Sidon

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Say “Sidon” to a scholar of Greek mythology, and he or she will tell you of the wondrous Sidonian silver bowl described by Homer in the Iliad that was a prize during the funeral games for Patroclus. Destined for Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, the bowl traveled from the ancient city port of Sidon and was a prime symbol of communication and exchange in the Mediterranean Sea. Or he or she may recount the story of Europa, the daughter of the king of Sidon who was enticed by an amorous Zeus in the guise of a bull and who then went on to lay the foundations for the House of Minos.

Say “Sidon” to a Bible scholar, and he or she will tell you, “That was where Jezebel came from.” Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab(1 Kings 16:31) during the ninth century B.C.E.

Sidon is perched on the slope of a rocky promontory with a naturally protected harbor on the Mediterranean Sea south of the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The city is mentioned 38 times in the Hebrew Bible and was one of the most important Canaanite—and later Phoenician—coastal cities.

Mention Sidon to an archaeologist, and he or she will recall the port city’s ramparts and two castles, which still broadly resemble the version that was described by 19th-century travelers.

Still others may think of the numerous seal impressions featuring animals referred to in the Bible as the “wild beasts of Lebanon”(2 Kings 14:9; 2 Chronicles 25:18)—namely large carnivores such as the lion and bear, as well as the Mesopotamian fallow deer, wild boar, aurochs and hippopotamus. They were all hunted by Sidonians in the third millennium B.C.E.¹ This activity was depicted on seal impressions—with the most popular scene being the illustration of a male hunter with an erect penis accompanied by a lion.

Feasting was another common scene found at 023Sidon. Pictorial representations of feasts feature activities performed at the event, such as dancing. One cylinder seal shows a row of men with long straight noses and sharply jutting pointed beards dancing with great vivacity.²

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A statuette from Sidon highlights ancestor cult rites practiced during the third millennium B.C.E. This miniature figurine, about 2 inches tall, was part of the “guardian spirit” group of figurines, which have been uncovered both in houses and in ancestor shrines. It was found together with a small bowl with a broken handle. Both the statuette and bowl 025were carved from gypsum. Syria also provides examples of ancestor images holding bowls. The head of the Sidon figurine was broken off in accordance with its “killing” or “rejecting” at the time of disposal. Mutilation of anthropomorphic figurines’ heads and hands is a well-known tradition in the ancient Near East, found as early as the third millennium B.C.E. It is also documented in Deuteronomy 7:25: “The images of their gods you shall burn with fire.” The presence of the miniature bowl nearby suggests that it had been used to receive offerings or, at the very least, that the idea of an offering was intended.³

By the second millennium B.C.E., hunting was no longer an important activity—as proven by the absence of wild game in the analyses of animal remains at Sidon.⁴ A cylinder seal from an early second-millennium grave depicts a diminutive hunter holding a bow that, from his small stature, 026is only the perpetuation of the memory of the hunt.⁵

Among the early illustrations from Sidon, there is a reluctance to represent the human face. No interest was shown in rendering precise facial features, and when humans are depicted, they always appear as a mix of human and animal. The symbiosis between man and animal is illustrated on a stylized painted limestone figurine with broken legs dating to around 1650–1600 B.C.E. This figurine features a deity with eyebrows and a nose recalling the full-frontal face of a ram’s head, which symbolized virility.⁶

This figurine was found together with an incense burner and a jar containing eight astragalus bones inside and around its base. The astragalus is the knucklebone in the animal’s heel between the hind limb and the lower foot. Due to its anatomical position, it is a distinctive bone, one which is located where the butcher’s knife is first inserted into the animal when skinning. The very act of skinning had a mystical aspect that encouraged a special respect for the astragalus due to its location in connection with the knife’s point of entry.

At the dawn of the second millennium B.C.E., the site was covered by a thick layer of deliberately cleaned sand between 3 and 4.6 feet deep, brought from the nearby seashore. This “purifying” activity must have taken weeks of hard labor. At this point Sidon became a burial site.⁷ To date, 142 burials have been found in this sand and in subsequent layers on top of it dating until around 1500 B.C.E. A funerary feasting tradition took place at the time of burial.⁸ High-ranking individuals were buried with objects indicating their power, rank and reputation, such as a Minoan cup (1984–1859 B.C.E.) from Phaistos, Crete,⁹ which was found inverted, as was the common Aegean practice. The cup was placed over a 027deposit of nearly 200 animal bone fragments from one sub-adult goat and two young sheep. Only the meat-bearing bones, limbs and axial skeleton were recovered, which indicates that these were the remains of a feast. Cut marks on the bones offer additional proof of the feast.¹⁰

Also found at Sidon in an early Canaanite pit adjacent to a burial was a depiction of Sidon’s storm god as a leonine dragon. Not illustrated in its usual striding posture but rather as a nonhuman symbolic representation, Sidon’s storm god appears on a stamped handle dated to about 1800–1750 B.C.E. The dragon epitomizes the most fundamental ancient mythical perception of the Mesopotamian storm god. The handle displays an impression of a ship with the leonine dragon Ušumgal, the storm god Adad’s attendant, next to it. Adad (the Canaanite Hadad, the Semitic Hadda, the Hurrian Teshub, the Egyptian Resheph, the Phoenician Baal/Bel, the Sumerian Ishkur) is the Mesopotamian storm god, who has special maritime, celestial and meteorological attributes important to the well-being of sailors. Given Sidon’s position on the coast, it is not surprising that the storm god is Sidon’s most important god.

Sidon’s temple, which is 52 yards long, was the most imposing structure on site. Constructed around 1500 B.C.E., the temple was used for feasting, including a commemorative practice involving the ritual destruction of items in a breakage ceremony.¹¹ A model shrine from the temple surmounted by a lion’s head, one of Astarte’s attributes, reminded worshipers of the divine presence. It represents a symbolic pseudo-temple, a substitute for the actual temple in which a divine effigy—probably the fertility goddess Ishtar/Astarte, also known as Anat/Asherah—would be placed.

In order to ensure the purity of the site, pleasant odorous substances, such as incense, would have been lit, accounting for the discovery of portable incense burners at the temple.

Around 1300 B.C.E. (during the Late 028Bronze Age), the Sidonians worshiped their gods in a subterranean temple. This building was probably entered through a door placed high up in a wall and reached via an internal wooden staircase, thus emphasizing limited access to this place.¹² Access was probably restricted to a few high-status members of the community.

Recent excavations have revealed another underground room where 20 stones in the shape of horns were found. These stones are reminiscent, in terms of their strange shape, of similar Minoan features known as “horns of consecration” and are viewed in this Levantine context as another important step forward in the study of the relationship and interconnections in ancient Mediterranean cultures. The horns were found in and around a channel in the room—but nowhere else. Made in different sizes, these horns were sometimes pointed and sharp or shorter with rounded blunted tips. They varied in length between 6 and 12 inches. Similar horns were embedded within structures in Galatas, Crete. They were used in a ritual related to the renovation or foundation of a building.¹³

Two further unusual artifacts were discovered in this room. The first was a freestanding stone found lying on its side in the area where the channel emptied. What distinguishes this stone is that its top surface was carefully etched in order to insert the astragalus of an ox. The second was an astragalus carved in stone.

There were plenty of feasting opportunities in Sidon during the Late Bronze Age as evidenced by the quantity of pottery, in particular the Mycenaean and the Late Cypriot pottery that arrived as imports through Sidon’s harbor. Drinking sets, such as craters used for mixing wine with water before serving it to participants of a feast, were very popular. Furthermore, the Sidon excavation has yielded by far the largest number of rhyta, drinking vessels imported to Sidon from Greece, ever found at a single site in the Levant.

029Sidon remained strong and prosperous in the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.E. This was at the time that the Sea Peoples (especially the Philistines) were emerging in the Levant as political powers. As recounted in the Bible (Deuteronomy 3:9; Joshua 13:6; Judges 3:3; Judges 10:12; Judges 18:7), it is Sidon—not Tyre—that figures as the powerful Phoenician city during this period. According to the report of the Egyptian envoy Wen-Amun around 1080 B.C.E., Sidon’s harbor held 50 commercial vessels.

The 2016 Sidon excavation concentrated on the 12th–11th-century B.C.E. levels of the temple. One room had a round base supporting what was probably a wooden pillar. Along the wall of another room was a bench for placing offerings and an altar of unhewn stones. This pile of crude stones evokes Exodus 20:25: “But if you make for me an altar of stone, do not build it of hewn stones; for if you use a chisel upon it, you profane it.” Ivory inlays, alabaster vessels imported from Egypt, an alabaster spoon in the shape of a lotus bud painted in red, a decorated piece of bone, a faience necklace, an engraved comb and two ceremonial iron knives were also found in this temple.

A rare mid-eighth-century B.C.E. crater recently discovered outside Sidon’s temple is decorated with the tree of life and flanked by goats. The topic of its decoration and the quality of its manufacture is on a par with the famous Cesnola Collection Crater from Cyprus, which was acquired in 1880 and is featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

From the Persian period (around the fourth century B.C.E.) in a pit outside the temple came a sistrum, a percussion instrument, bearing the image of the goddess Hathor. It was found together with a number of terracotta figurines. It is an authentic Egyptian musical instrument common to sacred contexts. It was most frequently played by women inside a temple in a ritual context that included singing and dancing.

Feasting occupied a central role in the social interest of Bronze and Iron Age Sidon and involved 058a broad spectrum of activity from food distribution to funerary feasting at the grave in honor of the dead.

Future work at Sidon will focus on refining the understanding presented here. It is now certain that the Sidon excavation is at the core of a new dynamic that will be instrumental for gaining insight into Canaanite social and cultural identity. This remarkable body of information will no doubt act as a cornerstone for a broader understanding of cult and ritual on the Levantine coast throughout the millennia.

The city of Sidon on the coast of modern Lebanon is mentioned 38 times in the Hebrew Bible. Recent excavations have exposed part of the ancient Canaanite—and later Phoenician—city, including a massive temple and depictions of deities worshiped at Sidon.