Site of Phoenician City is Reconsidered

Phoenician ship, from ancient bas relief.

The ancient Phoenician city of Aüza ~ known only from written records dating back 3,500 years ~ may have been in a different location than experts have long thought. By studying ancient maps and records, emeritus classics professor Sir John Boardman of the University of Oxford has pinpointed a more likely site.

“Too many people have wanted to put it much too far away,” Boardman says. Where previous historians have thought Aüza was probably far to the west, beyond Carthage in Tunisia, he puts it at a site known as Aziris, nearer to Egypt and Phoenicia. Aüza was a port city used to give the Phoenicians a foothold on the African continent.

According to LiveScience, the confusion over the site for Aüza likely stemmed from the many names the site of Aziris has had over time, and the poor records identifying where Aüza actually was. Though Boardman can't be sure he's gotten to the bottom of the matter, he thinks Aziris is the most likely place to have hosted Aüza.

The Phoenicians were a seafaring civilization that thrived between 1550 BC and 300 BC, famous for their shipbuilding capabilities and seamanship.“They were exploring the Mediterranean the same time the Greeks were,” Boardman said. “It's fashionable to think they were in rivalry, but it's much more likely they were friendly to each other.”

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Basis of Death's 'Sardonic Grin' is Revealed

Scientists have determined how ancient Phoenicians created gruesome smiles ~ known as a “sardonic grin” ~ on the dead some 2,800 years ago.

According to National Geographic, elderly people who could no longer care for themselves and criminals "were intoxicated with the sardonic herb and then killed by dropping from a high rock or by beating to death," according to the new study.

For centuries the herb's identity has been a mystery, but study leader Giovanni Appendino and colleagues say they have discovered a sardonic grin-inducing compound in a plant called hemlock water-dropwort.

By the eighth century B.C., Homer had coined the term "sardonic grin" ~ "sardonic" having its roots in "Sardinia" ~ referring to the Sardinia’s ritual killings.

About a decade ago, a Sardinian shepherd committed suicide by eating a hemlock water-dropwort, leaving a corpse with a striking grin.

The death spurred study co-author Mauro Ballero, a botanist at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, to study every dropwort-related fatality on the island in recent decades.

For the new study, Ballero and colleagues detailed the molecular structure of the plant's toxin and determined how it affects the human body.

Study leader Appendino, an organic chemist from the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale in Italy, said, "The compound is highly toxic and causes symptoms similar to those described by the ancients for the sardonic smile, including facial paralysis."

Click here for the complete National Geographic article.

Photo shows 4th Century Phoenician mask displaying the notorious grin.

Stash of Phoenician Jugs Found in Lebanon

An archeologist extracting a Phoenician earthenware jug.

Documenting locations of some of the 100 jugs unearthed so far.

Archaeologists in southern Lebanon have unearthed more than 100 Phoenician pottery jars dating back 2,900 years. The jars were used to hold human remains following cremation. "The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them," Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters.

Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists discovered the jars at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria. The Phoenicians' earliest cities included Byblos, Tire and Sidon on Lebanon's coast. From Tire, Phoenicians are thought to have expanded into other colonies on the Mediterranean coast.

"These discoveries help researchers who work on past Phoenician colonies in Spain, Italy and Tunisia, to pin down a large number of their habits and traditions," said Maria Eugenia Aubet, who leads the Spanish archaeological team.

"Especially since there are few studies of the Phoenicians in their motherland of Lebanon," Aubet said, adding that the remains proved that the Phoenicians had a vision for life after death.