Images Merchants Mercenaries.pdf

2 Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries: Aegeans and Southern Judah in the Eighth Century BCE Sandra Blakely INTRODUCTION: UZZIAH AND THE OLYMPIADS In the forty-fifth year of Uzziah’s rule of Judah, the best athletes of Greek settlements around the Mediterranean trekked across the waves to Elis to compete in the first Olympiad. So claimed the Byzantine scholar George Syncellus, writing some 16 centuries after these events (Canon Chronicus Genearchum, 197). The Olympiads were one of the thousands of historical moments he sought to bring into chronological relationship in order to demonstrate the cumulative progress of the various Mediterranean civilizations—Greek and Hebrew, Roman and Syriac—which culminated in the Christian empire of Byzantium. Syncellus linked Uzziah to the Olympiads for purely chronological reasons: he implied neither contact nor cause. Their juxtaposition, however, highlights the distance between Judaah and the Aegean in the mid-eighth century: a desert kingdom and its dynastic ruler, and independent Greek poleis characterized by geographic distance, mutual competition and the ongoing invention of the citystate. Josephus, in the late first century CE, emphasized the mutual incompatibility of these two groups, and attributed it to the maritime nature of the Greeks as much as the cultural isolationism of the Jews. Greek settlements were never far from the shore; sea travel meant that Greeks met Egyptians and Phoenicians in the context of trade, Medes and Persians through robbery and foreign wars, and Thracians and Scythians when they traveled to the edges of their territory (C. Ap. 1.60–68). Josephus seems here to ventriloquize the Greek conception of the sea as simultaneously the locus of cultural corruption and the highway to economic prosperity, and maritime skill as the defining element of Greek culture. Claims of an absolute separation between Greek and Jew have held little sway, however, in the long academic investigation of the two cultures which gave 35 This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 36 Sandra Blakely the western tradition the canonical texts of Homer and the Bible. Scholarship devoted to parallels, analogies and patterns of influence in law, myth, civic structures, iconographies and ceramics has flourished since the nineteenth century, not infrequently informed by a generalized “orientalism” which informed ancient authors as well. The most robust evidence comes from periods long before or immediately after Uzziah’s eighth century context. Models for trade, conquest and invasion have linked the fall of the Late Bronze Age Aegean palaces to the cultural genesis of the Philistines. Early Iron age exchanges were enabled by Phoenician intermediaries, whose travels linked the Levant with Northern Aegean, the Greek mainland, Crete, Sicily and Spain. And evidence in both Greece and the Levant for interactions between the two cultures rises precipitously after 701. In the East, Sennacherib’s conquest opened the door to increased mercantile and mercenary Greek presence, legible in ceramics at coastal sites such as Ashkelon. In Greece, the Geometric period yields to the Orientalizing with the onset of the seventh century, as the aesthetic influences which had trickled in prior to that time found wide expression in the ceramics which themselves became objects of long distance trade. The arenas for these interactions, moreover, are geographically as well as chronologically removed from southern Judah, with the bulk of archaeological evidence and textual tradition coming from Syria in the north, Egypt in the south, or the offshore kingdoms of Cyprus. The desert king, it seems, would have little first-hand knowledge of the Aegean athletes who were his contemporaries, though rulers before and after him, and contemporaries in other regions, knew them as traders, mercenaries and settlers. Viewed in this light, Southern Judah in the second half of the eighth century seems anomalous in terms of its Aegean connections from the broader picture of the Levantine coast. This kind of distinction invites investigation: it has been attributed to scholarly cultures, archaeological accident, the biases of textual sources or extraordinary historical conditions (Waldbaum 1997). The crafted items which moved between Greece and the Levant in this period suggest that these exchanges were characterized by mediation, mercantilism and mobility, and that these patterns were more advantageous for Hellenic interests in the region than the colonial models which proved productive in the Black Sea, Ionia and the West. The southern exchanges highlight myths of heroic mercenaries, the productivity of ancient imprecision in ethnic designations, and ancient narratives which praise a cultural isolationism which counters current scholarly emphases on trade, connectivity and networks. I offer here a discussion of some of the images, artifacts and myths which cast light on these exchanges as a tribute to my colleague Oded Borowski, who in his scholarship, teaching, and friendship has been a continuing source of inspiration to me. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 37 IMAGES OF THE EAST: ICONOGRAPHY AND IMPORTS IN EIGHTH-CENTURY GREECE Two images—a lion and a goddess—offer iconographic pathways into the Levantine presence in eighth century Greece. The images have Near Eastern roots; debate has centered on whether they represent Bronze Age memories or fresh cultural input from eighth century merchants and artisans. Exchange between the Aegean and the Levant flourished in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, from 2000– 1150 BCE. Raw materials, finely worked goods, and intellectual stowaways in the form of granulation, niello, glassmaking and divine iconographies arrived in Crete; leather, bronze weapons, and silver and gold vessels moved east to Mari from Minoan workshops (Betancourt 2010; 1998). Aegean style wall paintings were commissioned for Tell el Dab’a in the sixteenth century BCE, Rekhmire’s tomb in the early Eighteenth Dynasty, and Tel Kabri in the Galilee coastal plain, bringing the international elite of the Late Bronze age onto the shores of the Galilee (Bietak 2000). The creators of these paintings have been seen as historical analogues for the mythic Kothar-wa-Hasis who arrived from Caphtor or Crete in order to build a palace for Baal. His myths have roots in the Middle Bronze Age, recorded in Ugaritic mythological poems of 1400–1350 (Morris 1999, 73–101). The international reach of the Minoan palaces was taken up by their Mycenaean conquerors; their fall, in turn, was consigned to myth and memory most famously in the epic poems attributed to Homer and the eighth century BCE. Some time around 750 BCE, an elite Athenian family interred one of its own with a gold diadem worthy of Pandora herself, and of the long tradition of AegeanLevantine exchange (Ohly 1953, 9; 19; see fig. 1). Lionesses attack grazing deer on the 3 cm wide band: two ambush their prey from behind, while a third makes a frontal assault on its victim. A vertical border in the center of the diadem suggests it was made by impressing the gold on a mold with vertical sides, very likely one used for making metal ornaments for wooden boxes. Diadems are known in Greek contexts from the Bronze Age onward, as signs of royalty, athletic triumph, or as gifts to the dead (Stevenson 1995). The thinness of this band has prompted suggestions that it was created exclusively for funerary use. The material as well as the imagery of this diadem suggest a journey into Greece from the east. Gold and bronze had nearly vanished in the period between 1025–950 BCE but reemerged in the eighth century BCE (Coldstream 2003a, xxiv). More than fifty gold diadems have now been found from this period. While made in Greece, their decoration points to the infusion of motifs from the east, suggesting either immigrant craftsman, imported matrices, or Greek artisans who trained overseas. The choice of animals, their organization in a file and the depiction of successive actions reflect Near Eastern aesthetic conceptions. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 38 Sandra Blakely Fig. 1: Gold Band, NAM Athens, A 726, 37 cm x 3 cm. Source: DEA/G. Dagli Orti (De Agostini Collection)/Getty Images. The motif of a lion taking down its prey or a combatant is widespread in the Levant, with roots into third millennium Mesopotamia and an appearance on Greek soil in Minoan and Mycenaean sealing rings, weapons, ship’s prows, and monuments (Thomas 2004). The lions on this frieze may thus evoke Bronze Age memory, Homeric similes, or contemporary Near Eastern iconography. The latter seems most likely. First-hand familiarity with lions is particularly unlikely, as faunal evidence suggests that the animals were almost completely extinct in Greece by the eighth century BCE. Both files of deer and attacking lions figure in contemporary Greek vase painting of the eighth century BCE: their longevity suggests the lasting effect of oriental objects on the course of Greek visual arts. The deer which graze in a file across the vase of the Dipylon workshop have a home This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 39 in the orient, in the work of Phoenician and Syrian ivory carvers of the ninth and eighth centuries found in Samaria, Arslan-Tash, Assur and Nimrud (see fig. 2). The diadem’s depiction of not just figures, but the interaction among them, is a step toward the visual depiction of narrative which takes shape in the scenes of battle, mourning and shipwreck on geometric vases. Whether the gold bands or the ceramics showed the oriental influence first is a matter of debate (Carter 1972, 33; 39; 43). The scenes on geometric ceramics are at once Homeric and self-reflective, aligning the dead with the heroic past and the aristocratic present. Contemporary regard for the diadem’s frieze may be detected in another text with Near Eastern roots. The eighth century BCE poet Hesiod describes the creation of the first woman, Pandora, as the revenge of an angry god on an unsuspecting human race (Theog. 578–584). Hephaistos creates her diadem as the finishing touch for the “beautiful evil” who exemplifies the disjuncture between content and form. The god decorates the band with animals which seem to live and to speak: Fig. 2: Decorative Plaque: Browsing Stag, Phoenician, Iraq, Nimrud, ninth–eighth century BCE, ivory, overall: 4.5 x 8.9 cm (1.75 x 3.5 in). Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1968.49. © The Cleveland Museum of Art. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Sandra Blakely 40 And around her head she placed a golden headband, Which the much-renowned Lame One made himself… On this were contrived many designs, highly wrought, A wonder to see, all the terrible monsters the land and the sea nourish; He put many of these into it, wondrous, similar to living animals Endowed with speech, and gracefulness breathed upon them all. (Theog. 578–584) Fig. 3: Ivory statuette from Dipylon necropolis, Athens, Greece. eighth century BCE. Source: DEA/G. Nimatalla (De Agostini collection)/Getty Images. The crown is described as a “thauma” or “wonder,” a term that emphasizes the viewers’ inability to understand what they see. Gazing at a thauma takes the viewer into a world full of creatures not usually accessible to the human eye (Papalexandrou 2010). In Hesiod’s description, the new visual vocabulary from the East—the fluid, interactive forms of the Kerameikos diadem—become analogous to the magical animation of Zeus’ own metallurgist. The newly deceased woman who wore this Orientalizing diadem for her interment added the aesthetic impact of thauma to the theater of eighth century burials. Five very different crowned females went into the grave some thirty years later, in an exceptionally rich burial near the Dipylon gate of the Kerameikos cemetery (Lapatin 2001, 18, 44–45). These are ivory statuettes, 24 in tall (see fig. 3); four of them are very well preserved, while one is known only from a fragment of the left arm and leg. They were not free-standing figurines: iron pins through their bases suggest a function as handles, furniture ornament, or attachments to larger vessels. The women are slender, with triangular torsos, small waists, and the proportions appropriate to contemporary vase paintings. The warm tones of the ivory would have suggested the fair skin tones associated with women on fifth-century vases. The ivory women stand upright, legs pressed together, arms straight at their sides: the forward gaze of their large This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 41 eyes, worked directly into the ivory, duplicates the rigid frontality of the bodies. Their hair hangs in neat vertical rows down their backs, its texture suggested by criss-cross patterns. Each of them wears a polos, a pillbox-style hat: some show signs of incisions around the neck which suggest that they were originally interred with a necklace of some sort. Apart from hat and jewelry, these little embodiments of ideal femininity are nude, a striking exception to the Greek ideals of the ensuing eras for the women of elite families. The figures seem Greek in their style and manufacture. The proportions and clear articulation of body parts echo the local Geometric canon, and are paralleled on contemporary Attic bronzes and vases. Iron rivets, and the use of a maeander to decorate one of the poloi, signal adaptation to local taste and production by a Greek craftsman. The figures are carved whole, possibly from a single tusk. Two of them have separately carved ears, which were dowelled onto their heads. This technique of joining was known in the Near East, but not used at this small scale. The choice suggests a concern among Greek craftsmen to conserve the costly imported material. The material, the polos, and the nudity of these figurines, however, reflect Near Eastern origins and elite cultural value. Ivory was imported to Greece from the Near East in the Bronze Age, when it provided the materials for furniture inlays, carved boxes, and sword hilts (Hughes-Brock 1992). It reappears ca. 850 BCE, in Attic burials and votives in the Idaian cave on Crete. The prophets Amos (3:15, 6:4) and Ezekiel (27:6) railed against the excesses of those who used ivory furniture and lived in ivory houses; in Athens, the prestige of these objects would have been increased through the distance it traveled and its relative rarity (Winter 1976; Nijboer 2013). It is clear that the family who buried this woman was eager, at the point of burial, to announce their own international connectivity. Levantine analogies for the ivory females have been recovered in ivory, metal and terracotta forms. Naked women worked in ivory, possibly intended as mirror handles, were recovered from ninth- and eighth-century BCE contexts in Nimrud (see fig. 4). They duplicate the pose and iconography of the Dipylon figures, and even show analogous indications of necklaces. Two-dimensional representations of this figure decorate metallic horse trappings, shields, bronze bowls, jewelry and ivories found in Greek sanctuaries, imported from Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. The least expensive and most numerous articulations of a standing naked female, however, are terracotta, in both the Greek west and in every major excavation in Palestine from the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1500) to the Early Iron II 900–600. The figure type enters the Greek world along with the coroplastic techniques which were transmitted to the Greeks first on the Syro-Phoenician coast, then in Cyprus, and eventually as far west as Italy (Ammerman 1991). These are elegant, jewelry-wearing, forward-facing females, with slender waists, elaborate hair and exaggerated, naked pudenda (Riis 1948; see fig. 5). The figures appear chiefly in This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Sandra Blakely 42 sanctuaries devoted to great local goddesses, including the Artemision of Ephesos, the Heraion of Samos, and the sanctuary of Hera Limenia at Perachora. The same plaques have been identified as the origin for one of the most contested elements of religion in Southern Judah, the small, free-standing, pillar figurines whose arms cradle their pronounced breasts (see fig. 5). These share with their northern counterparts a plurality of potential divine names: Anat, Astarte, Ashera (Hadley 2000, 63–65). In contrast to their northern counterparts, they seem to be clothed. Their low cost, find places, and great abundance has suggested a role in folk religion, though these interpretations are highly contested. What is clear is the rejection with which she was met by the religious authorities: So then, tear down their altars, break their sacred stone pillars in pieces, cut down the symbols of their goddess Asherah, and burn their idols. (Deut 7:5) Fig 4: Woman with a Crown. Ivory Statuette from Kalakh (Nimrud). Ivory, H13 cm, tenth century BC. British Museum, London, UK. Leemage (Universal Images Group) / Getty Images. Tear down their altars and smash their sacred stone pillars to pieces. Burn their symbols of the goddess Asherah and chop down their idols, so that they will never again be worshipped at those places. (Deut 12:3) Darby has demonstrated that it is the goddess worked in silver, ivory and precious materials whom the prophets reject: when made in clay, she was used for healing rituals (Darby 2014). An identification with Asher-ah, however, was an opportunity to reject her as a foreigner, part of the religion of Jezebel and an embodiment of the edges of Israelite identity. Asherah seems to have had deep roots within Judah’s own traditions. A ninth to eighth century inscription from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud names Asherah as the consort of Jahweh; an inscription from Khirbet el-Qom of the mid-eighth century BCE refers to Yahweh and his Asherah (Day 1986). An identification as a foreigner would demand an argument, and the highly mobile, broadly celebrated goddess This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 43 Fig. 5: “Astarte” figurines, Judah, seventh–sixth century BCE. H 12.5–17.2 cm. W 6.3–11 cm. Extended loan from the Reifenberg Family, Haifa. Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Photo © The Israel Museum, by Meidad Suchowolski. supported this (Wilson 2012). A position at the edges of cultures is one of the most substantial commonalities between her presence in Greek and Judahite contexts. What the prophets argued, the Greeks would see, in the imported material and frontal nudity of the Dipylon ivories and their parallels. In the Greek world, however, that border crossing constitutes a source of value, complemented by other imported materials as a gift to the best among the dead. EAST OF EUBOIA: GREEKS, POTS, AND LEGENDS IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY The appearance of these images in the Greek world was contemporary with the establishment of Greek colonies from the Black Sea to Libya to Italy. These ventures summoned a range of myths to ensure their success: these claimed divine authority for the colony, and communicated to the Greeks, no matter where they lived, a shared heritage of gods and narratives. The myths include the nostoi, “homecomings” of the Greek warriors returning from Troy; the Ionian migration of the eleventh century; the trails of the Argonauts into the Black Sea; and the divinely sanctioned oikists who claimed Apollo as their guide. All of these enable claims to territorial rights through semi-divine genealogies, heroic burials, gifts and brides exchanged between local kings and legendary This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 44 Sandra Blakely travelers, and the ritual authority enabled by Apollo. These wove a web of cultural imagery with practical political usefulness which linked Greeks to Greeks, and created a middle ground between Greeks and foreigners. The reliance on this cultural imaginarium grew in strength with geographic distance: the more distant from the Greek mainland, the more elaborate the web of gods, myths and shared symbols (Malkin 2004; Hodos 2006). The legends are notably absent, however, in Palestine and southern Judah, though there is no absence of Greek imports (Waldbaum 1994). These are ceramic only, rather than the luxury goods which moved from east to west. Scholarly debates have focused on the distribution and quantity of the finds, their chronology, initiative in manufacture and transportation, appropriateness as an index of resident Greek merchants, settlers or mercenaries, and adoption by Levantine populations. The materials are found in sites from Cilicia and Syria to Ashkelon and Tel Dor. The total number of Greek sherds in most of the sites is very small: Wenning proposes an average of forty sherds per site, compared to the thousands of nonGreek sherds (Wenning 1991). A hundred-year gap distinguishes high from low chronologies proposed for these vases, as Late Protogeometric pottery dated to the tenth century in Greece, to the eleventh in the Levant (Fantalkin 2001, Coldstream 2003b). Initiative for these exchanges has been assigned to Euboians, Phoenicians and Cypriots: the role of each of these groups remains under debate. Both the design and the fabric of the vases suggest Euboian manufacture. The Euboian skyphos, painted with pendent semicircle design, is the dominant form for Greek imported pottery in the ninth and eighth century Levant (see fig. 6). The concentration of Levantine imports at Lefkandi, evidence for Euboian primacy in overseas ventures to the far West, and a local receptiveness to Near Eastern traditions, reflected in Hesiod’s Theogony, further recommend an active Euboian role. The richest finds of these vessels in the east come from Cyprus, particularly the port of Amathus on the south coast. Debates on whether Euboian or Phoenician ships carried the wares have yielded, in some degree, to a view of Euboians and Phoenicians as two maritime peoples, both impelled by the limited resources of their territory to undertake overseas commerce and colonization (Coldstream 2008; Lemos 2002, 228; Papadopoulos 1997). Colonial, mercantile and mercenary models have been proposed as the historical reality behind these ceramics. All three have been brought to Al Mina in Syria. Sir Leonard Woolley, its first excavator, came to the site seeking the Bronze Age port through which Minoans conducted their exchanges with the palatial cultures of the hinterland. The site exceeds the norm of ceramic evidence; as Woolley assumed there was no local appetite for imported Greek goods, these were taken as evidence for resident Greeks (Graham 1986; Boardman 1990). Boardman and This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 45 Fig. 6: Euboian Skyphos, Geometric period, first half of eighth century BCE. H 8.6 cm. The Cesnola Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 74.51.589. Woolley added to the ceramics the legendary account of Amphilochus who wandered south from Pamphylia with the Greek seer Mopsos and founded a city named Posidoneia (Scheer 1993, 153–73, 222–71). The legend (later assigned to Tell Sukas), the ceramics, and evidence that imports increased at Al Mina when they declined along the rest of the coast were taken together to identify Al Mina as a leader in Greek-Levantine interactions. The data have proven insufficient, however, to support a residential model. There are no houses, tombs, or Greek inscriptions, and the ceramic types are limited to drinking ware. Absent from the ceramics are the domestic vessels, lamps, storage and cooking vessels associated with settlements. The quantity of Greek vessels found at Tyre suggest the potential for local Phoenicians to have used and valued these Greek vessels, which they include among their gifts to the dead (Coldstream and Bikai 1988, 38). While Al Mina seems an exceptional center for Greek commerce, it is not a colony in the traditional sense. A new analysis of Al Mina’s material, combined with a new survey of Greek ceramics in the hinterland, offers a more nuanced model of the site as a port of trade and revises the hypothesis of its singularity. Luke identifies Al Mina as a port controlled by a hinterland power whose interests it serves—one of Polanyi’s types for ports of trade (Luke 2003). Around 738 BCE, the neo-Aramaean kingdom of Unqi established control over Al Mina, and exchanges began to take on This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 46 Sandra Blakely more regular form. This complements the model of Al Mina’s Greeks as the protégés of inland powers who used them to break the Phoenician monopoly on trade with the west (Helm 1980, 91). The pattern of a seaport funneling elite imported drinking vessels into the hinterland can be traced in ports and centers further south, where Greek ceramics are deposited in temples, palaces, public buildings and elite burials—locations of carefully constructed socially competitive display. The predominance of fine drinking vessels suggests a market oriented toward elite consumers who took up the habits of feasting in the Greek fashion (Kearsley 1999; Luke 1994). Large Middle Geometric kraters found in Tyre, Samaria, Hamat and Amathus indicate the extent to which forms and iconography were adapted to local tastes, even adding an image of the tree of life (Catling and Lemos 1990, 25–31). Aegean-styled feasts, however, drew the ire of the prophets no less than did the hint of an exotic Asherah. Amos, the prophet of Judah under Uzziah, writes: I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end, says the Lord. (Amos 3:15) Wo to those who lie upon bed of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches … who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils. (Amos 6:12) The gatherings served by these couches are the Marzeah, a cultural practice with roots in fourteenth century BCE Ugarit and a duration through the sixth century BCE (Nijboer 2013). Ugaritic, Elephantine, Phoenician, Nabataean and Palmyrene texts refer to the practice and identify the gods they honored, including Hurrian Ishtar and Anat. The cultural boundaries they crossed included, ultimately, those between the Levant and the Greeks. Striking analogies in both gear and cultural practice link Cretan syssition and Greek symposion to their eastern counterparts, including a focus on drinking, the celebration of warrior virtues, the exclusion of women and a restriction to the upper classes. The inlaid ivory couches which Amos uses to embody the marzeah have analogy in the Greek kline which is fundamental to the iconography of Greek drinking parties. These are considered an oriental import to the west; in the east, archaeological confirmation has come in the form of ivory plaques excavated at Samaria, Salamis, Nimrud, and Ugarit which would have turned wooden furniture into ivory beds. The themes on these plaques include rebirth, fertility and eternal life, appropriate for the life-giving side of Astarte and Asherah. Feasting ‘à la grecque’ was thus pursued with gear as well as customs which were as much at home in the east as on Aegean shores: common to both contexts was the exchange This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 47 of gifts, the use of imported luxury goods, and stories which celebrated warrior virtues (Carter 1997). A third category of overseas Aegean—the mercenary soldier—has also been proposed as a cultural intermediary between Greece and the Near East in the eighth century (Dezsö-Vér 2013, 330). The Greeks who were engaged with commerce in the northern Levantine coast in the ninth and eighth centuries were operating in a context of constantly shifting coalitions. The establishment of Assyrian control extended not only to the Mediterranean coast, but the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and Arabia, Anatolia, the Via Maris and all the way to the Far East along the Silk Route. Within these regions, foreigners could trade only under Assyrian supervision and strict rules. Not all subjects were willing: while Tiglath-pileser III achieved direct rule over Northern Syria and Phoenicia between 740–740, Assyrian records mention Ionian Greeks who challenged Assyrian control on the sea and in the ports. A letter dated 738–732 from Qurdi-Assur-lamur, an Assyrian governor, to Tiglath-pileser III reports that Ionians were attacking the Levantine towns of Samsimuruna and Harisu from the sea. Analogous upsets are recorded on the walls of the capital of Sargon II, showing that the attacks continued (Lanfranchi 2000; Dezsö 2013). Sargon’s annals describe his victory over the Ionians who live in the midst of the sea, who “since long in the past used to kill the inhabitants of the city of Tyra and the land of Que (northern Syria) and interrupt commercial traffic” (Annals lines 117–1179; Luraghi 2006, 31 and n. 46). Other texts refer to Sargon catching these people like fish. The references to these men in Assyrian accounts, though variable, suggest that they are not members of the Cilician, North Syrian or Phoenician states; they are mobile groups, and not aligned to political units (Kearsley 1999, 121–22). The piratical activities of these Greeks are a reminder of the thin line between trade and piracy in the ancient world: the same people could fall on both sides of the divide. Thucydides notes that in ancient times there was no offense in asking a traveler if he was a pirate (1.5.1–2). Pirates shared with Homeric princes skills in raiding and armed conflict, and Odysseus himself claims that he conducted raids on Egypt (Od. 14.199–359; Emanuel 2012). The pattern of the displaced Phoceans who turn from trade to piracy is a typical one (Herodotus, Hist. 1.163–7). This blend is in evidence at Lefkandi and Eretria, where burials celebrate the combination of martial skill and merchant enterprise (Popham 1994; Bérard 1970, 70). The prince in the central building of Lefkandi, cremated and encased in a bronze cauldron worthy of Homer, had an iron sword wrapped around the vessel that held his ashes, while imports in faience, Phoenician seals, and an engraved bronze bowl reflect his international reach. These Euboians may have been among those who resisted the Assyrians: the Assyrian term “Ionian” was not geographically specific, and could be used of anyone claiming to be Greek (Brinkman 1989). The Greek traders in Northern Syria, This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 48 Sandra Blakely and the Greek pirates who attack Cilicia and Phoenicia, are likely the same, part of what Luraghi has characterized as an enduring nexus of trade, piracy and mercenary service in the story of the Mediterranean (Luraghi 2000, 386–88). These figures may also be the predecessors of the mercenaries known from seventh and sixth century sources. That pirates could become mercenaries is suggested in Herodotus’s account of Psammetichus who, driven from power into the marshes, inquired of the oracle at Buto what he should do. The oracle said he would have vengeance when he saw men of bronze coming from the sea. When Ionians and Carians, “voyaging for plunder,” put in at the coast, Psammetichus greeted them as the fulfillment of the oracle, and offered great rewards for their aid. With their help, he deposed the kings who had overthrown him (2.152). An inscription on a statue dedicated by a mercenary named Pedon near Priene suggests the extent to which pay, not merely friendship, motivated these men: “Pedon dedicated me, the son of Amphinneos, having brought me from Egypt: to him the Egyptian king Psammetichus gave as a reward of valor a golden bracelet and a city, on account of his virtue” (Moyer 2011, 57). Other evidence for Ionians in Egyptian service include the armor dedicated by the Pharaoh Necho at Branchidae, suggesting his thanks to Apollo and the Ionians who fought alongside him in 608 (Herodotus, Hist. 2.159; cf. Jer 46:9). The Greek lyric poet Alkaios describes his brother Antimenidas serving as a mercenary for the Babylonians (Fantalkin and Lytle 2016). Sennacherib lists Yadnaanean sailors alongside the Tyrians and Sidonians he captured in his 701 campaign; if he followed Assyrian practice, and incorporated them into his own ranks, these Greeks may have eventually fought for Sennacherib himself (Helms 1980, 147). Locations for these groups have been identified at Tel Kabri, Mesad Hashavyahu, and fortresses in southern Palastine, including Ziklag, Timnah, and Arad; evidence for Aegean mercenaries at the royal court of Judah dates as early as the ninth century BCE (Niemeier 1994; Naveh 1962; Kestemont 1985, 143). Material evidence in the form of bronze horse trappings, helmets, shields and Phoenician bowls support the arguments for mercenaries in the eighth century. A bronze horse frontlet found at the sanctuary of Hera on Samos and a blinker from the sanctuary of Apollo at Eretria both bear inscriptions identifying them as part of the booty taken by King Hazael, king of Damascus in 842, from Unqi. A second blinker in stratified context affirms its deposition with a terminus ante quem of the late eighth century. They are analogous in style to four blinkers and one frontlet from Samos: the Samos frontlet is decorated with four naked standing females. The route from Damascus to the Greek sanctuaries was most likely initiated by Tiglath-pileser’s conquest of the city in 732. Votive dedications, however, represent weapons looted from the enemy, so those who offered these trappings as votives would have fought in the army of Tiglath-pileser himself. Greek helmets of the eighth century may reflect personal familiarity with Assyrian military practices: a late Geometric helmet from Argos with a crescent-shaped crest, for This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 49 Fig. 7: Amathus bowl, from Nino Luraghi, “Trader, Pirates, Warriors: The ProtoHistory of Grek Mercenary Soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Phoenix 60 1.2 (2006): 48, pl. 1. Image reproduced by kind permission of Phoenix and Nino Luraghi. example, has its strongest parallel in Assyrian helmets known from the frescoes of the Assyrian provincial palace of Til Barsip. Narrative scenes on Phoenician silver bowls offer confirmation that the vocabulary of Greek hoplite warriors was known to the manufacturers of these bowls in the late eighth century. A silver bowl recovered from a tomb near Amathus, dating 710–675 BC, includes along with its Egyptianizing and Assyrianizing repertoire a scene of a Near Eastern city under siege; Greek hoplites in phalanx formation are among the warriors under attack, following a man with a pointed Assyrian helmet; additional hoplites help defend the city, surrounded by their Near Eastern colleagues (see fig. 7). Greeks could evidently be found fighting on many sides in the eastern Mediterranean, and their techniques were sufficiently familiar that Phoenician craftsmen could use them to mark ethnic origins in the late eighth century (Luraghi 2006; Dezsö 1998). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 50 Sandra Blakely Mobile, militarily skilled, and working outside the confines of political units, the Greek mercenaries are part of the vocabulary of myth as well as the visual arts. The most evocative were wandering strongmen like Herakles, who served more than one foreign king and whose analogies to Samson have long been noted. They appear at the edges of the myths of Odysseus, conducting a raid on Egypt, or sacking Ismarus after leaving Troy (Golden 1986; Barb 1972). These episodes in the heroic experience suggest models more appropriate for the Greek interactions in the eighth century Levant than the oikists provide. They also resonate in significant ways with the visual and material signature at warrior graves in Euboia, the region which most led the Greeks in Levantine interactions. If we take Hercules and Odysseus as models, however, we are reminded that their paths covered the entire length of the Mediterranean. This suggests the heuristic potential in the mobile warrior in regions beyond the Levant, where colonial founders have overshadowed other mythic types. In Levantine contexts, the objections of the prophets on the one hand, the eager adoption of Hellenic styles on the other, suggest that Aegeans were “good to think with”; the Greek myths which focus on the permeable boundaries between profit motive, mobility and military action may have provided an analogous matrix for processing the Levantine experience in the Greek imaginarium. CONCLUSION: ISOLATION, MEDIATION, AND MOBILITIES The relative dearth of archaeological evidence for Greeks in the eighth-century southern Levant, combined with the wrath of the prophets, casts down the question—can we take Josephus at face value, and posit a space and a moment of genuine, if relative, cultural isolation? There is value in exploring the idea seriously. Among the most robust contemporary paradigms for history and archaeology are those inspired by the hyper-networked experiences of our own world. These have opened new perspectives on antiquity, at the same time they run the risk of imposing an etic lens on the object of investigation. Amos’ fulminations remind us of the potential for resistance to that specific perspective among our subject ancient cultures. At the same time, the voice of the prophets—however unrealized their cultural orthodoxy—underscores the political weight of imported goods and Aegeanwide cultural norms (Hardin 2014). There was in both Greece and Judah an ancient “jet set” whose feasts and rituals achieved their cultural work in part through material objects which signaled their origins, the distances they traveled, and their adaptation to local tastes. There are singularities in the story of the Greeks in the Levant: the colonial paradigm which stretches from the Black Sea to Italy is not in evidence in the stretch of territory which had been part of Greek trade circuits since the Middle This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. Images, Merchants, and Mercenaries 51 Bronze Age. The control exercised by local authorities over Levantine Greeks would limit their capacity to prosper as Greek settlements did elsewhere. These conditions were, however, adaptable to the emporium, and to a symbiosis with a range of mediators who shared the Greeks’ mercantile ambitions, and enabled high mobility of goods as well as individuals. Debates about the priority of Greek or Levantine sailors in bringing goods into their respective ports have yielded to examinations of shared experiences among groups with high maritime skills, great geographic reach, and restricted natural resources in their home territory. The scholarly recognition of the fuzziness of ancient ethnic designations complements this view of an ancient world in which the pragmatics of profit were as great a driving force as political alliance. In the end, the archaeological material for the late eighth century is a very small percentage of the total cultural debitage in both East and West. The examples from Euboia and the Levant often fall at the elite levels of the cultural strata, and in ritual and feasting contexts in which communicative functions are key. These factors suggest a semantic weight inversely proportionate to their numerical dominance, and could perhaps offer some pardon to the overemphasis Classicists have placed on this material. The increase in evidence in the seventh century, however, dwarfs the eighth century material on both sides of the Mediterranean. With the start of the seventh century comes the Orientalizing era in Greece, in which the visual signatures of eastern artists reshape the pictorial vocabulary of vases and metalwork, feasting and votive practice. In the east, Sennacherib’s devastation of Judah in 701 is followed by an energetic promotion of foreign trade and settlements in the lands he annexed, extending his reach into the Aegean, and opening the floodgate for Aegean entrepreneurs who benefited directly from Assyrian hegemony (Lanfranchi 2000). Sennacherib, ultimately, was good news for the Aegeans—and in this regard, it seems that Amos was right. Hardin has noted that the orthodoxy proposed in the biblical texts was not the norm, a reality born out by the archaeological record (Hardin 2014, 13). That orthodoxy does, however, represent a powerful voice in the social identity of southern Judah. In terms of our approaches to the archaeological record, it reminds us of the role of agency exercised by cultural groups about the boundaries of their own identity. The absence of Aegean initiatives in the southern Levant reflects local decision as well as the actions of the Greeks. The military and political coincidence of Aegean culture and Judahite destruction offers weight to the prophetic demand for a cultural isolation, however untenable in the long term, and reminds us of the limitations of our own academic perspectives. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2018 by SBL Press. 52 Sandra Blakely BIBLIOGRAPHY Ammerman, Rebecca Miller. 1991. “The Standing Naked Goddess: A Group of Archaic Terracotta Figurines from the Sanctuary in the località Santa Venera at Paestum.” AJA 95: 203–30. Bérard, Claude. 1970. 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