Phoenicia
Phoenicia was an ancient
civilization in the north of ancient
Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains of what is now
Lebanon. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising
maritime trading culture that spread right across the
Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. Though ancient boundaries of such city-centered cultures fluctuated, the city of
Tyre seems to have been the southernmost.
Sarepta between
Sidon and Tyre, is the most thoroughly excavated city of the Phoenician homeland. Although the people of the region most likely called themselves the
kena'ani, the name
Phoenicia became common thanks to the Greeks who called the land
Phoiniki -
Φοινίκη (
Phoiník"; see also
List of traditional Greek place names). This term had been borrowed from Ancient Egyptian
Fnkhw "Syrians". Due to phonetic similarity, the Greek word for Phoenician was synonymous with the color purple or crimson, (
phoînix), through its close association with the famous dye
Tyrian purple (cf. also
Phoenix). The dye was used in ancient textile trade, and highly desired. The Phoenicians became known as the 'Purple People'. The Phoenicians often traded by means of a galley, which is a man-powered ship.
The Phoenicians spoke the
Phoenician language, counted among the
Canaanite languages in the
Semitic language family. In addition to their many inscriptions, the Phoenicians, contrary to some reports, wrote many books that have not survived.
Evangelical Preparation by
Eusebius of Caesarea quotes extensively from
Philo of Byblos and
Sanchuniathon. Furthermore, the Phoenician Punic colonies of
North Africa continued to be a source of knowledge about the Phoenicians.
Saint Augustine knew at least a smattering of
Punic and occasionally uses it to explain cognate words found in Hebrew. The name of his mother,
Saint Monica, is said to be of Punic origin as well.
Recent DNA (Y chromosome) studies conducted by the National Geographic Magazine on the bones of ancient Phoenicians and living people from Lebanon and elsewhere in the Mediterranean prove that both Muslims and Christians from those areas carry the same ancient Phoenician genetic material. Further, the Phoenician bloodline has been proven to come from an ancient Mediterranean sub-stratum (see: Arniaz-Villena, et al. "HLA genes in Macedonians..." Tissue Antigens, February 2001, volume 57, issue 2, pages 118-12). The stories of their emigrating to the eastern Mediterranean are unfounded. Hence,
Herodotus's account (written c. 440 BC) refers to a faint memory from 1000 years earlier, and so may be subject to question (
History, I:1):
"According to the
Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began to quarrel. This people, who had formerly reached the shores of the
Erythraean Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean from an unknown origin and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria..."
But this is merely a legendary introduction to Herodotus' brief retelling of some mythic Hellene-Phoenician interactions: he follows directly with succinct accounts of the abduction of
Io from Pylos, and the retaliatory abduction of
Europa by the
Cretans. "The Cretans say that it was not they who did this act, but rather Zeus, enamored of the fair Europa, who disguised himself as a bull, gained the maiden's affections, and thence carried her off to Crete, where she bore three sons by Zeus: Sarpedon, Rhadamanthys, and Minos, later king of all Crete." Few modern archaeologists would confuse this myth with history.
In terms of archaeology, language, and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other local cultures of Canaan because they were Canaanites themselves. However, they are unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements. Indeed, in the
Amarna tablets of the
14th century BC they call themselves
Kenaani or
Kinaani (Canaanites); and even much later in the
6th century BC,
Hecataeus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called
χνα, a name Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix".
To many archaeologists therefore, the Phoenicians are simply indistinguishable from the descendants of coastal-dwelling Canaanites, who over the centuries developed a particular seagoing culture and skills. But others believe equally firmly, like Herodotus, that the Phoenician culture must have been inspired from an external source. All manner of suggestions have been made: that the Phoenicians were sea-traders from the
Land of Punt who co-opted the Canaanite population; or that they were connected with the
Minoans; or the
Sea Peoples or the
Philistines further south; or on the other side of the fence, that they represent the activities of supposed coastal maritime
Israelite tribes like
Dan.
While the Semitic language of the Phoenicians, and some evidence of invasion at the site of Byblos, suggest origins in the wave of Semitic migration that hit the
Fertile Crescent between 2300 and 2100 BC, many scholars, including
Sabatino Moscati believe that the Phoenicians evolved from a prior non-Semitic people of the area, suggesting a mixture between the two populations. Historian
Gerhard Herm further asserts that, because the Phoenicians' legendary sailing abilities are not well attested before the invasions of the Sea Peoples around 1200 BC, that these Sea Peoples would have merged with the local population to produce the Phoenicians, who seemingly gained these abilities rather suddenly at that time. This idea is backed up by archaeological evidence that the Philistines, often thought of as related to the Sea Peoples, were culturally linked to
Mycenaean Greeks, who were also known to be great sailors even in this period.
The question of the Phoenicians' origin persists. Professional archaeologists have pursuing the origins of the Phoenicians for generations, basing their analysis in the mainstream of excavated sites, the remains of material culture, contemporary texts set into contemporary contexts, and the even more slippery slopes of
linguistics. In some cases, the debate is charazterized by modern cultural agendas. Ultimately, the origins of the Phoenicians are still unclear: where they came from and just when (or if) they arrived, and under what circumstances, are all still energetically disputed.
Some Lebanese, Syrians, Maltese, Tunisians, Algerians and a small percentage of Somalis, along with certain other island folk in the Mediterranean, still consider themselves descendants of Phoenicians. The
Melungeons are also sometimes claimed to be descendants of the Phoenicians. Studies on the Maltese have proven that 50% carry Phoenician genetic materials (see National Geographic Study by Wells and Zalloua).
|
Phoenician sarcophagus found in Cadiz, Spain; now in Archaeological Museum of Cádiz. The sarcophagus is thought to have been designed and paid for by a Phoenician merchant, and made in Greece with Egyptian influence. |
Fernand Braudel remarked (in
The Perspective of the World) that Phoenicia was an early example of a "world-economy" surrounded by empires. The high point of Phoenician culture and seapower is usually placed ca 1200 " 800 BC.
Many of the most important Phoenician settlements had been established long before this:
Byblos,
Tyre,
Sidon,
Simyra,
Aradus and
Berytus all appear in the Amarna tablets; and indeed, the first appearance in archaeology of cultural elements clearly identifiable with the Phoenician zenith is sometimes dated as early as the third millennium BC.
This 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, rich in natural resources, and the rest of the ancient world. Suddenly, during the early
Iron Age, in around 1200 BC, an unknown event occurred, historically associated with the appearance of the
Sea Peoples. The powers that had previously dominated the area, notably the
Egyptians and the
Hittites, became weakened or destroyed; and in the resulting power vacuum a number of Phoenician cities established themselves as significant maritime powers.
Authority seems to have stabilized because it derived from three power-bases: the king; the temple and its priests; and councils of elders. Byblos soon became the predominant centre from where they proceeded to dominate the Mediterranean and Erythraean (Red) Sea routes. However, Byblos was attacked by successive invaders, and by around 1000 BC Tyre and Sidon had taken its place. The collection of city-kingdoms constituting Phoenicia came to be characterized by outsiders and the Phoenicians themselves as
Sidonia or
Tyria, and Phoenicians and Canaanites alike came to be called
Zidonians or
Tyrians, as one Phoenician conquest came to prominence after another.
|
Map of Phoenicia and trade routes. |
In the centuries following 1200 BC, the Phoenicians formed the major naval and trading power of the region. Perhaps it was through these merchants that the Hebrew word
kena'ani ('Canaanite') came to have the secondary, and apt, meaning of "merchant". The Greek term "Tyrian purple" describes the dye they were especially famous for, and their port town Tyre. The Phoenicians also traded cedar for making ships and other things. Phoenician trade was founded on this violet-purple dye derived from the
Murex sea-snail's shell, once profusely available in coastal waters but exploited to local extinction.
James B. Pritchard's excavations at
Sarepta in Lebanon revealed crushed Murex shells and pottery containers stained with the dye that was being produced at the site. Brilliant textiles were a part of Phoenician wealth. Phoenician
glass was another export ware. Phoenicians seem to have first discovered the technique of producing transparent glass. Phoenicians also shipped tall
Lebanon cedars to Egypt, a civilization that consumed more wood than it could produce. Indeed, the Amarna tablets suggest that in this manner the Phoenicians paid tribute to Egypt in the
14th century BC.
From elsewhere they got many other materials, perhaps the most important being
tin and
silver from
Spain and possibly even
Cornwall on
Great Britain, that together with
copper (from
Cyprus) was used to make
bronze. Trade routes from
Asia converged on the Phoenician coast as well, enabling the Phoenicians to govern trade between
Mesopotamia on the one side, and
Egypt and
Arabia on the other.
The Phoenicians established commercial outposts throughout the
Mediterranean, the most strategically important ones being
Carthage in
North Africa, and directly across the narrow straits in
Sicily — carefully selected with the design of monopolizing the Mediterranean trade beyond that point and keeping their rivals from passing through. Other colonies were planted in
Cyprus,
Corsica,
Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, and elsewhere. They also founded innumerable small outposts a day's sail away from each other all along the North African coast on the route to Spain's mineral wealth. (The name
Spain comes from the Phoenician word
I-Shaphan, meaning, thanks to an early double misidentification, 'island of
hyraxes'.)
The date when many of these cities were founded has been very controversial. Greek sources put the foundation of many cities very early.
Gades (Cadiz) in Spain was traditionally founded in
1110 BC, while
Utica in Africa was supposedly founded in
1101 BC. However, no archaeological remains have been dated to such a remote era. The traditional dates may reflect the establishment of rudimentary way stations that left little archaeological trace, and only grew into full cities centuries later. (
The World of the Phoenicians, Sabatino Moscati, 1965). Alternatively, the early dates may reflect Greek historians' belief that the legends of Troy (mentioning these cities) were historically reliable.
Phoenician ships used to ply the coast of southern Spain and along the coast of present-day Portugal. The fishermen of
Nazaré and
Aveiro in Portugal are traditionally of Phoenician descent. This can be seen today in the unusual and ancient design of their boats which have soaring pointed bows and are painted with mystical symbols. It is often mentioned that Phoenicians ventured north into the Atlantic ocean as far as Great Britain, where the tin mines in what is now Cornwall provided them with important materials, although no archaeological evidence supports this belief. They also sailed south along the coast of
Africa. A Carthaginian expedition led by
Hanno the Navigator explored and colonized the Atlantic coast of Africa as far as the
Gulf of Guinea; and according to Herodotus, a Phoenician expedition sent down the
Red Sea by pharaoh
Necho II of Egypt (c. 600 BC) even
circumnavigated Africa and returned through the
Pillars of Hercules in three years.
The Phoenicians were not an agricultural people, because most of the land was not arable; therefore, they focused on commerce and trading instead. They did, however, raise
sheep and sell them and their wool.
The Phoenicians exerted considerable influence on the other groups around the Mediterranean, notably the Greeks, who later became their main commercial rivals. They appear in Greek mythology. Traditionally, the city of
Thebes was founded by a Phoenician prince named
Cadmus when he set out to look for his sister
Europa, who had been kidnapped by Zeus.
In the
Bible, king
Hiram I of Tyre is mentioned as co-operating with
Solomon in mounting an expedition on the
Red Sea and on building the
temple. The
Temple of Solomon is considered to be built according to Phoenician design, and its description is considered the best description of what a Phoenician temple looked like. Phoenicians from Syria were also called
Syrophenicians.
The
Phoenician alphabet was developed around
1200 BC from an earlier Semitic prototype that also gave rise to the
Ugaritic alphabet. It was used mainly for commercial notes. The
Greek alphabet, that forms the basis of all European
alphabets, was derived from the Phoenician one. The alphabets of the
Middle East and
India are also thought to derive, directly or indirectly, from the Phoenician alphabet. Ironically, the Phoenicians themselves are mostly silent on their own history, possibly because they wrote on perishable materials, papyrus or skins. Other than the stone inscriptions, Phoenician writing has largely perished. There are a very few writers such as Sanchunathion quoted only in later works, and the Phoenicians were described by
Sallust and
Augustine as having possessed an extensive literature, but of this, only a single work survives, in Latin translation: Mago's
Agriculture. What we know of them comes mainly from their neighbors, the Greeks and Hebrews.
With the rise of
Assyria, the Phoenician cities one by one lost their independence; however the city of Tyre, situated just off the mainland and protected by powerful fleets, proved impossible to take for the Assyrians, and many others after them. The Phoenician cities were later dominated by
Babylonia, then
Persia. They remained very important, however, and provided these powers with their main source of naval strength. The stacked warships, such as
triremes and
quinqueremes, were probably Phoenician inventions, though eagerly adopted by the Greeks.
Map Of Phoenicia's Trade routes:[
1]
Cyrus the Great conquered Phoenicia in 538 BC. Phoenicia accepted rule by the Persians, and Phoenician influence declined after this. It is also reasonable to suppose that much of the Phoenician population migrated to Carthage and other colonies following the Persian conquest, as it is roughly then (under King
Hanno) that we first hear of Carthage as a powerful maritime entity.
Later, the rise of
Hellenistic Greece eventually ousted the remnants of Phoenicia's former dominance over the Eastern Mediterranean trade routes, and Phoenician culture disappeared entirely in the motherland. However, its North African offspring, Carthage, continued to flourish, mining iron and precious metals from Iberia, and using its considerable naval power and mercenary armies to protect its commercial interests until it was finally destroyed by Rome ca. 149 BC at the end of the
Punic Wars.
Information on Phoenician cities and their hinterlands under the Achaemenid Persians is sparse. The famous event is the revolt of Sidon against Achaemenid rule in
345 BC and its destruction, dramatically (perhaps
too dramatically) described by
Diodorus Siculus. The arrival of
Alexander the Great in
333 –
332 BC is the main turning point, for Hellenistic Phoenicia lost its influential mercantile role, and the distinctive culture of its cities was Hellenized under Alexander and his Hellenic successors. The responses of the individual Phoenician cities to Alexander's conquest of Persia varied: the ruler of Aradus submitted; the king of Sidon was overthrown (perhaps by internal plotters who valued the city more than their king). Tyre resisted with the most energy. It was captured after a prolonged siege, one of the most famous sieges in Antiquity (see
Siege of Tyre), and Alexander was exceptionally harsh. He executed 2000 of the leading citizens, but maintained the king in power. A popular king who owed everything to Alexander, made for a more secure city than a deeply-rooted local oligarchy. If Tyre was meant to set an example, it was effective: the Phoenician resistance was utterly broken, and no Phoenician city thereafter seems to have resisted occupation. In the following decades, shifting frontiers between Ptolemaic armies, and Antigonid or Seleucid forces, required some flexible diplomacy and alacrity in accepting a new alliance. This is the period when the cult of
Tyche, goddess of Fortune, reached a prominence it had never enjoyed before.
In
287 –
225 BC, after decades of meaningless violence and small empty victories that simply ravaged the countryside, the Ptolemies regained some stabilized control of the cities (except for Aradus), and the last of the old Phoenician city-kings disappeared. In their new forms, the cities were scarcely different from the Greek cities interspersed along the coastal plain - all nominal republics with a very limited suffrage, and autonomy that was formal and local, while they were ruled from a distance by a great king at Alexandria. The center of Phoenician power had shifted westward to the Tyrian colony of
Carthage, that had not merely gained its independence, but had become a major power in the Western Mediterranean in its own right. At the beginning of the
2nd century BC, the Seleucid monarchy had finally reasserted its primacy on the former Phoenician coast, but the last Seleucid kings' local power was increasingly a fiction, as the cities, now thoroughly Hellenistic, regained local independence.
From the
10th century BC, their expansive culture established cities and colonies throughout the Mediterranean. Canaanite deities like
Baal and
Astarte were being worshipped from Cyprus to Sardinia, Malta, Sicily, and most notably at Carthage in modern Tunisia.
In the Phoenician homeland:
*
Arka*
Arwad (Classical Aradus)
*
Batroun*
Berut (
Greek 'ηρυτός;
Latin Berytus;
Arabic بيروت;
English Beirut)
*
Byblos*
Safita*
Sidon*
Tripoli*
Tyre*
Ugarit*
Zemar (
Sumur)
Phoenician colonies, including some unimportant ones (this list may be incomplete):
* Located in modern
Algeria**
Hippo Regius (modern
Annaba)
** Iol Caesarea (modern
Cherchell)
* Located in modern
Cyprus** Kition (modern
Larnaca)
* Located in modern
Italy**
Sardinia*** Karalis (modern
Cagliari)
***
Nora***
Olbia***
Sulci***
Tharros**
Sicily*** Ziz, Classical Lilybeaum (modern
Marsala)
***
Motya*** Panormos (modern
Palermo)
* Located in modern
Libya**
Leptis Magna** Oea (modern
Tripoli)
**
Sabratha* Located in modern
Mauritania**
Cerne* Located in modern
Morocco**
Acra**
Arambys**
Caricus Murus** Gytta
**
Lixus (modern
Larache)
** Tingis (modern
Tangier)
* Located in modern
Spain**
Abdera (modern
Adra)
** Abyla (modern
Ceuta)
** Akra Leuke (modern
Alicante)
** Gadir (modern
Cádiz)
** Ibossim (modern
Ibiza)
** Malaca (modern
Málaga)
** Onoba (modern
Huelva)
**
Qart Hadašt (
Greek Νέα Καρχηδόνα;
Latin Carthago Nova;
Spanish Cartagena)
** Rusadir (modern
Melilla)
**
Sexi (modern
Almuñécar)
* Located in modern
Tunisia**
Hadrumetum (modern
Susat)
**
Qart Hadašt (
Greek Καρχηδόνα;
Latin Carthago;
English Carthage)
**
Thapsus (near modern
Bekalta)
**
Utica* Located in modern
Turkey** Phoenicus (modern
Finike)
* Other colonies
**
Calpe (modern
Gibraltar)
**
Gunugu**
Hippo Diarrhytus**
Thenae**
TipassaThe Phoenicians are credited with developing the
Phoenician alphabet. They are known to have created the first syllabic language that used phonics. The Phoenician alphabet arose around 1400 BC from a need to communicate with the diverse languages of their trading partners that encircled the Mediterranean Sea. Their 22-letter alphabet based on sound was widely received, as opposed to the myriad of symbols in cuneiform or hieroglyphics prevalent at the time. The Phoenician alphabetserved as the origin of the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic alphabets. Phoenician traders disseminated the concept along Aegean trade routes, to coastal Anatolia (Turkey), the Minoan civilization of Crete, Mycenean Greece, and throughout the Mediterranean. Classical Greeks remembered that the alphabet arrived in Greece with the mythical founder of Thebes,
Cadmus.
The Phoenician alphabet has been termed an
abjad or a script that contains no vowels. A
cuneiform abjad originated to the north in
Ugarit, a Canaanite city of northern Syria, in the
14th century BC. Their language,
Phoenician, has been considered by some authorities as a Northwest
Semitic language of the
Canaanite subgroup. Its later descendant in
North Africa is termed
Punic.
The
Amarna letters, dated to the 14th century BC, although written in
Akkadian, the language of diplomacy at the time, contain solecisms that are not 'mistakes', but actually early Canaanite words and phrases.
The earliest known inscriptions in Phoenician come from Byblos and date back to ca. 1000 BC. Phoenician inscriptions are found in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Cyprus and other locations, as late as the early centuries of the Christian Era. Punic, a language that developed from Phoenician in Phoenician colonies around the western Mediterranean beginning in the
9th century BC, slowly supplanted Phoenician there, similar to the way Italian supplanted Latin. Punic Phoenician was still spoken in the 5th century CE: St. Augustine, for example, grew up in
North Africa and was familiar with the language.
In the Old Testament there is no reference to the Greek term
Phoenicia; instead, the inhabitants of the coastal are identified by their city of origin, most often as
Sidonians (Gen. x. 15; Judges iii. 3; x. 6, xviii. 7; I Kings v. 20, xvi. 31). Early relations between Israelites and the Canaanites were cordial:
Hiram of Tyre, a Phoenician by modern assessment, furnished architects, workmen and cedar timbers for the temple of his ally
Solomon at Jerusalem. The
Phoenician language was largely mutually intellegible with the
Hebrew language, and cultural similarities between the two peoples were significant, leading to the worship of Phoenician gods like
Baal by some Jews during the time of
Prophet Elijah.
Of course there is another Hiram (also spelled Huran) associated with the building of the temple."2Ch 2:14 The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father [was] a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him..."This is the architect of the Temple, Hiram Abiff of Masonic lore.
Later, reforming prophets railed against the practice of drawing royal wives from among foreigners:
Elijah execrated
Jezebel, the princess from Tyre who became a consort of King
Ahab and introduced the
worship of her gods.
Long after Phoenician culture had flourished, or Phoenicia had existed as any political entity, Hellenized natives of the region where Canaanites still lived were referred to as "Syro-Phoenician", as in the
Gospel of Mark 7:26: "The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth..."
The word
Bible itself ultimately derives (through Latin and Greek) from
Byblos, the Phoenician city.Because of its papyruses, Byblos was also the source of the Greek word for book and, hence, of the name of the Bible.
*Aubet, Maria Eugenia,
The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, tr. Mary Turton (
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2001: review)*Johnston, T. C. 1913 [1892] Did the Phoenicians Discover America? J. Nisbet, London.
*Sanford Holst, "Phoenicians, Lebanon's Epic Heritage." Cambridge and Boston Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
The History of Phoenicia, first published in 1889 by
George Rawlinson is available under
Project Gutenberg at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2331 Rawlinson's 19th century text needs updating for modern improvements in historical understanding.
*
Encyclopedia Phoeniciana website largest and most comprehensive website on Phoenicia about 1,200 pages
*
University of Pennsylvania Museum offers simplified but unbiased information on Canaan and Phoenicians, emphasizing common aspects of culture among Israel and the other kingdoms in Canaan.*
Phoenician history Lebanese point of view.*
Phoenicians overview by Genry Joil.
*
Phoenicians in Cadiz bay (Spain) Punic Phoenician archaeology in Cadiz bay (Spain)
