In Search of the Phoenicians

In this scholarly work, Quinn (The Punic Mediterranean), associate professor of ancient history at Oxford, finds surprising echoes through the centuries of the ways in which Phoenician cultural identity and nationhood were created. She argues that the Phoenicians, widespread temporally and geographically throughout the Mediterranean in antiquity, never formed a cohesive society and “did not even exist as a self-conscious collective.” Instead, their perceived character as indomitable explorers and inventors who were proficient in trade and warfare has been repeatedly co-opted by latter-day nationalists from Lebanon to Tunisia to Ireland seeking prestigious forebears for their own nations. The real Phoenician city-states defy easy categorization; inhabitants of each newly-settled location reworked the traditions of the homeland with which they had broken. Of great interest to specialists, Quinn’s precise and detailed investigations will reward patient students with a wealth of information on artifacts and practices, including coinage and child sacrifice, from throughout the Phoenician linguistic and religious continuum. Quinn couples her systematic history of the Phoenicians with an examination of their use in service of national and political mythmaking. Though dry prose and lengthy analyses of funerary inscriptions may intimidate casual readers, Quinn’s ambitious study ties history and political science together to reveal the ways that antiquity remains relevant today. Maps & illus. (Dec.)