Of purple men and oil merchants

In the eleventh century BCE the coastal Canaanites of the Levant arose from the debris of the Late Bronze Age cataclysm with a vengeance. Henceforth known by the name the Greeks gave them – the Phoenicians – they returned to the sea doing what they did better than anyone of their age: sailing to places hitherto unknown, buying where cheapest, selling where dearest, and making boatloads of money. For a while, they were the master entrepreneurs of the Mediterranean, answering the call for metals by finding new sources and creating new routes to replace those that had been disrupted. They imported raw material, processed it in their workshops, and exported sumptuous luxury products. As before, the Phoenicians continued to live in independent city states.

The ancient port of Byblos revived as a center for the Egyptian trade, but Egypt was not nearly so dominant as before, and the overly conservative merchants of Byblos did not seize on new opportunities. Instead Tyre and Sidon became the chief commercial centers, especially Tyre, which was built on two islands joined together several hundred yards from the mainland. The prophet Isaiah calls Tyre “the merchant of the nations” and “the bestower of crowns whose merchants were princes.” Ezekiel concurs, noting, “You satisfied many peoples with your abundant wealth and merchandise, you enriched the kings of the earth.” He lists 16 different places in which the Phoenicians traded, from Tarshish in southwestern Spain to Sheba in southwestern Arabia and provides a catalogue of trade goods ranging from precious stones, ivory, ebony, and spices to metals, foodstuffs, livestock, wool, and slaves. For the early centuries of the first millennium BCE, Tyre could justly claim Ugarit’s old title of greatest port in the Mediterranean and perhaps the world. In the tradition of their forefathers, the Phoenicians were excellent sailors

who enjoyed certain technical advantages centering on the development of more seaworthy ships capable of long voyages. They were referred to in the Bible as the “Ships of Tarshish,” meaning ships capable of sailing from one side of the Mediterranean to the other. They developed the keel, allowing for better control in rough seas, and used adjustable sails. According to Pliny,

they “invented observing the stars in sailing” and by using the Pole Star became the first to sail at night beyond the sight of land over the open waters. Beginning in the ninth century BCE, the Phoenician world became more

complicated with the arrival of a new power from the east, the Assyrians. Wisely, the Phoenicians chose to bow to the weight of the ferocious Assyrian war machine, striking a deal under which they paid a large tribute in silver. Tyre lost control over much of its Syrian and Anatolian trade to the Assyrians themselves, but the conquerors did have an important place for the Phoenicians in their overall commercial scheme. Wool, a staple in the Mesopotamian export trade for millennia, was now directed to Phoenician cities where it was woven and dyed purple, then sent to various destinations within the empire, including back to Assyria. The Phoenicians could also help to assure the Assyrians a large and steady supply of metals: gold and silver to power their economy and bronze and iron to equip their armies. Phoenician ports became the Assyrian Empire’s window to a new and virtually untapped storehouse of metals, the western Mediterranean. Despite increasingly exorbitant demands for tribute and not being allowed

to trade with Assyria’s enemy Egypt, the Phoenician cities generally benefited from their position in the Assyrian system, at least for a while. Assyrian markets were open to Phoenician goods, and the empire provided security and stability. The Canaanite-Phoenicians had always enjoyed a happy balance of palace-based and private sector trade, but under Assyrian control this shifted, reflecting a decline in Phoenician state power. Long-distance overland trade came into the hands of independent merchant houses operating through a system of agents. This system did not endear Phoenician political authorities to Assyrian rule, and in the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE they became party to several unsuccessful attempts at throwing off the imperial yoke. Tyre was not destroyed but was forced to pay an onerous exaction in gold. Sidon, considered as less essential in the Assyrian commercial scheme, paid for a rebellion by being sacked and wasted. The Assyrian presence helps to explain the most important role the

Phoenicians played in the history of trade, their push across the Mediterranean. The collapse of Mycenaean power several centuries earlier had opened the westernMediterranean, but the vacuum had yet to be filled. The need to pay their tribute in silver as well as the opportunity to serve as the connection between the interior of Southwest Asia and the lands ringing the Mediterranean drove the Phoenicians westward to seek new sources of metal. In the end their goal became nothing less than a monopoly over the natural resources of the western Mediterranean. A key strategy in Phoenician trade was to create a demand for a new product, usually a luxury item that would appeal to a local elite, who would then organize production of the commodity the Phoenicians were seeking. Among goods the Phoenicians commonly offered were wine, olive oil, unguents, perfumes, cosmetics, jewelry, trinkets,

statuettes, and textiles. The nodes of this network were stations carefully selected as emporia, processing centers, and strongholds for safeguarding vital points along the way. Several were founded with substantial numbers of settlers from the homeland and evolved into independent cities. Classical authors including Pliny and Strabo claim that the Phoenicians

were active in the western Mediterranean in the twelfth century BCE with their earliest outposts at Lixus in Morocco and Gades (Cadiz) in Spain, both beyond the Straits of Gibraltar on the Atlantic side, both founded c. 1100 BCE. The archaeological evidence points to the eighth and seventh centuries BCE as the time for such expansion although a recent discovery of Phoenician inscriptions on Sardinia dating to the eleventh or tenth century has rekindled the controversy. Using, perhaps, old Mycenaean routes, the Phoenicians hopped from Cyprus to the Aegean, where they were seeking silver and slaves by the mid-ninth century, and beyond to Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, and Spain. Some evidence shows them in the Rabat area of Morocco in the eighth century. They tended to settle their colonies in clusters along the Tunisian and Libyan coasts, on Sicily, and in southeastern Spain. Until the rise of Carthage, the most important was at Gades and beyond in the mysterious land of Tartessia (the Biblical Tarshish) although it is not clear exactly who lived in the latter place, Phoenicians, native Spaniards, or more likely both. The trip from Tyre to Gades took 3 months, at the end of which a ship

had to navigate the Straits of Gibraltar with its treacherous tides and sometimes violent winds. Gades is believed to have been founded in c. 770 BCE as the gateway to Tartessia, a place still not archaeologically pinpointed but said to contain so much silver that the inhabitants made furniture from it and ships headed back to Phoenicia used it for ballast. The mining, production, and transport of metals on so large a scale across such a distance were enormous undertakings. The value represented and the profits realized had to be huge to justify the effort. Tartessia became a byword for wealth and remoteness. The early Greeks associated Tartessia with Hades, that is until a Greek merchant named Colaeus was blown off course on his way to Egypt in 638 BCE by a wind so relentless it carried him across the Mediterranean and, according to Herodotus, through Gibraltar to Tartessia: “This trading center was virgin territory at the time, and consequently they came home with the biggest profit any Greek trader we have reliable information about has ever made from his cargo.” This amounted to 60 talents, an incredible 3,600 pounds of silver! In the long run, the richest and most powerful of Punic cities did not

prove to be Gades even when combined with Tartessia. Carthage had a spacious natural harbor, commanded a good defensive position, and fronted on a hinterland that proved to be an excellent place to grow grain, olives, grapes, and other fruits. Nearby waters contained the purple-producing murex shellfish. The traditional date for the founding of Carthage is 814 BCE. At

first, it was little more than a stopover for traffic en route to Spain, but its position at the narrowest point in the Mediterranean where the North African and Sicilian coasts are only 75 miles apart gave it an unmatched strategic position. The power that controlled both sides could control traffic passing between the eastern and western Mediterranean. As the mother cities back in Phoenicia slowly declined under the tribute

burdens imposed by Assyria, Carthage assumed control over their trade routes. In the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Carthage emerged victorious from a series of wars against the Greek cities of Sicily, capturing the trade that had previously flowed through them. Carthage’s port had to be refurbished and expanded to accommodate the boom. The metals of Spain and Sardinia were now brought there to be processed, and the city also became famous for other merchandise, especially carpets, pillows, and perfumes. Carthaginian amphorae fashioned in a distinct cigar-shape were shipped around the western Mediterranean, and although the contents are not certain, most indicators point to wine. Unlike their Roman rivals, the Carthaginians were more concerned with

making money than ruling. They had little interest in creating a large land empire stretching out in all directions from their city, and most of the time the Carthaginian gaze was turned toward the sea even when their interest was in Africa. The Phoenicians had sailed into the Atlantic, with their archaeological remains extending as far as Essaouira midway down the Moroccan coast, and they visited Madeira and the Canary Islands. How much farther the Carthaginians went is a matter of speculation. Herodotus has them trading for gold in a version of the silent trade at a location that may have been the mouth of the Senegal River. In another account a fleet under Hanno in 465 BCE is said to have reached a spot between Sierra Leone and the Congo River. The problem in accepting this is that the wind and the current both flow from the north. Hanno may have been able to sail down the West African coast, but neither he nor anyone else of his time had the navigational techniques or the equipment to sail back. This is also a problem in accepting the story of the Phoenicians who circumnavigated Africa under orders from the Pharaoh Necho II. Pliny mentions Hanno along with a contemporary named Himilco, who

was sent to explore the coasts of Europe in what appears to have been a twopronged assault to bring the lands beyond Gibraltar into the Carthaginian commercial fold. The Tartessians had earlier established trade contact with the “Tin Islands,” and Himilco’s venture may have been a follow-up on this. Himilco sailed up the coasts of Portugal, northwestern Spain, and France and likely crossed to Britain and Ireland. On the way he reportedly encountered sea monsters and got stuck in a morass of seaweed. Back in the Phoenician homeland, matters were not getting better. The

fall of the Assyrian Empire in the late sixth century BCE brought the rise of a new power in Mesopotamia, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, whose armies

besieged Tyre for 13 years. Tyre survived but was exhausted. The NeoBabylonians didn’t last long and soon were replaced by the Persians, under whom the Phoenicians fared somewhat better. The Phoenicians provided the Persian Empire with much of its fleet but, during the Macedonian conquest of Persia, Tyre provoked the wrath of Alexander the Great and was destroyed in 332 BCE. This opened the gate for the last flood of refugees into Carthage and marked the passing of commercial prominence on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from the cities of the Levant to a new center on the Egyptian coast, Alexandria. During the heyday of the Phoenicians, their only major commercial rivals

in the Mediterranean were the Greeks. The collapse of Mycenaean civilization was so complete that it took the Greeks almost four centuries to recover, a period known as the Dark Ages. The small amount of goods exchanged during this time was through reciprocity rather than commercial trade. Grave goods from Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt dating from the tenth and ninth centuries BCE have been found at one site, probably carried there by Phoenicians in very casual, sporadic, small-scale trade. In the Homeric epics, which were composed following the end of the Dark

Ages, the attitude toward trade was decidedly negative, which was not a residue from the Mycenaeans, who were enthusiastic traders. Goods might be exchanged on a one-time basis between parties of equal strength, and people who had frequent contact with each other exchanged gifts, but to trade for profit was considered a contemptible vocation. For the Homeric Greeks this was a matter of ethics: it was thought nobler to plunder someone of their goods than to trade for them. In the Odyssey Odysseus in disguise visits some Greeks who are holding athletic contests. When he refuses to join in, he is taunted by a brash young man who lays on Odysseus the deepest of insults: “You are more like a skipper of a merchant crew, who spends his life on a hulking tramp, worrying about his outward freight, or keeping a sharp eye on the cargo when he comes home with his extortionate profits. No: one can see you are no athlete.” Beginning in the eighth century BCE, Greece underwent a dramatic change

with a population boom amounting to an increase of between 300 and 700 percent over less than a century. The economy changed virtually overnight, with the production of surplus goods, the appearance of an entrepreneurial spirit, the emergence of market forces, and the reestablishment of significant overseas trade. Greece is a relatively small, rocky place with a huge coastline featuring a multitude of natural harbors and bordered by a sea having an abundance of islands and lacking tides. The Greeks returned to this sea with gusto, initially in undecked, broad-bottomed, 20-oared ships but soon in much larger double-banked 50-oared ships up to 80 feet long, the famous pentekontors. The old palace-dominated system of the Minoans and Mycenaeans was not reestablished. Instead profits were the driving force although, taking a lesson from the Phoenicians, Greek merchants often

facilitated contact with foreign partners through gift-giving. This longdistance trade would not just focus on securing imports in the form of luxury goods and metals but also on exports, including products manufactured expressly to sell abroad to make a profit. The initial direction of the new long-distance trade was eastward with old

trading partners in the Levant. By 800 BCE Greeks from the island of Euboea were established at Al Mina (“the Port”) in northern Syria just up the coast from ancient Ugarit. Al Mina would be used by Greek merchants from various cities for the next four centuries as an emporium for the transfer of goods between the interior of Southwest Asia, the Aegean region, and later the western Mediterranean. Probably the Greeks were seeking metals carried down from Anatolia and Armenia, but later, after they found better sources in the western Mediterranean, they reversed the flow and carried metals, especially iron, into Al Mina. Other goods the Greeks sought from the east included such high-tech products as glass, medicines, and dyes. The Euboeans also pioneered Greek trade to the west. The common

assumption has been that Greek colonization was primarily a matter of overpopulation and land hunger, with surplus people spilling out of Greece to find new places to farm. Whereas this was true in some instances, a closer look at the earliest Greek settlements in the west seems to show most were established as part of a trade-route building process for contact with peoples such as the Etruscans, who lived on the Italian peninsula north of Rome. Even colonies established for agricultural purposes were soon producing surpluses of grain and other products in demand by the folks back home. The earliest of the Euboean colonies in the west was at Pithekoussai (“Ape Island”) on the northern rim of the Bay of Naples, a strategic location for contact with the Etruscans but hardly an attractive place to farm. Soon goods were moving from Pithekoussai not just to Greece but as far as Al Mina with stops along the way. The Euboean Greeks and the Phoenicians were often partners in trade, and

part of the population at Pithekoussai was Phoenician. Since the Phoenicians preceded the Greeks in this part of the world, it is unlikely that the Greeks could have entered this market without Phoenician acquiescence. For a time, until the founding of Massilia (Marseilles) in c. 600 BCE, the Greeks did not attempt to penetrate farther west into territory that fell under the Phoenician monopoly. In some places Greeks also lived side by side and formed business partnerships with Etruscans. The Greeks did safeguard the entryway into their own area of operation by taking control over the Straits of Messina, the narrow passage separating Italy and Sicily, and various Greek cities set up colonies on both sides, usually where trade prospects looked promising. Soon colonies were founding their own colonies. The era of peace and partnership, however, did not last indefinitely. By the early

sixth century BCE, chronic warfare existed between Greek and Phoenician colonies in Sicily over control of the doorway between the eastern and western

Mediterranean whereas to the north Greeks and Etruscans struggled to determine commercial supremacy in the northwest. The colony of Massilia, which soon became a thriving city, must have been of considerable annoyance to both Etruscans and Phoenicians. Located near the mouth of the Rhone River, it could tap into the huge hinterland of Gaul (France and Belgium). In Gaul goods moved across well developed exchange networks using river

valleys, one running from the Seine to the Saone to the Rhone, another up the Loire to the Rhone. The Greeks of Massilia became middlemen in the flow of goods between northwestern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. A much desired commodity on this route was tin, some of which came from Brittany on the northwestern coast of Gaul, but the major source was across the English Channel in the British Isles. This system was still active in the first century as noted by the historian Diodorus Siculus, who observed that British tin was transported by packhorse across Brittany by a tribe called the Veneti, who had become very wealthy from this. Along with tin came perishables such as hides, salted meats, grain, slaves, and, from farther north, furs. The Greeks brought the grape vine and olive tree to southern France, and

Massilia sent much of its own wine and oil inland as well as related products such as goblets, cups, jugs, and kraters (bowls used for mixing wine and water). Iron Age princely graves and votive deposits in western and northern Europe contained many elite goods of Greek and Etruscan manufacture, some of which were quite exquisite, including bronze swords; cauldrons and feasting equipment; coral beads, amulets, and brooches; furniture sometimes with ivory inlay; and wheeled carts and wagons. Initially many of the imports were still distributed through prestige chains but, as time went on, more and more entered the nascent market system as exchange moved away from social relationships to profit-making. Economies in the interior became more geared to the production of goods desired in Mediterranean markets in order to obtain Mediterranean goods. Massilia’s interests were not confined to the northern interior. It also came

to control the overland trade routes between Spain and Italy and established its own colony at Emporiae (Ampurias) and smaller outposts down the Spanish coast, challenging Carthage’s monopoly. One source mentions a maritime route originating in Ireland or Britain, crossing to Brittany, then moving down the Atlantic coast to Tartessia, through Gibraltar and north along the Mediterranean coast to Massilia. This was made possible by the recent introduction of the sail into northwestern Europe, the earliest of which were made of leather. Prior to this, boats had to be paddled or rowed. A trader from Massilia named Pytheas searching for tin claimed to have sailed beyond Britain in the fourth century BCE to a place he called Thule, which modern speculation has as either Iceland, Norway, or the Shetland Islands, then continued on, eventually reaching the Arctic ice. On the way back he picked up a load of amber on an island off Denmark, which must have made the trip worthwhile.