Near
Eastern Artefacts in the Greek World
Near Eastern imports in the
Greek world (Asia Minor, the Ægean Sea, Crete, and mainland Greece) appear in
the 10th century BC, and progressively increase during the 9th, the 8th and the
7th centuries. The area of provenance is very wide: it includes
southeastern Anatolia, North Syria, Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt. As for the
quality of the imports, they include pottery, metalwork (bronze and gold) and
ivory items. No clear prevalence of a specific area of origin can be detected
in specific periods. On the other hand, the debate about the identity of the
trading vectors (Phoenicians or Syrians or Cypriotes or Greeks or all of them
inextricably mixed together), has a long history and is still flourishing, no
convincing solutions having been presented so far owing to the mixed character
of the findings. It is generally agreed that in the 10th century the initiative
was primarily in the hands of Syro- Phoenicians, who were soon joined by Greeks
and Cypriotes; and it seems that, by the second half of the 7th century, a slow
but progressive decline of the Phoenician trade took place in favour of the
Greek. (Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, “The Ideological and
Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th
and 7th Centuries BC,” in The Heirs of Assyria: Proceedings of the
Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project.
Held in Tvärminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998, ed. Sanno Aro and R. M.
Whiting [Melammu Symposia 1; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project,
2000], 8, emphasis in bold added)