A seafaring people

When we think about societies that had a massive impact on world history, we often forget about the “purple people.” The Greeks gave this name to their seafaring trade partners, the Phoenicians, because of the rare purple dye they made from snail shells. And although the Phoenicians called themselves Can’ani (Canaanites), the name the Greeks gave them seems to have stuck.

This is partly because historians mainly used Greek, Assyrian, and Latin sources along with Biblical references to learn about Phoenician society. The Phoenicians are perhaps best known for creating the first alphabet, which influenced writing systems everywhere. The Phoenicians used this alphabet to record their histories on papyrus. Unfortunately, almost all of their original writings were lost due to changing environmental conditions and multiple migrations and invasions. Still, historians and archaeologists are able to piece together a story about the Phoenicians.

Historians think “Phoenicia” was never a unified society. Rather, it was a loose alliance of many city- states in modern-day Lebanon and Syria, including Tyre, Byblos, Beirut, and Sidon. Phoenician cities were also often controlled by other regional powers like the Egyptians and Assyrians.

Though the Phoenician people didn’t form a powerful empire, they were still incredibly influential. As master seafarers and traders, they created a robust network across and beyond the Mediterranean Sea. Phoenician ships carried technologies and ideas. As a result, Phoenician merchant communities absorbed and adapted foreign ideas. They formed critical connections between places, and drove cultural exchanges that would impact the world for millennia.

Masters of the sea

Driven to the coast, probably by their aggressive Assyrian neighbors, Phoenicians were not able to develop extensive farming. The environmental conditions inland were not favorable to large-scale agriculture. Living in a narrow coastal corridor that connected Asia to Africa, Phoenicians took advantage of their location to foster trade.

Ancient writers describe the Phoenicians as expert sailors. They were first to venture from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. By 1200 BCE, they were the dominant maritime power, and they continued to dominate until around 800 BCE. They built commercial colonies in Rhodes, Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and north Africa. This gave them a network of ports in the Mediterranean. There’s also evidence that they ventured far west to what is now Spain and beyond to the Atlantic coast of Africa. According to ancient Greek historian Herodotus, they traveled as far as South Africa!

Their success was due to their ships. They were known for their speed and their ability to maneuver harsh seas. In fact, the ancient Egyptians called boats that could travel in the deep seas “Byblos boats,” after the Phoenician city-state. Phoenician boats had room for many rowers and were built to sail long distances. One key ship technology was the cutwater, a sharp point that allowed ships to, well, cut through water. Phoenician ships were so advanced that both Persian and Assyrian royalty used Phoenician ships to sail. Phoenician sailors themselves were also skilled. They were some of the first people to use stars to navigate.

Along with their famous purple dyes, Phoenician sailors traded textiles, wood, glass, metals, incense, papyrus,¹ and carved ivory. In fact, the word “Bible,” from the Greek biblion, or book, came from the city of Byblos. It was a center of the trade of papyrus, a common writing material in the ancient world. They also traded wine, spices, salted fish and other food. The Phoenician political structure supported this trade. Foreign policy was determined by the dominant merchant class. They had an economic interest in maintaining sea lanes and making it easy to get raw materials.

The Phoenician community

Trade was at the center of the Phoenician economy, so merchants were at the center of the political structure and community. Merchant families made up the Phoenician senate, which determined the affairs of the city-state. This created a kind of merchant aristocracy (upper class). But unlike other aristocracies, this wasn’t a closed group for those of noble birth.

In general, there was a lot of social mobility in Phoenician communities. Phoenicians frequently married non- Phoenicians, and women had more freedom than many other women in the ancient world. There are few sources about Phoenician life in general and even less about women. But evidence suggests that women had a seat at the table—literally. Carvings and inscriptions show women at banquets and large gatherings alongside their male family members. They are also seen at religious events. There were many respected female deities (gods). The Phoenicians also had famous female leaders, including Dido, the Queen of Carthage.

But hierarchies did exist. There were many enslaved people in Phoenician society. Many of these slaves were captured enemy soldiers. There were also reports that Phoenician sailors tricked people onto ships, pretending to show them goods, then capturing them as slaves. But since these reports came from Phoenicia’s competitors, we should be aware of historical bias from these sources.

Historians have a better understanding of Phoenician’s belief system. This may be because it’s one of the main things uniting the many Phoenician communities. Even the faraway colony of Carthage in modern-day Tunisia sent people back to Tyre annually to participate in a sacrifice at the temple of the god Melqart. There were multiple Phoenician deities. Like the Greek gods, they were seen as powerful and unpredictable.

Many of these religious beliefs were based on Mesopotamian traditions. Indeed, much of Phoenician culture was a kind of adaptation. Phoenician art borrowed a lot from Asian and Egyptian styles, probably partly because Phoenicians had customers in those regions. But although Phoenicians borrowed a lot, they also innovated. In fact, the incredibly innovative Phoenician alphabet—which we’ll come back to in a moment—may have begun as an experimentation based on Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems of writing.

Phoenicians abroad

Phoenicians were often under pressure by aggressive neighbors. Without enough land to feed their growing population, Phoenicians ventured abroad looking for land, resources, and trading partners. Some colonies, most notably Carthage, came to be more powerful than the original city-states. By 500 BCE, Carthage was one of the biggest cities in the world, with nearly half a million residents.

These colonies played a critical role in the production and distribution of goods. They formed the basis of a lively trade network. Over two dozen ports and colonies were strung together, linking Mediterranean and Atlantic trade. Colonies were ethnically diverse. Phoenicians, indigenous people, and migrants from across the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa lived in them. Though the Phoenicians built colonies, they didn’t really build an empire, because they didn’t directly rule over a large territory. However, they did have power over the colonized people. For example, in fertile Carthage, enslaved people and indigenous peasants farmed to provide a stable food supply. Carthage also had a powerful military. It was therefore the most empire-like of the Phoenician city-states.

Many commercial colonies became vibrant city-states. In fact, some historians argue that these Phoenician urban centers became the model for the Greek city-state. But perhaps the most influential thing the Phoenicians introduced to Greece was their alphabet.

A revolutionary script

The twenty-two characters of the Phoenician script revolutionized the written language. But where did it come from, and why was it so revolutionary? The Phoenician alphabet basically simplified writing. Both Egyptian and Mesopotamian early systems of writing used pictographs, which are pictures used as symbols. And there’s evidence that Phoenicians were drawing on both of these systems of writing. But instead of using pictures to represent things, Phoenicians used symbols to represent sounds. This might sound pretty unexciting, but it was a huge leap. Once you learned the sounds symbolized by the letters, you could read without having to know the meanings of countless little pictures. This made literacy a lot easier, and writing a whole lot faster.

This simplified alphabet made trade and accounting easier. As Phoenicians traveled across their networks, their system of writing moved with them. By 800 BCE, the Greeks had adopted it, adding vowels to make it even more efficient. It formed the basis of the Greek, Aramaic, and Etruscan systems of writing. By extension, it influenced Latin and dozens of other Indo-European languages. It influenced a big fraction of ancient writing systems, with the notable exception of East Asian writing.

Where did the Phoenicians go?

Historians debate what happened to this innovative, seafaring society. As empires like Persia expanded, Phoenicians strategically played these empires against each other and accepted their control when it was necessary. But over time, the original city-states lost their power. Eventually, the colonies were the only independent Phoenician societies left. As the Phoenicians traveled and traded, they spread cultural ideas, mixed with indigenous populations, and came up with some of the most innovative technologies in world history.

1 Ancient societies like the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Greeks used papyrus or paper made from plant fibers for writing and record keeping.