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Phoenicians (Peoples of the Past)
More than 2,500 years ago Phoenician mariners sailed to Mediterranean and southwestern European ports. The Phoenicians
were the great merchants of ancient times. They sold rich treasures from many lands.
These Phoenicians (the Canaanites, or Sidonians, of the Bible) were Semitic people. Their country was a
narrow strip of the Syrian coast, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) long and 20 miles (32 kilometers)
wide. The area now comprises Lebanon and parts of Syria and Israel. Their territory was so small that the Phoenicians
were forced to turn to the sea for a living. They became the most skillful shipbuilders and navigators of their
time. They worked the silver mines of Spain, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, and founded the city of Cadiz
on the southern coast of Spain. They sailed to the British Isles for tin and may have ventured around southern
Africa. They founded many colonies, the greatest being Carthage.
The Phoenicians began to develop as a seafaring, manufacturing, and trading nation when the Cretans--the first
masters of the Mediterranean--were overthrown by the Greeks (see Aegean Civilization).
Not only did they take the fine wares of the Eastern nations to the Western barbarians, but they also became skilled
in making such wares themselves--especially metalwork, glass, and cloth. From a snail, the murex, they obtained
a crimson dye called Tyrian purple. This was so costly that only kings and wealthy nobles could afford garments
dyed with it.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Phoenicians was a syllabic writing, developed in about 1000 BC
at Byblos. From this city's name come the Greek word biblia (books) and the English word Bible. This form
of writing was spread by the Phoenicians in their travels and influenced the Aramaic and Greek alphabets.
There were two great cities of Phoenicia--Sidon, the center of the glass industry, and Tyre, the center of the
purple-dye industry. In the middle of the 10th century BC, Tyre assumed the leadership of all Phoenicia. Friendly
relations were established with the Hebrews, and King Solomon sent to King Hiram of Tyre not only for materials
but also for skilled workmen to build the temple.
The Phoenicians supplied the great Persian fleets with which Darius and Xerxes attacked Greece (see Persian
Wars). Usually they submitted readily to foreign conquerors and paid tribute. In return they were allowed to
pursue their commercial enterprises as they liked. Alexander the Great took Tyre in
332 BC, after one of the greatest sieges of history. In 64 BC Phoenicia came under the control of the Romans.
The chief divinities of the Phoenician religion were the god Baal and the goddess Astarte, or Ashtoreth. In times
of great distress human sacrifices were offered to the god Moloch.
Today the small island on which Tyre once stood is connected with the mainland by a broad tongue of land. It grew
out of the causeway built during Alexander's siege. The town is called Sur in Arabic.
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The Phoenicians