Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Depto. de Letras, Programa de Espanhol Disciplina: História da Língua Espanhola

Centro de Artes e Comunicação Professor: Dr. João Sedycias Código da Disciplina: ______

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Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Tartessus –

Ancient region and town of the Guadalquivir River valley in southwestern Spain, probably identical with the Tarshish mentioned in the Bible. It prospered from trade with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians but was probably destroyed by the latter about 500 BC. The exact site of the town is not known, but archaeological evidence suggests it may have been near present-day Seville.

The People of Spain

Spain has been invaded and inhabited by many different peoples. The peninsula was originally settled by groups from North Africa and western Europe, including the Iberians, Celts, and Basques. Throughout antiquity it was a constant point of attraction for the more advanced civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. From about 1100 BC the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians began to establish settlements and trading posts, especially on the eastern and southern coasts.

These outsiders found a mosaic of peoples collectively known as the Iberians, who, however, did not have a single culture or even share a single language. There was a kingdom called Tartessus, which flourished between 800 and 550 BC, that ruled much of the valley of the Guadalquivir. Elsewhere political organization was less sophisticated, consisting of a number of city-states in the coastal regions and of clans in the interior and the northwest.

Iron Age Cultures of Spain

Highly interesting artistic flowerings occurred in Spain at the end of the protohistoric era. First, in the southwest of the peninsula, near the town of Cadiz, there developed at the extreme end of the 2nd millennium BC a civilization, still poorly understood, that tradition attributes to the semi-historic, semilegendary state of Tartessus. Archaeology has not yet revealed the splendour ascribed by the ancients to the Tartessian culture, which was strongly influenced by early Phoenician commercial contacts from the southern coast of Spain. Along the coasts of the Levant and penetrating deeply into the interior of the peninsula, an indigenous population, the Iberians, developed a truly original art under combined Grecian, Carthaginian, and Phoenician influences.

Many Iberian dwelling sites have been discovered on the eastern coasts of Spain, where they were established on such high places as steep-sloped plateaus and protected by surrounding walls with round and square towers and doors. The street network does not seem to follow a regular plan. Great temples such as those of Castellar de Santisteban and Despeñaperros in the Sierra Morena have sacred storerooms where a great number (about 6,000 for the two sites) of votive statuettes have been discovered.

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