An outline, era by era

Phoenicians

maritime trade, alphabet spread, Carthage founded

Iron Age · ~1200 – ~500 BCE

The Phoenicians were the people of a string of independent city-states on the coast of what is now Lebanon, northern Israel and southern Syria. Their main cities were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad. They were descendants of the Canaanites of the Bronze Age, and their golden age ran from about 1200 to 800 BCE, after the Late Bronze Age collapse had weakened Egypt and the Hittites. They never formed a single state, and the name Phoenicians comes from the Greeks.

From their harbours they became the great sea traders of the early first millennium BCE. They carried cedar, purple-dyed cloth, glass, metalwork and wine across the Mediterranean, and founded colonies in Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa and Spain. Their linear alphabet of about 22 letters, written without vowels, was adopted by the Greeks and became the ancestor of the Greek, Latin and many other scripts. Carthage, founded from Tyre and traditionally dated to 814 BCE, grew into a power that dominated the western Mediterranean until Rome destroyed it in 146 BCE.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Dido and the founding of Carthage

    Origin story

    The legend

    Princess Dido, also called Elissa, flees Tyre after her brother Pygmalion murders her husband. She sails to North Africa, where the local king offers her as much land as an ox hide can cover. She cuts the hide into thin strips, encircles a hilltop, and founds Carthage there.

    The rest is history

    The story is told in full by the Roman historian Justin, who abridged the earlier work of Pompeius Trogus, and it was made famous by Virgil's Aeneid. Virgil has Dido and Aeneas meet, which is impossible by any chronology, since Troy's fall is placed centuries before Carthage. Ancient writers dated the foundation to 814 BCE, and the earliest archaeological material at Carthage dates to roughly the later 8th century BCE, which is broadly consistent. The ox-hide tale probably comes from a Greek pun on the name Byrsa, the citadel, which resembles the Greek word for hide. A Tyrian origin for the city is very likely, since Carthage kept religious ties with Tyre for centuries.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryJustin. Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, book 18. Latin abridgement, 2nd or 3rd century CE.
    2. PrimaryVirgil. Aeneid, book 1 and book 4. Latin epic poem, c. 29-19 BCE.
    3. BookAubet, Maria Eugenia. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Standard survey of Phoenician expansion and the foundation of Carthage.

  2. Cadmus brings the alphabet to Greece

    Origin story

    The legend

    Cadmus, a prince of Tyre, goes looking for his sister Europa, who has been carried off by Zeus. He never finds her, but settles in Greece and founds Thebes. He brings with him the letters of the alphabet, which the Greeks first learn from the Phoenicians.

    The rest is history

    The Greeks themselves said their letters were Phoenician. Herodotus describes them as the Phoenician letters that came with Cadmus's followers and were later changed. This is largely right. Greek letter names such as alpha and beta match Semitic words like aleph (ox) and bet (house), and early Greek letter shapes closely resemble Phoenician ones. The Greeks added signs for vowels, using Phoenician letters for sounds that Greek did not need. The adoption probably took place around the 9th or 8th century BCE, though the date is debated. Cadmus himself is a figure of myth.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, book 5, chapters 57-58. Greek prose history, c. 430 BCE.
    2. BookPowell, Barry B. Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
    3. BookHealey, John F. The Early Alphabet. Reading the Past 9. London: British Museum Press, 1990.

  3. The Phoenician sailors who circled Africa

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt hires Phoenician sailors to explore the seas. They set out from the Red Sea and sail south, stopping each autumn to sow grain and wait for the harvest. After about three years they return through the Pillars of Heracles, saying that as they sailed west around the south the sun was on their right hand.

    The rest is history

    The story comes from Herodotus, who wrote around 430 BCE, about two centuries after the supposed voyage in the time of Necho II, who ruled c. 610 to 595 BCE. Herodotus himself says he did not believe the detail about the sun. That detail is the reason many scholars take the account seriously, because it is just what sailors would see south of the equator, and Herodotus would have had no reason to invent it. No Phoenician or Egyptian record of the voyage survives, so it cannot be confirmed. Phoenicians were certainly capable long-distance sailors who reached Atlantic Spain and Morocco.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, book 4, chapter 42. Greek prose history, c. 430 BCE.
    2. BookLipiński, Edward, ed. Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique. Turnhout: Brepols, 1992.
    3. BookMarkoe, Glenn. Phoenicians. Peoples of the Past. London: British Museum Press, 2000.

  4. Tyrian purple and the dog's mouth

    Folk tale

    The legend

    The god Heracles, or in some tellings a shepherd, walks along the shore of Tyre with his dog. The dog bites a sea snail and its mouth is stained a brilliant purple. The nymph he loves demands a robe of that colour, and so the dye is discovered.

    The rest is history

    The tale is told by the Greek writer Julius Pollux in the 2nd century CE, long after the dye trade began. The dye itself was real. It was made from the glands of murex sea snails, and it needed vast numbers of shells for small amounts of cloth, which made it very costly. The name Phoenicia is often thought to come from the Greek word phoinix, meaning purple or crimson, though this is debated. Heaps of crushed murex shells have been found at Tyre and Sidon, and the dye became a sign of royal and priestly rank across the ancient world.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryPollux, Julius. Onomasticon, book 1, section 45-49. Greek lexicon, 2nd century CE.
    2. BookAubet, Maria Eugenia. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
    3. BookMarkoe, Glenn. Phoenicians. Peoples of the Past. London: British Museum Press, 2000.

  5. Phoenicians sacrificed their children

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Carthaginians, the Phoenician colonists in North Africa, are said to have burned their infants in fire as offerings to the gods Baal Hammon and Tanit. In times of crisis, nobles are said to have given up their own children. The story is repeated as proof of Phoenician cruelty.

    The rest is history

    Greek and Roman writers, who were often hostile to Carthage, made the accusation, and the Bible also condemns the offering of children to Molech. Excavations of the tophet, a sacred burial ground at Carthage, have found urns of burnt bones of very young children and animals, with stone markers that give dedications to the gods. Scholars are sharply divided about what this shows. Some see ritual sacrifice, others say these were children who died naturally and were cremated in a sacred place. The evidence has been argued over since the 1970s and the question is not settled.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryDiodorus Siculus. Library of History, book 20, chapters 14. Greek universal history, 1st century BCE.
    2. BookBrown, Shelby. Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in Their Mediterranean Context. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 3. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991.
    3. ArticleSchwartz, Jeffrey H., Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli, and Luca Bondioli. "Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants." PLoS ONE 5, no. 2 (2010): e9177.

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