Our final review of 2015, from the list Dr Sheldrake suggested to me, is of Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe’s next to most recent work. Sir Barry Cunliffe is the oldest, most eminent, and the most well-placed of our reviewees. His book is the largest (518 pp), most ambitious, and the newest of them (2008; being paperbacked only in 2011). Cunliffe is also the most interesting, knowledgeable, balanced and thoughtful, certainly of the modern authors we have examined.
The major difference between Cunliffe’s generation of writers, and our first two reviewees – of authors writing over a century ago, is that they had an awareness, which modern writers do not, of the importance, biblically, of identifying Tarshish. In a way, Champion is an oddity here – he seems aware of Tarshish’s importance, but only uses that awareness to goad into anger the Bible-believer by his swashbuckling, sociologically-driven derisiveness of the older Archaeology, and all things connected with the Bible.
We get the best out of Cunliffe by ignoring the issue of the label “Tarshish”, and looking instead at his dealing with issues such as “Cornwall, tin mining”, “Tin, Cornish” and “Tin Islands”. Then we discover a rich vein of information, to assist our studies.
Using our initial criteria, adopted back in the spring, with Smith, we find, then, that Cunliffe wholly ignores the issue of “Tarshish”, as a label.
His awareness of ancient authorities is vast, and he refers to a lot of them in some detail: as well as Classical authors such as Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Strabo, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny and Polybius, he refers to much more specialist sources, too. Thus, we have details of the Greek geographer Hecataeus, the Phoenician explorers Hanno and Himilco, the traveller and scientist Pytheas of Marseille, and the Greek scholar Eratosthenes. We, thus justifiably, feel ourselves to be in good hands, when Cunliffe makes judgements or generalisations, and, indeed, such comments are redolent with wisdom, insight and balance.
I wish, therefore, to present interesting observations made by Cunliffe, and draw what I believe to be wholly legitimate, and highly significant conclusions from them:
(1) Cunliffe prints maps [p. 5], as designed by Herodotus, with interesting observations by himself. He shows Herodotus’s map, based on Hecataeus. This, in turn, was derived from compiling data from traders’ accounts. The map shows a large area west and north of what is clearly meant, from the cartography, though it is unlabelled by Herodotus, as the Straits of Gibraltar. This large area is labelled, as “Ocean”, and in it, to the North-West of Gibraltar, are the “Tin Islands”. Cunliffe comments: “Herodotus… was careful not to speculate about regions he knew little or nothing about”.
(2) He prints maps drawn up by Eratosthenes, and Strabo [p.9] with interesting observations. The Eratosthenes map was, says Cunliffe, derived from “information brought back by the Atlantic explorer Pytheas”. Pytheas had, in fact, sailed right around the British Isles, in a West-East pattern, taking sun-height measurements on the islands of Man, Lewis and Shetland, and visiting the tin-producing region of Cornwall. The map, based on his work shows “Britannia” quite clearly, with a group of four unlabeled islands, off to the South-west of the mainland.
(3) Strabo’s map is later [first century BC], and is based on sources other than Pytheas. It, too, shows “Britain”, and six islands South-west of the mainland. On Strabo’s map, these are labelled – as “Tin Islands”. In fact, this is a complex issue, even with modern cartographic gear. It is, however, estimated that the Scillies contain 5 inhabited islands, and 140 others!
(4) Cunliffe shows the distribution, in Europe, of Tin, with interesting observations. The distribution of Tin, in Western Europe, is in Portugal, Brittany and in Cornwall, in South-west England. The “Tin Islands”, however, were off Cornwall, and were the places bearing that ascription for the very good reason that they, and Cornwall, were the major source of Tin. And, says Cunliffe, the industry involving tin did start in Britain. Once discovered, and its alloy with Copper perfected, says Cunliffe, the alloys of preference, in warfare terms, changed:
“In Europe, once full tin-bronze (c.90% copper and 10 % tin) had been developed, it was adopted universally, replacing unalloyed copper and the arsenical alloys. The earliest appearance of a regular bronze-using economy is to be found in Britain and Ireland in the period 2200 – 2000 BC, after which it spread eastwards and southwards through Europe, reaching all parts by 1400 – 1300 BC. Since the constituents of bronze were not widely found, and tin was and is exceedingly rare, bronze took on value as a prestige commodity. Once established, it became highly desirable and the movement of the metal as ingots or as scrap or finished items became widespread. Many other commodities now entered into the exchange networks in quantity: gold, silver, amber, furs, horses, textiles, oils and exotic stones like lapis and amethyst are all evident in the archaeological record” (pp 181 – 182)
(5) Professor Cunliffe shows the distribution, in Europe, of Bronze artefacts, from his own experience. The European archaeological sites, with Roasting Spits, Flesh Hooks and Cauldrons, of bronze, from the period 1200 – 800 BC, total 89. Of these, the distribution is as follows:-
(a) British Isles 49
[Ireland – 23; England, Scotland & Wales – 25]
[Channel Islands – 1]
(b) Denmark 1
(c) France 14
(d) Iberia 23
(e) Sardinia 1
(f) Cyprus 1
Of this distribution, Cunliffe comments as follows:
“The old hard rocks of southern Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the western coastal regions of Iberia were metal-rich, producing abundant copper to service regional needs and tin and gold for export to other parts of Europe. The scale of metal-production during this period can be gauged from the huge number of bronze items preserved in museum collections – axes, swords, spears, and a variety of tools and luxury gear. Axes alone number in the tens of thousands.” (p. 254)
In conclusion, there is much that is useful in Cunliffe’s book, both in technical detail, in up-to-date scholarship, directed research of his subordinates1, and broad and imaginative sweep of generalised judgment. Cunliffe is fully aware of the history of previous scholarship and of what academics of later generations owe to the Rawlinsons of previous periods. Cunliffe makes many more useful comments for the Bible student than does his younger Spanish contemporary, Professor Maria Eugenia Aubet2 of Barcelona University.
1 It is said of Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of the Holocaust that his PhD students scoured the vestries of the parishes of Europe, scrutinising records of births, deaths and marriages to show beyond cavil how many Jews had perished in the Shoah – and, indeed, proved by that means that it was of the order, at least, of 5.75 million. Cunliffe seems to have done similarly with his analysis of European archaeological sites, in a way clearly beyond the scope of any single individual, however dedicated and brilliant.
2 Aubet’s work – The Phoenicians and the West (2nd edition; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) is mentioned, though not reviewed in this series. Aubet’s book is shorter than Cunliffe’s, and double the price [at over £30] is very precise, in the way of offering minutiae comments within her own special sphere of archaeological digs in Tyre, but is not useful to the Bible-student seeking informative broad-brush insights [despite the title her publishers clearly wanted her to work to], since she is forced to rely on the scholarship of others, outside the very narrow confines of her own studies, and does not always choose wisely, even then. As stated in these reviews, for example, she relies for Bible scholarship on a little-known Higher-critical Italian Professor, for her thoughts and opinions on matters of Biblical interest. Aubet’s scholarship – both in her Bibliography, and in her views on the History of Phoenicia in Western Europe – is much too Hispanic, for balance.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)