Binding: Hardcover
Description: Who were the ancient Phoenicians and did they actually exist? The Phoenicians traveled the Mediterranean long before the Greeks and Romans trading establishing settlements and refining the art of navigation. But who these legendary sailors really were has long remained a mystery. In Search of the Phoenicians makes the startling claim that the Phoenicians never actually existed. Taking readers from the ancient world to today this monumental book argues that the notion of these sailors as a coherent people with a shared identity history and culture is a product of modern nationalist ideologies and a notion very much at odds with the ancient sources. Josephine Quinn shows how the belief in this historical mirage has blinded us to the compelling identities and communities these people really constructed for themselves in the ancient Mediterranean based not on ethnicity or nationhood but on cities family colonial ties and religious practices. She traces how the idea of being Phoenician first emerged in support of the imperial ambitions of Carthage and then Rome and only crystallized as a component of modern national identities in contexts as far - flung as Ireland and Lebanon. In Search of the Phoenicians delves into the ancient literary epigraphic numismatic and artistic evidence for the construction of identities by and for the Phoenicians ranging from the Levant to the Atlantic and from the Bronze Age to late antiquity and beyond. A momentous scholarly achievement this book also explores the prose poetry plays painting and polemic that have enshrined these fabled seafarers in nationalist histories from sixteenth - century England to twenty - first century Tunisia.
Title: In Search Of The Phoenicians
Author(s): Quinn Josephine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Barcode: 9780691175270
Pages: 360 Pages, 11 Maps
Publication Date: 12/25/2017
Series: Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures in Ancient History and Archaeology
Category: Classical Greek & Roman Archaeology