Phoenicians

The inhabitants of Phoenicia, in ancient times a small region occupying the coastal strip of Syria and northern Palestine, roughly corresponding to modern Lebanon. The Phoenicians, who were renowned for their seafaring skills and mercantile endeavors, spoke a Semitic language and were of Canaanite stock. In fact, they called themselves Canaani, the term Phoenician deriving from the Greek name for them, Phoiniki. Although the Phoenicians existed as early as the third millennium B. C., their heyday was the period of about 1200 to about 800 b. c. During these years the Phoenician cities, including Tyre (the southernmost), Byblos, Sarepta, Sidon, and Berytus (modern Beirut), grew populous and prosperous and established colonies and trading posts across the Mediterranean world. They were important middlemen in the principal trade route connecting that world to Mesopotamia and Iran. In fact, most of the tin the Mesopotamians used to make their bronze came from the Phoenicians, who obtained the tin in Spain and northwestern Europe.

The relationship between the Phoenician cities and Mesopotamia became more personal when the Assyrian Empire captured most of them. Later, the Babylonians and the Persians exerted their own control over these cities. Later still, in the late 330s B. C., during his conquest of Persia, Alexander the Great conquered Phoenicia, successfully laying siege to Tyre. Finally, after Alexander’s death, the Greek Seleucid rulers of Mesopotamia vied with the Greek Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt for possession of the Phoenician cities. By the first century B. C. Phoenicia had ceased to exist as a separate political and cultural sphere. Historically speaking, the Phoenicians’ most important contribution was probably their alphabet, which the Greeks, Romans, and many other ancient peoples eventually adopted and transmitted to the modern world.

See Also: Canaanites; Sidon; Syria; trade; Tyre