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The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician Art by Rebecca Martin

The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician Art by Rebecca Martin Rebecca Martin, The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 282 pp. The Greeks and Phoenicians between them, and without much hostility even in the area of Carthage, where both peoples settled in early days, created the Mediterranean maritime world of ports and trading posts, to as far as Spain. The Greeks needed more space for a growing population; the Phoenicians were being pressed by neighbors (Assyria/Egypt). Greeks learned much from the Phoenicians, without too much antagonism, and this book gives a very good and full critical account of the borrowings in the arts in the first millennium BC. Much, indeed most, of Phoenician art derives from Egypt, which is very clear in Greek products, especially the early ones but continuing into the classical period, and Martin is more than thorough in describing and illustrating the results. There could be a certain danger of believing that the inu fl ence was over - whelming and thus of forgetting the Greek genius for proportion, realism, and narrative, as well as the importance of their literature even in the creation of their plastic arts. By concentrating on Phoenician/Egyptian style, it may be easy to underestimate Greek invention. The Greeks’ earliest sarcophagus (just a box essentially) carried Greek- style narrative in the sixth century (in the Troad) and owes nothing to Phoenician/Egyptian types, let alone to the narrative sarcophagi of Cyprus and even of Sidon in the fourth century (the “Alexander”). There is, I think, no “Phoenician” (or “Egyptian”) sarcophagus bearing a narrative scene like the Greek, or indeed like the early Roman, with figures also atop. The Phoenician style was basically Egyptian with little left over from ear- lier Philistines. It had something too of the East, but not much. The earliest true incentives for Iron Age art in Greece came from Mesopotamia via North Syria (Al Mina) and Cyprus and gave birth to Greek narrative art of a type not conspic - uous in Phoenicia. It was also along this route that writing with the north Syrian adaptation of Phoenician script was invented, and it was then very non E - gyptian and very far from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This adaptation the Greeks sought out for themselves and is not much discussed by Martin. Moreover, the Greeks soon came to grips with Egyptian style for themselves, not via the East, when they established a town on the Nile (Naucratis) in the mid- seventh century BC. Martin’s excellent and very thorough account is true to its title, though it might lead classical students to underestimate, in the creation of Greek visual arts, the role of routes and contacts that were not with Phoenicia proper. — John Boardman doi 10.1215/0961754X-6940274 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/24/3/442/540757/0240442.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 23 May 2019 C OM MO N K N O W L E D G E 4 42 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician Art by Rebecca Martin

Boardman, John
Common Knowledge , Volume 24 (3) – Aug 1, 2018
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Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-6940274
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Abstract

Rebecca Martin, The Art of Contact: Comparative Approaches to Greek and Phoenician Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 282 pp. The Greeks and Phoenicians between them, and without much hostility even in the area of Carthage, where both peoples settled in early days, created the Mediterranean maritime world of ports and trading posts, to as far as Spain. The Greeks needed more space for a growing population; the Phoenicians were being pressed by neighbors (Assyria/Egypt). Greeks learned much from the Phoenicians, without too much antagonism, and this book gives a very good and full critical account of the borrowings in the arts in the first millennium BC. Much, indeed most, of Phoenician art derives from Egypt, which is very clear in Greek products, especially the early ones but continuing into the classical period, and Martin is more than thorough in describing and illustrating the results. There could be a certain danger of believing that the inu fl ence was over - whelming and thus of forgetting the Greek genius for proportion, realism, and narrative, as well as the importance of their literature even in the creation of their plastic arts. By concentrating on Phoenician/Egyptian style, it may be easy to underestimate Greek invention. The Greeks’ earliest sarcophagus (just a box essentially) carried Greek- style narrative in the sixth century (in the Troad) and owes nothing to Phoenician/Egyptian types, let alone to the narrative sarcophagi of Cyprus and even of Sidon in the fourth century (the “Alexander”). There is, I think, no “Phoenician” (or “Egyptian”) sarcophagus bearing a narrative scene like the Greek, or indeed like the early Roman, with figures also atop. The Phoenician style was basically Egyptian with little left over from ear- lier Philistines. It had something too of the East, but not much. The earliest true incentives for Iron Age art in Greece came from Mesopotamia via North Syria (Al Mina) and Cyprus and gave birth to Greek narrative art of a type not conspic - uous in Phoenicia. It was also along this route that writing with the north Syrian adaptation of Phoenician script was invented, and it was then very non E - gyptian and very far from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This adaptation the Greeks sought out for themselves and is not much discussed by Martin. Moreover, the Greeks soon came to grips with Egyptian style for themselves, not via the East, when they established a town on the Nile (Naucratis) in the mid- seventh century BC. Martin’s excellent and very thorough account is true to its title, though it might lead classical students to underestimate, in the creation of Greek visual arts, the role of routes and contacts that were not with Phoenicia proper. — John Boardman doi 10.1215/0961754X-6940274 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/24/3/442/540757/0240442.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 23 May 2019 C OM MO N K N O W L E D G E 4 42

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Aug 1, 2018

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