The Phoenicians are widely regarded as some of the best sailors of the ancient world.
Over their millennium-long history the Phoenicians revolutionized sailing and trading, sailing
as far from their Lebanese homeland as Britain and Senegal, and established colonies across
Anatolia, Cyprus, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and even one in modern-day Tunisia that was
so big it established its own colonies. So just who were these epic seafarers of the
ancient world, and what impact did they have on the world today?
There are multiple theories as to where the Phoenicians came from, with most suggesting
somewhere deeper in the Middle East, and some since ancient times even suggesting as far
as Bahrain, though this isn‘t as likely since Bahrain likely wasn‘t even inhabited
around this time. Who the Phoenicians most certainly were however was a people speaking
a Semitic language— related to Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and several others— in an area
then known as Phoenicia, now known as Lebanon. The name “Phoenicia” does not however
come from the Phoenicians, but rather is a Greek exonym, coming from the word φοῖνιξ
(phoînix), the name for a dye known in English as Tyrian Purple, a vibrant purple dye named
after the Phoenician city of Tyre which came from boiling rock snails of the family Muricidae,
something incredibly challenging to make and only really available from the Phoenicians,
leading to both the name we know them by today, and the perception of purple in Europe as
a color only worthy of royalty, and also why purple isn’t a color you see very much on
flags. In their native Semitic language however, the Phoenicians called their land Pūt, and
their people Ponnim, but their language Kana‘nim, in reference to their greater ancestral homeland
of kna’n, known in English as Canaan. Some of the earliest written mentions of the
Phoenicians come from records written during Egyptian expansion into the Near East, with
this region discussed heavily in the Amarna records. The region came under nominal Egyptian
rule through the conquests of Thutmose III in the mid 15th century BC, though were still
largely autonomous, with said Amarna records referencing how the Phoenician city-states
still had their own political systems and competing merchant fleets. Phoenicia was a
valuable asset for Egypt, with its access both to Mesopotamia via the Orontes and Nahr
al-Kabir rivers, and its supply of cedar wood, something Lebanon still likes to show off
to this day. The cities grew rich and prosperous under Egyptian rule, especially under Amenhotep
III, though this autonomy generally waned with the greater threat of the Hittites to
the north. Phoenicia however would break completely free of foreign rule with the Late Bronze
Age Collapse of the 12th century BC. The early 1st millennium BC is not regarded
well by most in the ancient world, this was a time right after the Bronze Age Collapse
and one known in Greek history as the Greek Dark Age, stemming from the lack of written
records there from the time. As if proving the passage ‘one man‘s trash is another
man‘s treasure‘ however, this was also the golden age of the Phoenician civilization,
probably due to all the outside empires suddenly not conquering them, and also because no one
was really even around to pose effective competition, giving them vast dominion over the eastern
Mediterranean. The Phoenicians set out to colonize much of
the Mediterranean for many reasons, but the biggest reason was simply the geography of
the region. The Levant is incredibly mountainous, which meant that it was more effective to
ship goods between the cities of Phoenicia by sea-- and many cities (notably Tyre) were
situated at least partially on offshore islands, making seafaring even more appropriate-- and
thus when it came time to expand in search of more resources, the logical direction was
seawards. The Phoenicians would establish numerous cities across the Mediterranean,
but some of the most important back home were Arvad, Gubal (Byblos), Sidon, and Tyre. Calling
this an empire though would be like calling the ancient Greek city states an empire, in
that it would be completely wrong, as these cities were actually loosely-knit city-states,
each with their own interests. Of course most of their colonies also weren’t always full-on
city-states of their own, rather small trading outposts, however in the 9th century BC one
colony would be destined to grow to huge heights. According to the city’s founding mythology,
around 814 BC a Tyrian woman named Dido, Tyre-d of the king’s antics, went off to modern-day
Tunisia to found a new city, or as they would have said in Phoenician ‘qrt-hdšt’, hence
its English name, Carthage, a city that would create an empire spanning the western Mediterranean.
Though their trade networks would continue to expand, their era of complete independence
could not last forever. Seeing as they were a loose-knit collection of city-states that
couldn’t build much of a standing army, this didn‘t exactly put them in an optimal
position to stay independent once the big, powerful empires came back, such as the Assyrian
Empire upon the ascension of King Shalmaneser III in 858 BC, however the cities would maintain
semi-independence upon his death in 824 BC. The Phoenicians would then be put under new
management in the Babylonian Empire in 605 BC, and then by the Achaemenids in 539 BC.
This period saw a gradual decline in Phoenician activity, with many moving out to the previously
established colonies, notably Carthage. The Achaemenid Empire however would be swept
from the region in 332 BC by Alexander the Great (who from now on on this channel will
be referred to as Alexander the Conqueror, because I really feel like that‘s a more
fitting title for him), who notably besieged the island of Tyre, building multiple causeways
to do so, something that was no small feat even for Alexander. The Phoenicians still
kept going under the Seleucid Empire, and even under the Roman Republic until around
the mid 1st century BC, their descendant Carthage however would not be quite so lucky, fighting
three wars with Rome and losing so badly that their capital was destroyed in one of the
most thorough cultural erasures in history, with the ground reportedly salted so nothing
would grow in memory of Carthage. For well over 1,000 years, the Phoenicians
ruled the waves of the Mediterranean, connecting the cultures of the Levant, the Greeks, Egypt,
southern Italy, Numidia, and Hispania to each-other, expanding their reach all across the sea and
innovating vastly in the field of seafaring. Even aside from cedarwood and Tyrian Purple
the Phoenicians were also renowned for their glasswork, metallurgy, ivory carving and woodwork,
and were even pioneers in mass production, with the Carthaginians utilizing serial production
in shipbuilding, allowing them to become the expert shipbuilders of the Mediterranean.
Of course I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention their writing system, one that shares
many similarities with the scripts used in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and other Semitic
languages which most likely evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphs, oh and also gave rise to basically
every script used on the European continent today from Latin to Greek to Cyrillic, but
I already talked about all this in a previous video, although the history of the Latin alphabet
could be a good future video unto itself. Given how long the Phoenicians lasted however,
especially given how much of that history was spent under foreign rule, I guess it goes
to show that if you want to be kept alive, make it so that you‘re only truly valuable
alive (and at least somewhat free). Just… try not to get on Rome’s bad side.
Thank you as always for watching. Be sure to like and share this video and if you enjoy
history consider also checking out last week’s video (linked on screen) which has an important
message for us in 2020 but hasn’t gotten many views at all. Anyway follow me on social
media, and subscribe to learn something new every Sunday.