The crucial role of Melqart among the communities of Tyrian origin might also be reflected in the bilingual inscriptions of the famous cippi of Malta (CIS I, 122), dated between the third and second centuries bce, in which Melqart, bʿl ṣr (“Lord of Tyre”) in the Phoenician version, is rendered as Herakles archegetes in the Greek version. The scene contained in the story of Justin (Epit. 44.5) in which the Tyrian Melqart participates in the founding of a colony of Gadir might be a good reflection of Melqart’s role as archegetes, a term associated with the work of establishing the civic and religious origins and identity of new communities (Bonnet 2009).
Conclusions
From the middle of the fourth century bce until the second century bce, we find diverse testimonies demonstrating the existence of strong religious and cultural links between Tyre and its ancient colony Carthage. It is reasonable, however, to suppose that this relationship is not exclusive to the case of Carthage (for which we do have more extensive information due to the Classical sources’ interest in Rome’s enemy) and might have extended to the other communities of the Tyrian diaspora, most notably Gadir (for which there are fewer or no preserved sources). The connection between Tyre and Gadir, cultivated as it was over a long period of time, sheds light on a number of aspects of the descriptions of the Herakleion at Gadir in the Roman period. These aspects include the intensely “Oriental” (almost “archaizing”) nature of the rituals and priesthood in the sanctuary at Gadir, but also the “Hellenizing” elements of the sanctuary, such as the statue of Alexander contemplated by Caesar. Both phenomena can be associated with the sustained and fluid connection between the Levant and Gadir until at least the fourth century bce. The same context of intense connection between east and west beyond the colonial period can explain the Egyptian component of the sanctuary as reflected in the very identity of the god, the “Egyptian” Hercules/Herakles according to Mela (3.46) and Philostratus (VA 5.4–5).
This relationship also explains phenomena such as the worship of Milkashtart at Gadir (Marín 2011). This divinity was worshiped at Umm el-Amed, near Tyre, between the third and second centuries bce, and his cult is also evidenced in Tas Silġ, Malta (fourth century bce), Carthage (ca. second century bce), and Tripolitania (first century bce). At Gadir, the cult of Milkashtart is documented by an inscription on a gold ring from the second century bce, which has been interpreted as an indication that the priests of Melqart at Gadir remained in close contact with the cult of the metropolis (Marín 2011: 219).
The close relationship in the religious sphere between Tyre and Gadir throughout their history provides the ideal framework for the abovementioned rereading of the passage from Justin (Epit. 44.5) in which certain sacra are brought from Tyre to Iberia on the occasion of the founding of a new colony by Gadir. Although the possible chronology and the circumstances of the story are still hypothetical, its underlying logic matches up faithfully with that of the role played by Melqart of Tyre in the religious and cultural sphere among the communities of the Tyrian diaspora such as Carthage as documented in the fourth century bce.
A common Tyrian origin is the basis for the ties of kinship and solidarity which were in turn established among this group of communities. The practices which permitted the construction and maintenance of this link revolving around the figure of Melqart of Tyre have as their best example the festival in honor of the god which was celebrated in the city upon the arrival of Alexander in 332 bce, with Carthaginian delegates present. It seems reasonable to apply this model also to the relationship between Tyre and Gadir, the colony which most faithfully reproduces the characteristic elements of the figure of Melqart as an oracular and founder god housed in his famous temple at the end of the known world.
References
Álvarez Martí-Aguilar, M. 2014. “Hijos de Melqart. Justino (44.5) y la koiné tiria entre los ss. IV–III a.C.” Archivo Español de Arqsueología 87: 21–40.
Álvarez Martí-Aguilar, M. 2017. “The Network of Melqart: Tyre, Gadir, Carthage and the Founding God.” In Warlords, War and Interstate Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean 404 BC—AD 14, edited by T. Ñaco and F. López-Sánchez, 113–50. Boston and Leiden: Brill.
Amitay, O. 2008. “Why did Alexander the Great Besiege Tyre?” Athenaeum 96, no. 1: 91–102.
Aubet, M. E. 2001. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bijovsky, G. 2005. “The Ambrosial Rocks and the Sacred Precinct of Melqart in Tyre.” In Actas del XIII Congreso Internacional de Numismática. Volume 1, 829–34. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura.
Bonnet, C. 1988. Melqart. Cultes et mythes de l’Heracles tyrien en Mediterranée, Leuven: Peeters; and Namur: Presses universitaires de Namur.
Bonnet, C. 2009. “L’identité religieuse des Phéniciens dans la Diaspora. Le cas de Melqart, dieu ancestral des Tyriens.” In Entre lignes de partage et territoires de passage. Les identités religieuses dans les mondes grec et romain. “Paganismes,” “judaïsmes,” “christianisme,” edited by N. Belayche and S. C. Momouni, 295–308. Paris: Peeters.
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Fear, A. 2005. “A Journey to the End of the World.” In Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods, edited by J. Elsner and I. Rutherford, 319–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Garbati, G. 2015. “Tyre, the homeland: Carthage and Cadiz under the God’s Eyes.” In Transformations and Crisis in the Mediterranean. “Identity” and Interculturality in the Levant and Phoenician West during the 12th-8th Centuries BCE, edited by G. Garbati and T. Pedrazzi, 197–208. Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore.
García y Bellido, A. 1963. “Hercvles Gaditanvs.” Archivo Español de Arqueología 36: 70–153.
Marín, M. C. 2011. “La singularidad religiosa de Gadir en el mundo fenicio-púnico.” In Fenicios en Tartesos: nuevas perspectivas, edited by M. Álvarez Martí-Aguilar, 213–22. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Marín, M. C., and A. M. Jiménez. 2004. “Los santuarios fenicio-púnicos como centros de sabiduría: el templo de Melqart en Gadir.” Huelva Arqueológica 20: 215–39.
Mierse, W. E. 2004. “The Architecture of the Lost Temple of Hercules Gaditanus and Its Levantine Associations.” American Journal of Archaeology 108: 545–76.
Quinn, J. C. 2011. “The Cultures of the Tophet: Identification and Identity in the Phoenician Diaspora.” In Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by E. Gruen, 388–413. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
Ribichini, S. 2000. “Sui miti della fondazione di Cadice.” In Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de Estudios Fenicios y Púnicos, edited by M. E. Aubet and M. Barthelemy, 661–68. Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz.
Chapter 41
North Africa
from the Atlantic to Algeria
Alfredo Mederos Martín
State of Archaeological Work
Research in North Africa has, for the past twenty-five years, primarily been carried out in Morocco rather than Algeria, owing to the political upheaval in the latter. Although there has been no policy of emergency excavations in the primary urban centers of Morocco (which would have been especially useful in Tangiers), several of the principal sites have been partially excavated, including Mogador, Thamusida, Banasa, Lixus, and Zilil. International teams have participated alongside Moroccan researchers, including teams from Spain (Lixus, Mogador, Tamuda, Kach Kouch, Kitane, and Rio Negro-Koudia Talâa), France (Banasa, Rirha, Zilil, Kuass), Italy (Thamusida), and Germany (Mogador). Another important advance has been the emergency excavations in the cities of Ceuta-Septem Fratres and Melilla-Rusaddir, which have located Phoenician strata at Ceuta and Phoenician materials at Melilla, although with no stratum found in situ in the latter so far (for sites mentioned, follow map 41.1).
Map 41.1 Map of the North African coast from Morocco to western Tunisia, with main sites mentioned in the t
ext.
Source: A. Mederos.
Archaeological explorations, especially intense in the north of Morocco, have led to the discovery of important sites which have not yet been excavated. These prospections, too, have been carried out by international teams together with Moroccan researchers, with Spanish archaeologists in the region of Tetuan, Italian teams in the region of Rif (Sidi Dris, Bouhout), and only Moroccan researchers in the valley of the Lucus River (Azib Slaoui).
On the other hand, the region for which we have the least information is the Algerian coast, where a large part of our current knowledge still comes from excavations dating to the French colonial period. The best places to locate a Phoenician presence in this area are small islands such as Rachgoun, Iôl, and Icosium-‘yksm, along with the town of Les Andalouses. This older occupation is concentrated in the area of Oran, which creates doubt as to whether the primary Phoenician influence came from the Iberian Peninsula or from the area of Carthage and Utica.
One key area of research today concerning the Carthaginian expansion is to learn whether it took the form of an economic sphere with the goal of obtaining resources and recruiting mercenaries for its military with only scattered colonial settlements, or whether it actually involved territorial control of the northern coast of Morocco and Algeria. What follows is a survey, from west to east, of the main sites excavated from which we will draw some conclusions about the evidence of a Phoenician and Carthaginian presence in the North African coast west of Carthage and its immediate area.
Morocco
The small island of Mogador (figure 41.1) is located close to the town of Essaouira, “the wall.” The eleventh-century ce Andalusian geographer and historian Al-Bekri calls this port town by the name Amogdoul or Amegdoul, which comes from the Hebrew migdol or the Punic mogdul (Lipiński 1992: 296), meaning “tower,” perhaps because it had a wooden watchtower where a thynnoskopos—that is, a watchman who spotted schools of tuna—could stand. Paleographic reconstruction has established that ca. 700 bce, Mogador was connected to the mainland by an isthmus (Brückner and Lucas 2009: 106, fig. 13, and 2010: 104, fig. 29b), which can be dated some 150 years later, toward the last half of the sixth century bce (Mederos and Escribano 2015a: 140). On the southeastern side of the island, beside a natural beach, lies the Phoenician and Roman site (Jodin 1966: 10, fig. 4, and 16, fig. 5; Jodin 1967: 18, fig. 6, and 20, fig. 7). Although the site was discovered in 1950, only recently in 2000 basic archaeological fieldwork took place on the island and the surrounding area (López Pardo et al. 2011), and later in 2006–2008 three seasons by Dirce Marzoli and Abdelaziz El Khayari (2009, 2010). These excavations yielded amphorae of type 10.1.1.1 from the first half of the seventh century bce, Bichrome IV Ware Cypriot ceramic from Archaic Cypriot I, 750–600 bce, amphorae from Chios from 610–575 bce, and amphorae à la brosse from the second half of the sixth century bce. In this case, they could be from the same period as the Ionic-Massalian amphora of form Py 1 and border 1, dating to between 525 and 500 bce. They demonstrate a more intense occupation of Mogador in the last quarter of the seventh century bce and especially during the first half of the sixth century bce, with the settlement continuing until 525 bce (López Pardo and Mederos 2008: 383–84).
Figure 41.1 View of the islet of Mogador (Essouira, Morocco) from the beach.
Source: Photo by A. Mederos.
The city of Sala is located on the south bank of the Bou Regreg about 3 km from its mouth, sitting atop Chella Hill (Chellah). Sala is sl‘t in neo-Punic, a feminine derivative of the root sl “rock” (Lipiński 1992: 385, 420). Although primarily a Roman settlement, it has produced four fragments of bowls with red slip from the seventh and first half of the sixth centuries bce (Boube 1984: 166–67, 170).
The Sebou River still has its name from the Roman era, Sububa (Plin. HN 5.1.9). Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, the river was navigable in the winter up to Fez (Pereira 1927: 238). On the second great bend upstream from the mouth lay Thamusida (modern Sidi Ali Ben Ahmed), a site whose name is considered Libyan for “swampland” (Villaverde Vega 2001: 150 n510). Excavated again between 1999 and 2006, it exhibited an occupation from the Phoenician era in the sixth century bce and one from the Punic era from the fifth–fourth centuries bce. The latter was smaller, around 250 m2, but grew to 1.5 hectares with the fortification of the first century ce (Akerraz et al. 2010: 162). The excavations carried out between 1999 and 2006 by the University of Siena and INSAP in Rabat, codirected by Aomar Akerraz and Emanuele Papi (2008), have allowed for clarification in the second Morel dig, one of the four which took place in 1961–1962. It presents three phases, IVC and IVB, without Mañá-Pascual A4 amphorae, but with plates with red slip from the fifth–fourth centuries bce (absent at Mogador), painted cups of the Banasa 9 type, and urns of the “Cruz del Negro” type. In addition, as residual material from sector 19, one can cite an evolved R-1 amphora, T-10.1.2.1, which could reach back to the sixth century bce (Akerraz et al. 2010: 150–56, figs. 4–9).
Continuing up this navigable river, one reaches Sidi Ali bou Djenoun, Iulia Valentia Banasa (Plin. HN 5.5), a site whose ancient name may be Semitic, bnsz (Villaverde Vega 2001: 146 n470, 581), or derived from the tribe of the Baniuri (Coltelloni-Trannoy 1997: 105). New excavations were carried out in 1992 and in 1997–1998, although the Phoenician material from the end of the seventh century and on into the sixth century bce (Arharbi 2004: 413–17, fig. 17) comes from the first excavations between 1933 and 1956 by Raymond Thouvenot and Armand Luquet. The Greek pottery also suggests dates from the seventh and sixth centuries bce (Villard 1960). Michel Ponsich (1982: 441) considers this a “Phoenician foundation” from the seventh century bce, while Sylvie Girard (1984: 152) and Fernando López Pardo (1990: 14, 16) interpret it as an indigenous settlement which began to be visited by Phoenician traders in the second half of the sixth century bce.
Four kilometers from the mouth of the Lucus River is the Phoenician city of Lixus (figure 41.2), which once had an area of around 12 hectares but grew in Imperial times to around 30 hectares (Aranegui Gascó 2007: 374). It has been proposed that the name of the hill, Tšemmiš, derives from tu-šomoš (Lipiński 2004: 456), containing the Semitic name of the sun god Šamaš. While the Phoenician levels were excavated in 1951–1959 by Tarradell Mateu, the materials have come to be restudied (Belén et al. 1996, 2001), and new excavations were begun between 1995 and 2003 (Aranegui Gascó 2001, 2005) along with a final phase between 2005 and 2009 (Aranegui and Hassini 2010) which enlarged the Phoenician sector.
Figure 41.2 View of the hill of Tšemmiš where the site of the city of Lixus is (Morocco), from the Loukos River.
Source: Photo by A. Mederos.
The oldest materials from the site come from the campaign of 1957, room 3, strata 24–26 (Belén et al. 2001: 99–101, figs. 8–11). They consist of an archaic horizon, ca. 800 bce, with strong parallels to Castillo de Doña Blanca and are at the moment the oldest in Morocco. They are marked by the presence of plates with burnished red slip and very narrow borders (2.35 cm), jars with a mushroom-shaped mouth and a spherical body, a scarcity of painted ceramics, and the absence of gray ceramics despite the existence of hand-polished pottery.
The latest excavations have identified two major phases. The first one takes place before the construction of buildings, when the percentage of painted ceramics is low, basically only including pithoi and urns of the “Cruz del Negro” type. This phase begins at the end of the eighth century bce with incidental gray pottery (Álvarez García et al. 2001: 74, 77). The second phase is dominated by a structure with various quadrangular rooms that correspond to the seventh century bce, as can be seen by the width of the borders of the plates with red slip that continue until the middle of the sixth century bce (Habibi 2005: 155, 157, fig. 4; Álvarez García and Gómez Bellard 2005: 167).
In the area of Lixus there existed a temple with an altar dedicated to Melqart. According to Pliny (HN 19.63), it was older than that of Gadir, whose founding is dated to 1
106 bce, eighty years after the fall of Troy (Vell. Pat. Hist. Rom. 1.2.3). It was located at the mouth of the Lixo River, where there was a small island (Plin. HN 5.3), although no archaeological traces have been found.
Going up the Lucus River, 36 km away from Larache, one reaches Ksar-el-Kebir, the “big palace,” the Roman Oppidum Novum, which was reachable by boat until the fifteenth century. Michel Ponsich (1982: 438) mentions the presence of “Ibero-Punic” pottery painted with bands. In Azib Slaoui, 5 km to the northeast, there was Phoenician occupation starting in the second half of the sixth century bce (Akerraz and El Khayari 2000: 1651–57).
The mouth of the Gharifa River is 28 km to the south of Cape Spartel and 4 km from the mouth of the Tahadart River. On its first bend are the salt factories of the village of Kuass and the salt pools nearby. The name comes from an Arabic word meaning “arches,” after a Roman aqueduct which provided water to the settlement, although it has also been associated with the Libyan Akwass (Lipiński 2004: 452). It was excavated recently in 2009–2010 (Kbiri Alaoui et al. 2011: 621–22) when the materials from older excavations was also reexamined. We can distinguish a phase with amphorae from the seventh–sixth centuries bce, another phase from the end of the fifth century and including the entire fourth century bce, and a third most recent phase between the end of the fourth century and the first half of the third century bce (Kbiri Alaoui 2007; López Pardo and Mederos 2008: 189–90).
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