Innovation & Wealth › Ancient merchants & trade
Phoenician sea trade
c. 1200–300 BC· Event· Innovations & industries
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details uncertain.
Seafaring city-states on the Lebanese coast built a trading network spanning the Mediterranean and beyond.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
Tyre, Sidon and Byblos sold cedar timber, glass, metalwork and costly purple dye made from sea snails, and traded enslaved people too. From about 1200 BC their ships founded trading posts and colonies such as Carthage in Tunisia and Gadir (Cádiz) in Spain, reaching past Gibraltar for silver and tin. Profit came from carrying goods between regions that lacked them. Alexander the Great took Tyre in 332 BC, and Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BC.
Impact on society and the economy
They showed that a small network of ports could outtrade large land empires, and they spread goods, techniques and the alphabet across the Mediterranean.
How we know
Phoenician shipwrecks off Israel and Spain, colony sites, inscriptions, the Hebrew Bible's list of Tyre's trade (Ezekiel 27), and Greek writers such as Homer and Herodotus. Little of their own writing survives.
Still debated
How far they sailed is debated, for example Herodotus's story of a voyage around Africa about 600 BC. 'Phoenician' was a Greek name; they identified by city.
Inside this (1)
Connections (2)
▸Phoenician sea trade spread Phoenician alphabetMostly agreed
The connection
Phoenician traders and scribes needed a quick script for contracts, inventories and letters. As their ships set up trading posts from Cyprus to Spain, the 22-letter alphabet traveled with them, and trading partners, especially Greeks, adapted it to their own languages.
When and how
Across the Mediterranean, about 1050–700 BC; Greeks adapted it around 800 BC, possibly through contacts in Cyprus or Crete.
How sure are we?
Phoenician inscriptions turn up at colony sites, early Greek letters closely match Phoenician shapes and order, and Greeks called their letters 'Phoenician'.
Debates
Whether merchants or scribes did most of the spreading, and where Greeks first learned it, are debated.
▸Phoenician sea trade was absorbed into Roman denarius and Mediterranean commerceMostly agreed
The connection
Phoenician cities and colonies were gradually swallowed by larger powers. Rome destroyed Carthage, the greatest Phoenician colony, in 146 BC and took over its North African and Spanish trade; Tyre and Sidon came under Roman rule in 64 BC. Their ports, routes and skills became part of Rome's Mediterranean market.
When and how
Carthage (Tunisia) in 146 BC after three Punic Wars, and the Lebanese coast under Pompey in 64 BC.
How sure are we?
Greek and Roman historians such as Polybius describe the wars, and archaeology shows Phoenician ports continuing to trade under Roman rule.
Debates
How much Phoenician commercial practice survived inside Roman trade, rather than being replaced, is hard to measure.