Marble for Phoenician Purple. Classical Sculpture on the Levantine Coast

Abstract

Marble artefacts were distributed to cities of the Phoenician Levantine coast since the Archaic period. They were a sign of economic prosperity and growing Hellenization of this area. Some surviving hon¬orific statues, funerary portraits and mythological sculptures are now kept in the Archaeological Museum in Tartus. They were made of the most precious marbles used in the Graeco-Roman world: the marble from Mount Pentelikon and from the island of Paros