.............following

Sardinia

Ancient city

All present-day countries shown in gray

Carthage

Sicily

TURKEY

N

TUNISIA

LEBANON

Phoenicia

Syria

SYRIA

IRAN

IRAN

ISRAEL

Tyre

IRAQ

miles

0                                 200

400

Jerusalem

0                 200

400

JORDAN

kilometers

LIBYA

EGYPT

A r a b i a 

KUWAIT

BAHRAIN

QATAR

ERITREA

SAUDI ARABIA

YEMEN

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

OMAN

INDIAN OCEAN

Map of Phoenicia, Syria,

and Arabia. XNR Productions. The Gale Group.

the greater its influence on the ancient world. Arabia is an area of more than 1.75 million square miles (4.53 square kilometers, or almost  half the size of the United States), but it played little role in ancient history; later, however, it would have an enor- mous impact on world events. As   for Syria, which  in modern times is a nation  of more than 70,000 square miles (or 181,300 square kilometers; about the size of Missouri), its language, Ara- maic, spread throughout the ancient world. When Jesus Christ brought his message of salvation to the Israelites, the language in which he spoke was Aramaic. Finally, there was tiny Phoeni- cia. In modern times, it is called Lebanon, a nation that covers fewer than  4,000 square miles  (10,360 square kilometers), meaning that  it  is  geographically   smaller than  Los   Angeles County,  which contains   the  northern portion of greater Los Angeles, California. Small it may have been, but its contribution to civilization  was  great:  Phoenicians  gave the world its first alphabet; established colonies in Spain, France, and North Africa; and sailed all the way around the African continent.

118             Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

Phoenicia (c. 2000–64 B.C.)

On  the eastern coast of the Mediterranean  (med-ih- tur-ANE-ee-uhn) Sea  lay Phoenicia  (foh-NEE-shuh), a narrow  strip of land  just 200 miles (322 kilometers) long and 30 miles (48 kilometers) wide—much smaller, in fact, than modern-day Lebanon (LEB-uh-nahn). It is not clear how  the Phoenicians got their name, though it may have come from a Greek  word for red or purple, a reference to the dyed cloth that the Phoeni- cians wore and sold. The Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language and  were probably  a  Canaanite  (KAY-nuhn-ite)  people; cer-  tainly  they lived  in the same region as the Canaanites, and worshiped Canaanite  gods such as Baal and Astarte.

Phoenicia was never a single country, but a loose  col- lection of city-states of which the most notable were Tyre (pro- nounced   like “tire”), Sidon  (SIE-duhn), and   Byblos   (BEEB- lohs). Unlike the city-states of Sumer, these towns were never at war  with  one another.  In fact  the Phoenicians  are  almost  unique among  ancient peoples in that they did  not maintain an  army  or  attempt to conquer  other peoples; rather,  their focus was on trade.

Conquest through trade

Trade is a term used to describe the exchange of goods for units of value (money, gold, or other goods) between two individuals or two countries. Trade  is  different from produc-  tion, which  occurs  when  a  farmer grows a crop  or raises of group of animals  for  sale, or when a craftsman manufactures goods for sale. A merchant, someone who engages in trade, sells the goods produced by farmers and  tradesmen (or, in modern times, by factories) to consumers—that  is, ordinary people who buy things they need. Rather than having to sell directly to the public, it was easier for producers  of goods to sell their items to merchants, who then sold  them to the consumers. As   a result, the economy of Phoenicia grew, and so did  its wealth.

The  Phoenicians  had  little choice but to  engage in trade. Though their soil was not bad for agriculture, the moun- tain ranges to the east meant that the available area for raising  crops or animals  was limited. Nor did Phoenicia have the kind of military  power that would make it possible to conquer oth- ers;  instead, the Phoenicians   established   their  influence through business.

Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia                      119

Words to Know: Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia

Archaeology: The  study  of  the  material  evi- dence left behind by past cultures.

Bronze: A type of metal made from a mixture of tin and copper.

City-state: A city that acts as an independent country.

Commerce: Buying and selling of goods on a large scale.

Consumer: A person who buys things from a merchant or businessperson.

Cuneiform: A type of wedge-shaped  writing used in Mesopotamia.

Dynasty: A group  of  people, often  but  not always a family,  who continue to hold  a position of power over a period of time.

Economy:  The whole  system  of  production, distribution, and consumption  of goods and services in a country.

Export: Selling goods to another country.

Fundamentalist: A person who strictly follows a basic set of (often religious) principles.

Goods: Items that are bought and sold.

Hegira:   Muhammad’s  escape  from  Mecca with his followers in A.D. 622; the begin- ning of the Muslim  calendar.

Hieroglyphics:   A system  of  symbols,  called hieroglyphs, which  made  up  the  Egyp- tians’ written language.

Import: Buying goods from another country.

Ironic: When something is intended to be one way but turns out to be quite different from what was intended.

Islam: A faith that arose in Arabia in the  A.D.

600s, led  by  the  prophet  Muhammad

(A.D. 570?–632).

Koran:  The holy book of Islam. Literate: Able to read and write. Mariner: A sailor.

Ports, ships, and trade

Beginning in about 2000 B.C., the peoples of Phoenicia established great port cities such as Tyre. There  they engaged in  import,  bringing  in  goods from other countries  such   as Egypt, and  export, selling goods from Phoenicia to the rest of the known world. Among    Phoenician-produced  items were cloth  goods, dyed in the reddish-purple color  produced by a type of shellfish plentiful along the Mediterranean coast.

Another important item was  wood, one of the coun- try’s only natural resources. Phoenician cedar (SEE-duhr), was a reddish wood so prized that the “cedars  of Lebanon” became

120            Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

Merchant: Someone who sells goods.

Middle  Ages: The period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning  of the Renaissance, roughly A.D. 500 to 1500.

Migration:     Movement  by  a  large  group  of people from one place to another.

Muslim: A believer in Islam.

Natural resources: Materials from nature, such as trees or minerals, that are useful to the operation of business or a society.

Nomadic: Wandering.

Peninsula: An area of land that sticks out into water. Examples include Arabia, Italy, and Florida.

Pictograms, phonograms: Two types of  writ- ten  symbol. A  pictogram  looks  like  the thing it  represents; a phonogram  repre- sents a specific syllable.

Province: A political unit, like a  state,  that is part of a larger country or empire.

Scribes:  A small and very powerful group in ancient  society  who  knew  how  to read and write.

Semitic: A term describing a number of groups in the Middle East, including the modern- day Arabs and Israelis.

Services:  Actions that are bought and sold— for example, cleaning a house or serving food.

Spherical: Shaped like a ball.

Terrorism: Frightening (and usually harming) a specific  group  of  people   in  order  to achieve a specific political goal.

Trade:  The  exchange  of  goods  for  units  of value  (money, gold, or   other  goods) between two individuals or two countries.

Trade  route:   Roads or  paths  along  which goods are regularly moved for export and import.

Vassal: A ruler who is subject to another ruler.

famous throughout  the ancient  world. Phoenician  cypress wood was  a  popular   export as  well.  (The flag of  modern Lebanon depicts  a cypress tree.) Phoenician  craftsmen were also  known  for their ability  at  woodworking: thus  when Solomon was building  his temple in Jerusalem, he brought in Phoenician  craftsmen.  The Bible also  indicates  that  Phoeni- cians were  talented at  working with bronze,  a type of metal made from a mixture of tin and  copper, which was used both for everyday items and for decorations.

It appears that the Phoenicians enjoyed generally good relations with  their Israelite neighbors to  the  south. Both

Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia                      121

Solomon  and  his father, David,  made treaties, or  agreements between nations, with  the Phoenician  king  Hiram (HIGH- rum) of Tyre  in the 900s B.C.  These  agreements with Israel, which at that point was a powerful force in the region, helped make it possible for Phoenicia to establish a number of trade routes—roads or paths along which goods are  regularly moved for export and import—over both land  and sea.

Phoenician colonies and voyages

Trade routes alone, however, were not enough: partic- ularly  in faraway places, the Phoenicians  needed warehouses where they could store goods for later sale as well as trading posts where they could conduct business with the local peo- ples. For  this reason, they  established  a number of overseas colonies in the period from about 900 to about 600  B.C.

To  call a  place  a  colony  means that  it  is  a  territory belonging to another country.  When people from the ruling country  go to a foreign place in large numbers and  begin to bring that  place under their control, they are  colonizing.  For  instance, the Egyptians colonized  Kush, and  the British colo- nized North America  in the 1600s and  1700s A.D. Phoenician colonization was  somewhat unusual  because,  as  always, the Phoenicians’ main concern was not political or military power,  but business. They were not interested in making  foreigners speak their language or worship their gods; all they wanted to do was conduct trade.

The  most  famous of  all  Phoenician  colonies  was Carthage  (KAHR-thej), located  in what  is now the nation  of Tunisia (too-NEE-zhuh) in North Africa. Established some time after 800  B.C., Carthage possessed a fine harbor that made it a favorite port  of call for trading ships.  Eventually it  would become  a great city, so great it challenged the most powerful empire of the ancient world: Rome.

Across the Mediterranean, Phoenician traders founded cities on the islands of Sicily and  Sardinia  (sar-DEEN-yuh) off the coast of Italy. They also established cities on the European continent, including Marseilles (mar-SAY) in France, as well as the Spanish   cities  of Barcelona  (bar-suh-LOH-nuh), Cadiz (kah-DEEZ), Malaga  (muh-LAH-guh), and   Algeciras  (al-juh- SEER-uhs). Farther away, at the edge of the known world, were

122            Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

what  the Phoenicians  called  “the tin islands”: Britain,  as well as the  region of Britanny    (BRIT-uh-nee)   on   the northwest coast of France. The Phoeni- cians brought  in  purple   cloth   and  traded it with the locals for tin, essen- tial for making bronze.

To appreciate the vast distances covered, and  the  bravery of  mariners (MARE-uh-nurz) or sailors who crossed the  Mediterranean to parts  beyond, it is  important to  remember  how  little ancient  people knew about  the Earth. As   far as most people knew, the entire world consisted  of  what  can now be identified as the Middle East, southern Europe, and northern Africa. Some had guessed that  the Earth was  spherical (S’FEER-ih-kul)—that  is, shaped like a ball—but  nobody  had  any  idea what lay  on  the other  side of  the planet. Beyond the  farthest edge of Spain, at the rock  of Gibraltar (ji-BRAWL-tur), lay  an  ocean, known  today  as  the

Atlantic, which was so wide that many believed it surrounded the  entire world.  The  modern  equivalent  of Phoenician mariners would be  astronauts, who likewise go bravely  into unexplored regions.

The greatest of Phoenician voyages took place in about

600  B.C.,  when the Egyptian pharaoh  Necho II  (NEE-koh; r.

610—595 B.C.) hired a group of Carthaginians (kar-thuh-GIN- ee-unz) to sail around the coast of Africa. For  some time, the Phoenicians  had  been trading with  Africans,  but this voyage took them from Carthage  all the  way  around the continent. Hugging  the coastline  as  they  went, the Phoenician  sailors  rounded the southern tip of Africa and came back up the coast along  the Indian Ocean.  They  sailed around the  “Horn  of Africa”  to the east, and  up  the Red Sea  coast of Egypt and Ethiopia. It would be more than 2,000 years before anyone else would make  such   an  extraordinary voyage, when the Por- tuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed around the African con- tinent in the A.D. 1400s.

Drawing of Vasco da Gama.

Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.

Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia                      123

Phoenician trade with Africa

The Phoenicians regularly traded with  Africans who lived on the  Atlantic coast below the Sahara  (suh-HAIR-uh) Desert, probably  in  the  area  of  the present-day  nation of Senegal (SIN-uh- gahl). They would land their ships on the coast, and  because  they  could  not communicate with the Africans,  they developed an unusual method of trade.

The Phoenicians would set out a certain amount of goods on a  beach, then return to their  ships. The Africans would then  place an amount of gold, which was plentiful in their area, next to the     Phoenicians’  goods. If     the Phoenicians  judged that it was a fair exchange, they would take the gold and depart. If they did  not, however,  they would leave their  goods on the shore until the Africans brought out more gold. Once  they  had agreed on an exchange, the  Phoenicians  would take their gold and sail away.

Other  African lands with which the Phoenicians traded were Ophir  (OH- fur), which may have been located where Mozambique  (moh-zam-BEEK) is now, on the southeastern coast of Africa; and Punt, the location of present-day Somalia (soe-MAHL-ee-uh)  on  the  “Horn    of Africa” to the east.

The alphabet and other contributions

Exploration, trade, and  crafts- manship were  not  the  Phoenicians’ only achievements. Perhaps the great- est of all their contributions to civiliza- tion was the development of the alpha- bet.  Though  the Phoenicians  did  not claim to  have invented the alphabet they used, they certainly developed it, and  through their many  voyages extended it to the known world.  The Phoenician  alphabet, which  appeared between 1700 and 1500 B.C., originally used  only nineteen  symbols, roughly equivalent to the letters of the English alphabet,  except for I and  the last  six letters, U through Z.

Before  the alphabet, all writing had been in the form of pictograms, sym- bols that looked like the thing they rep- resented, or  phonograms, symbols  that represented a syllable. To use hieroglyph- ics, as the Egyptians did, or cuneiform as did the people of Mesopotamia, one had to   memorize  hundreds of   symbols. Therefore only  scribes, highly  learned men  trained in the use of  pictograms and  phonograms, were literate  (LIT-uh- ret)—that is, able to read and write.

To use an alphabet, by contrast, one only  had   to  remember  a  small number of symbols—twenty-six in the alphabet used by English-speakers. Thus the  alphabet led to a great increase in learning, because  ordinary people were able  to become  literate as well. Eventu- ally  almost  all  the civilizations  of  the Western world began to use some form

of alphabet. Today only the peoples of the East, such as the Chi- nese and Japanese, use pictograms and phonograms.

124             Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

After  the development of  the alphabet, the next great  advance  in expanding people’s ability to read and write did   not  come  until  about  A.D.

1450, when the invention of the print- ing press made it possible to spread the written  word throughout  the world. The first book printed was the Bible. It is no mistake,  perhaps, that  the word Bible, which is Greek for “book,” comes from the name of the Phoenician city-

state of Byblos.

Caught between warring nations

Phoenician    civilization  did

really die out; rather,  the  Phoenicians were absorbed into the empires of con- quering nations.  Assyria   had   begun threatening  Phoenicia  as  early as  868

B.C., but when the Assyrian  monarch Tiglath-Pileser  attempted to  capture Tyre  in 734  B.C.,  he ran  into  trouble. Because the city was built on an island

about a mile offshore, it was a mighty fortress; in fact its name means “rock.” After two years, the Assyrians  finally captured  Tyre,  but  they did   not  attempt to  turn  the  region  into  a province (PRAH-vints) of their empire—not yet, at least.

In 701 B.C., Sennacherib led another Assyrian invasion of Phoenicia. He drove out the king of Tyre,  replacing  him with a vassal (VAH-sul), and  conquered the other  important cities  of Phoenicia,  including Sidon. A     later king  of Tyre attempted  a  revolt against   the Assyrians,  and  this  action resulted in  the  destruction of Sidon   in  677 B.C.  Still  Tyre remained rebellious, protected by its location.  The Assyrians tried once more to capture  it, but they had  troubles of their own at home and  eventually lost their empire to the Babylo- nians. Finally in 587 B.C., the Babylonian king Nebuchadnez- zar conquered Tyre.

Just as  Babylonia  replaced Assyria   as  the  dominant power in the region, the Persians replaced Babylonia in about

Table comparing the

Greek, Hieratic Greek,

and Phoenician alphabets. Corbis. Reproduced by permission.

Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia                      125

539 B.C.  As    part  of the Persian Empire, the  Phoenician  fleet helped wage war on the Greeks. Later, the armies of Alexander the Great  conquered the  Persians’ empire, and  Phoenicia passed into Greek  hands in 333 B.C. Like much of the Middle East, it then fell under the Seleucid Empire  before becoming part of the Roman province of Syria in 64 B.C.

Syria (A.D. c. 1200–600s)

The  Syrians,  whose  kingdom lay  to  the north  of Phoenicia, shared much common history with their seafaring neighbors. They  too  were a  Canaanite   people speaking  a Semitic language, and  they likewise often found  themselves caught between a number of great powers in the region.

Syria had  been populated since at least 8500 B.C., and for thousands of years it was controlled  by a people known to archaeologists  as the Halaf  (huh-LAHF) civilization.  The latter established the  city   of Ugarit (YOO-guh-rit), which  would remain an important center  until its destruction by the myste- rious Sea  Peoples in about 1200 B.C.  Halaf  culture, however, ended in about 4500 B.C., for reasons that are unclear, and over the next few thousand years,  Syria  was  controlled  by groups from Mesopotamia.

During  the 1700s B.C., the Mesopotamian city-state of Mari (MAHR-ee) held power over the area, extending its terri- tory all the way to Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast. Mari was followed by a number of other small civilizations. By the 1300s B.C.,  the Hittites were on the move, and  they often clashed  with the Egyptians for control of the region. Another force was Mitanni (mi-TAHN-ee) to the east. The Mitannians attempted to play  the Hittites and  Egyptians against  one another until they were crushed  by the Hittites in the mid-1300s B.C.

The Hittites finally did battle  with the Egyptians at the Syrian city of Kadesh (KAY-desh) in about 1285 B.C., and with the apparent victory of the Hittites, Syria came under Hittite control. The trading city  of Ugarit, however,  remained inde- pendent and established ties both with Egypt and the Hittites. The city  flourished from about  1400 to about 1200, and  the Ugaritic language spread throughout the region. After the Sea Peoples destroyed  the  city,  Phoenicians  took over the trade that had once passed through Ugarit.

126           Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

The Aramaeans

Syria truly came into its own under the control of the Aramaeans (air-uh-MAY-uhnz), a Semitic-speaking group from Mesopotamia who had  briefly controlled  Babylonia. In about

1200 B.C.,  however,  they moved westward,  rushing  into the power vacuum created by the Sea  Peoples’ destruction of the Hittites. The most powerful group of  Aramaeans established themselves in the city  of Damascus (duh-MAS-kuhs). Damas-  cus would become  an important city and remains the capital of Syria in modern times.

The kings of Aram  (AY-ram), as Syria at this time was called, regularly did  battle  with the Israelite kings  Saul  and David  in  the late 1000s and  early 900s B.C.  Though  David defeated the Syrians, after the division of Israel following the death of Solomon, the kings of Judah and Israel were often on friendly terms with  the Aramaean kings. Ben-Hadad  II (bin HAY-dad; r. 879—842 B.C.), persuaded the Israelites and others to join him in making  war on Assyria. For  a time, this alliance seemed to work, but in about 732 B.C., the Assyrians won con- trol over Syria.