Phoenicians who were taught on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates gained a wide artistic experience and finally came to create their own art, which was an amalgam of foreign models and perspectives. The Phoenicians were among the greatest traders of their time and owed much of their prosperity to trade.
At first, they traded mainly with the Greeks, in wood, salves, glass and powdered Tyrian purple. Tyrian Purple was a violet-purple dye used by the Greek elite to color garments. As trading and colonizing spread over the Mediterranean, Phoenicians and Greeks seemed to have unconsciously split that sea in two: the Phoenicians sailed along and eventually dominating the southern shore, while the Greeks were active along the northern shores. The two cultures clashed rarely, mainly in Sicily, which eventually settled into two spheres of influence, the Phoenician southwest and the Greek northeast.
In the centuries after BCE, the Phoenicians were the major naval and trading power of the region. Phoenician trade was founded on the Tyrian Purple dye, a violet-purple dye derived from the shell of the Murex sea-snail, once profusely available in coastal waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea but exploited to local extinction.
The Phoenicians established a second production center for the dye in Mogador, in present day Morocco. Brilliant textiles were a part of Phoenician wealth, and Phoenician glass was another export ware.
They traded unrefined, prick-eared hunting dogs of Asian or African origin which locally they had developed into many breeds. To Egypt, where grapevines would not grow, the 8th-century Phoenicians sold wine, the wine trade with Egypt is vividly documented by the shipwrecks located in in the open sea 30 miles west of Ascalon. Pottery kilns at Tyre produced the big terracotta jars used for transporting wine and from Egypt they bought gold.
From elsewhere, they obtained other materials, perhaps the most important being silver from Iberian peninsula and tin from Britain, the latter of which, when smelted with copper from Cyprus , created the durable metal alloy bronze. It was discovered in the ruins… Read more This illustration is of a gypseous alabaster frieze depicting a small boat transporting timber.
The horse-headed boat is most likely loaded with cedarwood—one of the biggest exports of Canaan present-day Lebanon. Phoenicians were perhaps the first mariners to adopt celestial navigation, charting their way across the seas using Polaris the North Star as a guide. The Phoenicians were the great mariners of the ancient world, and their thalassocracy maritime realm was organized into city-states akin to the Greeks.
Inhabitants of the Phoenician city-states along the Eastern Mediterranean coast like Sidon and Tyre might have called themselves Kenaani Canaanites ; or with appellations relating to their particular city-states e.
Over the centuries merchants and explorers from these city-states spread across the Mediterranean; and perhaps even navigated as far as the British Isles to bring back tin—a scarcity in the Mediterranean but a crucial ingredient, along with copper from the island of Cyprus where the Phoenicians also had a foothold , for the making of bronze.
Two of the most dominant and influential of the Phoenician home citadels that rose to power after BCE were the abovementioned Sidon and Tyre. Vintage engraving of the site of ancient Carthage The greatest of all the Phoenician city-states, however, was Carthage in North Africa.
This crucial event serves as the endpoint in our History Date Range for this civilization, although remnants of the Phoenician culture lingered on long after the fall of Carthage.
The extent of the Phoenician Civilization at the time of the Macedonian conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean In the political and military void of the ensuing year ancient Dark Age that began c. Instead of acquiring a physical empire of contiguous lands, they gradually built a large trading and colonial network from their home base of a few independent city-states along the coast of what is now Lebanon, Southern Syria and Northern Israel.
Spreading westward, the Phoenicians founded colonies on Cyprus and in the region of the Aegean Sea including the coast of Turkey ; on the islands of Malta, Sardinia, Sicily and the Balearic archipelago; and in North Africa, Spain and Portugal as well as other locations in the Mediterranean.
These coastal cities were hemmed in on the inland side by the Lebanon Mountains. Roman ruins on the site of Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia The only obvious opportunity for expansion and economic gain was by sea; and over the centuries the Phoenician trading posts and colonies spread west across the Mediterranean. The largest and most prosperous of all the Phoenician-founded city-states was Carthage in present-day Tunisia. At its zenith, Carthage nearly conquered its greatest rival: The Roman Republic.
The Minoans on Crete had blocked entrance into the Aegean, controlling all trade in that area, and perhaps even monopolizing trade further west. The Canaanite coastal towns were usually governed by Egypt, and one of their principal businesses was providing wood the famed cedars of Lebanon and provisions like wine to the Nile region. Phoenician trade routes Minoan territory had been taken over by the Mycenaeans prior to BCE, and the subsequent fall of that culture during the catastrophic events at the end of the 13th century BCE removed most of the constraints on Mediterranean and Aegean trade for surviving civilizations.
The Phoenicians were the most aggressive of those attempting to fill the void. Their cities were well positioned for this enterprise, being located literally in the center of the known world. The Aegean, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were all roughly equidistant to the west, east, and south. For any of the three regions to trade with another, the easiest route was through the Phoenician city-states. In the face of repeated assaults or heavy tribute payments, the Tyrians adopted the strategy of establishing colonies to the west.
These settlements were removed from the grasp of their Eastern overlords, helping with the exploitation of metals and trade in the western Mediterranean. Over the next years, Carthage grew rapidly in size and power. Much of its wealth came from highly productive ore mines of Spain.
Carthage fought for control of the Western Mediterranean first with the Greeks and then with the Romans. Purple Dye or Spiny Murex sea snails The early Phoenician economy was built on timber sales, woodworking, glass manufacturing, the shipping of goods like wine exports to Egypt , and the making of dye.
Phoenician dyes ranging in color from a pink to a deep purple were made from the secretions of the carnivorous murex sea snail. In Rome, this highly coveted dye was called Tyrian Purple after the Phoenician city of Tyre where it was made and it was worth quite literally more than its weight in gold.
Phoenician merchants may have traded for tin as far north as Cornwall Lizard Point, Cornwall, England, UK Gradually the Phoenician city-states became centers of maritime trade and manufacturing.
Having limited natural resources, they imported raw materials and fashioned them into more valuable objects that could be shipped profitably, such as jewelry, ivory carvings discovered at sites in Mesopotamia metalwork, furniture found in tombs on Cyprus , housewares, and specialty items like painted ostrich eggs.
They borrowed techniques and styles from all corners of the world that they touched as traders. Sixty years later, a study of this beautiful work using isotopic analysis concluded that the gold came from a nearby Spanish mine; but it was also determined that the ornaments were crafted using Phoenician techniques. In a 2,year-old Phoenician wreck was discovered off the coast of Malta that had carried a shipment of grinding stones made of lava rock and scores of amphorae.
We can only hope that more discoveries will be made revealing new secrets about this culture. Modern sculpture of Herodotus Born c. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that, in bygone days, the Phoenicians taught the Greeks of Boeotia the writing system that would eventually become the Greek alphabet. He also noted that Phoenician traders brought frankincense to the Aegean; and taught the Greeks the word for an exotic spice: cinnamon.
Antique engraving of Phoenician funerary monuments, Necropolis of Amrit, Syria The Phoenician religion was polytheistic, and their gods required sacrifices to forestall disaster, especially Baal, the God of Storms, and his consort Tanit. Made from Greek marble. The high point of Phoenician culture and sea power is usually placed c. Archeology has identified cultural elements of the Phoenician zenith as early as the 3rd millennium BCE. The league of independent city-state ports, with others on the islands and along other coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, was ideally suited for trade between the Levant area which was rich in natural resources and the rest of the ancient world.
In the resulting power vacuum, a number of Phoenician cities rose as significant maritime powers. These societies rested on three power-bases: the king; the temple and its priests; and the councils of elders. Byblos first became the predominant center from where the Phoenicians dominated the Mediterranean and Erythraean Red Sea routes. It was here that the first inscription in the Phoenician alphabet was found, on the sarcophagus of Ahiram c. Tyre rose to power several hundred years later.
The collection of city-states constituting Phoenicia came to be characterized by outsiders and the Phoenicians as Sidonia or Tyria. Phoenicians and Canaanites alike were called Sidonians or Tyrians, as one Phoenician city came to prominence after another. Though these vassal kingdoms prospered and furnished fleets for the Persian kings, Phoenician influence declined after this period. It is likely that much of the Phoenician population migrated to Carthage and other colonies following the Persian conquest.
Phoenician culture disappeared entirely in the motherland. Carthage continued to flourish in North Africa. It oversaw the mining of iron and precious metals from Iberia, and used its considerable naval power and mercenary armies to protect commercial interests.
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