Josette Elayi – författare

Arwad (now in Syria), Byblos (now Jbeil in Lebanon), Sidon (Saida in Lebanon), and Tyre (Sour in Lebanon)—the four major cites of Persian-period Phoenicia—all minted their own coins. Archaeologists and historians have found these coins to be a major resource for the reconstruction of Phoenician history. They have increasingly been able to use them to discern important details of Phoenicia’s political history that were previously unknown or were presented only from the perspective provided by the reports of the Greek historians or were based on knowledge of the Greek language, rather than being based on knowledge of Semitic languages and the iconography and inscriptions of the Phoenicians themselves.For more than two decades, Alain and Josette Elayi have researched the history of the Phoenician cities in the Persian period before Alexander’s conquest. In the first stage of their research, the authors provided an overview of the Phoenician economy under Persian rule. The second stage provided an analysis of all hoards, which included Phoenician coins dating to the Persian period. The third stage was an investigation of Phoenician weights, in which the Elayis used an original method that is also suited to numismatic studies. The fourth stage covered the monetary and political histories of the four Phoenician cities.In A Monetary and Political History of the Phoenician City of Byblos, the Elayis’ tour de force is the coin catalog, which introduces 1,662 silver Byblian coins, also published in 25 plates. In addition to the usual numismatic analysis (monetary production, number of issues, manufacturing techniques, and processes), this impressive volume provides information on monetary inscriptions and iconography and on the history of Byblos. The book is an indispensable reference for understanding coin circulation, trading exchanges, and even the wars involving the Greeks, Cypriots, and Egyptians in the Phoenician eastern Mediterranean.

Here is a blueprint for a new interdisciplinary approach that decompartmentalizes disciplines for the study of this district of the Achaemenid Empire including Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine and Cyprus. Remarkable cultural evolutions and changes in this area need closer study: the introduction of coinage and the coin economy, the sources of tension over problems of power and identity, the emergence of city-states similar to the Greek city type, the development of mercenary armies, the opening up of the Western fringe of the Persian Empire to the Greek world. Completely new research initiatives can extensively modify the vision that classical and oriental specialists have traditionally formed of the history of the Persian Empire.

The history of the Phoenicians, explorers and merchants, is little known. What a paradox for this ingenious people, who invented the alphabet, to have left so few written traces of their existence. Their literature, recorded on papyrus, has disappeared. And yet this civilization fired the imagination of its contemporaries--the Jews in particular--inspiring terror among the Romans and Greeks, who depicted them as a cruel people who practiced human sacrifice. Their clients were the pharaohs and the Assyrians, their ships criss-crossed the Mediterranean, laden with the luxuries of the day such as wine, oil, grain, and mineral ore. Buried beneath the modern cities of Lebanon, and a few of Syria and Israel, ancient Phoenicia has resuscitated in this volume.

Esarhaddon, King of Assyria continues Josette Elayi's narrative journey through the lives of the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Using both archaeological and textual evidence, Elayi examines the contentious circumstances surrounding Esarhaddon's accession to the throne in 681 BCE, his rebuilding of Babylon, which had been destroyed by his father Sennacherib, his successful campaigns in Media, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Levant, and his ultimate achievement, the conquest of Egypt in 671 BCE. Throughout, Elayi presents a rich portrait of this enigmatic figure, whose short but impactful reign was plagued by chronic illness and a complex--and ultimately fatal--relationship with his court officials. Yet, through it all, Esarhaddon emerges as one of the most scholarly and most politically successful kings of the empire.