These centuries also saw a transformation along the Levantine coast. There were cities here such as Byblos that had a history stretching back thousands of years. In the second millennium Ugarit, Tyre, and Sidon were all important trading centres. Before 1200 bc the economies of these cities were linked to those of the inland city-states, through which they served as intermediaries with the outside world. During the disruptions associated with the sea peoples, however, the original inhabitants of Canaan (from whom the Israelites distinguished themselves) lost much of their coastline and inland territories so that by the tenth century they controlled only 200 kilometres of coast (from an original 500) and the narrow strip of land that ran between the coast and the mountains. This quickly rose to some 3,000 metres. This proved, in fact, their salvation as they were well protected from invaders from the east, yet had good access to timber on the mountain slopes. The cities were well sited in bays and inlets while two cities, Tyre and Arvad, were on islands and virtually impregnable.
Gradually trade revived and there is a record of an Egyptian official, Wenamun, visiting Byblos in about 1100 in search of cedarwood for the shrine of Amun in Thebes. With Egypt’s status in decline he is treated with some condescension, and not even allowed to enter Byblos until his money has arrived from Egypt, but his account suggests that the king of Byblos had a fleet of twenty cargo ships with access to another fifty coastal vessels in nearby Sidon. So there is already some trading activity although Wenamun’s account also mentions pirates along the coast. The city that took the lead in expanding trade networks was Tyre. The city appears to have
Had a more flexible approach to commerce than Byblos with individual merchant families, rather than the king, taking the initiative in seeking outlets. By the ninth century, individual merchants from Tyre have, through their agents, set up outposts in Babylonia. Tyre’s reputation spread widely. Writing some 300 years later, after Tyre had fallen to the Babylonians, the prophet Ezekiel laments the demise of ‘that city standing at the edge of the sea, doing business with the nations in innumerable islands. . . your frontiers stretched out far to sea, those who built you made you perfect in beauty. . . Then you were rich and glorious surrounded by the seas.’ (This evocation of a prosperous city was so powerful that the Venetians later adopted it for themselves!) The Book of Ezekiel details, in chapter 27, all the many peoples from beyond the Euphrates in the east to the Arab peninsula in the south that dealt with the city.
The Canaanites would probably have always been dependent on trade. Although the coastline was fertile it could never have supported their population. However, when the Assyrians demanded tribute of the cities, particularly in metals, they were forced to trade overseas. It is certainly true that by the ninth century the Canaanites were penetrating deep into the Mediterranean, and it was here that they came into contact with another trading people, the Greeks, who shared with them a trading-post at al-Mina on the Orontes river through which contacts could be made with Mesopotamia. The Greeks, whose own trading activities were still undeveloped, found it difficult to distinguish the traders they worked with and they gave them the collective term ‘Phoenician’, which is probably derived from the reddish purple dye extracted from molluscs for which they were famous throughout the Mediterranean. The mingling of Greeks and the Phoenicians, who had absorbed much of the cultural heritage of the Ancient Near East, was to be of profound importance in the history of the western world (although the Greeks may have had other contacts; from the eighth century their shields and helmets suggest the direct influence of Assyria). The ensuing story will be told in Chapters 9 and 10.
World History
