Elusive Phoenicians | Perceptions of Phoenician identity and material culture as reflected in museum records and displays Lamia Sassine Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2020 Acknowledgements First and foremost, this thesis goes to my parents, who have worked hard to ensure there was another doctor in the family (although probably not the kind they initially hoped for). Thank you for being my main sponsors and support. This work would also have been impossible without my amazing supervisors. Sue, it was an honour to be one of your last students, you have been a true hero to archaeology and working with you for three years made it very clear why. Jane, thank you for always being there on the more practical side of things and for always making time for me, academia needs you. I also owe a lot to every curator and archivist who made me feel welcome and fed this thesis with the information they gave me. These people are: Elena Aguilera Collado, Anne-Marie Afeiche, Carla Del Vais, Lucia Ferruzza, Lamia Fersi, Maria Grazia Griffo, Thomas Kiely, Aurora Ladero, Hélène Le Meaux, María Dolores López De La Orden, Reine Mady, Giuseppa Mizzaro, Sara Muscuso, José Ángel Palomares Samper, Despina Pilides, Manuela Puddu, Alicia Rodero, Virginia Salve, Concha San Martín, Giuliana Sara, Anna Satraki, Sharon Sultana, Pamela Toti, Jonathan Tubb, Juan Ignacio Vallejo Sánchez, Yiannis Violaris, and Eftychia Zachariou. Thank you to Hélène Sader for pushing me to pursue a PhD in the first place and seeing potential in me. I am also indebted to María Belén Deamos for welcoming me at the University of Sevilla and helping me unpack the Andalusian side of Phoenician collections. For putting me in contact with curators, thanks to: María Eugenia Aubet, Leonardo Bison, Sophie Cluzan, Gioacchino Falsone, Michele Guirguis, Ana Navarro, Lorenzo Nigro, and Francesca Spatafora. Some of my friends deserve special mentions: Constantina Kaili for hosting me in Cyprus twice and taking care of me at my worst; Hanna Bertoldi for driving around Sardinia and patiently spending days at the museum with me; Léa Corban for the many stopovers in London; and my siblings Nay and Nicolas for contributing to emails, charts, and proofreading. Thank you to the Sheffield crew(s) for making this experience as fun and light as possible. Katie, Cait, Faidon, Chris, Kayleigh, Rob, and everyone else, this would have been boring without the hockey games, wine and cheese, pub quizzes, cooking competitions, trips to Ikea, brunches, Sheffield United supporting, covid calls, board games, bakes, brews, getaways to Leeds, and your participation in my constant nagging. Finally, a huge thank you to Ramez, who can tell you all about Sabatino Moscati and recite my presentations by heart, you’re half a doctor yourself by now. 1 Abstract This project aims to investigate the part played by different historical and modern perceptions of Phoenician culture and identity in the presentation and interpretation of what is (and has been over the last 100-150 years) regarded as Phoenician material culture in different Mediterranean and European museums. Given the chequered history of perceptions of Phoenicians in different national and intellectual contexts from antiquity until relatively recently, it seems likely that perspectives on what constitutes objects of Phoenician material culture will also have varied from place to place and from time to time. The research is based on an appreciation of accounts of, and attitudes to, Phoenicians from antiquity onwards, which have undoubtedly fed into more modern European views. This is gained from key ancient (Greek, Roman and Biblical) sources, as well as more modern (especially 19th and 20th century) European writings, both literary and archaeological/historical. The core of the research focuses on museum displays and records pertaining to Phoenician material culture. Museum displays and archives are investigated to see what is identified as Phoenician, why it is identified as such, and how it is interpreted, as well as whether views of what is Phoenician have changed over time. The project therefore focuses on interpretation aspects at the level of the museum, tracking mappable trends, at the level of the labelling tracking stereotypes, and at the level of artefacts tracking stylistic definitions of the term Phoenician. It lays these patterns against the literary perceptions, showing the importance of contextuality within the framework of defining and interpreting Phoenician identity. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. 3 Part 1 | Conceptualizing museums and the Phoenicians ......................................................... 12 Chapter 1 | Defining, Displaying, and Labelling ................................................................ 12 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 12 Displays ................................................................................................................. 13 Objects and experiences ......................................................................................... 13 The role of the museum ..........................................................................................16 Labelling ............................................................................................................... 18 Museums and simplification .................................................................................. 18 Archaeological labels and identities .......................................................................... 19 Definitions ............................................................................................................ 22 Levels ................................................................................................................ 22 Style and identity ................................................................................................. 24 Summary: Deconstructing displays ............................................................................. 26 Chapter 2 | The Eye of the Beholder: Perceptions and Attitudes to the Phoenicians in the Literature ............................................................................................................................... 29 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 29 Classical sources and conflicting agendas ..................................................................... 29 The sources ........................................................................................................ 29 The perspectives .................................................................................................. 30 The context(s)....................................................................................................... 31 Imperialism and European Nationalism in the 19th century .............................................. 34 Britain and Ireland ............................................................................................... 34 The Phoenicians as role-models .............................................................................. 35 Downfall of British appropriation ........................................................................... 36 3 Romanticism, Orientalism, and the Hellenocentric perspective ........................................ 37 Anti-Semitism in Europe ....................................................................................... 37 Romanticism and Orientalism ................................................................................ 37 Salammbô .......................................................................................................... 39 France and the Phoenicians.................................................................................... 40 Phoenicianism ..................................................................................................... 41 Post-colonial perceptions: from national identities to pop culture ..................................... 42 The shift in scholarly perceptions ............................................................................ 42 National identities in the post-colonial Mediterranean ................................................ 43 Pop culture Phoenicians ........................................................................................ 45 Conclusions: The Fabrication of the Phoenicians ........................................................... 48 Part 2 | Phoenicians on display .......................................................................................... 51 Introduction & Methodology ......................................................................................... 51 Chapter 3 | Patterns .................................................................................................... 60 Definition .............................................................................................................. 62 In archaeology ....................................................................................................