Listed 2 sub titles with search on: History for wider area of: "PHOENICE Ancient country LEBANON" .
The Mediterranean and North African coast (with the exception of Cyrenaica)
entered the mainstream of Mediterranean history with the arrival in the 1st millennium
BC of Phoenician traders, mainly from Tyre and Sidon in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Phoenicians were not looking for land to settle but for anchorages and staging
points on the trade route from Phoenicia to Spain, a source of silver and tin.
Points on an alternative route by way of Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands
also were occupied. The Phoenicians lacked the manpower and the need to found
large colonies as the Greeks did, and few of their settlements grew to any size.
The sites chosen were generally offshore islands or easily defensible promontories
with sheltered beaches on which ships could be drawn up. Carthage (from the Phoenician
Kart-Hadasht, New City), destined to be the largest Phoenician colony and in the
end an imperial power, conformed to the pattern.
Tradition dated the foundation of Gades (modern Cadiz; the earliest
known Phoenician trading post in Spain) to 1110 BC, Utica (Utique) to 1101 BC,
and Carthage to 814 BC. The dates appear legendary, and no Phoenician object earlier
than the 8th century BC has yet been found in the west. At Carthage some Greek
objects have been found, datable to about 750 or slightly later, which comes within
two generations of the traditional date. Little can be learned from the romantic
legends about the arrival of the Phoenicians at Carthage transmitted by Greco-Roman
sources. Though individual voyages doubtless took place earlier, the establishment
of permanent posts is unlikely to have taken place before 800 BC, antedating the
parallel movement of Greeks to Sicily and southern Italy.
Material evidence of Phoenician occupation in the 8th century BC comes
from Utica, and of the 7th or 6th century BC from Hadrumetum (Susah, Sousse),
Tipasa (east of Cherchell), Siga (Rachgoun), Lixus, and Mogador (Essaouira), the
last being the most distant Phoenician settlement found so far. Finds of similar
age have been made at Motya (Mozia) in Sicily, Nora (Nurri), Sulcis, and Tharros
(San Giovanni di Sinis) in Sardinia, and Cadiz and Almunecar in Spain. Unlike
the Greek settlements, however, those of the Phoenicians long remained politically
dependent on their homeland, and only a few were situated where the hinterland
had the potential for development. The emergence of Carthage as an independent
power, leading to the creation of an empire based on the secure possession of
the North African coast, resulted less from the weakening of Tyre, the chief city
of Phoenicia, by the Babylonians than from growing pressure from the Greeks in
the western Mediterranean; in 580 BC some Greek cities in Sicily attempted to
drive the Phoenicians from Motya and Panormus (Palermo) in the west of the island.
The Carthaginians feared that if the Greeks won the whole of Sicily they would
move on to Sardinia and beyond, isolating the Phoenicians in North Africa. The
successful defence of Sicily was followed by attempts to strengthen limited footholds
in Sardinia; a fortress at Monte Sirai is the oldest Phoenician military building
in the west. The threat from the Greeks receded when Carthage, in alliance with
Etruscan cities, backed the Phoenicians of Corsica in about 540 BC and succeeded
in excluding the Greeks from contact with southern Spain.
Venerable historical traditions recount the Phoenician voyages to
found new cities. Utica, on the Tunisian coast of North Africa, was reputedly
founded in 1178 BC, and by 1100 BC the Phoenician city of Tyre supposedly had
a Spanish colony at Gadir (Cadiz). Although intriguing, these historical traditions
are unsupported by evidence. Excavations confirm that the Phoenicians settled
in southern Spain after 800 BC. Their search for new commodities led them ever
farther westward and was the reason for their interest in southern Spain's mineral
wealth. The untapped lodes of silver and alluvial deposits of tin and gold provided
essential raw materials with which to meet the increasing Assyrian demands for
tribute. By 700 BC silver exported from the Rio Tinto mines was so abundant that
it depressed the value of silver bullion in the Assyrian world. This is the background
for Phoenician interest in the far west.
Phoenician commerce was conducted by family firms of ship owners and
manufacturers who had their base in Tyre or Byblos and placed their representatives
abroad. This accounts for the rich tombs of Phoenician pattern found at Almunecar,
Trayamar, and Villaricos, equipped with metropolitan goods such as alabaster wine
jars, imported Greek pottery, and delicate gold jewellery. Maritime bases from
the Balearic Islands (Ibiza) to Cadiz on the Atlantic were set up to sustain commerce
in salted fish, dyes, and textiles. Early Phoenician settlements are known from
Morro de Mezquitilla, Toscanos, and Guadalhorce and shrines from Gorham's Cave
in Gibraltar and the Temple of Melqart on the island of Sancti Petri near Cadiz.
After the fall of Tyre to the Babylonians in 573 BC and the subjugation of Phoenicia,
the early prosperity faded until the 4th century. Many colonies survived, however,
and Abdera (Adra), Baria (Villaricos), Carmona (Carmo), Gadir (Cadiz), Malaca
(Malaga), and Sexi (Almunecar) thrived under the trading system established by
Carthage for the central and western Mediterranean. Eivissa (Ibiza) became a major
Carthaginian colony, and the island produced dye, salt, fish sauce, and wool.
A shrine with offerings to the goddess Tanit was established in the cave at Es
Cuyram, and the Balearic Islands entered Eivissa's commercial orbit after 400
BC. In 237 BC, just before the Second Punic War, Carthage launched its conquest
of southern Spain under Hamilcar Barca, founded a new capital city at Cartago
Nova (Cartagena) in 228 BC, and suffered crushing defeat by the Romans in 206
BC.
Among the most outstanding colonies or trading posts which the Phoenicians
had established were the cities of Genoa, where they went in with the Celts and
established a flourishing colony, and Marseilles which they started as nothing
more than a trading post before it became fully Hellenized.
It is very probable that the tremendous colonial activity of the Phoenicians
and Carthaginians was stimulated in the 8th to 6th centuries BC by the military
blows that were wrecking the trade of the Phoenician homeland in the Levant. Also,
competition with the synchronous Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean
cannot be ignored as a contributing factor.
The earliest site outside the Phoenician homeland known to possess
important aspects of Phoenician culture is Ugarit (Ras Shamra), about six miles
north of Latakia. The site was already occupied before the 4th millennium BC,
but the Phoenicians only became prominent there around 1991-1786 BC.
According to Herodotus, the coast of Libya along the sea which washes
it to the north, throughout its entire length from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which
is its furthest point, is inhabited by Libyans of many distinct tribes who possess
the whole tract except certain portions which belong to the Phoenicians and the
Greeks.
Tyre's first colony, Utica in North Africa, was founded perhaps as
early as the 10th century BC. It is likely that the expansion of the Phoenicians
at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC is to be connected with the alliance
of Hiram of Tyre with Solomon of Israel in the second half of the 10th century
BC. In the following century, Phoenician presence in the north is shown by inscriptions
at Samal (Zincirli Huyuk) in eastern Cilicia, and in the 8th century at Karatepe
in the Taurus Mountains, but there is no evidence of direct colonization. Both
these cities acted as fortresses commanding the routes through the mountains to
the mineral and other wealth of Anatolia.
Cyprus had Phoenician settlements by the 9th century BC. Citium, known
to the Greeks as Kition (biblical Kittim), in the southeast corner of the island,
became the principal colony of the Phoenicians in Cyprus. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean,
several smaller settlements were planted as stepping-stones along the route to
Spain and its mineral wealth in silver and copper: at Malta, early remains go
back to the 7th century BC, and at Sulcis and Nora in Sardinia and Motya in Sicily,
perhaps a century earlier. According to Thucydides, the Phoenicians controlled
a large part of the island but withdrew to the northwest corner under pressure
from the Greeks. Modern scholars, however, disbelieve this and contend that the
Phoenicians arrived only after the Greeks were established.
In North Africa the next site colonized after Utica was Carthage (near
Tunis). Carthage in turn seems to have established (or, in some cases, re-established)
a number of settlements in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Balearic Islands, and
southern Spain, eventually making this city the acknowledged leader of the western
Phoenicians.
This text cited June 2004 from the Cedarland's URL below
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