Brian R Doak
Biographic Data
| ID | 1637232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian R Doak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian R |
| FAMILY NAME | Doak |
| SIGNATURE | DOAK B R |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Fox University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 48 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Shocking Discoveries of Giants You Will Not Believe
This article explores content on the YouTube video platform claiming to reveal evidence that giant humans existed in antiquity. After describing this YouTube content, I offer two analyses of these videos: (1) They are a digital instantiation of a longstanding attempt to display giant bones and related artifacts by way of antiquarian interest—dating back to the Bible itself. (2) They can be properly labelled within the genre of “conspiracy.” I tur…
Phoenicians and Carthaginians in the Western Imagination
Already in antiquity and throughout western history, Phoenicians provided a model of constitutional balance and good governance, an example of economic expansion, and an example of literate culture. As Orientalist narratives gained favor in the nineteenth century, however, Phoenician civilization was relegated to the margins, and negative stereotypes such as their alleged sensuality and depravity were emphasized. As pseudo-scientific racist theor…
The Archaeology of Phoenician Cities
This chapter deals with the archaeology of the Phoenician cities of the motherland, highlighting mainly recent results from Lebanon. It gives an overview of the available archaeological evidence resulting from surveys and excavations. The chapter presents the physical characteristics of the Phoenician cities: their location, size, distribution, and results of the investigation of their harbors. It discusses in detail the recent findings regarding…
The Alphabet and its Legacy
The alphabet employed by the Phoenicians was the inheritor of a long tradition of alphabetic writing and was itself adapted for use throughout the Mediterranean basin by numerous populations speaking many languages. The present contribution traces the origins of the alphabet in Sinai and the Levant before discussing different alphabetic standardizations in Ugarit and Phoenician Tyre. The complex adaptation of the latter for representation of the …
Phoenicia in the Later Iron Age: Tenth century bce to the Assyrian and Babylonian periods
A coherent history of Phoenicia between 1000 and 550 bce is difficult to write. The internal development of individual city-states is almost completely unknown. We can only get a glimpse of their foreign relations. Owing to geographical constraints, Phoenician cities were split into a northern group, from Arwad to Byblos, and a southern one, essentially Tyre and Sidon. These two cities may have been associated in one political unit from the ninth…
Malta and Gozo
Malta and Gozo are small offshore islands with a millennial history of maritime exploitation, from pioneer farmers to predatory pirates. Settled by the Phoenicians some time in the eighth century bce until they were occupied by Rome in 218 bce , Malta and Gozo offered these Levantine seafarers an ideal place to reside and exploit. The chapter draws on a whole range of evidence and offers a synthesis of earlier studies to show how the islanders ma…
Metallurgy and other Technologies
Metallurgy and other technologies were a crucial component of the Phoenician political economy and expansion to the western Mediterranean. Technological prowess was one of the outstanding features of Phoenician culture remembered in ancient documentary sources. The archaeological record bears this out, and provides a complementary perspective to the texts, in particular for the metals that were major drivers and products of the Phoenician colonia…
Pottery and Trade
This chapter focuses on the economic activity surrounding Phoenician ceramic production and distribution, in contrast with the traditional focus on ceramic typologies or other formal or chronological aspects. Given the limited data available, however, it is difficult to analyze the complex issues surrounding production to their full extent. Therefore, this chapter does not offer definitive answers. Instead, the chapter identifies diverse factors …
Phoenician Identity in Modern Lebanon
This chapter looks at the influence of Phoenician culture on the identity of modern Lebanon. Legitimizing identity through archaeology has generally been a popular approach to celebrate power and identity. Lebanese generations have made use of Phoenician history, archaeology, and myths to foster a proud and unique identity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the various ongoing cultural movements reflect a symbiotic relationship between pra…
Carthage after the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy
This chapter provides a brief introduction to how the historiographical development of Roman studies, since mid-twentieth century decolonization, has altered our understanding of the developments which took place in North Africa following the destruction of Carthage in 146 bce . The reader is introduced to literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of evidence, which have traditionally been used to argue for either cultural change or contin…
Phoenician Exploration
The Phoenicians were famous for their seafaring prowess and long-distance travel and commercial reach. From the beginning of the Iron Age until the fifth century bce , the Phoenicians explored much of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe, going as far north as the British Isles and as far south as tropical West Africa, as well as farther west into the Atlantic waters and around the African continent. Although there is so…
Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period
The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the…
North Africa: From the Atlantic to Algeria
The Phoenician presence in modern-day Morocco and Algeria started no later than the beginning of the eighth century bce , with the city of Lixus on the Atlantic and its temple of Melqart, one of the oldest in the Phoenician diaspora. There was a process of intensification during the second half of the seventh century bce , with sites springing up along the main river valleys or on small islands close to the coast, such as Mogador and Rachgoun. Th…
Birth and Prospects of a Discipline
In this third introductory chapter, the author looks back at the formative years of the study of the Phoenician and Punic worlds, taking a cue from a paper written fifty years ago by the person who can arguably be called the most influential scholar in the field during the second half of the twentieth century, Sabatino Moscati. Against the background of Moscati’s work, in particular the limitations of and opportunities provided by his field proje…
Cyprus
This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce ). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the wi…
Agriculture
Agriculture played a crucial role for the Phoenicians. Systematic study of the rural Phoenician world goes back only a few decades, thanks to archaeological surveys and excavations of non-urban structures and settlements. Despite our increasing knowledge of the subject, it is still difficult to define a single model. Still we can speak of some constant features. The chapter gives a view of coastal settlements producing an easily exported agricult…
The Punic Wars (264–146 bce)
The chapter provides a narrative in broad strokes of the period between 264 and 146 bce . The sources for the period are heavily biased in favor of the Romans, but the Romans did loom increasingly large in the Carthaginians’ world. In their treaties, our main source for their self-representation, the Carthaginians emphasize their overwhelming but beneficent power, their control of movement around the Mediterranean Sea, and their Phoenician identi…
Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman Literature
The picture painted of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman literature is a paradoxical one. Distinct themes continue to characterize them from the archaic period to late antiquity, but their definition as a distinct group of people remains vague throughout. Military conflict with Greeks and Romans means that they are presented more positively by intellectuals than politicians, and more positively in the east than the west, but identi…
Seafaring and Shipwreck Archaeology
Perhaps no civilization in history is as associated with the sea as the Phoenicians, whose ships and seafaring ability allowed them to travel, trade, and establish colonies across the Mediterranean. Search and survey operations in the Mediterranean have resulted in the discovery of a limited number of Canaanite, Phoenician, and Punic shipwrecks, which have been found in both deep and shallow water. These assemblages provide valuable evidence of t…
Residential Architecture
For more than thirty-five years, the story of Phoenician-Punic residential architecture has always taken its cue from the 1982 volume of Frank Braemer that dealt with the Iron Age Levant. In the West, a similar source had been virtually absent. A remarkable number of new studies and publications of archaeological discoveries over the last decade, however, have allowed us to complement this eastern perspective. This chapter addresses a wide range …
The Gadir–Tyre Axis
This chapter focuses on the connection between Tyre and its colony Gadir via the foundational figure of Melqart and his respective temples in these cities, a relationship which is well-known thanks to historiographical and literary testimonies dating to the Roman period. The chapter also draws a comparison with the case of the other main Tyrian colony of Carthage. This comparison allows us to note, among other things, that the religious and cultu…
Research Tools
The academic study of the Phoenicians and their civilization began relatively recently, but has quickly generated a large bibliography of important studies. One of the difficulties that learners face is that the historical study of Phoenician civilization must draw on a large number of sources from several different fields of research, not all of which are in regular communication with each other or are widely known to the general readership. Thi…
Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible
Though it cannot always be taken at face value as a historical source regarding its stories of Phoenician kings and cities, the Bible does engage with the Phoenicians in a substantial manner in its narratives. Solomon’s and David’s interactions with Hiram of Tyre form an important backdrop for thinking about the construction of the Israelite temple, and later religious corruptions under the northern monarchy invoke the Sidonian Jezebel as a prima…
The Italian Peninsula
The Phoenicians never built settlements on the Italian mainland, and the evidence of a Phoenician presence on the Italian peninsula is based mainly on the discovery of luxury items and material found from excavations of indigenous communities, mostly graves. This evidence has often been studied in isolation from the local context. Recent studies have shown, however, that they were part of a larger cross Mediterranean network alongside Greeks, Etr…
Phoenicia Under the Achaemenid Empire
This chapter covers several aspects of Achaemenid Phoenicia, including literary sources, epigraphy, numismatics, and material culture. Achaemenid Phoenicia was characterized by a continuity of material culture from the Neo-Babylonian period. The extant sources—literary, epigraphic, and numismatic—evince a conglomerate of independent city-states characterized by expressions of compliance with the central Achaemenid authorities while pursuing their…
The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean
The Phoenicians created the Mediterranean world as we know it-yet they remain a shadowy and poorly understood group. The academic study of the Phoenicians has come to an important crossroads; the field has grown in sheer content, sophistication of analysis, and diversity of interpretation, and we now need a current overview of where the study of these ancient seafarers and craftsman stands and where it is going. Moreover, the field of Phoenician …
Phoenician Aniconism in Its Mediterranean and Ancient Near Eastern Contexts
Sardinia
Starting from the late ninth century bce , groups of Phoenician sailors and merchants landed on the island of Sardinia, searching for resources—metals in particular—to trade along the trans-Mediterranean maritime network they had begun to establish. The earliest permanent Phoenician settlement dates back to the first half of the eighth century bce , and by the end of the following century new Phoenician settlements appeared, mainly on the coasts …
Religion
Phoenician polytheism—its structure and rites—is not completely unknown to us. There were mythological traditions common to the area, as well as a structure common to the pantheons of the Phoenician cities. At the top there is a divine couple consisting of a male god and a goddess, his spouse, and a divine assembly. The same basic structure is detectable in the Punic world, Carthage and elsewhere, although with differences and innovations. In tur…
Funerary Ritual
This chapter explores the funerary rites in the Phoenician-Punic world from a comprehensive point of view, and it focuses on the common points arising from a large amount of data. The concern for burying their deceased and the belief in the soul’s afterlife show that the Phoenicians considered death as a transformation rather than as the end of a person’s life. Through our access to archaeological remains and written sources, we can reconstruct t…
Phoenician Literature
There was, without a doubt, a Phoenician and Punic literature. Very little of it is extant, but we have enough of it to gauge the great loss. Lacking the advantage of its own manuscript tradition and later cultures devoted to it, Phoenician literature was not systematically preserved, unlike that of the Greeks, Romans, and Israelites. What we have are small pieces that surface among the Classical literary corpus. Despite these unfavorable conditi…
The Tophet and Infant Sacrifice
This chapter introduces the major debates surrounding a type of archaeological site conventionally called a “tophet.” While study of these sites has continued almost unabated for the last hundred years, two major developments—apart from postcolonialism spurring efforts to reject child sacrifice as an Orientalist fantasy—necessitate a comprehensive analysis. The first is the availability of new archaeological data that has been carefully collected…
Understanding the History of Ancient Israel
Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism
Given the inter-religious locus of modern tourism and importance of host–guest interaction, current study explores how religion is involved in constructing hosts’ understanding of hospitality and hospitable behavior in private, public, and commercial settings. Utilizing hermeneutic phenomenology as a methodological framework, we resorted to in-depth interviews with 30 participants representing Buddhist, Christian and Muslim faiths and did documen…
Some Worthless and Reckless Fellows: Landlessness and Parasocial Leadership in Judges
In this essay, I argue that the narratives in Judges 9, 11, and 18 should be read as examples of "parasocial" leadership in the Iron Age Levant. Specific characters such as Abimelek and Jephthah are parasocial leaders whose existence fits within known categories of regional social change. By extension, Judges may be read as the most sustained literary product in the ancient Near East depicting a world of habiru-like actors generating political tr…
The Fate and Power of Heroic Bones and the Politics of Bone Transfer in Ancient Israel and Greece
Tucked away in the Hebrew Bible at the end of 1 Samuel and then resumed near the end of 2 Samuel is a provocative tale recounting the final fate of Saul, Israel's first king. At the beginning of this two-part narrative (1 Sam 31:1), we find Saul atop Mount Gilboa, badly wounded by Philistine archers and nearly dead. Fearing the Philistine armies will rush upon him and continue the humiliation—perhaps by stabbing him repeatedly while still alive, …
Monster Violence in the Book of Job
In this paper, I explore the book of Job in terms of the symbolic and ideological warfare waged between God and the human protagonist, Job. Specifically, I argue that the invocation of various kinds of creatures under the “monster” rubric (such as Leviathan, Rahab, Yamm, the Twisting Serpent, and Behemoth) can be illuminated through a consideration of contemporary work—in the history of religions, literary theory, and film studies—that categorize…
Phoenician Aniconism in Its Mediterranean and Ancient Near Eastern Contexts
Phoenicians and Carthaginians in the Western Imagination
Already in antiquity and throughout western history, Phoenicians provided a model of constitutional balance and good governance, an example of economic expansion, and an example of literate culture. As Orientalist narratives gained favor in the nineteenth century, however, Phoenician civilization was relegated to the margins, and negative stereotypes such as their alleged sensuality and depravity were emphasized. As pseudo-scientific racist theor…
The Archaeology of Phoenician Cities
This chapter deals with the archaeology of the Phoenician cities of the motherland, highlighting mainly recent results from Lebanon. It gives an overview of the available archaeological evidence resulting from surveys and excavations. The chapter presents the physical characteristics of the Phoenician cities: their location, size, distribution, and results of the investigation of their harbors. It discusses in detail the recent findings regarding…
The Alphabet and its Legacy
The alphabet employed by the Phoenicians was the inheritor of a long tradition of alphabetic writing and was itself adapted for use throughout the Mediterranean basin by numerous populations speaking many languages. The present contribution traces the origins of the alphabet in Sinai and the Levant before discussing different alphabetic standardizations in Ugarit and Phoenician Tyre. The complex adaptation of the latter for representation of the …
Phoenicia in the Later Iron Age: Tenth century bce to the Assyrian and Babylonian periods
A coherent history of Phoenicia between 1000 and 550 bce is difficult to write. The internal development of individual city-states is almost completely unknown. We can only get a glimpse of their foreign relations. Owing to geographical constraints, Phoenician cities were split into a northern group, from Arwad to Byblos, and a southern one, essentially Tyre and Sidon. These two cities may have been associated in one political unit from the ninth…
Malta and Gozo
Malta and Gozo are small offshore islands with a millennial history of maritime exploitation, from pioneer farmers to predatory pirates. Settled by the Phoenicians some time in the eighth century bce until they were occupied by Rome in 218 bce , Malta and Gozo offered these Levantine seafarers an ideal place to reside and exploit. The chapter draws on a whole range of evidence and offers a synthesis of earlier studies to show how the islanders ma…
Metallurgy and other Technologies
Metallurgy and other technologies were a crucial component of the Phoenician political economy and expansion to the western Mediterranean. Technological prowess was one of the outstanding features of Phoenician culture remembered in ancient documentary sources. The archaeological record bears this out, and provides a complementary perspective to the texts, in particular for the metals that were major drivers and products of the Phoenician colonia…
Pottery and Trade
This chapter focuses on the economic activity surrounding Phoenician ceramic production and distribution, in contrast with the traditional focus on ceramic typologies or other formal or chronological aspects. Given the limited data available, however, it is difficult to analyze the complex issues surrounding production to their full extent. Therefore, this chapter does not offer definitive answers. Instead, the chapter identifies diverse factors …
Phoenician Identity in Modern Lebanon
This chapter looks at the influence of Phoenician culture on the identity of modern Lebanon. Legitimizing identity through archaeology has generally been a popular approach to celebrate power and identity. Lebanese generations have made use of Phoenician history, archaeology, and myths to foster a proud and unique identity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the various ongoing cultural movements reflect a symbiotic relationship between pra…
Carthage after the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy
This chapter provides a brief introduction to how the historiographical development of Roman studies, since mid-twentieth century decolonization, has altered our understanding of the developments which took place in North Africa following the destruction of Carthage in 146 bce . The reader is introduced to literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of evidence, which have traditionally been used to argue for either cultural change or contin…
Phoenician Exploration
The Phoenicians were famous for their seafaring prowess and long-distance travel and commercial reach. From the beginning of the Iron Age until the fifth century bce , the Phoenicians explored much of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe, going as far north as the British Isles and as far south as tropical West Africa, as well as farther west into the Atlantic waters and around the African continent. Although there is so…
Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period
The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the…
North Africa: From the Atlantic to Algeria
The Phoenician presence in modern-day Morocco and Algeria started no later than the beginning of the eighth century bce , with the city of Lixus on the Atlantic and its temple of Melqart, one of the oldest in the Phoenician diaspora. There was a process of intensification during the second half of the seventh century bce , with sites springing up along the main river valleys or on small islands close to the coast, such as Mogador and Rachgoun. Th…
Birth and Prospects of a Discipline
In this third introductory chapter, the author looks back at the formative years of the study of the Phoenician and Punic worlds, taking a cue from a paper written fifty years ago by the person who can arguably be called the most influential scholar in the field during the second half of the twentieth century, Sabatino Moscati. Against the background of Moscati’s work, in particular the limitations of and opportunities provided by his field proje…
Cyprus
This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce ). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the wi…
Agriculture
Agriculture played a crucial role for the Phoenicians. Systematic study of the rural Phoenician world goes back only a few decades, thanks to archaeological surveys and excavations of non-urban structures and settlements. Despite our increasing knowledge of the subject, it is still difficult to define a single model. Still we can speak of some constant features. The chapter gives a view of coastal settlements producing an easily exported agricult…
The Punic Wars (264–146 bce)
The chapter provides a narrative in broad strokes of the period between 264 and 146 bce . The sources for the period are heavily biased in favor of the Romans, but the Romans did loom increasingly large in the Carthaginians’ world. In their treaties, our main source for their self-representation, the Carthaginians emphasize their overwhelming but beneficent power, their control of movement around the Mediterranean Sea, and their Phoenician identi…
Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman Literature
The picture painted of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman literature is a paradoxical one. Distinct themes continue to characterize them from the archaic period to late antiquity, but their definition as a distinct group of people remains vague throughout. Military conflict with Greeks and Romans means that they are presented more positively by intellectuals than politicians, and more positively in the east than the west, but identi…
Seafaring and Shipwreck Archaeology
Perhaps no civilization in history is as associated with the sea as the Phoenicians, whose ships and seafaring ability allowed them to travel, trade, and establish colonies across the Mediterranean. Search and survey operations in the Mediterranean have resulted in the discovery of a limited number of Canaanite, Phoenician, and Punic shipwrecks, which have been found in both deep and shallow water. These assemblages provide valuable evidence of t…
Residential Architecture
For more than thirty-five years, the story of Phoenician-Punic residential architecture has always taken its cue from the 1982 volume of Frank Braemer that dealt with the Iron Age Levant. In the West, a similar source had been virtually absent. A remarkable number of new studies and publications of archaeological discoveries over the last decade, however, have allowed us to complement this eastern perspective. This chapter addresses a wide range …
History (49 works) · Ancient history (45 works) · Phoenician (39 works) · Archaeology (37 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (37 works) · Geography (27 works) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (24 works) · Art (23 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (22 works) · History (13 works)