Despite rejections on the basis of lack of data by the Louvre’s curator of
antiquities, Guillaume Frœhner (Wilhelm Fro ̈hner) (1834–1925), the image
of the cruel Phoenicians who practised infanticide was maintained in the
popular imagination.
Anti-Semitism, however, cannot by itself explain the rejection of Phoen-
ician archaeology. The criticism found in the Bible against the Phoenicians
also explains their rebuVin modern historiography. The Phoenicians were
Semitic peoples, but not that much (‘Semiti, ma non tanto’), as Liverani aptly
says (Liverani 1998: 6). Phoenicians were not as preoccupied with business,
and importantly their religion was not monotheistic; in Phoenicians one
couldWnd ‘a raw mythology, rude and ignoble gods, voluptuosity accepted
as a religious act’ (Renan 1855: 173 in Liverani 1998: 7). Renan would even try
to distinguish between race and language when in 1862 he talked about ‘the
Semitic peoples, or at least those talking a Semitic language’ (ibid.).
In Lebanon there were also Greek ruins to be excavated, which prompted
the intervention of Ottoman as well as of German archaeologists. The grow-
ing interest in antiquities, which at the start was focused particularly upon
classical antiquities, led Ottoman archaeologists to become interested in the
archaeology of the area. The 1874 law of antiquities, issued in Turkey a year
after Schliemann smuggled Priam’s treasure out of the country (Chapter 5),
also restricted the export of antiquities from Lebanon. Constraints were
increased with the law of 1884. From then on, being under Ottoman rule,
legislation led to the most valuable pieces being sent to the museum in
Constantinople instead of to the European and the new American powers.
In 1887 the Ottoman archaeologist Hamdi Bey excavated in the royal cemet-
ery of Sidon,Wnding twenty-six sarcophagi, including that of King Tabint,
which he took to the Ottoman Imperial Museum, a gesture which was also
interpreted—to a certain degree—as compensation for theWrst sarcophagus
found at Sidon and taken to the Louvre in 1855. The new arrivals prompted
the construction of a new museum building, for which neo-classical archi-
tecture would be chosen (Shaw 2002: 146, 156, 159).
German and French archaeologists would also work in Lebanon from the
turn of the century until the First World War. In November 1898, the Kaiser
Wilhelm II, during his visit to Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire, passed by
Baalbek (known as Heliopolis during the Hellenistic period) on his way to
Jerusalem. He was amazed by the ruins, which the Germans used to press
(successfully) for further archaeological favours: within a month, an archaeo-
logical team led by Theodor Wiegand (1864–1936), a scientiWc attache ́to the
German embassy in Constantinople and a specialist in ancient Greek art and
sculpture, was dispatched to work on the site between 1900 and 1904.
Biblical Archaeology 159