Phoenicia centered on the coastal areas of modern day Lebanon and included chunks of modern day northern Israel and western Syria reaching as far north as Arwad. Scholars debate how far south Phoenicia reached, with many suggesting a southern border at Philistine Ashkelon. Phoenicia was elongated north-to-south and ran along a narrow Mediterranean coastal strip for two hundred miles from the island of Aradus (modern Arwad) in the north to Tyre in the south. Its eastern boundary was marked by the Lebanon mountain range and the Mediterranean served as Phoenicia’s western boundary. Phoenicia’s heartland in the coastal plains made it a fertile country: though rain fell along the coastal plains only in the winter, mountain springs from the Lebanon mountains provided water year round for agriculture. Though Phoenicians were foremost marine traders, constructing most of their cities around natural harbors, they funded their merchant adventures with the ‘cedars of Lebanon,’ those great coniferous forests that once blanketed the Lebanon Mountains. These forests were rich sources not only of lumber and wood but also of oil and resin, all of which served as coveted exports for Phoenician merchants.
The term Phoenicia comes from ancient Greek and was used in everyday speech to refer to one of Phoenicia’s chief exports (beside ‘cedars of Lebanon’): a cloth dyed Tyrian purple from the Murex mollusk. The term Phoenicia doesn’t refer to a single ‘nation’ of Phoenicia but, rather, to the major port towns that expressed a particular culture. Just as the Greeks, Philistines, and Arameans were collections of various city-states, so, too, was the case with Phoenicia: rather than a central government with a king, it was a culture linked by economic and cultural ties but which was governed by an allotment of city-states vying for power. Notable city-states included Tyre, Sidon, Arwad, Berytus, Byblos, and (in due time) Carthage. As city-states, each city was a politically independent entity that exercised control over its dominions – dominions which were often won and lost in competition with neighboring city-states. Phoenicians didn’t have any ‘nationalist’ bent towards their overarching culture; they were fiercely loyal to city-states (and their respective chief deities), and their shared culture with their Phoenician neighbors didn’t foster any particular affection. What mattered to Phoenicians was their king, their temples and priests, and the councils of elders who ruled over the city-states. Interestingly, there was little in culture and architecture that was markedly ‘Phoenician,’ so that in culture and lifestyles the Phoenicians could easily get lost in a crowd with other peoples of the Levant (one particular exception to this was the Phoenician alphabet; the Phoenicians were one of the first societies to make extensive use of alphabets). Nevertheless, there was a collection of city-states that came to be characterized by outsiders – and the Phoenicians themselves – as Sidonia or Tyria. When the city-state of Sidon had the upper-hand, Phoenicians were known as Sidonians; when Tyre became more powerful than Sidon, they became known as Tyrians.
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| The Phoenician Alphabet |
The reason for the overbearing similarities between the Phoenicians and other peoples of the Levant is that Phoenicia’s roots lie (like her neighbors) in older Canaanite traditions. Even the famed Phoenician language with its alphabet was a later dialect of Canaanite. In the west, the Phoenician dialect of Carthage colony came to be known as Punic, and it was used into late Roman times. The ‘Punic’ of Carthage was just a host of Phoenician off-shoots; even the shoulder-to-shoulder city-states in Phoenicia proper had varying dialects, so that there was Byblian, Sidonian, Cypriot, and Cilician in addition to Punic. The Phoenician language was written in a consonantal alphabet, and it’s because of the transmission of this alphabet to Europe that the Phoenicians are largely remembered. From the mid-700s BC, Greek inscriptions began borrowing Phoenician script. Though it was long believed that the Phoenician alphabet was the predecessor to the Greek alphabet – and thus the deep-time ‘origins’ of the very alphabet you’re reading now! –modern historians tend to believe the origins of the western alphabet lie further south than Phoenicia.
Phoenician religion receives a bad rap in the Bible, but recent archaeological excavations have indicated that the reputation is warranted. The Phoenicians worshiped a number of deities, and plenty of their temples – both in the Phoenician heartland and in their overseas colonies – have been discovered. Our knowledge of the practice of their religion comes largely from biased Greek and Hebrew sources. Given that the Old Testament is unashamedly anti-Phoenician in its rhetoric, many scholars have questioned its reportage (though recent evidence does support the Hebraic vindictive). Phoenician deities were a concoction of gods and goddesses drawn from earlier Canaanite cultures and new gods who appeared around the first millennium BC. El, the creator and king of the gods at Ugarit, is mentioned only once in Phoenician texts; Astarte, of minor importance at Ugarit, takes center-stage in Iron Age Tyre and Sidon. Because Phoenician city-states lacked a federal hierarchy, there was no official religious pantheon, and each city claimed its own ‘patron deity’: in Tyre this was Melqart and in Sidon it was Baal-Sidon and Astarte. It’s probable that outlying towns and villages – under the thumb of domineering city-state but left otherwise to their own devices – had their own Canaanite pantheons and chief deities. Phoenician gods and goddesses include healing deities (e.g. Melqart, Eshmun, Shadrapa) and ‘dying and rising’ deities (e.g. Melqart and Eshmun – who were both healers and diers/risers – and Adonis). City-state kings were considered their states’ high priests serving whichever deity the city made its chief (this is why Jezebel, daughter of King Ethbaal of Tyre, was considered a ‘high priestess’ of the city’s Baal-Melqart cult). Interestingly, in westward Phoenician colonies, the functions of high priest fell to important families rather than dynastic heads, perhaps hinting at the colonies’ mercantile roots. These westward colonies served to spread Phoenician cults and temples, though the colonies – like the homeland – varied in their pantheons and chief deities (though ‘cults’ dedicated to Melqart, Eshmun, and Astarte remained popular). The rise of Carthage to overshadow its Phoenician founders resulted in the rise of particularly Carthaginian Phoenician religion: by the 400s BC Carthage’s chief deities were Baal-Hammon and Tannit, and from Carthage the worship of these deities spread through the Punic world. Scholars speculate that Baal-Hammon was derived from the Canaanite god El and that Tannit was derived from the Canaanite goddess Asherah.
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| the tophet (child cemetery) at Carthage |
As mentioned, Phoenician religion has gathered a bad reputation thanks to the Bible. Enlightenment scholars long argued that this was nothing more than Hebraic bias against a neighboring cult, but recent discoveries hint that the Hebrew writers knew what they were about. We know that Phoenician temples included artisans, sacrificers, cultic barbers, and temple prostitutes. Animals were regularly sacrificed – and children may have been sacrificed, too. This wouldn’t be too shocking, given that the Phoenician religion developed from earlier Canaanite beliefs and practices that included such appalling actions. Evidence of this may be found in the discovery of a tophet (or child cemetery) outside Carthage’s ancient city walls. This tophet contained twenty thousand urns filled with the remains of animals and children. A score of votive images and stone steles commemorate a religious rite called mlk that was done for Baal-Hammon and Tannit, and classical authors reference the Punic practice of sacrificing children in dire times – the votives may echo the practice of child sacrifice of which the classics speak. The Old Testament hints that such sacrifices were done with fire, as it prohibits the Israelites from ‘passing children through the fire.’
The Phoenicians whom we encounter in the Bible are actually a later phase of lengthy Phoenician development during the Iron Age (ca 1200-332 BC). Phoenician history during this period is drawn principally from classical historians, the Old Testament, Mesopotamian and Egyptian records, and the myths and legends of Homer (though the latter address themselves with Phoenician westward expansion). Actual stone-and-mortar archaeological remains from the Iron Age are rare, and we have no primary historical sources: the Phoenicians, being devout worshippers of their deities, wrote no history but much in regards to funeral rites, the building and repairing of temples, and dedicating objects to the gods. When history is touched upon, it doesn’t go far beyond giving the names of particular kings over certain city-states. Iron Age Phoenicia can be seen in two phases: from the beginning of the Sea Peoples invasion in the 1100s BC to the first Assyrian assault on Phoenicia by Ashurnasirpal II in 876; and from that point to Alexander the Great’s conquests in 332. In the wake of Alexander’s conquest, Phoenician cities were absorbed into the new Greek culture and lost their ‘civilized Canaanite’ flavor to the Hellenistic Age.
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| The Sea Peoples |
The story of Iron Age Phoenicia begins in the 1200s BC: the Phoenician city-states exist in the shadow of their towering neighbors, the Egyptian empire to the southwest and the Hittite empire to the north in Anatolia (modern day Turkey). The Egyptians and Hittites were in a constant state of war, as they threatened each other with only the Mediterranean Sea and the squabbling kingdoms of the Levant between them. Their ongoing rivalry was cut short around 1100 BC when the Sea Peoples shook the powers-that-be: over a period of years, waves of invaders blazed through the tenuous fabric of Near Eastern society. Though the origin and identity of the Sea Peoples is contested, most historians believe they were Greek refugees: around this time the city-states of Greece were barraged with the ‘Dorian Invasion,’ in which the city-states underwent a period of turbulence that produced ‘Classical Greece.’ The theory goes that the Mycenaean hegemony in Greece was shattered under this event and that Mycenaean refugees comprised the Sea Peoples. As the Sea Peoples invaded up and down the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the Egyptian Empire fought to protect its own borders and the Hittites were brought low. The kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean were shuffled and conflated and shuffled again; the balance of power was fractured and reassembled into loose echoes of its old self; and the Levant saw the emergence of new political heavy-weights such as the Philistines, Hebrews, and the Arameans. The Phoenician city-states clustered along the east coast thrived on Mediterranean trade, but historians are divided as to whether they learned seafaring techniques from the Sea Peoples that, when coupled with the lustfully-craved ‘cedars of Lebanon’ at their disposal, enabled them to dominate the Mediterranean trade in the power vacuum left by a fractured Mycenaean thalassocracy. Some historians believe that the Phoenicians had always practiced a maritime-fueled trade economy but that they’d just been overshadowed by Egypt to the south and the Hittites to the north. Though traditional historians tend towards the view that the Phoenicians learned maritime prowess from the refugee Sea Peoples and used that knowledge to dominate the Mediterranean after the collapse of the Mycenaean maritime networks, skeptics point out the lack of hard evidence of Sea Peoples in Phoenicia and argue that the Phoenician cities already had a long history of dominance in the eastern Mediterranean.
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| a replica of a Phoenician trading ship |
Whatever Phoenicia’s relationship with the Sea Peoples, she came out of the turbulent 1100s better for it. The Phoenician city-states experienced a ‘Golden Age’: freed from the heavy hands of the Hittites and able to defend against a weakened Egyptian navy, Phoenician maritime exports soared and trade thrived. She traded with a panoply of new neighbors: Philistia to the south (likely carved out by migrating Sea Peoples), northern Israel to the east, and Aramean city-states to the north and east. Two ancient documents date to this era of Peace and Prosperity after the Sea Peoples: the Egyptian ‘Story of Wenamon’ and an inscription by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I. The first tells of the commercial adventures of an Egyptian temple official who was dispatched to buy ‘Lebanon cedars’ from the Phoenician city-state of Byblos around 1075. The temple official tells of passing through the Philistine town of Dor and then through the Phoenicians ports of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and finally to the isle of Cyprus. He’s awed by the busy seaports. Tiglath-pileser I recounts how he went to the Lebanon Mountains to gather cedar to build a temple at the Assyrian capital, and he asserts that he received tribute from the Phoenician city-states of Byblos, Sidon, and Aradus.
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| the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos |
Byblos dominated Phoenicia during this ‘Golden Age’ with easy access to trade routes from both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Byblos is where the first instance of the Phoenician alphabet shows up. Byblos lost its dominance to the city-state of Tyre, and around 950 BC King Hiram of Tyre sealed a trade deal with King David in which he agreed to send the Israelite monarch cedar wood, carpenters, and stone-masons to assist in building David’s palace. David took advantage of the commercial roots of Tyre and Sidon to collect materials for the construction of Yahweh’s Temple. When his successor Solomon set about building the Temple, Solomon made a deal with Hiram in which he received lumber and artisans and paid for these services with annual shipments of wheat and olive oil (it’s interesting, then, that Phoenician artists participated in the construction of Solomon’s Temple). Later, Solomon and Hiram linked hands in a joint maritime adventure; together they built a ‘Solomonic Fleet’ that used ‘tarshish ships’ (large cargo ships named after smelting operations from which they carried raw materials) to conduct trade from the Red Sea port of Ezion-geber to Ophir (likely located along the Somali coast). The ‘tarshish ships’ belonged to Hiram and Solomon provided access to the Red Sea port.
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| the island port of Tyre (Tyre also had a mainland port) |
The later Tyrian king Ithobaal ruled from 887-856 and carried Tyre to unknown heights – and his daughter forever altered Israelite history. Ithobaal ruled over all of the Phoenician city-states including its rival Sidon; hence the Bible’s identification of Ithobaal as ‘King of the Sidonians.’ He expanded Phoenicia’s borders as far north as Beirut and even onto the island of Cyprus, and overseas colonies were founded in Libya and near Byblos. Ithobaal forged a treaty with King Omri of Israel; by this point Judah and northern Israel were divided, and Omri ruled over a flourishing Israel. That the two powers forged a treaty sealed by marriage indicates the wealth and prestige of the two countries. Ithobaal’s daughter Jezebal (known as ‘Jezebel’ in the Bible) married Omri’s son Ahab. When Ahab became king, Jezebel – a High Priestess of Baal – infected northern Israel with Phoenician religion. When Ahab and Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah was wedded to a future King of Judah, Phoenician religion infected Judah, too. Phoenician influence in northern Israel and Judah wouldn’t be eradicated until the purging reforms of Jehu around 840 BC.
It was during the height of the Tyrian Empire that the Assyrians became a major threat, and the post-Sea Peoples ‘Golden Age’ was brought to a calamitous halt. After gobbling up the remnants of the Hittite Empire, Assyria had focused its attention on the Aramean city-states that were prominently rising after being freed from the Hittite shadow. As the eastern menace overwhelmed Aramean city-states decade-by-decade, its shadow stretched to the Mediterranean and cast Phoenicia in troubling apprehension. The first Assyrian king to reach the Phoenician seacoast did so in 876 BC; his aim were to hold conquered territories close to Assyria’s inland borders, so he contented himself with tribute from Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and the island kingdom of Aradus along with numerous other coastal cities. Shalmaneser III ruled Assyria from 858-824 BC and conducted numerous campaigns into the region of Phoenicia. He received tribute from the major city-states of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, and he freely cut himself some cedar in the Amanus Mountains. The island-dwelling Phoenicians of Aradus couldn’t stomach such Assyrian high-handedness, and they contributed two hundred infantry to participate in the epic coalition showdown against Shalmaneser at Qarqar in 853. The Assyrian king Adad-nirari III ruled from 810-783 BC, and he raised tribute from Tyre and Sidon. Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled from 744-727, reported getting tribute from the kings of Byblos, Aradus, and Tyre.
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| the ancient ruins of Sidon's 'Sea Castle' |
For about 150 years – up until the reign of Sennacherib beginning in 704 BC – the Phoenician city-states were forced to pay tribute to the growing Assyrian Empire. Assyrian officials with an armed retinue were set up in the major cities to oversee (and enforce) the collection of the tribute and taxes on Phoenician exports. Though the Phoenicians no doubt hoped they could live in relative peace by ‘buying off’ the Assyrians, they were in reality just paying to postpone the inevitable. The Phoenicians were ‘barricaded’ from the Assyrians by the nations of Aram-Damascus and northern Israel, but it was just a matter of time before the barricades were knocked down and Assyria’s armies came knocking. The Assyrians were content to receive money from the Phoenicians since they lacked the ability to hold any Phoenician territory until Aram-Damascus and Israel were neutralized. The tributes paid to Assyria were high, and they were made in good faith. Many city-states happily embraced a vassal-like role to Assyria: they cared more about their trade and considered semi-autonomy a small price to pay for untroubled economic waters. Thus after Tiglath-pileser III’s conquest of Aram-Damascus in 732 and Shalmaneser V’s conquest of northern Israel in 722, the Phoenicians were caught exposed with their pants pulled down. They knew they were at Assyria’s mercy. Because they had paid their tribute in good faith, the Assyrians didn’t launch any immediate invasions; as a matter of honor they needed acts of bad faith from their vassals to execute any militant campaigns – but when the Phoenicians started getting bold, the Assyrians dropped the hammer hard. Rebellion or nonpayment of tributes was a capital offense with the penalty of destruction: it was a matter of justice to depose kings, sack cities, install ‘faithful’ puppet kings, and re-impose tribute. New kings who continued with the payments would be left alone. The preeminent city-state of Sidon ushered in a new dark age for Phoenicia when the king refused tribute to Sennacherib. The Assyrian king besieged and destroyed the city and conquered its dependencies; Sidon, which had enjoyed dominance over mainland Tyre and the northern Palestinian towns of Achzib and Acco, placed those territories right into Assyria’s hands. The Sidonian king was forced into exile on Cyprus, and a puppet king loyal to Sennacherib took the bloodied city’s reigns. Around 675 Sidon again revolted, and the Assyrian Esarhaddon leveled the city. The Sidonian king was beheaded, and the town was so devastated that a new city had to be built atop its ruins. By this point Tyre was no longer in Sidon’s shadow, having been given room to grow after Sennacherib’s sea of destruction; but its power waned when Esarhaddon conquered mainland Tyre and seized its vassal towns. Esarhaddon’s successor, Ashurbanipal, campaigned against Egypt, and the unconquered Tyrians in Tyre’s island stronghold surrendered after being cut off from food and water.
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the Battle of Pelusium 525 BC, after which Egypt became a
province of Persia |
As Assyrian dominance spread through Palestine, it necessarily came into contact with the southern power of Egypt. These two rivals were continually at odds throughout the ninth to sixth centuries, and Phoenician city-states were sometimes caught up in their squabbles. Phoenicians of Aradus fought side-by-side with the Egyptians at Qarqar in 853; Egypt assisted Hoshea of Israel against Shalmaneser V and fought against Sennacherib in 701. Esarhaddon invaded Egypt itself, shifting the epicenter of the conflict south of Palestine. Though most of the Egyptian-vs.-Assyrian campaigns were fought inland from the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes Phoenicia became a battleground. In this way Pharaoh Psammetichus I, around 615 BC, won sovereignty over a number of southern Phoenician city-states known as ‘the chiefs of Lebanon.’ Psammetichus campaigned against the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire in western Asia, as this new power threatened Egyptian interests in Canaan. Assyria was weakening due to the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire on her eastern borders, so Egyptian control of Phoenicia at this time isn’t remarkable. Egyptian tensions with New Babylon reached a pressure point with the Babylonian destruction of Assyria’s capital in Nineveh; in one fell swoop, the once-mighty Assyrian Empire disintegrated into a patchwork of territories in northern Syria centered around the city of Haran. Pharaoh Necho II (r. 610-595) jumped at the new power vacuum to extend Egyptian control into Palestine. With Egyptian forces holding down the Phoenician city-states, he was able to dispatch a Phoenician fleet down the Red Sea and around Africa to return to Egypt via the Straits of Gibraltar. Necho put on a friendly face with the desperate remnants of Assyria, and sensing that New Babylon was a greater threat, he choked his pride and joined hands with the ragged remains of his former menace. Together the Egyptians and Assyrians stood side-by-side against the Babylonians – and they were whollaped. Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon (r. 605-562 BC; a.k.a. ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ in the Bible) and his eastern Median allies trounced Necho II at Carchemish in 605 and put the Assyrians out of history once and for all when he took Haran. The Egyptian survivors hurried for home and New Babylon began exercising rule over Phoenicia. New Babylon rose out of Assyria’s ashes and Phoenicia once again became a focus-point between the southern and eastern empires. Necho’s successor, Pharaoh Psammetichus II (r. 595-589), lacked the strength to recoup Egyptian losses in Palestine, so Phoenicia was left under Babylonian sovereignty; Psammetichus instead sought to expand Egyptian power southward into Nubia. It’s interesting that he chose for this endeavor Phoenician mercenaries from the city-state of Tyre (ancient records mention of a ‘Tyrian’ encampment near Memphis). In the meantime Babylon focused on quelling revolts in Phoenicia and caring not to do it bloodlessly. Psammetichus II’s successor, Pharaoh Apries (r. 589-570), sought to reclaim Palestinian territories: he launched an army against and fought a naval battle with the Tyrians. Whether this happened before or after Nebuchadrezzar’s seizure of Tyre is unknown, but we know that Egypt’s campaigns were well-planned: a naval battle with Tyre was possible only because Egypt had built a new fleet of triremes. Apries’ campaigns ultimately failed, and the Phoenician city-states became Babylonian vassals. Nebuchadrezzar established a system akin to the Assyrians to maintain control, but this didn’t last long, as the glory days of New Babylon were short-lived: Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, was defeated by Cyrus II (‘The Great’) of Persia in 539 BC. Cambyses II of Persia defeated Pharaoh Psammetichus III at the brutal Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC; the beleaguered Pharaoh retreated to Memphis, but Cambyses took the city after a siege and put Egypt under Persian control.
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Phoenician ships served as transport shuttles for the Persians
during the Greco-Persian Wars |
Literally overnight the Phoenician city-states became vassals of Persia. Along with the island of Cyprus and a newly-won Egypt, the region became part of the Fifth Satrapy (or Province). The Persians placed their governor and his administration in Sidon. Persia made an effort to keep the Phoenicians happy, as she needed her Mediterranean trade to finance and supply operations against Greece. Phoenician ships served in his campaigns to transport food and troops to the Aegean as Persia warred against the Greek city-states. Most Phoenicians were glad to settle down in peace and prosperity under Persian rule, as it was a far cry from the turbulence of being pawns between Egypt and Babylon. Phoenician merchants were considerably happy, as they were the central hub of a trade network that reached from Gibraltar to Persia and from the Caucasus to Nubia. It’s no surprise that the first Persian coinage appeared at Sidon around 450 BC, and within a quarter century Tyre, Aradus, and Byblos embraced the change. Phoenician dislike of the Persians began to grow as the Greek Wars dragged on; pro-Greek sentiments spread through several vassal states. Those who began to resent Persian rule and crave independence were encouraged by Egyptian interference against Persian lordship. In 392 BC Tyre either joined or submitted to the Greek king of Salamis who fought with Athens and Egypt to unite the fractured island of Cyprus and free it from Persian rule. The Greek king was defeated and Tyre returned to Persian rule. In 362 the king of Sidon joined a western revolt that was squashed, and in 347 Sidon rebelled again only to be decimated: the city of Sidon was razed at the cost of forty thousand lives.
The Persian Empire ruled over Phoenicia for two hundred years, but when the end came, it was – as in the beginning – a hammer-blow. Alexander the Great, sweeping southeast from his homeland of Macedonia just north of Greece, pummeled the Persians and began gobbling up their territories. The Phoenician Iron Age came to an end in 332 BC when the city-state of Tyre fell to Alexander the Great. Alexander treated Tyre harshly, crucifying two thousand of her leading citizens, but he allowed the Tyrian king to retain his throne. Other Phoenician city-states submitted to him without opposition. The King of Sidon, determined to stand against Alexander, was overthrown by the populace. A king favorable towards the Macedonians was put in his place, and the Sidonians assisted Alexander in his capture of Tyre (though at the same time they helped a number of Tyrians escape). Alexander the Great went on to wipe out Persia, but then he became sick and met an untimely end. His kingdom was divided among his generals, and the city-states were ruled by a slew of Macedonian rulers. These rulers orchestrated the rise of Macedonian seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean at the expense of Phoenician traders. Alexander’s fragmented empire couldn’t live in peace, and between 286 to 197 BC, the Phoenician city-states – with the exception of Aradus – fell to the Ptolemaic pharaohs of Egypt (who, like the Macedonians, were splinter-cells of Alexander’s empire). The high priests of Astarte were established as vassal rulers in Sidon. In 197 the Seleucids (another of Alexander’s off-shoots) seized Phoenicia. Tyre became an autonomous city-state in 126 BC, but by this point it had been under Greek influence for two hundred years and looked more ‘Greek’ than ‘Phoenician.’ Sidon, also Hellenized, became independent in 111. Phoenicia by this point was thoroughly Hellenized and no longer retained Phoenician culture; Phoenicia’s death came not at the point of the spear but by cultural apathy. Hard-won independence for Tyre and Sidon didn’t last long, as another slew of rulers was about to call it theirs. Tigranes the Great of Armenia ruled Phoenicia from 82 until 69 BC when he was defeated by the Roman general Lucullus. In 65 BC Pompey of the Roman Republic incorporated Phoenicia into the Roman province of Syria. Around 200 AD Phoenicia became its own province of the Roman Empire.
Phoenician history in the motherland can be summed up as a brief spark of brilliance followed by wave after wave of invaders that weakened Phoenician identity and culture to the point of snuffing it out altogether. The Phoenician city-states, when they weren’t fighting amongst themselves, were constantly at war during the Iron Age: first the Assyrians, then the Egyptians, then the Babylonians, then the Egyptians again, then the Persians and then the Egyptians again! Century by century, Phoenicia was worn down under the boots of greater empires until resigning to the Greeks and Romans. Phoenician culture had an echo, however, in the overseas colonies that Phoenicia had established over the previous centuries. Up to this point we have looked at the history of the Phoenicians in their homeland; now we give a brief look at their overseas ‘empire’ created by loosely-knit merchant colonies. Phoenicia’s first colonies appeared on the island of Cyprus, and in the 700s BC settlements popped up in North Africa, Spain, Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia; in the 600s Phoenicia established a colony on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. As these colonies expanded, they gave birth to colonies of their own. The Phoenician colony of Gadir (modern Cadiz) built a network of trade colonies along the southern Spanish coast and in the Balearic Islands, and from at least the 400s the Phoenician colony of Carthage began establishing its own colonial trade network on Sardinia, Sicily, and elsewhere. As the Phoenician homeland drowned under relentless foreign deluges, Carthage thrived. The Macedonians had won Phoenicia’s maritime dominance, but the Carthaginians overshadowed them. Carthage’s ever-growing fleets controlled the major Mediterranean sea routes and vaulted it into a burgeoning world power.
Historians debate the impetus behind Phoenician overseas expansion. Some historians blame it on pressure from the growing Assyrian Empire; others see it as an idea triggered by the Sea Peoples that monopolized upon the power vacuum left by the Mycenaean collapse. Given Phoenicia’s fertile but small location and her vast trade networks, she would’ve grown exponentially in population; perhaps, then, overpopulation is to blame for the migrations? It’s likely that one of the impetuses (if not the impetus) was the Phoenician desire for new sources of metals that could be used for homegrown manufactures as well as exports to other countries for a pretty penny. That Phoenicia’s first major settlements were built around copper mines in Cyprus and silver, tin, and copper mines in Spain is telling. If the main impetus was economic in nature, it makes sense that the first settlements weren’t ‘colonies’ so much as working towns. Interspersed among them were landing and victualling stations to support the trade routes. As trade increased in the 800s BC, these working towns and ‘highway stations’ evolved into actual colonies as they developed towns and agriculture to sustain the growing population (not unlike the ‘gold towns’ in the American West becoming major cities themselves). These colonies became major seaports filled with Phoenician trade ships. Most Phoenician trade ships were tub-shaped and had horse heads carved onto their prows; in 2014 underwater archaeologists discovered a fifty-foot-long Phoenician trading ship dating to 700 BC, and it still held fifty amphorae full of wine and oil.
As these colonies grew, settlers from the Phoenician homelands carried Phoenician culture and religion along with them; when Phoenician culture disappeared entirely in the homeland after Alexander the Great’s conquest, it survived in a shadowy form throughout many of her colonies, particularly in Carthage. As Roman power grew in Italy, Carthage and Rome came to blows. The devastating Punic Wars – the ‘world wars’ of their times – brought Carthage to heel, and Carthage was eventually destroyed in 146 BC. With Carthage’s absorption into Rome, the tale of Phoenicia comes to an end.
