Biblical Tarshish Located in Sardinia?

1/6/2014 1:41 PM #

Looking at the abstract (the article itself does not seem to be available for free online), the results also seem to be consistent with a Spanish location for Tarshish. I think Tarshish is identical to the Tartessos of Herodotus, which was located in southern Spain.

E. Harding - 1/6/2014 1:41:49 PM

1/12/2014 1:07 AM #

Here are the basic points - just keep in mind that the article deals well with the issue of Spain vs Sardinia and shows that the understnading of Tarshish's location changed over time.  Tarshish was a large island in the early sources.   This is some of the paper  "The tendency to equate the 'Tarshish of scripture' with the similar-sounding, silver-rich kingdom of Tartessos of mythic history (Herodotus 1.163; Bochart Phaleg, 1646, iii. 7), with its suspected borders near today's Huelva and Seville, is complicated by inscriptions that oblige us to consider island locations – in a statement attributed to Esarhaddon, the Assyrian king proclaims that the kings of islands as far as Tarshish began paying tribute to him in the late 7th century BC (Pritchard 1955, 290 and infra).
There is no question that, long after early historical interactions had become legend, Tarshish was eventually identified with Tartessos in antiquity (Helm 1956) - ore-provenance data correlate with the ancient documents that indicate both Sardinia and Spain as suppliers, and Sardinia as the island of Tarshish"

MFB - 1/12/2014 1:07:42 AM