Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula, and Africa (Canary Islands).
The Phoenicians came to prominence following the collapse of most major cultures during the Late Bronze Age. They developed an expansive maritime trade network that lasted over a millennium, becoming the dominant commercial power for much of classical antiquity. Phoenician trade also helped facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles of civilization such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. After its zenith in the 9th century BC, Phoenician civilization in the eastern Mediterranean slowly declined in the face of foreign influence and conquest, though its presence would remain in the central and western Mediterranean until the second century BC.
Phoenician civilization was organized in city-states, similar to those of ancient Greece, of which the most notable were Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Each city-state was politically independent, and there is no evidence the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality. Carthage, a Phoenician settlement in northwest Africa, became a major civilization in its own right in the 7th century BC.
Since little has survived of Phoenician records or literature, most of what is known about their origins and history comes from the accounts of other civilizations and inferences from their material culture excavated throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Little was written about the Phoenicians in the early modern period, until the 1646 publication of Samuel Bochart's Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan, the first full-length book devoted to the subject. It created a framework narrative for future scholars of a maritime-based trading society with linguistic and philological influence across the region. However, early scholars like Bochart presented the Phoenicians as merchants and colonists from the same region, rather than a fully-fledged ethnocultural group. Knowledge of the Phoenicians at this time was confined to the ancient Greco-Roman sources.
Scholarly interest increased in 1758, when Jean-Jacques Barthélémy deciphered the Phoenician alphabet, and the number of known Phoenician inscriptions began to increase – the 1694 publication of the Cippi of Melqart was the first Phoenician inscription to be identified and published in modern times.Lehmann, p210 and 257, quote: "Soon thereafter, at the end of the 17th century, the abovementioned Ignazio di Costanzo was the first to report a Phoenician inscription and to consciously recognize Phoenician characters proper... And just as the Melitensis prima inscription played a prominent part as the first-ever published Phoenician inscription... and remained the number-one-inscription in the Monumenta (fig. 8), it now became the specimen of authentic Phoenician script par excellence... The Melitensis prima inscription of Marsa Scirocco (Marsaxlokk) had its lasting prominence as the palaeographic benchmark for the assumed, or rather deduced “classical” Phoenician (“echtphönikische”) script." In 1837, Wilhelm Gesenius published the first full compendium of the Phoenician language (Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monumenta), after which Franz Karl Movers published Die Phönizier (1841–1850) and Phönizische Texte, erklärt (1845–1847), collecting the classical and biblical sources, in which he presented the Phoenician “people” (Völkerschaft) as an ethnic group. Further 19th century scholarly works included: John Kenrick’s Phoenicia (1855), George Rawlinson's History of Phoenicia (1889) and Richard Pietschmann's Geschichte der Phönizier (also 1889). This scholarly study of the Phoenicians was first consolidated by Ernest Renan, first with his French-government-sponsored Mission de Phénicie – considered a smaller-scale follow up to the Napoleonic era Description de l'Égypte – and then with the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.
The scholarly consensus is that the Phoenicians' period of greatest prominence was 1200 BC to the end of the Persian period (332 BC). The Phoenician Early Bronze Age is largely unknown. The two most important sites are Byblos and Sidon-Dakerman (near Sidon), although, as of 2021, well over a hundred sites remain to be excavated, while others that have been are yet to be fully analysed. The Middle Bronze Age was a generally peaceful time of increasing population, trade, and prosperity, though there was competition for natural resources. In the Late Bronze Age, rivalry between Egypt, the Mittani, the Hittites, and Assyria had a significant impact on Phoenicians cities.
Origins
Herodotus believed that the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain, a view shared centuries later by the historian Strabo. This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren, who noted that Greek geographers described "two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Aradus, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples."Arnold Heeren, p. 441 The people of modern Tyre in Lebanon, have particularly long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon. The Dilmun civilization thrived in Bahrain during the period 2200–1600 BC, as shown by excavations of settlements and the Dilmun burial mounds. However, some scholars note that there is little evidence Bahrain was occupied during the time when such migration had supposedly taken place.Rice (1994), p. 21. Genetic research from 2017 showed that "present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age" based on ancient DNA samples from skeletons found in modern-day Lebanon. However, this study did not look at Arabian genetic history, and an even more recent study highlighted the high relatedness of Arabians with coastal Levantines, showing that Arabian hunter-gatherers derive most of their ancestry from Neolithic Levantines, and that modern inhabitants of the UAE derive a greater amount of their ancestry from Neolithic Levantines than do modern Levantines. While modern Lebanese derive over 90% of their ancestry from Bronze Age Sidonians, Emiratis derive 75% of their DNA from Bronze Age Sidon in Lebanon and 25% from Arabian hunter-gatherers who were highly related to the Natufians, or Neolithic Levantines. Therefore any back-migration of Arabians to the Levant is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish genetically. According to Sextus Julius Africanus, some Phoenicians claimed that their history stretched back some 30,000 years.
Certain scholars suggest there is enough evidence for a Semitic dispersal to the fertile crescent circa 2500 BC. By contrast, other scholars, such as Sabatino Moscati, believe the Phoenicians originated from an admixture of previous non-Semitic inhabitants with the Semitic arrivals. However, in reality, the ethnogenesis of the Canaanites, and more specifically, Phoenicians, is much more complex. The Canaanite culture that gave rise to the Phoenicians apparently developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals during the 6200 BC climatic crisis, which led to the Neolithic Revolution in the Levant. Byblos is attested as an archaeological site from the Early Bronze Age. The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically,Tubb, Jonathan N. (1998), "Canaanites" (British Museum People of the Past) even though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper.. .
Emergence during the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC) In the early 16th century BC, Egypt ejected foreign rulers known as the Hyksos, a diverse group of peoples from the Near East, and re-established native dynastic rule under the New Kingdom. This precipitated Egypt's incursion into the Levant, with a particular focus on Phoenicia; the first known account of the Phoenicians relates to the conquests of Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC). Coastal cities such as Byblos, Arwad, and Ullasa were targeted for their crucial geographic and commercial links with the interior (via the Nahr al-Kabir and the Orontes rivers). The cities provided Egypt with access to Mesopotamian trade as well as abundant stocks of the region's native cedar wood, of which there was no equivalent in the Egyptian homeland. Thutmose III reports stocking Phoenician harbors with timber for annual shipments, as well as constructing ships for inland trade through the Euphrates River.
According to the Amarna Letters, a series of correspondences between Egypt and Phoenicia from 1411 to 1358 BC, by the mid 14th century, most of Phoenicia, along with parts of the Levant, came under a "loosely defined" Egyptian administrative framework. The Phoenician city states were considered "favored cities" to the Egyptians, helping anchor Egypt's access to resources and trade. Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos were regarded as the most important. Though nominally under Egyptian rule, the Phoenicians had considerable autonomy and their cities were fairly well developed and prosperous. They are described as having their own established dynasties, political assemblies, and merchant fleets, even engaging in political and commercial competition amongst themselves. Byblos was evidently the leading city outside Egypt proper, accounting for most of the Amarna communications. It was a major center of bronze-making, and the primary terminus of precious goods such as tin and lapis lazuli from as far east as Afghanistan. Sidon and Tyre also commanded interest among Egyptian officials, beginning a pattern of rivalry that would span the next millennium.
The economic dynamism of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, particularly under its ninth pharaoh, Amenhotep III (1391–1353 BC), brought further prosperity and prominence to the Phoenician cities. There was growing demand for a wide array of goods, though timber remained the principal commodity: Egypt's expanding shipbuilding industry and rapid construction of temples and estates were a driving force of the economy; cedar was the wood of choice for the coffins of the priestly and upper class. Initially dominated by Byblos, virtually every city had access to a variety of hardwood, with the notable exception of Tyre. Every city saw an influx of wealth and a more diversified economy that included loggers, artisans, traders, and sailors.
Hittite intervention and Late Bronze Age collapse The Amarna letters report that from 1350 to 1300 BC, neighboring Amorites and Hittites were capturing Phoenician cities, especially in the north. Egypt subsequently lost its coastal holdings from Ugarit in northern Syria to Byblos near central Lebanon. The southern Phoenician cities appeared to have remained autonomous, though under Seti I (1306–1290 BC) Egypt reaffirmed its control.
Some time between 1200 and 1150 BC, the Late Bronze Age collapse severely weakened or destroyed most civilizations in the region, including the Egyptians and Hittites.
Ascendance and high point (1200–800 BC)