Tartessos existed from the 9th – 6th centuries BC, in the south-westernmost part of Spain , in thelandscape between the modern cities Huelva and Cádiz is defined nowadays by the lower course of the Guadalquivir, but in antiquity this area was covered by a huge gulf that bordered the Mediterranean Sea.
Tartessos extended around the coasts of this gulf and the neighboring lands to the north and east of it, both of which are part of the modern province of Andalucía
The people of Tartessos are known to have been both rich and clever, so much so that they impressed Greek historians.
Their civilization lasted approximately 5 centuries, but its decadent end has long been shrouded in mystery.
Along the valley of the River Guadalquivir , is one of the richest places for metal ores – copper and silver – located in southern Spain, and in the world of the 1st millennium BC these,these valuable metals were in great demand.
And in the efforts to exploit them one of the least known, and one of the world’s great civilisations arose: Tartessos.
The same wealth, and he Tartessians seemingly ‘disappear‘ from history about 2,500 years ago and by the time of the Romans disappeared from history, little has been known about the Phonecians as well.
Also, a long-standing and prevalent view is that the ocean-going, luxury-laden ‘ships of Tarshish’ mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament—going back to the joint venture of Solomon and Hiram I of Tyre around 950 BC—also refer to Tartessos.
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This meant they had to spread out, all over the Mediterranean –to Cyprus, then along the north coast of Africa where they founded Carthage, which became the center of their new dominion, and eventually spreading yet further into Spain.
The Phoenicians began to colonize the coast of southern Spain to facilitate the trade, spurred on by the demand from their avaricious neighbors the Assyrians.
In the 8th century BC, anew élite arose rapidly among the native trading partners of the Phoenicians – these Tartessians are known primarily from necropolises (burial sites), awash with luxury grave-goods from the eastern Mediterranean, including jewelry, cosmetics, portable images of deities, ornamented chariots, wine and oil.
Tartessos, in fact, was the late Bronze Age society in southwestern Spain that included the mines of the Tinto River in its territory; it flourished between 800- 550 BC.
The ‘Crisis’
In the 6th century, Tartessos suffered a crisis.
The success of Tartessos had always been fuelled by the silver trade: the Assyrians wanted vast quantities of silver which they demanded as tribute from Tyre, and for Tyre the best source of silver was Tartessos.
However in 612 BC the Assyrians were defeated by the rising power of the Medes, and the Medes did not have the same lust for silver as did the Assyrians.
During the 5th century BC, the Iberian culture of Spain’s Mediterranean coast—which had ongoing access to Greek and Carthaginian trade—was to supplant Tartessos as the wealthiest and most dynamic zone of the peninsula.
Then in 572, Tyre itself was captured after a long siege
With the fall of Tyre, Carthage began to take its place as the leader of the Phoenician world – and Carthage did not need to silver.
The collapse was most pronounced along the coast, in Huelva and in the agricultural settlements along the Eastern seaboard.
In the inland heartlands of Tartessos, life continued, indeed Cancho Roano is a monument belonging to this late phase.
But by the Roman period, the area of Tartessos was known as the minor tribe of the Turditanae.
Tartessos forms an interesting epilogue to our survey of the societies which arose in the Mediterranean and were eventually swamped by Greece and Rome.
According to Herodotus the Phocaeans were the first Greeks to make long sea-voyages, having discovered the coasts of the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia and Spain.
When Herodotus, wrote around 430 BC, the kingdom of Tartessos, had already ceased to exist and belonged to the pre-classical past before the rise of Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire.
King Arganthonios ruled Tartessos for 80 years (from about 625 BC to 545 BC) and lived to be about 120 years old.
Herodotus says that Arganthonios warmly welcomed the first Greeks to reach Iberia, who were on a ship carrying Phoenicians.
As the story goes kingdom of Tartessos (Tartessus) and its ruler, King Arganthonios, who befriended the Greek captain Kolaios after his vessel was blown off course.
Herodotus relates that the Greek’s long sea-voyages, so impressed Arganthonios, king of Tartessus in Spain, that he invited them to settle there, and, but they declined
Arganthonios was understandably eager for the Phocaeans to found a colony ‘anywhere they liked on his land’.
Tartessos was portrayed as a mineral emporium where Kolaios exchanged his merchandise for a fortune in silver bullion.
Hearing that the Medes were becoming a dominant force in the neighborhood of the Phoenicians, he gave the latter money to build a defensive wall about their town.
Herodotus comments that “he must have given with a bountiful hand, for the town is many furlongs in circuit”.
In the event, the wall did not protect them, so they again set out for Tartessos but only got as far as Corsica.
In his book on The Phoenicians, Donald Harding, the wisest and most widely knowledgeable of all the students of this area, makes the interesting comment that with the capture of Tyre by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, the Phoenician cities became but units in the Greek kingdom of the Seleucids: there was no longer a Phoenician nation or art-style.
Still today, in Carthage a troop founded in (1992) and began Reino de Tartessos , a festival that takes the name of the Tartessos, inhabitants of an ancient Iberian kingdom which was located in Western Andalusia and that has left for posterity fabulous treasures, worthy of all admiration, such as Carambolo treasure (Seville) in which they demonstrated their mastery as goldsmiths.
The form of government of the Tartessos was the monarchy and in the 9th-6th centuries before our era, appears in the sources the name of Argantonio, symbol of longevity, it is said that he reigned for eighty years.
The main sources of wealth in Tartessos were agriculture, livestock and, above all, metallurgy, using silver and especially bronze, with which they made weapons and agricultural tools.
Currently the troop Reino di Tartessos has several symbols that represent them: the main one, formed by a T, crossed by a falcata and a spear, weapons used during parades and other acts. (falcata for men and spear for women).
The second logo “Tartessas Warriors” is the one created to group all women who already have more than one year in the troop and who makes them disciples of the goddess Astarte.
In the tradition of Kingdom of Tartessos they dress as the warriors of the Kingdom, which was very widespread,fruitful, and closely associated with ducks, turkeys, peacocks and other birds of similar constitution.
For this same reason, many of the elements of the warrior wardrobe are decorated with feathers of different characteristics. Also as a recognition of its façade, based mainly on the golden colors for the rich mining and metal manufacturing.