Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean

Phoenician mariners, settlers and traders of the eighth and seventh centuries BCE are López-Ruiz's subject, together with the networks that she argues they helped establish, along which goods, technologies and cultural forms circulated. Regional chapters compare Iberia, the central Mediterranean, the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant, and follow the local adaptations of Near Eastern motifs, practices and technologies in each.

The evidence is archaeological, epigraphic and literary together: deposits, settlements, burials, sanctuaries, buildings, pottery, metalwork, ivories, sculpture and inscriptions. Examples range from the Huelva deposit and Sardinian settlements to Aegean sanctuaries and the multilingual texts of Cyprus. The dating and interpretation of objects are treated as dependent on their contexts and on comparative analysis.

How it is organised

An introduction sets out the approach and the idea of an orientalizing kit. Part I, Beware the Greek, takes up Phoenician overseas activity, interpretations of Mediterranean contact, and the meanings of orientalizing and Phoenicianizing. Part II, Follow the Sphinx, moves through the Far West, the central Mediterranean and the Aegean, then turns to intangible cultural legacies, Cyprus and the Levant. An epilogue draws the regional discussions together, and notes, bibliography and index follow.

The regional chapters arrange their material by theme as well as by place. The Far West chapter covers Huelva and Iberia, settlements, warrior stelae, funerary practice, pottery, metalwork, ivories, sanctuaries and script. The central Mediterranean chapter treats Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, southern Italy and Etruria, and the Aegean chapter surveys contact, objects, sanctuaries and artistic forms. The Cyprus chapter addresses the island's cultural history, kingdoms, pottery, metalwork, sanctuaries, languages and sculpture.

The argument

Scholarship, López-Ruiz argues, has often given Greek activity and cultural agency priority, treating Phoenician presence as secondary and discounting local exchange. She challenges interpretations that infer a Greek settlement or Greek influence from Greek pottery alone, and calls for comparisons that weigh material, architectural and contextual evidence alongside written sources (pp. 44–52).

Phoenicians appear as active participants in forming Mediterranean networks, with Tyre among the principal centres of expansion. The orientalizing kit names a repertoire of motifs, goods, technologies and practices that local communities could adapt, and the account keeps interaction and local variation in view across the regions. The epilogue sets the regional patterns of Phoenician activity and local adaptation side by side. It asks for archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence to be studied in connected ways, and for Phoenician agency to be considered alongside local participation.

Cyprus

López-Ruiz argues that Cypriot cultural history cannot be explained by Greek influence alone or by Phoenician influence alone. Local communities, Greek speakers, Eteo-Cypriot speakers and Phoenician speakers interacted in different settings, and she proposes that Phoenician practices and material culture contributed to the island's urban development while being adapted within local traditions (pp. 249–257).

Late Bronze Age contacts and the transition into the Iron Age lead on to archaic and classical evidence. Cypriot and Phoenician pottery, bronze bowls and other metalwork, jewellery, seals, sanctuaries, votive deposits, burial traditions and inscriptions in Phoenician and Cypro-syllabic are all discussed. She describes long-term contact and overlapping cultural practices, with regional variation distinguished: Phoenician pottery on the island from the eleventh century BCE, a more permanent Phoenician presence at Kition by the mid- to late ninth century, and Phoenician-style burials and material in places including Amathous (pp. 253–271).

Kition, Amathous, Palaipaphos, Idalion, Salamis, Kourion and Tamassos figure as Cypriot kingdoms or sanctuary sites, and Golgoi as a findspot of Egyptianizing statues. The sanctuary at Meniko-Litharkes is associated with Baal-Hammon, and Chytroi, Soloi and Ledra appear among the kingdoms on Esarhaddon's prism. López-Ruiz also reviews evidence for interaction among the Cypriot kingdoms and Phoenician communities, including shared or adapted material forms and multilingual inscriptions.

The Egyptianizing male votive statues of Cyprus she reads as a hybrid local form shaped by Cypriot, Phoenician and east Greek traditions. She compares them with Phoenician examples, presents Faegersten's comparison of Cypriot and Phoenician statuary as evidence for Phoenician input, and assesses their contexts, dates and artistic features. Their range of forms and settings, she argues, does not fit a narrow date tied to alleged Egyptian rule (pp. 272–279).

Dating

Beyond that focus the narrative reaches back to Late Bronze Age connections and follows Phoenician activity into the classical period. For Cyprus, López-Ruiz discusses the Late Bronze Age, the Cypriot-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods, and later classical evidence, keeping the labels and dates she gives there.