From Tyre to Tarshish: The Phoenicians in Spain
PHOTODRONE TECH SL / CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT
By the late ninth century BCE, Canaanites from Tyre, Sidon, and other Phoenician cities of the Levantine coast had made new homes in far-off places across the Mediterranean, from Kition in Cyprus to Carthage in Tunisia to Gadir (modern Cádiz) in southern Spain (Iberia). Literary sources, inscriptions, and archaeology confirm the long-lasting success of the Phoenician project overseas, especially in southern Iberia, an area rich in valuable metals, such as silver and tin.
The wealth of Iberia became synonymous with Phoenician economic and maritime power during the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BCE). Indeed, the Hebrew Bible closely links Tyre, the most powerful of the Phoenician city-states, with Tarshish, a distant land likely to be identified with Tartessos in southern Iberia, which was home to a powerful and wealthy people who rose to prominence in the first millennium BCE through their control of the region’s metal resources (see “Locating Biblical Tarshish”).1 In his invective against Tyre, for example, the prophet Ezekiel says, “Tarshish trafficked with you [i.e., Tyre] because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares” (27:12). Similarly, in Isaiah’s famous oracle against Tyre, written when the city faced renewed threats from Assyria, we read, “Is this your exultant city, whose origin is from days of old, whose feet carried her to settle far away? … Cross over to your own land, O ships of Tarshish; this harbor is no more” (23:6–10).
What led the Phoenicians to sail so far west and establish permanent enclaves in Iberia, a land that must have been largely terra incognita? Our written sources for answering this question are admittedly limited, with most of what we know about Phoenician expansion coming from brief references in Assyrian and biblical texts, or allusions to Phoenicians in Greek sources such as Homer and Herodotus. Later written traditions, transmitted by Greek and Roman historians, present the early western Phoenician settlements in the style of Greek colonies, initiated by political motivations, such as in Carthage (Justin, Epitome 18.4–6), and guided by oracles and omens, as in Gadir (Strabo, Geography 3.5.5). Cultural and religious ties between Tyre and Phoenicians living abroad lasted for centuries and reinforced their political and economic bonds, as exemplified by temples to the chief Phoenician god Melqart in both Tyre and Gadir, located at the opposite ends of the Mediterranean.
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These sources paint a picture of a network of Phoenician settlements that allowed for stable and defensible long-distance trade across the Mediterranean. This trade supported a number of highly successful industries for which the Phoenicians were famous: timber, purple dye, ivory, ostrich eggs, salted fish, and, probably most profitable of all, metals, especially silver and tin. The procurement, processing, and transport of these products relied on securing access to native resources in the western Mediterranean. In building these trade networks, the Phoenicians not only achieved great prominence during the time of the Assyrian Empire (see “Masters of the Mediterranean”) but also established Carthage and other major port cities that would become Mediterranean powerhouses in the late first millennium BCE.
CARMEN NAVÍO SOTO / CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT
Given the limitations of our written sources, we are heavily dependent on archaeology to address key questions about the Phoenician expansion: What did these outposts look like? What was their relationship with the local population and with cities in their Levantine homeland? How did they manage their resources and sustain their communities? What can we know about their cultural, religious, or ethnic identity?
The site of Cerro del Villar, located on the Bay of Málaga in southern Spain, just on the outskirts of the Andalusian port city, offers a unique vantage point to address some of these questions. The nearly 20-acre site was built on one of several islets located at the mouth of the Guadalhorce River, now constrained to a canal that runs east of the Málaga airport. Three millennia ago, this area was an open delta, only partly closed by sand banks, that over the centuries silted over to become agricultural marshland, which is how it appears today. On the largest of these islets, Phoenician merchants established a prominent coastal community that thrived from the eighth to sixth centuries BCE.
Building on earlier excavations conducted at the site decades ago, most notably by the late Spanish archaeologist María Eugenia Aubet, our joint team from the University of Málaga and the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures has returned to this key Phoenician enclave to gather more information about its urban layout, commercial and industrial activities, and connections with broader Mediterranean and local networks.
CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT
This settlement—along with La Rebanadilla, a neighboring island site with Phoenician occupation that extends back to the late ninth century, and several other early Phoenician sites around the Bay of Málaga—provides archaeologists with a unique perspective into Phoenician life in the western Mediterranean. Cerro del Villar was a harbor community that developed strong local connections while also maintaining links with the Phoenician homeland in the Levant. Excavation, survey, and geophysical analysis have revealed a densely constructed settlement with well-planned urban development, especially in the late eighth to early seventh centuries. The town featured large residences with multiple rooms, as well as commercial spaces with adobe structures built along a regular grid of streets. One such “commercial street” had several buildings whose lower rooms were dedicated to different industries, including metalwork, pottery production, and trade. The site shows no signs of defensive walls, and we have yet to uncover any monumental buildings or the site’s burial ground, although both probably existed, given that only about 10 percent of the site has been excavated.
The site’s houses, which have multiple rooms often situated around a courtyard, combine both working and living areas, with dedicated spaces for ceramic and metallurgic activity. They resemble houses documented at other Phoenician sites in the Bay of Málaga, such as Morro de Mezquitilla, Toscanos, and Chorreras, which span the eighth to seventh centuries. Houses excavated to the west in Cádiz provide even earlier examples, offering a small window into the foundations of Phoenician western expansion in the late ninth century. According to Aubet, these dwellings, which are nearly identical in style and construction to large houses in the earliest phases of Phoenician settlement at Carthage, indicate the presence of wealthy merchants from the first moment of settlement.2
Cerro del Villar was a center of pottery production. A number of kilns unearthed by Aubet testify to the direct transfer of ceramic practices and technologies from the Levant, as the ovens are nearly identical to those uncovered at Phoenician sites in Lebanon (such as Sarepta). Locally made amphorae, which likely contained products such as salted fish and various agricultural goods, were exported widely to sites across the Mediterranean, including Sardinia, Carthage, and other North African enclaves, and to various Phoenician markets on the Iberian Peninsula. In turn, Cerro del Villar received finely made ceramics from abroad, not only Phoenician pottery but also Greek and Etruscan wares. Among the more interesting finds are a significant number of Ionian cups and a complete Greek amphora dating to around 700 BCE. Levantine imports include typical Phoenician ceramics, such as perfume flasks and wine amphorae.
MARÍA EUGENIA AUBET / MÁLAGA MUSEUM
Perhaps not surprisingly, fishhooks, fishing weights, and stone anchors illustrate the community’s dependence on maritime trade and communication with other coastal enclaves and Mediterranean ports. However, plant remains reveal these Phoenician settlers also had access to nearby cultivated lands in southern Iberia. Agricultural production in interior valleys—likely farmed by indigenous peoples—supplied staples, such as barley and wheat, legumes, grapes, and olives. In return, local groups gained access to international goods and luxury objects (e.g., worked metal, ivories, seals), and adopted new styles and technologies, including alphabetic writing and monumental construction techniques. Cerro del Villar, therefore, was not only well connected to international trade networks but also seems to have been a regional trading center, a node of exchange between Iberia and the broader Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, we have no information regarding the political or social dynamics that governed this Phoenician community. Archaeology is more generous when it comes to evidence about their burials and ritual customs. Although the burial ground of Cerro del Villar has yet to be identified (it is likely hidden beneath modern development), cremation urns—a common form of Phoenician burial—were recovered from several nearby sites, most significantly at the necropolis associated with La Rebanadilla. There, Phoenician-style funerary urns, burial assemblages, and burial pits, all of which closely resemble burials discovered at the Tyrian necropolis of Al-Bass, were found together with more local funerary elements. In addition, stone-built hypogea (underground burial chambers), another common form of Phoenician burial, were found at Trayamar (about 20 miles east of Málaga), indicating that some Phoenician families accumulated extraordinary wealth. Phoenician graves across southern Iberia also feature large numbers of Egyptian alabaster vases, again attesting to high-end commercial and perhaps diplomatic connections across the Mediterranean.
CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT / COURTESY OF MARÍA EUGENIA AUBET
CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT / COURTESY OF MARÍA EUGENIA AUBET
A variety of other materials associated with ritual practices have come from scattered excavations in and around Málaga, providing glimpses of religious life within these Phoenician communities. For example, a sacred space with several altars was found at Calle Cister in Málaga’s city center, while a Cypriot bronze incense burner and other ritual objects were excavated at Cerro del Peñón in Vélez-Málaga (east of Málaga, near Toscanos). In addition, excavations at La Rebanadilla produced possible religious structures marked by seashell pavements (a feature that seems to have marked sacred spaces) and various cultic finds, including an incense burner, a stone betyl, and a graffito that may reference Eshmun, the principal god of Sidon (probably in a personal name).
Although we have yet to identify any monumental public or cultic buildings at Cerro del Villar, traces of ritual life have surfaced in scattered finds, showing how religious activity permeated the community. In one house, previous excavations unearthed a room partially paved with seashells that contained possible ritual deposits, including oil lamps and ostrich eggs. In addition, a volute capital fragment was discovered on the surface of this area prior to excavation. Such capitals, well known from royal architecture in ancient Israel and Judah, were widely used in monumental graves and shrines across the Phoenician world. Its presence suggests an important religious building at the site that has yet to be discovered.3
In another house, we identified a floor covered by a number of large seashells that rested on a layer of beach pebbles; the shells, in turn, were protected by a layer of broken pottery sherds. Such careful and deliberate deposition suggests the floor covered a ritual deposit or perhaps even a burial. In the areas surrounding the floor, we found evidence of food consumption and perhaps ritual feasting (e.g., plate fragments, mussel shells). Part of a stone anchor was also uncovered just outside this room, suggesting a possible votive function.
CERRO DEL VILLAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT
COURTESY OF J. A. MARTÍN RUIZ AND J. R. GARCÍA CARRETERO / ISAC MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Without a doubt, one of the most fascinating aspects of Cerro del Villar is its challenging environment. Situated on the coast at the mouth of a river, the settlement was inundated several times over the course of its two centuries of existence. In fact, the current excavations are documenting the extent of these floods to determine if they originated from the river (fluvial) or the sea (marine) and how the site’s inhabitants responded to these challenges.4
The first flooding event, which occurred at the beginning of the seventh century, was fluvial and had catastrophic consequences, depositing more than 3 feet of sediment across parts of the site. This event clearly impacted the town’s occupants and their livelihoods, as some buildings had to be heavily renovated while others were entirely rebuilt. The second event, which occurred at the end of the same century, was probably marine in nature and may have been caused by a storm surge or tsunami. This precarious situation, which left the settlement surrounded by marshland and expanding riverbeds, was likely the reason Cerro del Villar was abandoned as a residential settlement in the sixth century. We think the community moved to the area of the current city of Málaga, which began to expand about this same time. Afterward, Cerro del Villar was used almost exclusively for industrial activity, especially pottery production and the manufacture of garum, the famous Phoenician fish sauce well known from Greco-Roman sources.
The Bay of Málaga and in particular the site of Cerro del Villar provide a perfect laboratory to study Phoenician trade and migration in the western Mediterranean. Through this site, which we will continue to excavate in coming years, material remains evince the buzzing small ports, fish factories, and sacred spaces that characterized the lives of the average Phoenician traders and merchants who settled in this distant land. At the same time, we also find evidence of wealthy elites who could afford luxurious burials and access precious objects and materials from across the Mediterranean. Perhaps most important, especially in light of the many environmental concerns that we face today, we can document the various strategies these early Phoenician colonies adopted to sustain themselves in a changing environment.
Locating Biblical Tarshish
By Carolina López-Ruiz, David Schloen, José Suárez Padilla
PENTA SPRINGS LIMITED / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Tartessos was the ancient Greek name for the Guadalquivir River, which runs through the heart of Andalusia, from the inland areas of Córdoba and Seville to just north of Cádiz on the Atlantic coast. The region, called Turdetania by the Romans, was likely known to the Phoenicians (and the biblical writers) as Tarshish, which was probably a Semitic form of its local indigenous name.
During the first millennium BCE, Tartessos was home to a powerful local people who controlled access to some of Europe’s richest metal deposits, especially the Rio Tinto mines (about 45 miles north of Huelva) and the abundant pyrite resources spread across Andalusia. Such metals were the main reason for trade between Phoenician entrepreneurs and local Iberian communities, with sites like Huelva and Seville becoming early centers of exchange.
Wealthy burials that combine both traditional and Levantine elements, including “orientalizing” goods and imports, attest to the mixed culture that resulted from such contact. Sanctuaries were at the center of these interactions and provided safe spaces for economic exchange. For instance, at the site of El Carambolo just outside Seville, the Levantine gods Ashtart and a form of Baal, perhaps Melqart, were worshiped not only by Phoenician traders, but also by locals who had assimilated these gods to their own ancestral deities.
Unfortunately, we know little about the social or political organization of Tartessos. It seems likely that local chiefs controlled the area’s abundant resources well into the sixth century BCE, when we know Ionian Greeks came to Iberia seeking the support of Tartessos’s wealthy and proverbially long-lived king, Arganthonios, in the face of the Persian threat (Herodotus, Histories 1.163.1–165.2). Afterward, a crisis affected the region’s coastal settlements and pushed the Tartessic culture inland, to sites such as Cancho Roano and Casas del Turuñuelo, where archaeologists have found monumental buildings and a cosmopolitan material culture that displays Levantine styles and techniques.
After the sixth century, Tartessos and its wealth began to fade into legend, becoming associated in Greek myth with the far reaches of the known world (including stories about Herakles). Traces of its culture and language, however, continued to live on among Iberia’s later inhabitants, the Turdetanians, whom the Romans identified with the Tartessic legacy.
Masters of the Mediterranean
By Carolina López-Ruiz, David Schloen, José Suárez Padilla
ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY
Scholars long thought the main impetus for Phoenicia’s westward expansion was the Assyrian Empire, which demanded heavy tribute from the Phoenician city-states in the form of silver and timber. But archaeology indicates that intense trade with Iberia, and especially the areas west of the Strait of Gibraltar that were rich in metals, began a century or more before the rise of Assyria in the eighth century BCE. Early Phoenician settlements at sites such as Gadir, Carthage, and others now put the expansion in the mid- to late ninth century. In fact, as the Assyrians pushed westward in the eighth century, Tyre and Sidon enjoyed a more lenient treatment, precisely because they functioned as critical gateways to the Mediterranean.
We therefore need a different model to explain how and why the Phoenicians began to sail west. As a start, the independent city-states of the Phoenician coast were largely unscathed by the destructions and collapses that affected other Canaanite centers around 1200 BCE. Taking advantage of their centuries-long maritime experience, the Phoenician cities leveraged previous though irregular contacts with distant Mediterranean ports to establish an extensive network of stable, interconnected settlements far to the west.
It is unlikely that long-distance trade of this scope could have succeeded without state sponsorship. Even if we cannot attribute this initiative to Hiram, the tenth-century king of Tyre whom the Bible presents as King Solomon’s ally in a joint trading venture that involved “ships of Tarshish” (1 Kings 10:22), we might attribute it to the later Tyrian king Ittobaal (Ethbaal), father of the infamous Jezebel. Archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon dates from Gadir, the earliest and most famous of Phoenicia’s Iberian colonies, shows that regular trade was well established by the late ninth century, with permanent colonial settlements underway within a matter of decades.
MLA Citation
Endnotes
1. See Sebastián Celestino and Carolina López-Ruiz, Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016), and Carolina López-Ruiz, “Tarshish and Tartessos Revisited: Textual Problems and Historical Implications,” in M. Dietler and C. López-Ruiz, eds., Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 255–280.
2. María E. Aubet, “El Sistema colonial fenicio y sus pautas de organización,” Mainake 28 (2006), p. 38.
3. For further discussion, see Fanni Faegersten and Carolina López-Ruiz, “New insights on the ‘Volute Capital’ Motif: Its Materials, Meaning, and Contexts in the Phoenician World and Beyond,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 11.2–3 (2023), pp. 229–255.
4. M. Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar et al., “Archaeological and Geophysical Evidence of a High-Energy Marine Event at the Phoenician Site of Cerro del Villar (Malaga, Spain),” in M. Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar and F. Machuca Prieto, eds., Historical Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Archaeology in the Iberian Peninsula (Singapore: Springer, 2022), pp. 179–201.