Cult of the lamb beasts below the waves12/11/2023 ![]() This explains the frequent deposit of artifacts with such iconography in funerary and cultic contexts. Motifs connected to deities and practices that were believed to protect life and foster regeneration appear prominently, whether in Phoenician productions of in the versions they inspired among local groups (what we generally call “orientalizing”). Phoenician artistic repertoires travelled and grew roots among communities across the ancient Mediterranean in areas where Phoenicians traded and settled. ![]() If, as we suggest, this representation can be added to that in the Athenian document, we now have testimonies of two different local adaptations of a Phoenician theme at the two ends of the Mediterranean oikoumene in the archaic-late-classical periods.Ģ The Boat and the Lion Motif in Phoenician Contexts This “palmette-boat” depiction, in our view, is coherent with Egyptian Nilotic boats, but also with the use of shallow river-boats in the Tagus and Guadiana region, illustrating mechanisms of local adaptation of Phoenician sailing and life-death “passing” symbolism. The use the Phoenician palmette motif to portray the stylized boat seems an idiosyncratic choice, here perhaps inspired by the frequent use of the palmette in ivory-carving, but a parallel instance coappears in a painted pottery sherd from Olympia. Our analysis highlights how the artists behind the Athenian and Tartessic artifacts innovated while representing a theme that was not codified iconographically. Additional comparanda from the Levant, Iberia, and Tunisia in various media (coins, ivories, amulets), add weight to this interpretation. But excavations at the fifth-century BCE Tartessic site of Casas del Turuñuelo in southwestern Spain has revealed a set of ivory and bone panels, originally decorating the sides of a wooden box and bearing relevant iconography in the so-called orientalizing style. The lion-and-boat motif was, so far, only documented in a Phoenician funerary stela from late classical-Hellenistic Athens, the Antipatros/Shem stela (probably to be dated between the mid fourth-and the third cent. This essay introduces new evidence for the eschatological Phoenician motif alluding to a final sailing and its perils, represented by a monstrous lion attacking or sinking a boat. If, as we suggest, this representation can be added to that in the Athenian document, we now have testimonies of two different local adaptations of a Phoenician theme at the two ends of the Mediterranean oikoumene between the archaic and late classical periods. This “palmette-boat” depiction, in our view, is coherent with Egyptian Nilotic boats, but also with the use of flat or shallow river-boats in the Tagus and Guadiana region, illustrating mechanisms of local adaptation of Phoenician sailing and life-death “passing” symbolism. Most remarkable is the use of an ivory-carving convention (the Phoenician palmette motif) to portray the stylized boat, a choice corroborated by a painted pottery sherd from Olympia. Our analysis highlights how the artists behind the Athenian and Tartessic artifacts were innovative in their way of representing a theme that was not codified iconographically. Excavations at the fifth-century BCE Tartessic site of Casas del Turuñuelo in southwestern Spain has revealed a set of ivory and bone panels that decorated a wooden box, bearing relevant iconography in the so-called orientalizing style. The lion-and-boat motif was, so far, only documented in a Phoenician funerary stela from late classical Athens, the Antipatros/Shem stela. This essay introduces new evidence for an eschatological Phoenician motif that alludes to a final sailing and its perils, represented by a monstrous lion attacking or sinking a boat. ![]()
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