Phoenicia was a Mediterranean state of mind: it created a world it could fill, mapped it, and outlined it loosely. It inhabited the Asiatic East, swept over Europe, embraced Africa. It grew up among Egyptians, studied in Egyptian schools, learned to cherish the ideals of Egyptian form and movement. It knew Sumerian words, appreciated Akkadian syllabification, graduated in Babylonian literature. It was an associate of the Amorites of Ugarit and acquainted with their Minoan and Mycenean friends. It matured among the Mediterranean Sea Peoples, who challenged the order, while Arameans and Arabs were looking for land and identity. It was innately antiquarian—free to appreciate and peddle the past without ever having to feel responsible for it.
The people lived in cities and towns and outposts along the Levantine coast. They spread from there northward to interior North Syria and Cilicia, and southward from Mount Carmel to Joppa, then inland, and deep into Egypt, to Cyprus, and everywhere overseas. They identified themselves by their city of origin: the Kitian, the Byblian, the Tyrian, the Sidonian, Akkite, Arqite, and Carthaginian. As they traveled from home and, in particular instances, as they were inspired by a common and deliberate purpose, they might identify themselves by their ethnic origin, as Sidonians, descendants of the legendary Ṣid, the Hunter and Fisher and descendant of the original Seafarer. Their Greek friends called them by this name and, because they also invented lovely blue, purple, and crimson dyes, by the name of the murex shellfish that produced these dyes and colored their skin: Phoenicians. The Phoenicians themselves did not use this name but in their last centuries, when they were immersed in Attic culture, sometimes humored their old friends by using the murex as a symbol of their identity.
The Phoenicians, wherever they went, were merchants and traders. They supplied the things that people needed and wanted—some essential, some wanton, and some exotic and extravagant. People who could not compete found them brash or vulgar, but this was only because no one had ever seen business so naturally, humanely, skillfully, and profitably pursued. Nice dishes, everyone learned, made food taste better, and new shapes and near and distant markets inspired a varied diet. Silver had its uses, but money was new, and the Assyrian economy and the Phoenician trade network depended on it. Perfumes, unguents, and scented oils became necessities; class was replaced by sophistication and flaunted in stylish clothes. There was wine from down the coast and around the world. Wealthy clients kept pet monkeys (they show up on witty amulets eating bananas), and cute lion cubs were copied onto shekel weights. Exotica revealed the worldliness of their new owners and their real or imaginary travel. The Phoenicians inspired because they were smart, secular, and secure. They could read, write, and count, tell stories, describe their adventures, and evoke a real world. It was a world of business, where commerce and culture coalesced.