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Tartessos
Tartessos (Spanish: Tartesos) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula. It had a writing system, identified as Tartessian, that includes some 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language.
In the historical records, Tartessos (Ancient Greek: Ταρτησσός) appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Roman authors tend to echo the earlier Greek sources, but from around the end of the millennium there are indications that the name Tartessos had fallen out of use and the city may have been lost to flooding, although several authors attempt to identify it with cities of other names in the area.
The Tartessians were rich in metals. In the fourth century BC the historian Ephorus describes "a very prosperous market called Tartessos, with much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper from Celtic lands". Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age, since it is an essential component of bronze and is comparatively rare. Herodotus said a king of Tartessos, Arganthonios, welcomed the first Greeks to reach Iberia, Phocaeans who sailed from Asia Minor.
Pausanias wrote that Myron, the tyrant of Sicyon, built a treasury, which was called the treasury of the Sicyonians, to commemorate a victory in the chariot race at the Olympic games. In the treasury, he made two chambers with two different styles, one Doric and one Ionic, with bronze.[clarification needed] The Eleans said that the bronze was Tartessian.
The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in Iberia dates from the eighth century BC and who nearby built a harbor of their own, Gadir (Ancient Greek: Γάδειρα, Latin: Gades, present-day Cádiz).
Several early sources, such as Aristotle, refer to Tartessos as a river. Aristotle claims that it rises from the Pyrene Mountain (generally accepted by modern scholars as the Pyrenees) and flows out to sea outside the Pillars of Hercules, the modern Strait of Gibraltar. No such river traverses the Iberian Peninsula.
According to the fourth century BC Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas, quoted by Strabo in the first century AD, the ancestral homeland of the Turduli was located north of Turdetania, the region where the kingdom of Tartessos was located in the Baetis River valley (the present-day Guadalquivir valley) in southern Spain.
Pausanias, writing in the second century AD, identified the river and gave details of the location of the city:
Tartessos
Tartessos (Spanish: Tartesos) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula. It had a writing system, identified as Tartessian, that includes some 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language.
In the historical records, Tartessos (Ancient Greek: Ταρτησσός) appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Roman authors tend to echo the earlier Greek sources, but from around the end of the millennium there are indications that the name Tartessos had fallen out of use and the city may have been lost to flooding, although several authors attempt to identify it with cities of other names in the area.
The Tartessians were rich in metals. In the fourth century BC the historian Ephorus describes "a very prosperous market called Tartessos, with much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper from Celtic lands". Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age, since it is an essential component of bronze and is comparatively rare. Herodotus said a king of Tartessos, Arganthonios, welcomed the first Greeks to reach Iberia, Phocaeans who sailed from Asia Minor.
Pausanias wrote that Myron, the tyrant of Sicyon, built a treasury, which was called the treasury of the Sicyonians, to commemorate a victory in the chariot race at the Olympic games. In the treasury, he made two chambers with two different styles, one Doric and one Ionic, with bronze.[clarification needed] The Eleans said that the bronze was Tartessian.
The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in Iberia dates from the eighth century BC and who nearby built a harbor of their own, Gadir (Ancient Greek: Γάδειρα, Latin: Gades, present-day Cádiz).
Several early sources, such as Aristotle, refer to Tartessos as a river. Aristotle claims that it rises from the Pyrene Mountain (generally accepted by modern scholars as the Pyrenees) and flows out to sea outside the Pillars of Hercules, the modern Strait of Gibraltar. No such river traverses the Iberian Peninsula.
According to the fourth century BC Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas, quoted by Strabo in the first century AD, the ancestral homeland of the Turduli was located north of Turdetania, the region where the kingdom of Tartessos was located in the Baetis River valley (the present-day Guadalquivir valley) in southern Spain.
Pausanias, writing in the second century AD, identified the river and gave details of the location of the city: