Changing perspectives on the phoenician presence in the Mediterranean: past, present, and future

Abstract

This paper aims to trace the changing approaches to the Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean, since early work based on Biblical and Classical sources, through “orientalist” representations deeply embedded in European colonial ideologies, and into the institutionalisation of Phoenician and Punic Studies in the second half of the 20th century. The development of this field of study is then briefly analysed, and some present challenges to scholarship on the Phoenician Mediterranean are outlined and discussed.