During the second half of the eighth century BC there was a marked change in the nature of Phoenician activities overseas, particularly in the central Mediterranean. In Sardinia a number of settlements were founded in the south and west of the island, at Sulcis, Tharros and Nora. These colonies were very different from Sant’ Imbenia, because they were very much Phoenician settlements with little evidence of Nuragic residents. They conformed to the topographical particularities of Phoenician foundations located on islands, promontories and peninsulas, with two natural harbours so that wind direction would not inhibit use. Each provided good anchorage and easy access to the hinterland, where metal ores and agricultural produce could be acquired through trade with the Nuragic population.103 These new commercial relationships appear to have brought about a marked increase in competition for land and resources among the Nuragi, as different groups sought to control the lucrative business of supplying the Phoenicians with raw materials. This led to the clustering of populations into more nucleated settlements, a more complex social stratification, and the creation of a series of complex socio-political divisions.104
Pottery found at Sulcis clearly shows that trade with Pithecusa and Etruria, probably in conjunction with the Euboeans, was an important aspect of the economic life of these early Phoenician colonies.105 Sardinia also served as a platform for more ambitious trading strategies, especially by the Tyrians. As the most distant of all the Mediterranean islands from the European and African mainland, and with its long stretches of coastline, Sardinia was a natural ‘stepping stone’ to the far western reaches of the great sea, where far greater mineral riches could be found.106 Indeed, the Phoenician emporium at Huelva in south-west Spain was receiving goods from Sardinia in the eighth century.107
THE SPANISH SILVER MOUNTAIN
The oldest piece of Phoenician writing discovered in the western Mediterranean is on a fragmentary monument known as the Nora Stone, dated to the late ninth/early eighth century BC and from south-west Sardinia. Some scholars have interpreted the text as a vote of thanks to the god Pummay by a Phoenician high official, Milkaton, after he and the crew of his ship had survived a storm while on their way to the land of ‘Tarshish’. There has been much speculation on the actual location of ‘Tarshish’; however, easily the most convincing claim is that it refers to Tartessus, the ancient name for that region of southern Spain which now roughly covers Andalusia.108
Phoenician interest in Tartessus primarily centred on the vast mineral wealth found in its interior. Although the Greek author who claimed that during forest fires streams of molten silver ran down the hillsides may have been guilty of more than a little exaggeration, the mines of southern Spain appear to have offered a seemingly limitless supply of silver, iron and many other metals.109 Once again, the Tyrians had been quickest to recognize the huge possibilities presented by the mines of Tartessus, although other Phoenicians, from Sidon, Arvad and Byblos, are also recorded as taking part in Tyrian mercantile ventures.110 The Tyrians were the first to push to the furthermost limits of the Mediterranean Sea, establishing the colony of Lixus on the west coast of what is now Morocco after passing through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) into the Atlantic Ocean, after which they established another trading station on the island of Mogador.111
The Phoenicians had first reached Tartessus by the first half of the ninth century BC.112 The Tyrians had quickly struck up an extremely successful economic relationship with the local Tartessian elites, with their new partners controlling the actual mining and processing of the metal ores, while the Tyrians concentrated on the transportation of the ingots back to the Levant. At Huelva, a native Tartessian port, archaeologists have discovered huge smelting furnaces used for the production of metal ingots on an almost industrial scale.113 The metal trade was only one part of this lucrative enterprise. On the voyage from Phoenicia to southern Spain the ships would carry luxury goods such as jewels, ivories, bronze statuettes, cut glass, ornate jugs, unguents and perfumes packaged in alabaster vessels made in Tyrian workshops, which would be traded with the Tartessian elite.
In the late eighth century BC the Tyrians set up a colony at Gades (modern Cadiz), just beyond the Pillars of Hercules on the south-western coast of Spain, as the main transport hub for the trade. It would later be claimed that they had set out to found a settlement in the region under the orders of an oracle. However, it would take three separate expeditions before the right site was confirmed by a propitious sacrifice to the gods.114 Some would even say that the Phoenicians had reached Gades only after being blown off course in a storm.115 The site, like that of Tyre, was chosen because of its fantastic natural harbour. Situated at the end of a long, narrow promontory, it was surrounded on three sides by water, making it defendable from the land and accessible from the sea. Most importantly of all, it was situated opposite the mouth of the river Guadalete, down which the ore from the mines in the interior could be transported. In fact Gades was not just a one-industry town: it would also become famous for its garum, a strong-tasting sauce made out of decomposing mackerel mixed with vinegar, considered to be a great delicacy in the ancient world. It was, however, the metals–primarily silver–that were mined from the Spanish earth that kept the increasingly demanding Assyrian state satisfied and Tyre, therefore, relatively free to operate without excessive external interference.
The favoured route from Tyre to Gades took ships over the northern Mediterranean first to Cyprus, then to the southern coast of Asia Minor. The fleet would then travel to the islands of Rhodes, Malta, Sicily and Sardinia. The final leg of the journey went from Ibiza around the coast of Spain and then through the Pillars of Hercules to Gades. The least complicated return route was to follow the coast of North Africa, then Egypt and the Levantine coast.116 It was no coincidence that many of the Phoenician colonies that sprang up in North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and the Balearic Islands in the late ninth and eighth centuries were located on these vital trading arteries, like links in a giant chain. These colonies also acted as a defensive line that cut across the southern Mediterranean, effectively locking commercial competitors, particularly the Greeks, out of the most lucrative metal-ore market in the ancient world. Although a Greek sea captain from Samos, Colaeus, had made it to southern Spain in the seventh century BC and picked up a cargo of sixty talents of silver (the equivalent of between 1 and 2 tonnes of metal ore), this was an isolated incident.117
Along the Mediterranean coast of Andalusia a series of small Phoenician trading settlements, spaced out at a distance of every 10 kilometres or so, sprang up. Like their larger counterparts, they tended to be situated on promontories and small islands at river mouths, which provided good locations for harbours. It has been plausibly argued that each of these settlements was associated with a particular Phoenician trading firm. Although at first the economic activity that took place in these colonies was centred almost exclusively on their role as marketplaces where local goods would be traded, later some developed their own specialist industries often associated with the production, storage and transport of goods, such as pottery and metalworking. Moreover, many appear to have supported themselves not only through manufacturing and trade, but also through agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry.118 However, the prosperity and indeed very existence of these modest Phoenician settlements and many others in the central and western Mediterranean relied heavily on the metal-ore mining and processing operations that were taking place further to the west.
Gades was set apart from the other Phoenician colonies on the southern Spanish coastline not just by the scale of the city and its population, but also because it was the only urban centre with public buildings. The city appears to have acted as the centre of Tyrian interests on the Iberian peninsula, and it even established a number of secondary colonies such as fishing, transit and trading stations in North Africa and what is now Portugal.119 Unlike Kition, these new colonies in the western Mediterranean would not be administered by a governor sent fro
m Tyre. Their distance made such close control impossible. Instead, it appears that the Tyrian king appointed commercial agents from the Tyrian mercantile elite to oversee the trading operations and governance of the colonies.120 As individual initiative took over from palace monopolies in regard to foreign trade and the Tyrian commercial empire was extended to the far-off lands of the West, the influence of these merchant princes increasingly grew at the expense of the king’s own authority.121 As the king could not safeguard his interests through direct control, it therefore became increasingly important that he find another way of maintaining his power over a city which was many thousands of kilometres away. In these difficult circumstances, Melqart, for whom a magnificent temple would be built in the city, would become the embodiment of Tyrian royal power at Gades. The elision between god and king that had been such a key element of the veneration of Melqart since his emergence under Hiram meant that the worship of the god at Gades was also a recognition of Tyrian royal authority.
Melqart would stand at the epicentre of this dynamic new settlement. His sanctuary would take up the whole of the eastern half of the island site on which it was built, and it appeared to awed later visitors that the bedrock on which it sat resembled a huge polished platform.122 Within the sacred precinct was a famous sweet-water spring.123 The magnificent adornments for which the temple at Gades would become as famous as its Tyrian counterpart emphasized the sacred bonds that linked colony to mother city. Indeed, the presence of the temple of Melqart at Gades may have been a symbol of the city’s position as the centre of the Tyrian colonial community in the western Mediterranean.124 The temple contained an olive tree made of solid gold, whose branches held fruit made from glittering emeralds –surely a reference to the famous foundation myth of Tyre. The sanctuary also contained twin pillars, standing over a cubit (45 centimetres) high and square in shape, which were made of gold and silver fused into one colour and were covered in writing the meaning of which would eventually be lost.125 It was said that, after being instructed to in a dream, the people of Gades had brought relics of the god from Tyre to their new sanctuary.126
The sacred rites that were practised at Gades followed the Phoenician tradition. Women and swine were forbidden from entering the inner sanctum of the temple precinct. The barefoot priests, who wore linen robes with a band made of Egyptian flax over their shaven heads, were expected to remain celibate. When offering incense at the altar they wore their robes unbuckled, and while sacrificing they wore a garment embroidered with a broad stripe. In the temples there were no statues or other imagery of the gods. Most importantly, the fires on the sacred altars were kept continually alight.127 The sacred rite of the egersis was also enacted at Gades.128 Later writers would tell strange stories of foreigners being required to leave the city while the great ceremony was being held, and on their return ‘they found cast ashore a man of the sea, who was about five roods in size, and burning away, because heaven had blasted him with a thunderbolt’–a clearly confused reference to the effigy of the great god which was put on a raft and set ablaze out at sea.129
The temple of Melqart at Gades also served as the vital umbilical cord through which wealth flowed from Spain back to Phoenicia, acting as an important financial guarantor, with business deals being concluded with oaths sworn to the god. As the Phoenicians had no coinage in this early period, Melqart was also called upon to guarantee the weight and purity of the metal ingots and bars through special temple hallmarks. The Gaditans also paid a substantial annual tribute of a tenth of the public treasury to the temple of Melqart at Tyre.130
A CRUEL LESSON IN SUPPLY AND DEMAND
By the last decades of the eighth century BC it might therefore have looked as though the Tyrians were the clear winners in the great Phoenician expansion into the western Mediterranean. They had certainly succeeded in securing the means to keep the Assyrian beast’s ravenous hunger for precious metals sated and thereby maintain a fragile political independence that other, less productive, neighbours had already lost. Moreover, their relentless quest for raw materials had directly led to the establishment of a substantial network of trading emporia and colonies stretching from Cyprus to Spain. However, in this instance appearances were deceiving. During the 730s the Assyrian king Tiglathpileser III, breaking with the policy of his royal predecessors, who had left the Phoenicians to their own devices as long as hefty tributes continued to be paid, attacked and captured a number of cities, including Tyre. On this occasion the Tyrians, who had initially joined an anti-Assyrian alliance with some Syrian and other Phoenician cities, suffered a lighter penalty than most others because of their swift capitulation and the huge tribute of 150 talents of gold that was then paid. This unusual leniency on the part of the Assyrians was also surely connected to the crucial role that the Tyrians continued to play in maintaining the supply of precious metals and other goods into the Near East. However, Tyrian commercial activities did now start to come under much closer Assyrian scrutiny and supervision. The freedoms that the Tyrians had jealously guarded for centuries would be gradually eroded as Assyrian customs officials became increasingly involved in the administration of the famous twin harbours, enforcing the payment of heavy customs duties on products such as wood and ensuring that Phoenician merchants did not break the ruinous trade embargo that had been placed on the Great King’s enemy, Egypt.131
It was perhaps these clear signs of weakness that led to a series of revolts by Tyrian satellites in both Phoenicia and Cyprus, and to the eventual annexation of the latter by the Assyrians, making Tyre ever more reliant on its commercial operations in the West. A Tyrian revolt against Assyrian rule led to the Tyrian monarch Luli having to flee the city and go into exile in Cyprus–an act beautifully caught on a royal Assyrian bas-relief from Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) that depicts the king with his family and retainers being bundled on to ships as the Assyrian army under the vengeful king Sennacherib is about to break into the city after a five-year siege. In a further sign of Tyre’s decline, it appears that a number of Phoenician cities that had previously been under its rule supplied the Assyrians with sixty ships so that the island city could be blockaded. Certainly Sidon was no longer under Tyrian control, and nor was most of Tyre’s former territory on the Levantine mainland. Although Tyre was still nominally an autonomous kingdom, the powers of its monarch were now severely curtailed. A new ‘agreement’ signed sometime in the second half of the 670s placed restrictions on whom the Tyrians could trade with and its famous ports were now directly administered by Assyrian officials. Moreover, a governor was stationed in Tyre to oversee Assyrian interests. The Tyrian king was now not even allowed to open official communiqués without Assyrian officials being present.132
Yet, even after several more unsuccessful rebellions during the seventh century, Assyria still resisted incorporating Tyre, along with the cities of Arvad and Byblos, into one of the three provinces into which the rest of Phoenicia had been divided. Pragmatism dictated that Assyria could not risk disrupting the Tyrian trading network in the western Mediterranean, which now supplied the bulk of the silver and other metals that the Great King relied on to maintain his rule over his diffuse domains.133 The incorporation of Tyre would in no way have guaranteed the acquiescence of colonies thousands of kilometres over the sea. Furthermore, the modes of control that the Tyrians had developed in relation to their western colonies very much centred on the figure of the king himself and his relationship with Melqart. It was much more efficient for Assyria to maintain a strictly controlled but nominally independent Tyrian monarchy.
Yet, conversely, the pressures that Tyre increasingly faced during the seventh century BC undoubtedly played some part in creating favourable conditions for the growth of a number of its western colonies. With a founder often distracted by the ongoing battle for its own political survival and an environment in which there were as yet no big predators at the top of the political food chain, these fledgling communities could develop in a way that was simply unimaginable in
the old world of the Near East. Moreover, the commercial exploitation and colonization of the central and western Mediterranean by both Phoenicians and Greeks, and their subsequent interactions with indigenous populations, based as they were on both cooperation and competition, would set an important precedent for how this new world would subsequently develop. Indeed, the greatest legacy of Tyre would not be Gades, the silver routes, or the diplomatic high-wire act with Assyria, but a colony situated on the North African coast in what is now Tunisia, whose renown would soon come to far outshine the faded lustre of its Phoenician parent.
2
New City: The Rise of Carthage
ELISSA’S REFUGE
Great cities often attract great foundation myths, and Carthage was no exception. It was said that Mattan, king of Tyre, had dictated that on his death, in 831 BC, the kingdom was to be split between his son Pygmalion and his daughter Elissa (Elisshat). However, the people of Tyre, perhaps concerned about the instability that such an equitable settlement might ferment, had protested, and Pygmalion had been crowned sole monarch. In a ruthless show of strength, the new king quickly moved to snuff out any potential opposition by ordering the assassination of his uncle Acherbas (Zakarbaal), high priest of the god Melqart and husband of Elissa. To secure her own safety Elissa pretended to bear her brother no ill will for his actions, but secretly planned to flee the city with some similarly disaffected Tyrian nobles.1
Elissa then successfully allayed the suspicions of Pygmalion by requesting that she be allowed to move into his palace, as her late husband’s residence brought back too many painful memories. Her brother was delighted, as he thought that she would bring Acherbas’ gold with her. In a wonderful psychological ruse, Elissa then took the attendants that Pygmalion had sent with her to collect her belongings on a ship out to sea, where she threw a number of sacks overboard which she claimed were full of her dead husband’s gold. She then persuaded these royal retainers to join her in flight, claiming that a painful death now awaited them at the hands of her brother, who would be enraged at the loss of this treasure. After being joined by her noble companions and offering prayers to Melqart, the party fled the city and travelled to Cyprus. There the exiles were joined by the high priest of the goddess Astarte, who, as a reward for his loyalty, demanded that the office would stay within his family for all time. Eighty girls who had been chosen to serve as sacred prostitutes at the temple of Astarte were also added to the group, so that the men should have wives and their new settlement a future population.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed Page 7