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The Phoenicians on the West Coast of Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

D. B. Harden
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Extract

In the present state of our knowledge of the true extent of the Phoenician accomplishment in their homelands in the Mediterranean, it may seem foolhardy to try to evaluate their achievements in West Africa, or indeed anywhere else on the periphery of their sphere of influence. The attempt has, however, been made in the past, nearly always from the purely historical aspect, and my excuse for essaying it once again is that the time seems to have come to emphasize how archaeology could help to shed light on their colonial and mercantile activities in those regions.

Before 1200 B.C. the Phoenician cities on the Syrian coast had sent out colonies to Cyprus, Rhodes and possibly Crete, and, not much later, farther west to Utica and even Gades, if we are to believe our ancient sources (1). These colonies and others, situated at the most strategical points in the Mediterranean, were important vantage-places from which to curb the Greek spread westwards. They kept the Greeks from any real foothold west of a line drawn from Cumae to Selinus, apart from an enclave in the Gulf of Lions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 22 , Issue 87 , September 1948 , pp. 141 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1948

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References

1 Tradition (Velleius Paterculus, 1, 2, 4; Pliny, Nat. Hist, XVI, 216; Aristotle, de mirab. auscult., 134) puts the date of foundation of Utica and Gades at about noo B.C., i.e. 300 years before Carthage, founded in 814 B.C. There is no archaeological reason why these dates should not be accepted, though, if they are true, we have yet to discover traces of the earliest settlements at each site.

2 There is one hint, no more, in Diodorus (v, 20) that the Etruscans sometimes had western dreams. After describing how a Carthaginian ship, blown out of its course into the Atlantic, discovered a large island with a good climate (probably one of the Madeiras) Diodorus adds that the Etruscans, who were strong on the sea at that time (so that it must have been before their defeat by Hiero of Syracuse at Cumae, 474 B.C.), wanted to found a colony there, but the Carthaginians, though friendly to the Etruscans, put them off.

3 I use the word mainland advisedly in view of the eight Carthaginian and one Cyrenaican coins of the 3rd century B.C. found as part of a hoard in a clay vase on Corvo Island in the Azores in 1749. The coins were published by a Swede called Podolyn in 1778, having been given to him in Madrid. Podolyn’s story is cited in full by R. Hennig, Terrae Incognitae (Leiden, 1936), 1, 109 ff., who republished Podolyn’s plate, having tried unsuccessfully to trace the actual coins. A different version, based on another source, is given by Gsell, Hist, de l’Afr. du Nord, IV, 142.

4 See, however, de la Martinière in Bull. Archéologique, 1890, 134 ff. for possible traces of the Phoenician settlement underlying later levels at Lixus (Larache in Spanish Morocco ; not the river Lixus of Hanno, see below). The evidence M. cites is insufficient to prove Phoenician presence and the site should be revisited, now that we know so much more about what to look for.

5 The Greek text is best consulted in C. Müller’s edition, Geog. Graec. Minores, 1 (Paris, 1855), 1 ff.

6 Libyphoenicians can mean either Phoenicians from Africa or African allies or vassals of the Carthaginians ; the former is certainly meant here.

7 It is not known what Phoenician deity is represented here in the Greek text by the name Poseidon.

8 The first is generally accepted now to have been at or near Mogador ; the third name is thought to represent modern Agadir ; the other three are unidentifiable, though clearly in the same general neighbourhood.

9 There are, of course others, e.g. Goree island off Dakar, suggested by A. Mer (Mémoire sur le périple d’Harmon, Paris, 1885), but they have won little support.

10 Some commentators record a river St. Jean opposite Arguin, but Gsell (op. cit. 1, 490, n. 1) rightly notes that this river ‘n’existe pas’.

11 As has been pointed out by E. F. Gautier, Le passé de l’Afrique du Nord (Paris, 1942), p. 47.

12 If Hanno’s figures, Lixus to Cerne=3 days’ sail, Cerne to the mountains=12 days, are correct, we cannot accept both Cerne=Senegal and these mountains=Cape Verde. But, as I have said above, figures in MSS. are notoriously liable to error.

13 These hill-side fires are usually explained as autumn burning of the grass to promote production of crops in the following spring. Mungo Park (Travels in the interior of Africa—London, 3rd ed., 1799—p. 259 f.) describes the same phenomenon.

14 What these really were is anyone’s guess ; chimpanzees, baboons, gorillas and pygmies have all been suggested. We cannot argue that they were gorillas from the name used, for when Dr T. S. Savage in 1847 discovered gorillas in Gabun he borrowed Hanno’s word for a name for them (N.E.D. s.v..Gorilla).

15 H. R. Palmer, The Carthaginian voyage to West Africa in 500B.C. (Bathurst, 1931), puts this argument very strongly.

16 Information obtained for me from Dr M. D. W. Jeffreys of Johannesburg by Dr M. Fortes.

17 The short theorists can readily identify the Horn of the West with, say, Bissagos bay, the ‘island within an island’ with Orango, and the Horn of the South with Sherbro sound (note that horn—κ∊ραs—means bay, not cape, in these contexts). The long theorists can give free play to their imaginations, for there must be many places between Gambia and the Gabun which would suit.

18 So Hennig, op. cit. 1, 49 ff.: Gsell, op. cit. 1, 509 ; M. Cary and E, H. Warmington, The Ancient Explorers, pp. 87 ff.

19 The phrase is Kαρχηδόυιί ∊ìσι оí λέγоυτ∊ς ‘the Carthaginians who tell us’; but see G. Rawlinson’s translation (Everyman ed., 1, 303) and E. H. Warmington, Greek Geography, p. 89, for alternative renderings.

20 The text can be consulted in C. Müller, Geog. Graec. Minares, i, 15 ff.

21 In ancient authors Ethiopians are black men, whether in East or West Africa.

22 It is proper to add that this statement about export of wine has been received with the greatest scepticism by many modern commentators.

23 Strabo, II, 3, 4 : the story is that his attempt was instigated by his finding a prow of a ship of Gades on the East African coast !

24 See Cary and Warmington, op. cit., p. 98, based on Pliny, Nat. Hist. II, 169.

25 Hennig, op. cit. 1, 100 ff.

26 cp. Gsell, op. cit. IV, 138 f.

27 Apart from de la Martinière’s work at Lixus sixty years ago, note 4 above.

28 W. Frobenius, Voice of Africa (engl. ed. 1913), I, 319 ff.

29 op. cit. in note II above.

30 The very name may be ancient, as Gautier notes (op. cit., p. 49) ; it is very like Pliny’s name Bambotus, used by him for a big river hereabouts, probably the Senegal, in describing Polybius’s expedition (p. 147 above).

31 One example of this theorizing, and to my mind a particularly wild one, is Frobenius’s comparison of Phoenico-Sardinian masks with an Ife terracotta head (op. cit., pl. v, facing p. 312). The parallel is in itself unconvincing. He would have done better to show some Etruscan face urns !

32 Good examples are illustrated in J. I. S. Whitaker, Motya (London, 1921), figs. 7-10.

33 Cp. Virgil, Aeneid, 1, 427 : hic portus alii effodiunt.

34 Whitaker, op. cit. pp. 186-7.

35 cp. L. Poinssot and R. Lantier in Rev. de l’Histoire des Religions, LXXXVII, 32 ff ; F. W. Kelsey, Prelim, report on the excavations at Carthage (New York, 1926), 33 ff ; D. B. Harden, Iraq, IV, 59 ff. ; G. Picard, Compte-rendus de l’Acad. des Inscr., 1945, 443 ff.