A Perilous Sailing and a Lion: Comparative Evidence for a Phoenician Afterlife Motif

Abstract This essay introduces new evidence for an eschatological Phoenician motif that alludes to a final sailing and its perils, represented by monstrous lion attacking or sinking boat. The lion-and-boat was, so far, only documented in funerary stela from late classical Athens, the Antipatros/Shem stela. Excavations at fifth-century BCE Tartessic site of Casas del Turuñuelo southwestern Spain has revealed set ivory bone panels decorated wooden box, bearing relevant iconography so-called orientalizing style. Additional comparanda Levant, Iberia, Tunisia various media (coins, ivories, amulets), add weight this interpretation. Our analysis highlights how artists behind Athenian artifacts were innovative their way representing theme was not codified iconographically. Most remarkable is use ivory-carving convention (the palmette motif) portray stylized boat, choice corroborated painted pottery sherd Olympia. “palmette-boat” depiction, our view, coherent with Egyptian Nilotic boats, but also flat shallow river-boats Tagus Guadiana region, illustrating mechanisms local adaptation life-death “passing” symbolism. If, as we suggest, representation can be added document, now have testimonies two different adaptations ends Mediterranean oikoumene between archaic periods.