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 Welcome
to Phoenicia!
It all
began in the Levant, the countries bordering on the eastern Mediterranean
between Egypt and Turkey. It was only natural that it begin there too.
At the western end of the Fertile Crescent, it was there that
westward-bound refugees and explorers would first find the mythical waters
of the Mediterranean. It was there that they would build their first
communities. It was from there that they would launch the beginnings of
their reluctant empire.
Byblos is believed to have been the first city of the Phoenician
homeland. Sidon and Tyre followed soon after and gained in relative
importance after the 13th century BC saw waves of raiders raze Byblos. As
demands for commerce increased and trade relations developed, the
Phoenician influence began to spread. Although by the 9th century BC,
settlements had reached much farther afield - as far as the North Africa
and Spanish coast, in the early years, Phoenician mingling remained
centered along the Levantine coast. Ugarit, to the north of Byblos first
fell under its spell. Later, points south grew into substantial
settlements, some of which are still known to us today as cities in modern
Israel, for example, Accho (today's Acre), Joppa (Tel Aviv-Yafo) and Dor (Nasholim).
After 1000 BC, when Tyre rose to prominence as the principal city of
Levantine Phoenicia, the imperial overlord of the moment, the Assyrians,
required regular tribute payments to their king. To satisfy this demand -
and Phoenician curiosity - traders pushed west in search of new resources
and commodities, founding great cities like Utica and Carthage. This
expansion was further encouraged by alliances between Tyre and Israel and
later by disruptive enemy raids. Unconfirmed tradition has it that they
had already sailed as far as Spain and the North African coast as early as
the 10th-12th centuries BC, but no evidence has been proven to confirm
these dates.
Unfortunately, as with much of what was once Phoenicia, little remains
of the great cities that stood at the center of this ancient maritime
power. None of the original buildings they lived in and temples they built
are still standing, and there is no great wealth of art depicting exactly
how they lived. In fact, it has taken chance and persistent digging just
to uncover some of the foundation traces of these intrepid people, despite
the once heralded majesty of their municipalities. And, albeit
informative, what has been physically brought to light does not pack the
same kind of punch that tripping through Pompeii or the Roman Forum does.
Nevertheless, the capital cities of Phoenicia's past - Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Ugarit and Carthage - are worth the trip, both for the discovery of
the people who inhabit the modern cities and for the academic thrill of
writing a postcard home from the place that made writing a letter home
possible in the first place.
The Phoenicians formed a reluctant empire. Having first made their mark
on the ancient Mediterranean world as consummate merchant traders and then
established protected colonial outposts along their shipping byways, they
accepted the mantle of imperial power by accident. However, unlike the
successive waves of conquest and subjugation led by their marauding
contemporaries - Egyptians, Assyrians/Babylonians, Persians, Greeks,
Romans - the Phoenicians never really had dreams of domination. Nor, for
that matter, were they ever really a nation, or a classic empire.
The earliest record of the Phoenicians is from the 16th century BC,
although it is believed that around 3000 BC they settled in what became
known as Phoenicia (from the Greek name, Phoinikes), an area equivalent to
the coast of modern-day Lebanon. A Semitic people perhaps originally from
the Persian Gulf area, they turned their backs on the sere land they had
crossed and developed one of the earliest ancient and great seafaring
Western cultures, using commerce as their principal motivation and source
of influence. In fact, their name for themselves seems to have been
Kena'ani (or Canaanites), a word which in Hebrew means "merchants."
The early Phoenicians were constantly subject to the suzerainty of
greater powers that vied for control of the Old World. Between the 16th
century BC and the 1st century AD, these enterprising levanters watched
the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks under Alexander,
and then the Romans sweep in, exact tribute, and then disappear.
Throughout it all they maintained a fierce sense of independence, and
often an envied autonomy. The first order of business was... business. As
long as the political maneuvering - internal or imposed - did not
interfere with trade and prosperity, it did not really matter which throne
laid claim to the land.
Nevertheless, not content to suffer the vicissitudes of foreign
manipulation and ever wary of the importance of freedom of movement
throughout the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians were eager and able
colonizers. As early as the 2nd millennium BC, there were Phoenician
settlements throughout the Mediterranean. The most important of these was
at Carthage, a center that grew to become the biggest city in the western
Mediterranean and the principal maritime and commercial center.
Eventually, however, conflict with Rome in the 3rd century BC led to its
total destruction, dispersion of its forces and people, and, for all
practical purposes, the end of the era of Phoenicia's part in the
development of the Mediterranean. It's people continued to thrive, trade
in their able hands continued to flourish, and despite Phoenicia's
incorporation into the Roman province of Syria, its original eastern city
centers at Sidon and Tyre remained self-governing. Still, Rome had become
the paramount player in the region.
In short, the Phoenicians were instrumental in establishing and
following a pattern that still prevails in Mediterranean (and world)
history. They arrived from a foreign land, bringing with them imported
knowledge and skills. These they applied to their new environment, adding
new cultural advances learned locally. Having excelled at seafaring in a
sea-turned land, they traveled and traded widely, thereby also gathering
and spreading knowledge throughout the region. Thus it was the cultures
mingled, ushering in a period of growth and development; thus too it was
that cultures collided, leading ultimately to the demise of this
peripatetic culture.
Source: Gorp
Places to Go!
{click on the map to visit the cities of Phoenicia}
People
to Meet!
Phoenician
Family Names ~ Barca,
Hasdrubal
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