Why Were the Phoenicians So Influential?

Of all of the historical periods in the ancient Near East, the Iron Age in the Levant is perhaps the most well studied, and although that typically pertains to the Southern Levant, the Northern Levant at the time of the Phoenicians has been a favorite of many a scholar. I must admit that the history of the Phoenicians is one of my favorite periods to study. 

Generally speaking, the early Iron Age in the Levant is a time of change. On the heels of the Bronze Age Collapse, that period in which most of the northern hemisphere reached a climatological hot point bringing drought and famine and therefore war and devastation from the Black Sea to Egypt, the Northern Levant saw opportunity.

It should be noted that Phoenicia is not a state or nation; instead, like Sumer, it is a geographical region, in this case a region along the Mediterranean coast in the Northern Levant between Mt. Carmel and Arvad (Beyl 2013: 15) somewhat secluded from the world due to a large mountain range to the east (Aubet 2001: 17). The region includes the primary cities of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre (Peckham 2014: 1). 

The people of the Phoenician cities are thought to be the last remnant of the aboriginal, non-Semitic inhabitants of the land (Liverani 1998: 6-7), though no doubt of mixed race. Not because of this possible blood-link to Hamitic Canaan but because of their financial prowess, throughout history, the Phoenicians had been known as hucksters, cheaters, and swindlers (Castro 2006: 74), but they have also been known as artisans (Iliad 6: 290-91), and in fact, the name Phoenician may stem from the Greek word Φοινος, purple, likely referring to the purple dye industry for which the region was known (Beyl 2013: 22).

Emergence of the Phoenicians.

During the Bronze Age, the Northern Levant went through a series of ups and downs, and sites such as Byblos, Tell Arqa, and Ebla played an important role in the region, the first two forming long distance trade with Egypt (Genz 2017: 79) and the latter forming similar trade with Mesopotamia (Greenberg 2013: 275). 

Bronze Age Collapse.

Something occurred at the end of the Bronze Age that changed the entire Near East, specifically the Bronze Age Collapse. This collapse of civilization occurred over a period of time generally understood to extend from ca. 1315-1190 B.C. and is seen as the collapse of the Palatial System (Drake 2012: 1862) introduced by the Mycenaeans and the collapse of those civilizations that in turn were affected by palatial systems. As one civilization collapsed, the remnants then placed pressure on their neighbors, causing war, devastation, and furthering the climatological stress that all groups already felt. 

A major part of this fall in the Near East relates to the coming of the Sea Peoples to the Levant (Jung 2018: 273), a collection of different cultural groups who expanded into the region primarily from the sea (Jung 2018: 275) likely as climatological and social pressure was placed on them in their homeland and, according to Egyptian records, existing of the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Shardana, Danuna, and Weshesh (Cline 2014: 1), some arguing the central Mediterranean as their place of origin (Beyl 2013: 36), including possibilities such as Crete, Sicily, and Sardinia, though this is debated. 

The collapse of societies appears to have taken place in major areas throughout Italy, Greece, and other regions (Drews 1993: 3), and the northern extent of the collapse appears to have been the Hittite controlled territories just south of the Black Sea, where famine had stirred tribal groups to invade Hittite sectors and ultimately burn Hattusa, the Hittite capital (Demand 2011: 195). 

The earliest signs of trouble in the Northern Levant dates to the time of Akhenaten, some of the Sea Peoples settling on the coast of western Anatolia and attacking/raiding coastal sites (Demand 2011: 201). Perhaps the best known of these Sea Peoples are the Philistines (Novak 2015: 176), known by the Egyptians as the Peleset, a group that had already been in the region as early as the time of Abraham (Gen. 6:28-31) and who had later helped Ramesses III in his fight against the Hittites, before turning on Egypt itself (Dothan 1995: 1267-68). These Philistines and the other Sea Peoples brought with them the iron industry (Erb-Satullo 2019: 557-58), changing the shape of warfare forever.

Surviving the Collapse.

During the Bronze and Iron Age transition, as noted above, destructions are seen from the Black Sea to Egypt and the major Mediterranean trade network founded by the Mycenaeans had collapsed. The collapse of these trade networks necessarily meant that those sites dependent upon foreign materials, such as copper and tin, also experienced a failed economy (Cline 2014: 148-49). An example of this can be seen at Thapsos, a coastal site of great importance on the island of Sicily. With the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system, Thapsos and other coastal Sicilian sites were either destroyed or abandoned, followed by a purposeful move to inland, mountaintop settlements for defense (Tanasi 2009: 58). The fragile economy of these foreign-trade-dependent settlements could not handle the loss of trade, and no doubt a threat from the sea urged them to reestablish themselves elsewhere. 

In the Levant and Cyprus, locations all around the Phoenician coast, sites such as Ugarit and Tell Sukas in the north, Hazor and Akko in the south, and Enkomi in the west on the island of Cyprus were destroyed (Cline 2014: 110-111), but resting peacefully in the middle of these sites was the Phoenician coast, and sites such as Tyre and Sidon appear to have survived the ruination (Millek 2022: 1). 

With the collapsed trade network, seemingly the entire Mediterranean became a vast economic vacuum. Because the Phoenician coastal cities survived the great collapse, using the lumber that the Lebanon Mountains provided, the city of Tyre would build ships and replace the lost trade networks, filling the economic void and even extending farther than the previous network had allowed.

Phoenician Small Ship

Ascendence to Prominence.

It should be noted that the long distance trade networks that had existed subsisted of not only major trade centers and groups but often complex short distance networks with various indigenous communities participating (Knapp, Russell, and van Dommelen 2021: 93), the indigenous communities continuing to follow their own agenda and create their own values (Singleton 2024: 56-57). While many of these indigenous sites were destroyed or abandoned after or during the collapse, the need for goods continued. 

It was in the Late Bronze Age that the island of Tyre was first permanently settled (Aubet 2020: 18), and throughout the Late Bronze Age, Tyre would consolidate its position eventually emerging as commercially dominant during the Iron Age (Marriner, Morhange, and Carayon 2008: 1290). In fact, early Tyre became connected, through Ugarit, with the Aegean, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Cyprus (Cline 2014: 104), so that when the Bronze Age Collapse did occur, the Phoenician city was already aware of the need for goods. Shortly after the beginning of the new millennium, Tyre even surpassed Byblos as the region’s principal seaport (Marriner, Morhange, and Carayon 2008: 1290), Byblos having functioned in that role since at least the Early Bronze Age. 

Early Exploration.

The land of Phoenicia occupied a rather strategic place in the eastern Mediterranean, linking Europe, Asia, and Africa (Kharrat et al. 2020: 12), and this link was utilized quite early, Eleventh and Tenth Century Phoenician pottery appearing in Cypriot graves at Kition, Amathus, and Paphos (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35). As noted before, Byblos is known to have traded with Egypt as early as the Old Kingdom/Early Bronze II-III (Schoville 2004: 162-63). More to the point, a Phoenician settlement at Huelva, Spain, known to the Greeks as Tartessos (Canales, Serrano, and Llompart 2006: 26), dates quite early, possibly as early as the mid 900s B.C. (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35), roughly to the time of Solomon, and Necho II of Egypt may have, according to Herodotus, requested that the Phoenicians circumnavigate Africa ca. 600 B.C. (Histories 4.42).

Enriching Tyre.

Aegean influence identified trade potential throughout the Mediterranean (Grainger 1991: 189), and Phoenician and Greek merchants had come to build mercantile relationships with indigenous cultures as far as Spain (Castro 2015: 74). In fact, the Phoenicians appear to have established some trading links in the west even before the Greeks (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 33).

For the Phoenicians, the abundant natural resources from the mountains meant that a surplus was already had at home, and therefore Tyrian ships were able to export cedar, wine, honey, balm, spices, olive oil, cereals, fruits, and more, and the Phoenicians helped to propagate chicken, donkeys, cats, and even rabbits, as well as spreading plants cultivars such as citrus, reed, flax, and pomegranate (Kharrat et al. 2020: 12). Living on the semi-periphery of both Egypt and Assyria, the Phoenician cities could trade with these great societies and beyond (Scott 2019: 35), collecting resources along the way from newly established Phoenician settlements who no doubt gathered resources from indigenous groups.

Phoenician ships spread across the sea, establishing multiple settlements with good harbor at sites all across the Mediterranean (Aubet 2001: 310), possibly a move taken to counter the growing Greek colonization of places such as Sicily (Tribulato 2012: 15). One such site, Carthage, shows evidence of tithes paid to the temple of Melqart in Tyre (Markoe 2005: 121), thus enriching Tyre as well as themselves, Tyre becoming the key economic core of the Phoenician coast (Scott 2019: 35).

Missionary and Intellectual Efforts.

The richness of the Phoenician coast went well beyond their trade emporia. Notably, as the Phoenicians spread across the sea, they took with them culture and practices. One of the great innovations that the Phoenicians carried with them was a developed phonetic alphabet (Lawler 2012: 48), an alphabet that they left behind wherever they went (Petrovich 2016: 7). 

This Phoenician alphabet is seen preserved on the tomb of Ahiram (Beyl 2013: 86), dating to ca. 1000 B.C. (Porada 1973: 364), but the first alphabetic script can be traced to Middle Kingdom Egypt (Petrariu 2013: 189) where Asiatics likely interacted with Egyptian scribes, producing the alphabetic script for the Semitic language used (Darnell 2007: 40). From there, the development of a native Phoenician script came in one of two ways: either through Byblos (Peckham 2014: 7), due to trade with Egypt, forming the Byblian Phoenician script that was further developed and changed into a Tyrio-Sidonian script (Krahmalkov 2001: 2), or through the Hebrew script, which some argue to be the original Middle Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic script (Petrovich 2016: 193). Either way, the Phoenicians then carried their writing style across the Mediterranean, possibly passing their writing onto the Greeks via Cyprus (Astoreca 2021: 5), though Herodotus argues that Phoenicians may had gone to mainland Greece and passed on their learning (Hdt.5.58.1–2). 

Beyond academic learning, the Phoenicians also extended their own religion into the Mediterranean, much like modern missionaries. The likely fictional founder of the Tyrian harbor city of Carthage in North Africa, Dido, is said to have fled tyranny (Aeneid 1.335; Josephus 1.125) and purchased land from a local chieftain at the site of Carthage, and she is said to have eventually married that chieftain and founded the city. Interestingly, mixed marriages at Carthage are known from archaeological sources (Whittaker 1974: 74), where a flourishing hybrid culture can be seen. 

Hundreds of funerary stelae were discovered at Carthage, inscribed with images of both Ba‘al and Tanit, his Carthaginian consort, and these appear to be associated not only with Ba‘al but with the Canaanite deity Molech, who received child sacrifices (Smith 2013: 102). Other Ba’alistic features are seen across the Mediterranean, such as at Motya, Sicily where a temple of Ba’al has been discovered, along with a large statue of Ba’al overlooking a sacred pool (Nigro 2022: 357) and where different facets of both indigenous and Phoenician religion appear to be mixed together (Whittaker 1974: 62), showing that the intellectual trade network worked in both directions. 

Other additional cultural translations took place, such as the mixing of religion at Cyprus (Whittaker 1974: 71) where the goddess Astarte appears to have been adopted into the creation of Aphrodite by the Greeks (Kenaan 2010: 30). Similarly, the deity Zeus, although existent in Greek mythology before contact with the Phoenicians, was translated from Ba’al so that the mythologies of Ba’al and Zeus are similar (López-Ruiz 2014: 1), much as Ba’al was previously translated through the deity Hadad at Mari from the Mesopotamian Marduk (Schwemer 2007: 156). This type of missionary effort was evidenced by the very many temples to Canaanite deities across the Mediterranean, and as evidenced by the biblical Jezebel, the Phoenician princess who married Ahab and spread a more perfect Ba’alism through Israel (Miller 2007: 57).

The Fall of the Phoenician Coast

The Phoenician coast did eventually fall. As the Near East edged closer toward imperialism, societies bent on broadening their control began to threaten the prosperous Phoenicians, demanding tribute for the Phoenician cities’ continued existence. It is possible that the Phoenician craftsmen who left their homeland for parts unknown, founding colonies around the Mediterranean, left their homeland due to this growing threat at the end of the Ninth Century (Ridgway 2004: 35), ultimately ending the coastal dominance, but not the Phoenician dominance.

Assyrian Threat.

The Phoenician cities remained quite comfortable in their northern Levantine homeland early on, and their mutual economic treaty with the then combined nation of Israel under the famed King Solomon no doubt enriched both regions. It was not until the later Assyrian Empire demanded tribute that the Phoenicians truly felt the pressure of the outside world (Monroe 2018: 232). In fact, as the Assyrian Empire expanded their territorial control, the Assyrians had to rely on external sources to meet their own demands, depending on eastern Mediterranean cultural groups such as Arab, Philistine, and Phoenician traders to gather the needed resources from far off regions such as Spain, Nubia, Arabia, and Afghanistan (Herrmann and Tyson 2018: 18). Interestingly, it was likely the Phoenicians who brought the ninth century Assyrians, through Tiglath-pileser I, into a technological modernity (Monroe 2018: 256-57).

Unfortunately for the Phoenician coastal cities, Assyrian expansion into the general Phoenician area of the Levant meant that Assyria would begin to change its relationship with Tyre from trade partner to overlord. With this change in status, Assyria required the Phoenicians now simply to pay the Assyrians (Boyes 2012: 38) rather than mere exchange, and as Assyria conquered parts of the Southern Levant, namely the northern nation of Israel, and replaced the people there with peoples from around the conquered empire (Dixon 2013: 306), the Phoenician cities could now see first-hand what denying the Assyrians could look like.

Carthaginian Autonomy.

Although the Phoenician coastal cities continued their existence under Assyrian and then Babylonian overlordship, Carthage, that major port city established in North Africa, would begin to reign under its own autonomy (van der Brugge and Kleber 2016: 201). By the Persian Period, with the Persian conquering of the Northern Levant, Carthage began a new era of true autonomy and of prosperity (Dixon 2013: 89). This Carthage is the same Carthage that would ultimately fight against the Romans during the Punic Wars, and the Carthaginian influence would continue throughout the Mediterranean.

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[This is a lecture written for the course 'HIST 262: History of the Ancient Near East,' taught Fall 2023 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]