The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade.

• Author: Muhly, J.D.

M. E. Aubet (who also publishes under the name M. E. Aubet Semmler) has written the best general book on the Phoenicians ever published. Originally in Spanish, Tiro y las colonias fenicias de Occidente (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 1987), it now becomes available to a much wider audience thanks to the Cambridge University Press and the financial support of the Direccion General dei Libro y Bibliotecas del Ministerio de Cultura de Espana, in this excellent English translation by M. Turton. Aubet's book is sensible, sound, sane, and comprehensive - quite an achievement in Phoenician studies. She offers a superb overview of all aspects of Phoenician history and culture, making full use of new archaeological evidence as well as recent work on Phoenician art, religion, and political institutions.

This book is, however, meant to be a general introduction, and yet it appears entirely without annotation. As compensation, Aubet has provided an excellent bibliography, arranged according to chapters and sub-headings within each chapter. She also provides translated texts of the Journey of Wen-Amun and of the oracles against Tyre in Isaiah and Ezekiel (appendices two and three), a special discussion of Phoenician Iron Age archaeology (appendix one), and a discussion of Phoenician settlements in the central Mediterranean (appendix four). The translation reads very well, although there are some problems with personal names, Estesicorus for Stesichorus (pp. 178, 236) being the worst example. The statement that "The gaulos is thought to be the Phoenician merchant ship by autonomasia . . ." (p. 148) is likely to leave most readers wondering what that is supposed to mean.

The maps, plans, and photographs are attractive and informative, but the photograph of the Nora stele (p. 180, fig. 33) is published upside down. The statement, in reference to Carthage, that "the two harbours close to Salammbo were built during the Punic wars and are consequently no earlier than the fourth century BC" (p. 153) is puzzling since those wars began in the mid-third century B.C. Students of Near Eastern archaeology will probably bristle at the description of Sir Leonard Woolicy as the chief exponent of "the anti-Semitic and European colonialist sentiments of the day" (p. 171). And Aubet's statement that "when Polanyi published his conclusions in 1957, only a tiny part of the archives of Kultepe was known, the part published by Garelli" (p. 88) is simply wrong.

These are but...