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The Greek Trade at Al Mina:1 A Footnote to Oriental History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The excavation conducted by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1936 and 1937 at the site near al Mina, at the mouth of the Orontes, produced material of interest not only for archaeological study but also for Oriental history. The eighth to the fourth centuries of the pre-Christian era, to which the material remains belong, are also represented at other sites in Syria and Palestine that have been excavated by scientific expeditions. But the Phoenician cities, Byblos and Sidon, the north Syrian cities, Carchemish and Sinčirli, the sites on the plain of Aleppo reported on by the Syrian expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and Palestinian sites, have not yielded the same material of one special kind as al Mina, or only stray examples of it. There Cycladic and proto-Corinthian sherds and later developments of early Greek vases show conclusively that there was trade between the little Syrian port on the one side and the Aegean islands and the Greek mainland on the other, between the beginning of the eighth century and the end of the seventh. Similarly Attic pottery and coins are a proof of the encouragement given to Athenian trade at the same port from the time of Darius I to that of Artaxerxes III. In this respect new knowledge is to be gained from the finds at al Mina as to the history of the north Syrian coast during five centuries. The conclusions that may be drawn form an interesting footnote to what is known, and to some of the assumptions, about general Oriental history.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1942

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References

page 87 note 2 Reports by Sir Leonard Woolley, ‘Excavations near Antioch in 1936’, in The Antiquaries Journal, xvii, 1–15; ‘Excavations at al Mina, Sueidia’, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, lviii, 1–30, 133–70.

page 89 note 1 See W. A. Heurtley in the Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, v, 90–110; C. W. McEwan in American Journal of Archaeology, xli, 10, Period V; Miss Hetty Goldman, ‘A Note on Two Painted Sherds with Representations of Birds from Gözlü Kule, Tarsus’ in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Dec. 1939, p. 2, and American Journal of Archaeology, xliv, 76. The fragments published in K. Bittel und G. Güterbock, Boǧazköy (Abhandlungen der preuss. Ak. der W., Jahrgang 1933, phil-hist. Kl., No. 1), Taf. 16, No. 3, Taf. 17, nos. 8 and 10, must be stray representatives of the same class, out of their proper connection and not recognised by Bittel, p. 59.

page 91 note 1 Martin Robertson, ‘The Excavations at al Mina, Suweidia. IV. The Early Greek Vases’, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, lx, 2–21.

page 92 note 1 A. Götze, ‘Kleinasien’, in Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients, Dritter Abschnitt, Erste Lieferung, pp. 179–80; E. A. Speiser, Introduction to Human (The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. xx) p. 10.

page 93 note 1 Thus the chair ornaments in the relief of Bar-Rekub, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, iv, pl. LX, are unquestionably Urartian.

page 94 note 1 Harald Ingholt, Rapport Préliminaire sur sept campagnes de fouilles à Hama en Syrie (Det. kgl. danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Archaeologisk-kunsthistoriske Middelelser, xxx, 1), pp. 107–14. Professor Ingholt is inclined to date the pair of lions flanking a staircase, pp. 109–10, pl. xxxvi, no. 3, to the 10th century, with the lion from Sandiq and an example from Carchemish. I do not think the Hamath lions, or the other examples, so early.

page 94 note 2 See Ingholt, Rapport Préliminaire, p. 98. The date suggested for these pieces by M. Friis Johansen in note 7, between 850 and 800, may be slightly too early.

page 95 note 1 In addition to the material from Gordion and Aliṣar IV there is now the result of excavations at Pazarli, see the preliminary report by Dr. Hamit Zübeyr Koṣay in Belleten III (1939), pp. 5–25 and plates I-XXXIX, and also La Turquie Kémaliste, December, 1937, pp. 25–35. The evidence from Bogazköy, discussed by Bittel in K. Bittel und G. Güterbock, Boǧazköy, pp. 52–8, is decisive in regard to dating.

page 95 note 2 R. D. Barnett, ‘The Greek Pottery’, in ‘Explorations in Cilicia: the Neilson Expedition Fifth Interim Report,’ from Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, xxvi, 98 ff.

page 96 note 1 For arguments about the northern border based on the assumption that Poseideïon must lie south of Mount Kasios see O. Leuze, Die Satrapieneinteilung in Syrien und im Zweistromlande von 520–320 (Schriften der Königsberger gelehrten Gesellschaft, geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse, Jahr 11, Heft 4), pp. 101–2, 113–17, 138–9, 316–17. There is no sound discussion of the location of Poseideïon, and most of the arguments are invalidated by Woolley's identification.

page 97 note 1 Strabo, 16, 753. To distinguish between the two different sites the spelling Poseidion has been artificially confined, in the present essay, to the later town and the Herodotean form maintained for the earlier.

page 97 note 2 Edited by Holleaux in Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1906, pp. 330–48; and by Mitteis und Wilcken, Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, i, no. 1.

page 97 note 3 Syria, xix, 312.

page 99 note 1 Saul S. Weinberg, ‘What is Proto-Corinthian Geometric Ware?’, in American Journal of Archaeology, xlv, pp. 30–44, argues, apparently correctly, that only one group of the ware previously called Proto-Corinthian was made at Corinth; the other group, to which most if not all of the examples from al Mina belong, cannot possibly, on the evidence produced by excavations, come from Corinth but may possibly have been made at Aegina. That thesis will require a modification, but not a radical alteration, in the argument stated above.

page 101 note 1 Cambridge Ancient History, iv, 583.

page 101 note 2 H. G. Payne, Necrocorinthia, Preface.

page 101 note 3 H. G. Payne, Necrocorinthia, p. 53; Annual of the British School at Athens, xxix, 281–2.

page 102 note 1 Classical Sculpture, p. 121.

page 102 note 2 Payne, Necrocorinthia, pl. 1, no. 7, pp. 67–70; Ingholt, Rapport Préliminaire, pl. xxxvii, no. 3 and pp. 111–12.

page 103 note 1 G. Karo, Orient und Hellas in archaischer Zeit (Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, xxxxv, 1920), pp. 144–5.

page 103 note 2 See, for instance, Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien Einst und Jetzt, ii, 2, p. 500.

page 103 note 3 A good example of a complete specimen is B.M. no. 22494.

page 103 note 4 E. Herzfeld, ‘Khattische und khaldische Bronzen’, in Janus, Heft 1, pp. 145–57.

page 104 note 1 Ipsen in Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien Einst und Jetzt, ii, 2, pp. 492–3.

page 104 note 2 L. Curtius, Assyrischer Dreifuss in Erlangen; see Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien Einst und Jetzt, ii, 2, p. 521.

page 105 note 1 The Journal of Hellenic Studies, lix, 1–44.

page 106 note 1 On this identification see N. Glueck, The Other Side of the Jordan, and A. Bea in Biblica, XXI, 1940, pp. 429–45.

page 106 note 2 For references see C. W. McEwan in American Journal of Archaeology, lxi, 10; J. H. Iliffe, ‘Pre-Hellenistic Greek pottery in Palestine’, in Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, ii, 15–26, and for typical specimens see also C. N. Johns, ‘Excavations at Atlit’, in the same volume, p. 73; Nelson Glueck in the same Quarterly, ix, 215–16. Four fragments of b.f. and two of r.f., of the late sixth and fifth centuries, were found at Tall an Nasbah, see Dietrich von Bothmer's report in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 83 (1940), pp. 25–30.

page 106 note 3 E. Forrer, ‘Eine unbekannte griechische Kolonie des sechsten Jahrhunderts v. Chr. in Phönikien’, in Bericht über den VI. internationalen Kongress für Archäologie, Berlin, 21–26 August, 1930, pp. 360–5, Tafel 54–5.

page 106 note 4 The Journal of Hellenic Studies, lviii, 21.

page 107 note 1 Fleming, Wallace B., The History of Tyre (Columbia University Oriental Studies, x, 1925, p. 44)Google Scholar.

page 107 note 2 E. Unger in Theologische Literatur-Zeitung, l, 1925, pp. 481 ff.

page 107 note 3 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, i, 79, says of the time after the fall of Assyria: ‘…the great caravan trade, which was another creation of Babylonia and which connected Lower Mesopotamia with Iran, India (and perhaps China) and Arabia on the one hand and with the Pontic and Mediterranean regions on the other… was as old as Babylonian civilization… the great caravan roads of the Tigris and Euphrates with their branches in the East, in the South (south Arabia) in the North (the Black Sea coast with its wealth of metals) and in the West (the Phoenician and Anatolian coasts) remained in Persian times as important as they had previously been.’ This is not true. Only in the Persian period were all these routes open at the same time. There was no connexion between Babylonia and China in historical times; that with India existed only in the time of the Agade dynasty and of Nebuchadrezzar II. There is no proof of any old Babylonian trade with southern Arabia, but only with the central oases, and not even of that before the eighth century; there is no evidence for trade with Pontus at all, and, in Anatolia, only with Cappadocia. There may have been a direct trade route across the desert from Babylonia to Arabia in the Parthian period, see Neilson C. Debevoise, ‘The Origin of Decorative Stucco’, in American Journal of Archaeology, xlv, p. 56, but not earlier. Even as regards the Mediterranean Rostovtzeff's statement is an exaggeration. The trade as he describes it was a creation of the Achaemenid Empire.

page 109 note 1 See Mélanges syriens, i, 475.

page 109 note 2 V. Scheil, ‘Inscriptions des Achémenides a Suse’, in Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique de Perse, tome xxi.

page 109 note 3 For the latest discussion of the whole question, see E. Herzfeld, Altpersische Inschriften, pp. 18, 121 ff., 88 ff., whose conclusions I am not able to accept.

page 110 note 1 M. Farnsworth, and S. E.Q. Ashley, ‘The Technology of Black Attic Glaze’ in American Journal of Archaeology, xlv, p. 92, say that mineral magnetite was used.

page 110 note 2 See Journal of Hellenic Studies, lviii, 24.

page 110 note 3 Numismatic Chronicle, Fifth Series, xvii, 187–9.

page 111 note 1 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, i, 83.

page 111 note 2 Syria, vii, 193 ff.

page 112 note 1 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, i, 105.

page 112 note 2 Ibid., p. 131.