About Earthly, Water and Underwater Meetings of The Phoenicians and the Greeks. Mythological and Religious Ways of Transmission in The Eastern Mediterranean

Year 2021, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 210 - 217, 15.06.2021

Krzysztof Ulanowski

https://doi.org/10.30897/ijegeo.811026

Abstract

The meeting of people and cultures in the Mediterranean is as old as the art of shipping. Especially the Minoans (let me call them pre-Greeks), their successors the Greeks themselves, the Phoenicians but also the Egyptians and the Assyrians have traveled, traded, and fought frequently for centuries. Especially the Cypro-Minoan and the Cypro-Mycenaean relations are well documented and the area around the Greek Islands and Cyprus is full of traces of the old glory that now is represented in the shape of shipwrecks and their lost cargo.
In my article, I focus on the artistic representation of ships and navigation in the Near Eastern and Greek material sources. However, of great interest to mine is not only strictly artistic representation but also their hidden meanings like the apotropaic function of these vessels.
The second part, even more important, is about the transmission of mythological and religious motives. I decided to present only two motives; fight and conquest which were very popular in the art and mythologies of the Geometric and Archaic Periods. A good example is a fragment of a Greek pot found on the site of the Pointe Lequin 1A wreck which (probably) represents the fight between Theseus and the Minotaur. I found its Eastern counterparts or rather forerunners and explain the meaning of these motives and symbols. I focused also on the representation of the mythological depiction of Gorgon and lion which surprisingly caught the attention of the Greek audience.

Keywords

Greeks, Phoenicians, Mythology, Myths, Religion, Mediterranean, Sea, Ships

References

• Aster, S. Z. 2012. The Unbeatable Light. Melammu and Its Biblical Parallels. Münster, Ugarit-Verlag.
• Aubet, M.E. 1966. The Phoenicians and the West. Politics, Colonies, and Trade. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.