ABSTRACTS
Jean-Paul Thalmann
Tell Arqa-external relations in light of new discoveries
Muntaha Saghieh-Beydoun
Byblos revisited
Stefania Mazzoni
Seals and jars: the evidence of the early interconnections in the Eastern Mediterranean
During the final Late Chalcolithic and the initial Early Bronze Age the Levant experienced a distinct process of cultural and social complexity culminating in the emergence of walled towns and cult centres. The diffusion of sealing practices, standardization of pottery and increasing interrelations over long-distance were a consistent component of this process. The circulation of jars with impressions of seals is one of the dynamics of the period that can best document the nature and pattern of the economic relations that connected at that time Levant and Egypt; it also offers a valuable evidence to underscore mechanisms of cultural diffusion and elite emulation.
Eric Gubel
The Phoenician temple at Tell Kazel
The excavation of a monumental broad-room complex implanted on Tell Kazel’s acropolis towards the end of Iron Age I soon reaching its end, a new stratigraphical sequence linked with a ceramic typology based on quantitative recording will become available for the archaeology of the Phoenician coast. Mainly drawing on the evidence from the IA II levels (8-10) representing the three successive occupation phases of the building, our paper will offer some preliminary conclusions on finds currently under study. In the light of the present colloquium’s subject, attention will be paid to their bearing on local developments (Kazel and its immediate vicinity) as well as on regional interaction (Kazel’s status in the Akkar plain), before widening the scope to a supra-regional dimension (Jebleh plain, the Amuq, the kingdom of Hama and the Syrian Hinterland). Finally, evidence will be provided as to the site’s participation in the overseas trade of the bicephalic Tyro-Sidonian kingdom. Descendants of the Iron Age I lineage of “kings of Amurru” (from Zakarba‛al to Ba‛al of Sumur in the days of Shalmaneser III), the “people behind the pots” bore Phoenician names, expressed themselves by using Phoenician characters and embraced the same vogues current in the coastal centres down to the Carmel and well into the Seleucid era .
Assaad Seif
A 4th Millennium Tomb in Mechane: New Discoveries in Wadi Nahr Ibrahim
Corine Yazbeck
Chipped stone tools from the Bronze Age in Lebanon with special reference to Saida (College site)
Gassia Artin
Échanges “commerciaux” et “culturels” au IVème millénaire vus au travers du “prisme” funéraire du site de Byblos
Au IVème millénaire, sur la côte Levantine, Byblos est une importante installation "énéolithique", caractérisée par un mode d'inhumation en jarres et un mobilier funéraire exceptionnellement riche et varié. En effet, Byblos se distingue des autres sites chalcolithiques ayant adopté le mode d'inhumation en jarres par la richesse quantitative du mobilier funéraire, l'abondance de la céramique et des parures, ainsi que par la présence d'objets en os, en pierre (silex, obsidienne...) et en métal, dont des pièces en or et en argent. La découverte de matériaux non originaires de la région (cuivre, obsidienne, œuf d'autruche) parmi le mobilier d’accompagnement, ainsi que l'absence d'atelier d'artisanat sur le site, suggéreraient une activité «commerciale» qui s’instaure vers les débuts du IVème millénaire entre la côte du Nord du Levant, l’Egypte, La Palestine, la Mésopotamie, l’Anatolie et Chypre. C’est au travers du “prisme” funéraire, principalement, que nous avons essayé de cerner les éventuelles analogies qui ont pu exister entre Byblos et les autres sites de la côte Levantine à cette période pour les différents aspects de la culture matérielle. Cette étude soulève plusieurs interrogations sur les échanges "commerciaux" et "culturels" qui se sont développés entre Byblos, le Levant Nord et le Levant Sud au cours du IVème millénaire.
Yasmine Makaroun
L’urbanisation de Byblos dans son contexte régional au Bronze Ancien
Bertrand Lafont
D’Ur à Byblos: ce que disent les textes des relations entre Levant et domaine syro-mésopotamien aux IIIe et IIe mil-lénaires avant notre ère
Hermann Genz
Tell Fadous-Kfarbida, Regional Connections in the Early Bronze Age
The site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida was discovered in 2004 and since then has been investigated by a team from AUB directed by H. Sader and H. Genz. The main occupation phases of this relatively small site (1,5 ha) are restricted to the Early Bronze Age II-III, with indications of a more limited occupation during the Early Bronze Age IV and the Middle Bronze Age. So far for the main occupation phase during the Early Bronze Age II-III no evidence of international trade connections has come to light. However, analysis of the material culture, especially the pottery types, shows many connections to neighboring sites. These comparisons demonstrate rather close connections between Tell Fadous-Kfarabida and Byblos, suggesting possible political and/or socio-economic ties between the two sites during the Early Bronze Age II-III.
Paolo Matthiae
Temples and Queens at Ebla. Recent Discoveries in a Syrian Metropolis between Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant
Irene Forstner-Müller, Karin Kopetzky
Pots and People: Interconnections between Egypt and the Levant in the Second Millennium BC
The contact between Egypt and the Levant is an long ongoing story, which started already in Predynastic times. It is the period of the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period, where these connections intensified. The well stratified site of Tell el-Dabca in the north-eastern Nile delta with its ethnic Asiatic population, provides the ideal place to compare Levantine material in Egyptian contexts. From the late Middle Kingdom until the beginning of the New Kingdom Asiatics, probably from the Lebanese coast, settled at the ancient harbour town of Tell el-Dabca and built up an intensive network of trade between the Nile delta and the Levant. Later they incorporated also Cyprus into this network. The imported and locally produced MB material found in the settlement layers as well as amongst the tomb material of Tell el-Dabca leads to conclusions about Egypt´s trading partners and the up and downs of sea trade and diplomatique connections. Exported Egyptian or Egypianising objects of this period found in Lebanon provides an interesting insight into the political and economic exchanges of theses to powerful regions in the 2nd millennium B.C.
Lorenzo Nigro
Ebla and the Royal tombs at Byblos
Hélène Sader
Palace architecture in Tell Burak: some evidence for Egyptian-Mesopotamian-Levantine interconnections
This paper deals with the evidence for foreign contacts in Tell el-Burak during the Middle Bronze Age. This evidence comes mainly from the monumental mudbrick building, most probably a palace, excavated in Area 1. A general presentation of this building and its characteristic features will be followed by a detailed description of the evidence indicating connections with the Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean. While the palace architecture seems inspired from Mesopotamian examples, the scenes depicted on the wall paintings found in room 10, the Middle Bronze Age pottery found both in situ and in fill layers in various rooms of the palace as well as some small finds provide clear evidence for strong relations with Egypt. Cypriot and Minoan influence have not been detected so far.
Alexander MacGillivray
Lebanon and the Minoans in the Middle Bronze Age with particular reference to the pottery
The very fine Middle Minoan ‘Kamares Ware’ pottery found in Lebanon is part of the wider issue of Cretan exports to sites throughout the south-eastern Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt at the time of the first palaces. The Kamares Ware at harbour sites and along the Nile is believed to reflect trade routes for a host of products including vital metals and semi-precious stones. This paper reviews the chronological implications of this pottery and the evidence for Cretan trade with Lebanon and its neighbours. It also explores Minoan Crete’s special relationship with Lebanon as shown by recent DNA studies and recalled in the Europa myth.
Frances Pinnock
Open cults and temples in Palestine, Egypt and the Levant
As was recently proposed by Lorenzo Nigro, in a synthetic and accurate presentation, in many pre-classical sanctuaries of the Syro-Palestinian region important moments of religious ceremonies took place in open areas, in the presence of a large number of persons. These open areas could be isolated, might include a small sanctuary, or could be related with a great town sanctuary: in the two first instances, the open cult area was limited by a wall, but in the third case this wall could be missing. As already proposed, these peculiar ceremonial-cult structures were often connected with the main town deity, frequently to be identified with Ishtar, but deepening the analysis, it is perhaps possible to propose that the ceremonies taking place in them were really functional for the exercise of kingship, and, therefore, they were related with Ishtar particularly since the beginning of Middle Bronze, when the goddess became the main patron deity of kingship in some of the major centres of northern Syria, while during Early Bronze, similar cults and ceremonies were dedicated to other gods, who shared with Ishtar the quality of being protectors of a ruling dynasty.
Manfred Bietak
Near Eastern influence on temples and cult in Tell-el-Dab’a
Claude Doumet-Serhal
Second Millennium BC Levantine Ceremonial Feasts: Sidon as a Case Study
Events of ritual activity that involve shared food and drink consumption in archaeological records can be identified in Middle Bronze Age Sidon from funerary assemblages as well as from ritual breakage and burning of pottery. Prestige items and ritual paraphernalia are also found in the Late Bronze Age indicating the importance of the British Museum excavation in Sidon in illustrating communal feasts, a fundamental aspect of Levantine archaeology.
Leila Badre
Religious Architecture: Middle Bronze Age Beirut 003 and Late Bronze Age Tell Kazel
Guillaume Gernez
La place de l’armement levantin en Méditerranée orientale: influences, dynamiques et échanges au cours du Bronze Ancien et Moyen (3300-1600 av. J.-C.)
Nicole Hirschfeld
The many ways between Late Bronze Age Levants and Aegeans
Hanan Charaf
Arqa during the Second Millennium BC: Connections with the West
The archaeological excavations at Tell Arqa, one of the largest sites in northern Lebanon, have produced 458 vessels of Cypriote, Mycenaean and other Aegean origins from the Bronze Age. More than 58% of these imports were found in the Late Bronze Age levels. While Cypriote vessels are predominant in this corpus attesting to the continuous strong connections with Cyprus established since the Middle Bronze Age, Mycenaean imports account only for 14 vases and present a strong argument in favor of the decline of Arqa during the later period of the Late Bronze Age in favor of nearby site of Tell Kazel. Cypriote well-stratified imports occurrences represent nearly all the Cypriote imports to the Levant, such as White Painted Wares, Base-Ring, White Slip, Monochrome and White Shaved wares. The substantial number of imports, found together with the local material in sealed contexts, provides us with a basis for comparison with Lebanese and other nearby Levantine sites such as Sidon, Tell Kazel, Ugarit and Alalakh. The Tell Arqa material can also serve as a point of departure for synchronization with southern Levantine assemblages, where the typological development of local material is different, but the same types of Cypriot vessels are represented.
Marlies Heinz
Imports - consumer goods, gifts or private property? The story behind the material evidence for external relations in Late Bronze Age Kumidi
During the Late Bronze Age Kumidi had been a prosperous city, deeply involved in the international political events, an involvement, that finally resulted in the political occupation of the city through the Egyptian superpower. "Schatzhaus", palace, temple and the settlement of the eastslope exhibit a variety of "differing" goods and at the same time a variety of places for origin of these goods. Egypt, Greece, Crete, Cyprus and probably Anatolia and Syria have been identified as potentially producing countries. The historical constellation, the particular contexts in which the objects were found in Kumidi as well as their place of origin together allow first considerations to define what these differing goods constituted in Kamid el-Loz: how and why did these goods arrive in the city and what purpose did they serve in Kumidi?
Amélie Beyhum
The ‘Phoenicians’ of the LBA in the Lebanon
Valérie Matoïan
Vitreous materials from Bronze Age sites of Lebanon: evidence of interconnections in the Eastern Mediterranean
Vassos Karageorghis
Cyprus and Lebanon, fifteen hundred years of interconnections
Cyprus, because of her strategic geographical position, played an important role in the development of Lebanon’s foreign relations, not only with Cyprus itself, but also with the rest of the ‘western’ world, namely the Aegean. These relations may be traced already to the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the initial stages of the Late Bronze Age; they continue uninterruptedly to the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., when they were intensified as a result of the Phoenician expansion. In this paper we present a summary of the evidence for such contacts, mainly Cypriote pottery found at the main archaeological sites of Lebanon (Sidon, Arqa, Tyre, Sarepta, Kamid el-Loz and Byblos and Beirut) and some other material of the 1st millennium B.C. found mainly at Byblos, Sidon, Beirut and elsewhere.
Nicolas Grimal
The Levant and Egypt - from the Levantine point of view and from the Egyptian point of view
L’intention de cette communication est de présenter une réflexion sur un traitement possible des sources égyptiennes comparées aux données issues de l’archéologie du Levant, de manière à tenter de rendre un compte des relations internationales peut-être un plus proche de la réalité que celui que donnent les sources directes de l’historiographie égyptienne. Les cartes géopolitiques que dressent les Égyptiens à travers les “listes de peuples” rencontrent, en effet, la réalité archéologique lorsque cette dernière se laisse suffisamment apercevoir. On invoquera les exemples de Chypre, d’Ougarit, et, naturellement des cités de la côte libanaise, pour dessiner quelques contours des relations internationales de l’époque.
Nota Kourou
The Aegean and the Levant in Early Iron Age: Recent developments
This paper takes up a discussion of the relations between Aegean and the Levant in the Early Iron Age according to new finds and recent developments in the field. For the Aegean emphasis is given to the discussion of finds from sites, which present a new picture of their post-palatial evolution. For Cyprus and Near East questions related to finds of a complicated and mixed Cypro-Euboean character are stressed in an attempt to delineate possible cultural implications of early interconnections between the two areas.
Annie Caubet
Synoptical panorama of Ivory production in the Levant in the Late Bronze Age
The art of working with ivory is an essential part of the international civilization of the Late Bronze Age Levant. Artefacts have surfaced on a large number of excavation sites, along the littoral of Syria, Libanon and Palestine. Finds from Cyprus, the Aegean and Egypt further demonstrate the wide distribution of styles characteristic of an artistic koine. Recent studies (Gachet-Bizollon 2007, Fischer 2007) and recent discoveries (at Qatna and Hazor) are bringing new insights on a number of issues, such as the identification and origin of the raw material; the question of the “syrian elephant”; the localisation of workshops etc. The repertoire of artefacts, with its distinction between luxury goods produced in “series”, such as the cosmetic duck box, and the “unique” masterpieces created for palace and temple, provides a vivid insight in the life of the ruling elites and their entourage.
Pierre Bordreuil
Remarques sur le vocabulaire cananéen de la région de Sidon et de Tyr à la fin de l’âge du Bronze
Honor Frost
From Knossos to Gwasis ex-votos and civic monuments
All Bronze Age vessels had square sails and all lacked engines, so that if blown off-course towards rocks or shore, averting disaster and possibly death depended entirely on the hold of the stone anchors that such vessels carried, hence the exceptional force of anchor-symbolism (which, in a lesser degree, still clings to anchors in general). Variations in anchor-symbolism reflect variations in local customs and beliefs, as can be seen by comparing the positioning of anchors on archaeological sites round the Eastern Mediterranean and –by contrast- the Pharaonic anchors which when found in monuments on the shores of the Red Sea, reflect the achievements of ship-owning bureaucrats rather than seafarers.
Maria Eugenia Aubet, Fransisco Nuñez
Tyre - Imported material / typology and results:
The material and human remains recovered in the course of several excavation campaigns undertaken at the Phoenician cemetery of al - Bass, in Tyre, have led us to a better knowledge and understanding of the Phoenician funerary rituals in the metropolis. Among these remains, the ceramics have produced a relevant and standardized repertoire that, besides its functional character, offers a series of interesting typological, social and chronological readings. In this paper, we will focus on the Cypriot imports. Even if their proportion is reduced, they represent the local taste for these materials in general and certain ceramic forms in particular, especially the big containers used as cinerary urns. Moreover, it is not only about the sociological implications of the demand for these materials, but also the ways it was fulfilled, whether through direct contacts with Cyprus or by means of not insular productions, a possibility that should not be ruled out. Finally, if the contexts where the Cypriot ceramics were found are regarded, these imports have also relevant sequential and chronological implications for both the Phoenician and Cypriot repertoires.
Grace Homsy-Gottwalles
Une approche des relations commerciales de Byblos à l’âge du Fer :
Le but de cette communication est de présenter quelques aspects des échanges commerciaux existant entre Byblos et les autres régions de la Méditerranée orientale à l’Age du Fer. Cette intervention se base principalement sur les sources écrites, épigraphiques et littéraires, dont la plus importante qui nous soit parvenue de l’Age du Fer est égyptienne, le récit du voyage de Ounamon, et sur les données archéologiques issues du site même de Byblos. La confrontation du contenu de ce texte, rédigé à la fin du IIe millénaire avant J.-C., aux découvertes archéologiques, permet d’enrichir notre connaissance des relations commerciales maritimes, mais aussi des conditions de navigation durant cette période.
Elisabeth Fontan
Phéniciennes, chypriotes, rhodiennes...? Quelques réflexions sur les figurines de terre cuite de l'âge du Fer au Levant
L'attribution à la civilisation phénicienne de productions caractéristiques dont aucun exemplaire n'a été trouvé sur le sol même de la Phénicie dans un contexte bien documenté est un paradoxe souvent évoqué. Si l'identification de centres de fabrication pour les ivoires et les coupes métalliques reste à faire, la production des coroplastes est mieux connue. Les études récentes portant sur les collections de figurines de terre cuite de de l'ancien fonds du Musée du Louvre, réalisées à l'occasion de publications, d'expositions et de campagnes de restauration, apportent quelques informations nouvelles sur ces questions d'ateliers.
John Curtis
Phoenicians on the Balawat Gates
This paper will describe and analyse representations of Phoenicians on the three sets of bronze gates found at the Assyrian city of Balawat in Northern Iraq. It has long been known that Phoenicians are shown on two bands of the gates set up by Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC) that were found by Hormuzd Rassam in 1878 and were fully published by L.W. King in 1915. These bands show the tribute of Tyre and Sidon. Less well known is the fact that two further sets of bronze gates, both set up by Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC), were also found at Balawat, the first by Rassam in 1878 and the second by Sir Max Mallowan in 1956. They have recently been fully published for the first time (J.E. Curtis and N. Tallis (eds.), The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II) and three or four of the bands feature scenes of Phoenician interest. They show Phoenician cities, boats of Phoenician type, figures wearing Phoenician dress, and figures carrying tribute, the latter presumably items of distinctive Phoenician type. This is a rich source of new information about Phoenician topography and Phoenician material culture, and we will stress the significance of the Balawat Gates for Phoenician studies.
Hartmut Matthaeus
Phoenician metal-work up to date
Research of the last 25 years has considerably enlarged our knowledge of Phoenician metalwork of the first half of the first millennium B. C. In the focus of the paper will be the most important categories of Phoenician art in metal: incense burners of various types as well as bowls with figural decoration.
1. Incense burners/thymiateria of Phoenician origin. There distribution can be followed throughout the Mediterranean, from the Levant to the Iberian Peninsula. Types, distribution, chronology and function can now be defined more precisely, as a doctoral thesis by B. Morstadt has meanwhile be been finished at the University of Erlangen, which discusses the whole corpus of material.
2. Bowls with figural decoration. The following topics will be discussed: a) Origins of the technique and iconography in Egypt and North Syria. b) Recent finds from the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean, Phoenician and Phoenicianising: e. g. the bronze bowl from Arjan/Iran, a bull bowl from Ankara, Phoenician exports to Crete, like specimens from the Idaean Cave of Zeus and the Orthi Petra necropolis at Eleutherna. c) Phoenican bull bowls and their local imitations from Kush/modern Sudan - finds which have come to light or have been published during the last years, a most interesting and important group of Phoenician metalwork. Furthermore Kushitic cemeteries like Nuri, El Kurru and Meroe offer finds of metalwork, which have their origin in Cyprus, evidence of a wave of imports from mainland Phoenicia and Cyprus, which must have been imported via Egypt, although finds from Egypt itself are not (yet) known. d) The central and west Mediterranean perspective.
3. Other types of Phoenician metalwork, like Phoenician jugs and undecorated bowls as well as their "Levantine" forerunners in the Mediterranean area.
Christina Ioannou
Recent discoveries of Phoenician inscriptions in Cyprus
Gerta Maaß-Lindermann
Phoenicians between East and West
The art of working with ivory is an essential part of the international civilization of the Late Bronze Age Levant. Artefacts have surfaced on a large number of excavation sites, along the littoral of Syria, Libanon and Palestine. Finds from Cyprus, the Aegean and Egypt further demonstrate the wide distribution of styles characteristic of an artistic koine. Recent studies (Gachet-Bizollon 2007, Fischer 2007) and recent discoveries (at Qatna and Hazor) are bringing new insights on a number of issues, such as the identification and origin of the raw material; the question of the “syrian elephant”; the localisation of workshops etc. The repertoire of artefacts, with its distinction between luxury goods produced in “series”, such as the cosmetic duck box, and the “unique” masterpieces created for palace and temple, provides a vivid insight in the life of the ruling elites and their entourage.
Eleftheria Pappa
Levantine Connections in the West in the Early Iron Age: Spheres and Nature of interractions
Phoenician “colonisation” in the western Mediterranean has enjoyed a fruitful era of research during the past few decades, with outstanding results for a period for which scanty textual sources exist. Yet, the degree to which western Phoenician society evolved and adapted to the new environments within the first two centuries of settlement, as well as whether changes in the indigenous populations were precipitated by foreign contact is still an issue whose ramifications are held at bay by the complexity of the archaeological record and its inherent problems of interpretation. In the best of cases, there is the contention that Phoenicians brought about a “social restructuring” in the local societies-though more likely than not the settlement of foreigners in the area could not have materialised without the presence of a “developed” indigenous society in the first case. The construction and perception of identity has meaning in relation to a reference point, and hence a multiplicity of various social and personal identities can co-exist through a series of relationships with a plethora of various “others”. Understanding the nature of interactions between foreigners and pre-existing populations is the key to dissecting how colonial identity evolved and developed over the course of the first centuries of the Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean, charting at the same time responses in the same realm on the part of the indigenous societies. In trying to explicate the processes of social identity formation within the social domains of western colonies during the 9th -6th c. BC, this paper is an attempt to trace the seemingly intractable problems related to the process of social identity formation and self-categorisation, via comparative analysis of the material culture of the western Phoenician settlements, debunking the idea that the archaeological record is insufficient in addressing such at-first-sight abstract concepts as representations and self-perception of identity by recognising their material manifestations.
Francesca Onnis
Levantine iconology: was there a conscious figurative programme in the decoration of the "Phoenician" metal bowl?
Explaining the potential or actual meaning of the motifs appearing on the bowls is still an unsolved issue. These motifs are derived from a vast inventory mixing various iconographic traditions of the ancient Orient and the eastern Mediterranean. Upon closer examination the choice of themes is far from chaotic, but rather seems to be the result of a very systematic selection from the abundant sources available. My particular concern has been those motifs on the Phoenician bowls betraying a probable Mesopotamian origin. All of these share the same meaning: the exaltation of royal power, in the sense of reflecting the most important aspects of the good ruler. These motifs evolved in the course of the utilisation of the bowls by other communities. The modifications would appear to have invariably involved a formal and semantic adaptation, but still stressing the theme of the glorification of the local political power. This common goal probably constitutes the principal criterion dominating the choice of the motifs on the bowls. And thus it poses a question about the symbolic value of these objects which can now be examined in a different light.