The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz

  The Most Powerful Myths: A Question of Connectedness

  Certain symbols and myths which first emanated from the Phoenician civilization have persistently been used to shape the Lebanese’s new identity as skilled navigators, craftsmen, and commercial traders. These symbols and myths were connected to mythical figures who, just as the real navigators, craftsmen, and traders, belonged within a much broader Mediterranean setting. Just as the “boat” and the “oar” were integral symbols for the exportation of Phoenician skills, so did the myths of Europa and Cadmus (Greek Kadmos) reinforce the idea of cultural exchanges.

  “The Boat and the Oar”

  The title of one of Michel Chiha’s editorials in the Le Jour newspaper (February 11, 1944) referred to the maritime traditions of these hardy seafarers who navigated the seas long before the invention of the mariner’s compass (Markoe 2000: 12). Not only were they skilled navigators but the Phoenicians also excelled in building boats, including the famous biremes of the late eighth century bce, which were used by the Greeks and Romans, as well as another category of merchant ships (on ships, see chapter 27, this volume). Undoubtedly, the broader and more obvious implications of boatbuilding and seafaring are a direct reflection of a symbiotic relationship between practical behavior and ritual symbology. As it happens, Chiha was not a devotee of “Phoenicianism,” but he did see the Lebanese commercial middle classes as comparable to Phoenician traders of ancient times, and he did feel that the accomplishments and endured hardships of expatriate Lebanese were equal in daring adventurism to that of the ancient Phoenicians (Salem 1994: 236).

  Hiram Abi, the Phoenician Craftsman

  The presence of Phoenician architects and craftsmen in Palestine during the ninth century bce is well documented (Aubet 2001: 47). Hiram Abi (also spelled Huram-abi), the skilled Phoenician mentioned in 1 Kings 7:40–46 and 2 Chronicles 2:13 and 4:11–16 who helped to build Solomon’s temple and who had many skills and was able to carry out all ideas which were given to him, epitomizes the spirit of Lebanese entrepreneurship by providing whatever skills or services were in demand and by taking advantage of opportunities as they arose. Thus, during a lecture at Corm’s 1933 Beirut cultural “salon” known as the “Amitiés Libanaises,” Lebanese Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others gathered there enthusiastically applauded the mention of Hiram, the builder of the Temple of Jerusalem (Salameh 2015: 16).

  Europa

  According to the legend, Europa was the daughter of Phoinix or Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and Telephassa; her brother was Cadmus. Zeus, in the form of a bull, seduced and carried Europa away to Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. Their father sent her brother Cadmus to search for her. Europa, now the Queen of Crete, mated with a divine bull and bore a son called Minos. The siblings Cadmus and Europa were Phoenician. In January 1938, a new literary journal called Phénicia, published by Aurore Ougour, explained that the image on its cover (figure 47.1) featuring a design by the Lebanese sculptor Joseph Hoyeck was a “powerfully conceived and executed design that evokes the legend of Europe abducted by Zeus who took the form of a bull and was therefore embarked on a cruise of love. Just like Europa, the ‘Phénicia’ magazine wants to undertake a cruise that seeks to be a cruise of the souls” (Phénicia 1938: 2).

  Figure 47.1 Cover of the literary journal Phénicia, published by Aurore Ougour, featuring a design by the Lebanese sculptor Joseph Hoyeck that evokes the legend of Europe abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull.

  Source: Public domain.

  Cadmus

  The History of Herodotus (II.49, V.57.1–58.2), completed in the second half of the fifth century bce, is the main source of the legend of Cadmus. This legend reflects the inclusion of an early ancient Greek narrative relating to Thebes in Boeotia. It tells of the Phoenician expansion in the Mediterranean that continued until the first millennium bce, and is the first reference in ancient literature to explicitly identify Cadmus as a Phoenician. Phoenicians were responsible for the introduction and adoption of the Greek alphabet (Hdt. 5.57.1–58.2), and according to Herodotus, the Phoenician consonantal alphabet was imported to the Boeotian city of Thebes by the legendary Phoenician, Cadmus. Ancient references relating to the Phoenician expansion in the Mediterranean usually mention either Tyre or Sidon, and the character of Cadmus could be linked to either of these two entities (Lipiński 2015: 102, 105, 106). Cadmus became the subject of the Lebanese poet Said Aql’s most famous masterpiece, and his work can justifiably be described as the foundation of modern “Libanisme” (Durtal 1978: 66). According to Fouad Boustany, one-time rector of the Lebanese University, Cadmus may be “the only vestige of Arabic language which represents classical tragedy” and “Cadmus is in any case ‘the charter of Libanisme’” (Durtal 1978: 69).

  The “Bridge,” the “Link,” the “Meeting Point”

  Phoenicians were, according to Homer, middlemen. Although Renan never recognized a true Phoenician identity, he did acknowledge their role as intermediaries (Renan 1864: 829–30). Fernand Braudel also calls the Phoenicians “the born-intermediates of the Levant” (Braudel 1998: 107). This historical link between East and West was celebrated by a plethora of lectures and articles mostly given in the Cénacle Libanais. It follows, therefore, that Lebanon has a constructive role to play in the international arena. It consists in being true to the best of the East and West alike: “This burden of mediation and understanding, she is uniquely called to bear” (Malik 1952: 239). The dilemma lies in deciding between the Arab world, of which Lebanon is an integral part, and the West, in which Lebanon strongly participates. Chiha acknowledged that,

  Lebanon is certainly a very small country, but its uniqueness is indisputable. It is a very old country that today we say is very young. Its geographical location on the Mediterranean is one of the most important and the most exposed of any country. It is located between a land and a sea route that are the most important paths on the globe. From a particular point of view and when seen from a certain angle, it has contributed more than any other country to facilitating connections between the different cultures of the four corners of the globe. (Chiha 2018: 27)

  As Malik also put it, “The Near East is associated with history. It is the cradle of Western civilization, the source of the three Semitic world religions and the birthplace of a number of historic cultures” (Malik 1948: 1). Moreover, “If a circle is drawn on the map with Beirut or Damascus or Jerusalem as its centre and with a radius of about nine hundred miles, this circle will pretty nearly comprise the whole of the Near East” (Malik 1952: 231).

  For some, the function of “bridging” East and West—“linking” Christianity and Islam, or “meeting” the desert and the sea, the Arabs and Europeans, the Mediterranean and the continent, as well as to act as a “shelter” for minorities—did not really encourage a solid national identity. Rather, it led to the conception of Lebanon as a sort of passive actor, a passive place, while history was being made elsewhere in the region (Salamé 1986: 4–5; Maila 2005: 4). In contrast, Hourani maintains that the role of Lebanon as belonging to two worlds is valid, if not a precarious balance (Hourani 1983: 319–20; Al-Sudairi 1999: 97): “Mediterranean or Arab, because it bears the mark of both…a blend of two worlds, it must try not to be untrue to either side of its nature or either of its two interests” (Hourani 1983: 321). For the poet Said Aql (1912–2014), the history of Lebanon clearly indicates that it belongs neither to the East nor to the West, but is, rather, an “initiator” and a “giver” to East and West alike (Durtal 1978: 71).

  Commercial Skills and Entrepreneurship

  In 1948, a movement known as the “New Phoenicians” was founded in Beirut by a group of mainly Christian merchants, bankers, and economists (Gates 1998: 82, 95), who claimed that the Lebanese people had inherited their commercial talents from their forefathers, the earliest entrepreneurs in human history (Kaufman 2014: 233). This group operated under the banner of the Société Libanaise d’Economie Politique (SLEP), whose ideological mentor was the ec
onomist Gabriel Menassa. Their doctrine held that, as a small country without natural resources, Lebanon’s development should rely on its economic openness, which would enable it to play its role as a commercial and financial intermediary at the hinge of the Western and Arab worlds. This “idea of Lebanon,” applying the Phoenician myth to a strict laissez-faire policy, was enacted in 1950, when the customs union between Lebanon and Syria broke down. The immediate beneficiary of the rupture was Lebanon, which now began to receive all its customs revenue instead of only 44 percent, as had been formerly the case. However, much of Lebanon’s imports were destined for resale in Syria. These economic advantages did realize their full effect during the presidency of Camille Chamoun (1952–1958), when the country saw rapid economic growth, and the period came to be known as the “economic miracle” (Shehadi 1987: 3–4).

  DNA: The Answer to the Phoenician Identity?

  Current DNA research results are transforming the conventional wisdom regarding the Phoenicians and their diaspora. A most recent study undertaken by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have sequenced the entire genomes of 4,000-year-old Canaanite individuals who lived in Sidon and compared these to 99 present-day Lebanese. The results, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics (Haber et al. 2017), suggest that present-day Lebanese are direct descendants of the ancient Canaanites, with an additional small proportion of ancestry deriving from a different Eurasian population. These results concur with the evidence of continuity ascertained by archaeologists. Such collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists greatly enriches both fields of study and can help answer questions about ancestry in ways that experts in either field, working alone, would find difficult to answer.

  Conclusion

  Whether Phoenician or Arab, “Lebanon today is a political society condemned to know and understand the real facts of its history if it seeks to survive…and what applies to Lebanon in this respect also applies to the whole Arab world” (Salibi 1988: 217, 218). Aspects of identity become crucial at critical times and are politically irrelevant at other times (Salamé 1986: 25). Lebanese are not divided any more on the independence of their country, nor do they request the annexation of the country to a larger entity, nor its partition. They are not divided on the nature of their parliamentary government, nor on their Arab identity (Maila 2005: 14). However, Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese-born French author, points out the great tension that still troubles the two cultures by stressing the dangers “[of] encourag[ing] our contemporaries to affirm their identity and the obligation to find at the bottom of themselves this purported fundamental belonging, often religious or national or ethnic or racial and waving it proudly in the face of others” (1998: 11, 33). Lebanon is often cited as definitive proof that a Middle Eastern country cannot tolerate religious and ethnic plurality; but the reality is much more complicated and far less decisive. The consciousness of a Lebanese identity, however fragmented and pluralistic it may seem, exists in spite of the tension. This is evidenced, for example, by the Makassed Association, a Sunni Muslim charity that declared itself both Sunni and Lebanese during and after the war, and with a Makassed student declaring that his “Lebanese identity…is not distinct from his Arab identity” (Terc 2006). Shia schools currently promote a new cognizance of their political majority, but do not question the existence of a Lebanese entity embodied in the state (Thomas 2012: 308, 382).

  From 1989 to the present, thirty-five targeted car-bomb assassinations of prominent politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and innocent bystanders belonging to all religions have taken place in Lebanon (Knudzen 2010: 15). These targets were Lebanese men and women who wished to affirm Lebanon’s uniqueness and independence. Identifying as Lebanese, rather than as Christians or Muslims, followers of the Sunni Lebanese Mustakbal movement adopted in 2006 their motto “Loubnan Awwalan,” or “Lebanon First” (Blanford 2006: 210–11).

  While Phoenician identity is embedded in modern Lebanese culture, strong sectarianist movements are sweeping through the region. However, as Amin Maalouf concludes, identity is not given once and for all; it is built and transformed throughout its existence (1998: 11, 13). While the search for a historical and philosophical basis for the historical Lebanese character continues, calling for tenacity and resilience, it is through the day-by-day process of being Lebanese that the people of Lebanon are becoming a nation (Salibi 1971: 86).

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