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The Old Phoenician Inscription from Spain Dedicated to Hurrian Astarte*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Frank Moore Cross Jr.
Frank Moore Cross Jr.
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In 1963 a bronze statuette was acquired by the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla. It portrays a naked goddess with a modified Ḥatḥor hair style. She is seated, her feet resting on a pedestal which is inscribed with five lines of old Phoenician writing. The writing surface on the pedestal measures only 4.1 × 2.8 cm. and unhappily is marred by bronze disease, that is, by corrosion which swells and flakes. The figurine with its inscription was published by J. M. Solá-Solé in 1966 in an excellent paper which correctly dated the inscription (and the statuette) in the first half of the eighth century B.C. and went far in deciphering the difficult text. In figure 1 we have attempted to draw a facsimile of the statue pedestal based on the published photographs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 64 , Issue 2-3 , July 1971 , pp. 189 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1971

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References

1 Nueva inscripción fenicia de España (Hispania 14), RSO 41 (1966), 97–108; Pis. I and II. Cf. Amadasi, M. G., Le iscrizioni fenicie e puniche delta colonia in occidente (Rome, 1967), 1501Google Scholar., and G. Garbini, RSO 42 (1967), 6ff.; A. Van den Branden, RSO 44 (1969), 103–08.

2 The mats of the published photographs are rather coarse and difficult to trace. Ideally, our drawing should be checked by the original. Solá-Solé has published only a table of scripts, and this in rather free form.

3 For references, see the discussion of Charlier in Berthier, A. and Charlier, R., Le sanctuaire punique de El-Hofra à Constantine (Paris, 1955), 75 fGoogle Scholar.

4 For examples of both in a single eighth-century inscription, see KAI 26. For references to the discussion of the suffix -nm, see the discussion to KAI 13.4.

5 Op. cit. (note 3), p. 167 and Pl. 28A. Note that the first person suffix is used with the divine appellative in a votive text otherwise in the third person. For other examples, cf. KAI 102 (lrbtn, also in a third-person context); and KAI 147 (l'dnn). Compare also the use of Hebrew ’ādōnay.

6 Cf. Ugaritic š'al; cuneiform sa-u-li (APN 194), ša-ú-la-a-nu (APN 307), etc.; Hebrew šā'ūl and Dâliyeh P. 1.2 š'lh (fem.); Aramaic (Kilamuma [KAI 24.4]); Lihyanic sa'l; Palmyrene š'yl’; etc.

7 PRU IV, p. 230 (RS 18.01, 1. 3, 6).

8 For references, see Ugaritica V, p. 540; PRU II 4.22; 107.10; PRU IV, p. 137 (RS 18.06 + 17.365, 1. 9); etc.

9 See Albright, W. F., The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (New Haven, 1934), 36Google Scholar; cf. also the writing cited by Helck, W., Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Wiesbaden, 1962), 4931Google Scholar; ‘s-ta-ya ḫu-ru; and the Babylonian form ‘a-ša-ḫa-ru, 503.

10 See Ugaritica V, p. 45; and the discussion of Nougayrol, 56f. (under the headings ligne 23 and 24), and his references to the literature.

11 So, for example, Helck, op. cit. (note 9), 493; and W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (London, 1968), 125, n. 88.

12 The shift ú > ō operates also in Phoenician. Cf. Johannes Friedrich, Phönizisch-Punische Grammatik § 84 (the examples taken from Plautos’ Poenulus are without value, as I have been convinced after many attempts to impose linguistic discipline on the text; in fact the text is almost hopelessly corrupt).

13 See above, note 5. The inscription reads ρυβαοων, an obvious blunder for ρυβαθων.

14 Compare the Hebrew (Judahite) shift in the 3rd p.s. suffix: *-uh > *-úh > ō, written in pre-Exilic script -h.

15 We shall refer to the Archaic Cyprus and Nora inscriptions of the ninth century B.C. They are KAI 30 and KAI 46 (CIS 1, 144) respectively. From the eighth century the Ba'l Lebanon and Karatepe inscriptions are important for palaeography. They are KAI 31 (CIS 1, 5) and KAI 26. The Ba'l Lebanon is closely dated by the mention of Hiram II (ca. 773–738 B.C.), the contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.). The Karatepe texts cannot be later than ca. 720 B.C. There have been attempts to raise its dates, but this goes against the fact that its script and language are the most developed of any eighth-century text. For other texts mentioned, see Brian Peckham, The Development of the Late Phoenician Scripts (Cambridge, 1968), and his very accurate charts.

16 The zigzag headed form of mêm did not immediately disappear, of course, surviving into the seventh century. It appears in the Hasan-Beyli inscription which dates to the beginning of the seventh century and in the Malta Stele (CIS 123) dated in the seventh century usually. I should like to raise its date to the late eighth century B.C. (among other things because of its style of mêm).

17 Many have overlooked this trait of the Karatepe taw (including Solé-Solé in his chart). It is obvious to one examining the stones, and clear in good glossy prints.

18 On the other hand, perhaps the argument will develop (as it has with the eighth-century Gold Pendant from Carthage) that we merely have an heirloom. With each additional specimen, however, the argument becomes less credible … unless the Phoenicians went west to set up antiquities shops. On the date of the Phoenicians in the west and in Spain, see W. F. Albright, The Cambridge Ancient History, rev. ed., Vol. II, Chapter XXXIII, and his references.