Phoenician art

Phoenician art. The Phoenician region developed as a major trade center of the ancient world; consequently Phoenician art clearly reflects the influences of Egypt, Syria, and Greece. Phoenician deities were represented in Egyptian and Syrian attire and were surrounded with foreign symbolism adopted by Phoenician artists and used to illustrate indigenous beliefs. The Phoenicians excelled at metalcraft and carving. Their ivories and metal reliefs were copied in many neighboring regions, especially in Palestine, Greece, and Etruria. Their artisans settled in Egypt and Greece and imported Syrian work as well as their own, increasing the amalgamation of styles. The principal Phoenician excavations are at Byblos, but Phoenician works in jewelry, glass, clay, alabaster, ivory, many metals, faience, and wood are found in all Mediterranean countries and neighboring areas of Asia Minor. Their textiles too, particularly the famous blue and purple cloth, were widely exported. Among the most famous examples of Phoenician carving is a gem- and glass-inlaid ivory found at Nimrud depicting a Nubian man being attacked by a lion (British Mus.).

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This book does not present (nor aim to) a comprehensive corpus of Phoenician art; rather, it seeks to unpack how essentialist notions of East and West have created modern fictions of identity pinned loosely to selected works of art.

She then deconstructs the concept of "Phoenician art" as a "fantasy" (p.

The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician

Traditional Phoenician art forms such as anthropoid sarcophagi, stone coffins whose human heads, arms and feet protruded out from a piece of smooth stone like human pupae, acquired Greek dress and hair decoration.

Carthage: the lost Mediterranean civilisation: little remains of the great North African empire that was Rome's most formidable enemy, because, as Richard Miles explains, only its complete annihilation could satisfy its younger rival

Chapter eight covers the topic of Phoenician art. Although Woolmer starts with a statement that the majority of Phoenician art objects were characterized by stylistic borrowings from elsewhere, he nuances this notion by pointing out that "when the Phoenicians adopted, and adapted, foreign designs and motifs, they frequently did so for a specific purpose or reason" (p.

Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction

Sabatino Moscati inaugurated the modem phase of Phoenician studies in 1963 with his programmatic paper, "La questione fenicia." (2) In this seminal study, Moscati took up the question of the identity of the "Phoenicians" as a people or ethnic group, the definitional role of language in Phoenician identity, the religious continuities and discontinuities of "Phoenician" populations, and the systematic description of Phoenician art. Moscati returned to these guiding questions repeatedly.

The vast iconographic witness of Phoenician art has been undervalued; accusations that it lacks originality and is repetitive persist to the present.

A research manual on Phoenician and Punic civilization. (Review Article)

She offers a superb overview of all aspects of Phoenician history and culture, making full use of new archaeological evidence as well as recent work on Phoenician art, religion, and political institutions.