Where may Canaanites be found? Canaanites, Phoenicians and Others in Jewish Texts from the Hellenistic and Roman Period
- ️https://cnrs.academia.edu/KatellBerthelot
Related papers
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012
Phoenicia was a narrow coastal strip set between the Lebanon mountains and the Mediterranean. The name "Phoenician" is Greek and first appears in the Homeric epics. The Greeks designated these peoples Phoinikes, from the Greek word meaning purple. The name alludes to the preferred color of the textile industry for which these peoples were renowned. Both Greeks and Near Easterners often called the Phoenicians by the name of their city of origin (e.g., Sidonians, Tyrians). The Phoenicians called themselves can'ani, Canaanites, and their land Canaan; these names were also used by neighboring peoples and occur in the Bible. In Akkadian, as in Greek, Canaan has an ethnic meaning, but also signifies the color purple. Modern scholars use the name Canaanite to refer to the peoples living in the area in question in the second millennium BCE, but conventionally call the same people Phoenicians after 1200 BCE. The word Punic, the Latin word for Phoenician, also commonly designates the culture of the Phoenician colonies in the central and western Mediterranean. Widespread upheavals occurring ca. 1200 BCE formed a new political landscape in the Near East, which, however, did not seriously affect settlement patterns in Old Canaan. The Phoenician cities, including SIDON, TYRE, BYBLOS, and BERYTUS, continued to occupy small promontories, natural inlets, or small, offshore islands, and to be strongly oriented toward maritime trade. Cedar from the Lebanon mountains and textiles in purple dye obtained from the mollusk murex were renowned Phoenician exports throughout Antiquity. Other exports included the products of gifted local artisans in ivory furniture, metal vessels, jewelry, faience, and glass trinkets. The Phoenicians are also famous, however, for developing the alphabet at the close of the second millennium BCE and later passing it on to Europe in a Greek adaptation that included vowels.
Canaanite Roots, Proto Phoenicia, and Early Phoenicia: ca. 1300-1000 BCE_by Ann E. Killebrew_2019
The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean Edited by Brian R. Doak and Carolina López-Ruiz, 2019
The origins and ethnogenesis of a cultural entity, people, and territory referred to as "Phoenician" in later biblical and Classical sources and modern scholarship remain a topic of debate. This chapter examines the textual and archaeological sources relevant to the northern and central Levantine littoral during the Proto- (Late Bronze) and Early (Iron I) Phoenician periods (ca. fourteenth-eleventh centuries BCE). What emerges out of the ruins of the Late Bronze Age is a resilient Early Iron Age coastal culture centered on the commercial interactions of maritime city-states, which survived the demise of the Hittite and Egyptian empires, as well as the collapse of international trade at around 1200 BCE. Autochthonous Canaanite traditions dominate Iron I Phoenician cultural assemblages, but intrusive Aegean-style "Sea Peoples" and Cypriot influences are also present. Together they reflect the dynamic interplay of maritime cultural and commercial exchanges characteristic of the northern and central Levantine littoral during the final centuries of the second millennium BCE.
2016
The present study is based on the onomastics of the Land of Canaan during the second millennium BC. The results from onomastics are compared with the corresponding archaeological data and with parallel literary sources. The aim of the research has been to distinguish the different linguistic groups, especially the Canaanites and the Amorites, and to determine their principal areas of settlement. In accordance with the basic archaeological results, the toponyms show a dramatic change that took place in the Land of Canaan in the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age II (approximately 2000 BC). In the Land of Canaan there appeared toponymic types originating from the area of Phoenicia and spreading to the coastal area of modern Israel. Slightly later another kind of toponymic types appeared in the Galilee, the Judean Hill Country and in the Middle Zone of the Transjordan, the origin of which is to be found in Syro-Mesopotamia. It is remarkable that none of these particular types are foun...
Journal of Roman Archaeology 32, pp. 584-591, 2019
“The phantom Phoenicians are back” would perhaps be an apt alternative title for J. Crawley Quinn’s In search of the Phoenicians, reflecting the book’s brilliant and ironic spirit. Thanks to the success it has enjoyed internationally, the British scholar’s book has given a significant boost, especially in the English-speaking world, to the revival of interest in the Phoenicians — the “invisible people” — and has brought the long-standing question of Phoenician identity to the attention of non-specialists as well as specialists in Classical antiquity. The book’s leading thesis is to demonstrate, through the analysis of ancient documentation ranging from Near Eastern texts written in Ugaritic, Neo-Assyrian and Hebrew to those of ancient authors who wrote in Greek and Latin, that the Phoenicians never regarded themselves as a group. As the author frankly acknowledges (xxiv), “the suggestion that the Phoenicians were not a self-conscious collective, or even a clearly delineated historical civilization, is not new”. The never-ending debate about the identity of the peoples is not new either, nor is it limited to the Phoenicians. It must be understood — in the interests of methodological rigour — to apply also, and not exclusively, to all the other peoples of antiquity (even the Egyptians and Greeks), who never defined themselves in the way we define them, according to our current perspectives as interpreters of the past. The revival of these issues could be connected to the use of anthropological theories in various Phoenician and Punic studies and, at a more general level, to the contemporary problems of Mediterranean migrations that have made ‘obsession about identity’ such a sensitive topic. The book, composed of 9 chapters, is divided into three parts each of 3 chapters, with a brief introduction and conclusion. This arrangement reflects the origin of the book in three Balmuth Lectures delivered at Tufts University (Medford, MA) in 2012. In a narrative that has almost the structure of a hypertext, the titles play an important rôle, often referring, in appealing journalistic style, to burning issues in the political (“There are no camels in Lebanon” and “Lebanon first”) or academic spheres. The introduction is beautifully and passionately written. Beginning almost like a novel, it takes us to a schoolroom in Ireland in 1833 which is the setting of Brian Friel’s 1980 play “Translations”. In this context, the description of “noble” Carthage is connected to Ireland, while Rome is associated with the British occupation of the island. Irish Phoenicianism is the narrative escamotage with which Quinn illustrates the guiding principle of her work, which is above all (xiv-xv) to avoid the dangers of stamping ethnic labels on people who may themselves have felt ambivalent about or simply uninterested in them, people whose own collective identities came, went, and in some cases never rose above the level of their own towns or even families. Quinn introduces us to the theme of identity in a rigorous manner, providing some astute statements (xviii: “identities are variable across both time and space”) and some illuminating examples from recent African history that attest to the sheer breadth of the reading that forms the basis of her book.
THE treasures of ancient high art lately unearthed at Luxor have excited the admiring interest of a breathless world, and have awakened more vividly than before a sense of the vast antiquity of the so-called "Modern Civilization," as it existed over three thousand years ago in far-off Ancient Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Keener and more personal interest, therefore, should naturally be felt by us in the long-lost history and civilization of our own ancestors in Ancient Britain of about that period, as they are now disclosed to have been a branch of the same great ruling race to which belonged, as we shall see, the Sun-worshipping Akhen-aten (the predecessor and father-in-law of Tut-ankh-amen) and the authors of the naturalistic "New" Egyptian art--the Syrio-Phoenicians.
2020. Phoenicia and the Northern Kingdom of Israel: The Archaeological Evidence
A Life Dedicated to Anatolian Prehistory: Festschrift for Jak Yakar, 2020
During the Iron Age, several key Phoenician cities were located on the northern Coastal Plain of what is known today as modern Israel. As this area bordered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, it is the ideal location to look for evidence to explore the relationship between Phoenicia and Israel. Based on archaeological evidence, this paper sheds new light on the issue, which previously was almost exclusively reconstructed according to historical and biblical sources. Three distinctive chronological horizons with defi ned settlement patterns are outlined for Southern Phoenicia: During the 9th century BCE, hostility between Israel and Phoenicia, as attested by several fortresses, may have been resolved through the political marriage of Ahab and Jezebel. In the 8th century BCE, it was probably Jeroboam II who conquered part of the Southern Phoenician territory, bringing about a decline in their power. Only after the Assyrian conquest of the region did Phoenician sites fl ourish once again, in the context of the economic system of the Assyrian Empire.