Phoenician Art

Phoenician art was initially highly regarded by modern scholars, the praise it had received in a number of ancient written sources even leading to the belief that it had served as a model for early Greek art. However, its reputation gradually declined over the course of the 19th century. One reason for this were the objects uncovered by contemporary excavations, which, unlike, for example, Greek sculpture of the Classical period, did not accord with the artistic taste of the day. Their use of Assyrian and Egyptian pictorial motifs led, moreover, to the charge that they lacked originality. Another reason for the decline was that archaeology was coming under nationalistic and - particularly towards the end of the century - anti-semitic influences, which led to Phoenician art being condemned as stiff and lifeless. The trend was further strengthened by the popular image of the Phoenicians as a trading nation, for many scholars believed that peoples who actively engaged in trade were devoid of artistic sensibility. Although there were some dissenting voices, by the eve of the First World War the Phoenicians were generally viewed as a people with no artistic talent.

An autopsy of the Hellenistic grave stele, discovered in the 19th century in the Kerameikos in Athens, reveals that its textual (Phoenician and Greek) and visual components differ significantly from previously published descriptions. The author reexamines the morphology of the monument, also considering its sacred address and the force that such a monument exerted on its context. This single monument to a Phoenician buried in Athens engages issues of bilingualism, religious symbolism, and, most importantly, self-definition, which structured the complex social interactions in
Athens in the late 4th–2nd centuries b.c.

"This useful book fills a gap in the existing literature on aniconic cults, a gap particularly important from a Hebrew Bible perspective, since the Phoenicians were contemporary neighbours of Judah and Israel and are known to have influenced them in other matters. T.N.D. Mettinger (No Graven Image? 1995) had not given much attention to Phoenicia, referring mainly to later Phoenician/Punic evidence, and remaining agnostic about earlier Phoenician aniconism (evidence for which has expanded in recent years). D. covers all of the earlier Phoenician material and that from the Phoenician colonies very thoroughly, prefacing his discussion with a methodological reflection which is sometimes highly illuminating, e.g. in relation to sacramentality (M.B. Dick, 2005). There are interesting discussions of miniaturization (in relation to small models of sanctuaries), as perhaps parallelled in the Khirbet Qeiyafa model shrine (Y. Garfinkel and M. Mumcuoglu in IEJ 2013). But in the end the Phoenicians are very hard to define as a group and when they created colonies in Cyprus, Carthage and beyond they encountered many cultural streams which took them away from their Levantine roots, not least the widespread Greek tradition of aniconism studied recently by M. Gaifman (2012). Doak gives prominence to Egyptian and Mesopotamian influences on the Phoenician homeland, though Phoenician aniconism should not be regarded as a ‘careless mélange’. Phoenician aniconistic features are part of ‘a continuum of, and interplay between, anthropomorphic figurism and aniconism’. The main value of this book is as a guide to the Phoenician evidence, systematically studied and well illustrated, even if difficult to interpret coherently."

Amulet “garlands” worn over the left shoulder and then around the upper body in the fashion of the brahmanical sacred thread (yajñopavita) are compared between those appearing on two Phœnician votive images of the so-called ’temple boy’ and similar “garlands” appearing on two images of ‘tree goddesses’, from Bharhut, India.

A well-known statue of enthroned goddess from Soluntum might be seen as an example of the persistence of ancient oriental iconography in Hellenistic Sicily. Although in 1831 the finding spot of the statue was clearly indicated by its discoverer, in the 20th  century this datum was forgotten. Scholars suggested that the statue could come from a different place, where the archaic town of Soluntum originally rose. Nowadays the discovery of the statue in a shrine of Hellenistic Soluntum is generally accepted. For reconciling the dating with the finding spot, scholars argue that the simulacrum had been moved to the new Hellenistic city after the destruction of archaic Soluntum.
This paper a) suggests a new hypothesis about the statue; b) underlines some new aspects of the finding spot;  c) proposes a new dating of the enthroned goddess from Soluntum, by introducing it in the Punic context of the Hellenistic age.

Scholarly discourses in ancient history, she observes, shape our perceptions and all too frequently conform to Hellenocentric and primordialist narratives that promote the notion that Greek culture and art were inherently and exceptionally superior, and therefore that assimilation and acculturation by other Mediterranean societies were inevitabilities of this Hellenic triumph. The term for this process, 'Hellenization', and the assumptions that lie behind it, argues Martin, reflect the essentialism and chauvinism at the heart of scholarship in classical history. Furthermore, to even speak of distinct, self-identifying and defined 'Greek' and 'Phoenician' cultures in antiquity is, in itself, problematic, and a more holistic, nuanced and theoretically informed approach must be adopted. Towards this end, Martin reconsiders select examples of visual culture, from a variety of contexts, attributed to Greeks and Phoenicians over several centuries in the first millennium B.C. In her Introduction, Martin sets out the four principles that guide her study. The first is that 'barbarians matter'. That is, that groups and peoples like the Phoenicians matter in their own right, and that scholars of ancient history should duly take them as seriously as they do the Greeks and their Hellenic culture. Furthermore, we must exercise more caution in applying convenient etic terminologies indiscriminately to peoples and cultures that defy clear delineation. Her second principle holds that it is incumbent on us as scholars to apply theory in appropriate and responsible manner, acknowledging the reluctance of classical scholarship to unabashedly embrace theory as potentially useful, tiptoeing around it with terminology such as 'approaches' and 'perspectives'. Her third and fourth principles concern the question of identity and its expressions in art: that cultural contact is a significant factor in how identity is expressed artistically, and that it is the visual arts that offer us the most fruitful ground for addressing the question of Phoenician collective identity as an emic reality. The five subsequent chapters, informed by and aligned with these principles, build the case for an appreciation of how contact between cultures has an impact on the visual arts in ways that are best understood when approached via appropriate theories of cultural interaction. Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical landscape as it has developed to date, with regard to art history–both Greek and Phoenician–and ideas of culture, contact and interaction. The primary models employed in this discourse are Orientalizing and Hellenization. It is the latter with which Martin's book is most concerned, and, as mentioned above, it is found to be a problematic concept.

This study addresses the forms of aniconism occurring in Phoenicia and its overseas colonies, while noting analogues, influences and parallels elsewhere. Phoenician (‘Canaanite’) culture belongs to the cities of the Levantine littoral, especially in the first millennium BCE, and its colonial outposts ranging from Cyprus and Carthage to Sicily, Sardinia and Cadiz. In the culture’s floruit in the Iron Age, Phoenician craftsmen produced exquisitely-worked iconographic products, betraying other influences, notably Egyptian, but putting their own distinctive imprint on them. At the same time, some of these artifacts have been interpreted by scholars as in some degree aniconic, within one or other of the categories which scholars have identified...Doak threads his way through the complexities of the Old Testament witness, and the greater complexities of scholarly disagreement, with great sensitivity and skill. While the issues under discussion will probably always remain open, this volume will remain a useful and integral point of reference for further work.

*Article on topic posted above.*

The under life-sized Hellenistic sculptural group (Athens NM 3335) known conventionally as the “Slipper-Slapper” or “Sandal Slapper” was found on Delos in a complex operated by a koinon of Phoenician businessmen, the Poseidoniasts.  It shows Aphrodite holding her right left sandal, Pan reaching out to her, and Eros flying overhead grasping one of Pan’s horns.  The group’s Aphrodite quotes the late-Classical Knidia by Praxiteles, while reversing the position of the prototype’s arms and swapping the Knidia’s robe for the eponymous sandal.  The meaning of the Slipper-Slapper is debated and hinges on the significance of its reference to the Knidia and new narrative details.  Aphrodite’s sandal is alternatively interpreted in terms of eroticism, even prostitution; genre scenes; or religious word-play.  Most often this Aphrodite is understood as brandishing her sandal at Pan in order to fight off his unwanted sexual advances.  Eros, for his part, seems bemused by the feeble attempts of the unsophisticated suitor, though his pose is ambiguous: either he grasps Pan’s horn to bring him closer to his mother – or to shove Pan away.  Complicating any reading is the group’s accompanying inscription that makes clear it was a religious, if private, devotional work dedicated to the “native gods” of its Phoenician patron, Dionysios of Berytos. 

This paper presents a new interpretation of the Slipper Slapper group that rejects the idea that the work was designed for a strictly frontal view.  From the side, it clear that Pan is fully seated on a stump, his right leg kicked up in the air behind Aphrodite.  The stump is draped by an animal skin, against which leans Pan’s lagobolon.  Thus Pan is shown deliberately at rest in his milieu, the wilderness.  These details refute the typical interpretation of Pan as the sexual aggressor, perhaps having seized upon Aphrodite after her bath.  Rather, the reverse must be true: Aphrodite has approached Pan.  The paper will consider the implications of this observation, arguing that the Slipper-Slapper group is appropriating not only the pose of the Knidia, but also elements of the latter’s implied narrative.  Both works reference Aphrodite in sexual pursuit, which suggests that the intended object of her affection is Adonis.  The paper concludes by exploring the meanings of the Aphrodite-Adonis/Ashtarte-Adon pairing in both works.