Phoenicia (1200-500 BC) was a civilization of Semitic-speaking Canaanites living on the coast of modern Lebanon and Syria in the first millenium BC. From major cities such as Tyre and Sidon, Phoenician merchants and sailors explored the Mediterranean, engaged in widespread commerce, and founded Carthage and other colonies in the western Mediterranean.
History[]
While the Israelites were forming a united kingdom, the Phoenicians (who called themselves the "Can'ani"/Canaanites) settled in the Syria-Palestine region in 1200 BC. By 1100 BC Canaanite territory had shrunk to a narrow strip of present-day Lebanon between the mountains and sea, as the Israelites and the Philistines conquered their lands. The Phoenicians settled Byblos, Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, small city-states on the coast. Before 1000 BC, Byblos was the most important Phoenician city-state, a distribution center for cedar timber from the slopes of Mount Lebanon and for papyrus from Egypt. King Hiram, who came to power in 969 BCE, was responsible for Tyre's rise to prominence, forming a close alliance with King Solomon and providing skilled Phoenician craftsmen and cedar wood for building the First Temple in Jerusalem. In the 800s BC Tyre took control of nearby Sidon and dominated the Mediterranean coastal trade. Tyre was practically impregnable, having two harbors connected by a canal, a large marketplace, a magnificent palace with treausry and archives, and temples to the gods Melqart and Astarte. Some of the 30,000 inhabitants lived in suburbs on the mainland.
After 900 BC Tyre turned its attention westward, establishing colonies on Cyprus, a copper-rich island 100 miles from the Syrian coast. By 700 BC a string of settlements in the western Mediterranean formed a "Phoenecian Triangle" composed of the North African coast from western Libya to Morocco, the south and southeast coast of Spain, included Gades (modern Cadiz) on the Strait of Gibraltar, controlling passage between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean; and hte islands of Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta off the coast of Italy. Tyre maintained its autonomy until 701 BC by paying tribute to the Assyrian kings. In that year it finally fell to an Assyrian army that stripped it of much of its territory and population, allowing Sidon to become the leading city in Phoenicia.
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