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# The Phoenicians: Traders of the Ancient Mediterranean The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking people whose city-states lined the narrow coast of the eastern Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad were never a single kingdom. Each city had its own king, and the people thought of themselves as Tyrians or Sidonians rather than Phoenicians, a name the Greeks gave them. Their great age ran from roughly 1200 to 300 BCE, after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires left the sea lanes open. Trade was the foundation of their wealth. The mountains behind the coast held the cedar forests that Egypt and Mesopotamia lacked, and Phoenician timber went into temples, palaces and ships across the region. They also sold glassware, ivory, metalwork, wine and olive oil, and they carried copper from Cyprus, and silver and tin from Iberia, between distant markets. Their most famous product was Tyrian purple, a dye made from murex sea snails. Workers crushed the snails and left them to steep in vats for days, and the stench of the dye works carried far beyond the city walls. Thousands of shells yielded only a few grams of dye, but the colour deepened in sunlight instead of fading. Purple cloth became a mark of royalty from Persia to Rome, and the Greek name Phoenicia may itself come from phoinix, a word for that reddish purple. To reach their markets the Phoenicians became the boldest sailors of their time. Broad merchant ships carried cargo, oared galleys protected it, and Greek writers credited Phoenician pilots with steering at night by the Little Bear. Their longest voyage was around Africa. Herodotus reports that around 600 BCE the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II sent a Phoenician crew south from the Red Sea to sail around Africa. Each autumn they landed, sowed grain and waited for the harvest, and in the third year they returned through the Strait of Gibraltar. Herodotus doubted their claim that the sun had stood on their right, to the north, yet that detail is exactly what sailors south of the equator would see, and it is why many historians think the voyage really happened. Trading posts grew into permanent settlements across the western Mediterranean and beyond. Gadir, modern Cádiz, sat outside the Strait facing the Atlantic. The most important was Carthage, founded by settlers from Tyre, traditionally in 814 BCE, which later became a great power in its own right. Perhaps the most lasting Phoenician export was writing. By about 1050 BCE they used an alphabet of 22 letters, each standing for a consonant. The Greeks adopted it and added vowels, and through Greek and Latin it became the ancestor of most Western alphabets. Larger empires closed in. Assyrian kings demanded heavy tribute, and under the Persian Empire the cities supplied fleets for Persian wars. In 332 BCE Alexander the Great built a causeway to the island city of Tyre and took it after a seven-month siege, and Carthage, the last great Phoenician power, fell to Rome in 146 BCE.

# The Phoenicians: Traders of the Ancient Mediterranean The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking people whose city-states lined the narrow coast of the eastern Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad were never a single kingdom. Each city had its own king, and the people thought of themselves as Tyrians or Sidonians rather than Phoenicians, a name the Greeks gave them. Their great age ran from roughly 1200 to 300 BCE, after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires left the sea lanes open. Trade was the foundation of their wealth. The mountains behind the coast held the cedar forests that Egypt and Mesopotamia lacked, and Phoenician timber went into temples, palaces and ships across the region. They also sold glassware, ivory, metalwork, wine and olive oil, and they carried copper from Cyprus, and silver and tin from Iberia, between distant markets. Their most famous product was Tyrian purple, a dye made from murex sea snails. Workers crushed the snails and left them to steep in vats for days, and the stench of the dye works carried far beyond the city walls. Thousands of shells yielded only a few grams of dye, but the colour deepened in sunlight instead of fading. Purple cloth became a mark of royalty from Persia to Rome, and the Greek name Phoenicia may itself come from phoinix, a word for that reddish purple. To reach their markets the Phoenicians became the boldest sailors of their time. Broad merchant ships carried cargo, oared galleys protected it, and Greek writers credited Phoenician pilots with steering at night by the Little Bear. Their longest voyage was around Africa. Herodotus reports that around 600 BCE the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II sent a Phoenician crew south from the Red Sea to sail around Africa. Each autumn they landed, sowed grain and waited for the harvest, and in the third year they returned through the Strait of Gibraltar. Herodotus doubted their claim that the sun had stood on their right, to the north, yet that detail is exactly what sailors south of the equator would see, and it is why many historians think the voyage really happened. Trading posts grew into permanent settlements across the western Mediterranean and beyond. Gadir, modern Cádiz, sat outside the Strait facing the Atlantic. The most important was Carthage, founded by settlers from Tyre, traditionally in 814 BCE, which later became a great power in its own right. Perhaps the most lasting Phoenician export was writing. By about 1050 BCE they used an alphabet of 22 letters, each standing for a consonant. The Greeks adopted it and added vowels, and through Greek and Latin it became the ancestor of most Western alphabets. Larger empires closed in. Assyrian kings demanded heavy tribute, and under the Persian Empire the cities supplied fleets for Persian wars. In 332 BCE Alexander the Great built a causeway to the island city of Tyre and took it after a seven-month siege, and Carthage, the last great Phoenician power, fell to Rome in 146 BCE.

# The Phoenicians: Traders of the Ancient Mediterranean The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking people whose city-states lined the narrow coast of the eastern Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad were never a single kingdom. Each city had its own king, and the people thought of themselves as Tyrians or Sidonians rather than Phoenicians, a name the Greeks gave them. Their great age ran from roughly 1200 to 300 BCE, after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires left the sea lanes open. Trade was the foundation of their wealth. The mountains behind the coast held the cedar forests that Egypt and Mesopotamia lacked, and Phoenician timber went into temples, palaces and ships across the region. They also sold glassware, ivory, metalwork, wine and olive oil, and they carried copper from Cyprus, and silver and tin from Iberia, between distant markets. Their most famous product was Tyrian purple, a dye made from murex sea snails. Workers crushed the snails and left them to steep in vats for days, and the stench of the dye works carried far beyond the city walls. Thousands of shells yielded only a few grams of dye, but the colour deepened in sunlight instead of fading. Purple cloth became a mark of royalty from Persia to Rome, and the Greek name Phoenicia may itself come from phoinix, a word for that reddish purple. To reach their markets the Phoenicians became the boldest sailors of their time. Broad merchant ships carried cargo, oared galleys protected it, and Greek writers credited Phoenician pilots with steering at night by the Little Bear. Their longest voyage was around Africa. Herodotus reports that around 600 BCE the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II sent a Phoenician crew south from the Red Sea to sail around Africa. Each autumn they landed, sowed grain and waited for the harvest, and in the third year they returned through the Strait of Gibraltar. Herodotus doubted their claim that the sun had stood on their right, to the north, yet that detail is exactly what sailors south of the equator would see, and it is why many historians think the voyage really happened. Trading posts grew into permanent settlements across the western Mediterranean and beyond. Gadir, modern Cádiz, sat outside the Strait facing the Atlantic. The most important was Carthage, founded by settlers from Tyre, traditionally in 814 BCE, which later became a great power in its own right. Perhaps the most lasting Phoenician export was writing. By about 1050 BCE they used an alphabet of 22 letters, each standing for a consonant. The Greeks adopted it and added vowels, and through Greek and Latin it became the ancestor of most Western alphabets. Larger empires closed in. Assyrian kings demanded heavy tribute, and under the Persian Empire the cities supplied fleets for Persian wars. In 332 BCE Alexander the Great built a causeway to the island city of Tyre and took it after a seven-month siege, and Carthage, the last great Phoenician power, fell to Rome in 146 BCE.