Phoenicians: information, religion, economy and characteristics

We explain who the Phoenicians were, what their religion and society were like. Also, what are its characteristics and cultural traits.

Phoenician cities led trade in the Mediterranean Sea between 2800 and 700 BC.

Who were the Phoenicians?

The Phoenicians were the ancient settlers of the Levant, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, a region known at that time as Canaan. They were great navigators, who established trade routes throughout the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black Sea.Between 2800 and 700 BC, the Phoenician cities of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre managed to control the region’s trade in an alternating manner and maintain their political autonomy.

The Phoenicians they called themselves Canaanitesin reference to the region they inhabited. Other civilizations with which they traded gave them other names. The ancient Greeks called them phoinikes (“red, purple”), due to the purple dyes they traded. The name Punic that the Latins used and the name phoenicia that are currently used by specialists.

See also: Byzantine Empire

Characteristics of the Phoenicians

The main characteristics of the Phoenicians were:

• They inhabited the Levant region, north of Palestine, between 2800 and 700 BC.
• From their main cities, such as Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, they controlled the trade of the Mediterranean Sea.
• They founded dozens of colonies and trading posts on the Mediterranean coasts, and left a marked influence in North Africa, southern Spain and southern Italy.
• They maintained the independence of their cities, and formed commercial and political alliances to defend themselves from the other powers in the region.
• They organized their politics and society around commercial activity, controlled by merchant aristocrats who formed governing councils in each city and limited the power of the kings.
• They influenced the cultures of the region, exchanging goods, services and ideas between distant territories and very different populations.
• They created an alphabetic writing system that was later used by the Greeks and Latins.

Geographical location of the Phoenicians

The Phoenician civilization developed on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Phoenicians settled in the Levant, a territory that extends along the Mediterranean coast.between the sea and the mountains of Lebanon, from the mouth of the Orontes River in the north to Haifa Bay in the south. Today, this area is occupied by the countries of Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Palestine.

History of the Phoenicians

The Phoenician city of Tyre dominated Mediterranean trade between 1200 and 700 BC.

Specialists divide the history of the Phoenicians into three major periods:

• 2800-1600 BC c. During this period, the city of Byblos, which had commercial relations with the kingdom of Egypt, predominated. Its support allowed it to impose itself and influence the rest of the Phoenician cities. However, it ended up subject to the Egyptian government and lost its commercial predominance in the region.
• 1600-1200 BC cThe city of Sidon grew in importance and eventually extended its trade routes across the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black Seas. Towards the end of the period, the Greeks drove the Phoenicians out of the Aegean and the Sea Peoples began a series of attacks on the city.
• 1200-700 BC c. In this period, the most predominant city was Tire, located on an island near the coast of the Levant. Their merchants used the routes opened by the Sidonians and extended them: they reached the western Mediterranean, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and reached the British Isles. Along the way they founded commercial colonies, such as Carthage on the African coast. The growth of the city and its commercial power brought internal disputes and the empires of the region began to intercede. This weakened the city, which ended up losing its economic and political autonomy and, around 700 BC. C., came under the rule of the Assyrians.

Social organization of the Phoenicians

The Phoenicians They had a stratified society that was organized around trade. The upper class consisted of an aristocracy of large merchant and slave-trading families. Then, there was a class of medium merchants, who dealt with the smaller scale trade routes. Sailors and artisans made up the lowest class of society.

Political organization of the Phoenicians

Phoenician cities formed alliances to defend themselves from neighboring empires.

The Phoenicians never had a centralized governmentInstead, there was a set of city-states that had a greater or lesser level of regional influence according to their wealth and political power. These cities were independent and formed political and commercial alliances to maintain their autonomy from the rest of the kingdoms and empires in the region.

Each city was led by a king and his power was believed to be of divine origin. However, his power was not absolute: The king exercised military and economic functionsbut shared the government with a Council of Elders, composed of the fathers of the aristocratic families.

The Phoenicians did not conquer the territories they reached with their trade routes. Instead, They founded their own colonies and commercial factories (enclaves dedicated to production). In this way, they developed a network of support, production and distribution points for their trade routes.

Economy of the Phoenicians

The Phoenicians traded oil, wine, resin and perfumes in ceramic vessels.

The Phoenician economy was essentially maritime, with a strong dynamic of exchange between its own cities and abroadThey became a commercial power in the region, which is why they are considered the great merchants of antiquity.

The main commercial activity was the slave trade., which were captured by the merchants themselves or bought in local markets. In addition, they traded silk and linen fabrics, oil, wine, resin, perfumes and all kinds of luxury goods. Their routes connected the Nile River delta in Egypt with the Mediterranean Sea, the islands of the Aegean Sea and the cities of Asian Mesopotamia.

They were also dedicated to boat construction, for which they used cedar wood from the forests of Lebanon. They founded dozens of factories in which metal work predominated, such as gold, silver and bronze, and ceramic production, decorated with a purple dye extracted from mollusks. murex.

Religion of the Phoenicians

The city of Byblos dedicated its main temple to the goddess Astarte.

The Phoenicians They were polytheists and worshiped different godsAlthough each city had its main pantheon, the cult of Baal and Astarte, the divine marriage that represented the sun and the moon, was practiced in all of them.
Some of the main gods of their mythology were:

• Astarte. The main goddess of the cities of Sidon and Byblos (although she was also present in other Phoenician cities), she represented fertility. She was also worshipped as the goddess of hunting, war and patron of sailors. She became assimilated with the Greek Aphrodite or the Egyptian Isis, and is represented with a lion, and holding a lotus flower and a snake, often with bare breasts or breastfeeding.
• Eshmun. Worshipped in Sidon and Cyprus, and assimilated to Apollo and Aesculapius in the Greco-Roman tradition, he was a healing god, in whose honour games similar to the Greek Olympic games were held, and whose winner was rewarded with a purple cloth.
• Baal. It was a solar divinity that the inhabitants of Asia Minor worshiped, and those peoples over whom they had influence, such as the Phoenicians. She was the deity of rain and war, and was one of the central gods of the Phoenician cult.
• Chusor. God of armorers, blacksmiths and fishermen, he is believed to have been the first of mankind’s navigators and the builder of the first temple to Baal. He was also credited with the invention of fishing, navigation and forging.
• Hadad. He was the Phoenician god of air, storms and lightning, rain and wind. The Phoenicians thought that it was his voice that echoed in the midst of storms.
• MelkartHe was the Phoenician deity of the city of Tyre, equivalent to a Phoenician version of Baal. He was originally an agricultural and spring god, who was worshipped through sacrificial rites, and acquired a maritime content in Phoenicia, in a clear example of religious syncretism. His name means “King of the city” and in Tyre he was worshipped as such, and he was also considered the god of navigation and especially of colonization.
• Dagon. Possible syncretism between three gods (one Ugaritic: Ben Dagon; one Sumerian: Dagan; and one Phoenician: Dagon), he was a maritime deity represented as a creature half man, half fish. However, other interpretations associate him with agricultural words (“grain of wheat” in Hebrew), although he is perhaps one of the few national gods of the Philistines.
• Moloch. Supreme god and protector of Carthage, he was a bull-deity similar to the minotaur. In honor of him, four young people were sacrificed a year, locked in a structure that was then burned.

Culture of the Phoenicians

The Phoenicians invented a phonetic alphabet that formed words with vowels and consonants.

The main cultural features of the Phoenicians were:

• Art and architecture. For centuries, the Phoenicians used Egyptian and Assyrian styles in their artistic and architectural designs. Artistic production had commercial purposes, so ceramics and crafts took shapes and designs from those regions with which they traded.
• Writing. The Phoenicians created an alphabetic writing system, made up of 22 phonetic signs. The signs were differentiated into vowels and consonants, which were combined to form words. This system was easy to learn and use, making it very convenient for commercial use. It spread along Phoenician trade routes and enclaves, and ended up being adopted by other peoples, such as the Greeks and Latins, who took it as the basis for their own writing systems.
• Maritime exploration. Throughout their history, the Phoenicians expanded their trade routes to increasingly distant maritime spaces. In this sense, the founding of colonies was key, which allowed them to secure ports and merchandise warehouses. They traveled through the Mediterranean between March and October, and used two different routes (the southern one, along the African coast; and the northern one, between the Aegean islands).
• Economic exchangeFor commercial exchanges, the Phoenicians had different methods: they negotiated directly from the ships to the ports they arrived at, they landed on the beach and negotiated with the local inhabitants, or they unloaded the goods on the beach and waited for the local inhabitants to make their offers.
• Cultural exchange. Through…