Discover Top Posts Tagged with #phoenicians

Phoenician/Carthaginian glass pendants in the shape of a male face.

#ancient carthage #carthaginians #carthage #phoenicians #ancient mediterranean #pendnats #ancient civilisation #ancient culture

Essos fashion studies: Myr

"Some maesters believe that Myrmen are descended from the Rhoynar, as many of the Myrmen share their olive skin and dark hair, but this theory is disputed. Myrmen speak a dialect of bastard Valyrian,and the Common Tongue when spoken with a Myrish accent can sound sultry. The mercantile port's inhabitants have no established faith. Myr is ruled by a conclave of magisters, chosen from amongst the most wealthy and noble men of the city. The magisters give lavishly to passing Dothraki khals to prevent their khalasars from sacking the city. A slave city, Myr has three slaves for every freeborn. The slaves in Myr are collared and branded. There are those in the city who have Unsullied in their service. The Myrmen fight often with Tyrosh and Lys over the Disputed Lands, though they will not risk the lives of their citizens in this, preferring to hire free companies instead. Myrmen often use stilettos and crossbows and bravos can be found in Myr as well. Myrish pirates often have nests in the Stepstones. "The Seasons of My Love" is a Myrish song."

World History in a Year (Week 20): 900s BC

The event with the greatest long-term significance around this period was the development of the Phoenician alphabetic script. (It may have originated in the previous century, but our earliest records of it are from this time.) This script was easier to learn and use than cuneiform had been, and played a major role in the increases in literacy that would occur over the rest of the first millennium BC. The Phoenician script would be, in later centuries, the origin point for the Greek and Aramaic scripts; through Greek, for the Latin script (i.e. the one I am currently using) and Cyrillic script; and through Aramaic, for the Hebrew, Arabic, and probably Indian scripts. Most of the present-day world outside eastern Asia uses scripts derived from the Phoenician one.

The Phoenicians were traders on the eastern Mediterranean coast. “Phoenicians” is the Greek name for them, a reference to their famed Tyrian purple dye; they would have identified themselves as Canaanites, or more likely (since they were not a unified polity) as members of individual city-states such as Tyre and Sidon. In addition to their purple cloth, they sold other luxury crafts such as decorative glasswares, as well as timber (the cedars of Lebanon), and specialized in seaborne trade and navigation. They were largely a continuation of city-states that had existed in the Late Bronze Age, but no longer under the hegemony of the Hittites or Egyptians; one of their city-states, Byblos, was the one that Egyptian official Wen-Amun sought to import timber from in the 1000s BC, as discussed last week. The Levant during this period was a region of many small states, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Egypt’s international position now deteriorated further. In earlier centuries they had clashed repeatedly with Libyans, but also recruited some into their military. In the mid-900s BC, Libyans conquered Egypt and subsequently ruled it as the 22nd and 23rd dynasties.

On the opposite side of the world, another important shift in power occurred. Sometime in the century, Olmec power shifted from San Lorenzo to the city of La Venta, a little further east and nearer to the coast. There are multiple theories for what precipitated this change; an earlier idea was violent conquest of San Lorenzo by the La Venta Olmecs, but more recent theories have shifted to environmental causes such as the movement of rivers near San Lorenzo. Both San Lorenzo and La Venta were located on rivers, and like many other ancient cities may have relied on them as transportation corridors (especially given the absence of any beasts or burden in Mesoamerica).

La Venta’s scale and architecture was even greater than that of San Lorenzo, including an over 33m-high clay pyramid within a complex of platforms and courtyards. These courtyards and plazas were the site for more of the famous Olmec heads, as well as carved thrones and stelae.

Further east, the first monumental architecture in lowland Maya regions was built during this period, near the Mexico-Guatemala border. The largest site was Aguada Fénix, which had a raised rectangular platform 1.4km long and 15m high constructed of coloured clays, with roads and causeways running out from it. No residential remains have been found; either they have not been preserved or this site was a ceremonial centre rather than a town or city. Smaller platform sites appear across northern Guatemala.

Substantial changes were also underway in India around this time. Through the period from around the 900s to 700s BC, Indo-European-speaking peoples who had settled in the Punjab expanded eastwards into the area around the upper Ganges and Yamuna rivers in northern India. They changed from nomadic cattle herding to take up settled agriculture (wheat, barley, and rice), which they learned from the indigenous inhabitants of the region, and used fire to clear forests and increase the amount of agricultural land. They used iron, starting in this period or a little earlier, but disdained some other crafts practised by indigenous people of the area, such as wheel-thrown pottery.

This information is largely extrapolated from religious texts (still in oral form at the time), as the archaeological record is limited. Around this time, the Rig Veda set of hymns was finalized and reorganized, going from various sets of hymns associated with different tribes and lineages to a single organized set with a clear structure. This could be associated with one tribe gaining relative predominance.

In the same period, new religious compositions joined the Rig Veda, giving detailed rules for carrying out sacrifices (ritual words, music, practices, etc.). With the increasing complexity of sacrifice, brahmin priests were trained from childhood to memorize specific portions of the rituals; different brahmins had different roles, since the entirety of the rituals and hymns were too much for anyone to memorize. A symbiosis developed between priests (brahmins) and rulers or chieftains (kshatriyas or rajanas), with brahmins providing the ceremonies and sacrifices that established and sustained the ruler’s legitimacy, while deriving power of their own by being the only ones who could provide the rituals. This laid the groundwork for greater political centralization.

It was around this time that the foundations of the caste system emerged, with the legend of creation of the four main castes from a primordial being: brahmins (priests) from the mouth, kshatriyas (warriors and rulers) from the arms, vaishyas (free peasant farmers and traders) from the thighs, and shudras (labourers and artisans) from the feet. Indigenous people who were absorbed into this society were classed as shudras; hunter-gatherers remained outside the system.

Finally, in China, the latter half of the 900s BC was the height of the Zhou dynasty, with the state becoming more organized and bureaucratic. A Zhou code of criminal law dates from this time. The bureaucracy was controlled by noble families, with particular families having hereditary responsibility for particular government functions: this was not the professionalized, test-based bureaucracy of later Chinese empires, though specialization in skills could still occur. Proper performance of rituals was an important task of the state bureaucracy and, like in India, rituals became more elaborate and standardized during this time.

#world history in a year #world history #ancient history #zhou dynasty #olmecs #phoenicians #ancient india

The sister cities of Tyre and Sidon, Phoenicia by Sasha Beliaev

Gods of Antiquity: Love Goddesses Part II

By Молли - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35026199

With the close connections of the Levant and Mesopotamia, it isn't surprising that Ishtar/Inanna spread out from her Sumerian/Akkadian origins. Among the Canaanites, she was known as ʿAṯtart, or Astarte as her name was Hellenized. Along with love, beauty, and war, she was also the goddess of hunting, worshiped by the Canaanites and Phoenicians among others in the Levant, with her worship spreading into Cyprus before the rise of the Mycenaean Greeks and cult centers for her can be found as far as Spain and Britain where her worship spread under the Romans. She was also associated with sensuality, the carnal aspects of love, and fertility in cattle.

By Mattes - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16149359

As with Ishtar/Inanna, ʿAṯtart/Astarte was not a human fertility goddess, but more focused on sexuality. She also had lions and doves as her symbol. She also was associated with healing, especially as attested in Ugarit and Egypt. She might not have been associated with Venus by the Ugarit and Emar people. Unlike Ishtar/Inanna, ʿAṯtart/Astarte was depicted carrying the solar disk with the crescent moon as a headdress. She is also associated with the bee, palm trees, and lotus flowers, as well as the chariot.

By SonOfRa - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15781244

She is a member of the household of El and consort to Ba'al and of Set, the Egyptian god of deserts, storms, violence, disorder, and foreigners. She is often paired with Anat, another goddess of war and hunting in invocations and incantations, for example, those against snakebite. She was also worshiped alongside Tanit, the goddess of civilized life, including wisdom and crafts, in Carthage.

By Phoenician Inscription from Ur - Burrows, E. (1927). Phoenician Inscription from Ur. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, (4), 791-794. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25221248.

She is well attested from the 3rd millennium BCE, beginning as Aštarta and Ištarta, making her connection to Ishtar more obvious. Her early cult center in Mari (in modern-day Syria) is where her name becomes ᴰʿAṯtarat, distinguishing her from Ishtar, and her name is used in the names of people, such as ᴰAštart-azi, which means 'ʿAṯtart is my strength'. It is in Ugarit that she is written of as a hunter, warrior, and healer goddess. She is also a gender non-conforming goddess, being a hunter and warrior at a time when women weren't generally involved in these realms of life.

#gods of antiquity #love goddess #astarte #canaan #phoenicians

Inanna

Inanna is the Mesopotamian goddess of fertility, love, power, and sensuality.

Inanna’s worship can be traced back to Sumer as early as 4000 BC

traditional worship to this deity included sacred prostitution, sexual rites, and an emphasis on the arts

often know as Ishtar (by the Assyrians) or Astarte (by the Phoenicians)

Inanna is often seen as the origin of Aphrodite’s cults in Cyprus and Cythera. the goddess also shares similarities with Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magic and femininity

Associations

star of Inanna (also known as the star of Ishtar or the eight-pointed star)

lions

roses

doves

weapons (particularly whips, reeds, and hooks)

ps… this is my first time researching Inanna-Ishtar and im eager to learn! let me know if i got anything wrong or if there’s anything else i should know!