Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period

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Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period María Eugenia Aubet The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000-332 BCE Edited by Ann E. Killebrew and Margreet Steiner

Print Publication Date: Nov 2013 Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of the Near East Online Publication Date: Mar 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199212972.013.046

Abstract and Keywords

This articleanalyses archaeological evidence concerning the condition and developments in Phoenicia during the Iron Age II. It suggests that the Phoenician history during this period is aligned with the history of Tyre, which took the initiative in transforming Phoenicia into a commercial, territorial and colonial power. The article explains the causes of Tyre’s ascendancy during this period. These include the destruction of Ugarit at the beginning of the twelfth century BC, the decline of Egypt (which left Phoenicia free of administrative interference), and the absence of competitors in Levantine trade after the ‘crisis years’ that left the Phoenician cities in a position to resume the long-range economic strategy which had caused cities such as Byblos and Ugarit to prosper.

Keywords: Phoenicia, Iron Age II, Tyre, colonial power, Ugarit, Egypt, Levantine trade, crisis years

Introduction

During Iron Age II (900–600 BC) Phoenician history became aligned with the history of Tyre. Archaeological evidence shows that the city of Tyre took the initiative in transforming Phoenicia into a commercial, territorial, and colonial power (Fig. 46.1). The transformation began at the end of Iron I in the middle of the 11th century BC, when the whole region of the Bay of Akko and Mount Carmel became part of a southerly extension of Phoenicia, and Tyre set up its first trading post in Palaepaphos, on southwest Cyprus.

The causes of Tyre’s ascendancy during Iron II are the result of a number of factors that came together at the end of Iron I. In the first place, with the destruction of Ugarit at the beginning of the 12th century BC, the chief maritime and commercial power in the region disappeared, shifting the main focus of interregional trade southwards. Secondly, the

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period decline of Egypt left Phoenicia free of administrative interference, conferring a high degree of independence on its cities. Lastly, the absence of competitors in Levantine trade after the ‘crisis years’ left the Phoenician cities in a position to resume the long- range economic strategy that had caused cities like Byblos and Ugarit to prosper: that of acting as intermediaries between the great empires of the interior and the peripheral regions of Syria, Galilee, and the Mediterranean, and supplying strategic raw materials like copper, silver, and tin. Recent excavations in the region, moreover, demonstrate that the Phoenician cities remained at the margins of the serious destructions that devastated the region at the end of the Bronze Age. They were thus able quickly to regain control of the maritime circuits of exchange and connect them with the principal land networks, thanks to the privileged position of their ports, which afforded them good communication along the roads to the Beqa‘ Valley, Damascus, Lower Galilee, and Jordan Valley. So it can be said that at the beginning of Iron II the Phoenician cities had become genuine regional markets. Neither Tyre nor Sidon were a great centre of production, and their political institutions and merchant corporations succeeded in monopolizing the distribution of products and raw materials created by others.

It had been thought that the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age in Phoenicia had implied the replacement of a palace-administered exchange by a decentralized and (p. 707) entrepreneurial trade, and Phoenician trade was described as an activity characteristic of ‘merchant capitalism’. This interpretation was undoubtedly strongly influenced by the Homeric texts. The reality is much more complex and, as in so many other cases, Click to view larger archaeology reflects a strong Fig. 46.1 Map of Iron Age II sites in Phoenicia continuity with Late Bronze Age traditions in which private trade and institutional trade were intermixed and coexisted.

We know the archaeological sequence of Iron II thanks to important stratified deposits of ceramics and architecture identified in Tyre, Sarepta, Cyprus, Dor, Tell Abu Hawam, (p. 708) and Tel Keisan. These sequences, together with the Tyre stratigraphy established by Bikai in 1973–4 in the centre of the island (Bikai 1978), show the main features of the evolution of Phoenician pottery, easily recognizable and sober, standardized with

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period conservative shapes and simple decoration. In its general evolutionary tendency we can observe three fundamental changes:

1. The presence of Phoenician pottery, as in Strata XIII–X in Tyre (1050–850 bc) where the types characteristic of Phoenician Iron Age pottery appear for the first time, was strongly imbued with the traditions of the Late Bronze Age, together with Cypriot pottery, and the so-called Philistine pottery. Known as the ‘Kouklia horizon’ in Cyprus (Bikai 1987: 50–53), its most representative forms are the pilgrim flask, the palm tree jar, the dipper juglet, the strainer-spouted jar, and the round-based juglets with Bichrome decoration of concentric circles. At a later point in this period, during the first half of the 9th century BC (= Tyre X), burials began in the recently excavated zone of the Al-Bass cemetery. 2. The pottery of Tyre IX–IV (850–760 BC), or ‘Salamis horizon’ in Cyprus, shows transitional forms in which the circle decoration gives way to horizontal bands. Red Slip Ware makes an appearance and gradually increases, the most representative forms being the trefoil juglet with a long neck and the square-rimmed juglet (Fig. 46.2a), a forerunner of the famous mushroom-lipped jug. 3. In Strata III–II at Tyre, or the ‘Kition horizon’ in Cyprus (760–700 BC), the classic forms of the colonies in the West appear: the square- rim juglet becomes the mushroom-lip jug (Fig. 46.2b), the Click to view larger trefoil globular juglet Fig. 46.2 Juglets from Al-Bass (Tyre) becomes firmly established, (p. 709) and oil bottles, plates, the so-called Fine Ware, and the crisp-ware storage jar or ‘torpedo’ jar proliferate.

This is the time of the pinnacle of Red Slip Ware and of the absolute dominion of Tyre in the Mediterranean. In the time of Stratum I in Tyre, or the ‘Amathus’ horizon in Cyprus (700–600 BC), all these forms evolve into types further removed from the original models, although the Tyre III–II pottery continues to be predominate. Thus the body of the mushroom-lip jug becomes wider, the trefoil juglet acquires a biconical form, and Red Slip Ware starts to decline.

The presence and distribution of these three groups of pottery in Cyprus and Galilee allow us to reconstruct the main stages of Phoenician external expansion.

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The 10th–8th Centuries BC and the Making of Tyre

From the 10th century BC on, the archaeological record and written sources reveal strong growth in the city of Tyre. We do not know why Tyre imposed her supremacy on other Phoenician city-states. According to the written tradition, both classical and biblical, Iron II Tyre arose from an urban project and large-scale restructuring undertaken by just one person, King Hiram I (969–936 BC), who gave the city its monumental urban appearance that was to last for centuries (Fig. 46.3). The legend, as reported by Flavius Josephus (Contra Ap. I, 113), tells us that Hiram joined the two islands or reefs together, forming a single island, on which he erected temples for Melqart, Astarte, and Ba‘al Shamem. Centuries later some historians were able to visit the famous temple of Melqart, the patron deity of the city and the monarchy, evoking its two famous columns, one of pure gold and the other of emerald, which shone at night (Herodotus II, 44). As late as the Hellenistic period, the temple still received annual tributes in the name of the king, sent by the colonies. Other important projects of Hiram I were the construction of the walls and of the Eurychoros or ‘open space’, a big marketplace near the north port, the most ancient documented in eastern sources.

We have very little archaeological data from Tyre during Iron II. On the island a large industrial quarter of the 10th–8th centuries BC has been identified, devoted to the production of pottery and precious metals. This

Click to view larger sector was discovered by Fig. 46.3 Reconstruction of Tyre in Iron Age II Bikai (1978) very close to the city’s acropolis, where the temple of Melqart and the royal palace must have stood. Part of the main necropolis was excavated in 1997–2009 opposite the island, in the Al-Bass district, where in antiquity there had been a beach on the mainland less than 2km from the city. This is the biggest Iron Age necropolis known in Phoenicia (Aubet 2004). It was found at a depth of more than 4m near the Roman necropolis and has a high density of adult burials; so far 225 cremation urns have been located. The majority of the burials date to the 9th–7th centuries BC and reveal homogeneous mortuary practices: each cremation burial is accompanied by standard grave goods consisting of a mushroom-lip jug, a trefoil-rim jug, and a drinking bowl. Once the grave was closed, several fires were lit and vessels and pitchers were thrown onto the tomb. Inside the urn, near the bone remains, objects for personal use, such as rings, scarabs, bracelets, and jewels, were deposited. Some burials

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period were found associated with stone stelae on which inscriptions commemorating the deceased and symbolic motifs had been carved. The Al-Bass necropolis has provided a few novelties concerning the (p. 710) mortuary practices of Tyre. In many cases the bone remains of the same individual had been distributed between a pair of urns; one of the two contained most of the individual’s bone remains, while the contiguous urn preserved some bones and ash. In Al-Bass most of the graves are double-urn.

For the period when Tyre assumed hegemony over the other Phoenician cities, the most relevant information about the Phoenician heartland comes from cemeteries. Only Sarepta, 13km south of Sidon, has yielded stratigraphic sequences as complete (or more so) as Tyre. Two large sondages in the 1970s in the centre of this small coastal city, termed Areas II,Y and II,X, have provided important data about Iron II (Anderson 1988). As in Tyre, the Iron Age displays absolute continuity with the Late Bronze and starts in Strata E–D (1025–850 BC) with the first elements characteristic of Phoenician material culture: Bichrome ceramics and, for the first time, ashlar masonry that uses the header- and-stretcher technique typical of Phoenician architecture. This stratum is defined by a large quantity of Cypriot imports, whose early presence demonstrates that relations with Cyprus continued uninterrupted at the start of the Iron Age. Stratum C, dated to 800–650 BC, coincides with the industrial zone, which centred on the production of pottery and the processing and distribution of olive oil, as evidenced by the large number of kilns, stone olive presses, and storage and commercial amphorae found in its installations. The typical building technique of this period is the header-and-stretcher system alternating with rubble in domestic buildings and industrial installations, a technique only previously known in the colonies of the West.

The excavations in the town centre of Beirut (ancient Biruta) in 1993–6 revealed the importance of a Phoenician city that is barely mentioned in the written sources of the first millennium BC. The most notable find is a huge stone glacis (Fig. 46.4) of which a 160m stretch, Click to view larger 7.5m high, has been Fig. 46.4 The glacis of Beirut preserved (Finkbeiner and Sader 1997; Badre 1997). The glacis (p. 711) corresponds to an impressive fortress wall, the upper part of which is not preserved, erected in the Late Bronze Age and reused in the Iron Age after a long period of abandonment. The use of the Iron Age glacis dates to the 10th–7th centuries BC and shows several levels of destruction and abandonment. The archaeological evidence tells us that the Beirut tell was formed by a fortified citadel surrounded by a low-lying

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period city. A few kilometres south of Beirut in Khaldé, near the international airport, an extensive necropolis, made up of 150 burials, was excavated in 1961–4 (Saidah 1966). Scattered at various levels, most of the tombs are inhumations from the 10th–8th centuries BC. Level IV dates to the 10th–9th centuries BC, and contains Tombs 166 and 167 with materials similar to Tyre X and Sarepta D. Particularly interesting is Tomb 121, made up of a stone cyst containing rich inhumations and a cremation, all associated with a stone stele.

In north Lebanon, the previous excavations at Byblos failed to identify the Iron II levels, of which a few burials outside the walls are known. Only the excavations of 1978–81 and 1992–8 in the centre of Tell Arqa have provided evidence of a northern city during Iron II (Stratum 10), which arose following a long period of abandonment after the Late Bronze Age (Thalmann 2000). This is an extensive centre showing a violent level of destruction at the beginning of the 7th century BC. A casemate wall delimited the town centre, and the town is characterized by its paucity of foreign relations, judging by the few imports found in the centre.

The Territorial Expansion

The transformation of Phoenicia into a territorial power is the work of a single city, Tyre, whose control over Lower Galilee gave it direct access to one of the most fertile agricultural territories in the region. This territorial expansion began in the middle of the 11th century and pre-dates the reign of Hiram I.

The biblical tradition tells us that in the middle of the 10th century BC, Hiram I bought from Solomon twenty cities in the ‘land of Cabul’ in Galilee for 120 talents of gold (I Kgs. (p. 712) 9:10–14), incorporating the whole agricultural hinterland of Akko into his kingdom. But this biblical episode is contradicted by the archaeological evidence, which shows that the southern frontier of the kingdom of Tyre had already reached the Bay of Akko and Mount Carmel by the mid-11th century BC.

In Tel Dor, Strata XI–X and IX in Area B1 (c.1050–1000 BC) reveal that after the destruction of the city of the ‘Sea Peoples’, a Phoenician population settled there, using Bichrome pottery with affinities to Tyre XIII. Up until the Hellenistic and Roman periods Dor continued to be a Phoenician city (Stern 1995; Gilboa, Sharon, and Zorn 2004). From the outset, Dor presents itself as a well-planned city with streets, monumental walls, port installations, and large public buildings which, from Stratum VIII (10th century BC) onwards used the typically Phoenician technique of ashlar masonry with a fill of stones between the pillars. In Area 2D one of the largest public buildings in Israel was located, perhaps a palace consisting of ashlars and situated close to the entrance to the city from the port.

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Another important southern Phoenician centre is Tell Abu Hawam, in modern Haifa, a small fortified city at the mouth of the River Quishon, where Stratum III reflects a predominantly Phoenician character (Balensi and Herrera 1985; Herrera and Gómez 2004). In the Iron II levels the remains of a city wall, bastion, and several buildings have been found, belonging to a period when, as in the Late Bronze Age, Tell Abu Hawam constituted the chief port of entry to the cross-country roads leading to the Jordan Valley through Megiddo and Beth Shean. Stratum III appears to be sealed by a level of fire dated to 750–700 BC, which is followed by a long period of abandonment.

Tyre’s political hegemony is particularly visible in the Bay of Akko. This is a rich coastal plain made up of alluvial valleys with fertile soils and a mountainous zone, less rich but suitable for grazing and dry agriculture. A survey carried out in 1993–6 in the hinterland of Akko resulted in the location of numerous Iron II settlements (Lehmann 2001). Their form and distribution show that the definitive incorporation of this region into the kingdom of Tyre coincides with a profound restructuring of the territory, defined by the appearance of prosperous centres, intensification of agriculture centred on the production of wheat, wine, and olive oil, and a considerable increase in population. The settlement pattern entailed the existence of a system revolving around a regional centre (i.e. Akko), surrounded by subcentres and newly founded villages and settlements. The high point of this territory occurred in the 10th–8th centuries BC, when the city of Akko became the administrative capital of Lower Galilee (Dothan 1976). Within its sphere of influence were the cities of Akhziv (Mazar 2001) and Tel Keisan, the latter less than 7km from Akko, in the heart of the alluvial plain of Lower Galilee (Briend and Humbert 1980). Sited on a hill dominating the bay—the ‘land of Cabul’—Keisan shows more or less uninterrupted occupation from the Late Bronze Age. Above Strata 9–10 of Iron I, characterized by early Phoenician elements—Bichrome pottery and ashlar masonry—and after a level of destruction dated to around 1000 BC, a modest settlement was established a bit later (Stratum 8), which had known rapid development throughout Stratum 7 (900– 850 BC), when the material culture of the site places Tel Keisan within the orbit of Tyre.

After Stratum 6 (850–800 BC), which was very poor, it was abandoned for a brief period, and the settlement was reconstructed in Stratum 5 (750–700 BC), providing an abundance of Red Slip and Fine Wares of a Tyrian type, as well as traces of intense local wheat production. Level 4 (700–600 BC) is characterized by a dense population. The large number of amphorae reveals a prosperous oil trade. The violent abandonment of the site shortly before 600 BC is attributed to the Assyrian conquest.

(p. 713) Forming part of the Tyrian organizational system in the hinterland of Akko, small fortified structures are known, like Tel Kabri, and make up part of Tyre’s administrative system. The best-known structure was excavated in 1982–92 at Horbat Rosh Zayit— possibly biblical Cabul—situated in a zone midway between the Plain of Akko and the mountains, suitable for grazing and both dry and irrigated agriculture (Gal and Alexandre 2000). It is a big fortified edifice surrounded by a variety of agricultural installations, which were used for a short time from the end of the 10th century to the middle of the 9th century BC. Its architecture is characterized by ashlar masonry, the headers-and-

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period stretchers technique, and the use of dressed stone at the corners, i.e. clearly inspired by Phoenician architecture. The edifice consisted of two storeys and separate areas of activity—a granary, storehouse, kitchen, an area for processing oil, a mill for wheat, a space for worship, and in particular a cellar with a huge quantity of Phoenician amphorae. It is estimated that it could store some 14,000 litres of wheat, oil, and wine. The presence of weights, seals, and stamps indicates that this stronghold was concerned with administrative management, focusing on the processing, production, packaging, and distribution of agricultural products. Thus, it functioned as a centre for the receipt of taxes, probably managed by officials dependent on Tyre. The whole organization of the hinterland of Akko reveals an efficient centralized administration.

Foreign Trade and Colonialism

The interregional connections of the Phoenician cities in the Iron Age reflect networks and trade routes very similar to those of the Late Bronze Age. The presence of large quantities of Phoenician pottery in the Cypriot sites of Palaepahos-Skales and Tomb I at Salamis, as well as a high volume of Cypriot imports in Tyre XIII, Sarepta E–D, and Dor X– IX (Bikai 1978: 74; 1987: 50–3), demonstrates that contacts with Cyprus were hardly affected by the events of the ‘crisis years’. In Palaepahos, more than half the burials of the 11th–10th centuries BC contain Phoenician ceramics, which suggests a prosperous regional exchange in western Cyprus, probably associated with a Tyrian trading post. The case of Kouklia-Palaepahos reveals that after the fall of Ugarit the Phoenicians shifted the main trade route to the south of the island. So Tyre maintained the Bronze Age commercial circuits, but used different routes. Kouklia-Palaepahos could be considered the earliest Phoenician commercial enclave overseas. Phoenician commercial activity in Cyprus would have culminated around 850 BC with the founding of the first ‘official’ Tyrian colony in the Mediterranean, Kition (Karageorghis 1976). The vast majority of the pottery at Kition is Tyrian, which emphasizes the political and economic importance Tyre attached to the southeast of the island and access by colonial means to the metal-bearing resources of the region. Later, the Phoenician presence in Cyprus increased, as is shown by finds from the 7th century BC in Amathus and the Phoenician character of its cremation necropolis (Christou 1998). However, the Phoenician pottery from the second half of the 8th century BC found in Ayia Irini has a strong affinity with that of Sarepta rather than Tyre, denoting the presence of different Phoenician commercial spheres in overseas trade.

The existence of a Phoenician trading post at Palaepahos favoured the renewal of contacts with the Aegean. From the end of the 10th down to the 8th centuries BC, Tyre offers the greatest concentration of Greek Proto-Geometric ceramics in the whole of the Levant (Coldstream 1998). Most of it consisted of pendent semicircle skyphoi of the Euboean type, (p. 714) the most popular Greek vessel in the East, appreciated for its quality as a drinking cup. This indicates the direct implication of merchants from the

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Aegean in Phoenicia from a very early time and the development of joint Phoenicio- Euboean activities. The arrival of Greek ceramics in Tyre coincides with the find of oriental jewels and Phoenician ceramics in the elite tombs at Lefkandi in Euboea. So the Tyre–Euboea trade route across the south of Cyprus would have been inaugurated at the end of the 10th century BC, before the founding of Kition—a scene similar to the Late Bronze Age, when the Phoenician coast and not Ugarit had been the main recipient of Aegean pottery. The route must have passed through the south of Crete, since numerous Phoenician amphorae from the end of the 10th century BC have been discovered in the city of Kommos in the so-called Temple A (925–800 BC) (Shaw 1989). Temple B (800–760

BC), a three-pillar shrine of a Phoenician type—the most ancient known in the Greek world —appeared in association with Phoenician amphorae made with clays from the Lebanese coast. The building of a small Phoenician temple in Kommos suggests the existence of Levantine residents in the south of Crete since at least 800 BC, and reveals one of the most common practices of Phoenician colonialism: the building of a temple to guarantee peaceful commercial transactions and the implication of the temple of Melqart in Tyre in the colonial enterprise. Various finds also signal the presence of Phoenician merchants in other places in Crete, like Knossos and Orthi Petra (Eleutherna) (Stampolidis 2003). At the same date, around 800 BC, the Phoenicians had already initiated commercial contacts with the mining region of Huelva in the south of Spain.

The Assyrian Epilogue

The expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its pressure on the Phoenician cities corresponds to a fairly brief period (733–630 BC) and was less decisive than was originally thought. For a long time the horizon of the 8th–7th centuries BC was considered to be the beginning of the end of Tyre, due to Assyrian military and political pressure. However, this period corresponds to the zenith of the Phoenician colonial enterprise in the West. Many levels of destruction in Phoenicia have been related to the Assyrian conquest, not always very convincingly. The progressive Assyrian dominion over the Phoenician cities began with Tiglath-pileser III in 733/2 BC, stemming from the conquest of Lower Galilee and Dor. In 701 BC Sennacherib conquered Sidon, Sarepta, Akko, and Akhziv, and his annals mention the Plain of Akko as part of the Assyrian Empire. Asurbanipal (668–626 BC) would have destroyed the hinterland of Tyre and the city of Akko, deporting its inhabitants, an event that has been connected with the destruction level of Stratum 7 of Area A (Dothan 1976: 23). But the Assyrians made sure to preserve the city of Tyre and its zones of influence because of their economic and commercial potential. From the second half of the 8th century BC the whole of the kingdom of Tyre was still open to Assyrian trade and, contrary to the traditional view, it seems to coincide with high levels of prosperity and reactivation of the economy. In Tel Keisan, Assyrian pottery was located from Level 5 (Briend and Humbert 1980: 164). The Assyrian period coincides in Keisan with a rebirth of the city, which can be recognized in Level 4 with new town planning

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Subscriber: University College London; date: 02 November 2017 Phoenicia During the Iron Age II Period under Assyrian administration, as at Dor, where a flourishing local industry arose— smelting and producing iron. The fall of the Assyrian Empire and the subsequent Neo- Babylonian conquest would eventually drag the city-state of Tyre down with it, and see the shifting of the main centre of power again to Sidon.