Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990 - 30

earlier era, the king of Byblos would have extended
credit to a representative of the Egyptian Pharaoh. No
more!
Initially, it appears that the Phoenicians may have
conducted their overseas trade directly, but single ships
or even fleets arriving at irregular intervals could probably not meet the demand for goods. So in time, groups
of permanent sales representatives were stationed at
strategic points around the Mediterranean. They could
receive shipments and store them and also purchase raw
materials and warehouse those until a fleet came to pick
them up. This ensured a constant flow of goods.
Because of that trade, Tyre became "rich and glorious" (Ezekiel 27:25), and there were relatively few wars.
This may have led to unchecked population growth, a
potential disaster for a people so land poor. Even after
King Hiram I, the friend of Solomon, expanded the city
in ca. 970 b.c., the island-city Tyre covered no more than
about 40 acres. It is possible that the custom of infant
sacrifice, which is so well known from Carthage and
other colonies, developed as a social response to that
problem (see page 29). The biblical story of Abraham
and Isaac is a condemnation of that practice. Perhaps to
deal with overpopulation and also to further protect
their far-flung markets, large-scale overseas colonization began. The first colony, at Kition in Cyprus, was
founded no later than the ninth century b.c. Within a
few hundred years, colonies ringed the Mediterranean
basin.
The most important colony, the one that would
challenge both Greece and Rome, was Carthage in
modern Tunisia. The traditional story of the founding
of Carthage is that King Pygmalion of Tyre (821-774
b.c.) killed the husband of his sister, Elissa, in order to
seize his wealth. Elissa, Jezebel's grandniece, fled with
her husband's gold to what is now Tunisia. Once there
she negotiated to buy a piece of land as large as the hide
of an ox could cover and then cut a hide into tiny strips
and surrounded a large hill with it. Thus was born Carthage (the "new city") which in turn founded her own
colonies in the western Mediterranean. The Carthaginian empire gradually took over the role of the Levantine
cities as those cities were swallowed up by the Babylonian and then the Persian and Greek empires. Carthage
and the other colonies in the west remained independent
until Rome defeated them in 146 b.c.
Until that defeat, the Carthaginians continued the
exploration and expansion begun by Tyre nearly a millennium before. Trade networks stretched along the Atlantic coast both north and south of Gibraltar. Around
600 b.c. a group of Phoenicians probably even circumnavigated Africa, a feat that would not be replicated
until Vasco da Gama's voyage in a.d. 1497-98, two millennia later. The Greek historian Herodotus (4.42) tells
the story of that voyage but rejects it as a fable since
the sailors claimed that they had "the sun on their
right hand." In fact having the sun on the right - to the
north - is a phenomenon of the southern hemisphere.
Although there is as yet no confirmation of it in the Brit30 Archaeology

ish Isles, the story of a fifth-century voyage led by Himilco, probably to Cornwall, contains details that make it
believable. There is yet another story from the same
period of a group of colonists led down the west coast of
Africa by the Carthaginian Hanno. After planting colonies along the coast, some of the expe.ditionaries probably reached the vicinity of Sierra Leone and may have
gone as far as Cameroon. It is interesting that even today many Lebanese, particularly those from the Tyre
area, have strong economic links to that area of West
Africa.
In recent years, research on the Phoenicians has blossomed. The tragedy of civil war in Lebanon has, of
course, stopped work at the main ports, but current excavations at Ras el Bassit in Syria, Tell Dor in Israel, and
Kition-Bamboula in Cyprus, are now flooding the literature with fresh information. The picture, however, is
by no means complete. For example, there is an ancient
tradition that Tyre founded a colony at Cadiz in Spain
as early as 1100 b.c., yet the earliest Phoenician material remains uncovered to date in Spain are from about
800 b.c. We don't know whether to believe the tradition
or the present evidence, but reliance on our current
knowledge can be misleading. Evidence for an early
Phoenician presence in either Cyprus or Crete was lacking as recently as ten years ago. Two excavations since
then, at Palaepaphos in southwest Cyprus and at Kommos on the southern coast of Crete, have uncovered
Phoenician ceramics, including storage jars and jugs
perhaps used to export wines and oils, from the early
part of the Iron Age.
Their overseas exploits and the gradual recovery of
the material traces of their voyages has been the focus of
much research on the Phoenicians. From that evidence,
however, we will never be able to reconstruct more than
a part of their culture, for the Phoenicians were more
than just good sailors and clever traders. It is an irony
that almost none of the literature of the people who gave
us the alphabet has been preserved. Fragments of their
poetry have survived in, for example, the biblical Song
of Songs and in the Psalms. The mountains are described as "a fountain that makes the gardens fertile, [a]
well of living water" (Song of Songs 4:15). Even more
evocative is the Phoenician poem embedded in Psalm
104 which speaks of the birds making their nests in the
cedars which God planted and of the streams breaking
out of the ravines. In that Psalm, the creator lives in a
palace above the mountains - the thunder is his voice,
the clouds his chariot, and the winds his messengers.
Those are the Phoenician images that still survive in the
religious consciousness of the west.
In the future, better excavation and conservation
techniques may allow us to recover more from Phoenician sites than we have in the past. Those techniques
may overcome the frustration of seeing, as I once did, a
trace of dark carbonized material on the damp floor of
a Phoenician building, wondering whether it was the remains of a long-ago dinner - or excerpts from one of
those songs about the mountains.

Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990