Short summary on the Phoenicians: the territory, the maritime trade, the colonies, the religion and the culture of the Phoenician people.
The word “ Phoenicians ” comes from the Greek “phoinikes”, meaning red, and they were a Semitic people who lived in a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea, corresponding to present-day Lebanon.The territory. They were organized in cities independent of each other that since the third millennium BC had developed an intense commercial activity with neighboring Egypt.
The territory has been very important for the formation of their history: it is a strip of land between 12 and 50 km wide, surrounded by mountains to the east and by the sea to the west.
Sometimes the mountains ended in promontories, breaking the continuity of the territory and consequently land connections became more difficult.
The mountains were rich in forests that provided abundant wood, including valuable ones such as cedar, used for the construction of ships that favored the activity with which these people have gone down in history: trade.
THE PHOENICIANS: MARITIME TRADE AND COLONIES
The Phoenician cities each had their own autonomy and were governed by a king and a council of merchants ; sometimes it could happen that the king’s power was replaced by that of a magistrate – suffetes – who remained in office for a year.
The most important cities, such as Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Ugarit and Berytus (present-day Beirut) gave rise to a commercial activity that extended from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
The Phoenicians possessed an extraordinary craft activity , they produced: woolen fabrics painted with purple, ivory plaques, transparent glass objects and finally jewels.
The Phoenicians exported their artisanal production and, to encourage trade, founded several ports on the islands and along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
In this way a vast colonization movement was born which involved Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula.
The most important centers, such as Carthage, over time became cities independent from the mother country.
Maritime trade benefited from advances in navigation techniques and shipbuilding ; the Phoenicians could also count on knowledge of night orientation, navigation maps, the tidal cycle, the arrangement of sails and the keel hull which ensured greater stability and strength to the ship.
Another advantage was the use of bitumen to waterproof the hulls of ships. The Greeks also attributed to the Phoenicians the invention of the trireme, which for a long time were the queens of the Mediterranean.
THE PHOENICIANS: RELIGION AND CULTURE
The religion of the Phoenicians was characterized by different divinities , one for each city, but there was one more important than the others: Tanit, goddess of fertility.
While in Tyre they worshipped Melqart, in Sidon and Ugarit they worshipped Baal: a young warrior god, lord of the storm and defender of order against chaos.
The most important invention of the Phoenicians was alphabetic writing , which was born as an improvement on the writing used in the city of Ugarit.
