GADIR

The Phoenicians established an important trading center at Gadir, or Gades, modern Cadiz, just to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar. The purpose was to have access to metals: gold, silver, copper, and iron. Tin may have been sought as well, although sources lay much further away, in Galicia, north-west Spain. Phoenicians also settled on the south-east coast, east of Gibraltar, in modest towns connected with areas fertile for agriculture and advantageous for animal husbandry, and with timber resources.

Gdr means “wall” or “fortified citadel” in Phoenician. This settlement was located on two small islands, Erytheia (settlement) and Kotinoussa (cemeteries and extra-urban sanctuaries) just offshore from the mainland, close to the mouth of the Guadalete River (Figures 11.8 and 11.9). Today the islands are joined together. Although the ancient city of Gadir has not been

Figure 11.8 Regional plan, ancient Gadir

Much excavated, lying under the modern city’s historic center, cemeteries to the south have been explored.

The Guadalete is parallel with the Guadalquivir River to the northwest, the largest of southwest Spain. These and other rivers lead inland to the once productive and lucrative Aznalcollar and Rio Tinto mining areas, in Seville and Huelva provinces. From these mines the Phoenicians obtained silver, in particular; by the late eighth century BC access to mines in Cilicia and Anatolia and the Red Sea had been blocked. Today, the silver is gone, but ancient slag shows the magnitude of ancient activity. Phoenician participation has been confirmed by finds of Phoenician pottery at Cerro Salomon, a small settlement in the mining area; remains of smelting furnaces discovered in the port city of Huelva; and the burials of Phoenician character at La Joya, a necropolis of Huelva.

Because of disruption in the Phoencian heartland with the Babylonian capture of Tyre in 573 BC, direct Phoenician control of southern Spain ended in the sixth century BC. Carthage would later dominate this region.

In the Hellenistic period, Gadir continued to be connected with the Phoenicians, with the Trojan War, and with Herakles (Roman Hercules), identified with the Tyrian god Melqart. Melqart was associated with voyages to the western Mediterranean, with Gadir and its founders. An internationally famous sanctuary to Melqart/Hercules, visited by such notables as Julius Caesar, was located at the southern end of Kotinoussa island. This connection between Melqart and Hercules may be one explanation for the ancient name of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Pillars of Hercules.