The Iron Age: Iconographic Evidence
While Bronze Age Syro-Canaanite vessels were frequently depicted in Egyptian art, Assyrian reliefs provide Iron Age iconographic evidence for Phoenician ships and seafaring. Schematically represented Phoenician vessels featuring horse heads (hippoi) on both bow and stern finials bearing tribute are depicted on the Balawat gates of Shalmaneser III, ca. 850 bce (King 1915). No rigging is shown; instead, they are depicted as being propelled only by oars. A wall relief from the palace of the late eighth-century Assyrian king Sargon II at Khorsabad features similar craft, but with hippoi only at the bows, and with the rowers facing fore instead of aft (Casson 1971; McGrail 2004).
The most detailed representations of seagoing Phoenician ships come from the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh (figure 27.1). In a relief depicting the Tyrian king Luli’s waterborne flight to Cyprus in 701 bce, two types of ships are shown: sleek galleys and round merchantmen (Wachsmann 1998). The warships feature sharp-edged waterline rams and brailed sailing rigs, while the round ships’ rigging is not depicted. Both feature twin banks of oars, and may be intended to represent ships as large as fifty-oared pentekontors, although only nine to eleven rowers are depicted per side, as the figures are presented at a much larger scale than the ships.
Figure 27.1 Relief from the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh showing the waterborne flight of the Phoenician king Luli, along with merchantmen and warships filled with the men, women, and children of Tyre, ca. 701 bce.
Source: After Layard 1849–53: pl. 71 (public domain).
The Iron Age: Shipwreck Evidence
Though small in number, notable Phoenician and Punic shipwrecks have been discovered across the Mediterranean, from Ashkelon on the Levantine coast to the region of Murcia on the southeast coast of Spain. Together, they provide a picture—albeit an incomplete one—of several aspects of travel, trade, and combat, including open-water voyages, cabotage, and warfare on the open sea.
Ashkelon
In 1997, while searching for the lost Israeli submarine INS Dakar, the U.S. Navy research vessel NR-1 discovered two ancient shipwrecks off the coast of Ashkelon, Israel (figure 27.2). Christened Tanit and Elissa by their excavators, the two vessels, which date to the eighth century bce, were found lying upright at a depth of 400 m (Ballard et al. 2002). Each wreck featured nearly 400 visible torpedo-shaped amphorae, and residue analysis on vessels recovered from the wreckage indicated that the main cargo was likely wine, perhaps destined either for Carthage or for Egypt. They were identified as Phoenician based on the form of the amphorae, which is well known from the Phoenician coast and from Carthage, and on petrographic analysis demonstrating their origin on the central Lebanese coast (Ballard et al. 2002).
Figure 27.2 Amphora pile from the Tanit shipwreck (ca. 750 bce), one of two Phoenician shipwrecks found in deep water off the coast of Ashkelon.
Source: Courtesy of H. Singh, J. Howland. © WHOI, IFE, Ashkelon Excavations.
With their beam approximately one-third their length, these vessels are likely to have been closer in form to the round ships of Sennacherib’s relief than to longer, sleeker galleys. Along with being the earliest vessels discovered in deep water, Tanit and Elissa provide evidence for seafaring at some distance from the coast in the early first millennium bce, while their proximity to each other suggests that they were sailing together—perhaps as part of a larger fleet, owing either to the size of the delivery or for mutual protection—and foundered in the same nautical event. The presence of cooking pots and bowls supports an image of life at sea in which the preparation and consumption of food—in particular, fish-based “one-pot stews”—was carried out on board cargo vessels during long journeys, particularly when sailing at some distance from shore (Ballard et al. 2002). (For the Phoenicians in the Levant, see chapter 30, this volume.)
Malta
Diodorus Siculus characterized the harbors of Malta and Gozo, and the islands’ position in the open sea, as reasons for the establishment of Phoenician colonies on them (Diod. Sic. Library 5.12.1–4). In recent years, material evidence for Phoenician and Punic shipping has been discovered on the sea floor near Xlendi Bay, on the western side of Gozo. In 1961, a team of divers from the British vessel HMS Falcon discovered a trail of artifacts spread across the bay; since then, several Phoenician vessels have been found in the area, including one amphora that dates as far back as the seventh century bce and many more from the later first millennium (Azzopardi 2013). In 2001, during remote-operated vehicle operations near the entrance to Xlendi Bay, a massive amphora scatter covering 4 square km was discovered. Resting at a depth between 100 m and 130 m, the scatter contained thousands of vessels of at least seven different dates and types, including Punic amphorae dating to the third century bce. Following this, during a 2008 survey of the Maltese archipelago, another shipwreck was located off the coast of Xlendi. The oldest known shipwreck in the western Mediterranean, this Phoenician vessel sank in the early seventh century bce, resting on a submerged plateau at a depth of 110 m. Protected by sand, which likely covered the ship’s remains shortly after it sank, the ship’s cargo remains tightly clustered in the shape of the original vessel, with a length of 12 m and a beam of 5 m. The primary cargo was two layers of amphorae, which were of mixed Phoenician and Tyrrhenian origin (Drap et al. 2015). (For the Phoenicians in Malta, see chapter 36, this volume.)
Spain
Mazarrón
The southeastern coast of Spain features several natural harbors, as well as access to the region’s rich metal supply, which has been exploited since the Bronze Age (for metallurgy, see chapter 26, this volume). Material evidence has been found for Phoenician traffic in the area from the seventh century bce, with over 50 percent of the numerous ceramics found in the shallow waters off the coast of Playa de la Isla, having been identified as Phoenician or Punic (Abdelhamid 2015). In the late twentieth century, the construction of a seawall for the marina at Mazarrón stripped away the seabed in the bay at Playa de la Isla, revealing two seventh-century shipwrecks that had previously been covered by sediment (Negueruela et al. 1995). The vessels, called Mazarrón-1 and Mazarrón-2, were small craft, perhaps engaged in a local cabotage circuit. Amphorae found in the Mazarrón-1 assemblage were primarily Trayamar-1 type, characteristic of Phoenician cargoes in the western Mediterranean from the eighth century bce. The remains of the vessel itself, which included a complete keel 4.5 m in length, were raised in 1995 and transferred to the Museo Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática in Cartagena (Negueruela Martínez 2014). The Mazarrón-2 shipwreck, excavated from 1999 to 2001, was almost completely preserved. The vessel was 8.15 m long with a beam of 2.2 m, and was filled with just over three tons of locally mined, bun-shaped lead ingots, which it may have been transported across the bay or along the coast on a voyage of local supply. The vessels are similar in size and dimension, and both were constructed shell first, with mortise-and-tenon joinery and sewn frames (Negueruela Martínez 2014). Given their small size, the nature of their cargo, the Mazarrón vessels were likely engaged missions of local trade and supply, rather than open-ocean travel. Similar activity in metals trade is also reflected in a late seventh-century bce shipwreck at Rochelongue, on the southern coast of France, where copper ingots, weapons, and other bronze objects provide evidence for the recovery and transport of objects for recasting and later use (Aubet Semmler 2002).
Bajo de la Campana
Three further assemblages were discovered northeast of Cartagena, at the submerged site of Bajo de la Campana. These include the remains of a late seventh-century bce Phoenician vessel, a second-century bce Punic vessel, and a Roman shipwreck from the first century ce. Only the earliest of these has been excavated; it carried raw ivory, including over fifty elephant tusks, seven of which bore Phoenician inscriptions, as well as raw metals. Approximately one ton of lead ore was on board, as were ingots of copper and smelted tin. The raw materials, combined with other items on board (ivory-handled knives or daggers, an antler pi
n, double-ended boxwood combs, bronze furniture elements, and decorated ostrich eggshells) were typical of those exchanged with ore-rich indigenous populations, and may suggest that the vessel was on a supply or trading mission, perhaps to the colonial trading port of La Fonteta approximately 45 km up the coast. Only a small fragment of the hull was recovered, including a portion of one mortise, thus confirming that the hull of this vessel, too, was connected via mortise-and-tenon joinery (Polzer 2014). (For the Phoenicians on the Iberian Pinínsula, see chapter 38, this volume.)
Sicily
Marsala (Lilybaeum)
In the early 1970s, two shallow-water Punic shipwrecks were surveyed and excavated near Marsala, on the west coast of Sicily near the ancient city of Lilybaeum. Only the stern remained of the first ship, which was discovered in 1969 and excavated between 1971 and 1974. The freshness of its pigment and tool marks suggests that the vessel was still very new when it sank, while inclusions in the luting (putty used to fill gaps in the hill planking) attests to the celerity with which it was constructed; these come from the leafy dunnage that served as a buffer between ballast and hull and from wood shavings from superstructure construction, which seems to have been ongoing as the luting and dunnage were laid (Frost 1982).
One of the most remarkable aspects of this vessel was the presence of Punic characters, written in black on the yellow pine wood of the ship’s keel and planking. Variations in script suggest multiple literate hands at work, while the “pre-fab” nature of Punic vessels supports accounts of the swiftness with which they could construct large numbers of ships (Frost 1982). It may also help explain how the Romans, according to Pliny (HN 16.192) and Polybius (1.20), could have been able to quickly assemble a fleet using a single Punic ship as a model.
Of the second vessel, discovered in 1972, only the bow remained, complete with a pointed timber ram similar to those depicted in the aforementioned reliefs of Sennacherib. The ram, which was formed by nailing two upward-curving timbers to either side of the keel, mounting a central timber at the front of the stempost, and perhaps sheathing the entire apparatus in bronze, may have been designed to break off upon impact (Basch and Frost 1975). A Punic character was inscribed on the ram’s starboard timber.
The combination of the ram, the absence of amphorae in the wreckage, and the presence of ballast stones for offsetting the force of the wind on the sail marked the Marsala vessels as warships (Basch and Frost 1975; Tusa and Royal 2012). The lack of natural hazards in the area, combined with the angle at which the first wreck’s keel had been driven into the ocean bottom and the second wreck’s keel snapped from a violent force amidships, led their excavator attribute their sinkings to acts of war, perhaps as part of the First Punic War (Basch and Frost 1975). (On the Punic Wars, see chapter 13, this volume.)
Battle of the Egadi Islands
Beginning in 2005, the Soprintendenza del Mare of the Regione Siciliana and RPM Nautical Foundation conducted a survey of the ocean bottom around the Egadi Islands off northwest Sicily. Finds from this area have provided material support for the documentary evidence for the battle traditionally held to have been site of the final battle of the First Punic War in 241 bce (Polyb. 1.59–61). Surveys of this area have turned up a number of significant finds, including at least eight bronze helmets, several hundred Punic and Greco-Italic amphorae, and various other objects. In Polybius’s account, the wind was high and the sea was rough at the time of the Egadi Islands battle, and the Carthaginian warships were crewed by inexperienced sailors and overloaded with supplies intended for the garrison at Eryx, near Drepana in western Sicily (Polyb. 1.60–61). According to Polybius, the results were disastrous, and the material evidence found thus far supports this account. The presence of helmets and the distribution of amphorae on the sea floor attests to the load these vessels were carrying at the time of their demise (Tusa and Royal 2012).
The most remarkable finds in this area are eleven inscribed bronze rams from Roman and Punic warships (Tusa and Royal 2012; figure 27.3). Classical in form, unlike the “tusk”-shaped Marsala ram, which curved upward from the keel, the Egadi rams were formed of three fins, wale pockets, and a vertical cowl. They were molded directly onto the ramming and wale timbers on the ship’s bow via the lost-wax method, and affixed with bronze spikes (Steffy 1991; Tusa and Royal 2012). Seven rams bore inscriptions in Latin, one in Punic, and three have not been identified (Prag 2014). At least two show damage that may have been caused by violent collisions (Tusa and Royal 2012). The fact they remained attached to their bow timbers demonstrates that the rams sank with their attached ships, rather than breaking off and sinking on their own. (For the Phoenicians in the Sicily, see chapter 35, and for the Punic Wars, see chapter 13, this volume.)
Figure 27.3 Frontal view and profile of the Punic warship ram Egadi 3, discovered in 2010, third century bce.
Source: After Tusa and Royal 2012: fig 6 (with permission).
Conclusion
Though small in number, the Phoenician and Punic shipwrecks found and excavated thus far provide valuable evidence of this culture’s critical maritime component. Within the last decade in particular, the excavation of the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck has shed new light on Phoenician seafaring and ship construction, while the discovery of the Xlendi wreck has provided new evidence for Phoenician activity in the central Mediterranean, while survey and excavation in Sicily have provided a remarkable material counterpart to the textual evidence for the events at the end of the First Punic War. When combined with the deep-water wrecks off the coast of Ashkelon and the smaller, locally oriented Mazarrón wrecks, a more coherent—albeit still very incomplete—picture of Phoenician and Punic activity begins to take shape. The limited documentary and iconographic evidence makes material remains particularly valuable, and, we can be optimistic ongoing survey and excavation across the Mediterranean basin will bring more evidence to light in future years about this seafaring people’s maritime activities.
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