ABSTRACT
The Greek perceptions of Phoenicians that first becomes apparent in the Homeric epics and arguably also in the archaeological record of Greek interaction with the people of the eastern Mediterranean a few centuries earlier. Moral perspectives apart, this was a rhetoric based in international commercial advantage and its implications for domestic political power. Likewise, Phoenicians in Homers epics are thus in part a Greek invention, created in the process of defining Greek identity. This chapter shows Maritime trade and perceptions of particular kinds of traders and the goods they traded, as well as their general maritime activities, played a large part in the process. The correspondence between the epics and the archaeological record can be illustrated by focusing on some of the specific attributes of Phoenicians and the goods in which they deal in the epics and then looking briefly at how these relate to material actually found in the ground.
