This paper is about how the cultural, political and economic monetary language adopted by Carthage was influenced and arose from the necessity for the Phoenicians to adapt to the Greek and Roman worlds maintaining at the same time typical oriental characteristics. The first Punic coins in the West, which date back to around the 5th century B.C., were minted to facilitate integration into the Greek political and cultural reality in Sicily at that time, where each town produced its coins in almost complete autonomy and where each emission reflected the economic level reached by each single centre. This explains why the Phoenicians chose to use an iconography more or less of Greek inspiration and whose legends, though written in the Phoenician language, expressed a Sicilian semantic and political context. It was only in 410 B.C., due to the necessity to pay the mercenary troops engaged in war on the island, that Carthage began minting the first Silver coins that allude to the Carthaginian Military Administration present on the island. Nonetheless, the iconography remained predominantly similar to the Greek model though not exclusively. For instance, the Siculo-Punic tetradrachm, 320-306 B.C., which bore a female head wearing a oriental tiara and a lion standing in front of a palm tree, is a traditional Oriental Persian theme where the tiara and lion are symbolic of the ruling power of the Satrapes. The fact that coinage was introduced in North Africa and in Carthage itself at a much later date, highlights, on the one hand, the willingness of the Phoenicians to adapt to the economic system prevalent in North Africa where a monetary system was inexistent, and, on the other hand, the fact that in the Phoenician Administrative context money, as a means of exchange, was rare as was the case not only in the Achaemenid Empire but throughout the entire Middle East. The iconography adopted by the various Neopunic centres, from the end of the 3rd century B.C. to the 1st century A.D was of traditional oriental inspiration.
Riflessioni sulla valenza culturale, politica ed economica del linguaggio monetale adottato da Cartagine, che nasce dalla necessità di confrontarsi con il mondo greco e si sviluppa parallelamente a quello romano anche se mantiene connotati tipicamente orientali. Le prime esperienze monetali fenicie in Occidente dal V sec. a.C. si muovono nel contesto economico e culturale greco dominante in Sicilia, dove ogni città batte moneta in autonomia quasi assoluta e le emissioni prodotte rispecchiano il livello economico raggiunto dai singoli centri. Da qui la scelta di iconografie strettamente ispirate al repertorio iconografico greco e di leggende che, pur espresse in fenicio, si muovono nel contesto semantico e politico della Sicilia. Soltanto dal 410 a.C. per la necessità di pagare le truppe mercenarie impiegate nell'isola, Cartagine batte le prime monete in argento che alludono all'«amministrazione militare cartaginese» nell'isola. Le iconografie adottate seguono il predominante, ma non esclusivo, modello greco. I tetradrammi siculo-punici con testa femminile con copricapo frigio e il leone con dietro palma del 320-306 a.C. riportano, infatti, a temi vicino-orientali di tradizione persiana, dove la tiara e il leone sono simboli di comando riservato ai satrapi. Sul territorio nord-africano e a Cartagine stessa, si registra un attardamento nella produzione monetale, che evidenzia, da un lato, la volontà di adeguarsi al sistema economico del Nord-Africa privo di tradizione monetale, dall'altro, la sostanziale estraneità della moneta come mezzo di scambio nel contesto politico-amministrativo fenicio in sintonia con quanto avviene nell'impero achemenide e in generale in tutto il Vicino Oriente. Tra la fine del III sec. a.C. e il I sec. d.C. i diversi centri neopunici adottano iconografie che si ispirano a tipologie di tradizione ancora vicino-orientale. La raffigurazione emblematica dell'incidenza culturale dei questi temi nell'Occidente punico è l'Iside.
Iconografia e leggenda. Il linguaggio monetale di Cartagine
MANFREDI;LORENZA
2009
Abstract
This paper is about how the cultural, political and economic monetary language adopted by Carthage was influenced and arose from the necessity for the Phoenicians to adapt to the Greek and Roman worlds maintaining at the same time typical oriental characteristics. The first Punic coins in the West, which date back to around the 5th century B.C., were minted to facilitate integration into the Greek political and cultural reality in Sicily at that time, where each town produced its coins in almost complete autonomy and where each emission reflected the economic level reached by each single centre. This explains why the Phoenicians chose to use an iconography more or less of Greek inspiration and whose legends, though written in the Phoenician language, expressed a Sicilian semantic and political context. It was only in 410 B.C., due to the necessity to pay the mercenary troops engaged in war on the island, that Carthage began minting the first Silver coins that allude to the Carthaginian Military Administration present on the island. Nonetheless, the iconography remained predominantly similar to the Greek model though not exclusively. For instance, the Siculo-Punic tetradrachm, 320-306 B.C., which bore a female head wearing a oriental tiara and a lion standing in front of a palm tree, is a traditional Oriental Persian theme where the tiara and lion are symbolic of the ruling power of the Satrapes. The fact that coinage was introduced in North Africa and in Carthage itself at a much later date, highlights, on the one hand, the willingness of the Phoenicians to adapt to the economic system prevalent in North Africa where a monetary system was inexistent, and, on the other hand, the fact that in the Phoenician Administrative context money, as a means of exchange, was rare as was the case not only in the Achaemenid Empire but throughout the entire Middle East. The iconography adopted by the various Neopunic centres, from the end of the 3rd century B.C. to the 1st century A.D was of traditional oriental inspiration.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
