Tarszisz nad Atlantykiem

Abstract

Tarshish is a country mentioned ca. 800 B.C. in the Phoenician Nora inscription, then in the Annals of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and often in the Bible. It must be identified with Tartessos, known from Greek sources, and localized in the area of Huelva, in southwestern Spain. Huelva is built on a strip of land between the Odiel and the Tinto which both fall into the Atlantic by navigable estuaries. The great local industry from the Late Bronze age on is the mining of copper manganese and iron. The well-known Riotinto mines, near the sources of the Tinto, were exploited by local people from early times and from the 9th century B.C. also by Phoenicians who were cupelling large amounts of silver from the base metals and shipping the silver, as well as other goods, from the seaport of Huelva to the Levant. This rich area on the Atlantic was known to biblical writers, who record the Phoenician trading vessels, called “ships of Tarshish”, and mention “silver, iron, tin, and lead” shipped by them and traded in the fairs of Tyre (Ez. 27:12). Modern search for Tarshish-Tarsis-Tartessos managed to identify this area and to date the beginning of the Phoenician activity around Huelva to the 9th century B.C., showing thus that its biblical dating in the time of Solomon is too high. This profitable trade suffered a back-clash in the 6th-5th centuries B.C., and in Hellenistic times the location of Tarshish was no longer known in the Levant. The Septuagint sometimes identifies Tarshish with Carthage and Josephus Flavius most often confuses it with Tarsus in Cilicia. Various opinions were expressed in later times.