Greeks in the East Mediterranean (South Anatolia, Syria, Egypt)

GREEKS IN THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN (SOUTH ANATOLIA, SYRIA, EGYPT)

John Boardman

A settled Greek presence overseas was dependent initially on a desire or need to leave home, and ultimately on the reactions and inter- ests of those whose lands the Greeks visited or hoped to settle. In the areas considered in this chapter (Fig. 1) these were well-estab- lished kingdoms or their subject areas, and there was no question of founding colonies in the current scholarly sense of the word. We are dealing with apoikia only in the broadest terms, as ‘a home from home’, and more often with what might be usefully termed enoi- kismos,1 settlement absorbed by or alongside the local population, and not even necessarily a ‘Greek quarter’. Only in Egypt did the Greeks acquire a degree of local independence, strictly monitored by the Egyptians, and in early days at Al Mina in Syria they seem, for a while, to have been mainly on their own. Their presence in Cyprus will be considered by M. Iacovou in Volume 2. Our survey accord- ingly proceeds with reference to the history of the local populations, so far as it can be determined, rather than that of the Greeks. Some advantage in this lies in the fact that we are then somewhat less dependent on Greek sources than on local ones, which are con- temporary and are not ﬂawed by the imaginative invention of much later writers. Much of the other evidence is archaeological and we must judge evidence that might suggest or even prove Greek presence, whether this was a settled presence, and any indication of the terms under which it had been admitted. This is not a subject in which absolute proof can be expected. More often it is a question of judgment of plausibility, where analogy with other, better docu- mented areas, can be of value. The subject has lived long in the shadow of traditional views about the relative rôles of Greeks and Easterners. An Eastern site that produced much Greek pottery was naturally (over 50 years ago) taken

1 This is not an altogether proper use of the Greek word except to the extent that enoikizo may imply tenancy. 508 john boardman

Fig. 1. Map of the eastern Mediterranean. for a colony, and even small quantities justiﬁed claims for a Greek presence, while all Greek literary sources were taken to be histori- cally truthful. Revised views have produced equally exaggerated claims about the worthlessness of pottery as a marker, and the almost exclu- sive rôle in the Mediterranean of Easterners, usually taken to be Phoenicians,2 which does less than justice to many others from the

2 For an extreme example, see Negbi 1992, where all Eastern artefacts in the West are taken for Phoenician, Cypriot and mainland production is confused, two separate tombs at Knossos are conflated, and Kommos in Crete is promoted to being a Phoenician post on archaeological evidence which offers at best Phoenician visits for a limited period after a brief religious intervention (Shaw 1989). Most Eastern influence in Crete is (As)syrian or Cypriot.