In search of the Phoenicians.
| N° d'inventaire | 21944 |
| Format | 15.5 x 24 |
| Détails | 398 p., some illustrations and maps, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
Who are the Phoenicians? An ancient people from whom the Greeks borrowed the alphabet? Exceptional traders and navigators who left the Levant (Tyre, Sidon, present-day Lebanon) to found Carthage, whose empire would rival the Greek cities of Sicily and Sardinia, until its destruction by Rome? A people practicing a cruel religion with a god demanding the immolation of children, the source of inspiration for Flaubert's Salammbô? Why, compared to the Greeks and Romans, are they ultimately almost insignificant in our histories and stories of Antiquity? Like a detective story, the author retraces everything we know about them that would point to a "Phoenician identity, an original people." She successively explores the language, religion, colonies, and regional influence of Carthage. It is based on epigraphy, numismatics, architecture, the latest archaeological discoveries. Every time we think we have grasped this identity, it slips away... We are no longer even certain that Carthage was a colony of Tyre or Sidon... Were the Phoenicians a real people? Were they recognized as such by their contemporaries? What is certain is that they were the subject of a multitude of instrumentalization operations (and fantasies!): by the Greeks, the Romans and, a few centuries later, by the Irish then the English and, finally, the French!
Who are the Phoenicians? An ancient people from whom the Greeks borrowed the alphabet? Exceptional traders and navigators who left the Levant (Tyre, Sidon, present-day Lebanon) to found Carthage, whose empire would rival the Greek cities of Sicily and Sardinia, until its destruction by Rome? A people practicing a cruel religion with a god demanding the immolation of children, the source of inspiration for Flaubert's Salammbô? Why, compared to the Greeks and Romans, are they ultimately almost insignificant in our histories and stories of Antiquity? Like a detective story, the author retraces everything we know about them that would point to a "Phoenician identity, an original people." She successively explores the language, religion, colonies, and regional influence of Carthage. It is based on epigraphy, numismatics, architecture, the latest archaeological discoveries. Every time we think we have grasped this identity, it slips away... We are no longer even certain that Carthage was a colony of Tyre or Sidon... Were the Phoenicians a real people? Were they recognized as such by their contemporaries? What is certain is that they were the subject of a multitude of instrumentalization operations (and fantasies!): by the Greeks, the Romans and, a few centuries later, by the Irish then the English and, finally, the French!