As noted here, the absence of purportedly Phoenician arts in the Levantine homeland Phoenician cities presents a serious critique of the association of these material luxury arts with this group (Vella 2010: 24). For instance, only very few lower-quality ivories have been found at Carthage—far fewer than have been found at non-Phoenician sites around the Mediterranean—and no metal bowls or tridacna shells (Lancel 1995: 72–76; Niemeyer 2003: 204–205n4; La Méditerranée des Phéniciens 2007: nos. 316–18; Aruz et al. 2014: nos. 84, 85). Ivories from Iberia, dated to the seventh and sixth centuries bce, further complicate the situation owing to their Orientalizing influences, but also to their strongly local flavor that clearly distinguishes them from the purportedly “original” Phoenician ivories (Quesada Sanz 2014; Celestino and López-Ruiz 2016: 285–89).
Hans Georg Niemeyer, in discussing the discrepancy between the non-Phoenician findspots of the “high” arts and the known materials from Phoenician settlements (which seem to veer toward aniconism), nevertheless, rejects the possibility that the luxury arts might not in fact be Phoenician. Rather, he sees the lack of such material in Phoenician cities as an indicator that the luxury arts were produced only for exchange, arguing that “a lubricant in a network of far-reaching interconnections, they were gifts conferring honour and brought gifts in return” (Niemeyer 2003: 205). While there may be some merit in attributing to these materials a purposeful exchange function (also Vella 2010), it is nevertheless an entirely unprovable claim (the Homeric references not standing as sufficient evidence). Given the likelihood for production of such luxury goods beyond the strict boundaries of the Phoenician homeland, as sketched here, the picture—regarding the role of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing trends and regarding the process of Orientalization in itself—would appear to be rather more complex than has often been acknowledged.
Conclusions
Instead of “Orientalizing”—with its rigid dichotomy of East and West and its unidirectionality from East to West—we might rather think of connectivity and networking, with no single point of origin and no single point of geographical orientation (Hodos 2006; Pedrazzi 2016; Martin 2017). From this perspective, the eighth and seventh centuries bce remain significant for their high level of connectivity around and beyond the Mediterranean. The Levantine cities traditionally associated with Phoenicia were certainly prime participants in this connectivity; yet, so, too, were other cities in the greater Levantine region, as well as cities throughout the Mediterranean, such as in Cyprus, western Anatolia, Greece, Italy, North Africa, and Iberia. These included newly founded cities (Phoenician, Greek, or otherwise) whose ties to their homeland almost certainly varied from one to another and fluctuated in intensity through time. As Tatiana Pedrazzi (2016: 18) has recently argued, “the so-called ‘Orientalizing’ phenomenon should be redefined.… Rather, the process that developed between the 8th and 7th centuries might be better described as ‘Mediterraneanizing,’ since it consists in the (multicentric) processing of an effectively pan-Mediterranean cultural language.”
Opening the question up to multiple directionalities of contact and exchange does not mean that all areas around the Mediterranean participated with equal intensity or along the same vectors of cultural production. If one restricts the purview to the production of what might be called the “high arts,” then there certainly can be a case made for a general wave of influence from more eastern parts of the Mediterranean—similar to Purcell’s (2006: 22) notion of “westward-pointing signposts”—and here I would include Greece in the equation as partaking in this eastern wave through its own colonizing activities in Italy and elsewhere. However, when the parameters are opened fully to encompass all cultural activity, the process of supposed east–west Orientalization must be viewed as a more multidimensional set of exchanges. As postcolonial studies have demonstrated over the last several decades, “influences” are never unidirectional; there is always a returning impact on the supposed influencer as a result of contact and exchanges (Dietler 2009: 23–34)—what Purcell (2006: 28) suggests may be “eastward pointing signposts.” A consideration of how the Phoenicians (and their cultural production) were affected by their engagements with other peoples is still to be undertaken in a systematic manner (but see, briefly, Gunter 2014: 92–93, and for the sixth century bce and later periods, Bondì 2014). Such an endeavor entails working first at the micro scale of single sites (Pedrazzi 2016: 22), without assuming larger-scale homogeneity, and then piecing these micro-histories together in mosaic form. Unfortunately, the highly skilled and sumptuous arts typically associated with the Phoenicians cannot play much role in this endeavor. Indeed, these must be severed from the boundaries of a strictly Phoenician identity and permitted to belong to a much larger, more fluid network of crafting traditions across the greater Levant and beyond (Van Dongen 2010: 474; Feldman 2014; Martin 2017: 96).
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Chapter 25
Coins
John W. Betlyon
Phoenician numismatics is the study of the coinage and mints of the fifth- and fourth-century bce Phoenician city-states. Punic numismatics is the study of the coins struck in the Phoenician colonies in the central and western Mediterranean in later years. Coins did not originate in Phoenicia. But the early coins that circulated in East Greece (Asia Minor) by the end of the sixth century bce also circulated in the eastern Mediterranean world. Scholars have debated the origins of coinage, but most are in agreement that coinage was developed to facilitate trade, commerce, and the collection of taxes by governmental authorities. Coined money was more easily used in commercial and official capacities than were other forms of “money” (Betlyon 1996: 695–96). Texts from the early first millennium bce contain references to payment for goods and services “in kind,” or by some equivalent weight according to one of the many prevailing weight standards. Hoards of “money,” consisting of bits and pieces of silver wire, or small ingots, have been found at a number of sites throughout the Mediterranean—from east to west, and north to south. It is no wonder that “coined” money became so widely accepted after its introduction in the sixth century. All aspects of commerce, tax collection, and banking became simpler. In this milieu, the Phoenician city-states—always very interested in commerce and gaining economic advantage over their rival Greeks and East Greeks—began to strike coins in collaboration with their Persian overlords in the fifth century bce.
European travelers to the “East” collected coins because they were valuable for their metallic content, but also because they were miniature works of art. Many were beautifully struck, demonstrating great skill in metal working and die cutting. They were also politically relevant, representing the political authority that produced the coins and put them into circulation. While the earliest
coins in the eastern Mediterranean were probably struck to facilitate the collection of taxes, tolls, and tariffs, the ease with which simple commercial transactions could be done using coins, rather than weighing metal bullion according to differing weight standards, was fairly obvious. As familiarity with coins spread from Lydia in East Greece to the Greek mainland, the Cyclades, and into the trade routes moving east, more and more political authorities produced coined money. These coins eventually became important additions to the royal collections of Europe. Some early studies of coins from the eastern Mediterranean were made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. J. P. Six (1877: 177–239) studied the known coins from mints that were identified as Sidon, Tyre, Aradus, and Byblos, as early as 1877. Jacques Rouvier (1901: 103–17, 1902: 99–116) expanded Six’s work twenty years later. Major efforts to publish the great European collections housed in Paris and London completed the standard catalogues of the earliest coins of Phoenicia, including the work of Ernst Babelon (1910) and George Foote Hill (1910).
Because the Phoenician coins were considered artifacts of the “Classical” world, they were studied by scholars trained in the Classics and Classical languages, even though the coins’ ethnics were written in the Phoenician or Aramaic languages (not in Greek or Latin). While historical sources from the Persian period (ca. 550–332 bce) are sadly lacking from ancient Phoenicia, continuing archaeological discoveries have slowly expanded our knowledge of the region, the era, and the coins. Maurice Dunand’s excavations at Sidon increased our knowledge of the site. Recent epigraphic finds further increased the precision with which the fifth- and fourth-century bce Sidonian king list could be delineated (Dunand 1965: 105–109).
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