Phoenician
Economy, Trade, and Navigation
There is no doubt that the Phoenicians exploited the small extent of arable land as much as they could, forcing cultivation right up to the slopes of the Lebanese mountains and using the watercourses for irrigation. The terrain which it was possible to flood enabled them to cultivate cereals, while the rocky land was restricted to plantations. The system of cultivation of the cereals, in particular of grain, must have remained in use until recently. The Punic stelae show a very simple plough which, according to Mago, was drawn by oxen and bears a close resemblance to the modern Berber and Syrian plough. It would seem, therefore, that the Phoenician plough was similar. Stone wheels, found in more or less good condition, must have been used for grinding.
Vines, olives, figs, and date-palms were the commonest plantations. Certain large stones with holes, found in Phoenicia, may have been olive and grape presses, and it is likely that the systems of vine-dressing described by Mago and Columella in the West were imported from the homeland. Another widespread plantation in Carthage, the pomegranate, was also probably imported from Phoenicia.
Finally, the drinking water in the Phoenician cities, and above all on the islands, was obtained through large cisterns which gathered the rain. Archaeologists have brought their remains to light, and Strabo gives an interesting account of the way in which the inhabitants of Aradus used a spring which gushed out in the sea: they apparently let a funnel of lead into the spring, attached to a leather tube which carried the water straight to the island.
Th most important factor in Phoenician economy was the exploitation of the cedar and fir forests, which provided the neighbouring countries with valuable wood. Egyptian sources mention this trade from the beginning of history, particularly with Byblos. And in the period with which we are concerned both the Bible and Mesopotamian sources provide us with the information mentioned in the chapter on history. Furthermore, a relief of Sargon II depicts ships carrying large tree trunks. Trade with Egypt was, of course, all done by sea, while for Mesopotamia caravans were used as far as the Euphrates and the trunks en transported along the river. An interesting account of this means of transport is given by an inscription of Nebuchadnezar which ecords an expedition accomplished in Lebanon, mountain of cedars, green forest with fragrant air:
With the force of Nabu and Marduk, my lords, I armed my troops for an expedition in Lebanon. I drove out the enemy above and below, I brought happiness to the heart of the earth. The scattered population I gathered and brought back to their home. That which no king had done before, I did: I cleft high mountains, I cut blocks of stone from the mountains, I opened paths, prepared roads for the transport of the cedars. On the canal Avakhtu, as though they were reeds of the river, I floated large cedars, tall and strong, of great beauty, of imposing aspect, rich product of Lebanon, and brought them before Marduk, the king.Stone was also used by the Phoenicians. The custom of cutting tombs in the rock is a proof of their use and large blocks were taken from the quarries to build the city walls. In many cases the method of building with rough blocks was probably earlier than the use of square blocks, although the technique cannot be considered a definite proof. The stone coffins are an additional indication of the workability of the stone.
The main Phoenician industry was textiles. Homer refers on several occasions to the many coloured garments of the Sidonians, and the Asiatics depicted on Egyptian monuments wear equally colourful garbs. The Phoenicians were famous for dying their textiles with the murex trunculus or murex brandaris, shells once very common in the sea just off the Phoenician coast, but which gradually disappeared through intense exploitation. The dead murex secretes a liquid which, when applied to white material, colours it violet, and this is the purple colour con-nected with the name of the Phoenicians. According to the intensity of ihe liquid and the length of its exposure to the sun the colour could vary from pink to dark violet. Besides the vast literary evidence, the Phoenecian purple industry is attested by the immense deposits of shellsfound near Sidon and Tyre. South of Sidon there is a hill close to the se composed literally of layers of shells several metres thick: presumably the receptacles in which the fish were exposed until they putrefied and secreted their liquid were placed at a considerable distance from the city because of the pungent smell. Deposits of shells have also been discovered in the West, thereby proving the spread of this industry in the colonial area.
Glass was another notable industry of the Phoenician cities after the seventh century. It is probable that Pliny's claim that the Phoenicians invented this industry is correct. It is certainly true, that the Phoenicians developed the industry, because they used transparent glass. Glass also existed in Egypt but Egyptian glass was opaque suggesting far greater evolution in Phoenicia. Only in the first century BC was a further invention developed by the Phoenicians: the art of blowing glass.
Their fine metal and ivory work indicates wide commercial activity: copper came from Cyprus, silver and gold from Ethiopia and maybe from Anatolia, although there were copper and iron mines in Wadi Araba, which Solomon exploited amply, ivory from India or Punt. All this shows the importance of the Red Sea route, which gave access both to the African coast and India.
Phoenician trade is probably best described by the Hebrew prophets, who condemned the Phoenician cities and contrasted their past splendour to their future ruin. With regard to Sidon, and especially to Tyre, we have the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and, most comprehensive of all, Ezekiel:
O Tyre, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks ofBashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought of the isles of Chittim. Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishash was that which covered thee. The inhabitants of Sidon and Aradus were thy mariners; thy wise men, O Tyre, that were in thee, were thy pilots. The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness. The men of Aradus with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gaminadims were in thy towers: they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules. The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm. Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool. Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus were in thy market. Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots. Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee, in lambs, in rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold. Haran, and Canneh and Eden the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise. The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.
The prophecy is of great importance, since it reconstructs in unique detail the commercial activity of a Phoenician city. There may be some doubt about the identification of the localities mentioned and the exact nature of the goods, but the general picture is most impressive and shows the incredible abundance and intensity of Tyrian trade. To complete it there are accounts by other prophets, such as Isaiah, who speaks of Sidon's overseas commerce in Egyptian grain, and the historical facts about the fleet of Hiram which imported gold, precious stones, and wood from the region of Ophir (probably southern Arabia), while from Tarshish it brought back wood, silver, ivory, monkeys, and peacocks.
For lack of compass, navigation was performed under the guidance of Ursa Minor and the North Star which the Greeks called 'The Phoenician Star'. The ships generally did not go far out to sea: the Phoenicians probably founded their landing-stages at a day's voyage apart, so as to be able to shelter on the mainland at night. Nevertheless, they were not deterred by the most distant destinations and made special use of the islands as anchorages in the open sea.
According to Herodotus, the furthest voyage the Phoenician sailors ever undertook was the circumnavigation of the African continent, accomplished on the orders of the Pharaoh Necho c. 600 BC. The journey is supposed to have taken three years and the navigators sailed westwards from the Red Sea. The fact that the sun was to their right as they passed the tip of Africa is proof that the jounery was made. Herodotus writes (4.42):
As for Libya (Africa), we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Necos, the Egyptian king, who on desisting from the canal which he had begun between the Nile and the Arabian gulf, sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules, and return to Egypt through them, and by the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians took their departure from Egypt by way of the Erythraean sea, and so sailed into the southern ocean. When autumn came, they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared - I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may - that in sailing round Libya they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered.Two subsequent voyages were undertaken from Carthage: c 450 by Himilco, who sailed round Spain to the British Isles, an area known to the Phoenicians as "Tin-Land." and c. 425 by Hanno, who seems to have sailed through the Pillars of Hercules to the Gulf of Guinea.
Using Himilco's sea route from Carthage to England through the Straits of Gibraltar, the Phoenicians were able to trade for tin directly with Britain as tin trade at this time was controlled by the people living in the area that is now France.
King Hanno's famous expedition is recounted in vivid detail in a tablet found in the ruins of the temple of Cronos at Carthage. Known as The Periplus of Hanno, it is a Greek translation of a Punic text which chronicles Hanno's mission. These voyages, undertaken not from Phoenicia but from Carthage, appear to be the natural continuation of an expansion and naval art of which the Phoenicians were masters. Hanno set out with 60 ships and thousands of settlers. They sailed south along the African coast, establishing colonies or trading posts along the way. They traveled past the "Horn of West", probably Dakar or Cape Palmas, until they reached a towering volcano in full eruption, which they called "The Chariot of the Gods" and which most experts agree was probably Mount Cameroon, with its 13,000 foot volcanic peak.
Phoenician voyages of discovery may not have also ventured across the Atlantic. There has been eveidence in the form of maps on Phoenician coins to suggest that they may have also discovered America. A number of classical texts bolster this theory. For example, in the first century BC, Diodorus of Sicily wrote:
…in the deep off Africa is an island of considerable size… fruitful, much of it mountainous… Through it flow navigable rivers… The Phoenicians had discovered it by accident after having planted many colonies throughout Africa.During their voyages the Phoenicians seem to have sometimes resorted to piracy, and specialized in kidnapping boys and girls to be sold as slaves in other countries. Thus, in the Odyssey, Eumeus tells that 'Phoenicians, men famed for their ships, greedy knaves, bringing countless trinkets in their black ship', arrived in his country when he was a child. They arranged with the Phoenician nurse of the palace to carry off both the nurse and the child so as to sell them into slavery. Again in the Odyssey, Ulysses tells that a Phoenician took him to his land under the pretext of shipping the cargo as far as Libya with him, but actually to sell him as a slave. Further evidence is provided by Herodotus: lo, daughter of Inacus, was kidnapped by the Phoenicians, who took her to Egypt; Theban priestesses were kidnapped in Egypt to be shipped to Libya. On the whole, however, piratical activities must have been fairly limited, otherwise they would have jeopardized trade relations to which the Phoenicians attached great importance, and there was also a difference between piracy and organized slave traffic which was legal and considered part of normal commercial activity.