Phoenician craftsmen in Greece (2)

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The finds of Phoenician-looking unguent bottles and burial and epigraphic evidence for the presence of Phoenicians on Early Iron Age Rhodes and Crete (9th century BCE), has led to the question whether there were actually Phoenician unguent factories there or whether Phoenicians were simply making the bottles on Rhodes and Crete. There are several options: the existence of overseas Phoenician bottling facilities and unguent factories, foreign colonization, foreign copying of Phoenician imports, the itinerant craftsman, and the skilled refugee.

The first is unlikely because of economic reasons: the capacity to repatriate profits in the Greek Dark Age places serious restrictions on the branch plant hypothesis. Colonization is possible, but could have been dangerous and difficult, since the relevant sites were already occupied by the Greeks. The theory of foreign copying is hindered by a lack of ingredients in the Greek areas involved and the question why Phoenician imports were considered special in the first place if they could be produced locally as well. The prospects for an itinerant craftsman or refugee who leaves home to settle abroad are much better. The problems with the other theories do not apply here, and considering the unceasing disturbances in the Near East during this period, we need not look far to find motivation for emigration. However, each of the alternatives points towards extensive relations between the Phoenicians and the Greeks already in the Early Iron Age.

Bibliography

Erik van Dongen

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