Reviewed by: Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean by J. Brian Peckham Michael S. Moore j. brian peckham, Phoenicia: Episodes and Anecdotes from the Ancient Mediterranean (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014). Pp. xxi + 586. $62.55. This book packs between two covers a tremendous amount of evidence about Phoenicia—archaeological, literary, geographical, historical—and encyclopedically contextualizes it within a loose chronological framework spanning the eleventh to fourth centuries b.c.e. Set alongside the reference volumes of Véronique Krings (La civilisation phénicienne et punique: Manuel de recherche [HO 20; Leiden: Brill, 1995]), Edward Lipiński (Diction-naire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique [Leiden: Brill, 1992]), and Sabatino Moscati (The Phoenicians [New York: Rizzoli, 1999]), as well as the specialized studies of María Eugenia Aubet (The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade [2nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Vadim S. Jigoulov (The Social History of Achaemenid Phoenicia: Being a Phoenician, Negotiating Empire [BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2010]), the book under review looks rather scattered and anecdotal (as the subtitle suggests), but this distinction is more stylistic than substantive. This volume represents the final study of a senior scholar widely recognized within the guild as one of the leading experts of studia Phoenix, the posthumous epitaph of a creative thinker responsible not only for a major dictionary article (“Phoenicia, History of,” ABD 5:349–57), but for The Development of the Late Phoenician Scripts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), the still-provocative History and Prophecy: The Development of Late Judean Literary Traditions (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1993), and dozens of articles and reviews in various international publications. In chap. 1, Peckham attempts to describe the eleventh–tenth centuries, allotting minimal attention to things Ugaritic/Canaanite and maximal attention to the evidence detailing the rise of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos and the impact of this on Mediterranean history—Sidon being primarily the industrial/professional, Byblos the literary/artistic, and Tyre the mercantile middleman. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that here and throughout P. goes out of his way to avoid squashing the histories of these three cities into one artificial clump. In chap. 2, P. concentrates on the ninth-century evidence documenting the phenomenon of colonization in all its stages, beginning with the Sidonian settlement in southeast Cyprus alongside the Myceneans and other “sea peoples.” Unlike their Tyrian colleagues, the Sidonians marry local women, build warehouses, form syndicates and try to assimilate into Cypriot culture. Settling in northwest Cyprus, the Byblians stake their claim on the wholesale grocery business, as well as the crafts of masonry and smithing, while the Tyrians travel to northeast Cyprus, found a colony at Limassol, then restlessly move on to Crete, Italy, and Spain before founding the “New City” of Carthage near the end of the eighth century. In chap. 3, P. documents the eighth century, which he calls “an age of discovery and [End Page 692] bold change” (p. 291). Increasingly pressured by the Assyrians, Tyre nevertheless prospers more than Sidon and Byblos. Esarhaddon, for example, changes Sidon’s name to “Esarhaddon” after beheading its king. The Phoenicians intermittently and individually go west as early as the tenth century, but “in the 8th century they go regularly and in convoys, and begin to stay, not just stop.” Thus P. designates this “an age of individual entrepreneurs, of a new class of merchants and traders, of silver and money and a moneyed class” (p. 291). Tyre’s consolidation of socioeconomic power in the eastern Mediterranean in the face of constant Assyrian interference is the subject of chap. 4. Where Sidon and Byblos passive-aggressively succumb to this pressure, Tyre learns how to play Egypt off against Assyria in order to protect its profits; sometimes refusing to pay Assyrian tribute, and sometimes pledging loyalty to the images of Assyrian deities. Result: The seventh century sees Tyre “presiding over a vast network of economically alert, culturally attuned, and politically energized national states. The design is Tyrian (the infusion of lust for the good life, ambition, and hard work) and the engineering is Assyrian (cooperation, forced if not voluntary, as an ideal)” (p. 368). The sixth...