The Forum

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The Whole Truth

I champion your decision to run the article featuring explicit art from Pompeii (“Ancient Smut,” AO 03:05), and I was surprised by the reaction of some readers (see “Shameful Pandering or Forthright Honesty?” in The Forum, AO 04:01, and “More from the Porn Wars” in The Forum, AO 04:02). If you had to censor every fresco, mosaic or statue from the ancient world that had sexual overtones, your magazine would lack all depth and relevance.

As an artist, I was amazed by the beauty and detail of the objects from Pompeii. As a historian, it gave me a greater appreciation for the city’s complexity. As an anthropologist, I learned something about Roman culture. As a human being, the works of art helped me to reach back and almost touch those in the ancient past, who were not so very different from ourselves.

Because of your willingness to explore challenging historical issues, and because you treat your readers as scholars, as well as adults, I will renew my subscription.

Assyrian Art

My attention was caught by the ivory cherub in Mogens Trolle Larsen’s article, “Europe Confronts Assyrian Art,” AO 04:01. The caption states that the carving is of unknown provenance but probably came from Arslan Tash (ancient Khadatu) in northern Syria.

This ivory bears a striking similarity to a ninth-century B.C. plaque excavated in Samaria and presently housed in the Israel Museum. According to the Bible, in the ninth century B.C. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel built a palace with ivory inlays (see 1 Kings 22:39); the rulers of the northern kingdom of Israel lived in this palace until the Assyrian conquest in the late eighth century B.C. The prophet Amos foretells the Assyrian destruction of Samaria: “The ivory apartments shall be ruined and their many rooms shall be no more, says the Lord” (Amos 3:15). Is it possible that the cherub of unknown provenance came from Samaria?

The cherub/sphinx was the subject of an article in our sister magazine Biblical Archaeology Review by the ivory’s owner, Elie Borowski (“Cherubim: God’s Throne?” BAR 21:04). Borowski notes that our cherub has many features found in Arslan Tash ivories—such as the inclusion of both the Mesopotamian palm and the Egyptian lotus. “I once owned many Arslan Tash ivories,” Borowski writes. “There is no doubt in my mind that our ivory plaque comes from this same group.”—Ed.

010

The Not-So-Dark Dark Ages

Is it true, as James Sickinger claims (Origins, AO 04:01), that “democratic ideals and values disappeared from Western Europe during the Middle Ages”?

The medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas held that slavery and any form of tyranny are against nature. Thus the best polity “is a judicious combination of kingship (rule by one man), aristocracy (rule by many in accordance with virtue), and democracy (popular rule in that the rulers can be chosen from the people and the people have the right to choose their rulers)” (Summa Theologiae I–II, 105, 1).

Is that form of government so unfamiliar?

Whence “Phoenicians”?

David Soren states that the word “Phoenicians” comes from the Greek word for the purple dye for which the Phoenicians were famous (“‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed,’ But Must It Be Forgotten?” AO 03:06). However, I recently read something that made me wonder if the term “Phoenician” has earlier origins.

Indeed it has. Please see the following letter by Professor Charles R. Krahmalkov, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.—Ed.

Hence “Phoenicians”

David Soren states “The name ‘Phoenicians,’ for instance, was not what they [the Phoenicians] called themselves but what the Greeks called them; the word means dark red [in Greek] and refers to the royal purple dye that Phoenicians extracted from murex shells.” In fact, “Phoenicians” is not of Greek origin but is rather the ethnic term that the Phoenicians used to refer to themselves: The name appears in Psalm 45:14, in the phrase bat melek Ponnima (daughter of the king of the Phoenicians), which parallels bat Sor (daughter of Tyre) of verse 13. This psalm dates to about the ninth century B.C., well before the Hellenistic period. The same term, Ponnim (meaning the Phoenician language), appears in a comedy called Poenulus, by the Roman playwright T. Maccius Plautus (died 184 B.C.). The Latin poenus (noun) and punicus (adjective), as well as Greek phoinikos, derive from this native Phoenician term. If the reader would like more detailed information on the term Ponnim(a), he or she might consult the introductions to my books Phoenician-Punic Dictionary, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 90, Studia Phoenicia 15 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000) and Phoenician-Punic Grammar, Handbuch de Orientalistik 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2000).

Kings or Commoners?

In David Soren’s excellent article, Hannibal is described as a king. From what I’ve read, Hannibal was elected as one of two annual suffetes (judges) of Carthage a few years after the end of the Second Punic War. And yet some ancient authors even translated suffetes as “kings” or “consuls.” Had Hannibal actually been a king, he probably would have found more resources to support his war with Rome.

David Soren replies:

Strictly speaking, Hannibal was not a king, as the alert Mr. Van Scoy points out. Aristotle noted that the Carthaginian constitution was a combination of a strong executive under the control of a royal leader, a powerful aristocratic council of elders and a democratic assembly of the people. Gilbert Charles-Picard, the French Punic scholar, argued that the suffetes—a word once thought to mean “kings”—may have originally referred to judges handling civil and criminal cases. But others feel it referred to the leader or ruler of the city, which Hannibal was elected to be. The change from monarchic rule to rule by elected suffetes may have occurred in the third century B.C.

Child Sacrifice

I was shocked to learn that Phoenicians were possibly sacrificing young children at the Carthage Tophet (“An Odyssey Debate: Were Living Children Sacrificed to the 011Gods?” AO 03:06). The idea is horrifying. I always thought that the Phoenicians were a civilized race.

What Happened in the Tophet?

On reading the debate over the uses of the Carthage Tophet, I found myself agreeing with both sides on different points. I have one criticism of the “Yes” side [that is, the argument that the Tophet was used for child sacrifice]: Lawrence Stager and Joseph Greene find it significant that the syncretizing Judahites set up a “high place of Tophet” in the Ben-Hinnom Valley to burn their sons and daughters. What if, as M’hamed Hassine Fantar states in his “No” argument, they were cremating the remains of dead children and fetuses as offerings to the gods, in the hope of receiving replacements? I have read that Judaic law forbids the cremation of remains. Perhaps such a violation of the law was an affront to “non-syncretizing” Judahites?

Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene reply:

The Reverend Mr. Mai poses an intriguing question. Although there is no explicit biblical prohibition against cremation, the fact that after the defeat of Saul’s army his body and those of his sons were singled out for burning (1 Samuel 31:12–13) suggests that cremation after death was a mark of opprobrium. The honored dead would never be treated in such a manner in ancient Israel. In the Bible, burning is prescribed as punishment for particularly heinous sexual crimes (Genesis 38:24; Leviticus 20:14, 21:9), but the implication of these passages is that the offender is to be executed by burning, not first put to death and then cremated. There is no evidence for the practice of cremation in the mortuary archaeology of ancient Israel, although Israel’s neighbors, including the Phoenicians, sometimes did cremate their dead.

In contrast, burnt offerings as sacrifice to the deity were an established part of Israelite and Judahite religion, but such offerings were always explicitly nonhuman. What aroused the prophet Jeremiah’s ire was not the cremation of already deceased children in a syncretizing funerary rite, but rather the offering of a burnt human sacrifice to Yahweh, something Yahweh “did not command” (Jeremiah 7:31).

A useful overview of both burial and sacrifice in ancient Israel can be found in Roland de Vaux’s Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961). For “Death and Burial,” see part 1, chap. 6; for “Sacrifice,” see part 4, chaps. 10–14. For more information on Judahite mortuary practice, see Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). For more on sacrifice in ancient Israel, see Gary Anderson, Sacrifices and Offerings in Ancient Israel: Studies in Their Social and Political Importance (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).

The Whole Truth