36 Phoenicians in the West: The Early Epigraphic Evidence

[1986]

The discoveries of the past thirty years have trans• pology of the pottery or weapons upon which they were formed our knowledge of the palaeographical develop• found. Moreover, they link up with closely-dated inscrip• ment of the Old Canaanite script and the emergence tions of the late tenth and ninth centuries. Today the about 1100 BCE of the early Linear Phoenician character. typology of Phoenician inscriptions of the twelfth, elev• A turning point came in 1954 with the publication of enth, and tenth centuries is firmly established, as is the three inscribed arrowheads from 'El-lja<;lr in Palestine development of the daughter scripts of Phoenician, He• dating to ca. 1100 BCE. This group of arrowheads pro• brew, and Aramaic, of the ninth century BCE. vided easily deciphered texts from precisely the era of These rich palaeographical data from the Syro• transition from pictograph to linear script and proved to Palestinian mainland necessitate reexamination of the be in some sense a missing link in the history of the al• dates of Phoenician inscriptions from the islands and phabet. 1 Today more than thirty inscribed arrowheads are western shores of the Mediterranean. known, published and unpublished, all stemming from The dates of early inscriptions from Cyprus require the era between ca. 1100 and 950 BCE. 2 In addition some very little revision. The Archaic Cyprus inscription4 must sixteen inscriptions, on pottery, bronze, and stone are be dated to the second half of the ninth century, in the era now part of the corpus of mainland Phoenician inscrip• of Pygmalion of Tyre (Phoenician pmytn, pmyytn < tions from the same period, twelfth to mid-tenth centu• *p'mytn) whose dates may now be calculated as ca. 831- ries, BCE. 3 Many of these inscriptions are closely dated 785 BCE.5 The Ba'l Lebanon Inscription6 is dated to the from controlled archaeological contexts, or from the ty- reign of I:Iirom II named in its text. I:Iirom paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BCE) in 738, and died within 1. F. M. Cross and J. T. Milik, "Inscribed Javelin-heads from the the year to judge by the chronology of Menander. 7 The Period of the Judges," BASOR 134 (1954): 5-15 [Paper 49 below]; inscription thus must be dated between 785 and 738. Be• Cross and Milik, "A Typological Study of the El-ijadr Javelin- and Ar• rowheads. ADAJ 3 (1956): 15-23; and Cross, "The Origin and Early longing to the first half of the eighth century are also the Evolution of the Alphabet. Eretz-lsrael 8 (1967): 8*-24* [Paper 52 be• )nts Jug and the Kition Bowl. 8 The latter is generally low]. Two additional El-ija<;lr arrowheads-including the arrowhead with the longest text-were published in Cross, "Newly Found Inscrip• tions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts," BASOR 238 4. KAI: 30. See also 0. Masson and M. Sznycer, Recherches sur (1980): 4-7 [pp. 216-20 above]. Les Pheniciens a Chypre (Geneva and Paris: Librarie Droz, 1972): 13- 2. The published and unpublished pieces are enumerated in Paper 20; and H.-P. Miiller, "Die phonizische Grabinschrift aus dem Zypern• 29, Appendix A. Museum: KAI 30 und die Formgeschichte des nordwestsemitischen 3. These texts are surveyed and publication data listed in F. M. Epitaphs," ZA 65 (1975): 104-32. Cross, "The Origin and Early Evolution of the Alphabet" [Paper 52 be• 5. See Paper 35 above. low]; "Early Alphabetic Scripts," Symposia Celebrating the Seventy• 6. KAI: 31. Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental 7. See Peckham: 115. Research, ed. F. M. Cross (Cambridge, Mass.: ASOR, 1979): 97-123 8. On the 'nts Jug, see Peckham: 115, n. I; the Kition Bowl was [Paper 53 below]; and "Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and published by Dupont-Sommer, "Une inscription phenicienne archaYque Early Phoenician Scripts" [Paper 32 above]; and Paper 31 above. On the recemment trouvee aKition (Chypre)," Memoires de l 'Academie des In• palaeographic character of the Tell Fabariyeh Inscription, an Aramaic scriptions et Belles-lettres 44 (1970): 1-28; see also M. G. G. Amadasi text in Phoenician script, see Paper 4 above. and V. Karageorghis, Fouilles de Kition Ill. Inscriptions pheniciennes

254 Phoenicians in the West: The Early Epigraphic Evidence 255

dated to the end of the ninth century on archaeological tion from Crete was found in a tomb at Tekke near Knos• grounds, but its script is typologically more developed sos; it is inscribed on a bronze bowl. 15 The inscription than that of the Bacl Lebanon Inscription. reads: ks. sm< bn lbnn, 'The cup of Sama\ son of Laba• The earliest extant inscription from Carthage is the non'.16 The script includes the three-fingered kap, a form so-called Gold Pendant. Typologically its script belongs which disappeared after the tenth century, but is regular in to the second half of the eighth century BCE. The at• both eleventh- and tenth-century scripts; an archaic mem tempts of Ferron to raise its date to the ninth century fail in vertical stance; and an Astarte. 11 In the editio princeps 15. M. Sznycer, "L'inscription phenicienne de Tekke pres de J.M. Sola-Sole dated the inscription to the eighth cen• Cnossus," Kadmos 18 (1979): 89-93; H. W. Catling, "The Knossus Area, 1974-76;' Archaeological Reports for 1976-1977, No. 23 (1977): tury, and preferred a date in the first half of the century. I 11-15; and F. M. Cross, "Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite have argued in some detail for a date in the second half of and Early Phoenician Scripts" (above, n. I): 1-20, esp. 15 [pp. 227-30 the eighth century, and most recently Puech has sug• above]. 16. This reading is new, a revision of my earlier reading which left gested a date in the mid-eighth century, more precisely in the patronymic undeciphered following the initial lamed. I was, how• the third quarter. 12 In any case, its script falls between the ever, inclined to read the final letter as nun (as did Sznycer): 1--n. The scripts of the Bacl Lebanon inscription (mid-eighth cen• next to last letter also resembled nun. The problem has been with the second letter of the name, which I took as 'alep following Sznycer, but tury) and the Karatepe Bilingual BCE). 13 (ca. 720 with considerable reserve. In fact it must be read bet. This is now clear A complex for metalworking on Pithekoussai (Is• from the photograph published in Veronique Krings, ed., La Civilisa• chia) has produced two graffiti in Phoenician. The indus• tion phenicienne et punique. Manuel de Recherche [Handbuch der Ori• trial establishment and the graffiti belong to the eighth entalistik 20] (Leiden: Brill, 1995): Pl. 47. Dr. Mary Joan Winn Leith first urged upon me the possibility of reading a name from the root lbn. century BCE. 14 Cf. bib!. lbn, lbn', lbny; Ugaritic labnay, labnu, lbn, lbny, and lbnn (cp. The oldest of the Phoenician inscriptions from the the GN lbnn). However, the vertical stroke on the left of the letter West come from Crete and Sardinia. The oldest inscrip- seemed to render the reading impossible-until the new photograph made clear that the left downstroke was casual, not part of the letter. 17. Tomb J at Tekke is "Early Proto geometric in Cretan terms, (Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, 1977): 149-60 (No. D21); equivalent to the late Protogeometric of Attica" according to H. W. R. B. Coote, "The Kition Bowl;' BASOR 220 (1975): 47-53; and Catling, "The Knossus Area, 1974-76," p. 4. Desborough's dates for this W. Ri.illig, "Die Phi.inizier des Mutterlandes zur Zeit der Kolonisierung," phase are ca. 950-900. If this chronology is followed it may be con• Madrider Beitrage 8 (1982): 26f. cluded that the bowl is an heirloom left in the cave, a half-century or so 9. See Ferron, "Le Medaillon de Carthage;' Cahiers de Byrsa 8 older than the main deposit in the tomb. A Late Minoan lentoid seal (LM (1958/9): 45-60; and "Les Problemes du Medaillon de Carthage;' Le III) was also found in the tomb. However, there is strong pressure on the Museon 81 (1968): 255-61 (where he revises his views). part of archaeologists trained in both Near Eastern and Mediterranean 10. See the balanced and informed discussion of Peckham: 119-24. ceramics of this period to raise the date of the beginning Early Geometric 11. See F. M. Cross, "The Old Phoenician Inscription from Spain and the end of Protogeometric on the basis of Near Eastern data. It will Dedicated to Hurrian Astarte;' HTR 64 (1971): 189-95 [Paper 40 be• be remembered that the chronology of both Protogeometric and Geo• low]. Independently M. Weippert recognized the goddess 'strt !Jr as metric depend entirely on Near Eastern data for absolute dates. In her im• Hurrian Astarte. See "Abraham der Hebraer?" Biblica 52 (1971): 431f. portant dissertation, D. L. Saltz, "Greek Geometric Pottery in the East: This identification has increasingly been accepted. An excellent photo• The Chronological Implications" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Har• graph may be found in Amadasi, Pl. LXI (Spa. 16). vard University, 1978), has argued that the transition from Protogeomet• 12. E. Puech, "L'inscription phenicienne du tr6ne d'Astart a ric to Geometric in the East must now be dated to the mid-tenth century. Seville," RSF 5 (1977): 15-30. Desborough himself-if not his nepotes-was aware that his chronol• 13. G. Garbini, "Note di epigrafia punica: II. 6 Sull'iscrizione de ogy would be shifted upward a half-century if Tell Abu Hawam III fell Siviglia 'Hispania 14'," RSO 42 (1967): 2-6, argues for a date in the to Shishalc (Sesonq) in ca. 926. See V. R. Desborough, Protogeometric seventh-sixth centuries. His arguments are unconvincing. Pottery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952): 294. Reexamination of the 14. See P. K. McCarter, "A Phoenician Graffito from Pithekous• stratigraphy of Tell Abu Hawam now malces this date highly probable if sai," AJA 79 (1975): 140f.; G. Buchner, "Testimonianze epigraphiche not certain. Further, Anita Yannai-James in her Oxford dissertation semitiche dell'VIII secolo A.C. Pithekoussai," ParPass 179 (1978): "Studies on Trade Between the Levant and the Aegean in the 14th to 12th 130--42; G. Garbini, "Un iscrizione aramaica a Ischia," ParPass 179 centuries B.c." (Unpublished dissertation, Linacre College, 1983), also (1978): 143-50; J. Teixidor. "Bulletin d'epigraphie semitique," Kadmos argues on unrelated grounds that the end of Protogeometric must be 18 (1979): 387. Teixidor correctly assigns the "Aramaic" graffiti to raised by a half century or more above the Desborough date. It may be Phoenician. See also R. Drews, "Phoenicians, Carthage and the Spartan that the Tekke Bowl gives support from an unsuspected direction for at Eunomia," AJP 100 (1979): 45-58 and references. least a modest raising of the "low" chronology.