Brian Peckham - Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean
Here you can read online Brian Peckham - Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: Winona Lake, year: 2014, publisher: Eisenbrauns, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean
- Author:
- Publisher:Eisenbrauns
- Genre:
- Year:2014
- City:Winona Lake
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Phoenicia has long been known as the homeland of the Mediterranean seafarers who gave the Greeks their alphabet. But along with this fairly well-known reality, many mysteries remain, in part because the record of the coastal cities and regions that the people of Phoenicia inhabited is fragmentary and episodic.
In this magnum opus, the late Brian Peckham examines all of the evidence currently available to paint as complete a portrait as is possible of the land, its history, its people, and its culture. In fact, it was not the Phoenicians but the Canaanites who invented the alphabet; what distinguished the Phoenicians in their turn was the transmission of the alphabet, which was a revolutionary invention, to everyone they met. The Phoenicians were traders and merchants, the Tyrians especially, thriving in the back-and-forth of barter in copper for Levantine produce. They were artists, especially the Sidonians, known for gold and silver masterpieces engraved with scenes from the stories they told and which they exchanged for iron and eventually steel; and they were builders, like the Byblians, who taught the alphabet and numbers as elements of their trade.
When the Greeks went west, the Phoenicians went with them. Italy was the first destination; settlements in Spain eventually followed; but Carthage in North Africa was a uniquely Phoenician foundation. The Atlantic Spanish settlements retained their Phoenician character, but the Mediterranean settlements in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Malta were quickly converted into resource centers for the North African colony of Carthage, a colony that came to eclipse the influence of the Levantine coastal city-states. An emerging independent Western Phoenicia left Tyre free to consolidate its hegemony in the East. It became the sole west-Asiatic agent of the Assyrian Empire. But then the Babylonians let it all slip away; and the Persians, intent on war and world domination, wasted their own and everyones time trying to dominate the irascible and indomitable Greeks. The Punic West (Carthage) made the same mistake until it was handed off to the Romans. But Phoenicia had been born in a Greek matrix and in time had the sense and good grace to slip quietly into the dominant and sustaining Occidental culture.
This complicated history shows up in episodes and anecdotes along a frangible and fractured timeline. Individual men and women come forward in their artifacts, amulets, or seals. There are king lists and alliances, companies, and city assemblies. Years or centuries are skipped in the twinkling of any eye and only occasionally recovered. Phoenicia, like all history, is a construct, a product of historiography, an answer to questions. The history of Phoenicia is the history of its cities in relationship to each other and to the peoples, cities, and kingdoms who nourished their curiosity and their ambition. It is written by deduction and extrapolation, by shaping hard data into malleable evidence, by working from the peripheries of their worlds to the centers where they lived, by trying to uncover their mentalities, plans, beliefs, suppositions, and dreams in the residue of their products and accomplishments. For this reason, the subtitle, Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean, is a particularly appropriate description of Peckhams masterful (posthumous) volume, the fruit of a lifetime of research into the history and culture of the Phoenicians.
Brian Peckham: author's other books
Who wrote Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Charcoal drawing of J. Brian Peckham by Michael Steinhauser.
Phoenicia
Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean
J. Brian Peckham
Winona Lake, Indiana
E ISENBRAUNS
2014
Copyright 2014 Eisenbrauns
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
www.eisenbrauns.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peckham, Brian, 19342008.
Phoenicia : episodes and anecdotes from the ancient Mediterranean / J. Brian Peckham.
pagescm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-57506-181-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. PhoeniciansHistory.I. Title.
DS81.P432014
939.44dc23
2014016961
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Proto-Sinaitic inscription, Beloved of Baalat (BM 41748)
Shechem inscription, May waters of the well... (IDAM 38.1201)
Izbet Sartah abecedary (IDAM 80-1)
Ivory box from Ur with Phoenician inscription (BM WA 125028)
Inscribed arrowhead (The Man of Shophet, the Tyrian; BLMJ 0868)
Airom sarcophagus
Kilamuwa inscription from Zinjirli (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. S 6579)
Impression of seal (A.O. 3175)
Woman-in-the-window from Nimrud (BM 118159)
Jezebel seal (IAA 65-321)
Taanach cult stand (ASOJS 4197)
Inscribed pot sherd from Sarepta (Penn Museum image, SAR 2460 II A-6, level 2a)
Amrit Stele
Kition inscribed bowl (hair offering; Kition 1435)
Nora Inscription (Cagliari, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 5998)
Karatepe Inscription
Astarte statue from Seville (Museo Arqueolgico Provincil, Siviglia)
Bronze bowl from Salamis, Cyprus (BM Catalogue of Bronzes no. 186)
Bowl with decoration of religious ritual; Cypriot, eighth century B.C.E. (MMA 74.51.5700)
Royal Egyptian victory and mythological scenes, ca. 675 B.C.E. Found at Idalion (Louvre, A.O. 20134)
Assyrian relief, depicting Tyre (BM Or. Dr. IV, 8)
Impression of seal with couchant lion (REH-042)
Seal and impression with man and baboon (A.O. 10882)
Impression of seal with man in fringed robe (BLMJ Seal 1804)
Silver Bowl from Praeneste (61565)
Seal from Akko, picturing a man with an ibex (IAA 73-216)
Judean titled seal, picturing a rooster (IAA 32.2525)
Edomite seal (BM 136202)
Impression of Moabite seal with inscription, star, and crescent (BLMJ 1848)
Impression of Ammonite seal with bird and inscription (private collection)
Impression of Ammonite seal (two-sided, one side shown) with monkey and inscription (De Clercq Collection 2512)
Tabnt inscription on base of sarcophagus (King of Sidon); sarcophagus
Seal and impression with Hermes and inscription (Henri Seyrig Collection 1973.1.489)
Mask from Achzib (IDAM)
Seal and impression with smiting god and wolf (De Clercq Collection 2506)
Byblian coin of Ayyinel (ANS 1953.117.2)
Half-shekel coin of Sidon (ANS 1977.158.736)
Sidonian coin of Baalillem I (ANS 1997.9.197)
Sidonian coin of Baalillem II (ANS 1944.100.71301)
Example of the Symbol of Tannit (from Tunisia, A.O. 5987)
Note to the reader: The maps are intended to reflect sites mentioned in this book rather than the specific chronology or period of the chapter in which they appear.
The World of the Phoenicians
Canaan
Phoenicia and environs
Cyprus
Greece
Crete and Rhodes
Malta
Italy
Sicily
Sardinia
The Iberian Peninsula
It is not an exaggeration to say that Brian Peckhams dying wish was the publication of this book. As it became clear that his time was very limited, the manuscript was of the utmost concern to him and I am very honored that Brian entrusted me with the task of making sure it came to fruition.
When asked what Brians book is about, my response in short is that he has managed to document every place that a Phoenician set foot. Brian followed the Phoenicians through time and space as they left their mark on the various places to which they sailed. His expansive knowledge of the history, linguistics, epigraphy, politics, economics, and religions of the ancient Near East makes this work a truly comprehensive examination of the Phoenicians economic, religious, and social relationships with their neighbors.
In some ways, Brians scholarship has come full circle. Although his range of expertise was diverse and he published on a number of subjects, his very first and very last book, written some 40 years apart, both concentrate on the Phoenicians.
Brians death is a major loss to scholarship, to his students, and to his friends. To his students, he was an inspirational teacher, who gave them the confidence to pursue their own insights. To his friends, he was caring, funny, and engaged in their lives. I am very privileged to have known Brian as both teacher and friend, and I sincerely hope that any contribution I have made to this volume reflects the profound influence he had upon me.
The description of the Phoenicians in his introduction as welcoming waves of newcomers, the displaced and adventurers, by teaching them what [they] learned, and by looking for their learning in return is an apt description of Brian himself. He was not possessive of his knowledge and ideas but openly shared them and yet often remarked how much he constantly learned from others, his students in particular. He was a dedicated and devoted teacher and friend, whose unique character and selfless giving had an impact on all those around him. His modesty prevented him from readily accepting the accolades and expressions of appreciation that he so deserved. He was a mentor to many and believed in the pursuit of knowledge as being valuable in and of itself. Brians generosity of spirit will be truly missed.
I am grateful to the people at Eisenbrauns, particularly Jim Eisenbraun, Beverly McCoy, Andrew Knapp, and Gina Hannah, who went to extraordinary lengths to help fulfill Brians wish for the publication of this book. It is wonderful that both scholars and students who knew Brian and those who have yet to discover his valuable work will have access to his most recent scholarshipscholarship that incorporates a lifetime of study of the Phoenicians.
Adina Levin
Ag. Ap. Josephus. Against Apion
Diod. Diodorus. Histories
Ph.Byb. Philo of Byblos. Phoenician History
AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research
AB Anchor Bible
AbrN Abr-Nahrain
ABSA Annual of the British School at Athens
Actas 4 Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de Estudios Fenicios y Punicos, Cadiz, 2 al 6 de Octobre de 1995. 4 vols. Cadiz: University of Cadiz, 2000
Actes 3 M. H. Fantar and M. Ghaki, eds. Actes du IIIe Congres International des Etudes Pheniciennes et Puniques, Tunis, 1116 novembre 1991. 2 vols. Tunis: Institut Nationale du Patrimoine, 1995
ADAJ Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan
AfO Archiv fur Orientforschung
Ah, Assyria M. Cogan and I. Ephal, eds. Ah, Assyria... : Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor
Next pageFont size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean»
Look at similar books to Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.