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Phoenicia

Location of the main sites of the Levant of the first half of the first millennium BC

The territory of Phoenicia corresponds to Lebanon today which should be added portions of Syria and Palestine.

The Phoenicians were an ancient people of skilled sailors and traders. Having left their city-states in Phoenicia, they founded - 3000 many outlets along the eastern Mediterranean , including Carthage (in - 814 ). Rivals Mycenaeans for navigation in the Mediterranean in the second millennium BC. AD , they were from what we know of the best navigators of antiquity.

Invasion of the Sea Peoples will ravage the Phoenician cities, as well as Mycenae and other territories they cross, but this is what will allow the Phoenicians to find their independence vis--vis the neighboring powers that the subject had since they will also be destroyed by these invasions. The fall of Mycenae in particular will enable them to dominate the seas.

After enduring the onslaught of the Athenians, the Assyrians, Nebuchadnezzar then Darius III , Phoenicia finally disappeared with the conquest by Alexander the Great in - 332.

According to Pliny , "the Phoenician people has the distinction of having invented the letters of the alphabet. "

Summary

A maritime empire

Their country is prosperous, heavily wooded, fertile but narrow between the mountains of Lebanon and the sea so they could not hope to build an empire in the hinterland , inhabited by their powerful neighbors. So they go to sea to turn. Soon Tyre will become the capital of their maritime empire. So they find other resources that do not offer them the smallness of their territory, and the primary motivation that push them towards other shores will essentially mercantile order. To establish themselves as they did, they will have certainly a lot of tricks, but also a lot of courage to face the sea and its unknown horizons. They know, for centuries, make a virtual monopoly on trade in the Mediterranean. They propagated the alphabet in all riparian countries.

Navigation

"The Phoenicians brought a host of trinkets in their black ship. - Odyssey , XV

"The ships of Tarshish will bring back your son from afar, and with them their silver and gold. "- Book of Isaiah , LX, 9

This is the idea that the ancient Phoenician sailors had.

We know little about the Phoenician fleet and representations of their vessels are rare. One of them is from the fresco from a tomb of Thebes in the second millennium BC. AD, wide hull and rounded, with a central mast and a square sail. Another is from a bas-relief Assyrian palace of Sargon II near Nineveh , and is found at the ends of the boats with a horse head as a figure of bow , powered by rowers. Finally, a third on another bas-relief of Nineveh, from the palace of Sennacherib representing two different types of ships: battleships long keel, stem ending in a sharp spur in stern two oars flanked on each side for rudder, mast and two stacked rows of rowers; merchant ships hull bulges, gauloi the Greeks who imitate them and give them their names Phoenician transcribed in Greek.

Boats to go up the rivers and the coastal shipping , which the Phoenicians were not confined. They did not hesitate to confront the high seas, the compass does not exist then, their pilots repraient through Ursa Minor , the Greeks called precisely "Phoenician", which proves that they practiced night navigation.

Improvements of their ships and navigation techniques allowed them, among twelfth and eighth centuries BC. BC , to take a clear lead over their rivals. They assured the tightness of their boats through the bitumen for caulking , which probably allowed the elders to speak of "black ships" Phoenicians. Strengthening the hull with a cabin , they obtained vessels longer, faster and larger tonnage , better suited to navigating the distant and ocean navigation , allowing them to use the winds and currents. It assured them that the discovery of routes and control sea secrets that for centuries they guarded jealously.

Besides establishing their famous outlets such Carthage, they lend, not wrong, and their successors the Carthaginians, distant voyages, voyages of discovery and exploration beyond the known world in antiquity.

Trade

The first and major agents of shipowners Phoenicians were the empires of the Orient and Egypt, Assyrian kings and pharaohs, before the Phoenician cities form the empire of the sea they will dominate. Their ships are plying the Mediterranean and carry anything that can exchange or sell: food such as wine , oil or grains (wheat, barley) in their characteristic amphora shape, round and stubby, ores of copper , of money and especially of tin used in the production of bronze. Andalusia is then the traffic hub of minerals. The Bible, in this respect, made the famous "ships of Tarshish" ( Tartessos ).

But they also carry products from luxury exotic animals for the royal courts such as monkeys and crocodiles. Purple wood cedar , perfumes and precious stones from the country of Ophir in the time of Hiram and beads, which serves as a bargaining chip with local people.

There may be clues to the relationship they had with the local population and the type of exchanges, and their terms, in Herodotus who described a scene of trade in Argos , or at the Pseudo-Scilace and Dionysius of Halicarnassus : The piracy was rampant in the maritime traffic of antiquity, and women and children lingered haggling might be embedded. Because it was taking place on the shores barter with the natives while transactions with merchants of various civilizations with which they traded were held in the Emporis representing many stages of the Phoenicians roads, usually near the temples also provided for this purpose.

Mythology, Religion and Worship

Phoenician literature of the 1st millennium, written on papyrus, has completely disappeared in the humid climate of the Levant and is known to us only through fragments of text and engraved by the evidence left by the neighboring peoples. With this loss, lost much of the memory of the great cults of fertility and their rich heritage myth that struck the imagination of the Hebrews of Palestine.

Like all peoples and all ancient civilizations whose texts we do not reach or where there is little evidence - that is the case for the Phoenicians, but also the Etruscans or the Iberians example, is especially the archeology tells us that, and the texts left by neighbors, Egyptians, Greeks and Latins. Sometimes archeology confirms the ancient texts, sometimes the results are discordant.

Phoenician deities belonged to a mysterious and complex pantheon. A patron god was often associated with a city. It may be mentioned among the gods whose names are still known:

Many Greek myths involve the Phoenicians, their country or gods of their shore. Cadmos , Europe , and Adonis are the most famous examples. They were cleverly claimed by the Tyrian and Sidonian Hellenized in the Hellenistic period.

One must be cautious in granting credit to ancient authors when they describe foreign cultures, or even competing with theirs. This was the case for the Greeks vis--vis the Phoenicians and Romans vis--vis the Carthaginians. The authors sometimes give a distorted picture which probably corresponds to the reality or relate facts that are not understood or openly show hostility to those who represent the enemy.

The Greeks as the Romans have left us a picture of a Phoenician cruel people practicing human sacrifice was forgotten too quickly Iphigenia , remember a time when these sacrifices were practiced in Greece about the crucifixion We know it was common among the Romans. All archaic civilizations have practiced such rituals in one way or another and should therefore be to resize the aspect that strikes the modern worship, and was already facing the classical period, to understand what has been a civilization that was great, and what it has bequeathed to humanity. In this regard, the invention of the alphabet has long been attributed by the Greeks themselves.

The Phoenician cities

Phoenician cities are very old, well before the Iron Age , and built by the Canaanites. Their foundation is often legendary, and what is known structures (outside of what we book archeology) is mainly related to King Hiram of Tyre. Most coastal cities are most often located on promontories, on islands off the coast at the mouth of rivers, and site selection will be the same for the colonies.

The Phoenician

We are better informed on the foundations of Western cities, most recent. The choice of places follows the same criteria as in Phoenicia, sometimes at the bottom of bays by geography coasts that arise. Unlike the Greeks, who seek land to cultivate, the Phoenicians are primarily interested in facilitating the configuration of the port facilities. They are careful that the places they choose to have good access to the sea but also to the hinterland and the choice of islets reflects the concern of security and to possibly protect themselves from the local population. In the Phoenician city, all activity is centered on the port and warehouses. The orientation and the plane are not homogeneous. The houses are generally much larger than the homes of Greek colonies at the same time, probably in order to build stocks. Evolving, new construction will follow a regular plan and cities will also include public spaces, but far fewer than in the Greek colonies. Shrines and Tophet (burial) will also appear. With few exceptions, the arable land around is much less extensive than in the Greek colonies. The fortifications, except in Sardinia, are virtually nonexistent: the sea is the best defense.

Three cities were dependent on Carthage, later known under the name Greek or Latin: OEA, Sabratha, Leptis Magna


Colonization of Malta

The Phoenicians, great navigators, using Malta as from X centuryBC. BC , like stations on the way the copper they fetch in the current Iberian Peninsula. They create Carthage in 814 BC. AD and certainly to the same period that the positions in Sicily (Panormos / Palermo , Soeis / Solonte ) to Pantelleria and Malta. They established a colony in the islands of the archipelago about 725 BC. AD . It was at Malta that are found in the seventeenth century two cippi , dated II nd century BC. BC, dedicated to the god Melqart , Lord of Tyre , on which a bilingual Phoenician / Greek in 1758 allowed the French antiquarian, Father Jean-Jacques Barthlemy , decryption of the Phoenician language .

Notes

References

  1. J. Godechot (1970) p.12
  2. J. Godechot (1970) p.14
  3. AJ Frendo and NC Vella (2001) p.47
  • (In) Lina Murr Nehme , the Phoenician Baalbek, Aleph and Taw, Franois-Xavier de Guibert, 2001

Bibliography

  • (En) Anthony J. Frendo and Nicholas C. Vella (2001) "The Phoenician island in the middle of the sea" in Neolithic Malta to the Norman Conquest, Archaeology Record, No. 267, October 2001
  • (En) Godechot Jacques (1970) History of Malta, Press Universitaire de France, Col. What do I know, Paris

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