By Adriano Orsingher

 

Masks are common products of human experience. But while disguised activities are attested in many societies, the use of masks is inconsistent and often limited to particular groups of people, settlements or regions, or a specific moment during the year. In past societies, humans may have masked themselves as human-like figures, animals, hybrid creatures with mixed human and animal elements, or even given themselves imaginary features.

What is the archaeological evidence for masked activities in the ancient Mediterranean? For the period preceding the emergence of the theatre, the data are scanty, varied, and inconsistently interpreted by scholars. Disguises may have not been limited to the face and were mostly made of perishable materials, which usually are not preserved in the archaeological record. Archaeologists must therefore rely on other evidence: iconography, texts, and surviving artefacts.

But iconographic sources can be misleading: animal-headed figures cannot always be interpreted as humans wearing animal masks. Texts occasionally testify that ancient people dressed in animal skins for ceremonies, a use that would have otherwise remained archaeologically unattested. These difficulties help explain why scholars working on masquerades principally focus on clay and stone masks. But what did ancient people consider to be masks?

Ancient words for masks are mostly unknown, while the modern term is used with reference to a variety of artefacts representing a face, including discs, sculpted heads, and plaques.

If the primary purpose of a mask is to conceal the wearer’s identity while showing someone else’s face, reliable evidence of such use can be conventionally recognized in objects that can be worn on the face while the wearer performs some action. This type of artefact — backless faces with apertures for the eyes, sometimes cut-out mouths and rarely even holes for nostrils — is currently only attested from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in the Near East. An important corpus comes from the region between the Judean hills and desert in the southern Levant (ca. 8500-6400 BCE), but recently some coeval heads/protomes from Upper Mesopotamia have also been assigned the function. Clay masks with pointed chins from a later date are attested in the so-called elite Predynastic cemetery at Hierakonpolis/ancient Nekhen, in Upper Egypt (ca. 3700-3600 BCE).

An uninterrupted use of clay masks is attested in the Levant from the very end of the Middle Bronze Age to at least the Persian period (ca. mid-17th/16th-4th century BCE). During the Late Bronze, clay masks were also used in the Middle Euphrates Valley and from the late 13th century BCE up to the Hellenistic period in Cyprus. The variety of iconographies, contexts of use, manufacture, and decoration techniques qualify these as mostly local and independent phenomena.

But most of the clay masks from the Iron Age Levant are attested in sites on the central coast, a region conventionally identified with ancient Phoenicia.

Map of the Iron Age Levant with the position of sites where clay masks have been found (by A. Orsingher).

 

In comparison with other regions of the Levant, Phoenician masks stand out because they are mostly found in tombs, and include female but not animal iconography.

Akhziv, necropolis: female mask, c. 8th-7th century BCE (drawing by A. Guari after Dayagi-Mendels, M. 2002, The Akhziv cemeteries: the Ben-Dor excavations, 1941-1944. Israel Antiquities Authority Reports, 15, Jerusalem, fig. 7.21).

 

They also occur in industrial areas, temples, and secular buildings, which attests to a variety of uses and meanings. The only common thread may be a connection to religion, broadly construed.

Apart from female examples, the Phoenician masks represent beardless, short and long-bearded, and wrinkled faces.

Unknown provenance, possibly from Akhziv: male? mask, c. 8th-7th centuries BC (drawing by A. Guari after Hestrin, R. – Dayagi-Mendels, M. 1980, Two Phoenician pottery masks, The Israel Museum News16, fig. 1).

 

Akhziv, necropolis: male mask, c. 8th-7th centuries BC (drawing by A. Guari after Dayagi-Mendels, M. 2002, The Akhziv cemeteries: the Ben-Dor excavations, 1941-1944. Israel Antiquities Authority Reports, 15, Jerusalem, fig. 7.22).

 

Tyre al-Bass necropolis, tomb 8: male long-bearded mask, c. late 7th-early 6th century BC (drawing by A. Guari after Aubet, M.E. ed. 2004, The Phoenician Cemetery of Tyre-Al Bass. Excavations 1997-1999. BAAL, Hors-Série, I, Beyrouth, fig. 59:13).

 

Akhziv, southern cemetery, tomb Z III: male wrinkled mask, c. late 8th-7th century BC (drawing by A. Guari after Fariselli, A.C. 2014, Maschere antropomorfe in terracotta nell’oriente fenicio: riflessioni per la redazione di un corpus, in: A. Lemaire ed., Phéniciens d’Orient et d’Occident. Mélanges Josette Elayi. Cahiers de l’Institut du Proche-Orient Ancien du Collège de France, II, Paris, fig. 5).

 

I have recently proposed these be considered from portraits of young, adult, and elderly figures, respectively, representing distinct stages of human life and possibly connected to rites of passage. Of these types, the beardless young face survived (in a Greek style) in the Persian Period, when a new iconography – the silenic mask with horse-like features – appeared, attesting that the Phoenician repertoire become open to non-local elements.

Tel Dor, Area E, Locus 6843, Basket 68072: fragmentary mask, c. 539-332 BC (drawing by A. Guari after Stern, E. 2010, Excavations at Dor: figurines, cult objects and amulets: 1980-2000 seasons, Jerusalem, fig. 31:11).

 

During the Iron Age, masks were painted in part or in full. In Phoenician examples, colour sometimes covered parts of the face linked to senses, such as eyes, mouth, and ears. This may suggest these parts played a role during the disguised activities. Similarly, an important role for the mouth – through words and/or sounds – may explain the frequent appearance of cut-out and even grimacing mouths.

This Levantine masking tradition was kept alive by Phoenician-speaking groups moving westwards and founding new communities and settlements in the central and western Mediterranean, where the earliest, fragmentary examples found so far date from the late 8th century BCE.

Map of the central and western Mediterranean with the position of sites where clay masks have been found in find-contexts dating back to between the late 8th and the mid-2nd century BC (by A. Orsingher).

 

In the West, some types previously attested in the Levant continued to occur, albeit under a different guise: female masks, characters with long beards, elderly people and – from the 5th century BCE – silenus types.

Carthage, necropolis, near the theatre: Silenic mask, c. second half of the 4th century BC? (Wikimedia Commons).

 

But new types also appeared, possibly created in Punic places such as Carthage, Motya, Ibiza, and Cádiz. Among the new masks allegedly created at Carthage, one notable case is the grinning type.

Carthage, necropolis of Dermech, tomb 10: Black African mask, c. mid-7th century BC (Wikimedia Commons).

 

The grinning mask is the most iconic type, which owes its name to the wide v-shaped smile representing the focal point of the spectators. This type, which is also characterised by furrows (possibly wrinkles) on the forehead and cheekbones, is attested for about five centuries, from the second quarter of the 7th to the mid-2nd century BCE.

Chrono-typological sequence of the grimacing mask (after Orsingher, A. 2014. Listen and protect: reconsidering the grinning masks after a recent find from Motya, Vicino OrienteXVIII, fig. 3).

 

During this period, some features changed (oversized ears appeared, astral symbols on the forehead were replaced by animal, vegetal and aniconic motifs), and this iconography was reproduced in various media such as amulets and cretulae. It also appeared throughout the central Mediterranean, on Sicily, Sardinia, and Ibiza, attesting to the importance of the super-human character. But as is often the case with ancient masks, the precise identity cannot be established.

Certain contexts such as Tophets support a connection with the god Ba‘al Hamon and/or his circle, while some of the motifs on the masks (such as lion, rosette, lotus) instead recall female characters. The wrinkles, smile, and oversized ears suggest the grinning mask may represent a benevolent old man, willing to hear and fulfill the worshippers’ prayers. The latest example of this group, the oversized mask from the Chapelle Carton, shows the iconographic influence of Greek theatrical masks.

The end of the Levantine masking tradition during the Hellenistic period remains largely unexplained. Causes and timing of this process have not yet been established, but the appearance of theatrical masks during this era in some of the former manufacturing centres of masks in the central and western Mediterranean may imply a connection to the emergence of the theatre.

 

Adriano Orsingher is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Biblical Archaeology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

For Further Reading:

Jasmin, M., Thareani, Y., and Abrahami, P. 2016. A Rare Discovery at Tel Achziv: A Phoenician Clay Mask Mold from the Ninth Century B.C.E., Near Eastern Archaeology 79, 276-279.

Garbati, G. 2016. ‘Hidden Identities’. Observations on the ‘Grinning’ Phoenician Masks of Sardinia, in G. Garbati and T. Pedrazzi (eds.), “Identity” and Interculturality in the Levant and Phoenician West during the 8th-5th Centuries BCE(Rivista di Studi Fenici. Supplemento), Roma: Consiglio Nazionale delle ricerche, 209-228.

Orsingher, A. 2014. Listen and protect: reconsidering the grinning masks after a recent find from Motya, Vicino Oriente XVIII, 145-171.

Orsingher, A. 2016. A mask from Carthage and elusive gods, Semitica et Classica IX, 169-186.

Orsingher, A. 2018. Ritualized faces: the masks of the Phoenicians, in A. Berlejung and J.E. Filitz (eds), The Physicality of the Other. Masks as a Means of Encounter (Orientalische Religionen in der Antike, 27), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 265-305.

Orsingher, A. 2019. Across the Middle Sea: the long journey of Phoenician and Punic masks, in M. Barbanera (ed), “La medesima cosa sono Ade e Dioniso” (Eraclito, fr. 15 D.-K). Maschere, teatro e rituali funerari nel mondo antico. Atti dell’incontro, Sapienza Università di Roma, Odeion del Museo dell’Arte Classica, 16-17 Novembre 2017(Scienze delle Antichità 24/3), Roma: Edizioni Quasar, 51-68.