Description:

In the early first millennium BCE, the Phoenicians connected the extremes of the Mediterranean, establishing networks of trade and settlement that would endure for centuries. They provided an economic and cultural grid through interactions with Greeks, Etruscans, Sardinians, Iberians, and other peoples. This lecture provides an overview of this scenario―the when, how, and who of this process—while also examining the place of the Phoenicians across various disciplines and scholarly trends. While the Phoenicians ushered in a new, interconnected Mediterranean, our study of them decenters the Classical cultures and helps us fashion a revised and more complex image of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Carolina López-Ruiz is Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Mythologies in the Divinity School and Department of Classics, University of Chicago. Her numerous publications explore through both textual and archaeological sources comparative mythologies (especially narratives about the gods in Northwest Semitic and Greek traditions) and Mediterranean cultural interaction. Her books include When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East (Harvard, 2010) and the prize-winning Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean (Harvard 2021). She has also co-edited with Brian Doak The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean (2019).

This lecture is sponsored by the Myers Foundations and the Department of Art History.

Public presentation and Q&A: 5:30-7 pm

Reception: 7 pm onwards