Sarepta
Encyclopedia
Sarepta was a Phoenicia
n city on the Mediterranean
coast between Sidon
and Tyre. Most of the objects by which we characterise Phoenician culture are those that have been recovered scattered among Phoenician colonies and trading posts; such carefully excavated colonial sites are in Spain
, Sicily
, Sardinia
and Tunisia
. The sites of many Phoenician cities, like Sidon and Tyre, by contrast, are still occupied, unavailable to archaeology except in highly restricted chance sites, usually much disturbed. Sarepta is the exception, the one Phoenician city in the heartland of the culture that has been unearthed and thoroughly studied.
, Voyage d'un Egyptien, 1866, pp 20, 161, 163). Obadiah
says it was the northern boundary of Canaan
(Obadiah 1:20). Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasion of Shalmaneser IV
, 722 BCE. It fell to Sennacherib
in 701.
The first Books of Kings
(17:8-24) describes the city as being subject to Sidon in the time of Ahab
, and says that the prophet Elijah, after leaving the brook Cherith
, multiplied the meal and oil of the widow of Zarephath (Sarepta) and raised her son from the dead there. Zarephath (צרפת ṣārĕfáṯ, tsarfát; Σάρεπτα, Sárepta) in Hebrew became the eponym
for any smelter or forge
, or metalworking
shop. In the 1st century AD, the Roman Sarepta, a port about a kilometer to the south is mentioned by Josephus
, in Jewish Antiquities
(Book VIII, xiii:2) and by Pliny
, in Natural History (Book V, 17).
Sarepta as a Christian
city was mentioned in the Itinerarium Burdigalense
; the Onomasticon of Eusebius and in Jerome
; by Theodosius and Pseudo-Antoninus who, in the sixth century call it a small town, but very Christian. It contained at that time a church dedicated to St. Elias (Elijah). The Notitia episcopatuum, a list of bishoprics made in Antioch in the 6th century, speaks of Sarepta as a suffragan see of Tyre; none of its bishops are known.
After the Islamization of the area, in 1185, the Greek
monk
Phocas, making a gazetteer of the Holy Land
(De locis sanctis, 7), found the town almost in its ancient condition. A century later, according to Burchard of Mount Sion
, it was in ruins and contained only seven or eight houses. Even after the Crusaders' kingdoms had collapsed, the Roman Catholic Church
continued to appoint purely titular bishops of Sarepta, the most noted being Thomas of Wroclaw who held the
post from 1350 until 1378.
on the seashore was excavated by James B. Pritchard
over five years from 1969 to 1974.
Civil war in Lebanon put an end to the excavations.
The site of the ancient town is marked by the ruins
on the shore to the south of the modern village, about eight miles to the south of Sidon, which extend along the shore for a mile or more. They are in two distinct groups, one on a headland to the west of a fountain called ‛Ain el-Ḳantara, which is not far from the shore. Here was the ancient harbor which still affords shelter for small craft. The other group of ruins is to the south, and consists of columns, sarcophagi, and marble slabs, indicating a city of considerable importance.
Pritchard's excavations revealed many artifacts of daily life in the ancient Phoenician city of Sarepta: pottery workshops and kiln
s, artifacts of daily use and religious figurines, numerous inscriptions that included some in Ugaritic. Pillar worship is traceable from an 8th century
shrine of Tanit-Ashtart
, and a seal with the city's name made the identification secure. The local Bronze Age-Iron Age stratigraphy was established in detail; absolute dating depends in part on correlations with Cypriote and Aegean stratigraphy.
The climax of the Sarepta discoveries at Sarafand is the cult shrine of "Tanit
/Astart
", who is identified in the site by an inscribed votive ivory plaque, the first identification of Tanit in her homeland. The site revealed figurines, further carved ivories, amulet
s and a cultic mask.
after the Diaspora
, the name Zarephath (צרפת, ts-r-f-t, Tsarfat) is used to mean France
, perhaps because the Hebrew letters ts-r-f, if reversed, become f-r-ts.
A strain of the West Nile Virus
is called 'Sarafend'. Although the origins of the strain name are unknown, it is possible that the virus strain was first isolated in this area.
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n city on the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
coast between Sidon
Sidon
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon is the son of Canaan the grandson of Noah...
and Tyre. Most of the objects by which we characterise Phoenician culture are those that have been recovered scattered among Phoenician colonies and trading posts; such carefully excavated colonial sites are in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
. The sites of many Phoenician cities, like Sidon and Tyre, by contrast, are still occupied, unavailable to archaeology except in highly restricted chance sites, usually much disturbed. Sarepta is the exception, the one Phoenician city in the heartland of the culture that has been unearthed and thoroughly studied.
History
Sarepta is mentioned for the first time in the voyage of an Egyptian in the fourteenth century BCE (ChabasFrançois Chabas
François Joseph Chabas was a French egyptologist.Chabas came from a modest background, studied at Chalon and became a wine merchant. Self-taught, he learned Latin, Greek and other languages. Interested in anthropology, he turned to study Old Egyptian languages...
, Voyage d'un Egyptien, 1866, pp 20, 161, 163). Obadiah
Obadiah
Obadiah is a Biblical theophorical name, meaning "servant of Yahweh" or "worshipper of Yahweh." It is related to "Abdeel", "servant of God", which is also cognate to the Arabic name "Abdullah". Turkish name Abdil or Abdi. The form of Obadiah's name used in the Septuagint is Obdios; in Latin it is...
says it was the northern boundary of Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
(Obadiah 1:20). Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasion of Shalmaneser IV
Shalmaneser IV
Shalmaneser IV was king of Assyria . He succeeded his father Adad-nirari III, and was succeeded by his brother Ashur-dan III. Very little information about his reign has survived....
, 722 BCE. It fell to Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
in 701.
The first Books of Kings
Books of Kings
The Book of Kings presents a narrative history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of his successor Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years...
(17:8-24) describes the city as being subject to Sidon in the time of Ahab
Ahab
Ahab or Ach'av or Achab in Douay-Rheims was king of Israel and the son and successor of Omri according to the Hebrew Bible. His wife was Jezebel....
, and says that the prophet Elijah, after leaving the brook Cherith
Cherith
Cherith , also Chorath or Carith, is a "brook", in whose banks the prophet Elijah hid himself during the early part of the three years' drought which he announced to King Ahab . It has by some been identified as the Wady el-Kelt behind Jericho, which is formed by the junction of many streams...
, multiplied the meal and oil of the widow of Zarephath (Sarepta) and raised her son from the dead there. Zarephath (צרפת ṣārĕfáṯ, tsarfát; Σάρεπτα, Sárepta) in Hebrew became the eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
for any smelter or forge
Forge
A forge is a hearth used for forging. The term "forge" can also refer to the workplace of a smith or a blacksmith, although the term smithy is then more commonly used.The basic smithy contains a forge, also known as a hearth, for heating metals...
, or metalworking
Metalworking
Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...
shop. In the 1st century AD, the Roman Sarepta, a port about a kilometer to the south is mentioned by Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, in Jewish Antiquities
Antiquities of the Jews
Antiquities of the Jews is a twenty volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Roman emperor Flavius Domitian which was around 93 or 94 AD. Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of history of the Jewish people,...
(Book VIII, xiii:2) and by Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, in Natural History (Book V, 17).
Sarepta as a Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
city was mentioned in the Itinerarium Burdigalense
Itinerarium Burdigalense
The Itinerarium Burdigalense is the oldest known Christian itinerarium, written by an anonymous pilgrim from Burdigala...
; the Onomasticon of Eusebius and in Jerome
Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
; by Theodosius and Pseudo-Antoninus who, in the sixth century call it a small town, but very Christian. It contained at that time a church dedicated to St. Elias (Elijah). The Notitia episcopatuum, a list of bishoprics made in Antioch in the 6th century, speaks of Sarepta as a suffragan see of Tyre; none of its bishops are known.
After the Islamization of the area, in 1185, the Greek
Roman and Byzantine Greece
The history of Byzantine Greece mainly coincides with the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire.-Roman Greece:The Greek peninsula became a Roman protectorate in 146 BC, and the Aegean islands were added to this territory in 133. Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88, and the peninsula was...
monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
Phocas, making a gazetteer of the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
(De locis sanctis, 7), found the town almost in its ancient condition. A century later, according to Burchard of Mount Sion
Burchard of Mount Sion
Burchard of Mount Sion, or Burchard de Mont Sion, also wrongly called Brocard or Bocard, was a German Dominican who travelled to the Middle East at the end of the 13th century....
, it was in ruins and contained only seven or eight houses. Even after the Crusaders' kingdoms had collapsed, the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
continued to appoint purely titular bishops of Sarepta, the most noted being Thomas of Wroclaw who held the
post from 1350 until 1378.
Archaeology
The low tellTell
A tell or tel, is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides.-Archaeology:A tell is a hill created by different civilizations living and...
on the seashore was excavated by James B. Pritchard
James B. Pritchard
James Bennett Pritchard was an American archeologist whose work explicated the interrelationships of the religions of ancient Israel, Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon...
over five years from 1969 to 1974.
Civil war in Lebanon put an end to the excavations.
The site of the ancient town is marked by the ruins
Ruins
Ruins are the remains of human-made architecture: structures that were once complete, as time went by, have fallen into a state of partial or complete disrepair, due to lack of maintenance or deliberate acts of destruction...
on the shore to the south of the modern village, about eight miles to the south of Sidon, which extend along the shore for a mile or more. They are in two distinct groups, one on a headland to the west of a fountain called ‛Ain el-Ḳantara, which is not far from the shore. Here was the ancient harbor which still affords shelter for small craft. The other group of ruins is to the south, and consists of columns, sarcophagi, and marble slabs, indicating a city of considerable importance.
Pritchard's excavations revealed many artifacts of daily life in the ancient Phoenician city of Sarepta: pottery workshops and kiln
Kiln
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, or oven, in which a controlled temperature regime is produced. Uses include the hardening, burning or drying of materials...
s, artifacts of daily use and religious figurines, numerous inscriptions that included some in Ugaritic. Pillar worship is traceable from an 8th century
8th century BC
The 8th century BC started the first day of 800 BC and ended the last day of 701 BC.-Overview:The 8th century BC was a period of great changes in civilizations. In Egypt, the 23rd and 24th dynasties led to rule from Nubia in the 25th Dynasty...
shrine of Tanit-Ashtart
Astarte
Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...
, and a seal with the city's name made the identification secure. The local Bronze Age-Iron Age stratigraphy was established in detail; absolute dating depends in part on correlations with Cypriote and Aegean stratigraphy.
The climax of the Sarepta discoveries at Sarafand is the cult shrine of "Tanit
Tanit
Tanit was a Phoenician lunar goddess, worshipped as the patron goddess at Carthage. Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the fifth century BCE onwards Tanit is associated with that of Baal Hammon...
/Astart
Astarte
Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...
", who is identified in the site by an inscribed votive ivory plaque, the first identification of Tanit in her homeland. The site revealed figurines, further carved ivories, amulet
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
s and a cultic mask.
Other uses of the name
In HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
after the Diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
, the name Zarephath (צרפת, ts-r-f-t, Tsarfat) is used to mean France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, perhaps because the Hebrew letters ts-r-f, if reversed, become f-r-ts.
A strain of the West Nile Virus
West Nile virus
West Nile virus is a virus of the family Flaviviridae. Part of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of viruses, it is found in both tropical and temperate regions. It mainly infects birds, but is known to infect humans, horses, dogs, cats, bats, chipmunks, skunks, squirrels, domestic...
is called 'Sarafend'. Although the origins of the strain name are unknown, it is possible that the virus strain was first isolated in this area.
External links
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Sarepta