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The other day I made a rather off-hand post here:
http://bikerbar.livejournal.com/59803.html
Concerning ancient seals and amulets.
Let me say more seriously that the study of Phoenician seals (and art generally) manufactured during the Orientalizing, Archaic, and Classical periods of Greek history is, though not yet well developed, an important area of research, and not just digging in a place where no one has dug before.
For a start, since many of them are Egyptianizing, they will reveal information about the Semitic reception of Egpytian myth. I think it very likely that most Phoenicians using such seals understood the gods depicted on them by an interpretatio Semitica, in much the same way Etruscans understood Greek mythological scenes after their own mythology and eventually made their own vases showing Etruscan mythological scenes in Greek dress (probably the same thing went on in Scythia and among the Celts).
Far more importantly such studies would bear on the mythological background of the Hebrew Bible in light of the growing consensus that it was composed in this period or even later utilizing older traditions that of themselves were far removed from the version of Judaism represented in the text.
At the same time it would bear on the Semitic background of Hesiod and other early Greek mythological material.
Look at this Phoenician ceramic from Spain (precise date unknown but probably between 1000 and 750 BC:
Though little studied and almost completely unknown to scholars working in general Classical and Semitic fields, its has volumes to say on several interesting topics. The German caption refers to its relevance to the garden of Eden story (though the theme is not explored much more extensively in the article from which this scan comes in the Ugaritica Forschung of 2000). But it bears just as much on the Garden of the Hesperidies. It is only by using material like this that real links can be made between such myths whose general resemblance has long been noted. This piece is also interesting from the point of view of Egyptianizing. The cut of the female figure’s dress is Egyptian, and the marks on it, rather than any kind of alphabetic or proto-alphabetic script probably were meant to represent hieroglyphs by an artist familiar with but unable to read them. While that would suggest an Egyptian goddess, the myth illustrated seems Semitic (probably an Egyptologist would have a different opinion of that).
Finally, it bears also on various subsidiary myths, for instance the flying snakes that Herodotus informs us live in Arabia and Nubia and make an annual migration across the Red Sea (they nest in the trees from which frankincense comes).
And this is just at first glance.
http://bikerbar.livejournal.com/59803.html
Concerning ancient seals and amulets.
Let me say more seriously that the study of Phoenician seals (and art generally) manufactured during the Orientalizing, Archaic, and Classical periods of Greek history is, though not yet well developed, an important area of research, and not just digging in a place where no one has dug before.
For a start, since many of them are Egyptianizing, they will reveal information about the Semitic reception of Egpytian myth. I think it very likely that most Phoenicians using such seals understood the gods depicted on them by an interpretatio Semitica, in much the same way Etruscans understood Greek mythological scenes after their own mythology and eventually made their own vases showing Etruscan mythological scenes in Greek dress (probably the same thing went on in Scythia and among the Celts).
Far more importantly such studies would bear on the mythological background of the Hebrew Bible in light of the growing consensus that it was composed in this period or even later utilizing older traditions that of themselves were far removed from the version of Judaism represented in the text.
At the same time it would bear on the Semitic background of Hesiod and other early Greek mythological material.
Look at this Phoenician ceramic from Spain (precise date unknown but probably between 1000 and 750 BC:
Though little studied and almost completely unknown to scholars working in general Classical and Semitic fields, its has volumes to say on several interesting topics. The German caption refers to its relevance to the garden of Eden story (though the theme is not explored much more extensively in the article from which this scan comes in the Ugaritica Forschung of 2000). But it bears just as much on the Garden of the Hesperidies. It is only by using material like this that real links can be made between such myths whose general resemblance has long been noted. This piece is also interesting from the point of view of Egyptianizing. The cut of the female figure’s dress is Egyptian, and the marks on it, rather than any kind of alphabetic or proto-alphabetic script probably were meant to represent hieroglyphs by an artist familiar with but unable to read them. While that would suggest an Egyptian goddess, the myth illustrated seems Semitic (probably an Egyptologist would have a different opinion of that).
Finally, it bears also on various subsidiary myths, for instance the flying snakes that Herodotus informs us live in Arabia and Nubia and make an annual migration across the Red Sea (they nest in the trees from which frankincense comes).
And this is just at first glance.
