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Tarsus, Al Mina and Greek Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

John Boardman
John Boardman*
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford
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Extract

‘The most interesting excavated site, after Al Mina—Posideion, is Tarsus. This area may yet hold the key to many important problems, and provide firm associations between East and West which will give fixed points for early Greek history and chronology’ (Dunbabin, The Greeks and their Eastern Neighbours 33).

The publication of Tarsus iii (reviewed later in this volume) offers scholars the opportunity to judge how far the high hopes entertained for the absolute dating of Greek pottery found in the town destroyed by Sennacherib in 696 B.C. have been fulfilled. Hanfmann, who publishes the pottery, had already given some indication of the results in The Aegean and the Near East, 165 ff., a volume dedicated to Hetty Goldman, excavator of Tarsus. Some of the results seemed a little disturbing, like the appearance of East Greek bird bowls with rays before 696 B.C. With the publication we can see that the dating for Protocorinthian pottery of the end of the eighth century is moved back at least a quarter century (pp. 115, 129, 308), while the disturbance to the bird bowl series suggests even more radical changes, leaving something of a vacuum in the first half of the seventh century, so far as the usually accepted dates of Protocorinthian and East Greek pottery are concerned. Hanfmann does not pursue all the implications of this, nor was it his task to in this book. Fortunately the quality of the publication makes it possible to study these problems in some detail, to evaluate the evidence of the pottery and stratigraphy, and even to suggest possible accounts, different from those of the publishers, for the years around 696 B.C. In what follows I have taken Payne's chronology for Protocorinthian as the standard since none of the detailed attempts to upset it seem to me to have been at all successful, while much new evidence has appeared to confirm it. Dunbabin's.remarks on the possible margins of error have also to be remembered (in AE 1953–54 247 ff.).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 85 , November 1965 , pp. 5 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1965

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References

1 My references to pages, catalogue numbers and illustrations in Tarsus iii appear in italics throughout this paper.

2 ‘It is difficult to observe any marked development of shape or decoration among the bird bowls found at Tarsus’ (p. 296).

3 In what follows I have been greatly helped by Mr N. Coldstream, who studies these vases in his forthcoming book on Geometric Greek pottery. I have also been able to use the good stratified sequence of finds from Emporio in Chios, which has yet to be published. The drawings in fig. 1 are traced from Tarsus iii, with some of the decoration restored off the sherds.

4 Asine 321 fig. 219.4 (the site apparently abandoned about 700 B.C.). Ischia, the Nestor cup, Rend. Linc. 1955, 215 ff., pls. 1–4, with EPC.

5 The decline in shape may not be quite steady, or keep step in the various East Greek Centres producing bird bowls. Note that in Tarsus iii the profile of 1459 on fig. 145 is surely wrong, since the fragment (see fig. 99) is preserved to near its base. And 1443 on fig. 145 may be meant for 1448.

6 Clara Rhodos (hereafter CR) vi–vii 113 fig. 125 (with MPC aryballos, c. 650); 67 fig. 70 (with LPC aryballos; this bowl has rays also; Kardara, , Rhodiake Aggeiographia 17 Google Scholar); 61 fig. 61 (with EC alabastron; Kardara, op. cit., 22). Also in an unpublished tomb from Caere, with a PC aryballos of about 650.

7 Syracuse, , MA xxv 490 Google Scholar fig. 82 (in late MPC stratum; cf. Dunbabin, , Western Greeks 473 Google Scholar); Syracuse, , NSc 1925 202 Google Scholar fig. 37 (? with LPC/Trans.; cf. Dunbabin, op. cit., 474); and cf. the Malta bowl. Heidelberg, , AA 1963 669 f.Google Scholar, fig. 2, said to have been found with a Protocorinthian cup no earlier than about 650 (ibid., 667 f., fig. 1).

8 CR iii 46 figs. 33 and 37 (with LPC or later pyxis); 64 fig. 54 (with LPC aryballos); vi–vii 61 fig. 61 (with EC alabastrem); 65 fig. 66 (with Trans. aryballos); 67 fig. 70 (with LPC aryballos). Hesp. xvii 223 D53 pl. 82 (in EC well). Populonia, , Bronzo, Flabelli di, MA xxxiv 355 Google Scholar fig. 23 pl. 14.9 (with EC). Naucratis, CVA Oxford ii pl. 1.13 (nothing from the site pre-Trans.).

9 CR vi–vii 61 fig. 61, 65 fig. 66 (see last notes). CR iv 58 fig. 30 (with EC and ?MC; cf. Kardara, op. cit., 24 f.). Eventually, Vroulia pl. 42 tomb 18.2, early sixth century.

10 These are also called ‘Cycladic’. They are seen in Athens and Cyprus (with pendant-semicircle cups); see Desborough, , AA 1963 205–8Google Scholar figs. 43–7, where the captions give the erroneous impression that Desborough takes them for Attic.

11 Cf. Hanfmann, in The Aegean and the Near East 176 ff.Google Scholar On Samos the style appears in Well G, on which see below.

12 Cf. Taylor, , Iraq xxi 91 f.Google Scholar; Boardman, , Greeks Overseas 62.Google Scholar

13 The ‘krateriskos’ 1499 and the plates 1511–15 are added by Hanfmann (p. 128) to the repertory of ‘Cycladic’ shapes (the others are the pendantsemicircle cups). The first at least is better classified separately.

14 JAOS lix (1939) 16 no. 9. For the number of floors with tablets see p. 132 and contrast the account in AJA xli (1937) 276. The date is derived from what is taken to be a regnal year (‘year 33’ is read, and only Assurbanipal reigned so long) instead of the usual limmu date (which it is said to be on p. 132). Dr Gurney pointed out this odd feature to me. Professor Goetze observed in a letter that if the Assyrian regnal year dating is rejected it must refer to one of the neo-Babylonian kings, but thb is ruled out by the context, and all the other tablets are Assyrian. Perhaps the context with Greek pottery should be taken as confirmation of this rare instance of Assyrian regnal year dating. Or perhaps it is not a regnal year at all. At any rate it does not seem a wholly reliable dating point for Greek pottery.

15 Canciani, (AA 1963 668)Google Scholar may be relieved of his anxiety, prompted by the Tarsus finds, about the alleged find of such a bowl (now in Heidelberg) with a mid seventh-century PC cup.

16 Cf. The Aegean and the Near East 185 ff.; Boardman, , Island Gems 110 f.Google Scholar

17 In the catalogue some of these finds are described by the rooms of the higher, sixth-century level, but are located in the Assyrian levels by their depths.

18 Erzen, , Kilikien 86.Google Scholar Hanfmann observes (p. 159) that the Cimmerian invasion is not reflected in the ceramics industry, nor would we expect it to be, but other finds may be more revealing for some events.

19 See now Snodgrass, , Early Greek Armour 148 f.Google Scholar, where the same origin is indicated, and 252, n. 36, where the discordant dating evidence of the Tarsus finds is noted.

20 Erzen, , Kilikien 64.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 61 f.

22 Cf. RE s.v. ‘Tarsus’ 2436 ff. and AJA xxxix (1935) 526 ff.

23 I have been unable to find any sketch map relating Gözlü Kule to modern Tarsus in the Tarsus volumes or indeed elsewhere. I have relied on the opinions of friends who have visited the site that my interpretation of the topography is not impossible.

24 I have sketched the archaeological history of Mina, Al in these centuries in The Greeks Overseas 61 ff.Google Scholar

25 Taylor, , Iraq xxi (1959) 91 f.Google Scholar

26 Boardman, , Anat. Stud. ix (1959) 163 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Notably, the imitations of Protocorinthian now found on Ischia/Pithekoussai, and the skyphoi with concentric circles on the rim, which should now be taken as a Euboean speciality. The pendantsemicircle cups remain unknown in the west. They are better known in Euboea now and Euboean workshops may have stopped making them by the time Pithekoussai was founded, although examples may have been in use later in the century elsewhere, as at Tarsus. At Troy and ‘Larisa’ the date of the Iron Age settlements should perhaps be given by the local wares, so the pendant-semicircle cups there could be appreciably earlier than the other datable Greek pottery.

28 The find is mentioned by Barnett, , Nimrud Ivories 165 Google Scholar n. 1: ‘Tusks, some partly marked for sawing up ….’ One is Oxford 1954.522 with a single line cut round its base; other pieces are in London. Syrian elephants may not have survived the eighth century (Barnett, op. cit., 166).

29 Oxford 1963.5. JHS lviii (1938) 147 fig. 25 MN229, and p. 165: ‘apparently a fastening for furniture’. It is broken off where there may have been another ribbed moulding. In the sections in fig. 3 the horizontal represents the axis of the rivet hole. Preserved width 0.112.

30 Layard, , Monuments of Nineveh ii pl. 57A.Google Scholar Usually taken for Phoenician but there is nothing Egyptianising in it and it could be Assyrian work. Cf. ibid., pl. 60, with shorter arms. Murray, , Exc. in Cyprus 102 Google Scholar fig. 148.8, 9.

31 Fouilles de Delphes v 79 fig. 276; Pareti, , La Tomba Regolini-Galassi pl. 22.215–16.Google Scholar With shorter arms: Argive Heraeum ii pl. 121.2074, 2077 (and cf. pl. 235. 2788, which might be part of a long arm); Schumacher, , Bronzen in Karlsruhe pl. 8.16, 32Google Scholar; Lindos i pl. 29.709; and on the (?) Rhodian, decorated bowl, MonPiot xlviii (1956) 26 f.Google Scholar, figs. 1, 2, pl. 3. To judge from its three rivet holes the Tyszkiewicz bowl ( Fröhner, , Coll. Tysz. pl. 15 Google Scholar; Pfuhl, MuZ fig. 134) may have had a single handle of this sort.

32 Körte, , Gordion 68 ff.Google Scholar, figs. 45–8; Tell Halaf iv pl. 50.7; Olympia iv 133 no. 837; Fouilles de Delphes v 78, fig. 269; an example (? Phrygian) from Emporio in Chios.

33 (a) Oxford 1954.347 (MN600, Levels V and VI/VII), for which see JHS lx (1940) 15 fig. 7k; Schiering, , Werkstätten 123 n. 287Google Scholar; Kardara, 71, no.8. (b) Oxford 1954.342(9) (Level VI/VII); perhaps from the same vase as JHS lx (1940) 9 fig.4b. (c) Oxford 1954.348(1) (Level VI/VII). (d) Oxford, Private. The clay is a good red, sometimes fired with a greyish core. The paint is a deep brown over a thick dull cream slip. Our group is earlier than the general run of Rhodian dinoi (cf. Schiering, 37 f.) which, if they have handles at all, have rings in spools (e.g. Vroulia 215 f., fig. 103; MA xvii 250, fig. 188, from Gela, ? Chian), and are not wholly painted inside like the Al Mina fragments. Rather like the latter are the handles with short arms on dinoi from Ithaka, , BSA xliii (1948) pl. 24.383 Google Scholar (local), 45.599 (AntJ xxxvii (1957) pl. 22.9). The latter, if not Cretan, copies the Cretan dinoi from Afrati, which, however, have handles like the later Rhodian, (Ann. x–xii 164 f.Google Scholar, fig. 176; 172, fig. 192).

34 Greeks Overseas 73 f.

35 Cf. Dunbabin, , The Greeks and their Eastern Neighbours 76.Google Scholar For Barnett, Mersin in LAAA xxvi (1939) 110 ff.Google Scholar

36 Greeks Overseas 74–77. For Tell Sukas see Riis, in Ann. Arch. de Syrie viii/ix 107 ff.Google Scholar, x 111 ff., xi 133 ff., xiii (1963) 211 ff.

37 Cf. RE s.v. ‘Tarsus’ 2417 f.

I have had the pleasure of discussing Tarsus problems with Miss Goldman, Professor Mellink and Professor Hanfmann.