Tartessos

Tartessos (Spanish: Tartesos) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula from about the late Bronze Age until the 5th century BC. It had a writing system, named as the Southwest script, that includes some 97 inscriptions in an unknown language which is unclassified for lack of data. Tartessos was the first "entity located in southwestern Iberia to be recognised as a kingdom". 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, to commemorate an Olympic victory, the Sicyonian tyrant Myron built an Ionic treasury of bronze from Tartessos. The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in...