Tuna Across the Strait of Gibraltar: Traces of a Lost Fishing Myth?

Abstract

The fishing industry was the main source of livelihood for many populations living near the Strait of Gibraltar from the VI-V century BC onwards, as testified by archeological and literary sources. At the Phoenician colony of Gadir, and allied settlements, coins were struck with the image of the tuna fish on one side and the god Melqart, protector of the Western Phoenicians, on the other. In this article, we propose that this relationship between the Phoenician god and tuna fish could have been the subject of a local myth, adapted from a Semitic cosmogonic myth into a fishing myth and located in the geographical landscape of the West. We analyze its potential traces in ritual, iconography, and Greco-Roman texts dealing with the exploits of Heracles and other seafarers in the West, which are suspect of having been subject to various forms of Euhemerism and syncretism, without obliterating all traces of the previous mythology.