface of the Classical literary corpus. Nevertheless, despite these unfavorable conditions, an impressive range of literary genres is attested. They are concentrated in particular genres, some of which align with broader ancient Near Eastern tradition: cosmogony, foundation stories, historical records, and other areas that correspond with Phoenician expertise (travel accounts or itineraries, agricultural treatises). Other genres were likely adopted through Hellenistic influence (narrative histories, philosophy). Ultimately, the selective references and quotations respond to preferences of Greek and Roman readers. Overviews of this broken heritage are usually summarized in a few pages (Krings 1995; Hoyos 2010: 105–108), but this chapter aims at a more detailed and analytical account.

  Under the Classical Shadow

  Through medieval tradition (Byzantine and western) we have a curated but extensive selection of Greek and Roman texts. Ancient scholars shaped and channeled into modernity a “Classical” canon, following a line of transmission that started with the philologists and librarians of Hellenistic Alexandria and continued through the Roman reception of Greek literature. The canon we have inherited contains only a fraction of the best ancient works. Still, the legacy of Greece and Rome became part of mainstream education in the West, casting an enormous shadow over the surrounding Mediterranean cultures from whom we do not have directly transmitted literatures, including the Phoenicians. Until the Third Punic War in the mid-second century bce, however, the Phoenicians had a major presence in the ancient Mediterranean alongside the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, and other lesser known groups. The eventual dominance of Rome and its cultivation of Greek literature (especially Athenian) sealed the fate of Phoenician and other possible literary legacies.

  Among the Near Eastern cultures, the Israelites sa
w a selection of their ancient literature passed down in a manuscript tradition (resulting in the Hebrew Bible), which became a canonical text also for Christianity (see chapter 43, this volume). Outside this exceptional case, the archaeological discovery and decipherment of Near Eastern inscriptions (clay tablets, stone monuments, even papyri preserved in dry climates) opened for us a window to other eastern Mediterranean literatures, such as Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, Hittite, and Ugaritic (e.g., Larsen 1996). For the Phoenicians, however, the picture is grim. Their texts were not written on clay tablets but, rather, on degradable papyri (in Greek biblion, named after Byblos) and perhaps parchment. This is sadly ironic given the Phoenicians’ attachment to the invention and spread of their script, the heir of earlier Canaanite alphabetic systems (see chapter 17, this volume). The testimony of more than six thousand inscriptions in Phoenician language from different periods confirms the existence of a literate society, even if these are not literary documents but, rather, mostly funerary, votive, and commercial epigraphs, with few monumental-narrative texts (see chapter 16, this volume; on language, see chapter 15, this volume). Phoenician papyri are only exceptionally preserved or indicated indirectly: a scrap of an amulet from Malta (Müller 2001; Schmitz 2017) and a stash of seals found in recent excavations in the Tyrian colony of Gadir (Cádiz), which were used with papyrus rolls in the late ninth century bce. “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” (Aubet, chapter 6: 79 in this volume; Gener et al. 2012: 168–78).