From Death to Resurrection: The Early Evidence

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This article will examine a remarkable but little-known Punic/Phoenician funerary monument from Pozo Moro, Spain. Behind it lie complex cultural influences, including some connections with the Biblical prophet Ezekiel and his vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37). At opposite ends of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain and Canaan lie more than a thousand miles apart. But in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E., they shared a cultural relationship. Pozo Moro, meaning “the well of the Moors” in Spanish, is a small village in the province of Albacete in southeastern Spain.1 In 1971, a farmer discovered some […]

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Footnotes

A lekythos is a decorated jug used mainly as a tomb offering.

A pithos is a large storage jar.

A protome is the extended front of a sculptured artifact.

See Ephraim Stern, “The Many Masters of Dor, Part II,” BAR 19:02.

See “The Tombs of Silwan,” BAR 20:03.

Phoenicia is the Greek name for the area of modern Lebanon. Punic is the Roman form of the name used later for the Phoenicians in North Africa, as in the Punic wars.

Endnotes

Martín Almagro-Gorbea, “Pozo-Moro,” Madrider Mitteilungen 24, (1983), pp. 177–293.

Donald Harden, The Phoenicians (London: Praeger, 1971), p. 102, pl. 116.

Pierre Demargne, Fouilles de Xanthos I (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958); C. Bayburtluoglu, Lykia (Ankara: 1983), p. 67.

H. Benichon-Safar, Les tombes puniques de Carthage (Paris, 1982).

Almagro-Gorbea, “Pozo-Moro,” pp. 23a-b.

Richard D. Barnett, Ancient Ivories in the Middle East, Qedem 6 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1982), plate 48c. See also “Ancient Ivory—The Story of Wealth, Decadence and Beauty,” BAR 11:05.

Harden, The Phoenicians, pl. 71.

David Ussishkin, “The Neo-Hittite Monuments, Their Chronology and Style” (unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem). The earliest Phoenician example is on Ahiram’s sarcophagus from Byblos, which we have already looked at for its lions. The latest example (from the fifth century B.C.E.), before the motif disappeared entirely with the advent of classical art, comes from Discilion in western Anatolia (E. Akurgal, Ancient Civilization and Ruins of Turkey, Istanbul, [1983], pl. 20). The Neo-Hittite banquet scenes from the city gate at Karatepe (Turkey) are very similar to those at Pozo Moro (M. Vieyra, Hittite Art [London, 1955], pl. 107), both in their general composition and in particular details, such as the throne, the second offering table and even the offering of the cup to the ruler. Similar elements can be seen on a funerary stela from Senjirli, pl. 83.

S. Loewenstam, “Mot,” in Entsiqlopedia Miqra’it, vol. 4 (Jerusalem, 1962), pp. 754–763 (Hebrew); H. Donner and W. Rolling, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften (Wiesbaden, 1966), pp. 38–39.

10.

“Myth of Ba‘al,” in The Goddess Anat, trans. by Umberto Cassuto (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1951).

11.

See the entry under “Rafaim” in the Encyclopedia Biblica, vol. 7, p. 405 (in Hebrew).