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The Pirates of Phoenicia

When your merchandise went out on the seas, you [Phoenicia] satisfied many nations;

With your great wealth and your wares you enriched the kings of the earth.

“A LAMENT FOR TYRE,” EZEKIEL 27:33

In the Bible, there are several passages in which the term “Canaanite” is employed interchangeably with the words for “trader” and “merchant.” Evidently, among the writers of the Old Testament, the commercial skills of this rival Semitic nation were so impressive that a Canaanite was, by lineage, a cunning and effective merchant. This legendary flair for commerce was most apparent among the Canaanites who had settled north of the Hebrew kingdoms, on an unremarkable sliver of coastal land in modern-day Lebanon and Syria. From this inauspicious starting point, these northerly Canaanites, the Phoenicians, would remake the world of commerce and set the stage for the Greek and Roman intercontinental empires that would follow in their wake.

A Narrow Strip of Land

Necessity being, as Plato first observed, the mother of invention, critical needs of one sort or another have spurred important entrepreneurial developments. As we have seen in Mesopotamia, it was the scarcity of certain metals, timber, and other vital materials that spurred the initial wave of entrepreneurial activity within that society. In Phoenicia, the material shortcomings were even more acute, compelling its residents to take to the seas to obtain what was needed for their survival.

As was the case for Sumer and the Mesopotamian civilizations that succeeded it, Phoenicia operated more like a confederation of city-states than a well-defined nation-state. In fact, the Phoenicians themselves usually identified more with their city-states of origin as opposed to a larger sense of national identity. Nonetheless, they all shared a common tongue, religious heritage, and culture. The latter included a pronounced streak of resourcefulness that would often triumph over complicated logistical challenges.

Confined to a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and imposing mountain ranges to the east, the Phoenicians had very little arable land. However, they would discover that the apparent curse of the rocky terrain that kept them hemmed into what were essentially cramped beaches also represented the greatest blessing of their territory. The surrounding mountains were green with lush cedar and cypress forests. With sturdy lumber being in high demand in the rapidly developing Egyptian kingdom, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, the Phoenicians came to rely on the export of cedar and cypress wood for their survival.

While lumber was often the primary export of the Phoenicians, there were other salable commodities they found and developed in their limited native territory. For example, Murex is a type of sea snail that prefers shallow and warm waters, such as those along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The Phoenicians discovered that a valuable purple dye could be extracted from these creatures by removing the sea snails from the water and placing them into large stacks on dry land. As they perished from the heat, each Murex would release its dye, which would then coalesce into a bright pool at the bottom of each stack.

This stunning dye and the premium, regal clothing it would be used to make elicited the admiration of other civilizations in the region. In later years, Greek civilization, for one, was so impressed that its writers named the strange sea people bearing these dazzling purple products after their wares. That is how the coastal Canaanite civilization became known as Phoenicia, ancient Greek for “the land of purple.”

Another notable Phoenician export was wine. Making good use of the ample hillsides and sunshine that encircled their cities, the Phoenicians established many high-yield vineyards along their coastline. Later, as Phoenician settlements expanded across the wider region, these wine-making skills would help transform some of their new colonies into profit centers, particularly those situated in Greece and modern-day Italy and Spain.

However, from the early third millennium B.C.E., when the urban centers of Baalbek, Byblos, and Tyre were established, until around 1200 B.C.E., Phoenicia was not a colonizing power. Moreover, during that period its network of trade routes rarely extended beyond Egypt, the Hittite Empire to the north (in modern-day Turkey), Cyprus, and the kingdoms of the Hebrews, the Philistines, and other Semitic peoples living at the western edge of Asia Minor.

The Semitic peoples living to the south of Phoenicia were, by and large, farmers and shepherds. Like the merchants of Egypt, those of the Semitic kingdoms had foodstuffs and other products of interest to the Phoenicians. As for Cyprus, the primary attraction for the Phoenicians was the island’s abundant copper. With respect to their primary destination, Egypt, Phoenician merchants would traverse a land route via oxcarts; over time, they began to prefer a sea route, crossing over the Mediterranean to Egypt on simple raft-like boats.

In exchange for their prized cedar and cypress wood, the first of Phoenicia’s maritime-entrepreneurs obtained vital grains and other necessities from their Egyptian trading partners. This commercial arrangement with a much larger and almost neighboring economy was not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that it was during this period that the Phoenicians honed their legendary boat-building and seafaring skills. By the eleventh century B.C.E., it became evident that these had progressed well beyond the nautical achievements of any previous or contemporaneous civilization.

Nautical Engineers and Seaborne Profiteers

The Phoenician dominance of the sea and its trade stemmed from a combination of technical prowess and mercantile skill. Eager to expand the volume of their wood trade with Egypt and, more generally, to extend their network of business operations farther west, the Phoenicians grew frustrated with the limitations of simple raft-like boats. Particularly since they were transporting lumber, larger and more powerful vessels were needed. Fortunately, they were surrounded by cedarwood, a remarkably sturdy material well suited to the construction of Phoenicia’s imposing cargo boats.

Moreover, boatbuilders in the ports of Sidon, Tyre, and Baalbek put their civilization’s most renowned invention—the alphabet—to productive use. Each of the main parts of a ship bore the mark of a different letter. In order to spell a word correctly, each section had to be connected in the designated spot on the body of the vessel. This clever word-building exercise of the Phoenicians facilitated the quick and orderly assembly of their fleets. Moreover, these “masters of the sea,” as the Greeks described them, devised a number of significant improvements to existing ship design. Collectively, these improvements rank among the most consequential engineering feats of antiquity.

Foremost among these nautical advances was the development of the keel, a large longitudinal plank or set of planks running from a boat’s bow to its stern, forming a kind of spinal column for the vessel. With a stiff “backbone” in place, usually held firm with iron nails, these keeled boats could now carry much larger and heavier loads. It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this seminal innovation. In his The Phoenicians: The Purple Empire of the Ancient World, the German documentary filmmaker Gerhard Herm declared that the invention of the keel “was equivalent to that of the wheel in land transport.”¹

Other notable nautical improvements generally credited to the Phoenicians include sharpened rams, the use of metals in ship construction, and watertight boats. Regarding the former, the rams were positioned strategically at the front of the hull to intimidate and, if necessary, thrust through enemy vessels. This technique was so effective that it would be adopted by other Mediterranean powers, including the Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans. In order to remain competitive on the high seas, these rival maritime nations were quick to observe and emulate the best of Phoenicia’s nautical advances.

Of course, the Phoenicians were similarly willing to adopt the techniques of surrounding civilizations, but they often did so in innovative ways. Perhaps the best example of this was their use of iron and other metals in shipbuilding. From their trade with the Hittites, the Phoenicians learned of iron smelting and soon became highly proficient in the practice of “ore melting” themselves. It is believed that iron smelting was invented in Anatolia circa 1500 B.C.E., and the Iron Age, the epoch following the Bronze Age of the Mesopotamian era, began in the thirteenth century B.C.E. However, the first use of iron and other metals in shipbuilding is credited to the Phoenicians. Of course, such materials improved both the performance and durability of marine vessels, the latter being essential to the marathon seafaring expeditions of Phoenicia’s entrepreneurs.

Over time, the Phoenicians fine-tuned these improvements. With respect to watertight boats, the Phoenicians came upon an ingenious caulking method: They would stop up gaps in their vessels with thick and sticky pitch extracted from their cedar and cypress trees. Once a primary impediment to lengthy uninterrupted sea excursions, the problem of water leakages had now been solved. Another noteworthy invention was the dry dock. A structure on which a vessel can be suspended or removed from the water and drained of moisture, a dry dock is an invaluable tool for extending the life of a ship.

The Phoenician-built docks were often situated around a promontory (an elevated ridge projecting over a body of water). This was another important nautical advancement, as it would expand the docking area by allowing ships to moor on each side of the promontory. This partly accounts for why the Phoenicians were known to have the largest shipyards and docking areas of antiquity. There was little of the Phoenicians’ maritime infrastructure that was left to chance; their pursuit of nautical excellence was driven mostly by mercantile considerations, not merely a love of boats. For the Phoenicians, no effort was too great and no detail too small in the service of the merchant-sailor fleets.

These seminal advances in nautical engineering, among others, enabled these seafaring Canaanites to take their hereditary knack for profit making well beyond the confines of the eastern Mediterranean. In the early tenth century B.C.E., King Hiram of Tyre, the most powerful of Phoenicia’s city-states, assisted King Solomon with the Hebrew monarch’s quest for the “gold and silver, ivory, and apes and peacocks”² of east sub-Saharan Africa. This nautical journey through the Red Sea involved a fleet that was likely manned by sailors from Phoenicia, more accomplished in the nautical arts than Solomon’s subjects. As Herm concluded, “The ships of the squadron were only nominally Israel’s; their crews would have been exclusively recruited in Phoenicia.”³

As with the later renowned sailors of Portugal, those of Phoenicia could be commissioned to undertake a nautical voyage on behalf of another power as long as ample compensation was provided. For example, more than three hundred years after their expedition on behalf of the Hebrew king, the Phoenicians were engaged by Pharaoh Necho to sail southward from Egypt and circumnavigate the African continent. The Phoenicians relished such an unprecedented challenge and proceeded to complete the voyage successfully. Moreover, aside from the Egyptian ruler’s largesse, the circumnavigation afforded them the opportunity to scope out new commercial opportunities.

Staying Afloat: A Mercantile State

Unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the enterprising Phoenicians viewed all undertakings, especially maritime exploration, through the lens of commerce. All other ideals, from artistic beauty to military power, were regarded as secondary. Generally, such matters were only considered relevant to the extent that they might enhance or undermine mercantile operations. Perhaps the most striking example was how, in a particular instance of Punic-Hellenic hostilities, the (western) Phoenicians’ primary preparatory strategy for war with Greece was the employ of battle-tested mercenaries from various other ethnicities surrounding Carthage, the largest Phoenician settlement in North Africa. Such an approach to war was, as Herm observed, “typical of a merchant race.”⁴

Unlike any previous society and all but a few subsequent ones, the Phoenicians were a civilization governed, from top to bottom, by merchants. As discussed in the previous chapter, the merchant class of Mesopotamia was ever mindful of the temple and palace officials who, throughout most of that civilization’s history, were the most influential political entities. Even during periods in which the merchants of Mesopotamia gained the upper hand in trade and other commercial matters, ultimate decision-making power on strategic/military, legal, and other matters rested with the palace and temple, not the merchants’ karum.

As the Italian archaeologist Aldo Massa observed, “The true masters of the [Phoenician] cities were the heads of the leading families, or rather of the leading business houses.” Aside from being “the custodians of the national wealth and the masters of huge business empires,” collectively, these captains of family-run enterprises “used to form what really amounted to a senate, regardless of the name it was actually given.”⁵ Typically, these were the same families who profited the most from the jealously guarded network of Phoenician trade routes and, later, colonies. The latter were especially rewarding for this entrepreneurial elite who owned the largest tracts of colonized land, in some instances claiming title to entire Mediterranean islands.

Commercial and Territorial Expansion

In retrospect, with such avid entrepreneurs at the helm of Phoenician decision making, the civilization’s onslaught of foreign commerce seems all but inevitable. The Phoenicians would expand their initially limited network of trade in all directions. To the east, they would establish profitable trading relationships with the Mesopotamians, Persians, and others who would transport their wares to Phoenician ports by land in large caravans. Yet it was the extraordinary nature of their maritime trade to the west that would define the Phoenician legacy.

Upon examining the available evidence, the British archaeologist Donald Harden concluded, “To start with, anyhow, the Phoenicians travelled westward not as true colonists but as traders.”⁶ To be sure, the initial purpose of establishing maritime trade outposts was not to establish a foothold from which land could be obtained. This is evident from the pattern of Phoenician outposts established in such locations as Egypt and the southern coast of Greece. While the Phoenician settlement in Memphis (the seat of the pharaohs) did not extend beyond a commercial district, the one in Sicily eventually spanned the western half of the island.

The territories of the great civilizations of Egypt and Greece, unlike those of less developed and less populous nations, were not viable targets for Phoenician conquest. Moreover, the maritime-entrepreneurs measured their success in profits, not acreage. To them, the acquisition of additional territory was only desirable to the extent that it facilitated an expansion of commerce. That is why, while the Greek conquests of the era tended to be large, expanding deep into the hinterland, the Phoenician colonies did not widen beyond a narrow strip of coastal land.

However, as the Phoenician trade network continued to expand, the locus of its activity moved well beyond the eastern Mediterranean. The Phoenicians needed to maintain some permanent settlements beyond the bounds of Phoenicia proper, and they soon recognized that trade was not the only form of commerce served by some of these more westerly islands and coastal territories. The island of Sicily, south of the Italian peninsula, serves as a strong example. Skilled in both the production and sale of wine, the Phoenicians recognized that the island was, like their home country, an ideal locale for wine making. This is how the enterprising spirit of Phoenicia converted part of a sparsely populated Sicilian island into the site of a thriving wine-making and trading industry.

They began their spree of Mediterranean conquests with a large section of the island of Cyprus and a slice of the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. Subsequently, the maritime-entrepreneurs progressed steadily westward and, by 900 B.C.E., the Phoenicians had permanent colonies established in the islands that are presently known as Rhodes, Malta and Gozo (both constituent islands of the modern state of Malta), Sicily, and Sardinia.

While relations with the Greeks were still friendly, Lindos, situated in the southeastern section of Rhodes, was where the maritime-entrepreneurs would exchange their cedar and textiles for the gamut of Greece’s renowned artistic output—from small pottery to life-size bronze statues. Regarding Sardinia, the maritime-entrepreneurs established ports on the southern coast of this copper-rich island with the cooperation of the natives. For more than three hundred years, the original inhabitants of Sardinia cohabited peacefully with the Phoenicians, due in large part to the exotic goods the maritime-entrepreneurs would offer in exchange for the locally mined copper.

Figure 2.1

Engraving of an ancient Phoenician ship.

Source: Obtained (with Creative Commons permission to reuse) from Google Images, Wikipedia.

The Phoenicians also established large ports and warehouses along the North African coast that evolved into permanent colonies over the next century. The region became a hub of settlement activity, culminating with the establishment of Carthage circa 800 B.C.E. “Qart-Hadasht,” the Phoenician term for “new city,” was established by Elisha, the Phoenician monarch immortalized in the works of the Roman poet Virgil as Queen Dido. The Phoenicians’ North African coastal territory would eventually extend from modern-day Morocco all the way east to the western edge of Egypt. Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, served as the commercial and military heart of Phoenician North Africa and the western Mediterranean region.

During the early eighth century B.C.E., the maritime-entrepreneurs, who demonstrated an exceptional aptitude for identifying strategic locations, began a series of impressive territorial acquisitions on the European shore of the Mediterranean. These colonies, situated primarily in modern-day Spain and France, included Gadir (present-day Cadiz), from which the Phoenicians could access the abundant silver deposits of southwestern Spain; Malacca (present-day Málaga); the Spanish island of Majorca; and perhaps most notably, Massilia, the city currently known as Marseille, France. The legendary French novelist Alexandre Dumas, in his classic The Count of Monte Cristo, described his country’s third-largest city as “the younger sister of Tyre and Carthage, successor to the empire of the Mediterranean; Marseille, always getting younger as it grows older.”⁷

Considering the mercantile background of the colonizers, perhaps it is not surprising that, of the foreign territories that had significant native populations, the Phoenicians preferred “conquest by commerce.” In other words, through the establishment and ongoing development of commercial relationships and infrastructure, the maritime-entrepreneurs became the commercial lifeblood of the territory. Then, once the natives became their economic dependents, the territory could be claimed for Phoenicia. In this manner, the maritime-entrepreneurs could leverage their commercial acumen, unrivaled in the region, for territorial gain.

For example, once they were able to discern local tastes, the maritime-entrepreneurs would ply the natives generously with their luxuries of choice. Then, while these foreign peoples were enjoying Phoenician wine, Greek art, or any number of other exotic wares, the newcomers would negotiate the peaceful acquisition of territory. However, some of the prouder nations were offended by what they viewed as the Phoenicians’ attempt to dispossess them of their ancestral lands with bribery. In such instances, the Phoenicians were not above using less congenial methods of persuasion. However, as noted earlier, even some of their early military conquests were conducted with a mercantile flair, involving the employ of large battalions of hired foreign mercenaries.

In most instances, the maritime-entrepreneurs were the first colonizers of these and other historic northern Mediterranean settlements. In fact, some locales were so sparsely populated that, effectively, the Phoenicians were the founders of new human settlements. Certainly, they were the first to build and maintain what could be described as an infrastructure in these colonies. That is why many historians and archaeologists describe Phoenicia as the first “civilizer” of these previously “backward” regions of Mediterranean Europe and North Africa.

With respect to the consequences of Phoenicia’s westward expansion, as Thomas Noble and his colleagues write in Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries, “The result, though unintended, was that Phoenician colonists exported the civilization of western Asia to the western Mediterranean.”⁸ As discussed in the preceding chapter, urban civilization began in the western Asian city-states of Sumer, the first great nation of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. This was a pivot point in history—away from humanity’s hunter-gatherer and agrarian past and toward the establishment of towns, cities, formalized trade, and diversified labor roles.

The city-states of Phoenicia were established long after the founding of Ur. Nonetheless, having traded with Mesopotamian merchants for millennia, the Phoenician city-states were permeated with Mesopotamian culture. For example, Baal and Ashtoret, the names of two popular Phoenician deities, are remarkably similar to those of the Mesopotamian deities Bel and Ishtar. Situated at the western edge of the Asian continent, the economically vibrant urban centers of Sidon, Tyre, and Baalbek stood as exemplars of western Asian civilization.

Particularly in the period preceding the emergence of the Greek and Etruscan civilizations in the eighth century B.C.E., the lands of North Africa and Mediterranean Europe were, with the notable exception of Egypt, settled by relatively primitive tribal societies. Thus the expansion of the Phoenician presence throughout the Mediterranean was certainly a civilizing influence to the extent that it helped spread the technological and social advances of the western Asians, the pioneers of urban civilization.

Over “the End of the World”

The Phoenicians provide us with the first of several notable historical examples of enterprising civilizations that in the pursuit of greater profits expanded the boundaries of the known world. Diodorus Siculus described this tendency as a skill in “making discoveries for their own profit.”⁹ While the Greek historian’s description was certainly not intended as a compliment, discovery motivated primarily by financial gain is the engine of entrepreneurship. With very few exceptions, entrepreneurial pursuits are driven by self-interest, and even in its least glamorous forms, successful entrepreneurship usually involves some form of discovery. This may be as trivial as unearthing a new niche in a small local market or attaining a marginal improvement in manufacturing efficiency that allows for a slightly less expensive product.

However, the Phoenician story is among the most compelling in the history of entrepreneurship due to the momentous impact of many of their profit-seeking discoveries. Among the most notable examples is the maritime-entrepreneurs’ daring voyage over what was then believed to be the end of the world. Various civilizations across the Mediterranean and Asia Minor stood in awe of the slender passage at the western edge of the “Great Sea,” marked on either side by an imposing formation of rock. The one on the European side is currently known as the Rock of Gibraltar and, on the African side, there is a similarly high and rocky peak that the Moroccans refer to as Jebel Musa (Mount Moses).

In antiquity, these were referred to as the “Pillars of Heracles” (or, in Latin, “Hercules”), as they reminded the Greeks of the immense pillars to which, according to legend, the son of Zeus was once chained. The conventional wisdom held that beyond the western terminal of the Mediterranean, marked by the Pillars, was also the western terminal of what was still believed to be a flat earth. It was believed that any travel beyond that point was akin to sailing off the edge of a bottomless cliff.

To the Phoenicians, unlike any other Mediterranean or western Asian nation, the lure of rich untapped profits in parts unknown was so strong that it outweighed the perceived dangers of sailing past “the end of the world.” Having already profited handsomely from expanding their commercial activities across the length and breadth of the known world, the maritime-entrepreneurs were intent on expanding their unprecedented network of trading outposts and colonies even farther. As they would demonstrate repeatedly, the Phoenicians were prepared to risk death in the service of this ambition.

Golden Shores and Celtic Tin

At some point in the sixth century B.C.E., likely led by the renowned Carthage-based navigator Hanno, the Phoenicians sailed around the Atlantic coast of northwest Africa, making a number of exploratory stops along the way. Some of these, in modern-day Morocco, were the sites of future coastal colonies. However, the most notable aspect of this expedition was the establishment of commercial ties with African tribes much farther south, in the coastal territory of modern-day Senegal. These ties would prove to be highly profitable, enduring, and in terms of both commercial and cultural exchange, transformational.

A contemporaneous Greek account of Phoenician trade with black Africa reveals just how well the maritime-entrepreneurs were rewarded for being the first entrepreneurs of the West to reach such rich shores:

When they arrive, they unload their merchandise and, when they have set it in order on the shore, they return to their ships and make a great smoke, that the inhabitants, seeing the smoke, come down to the coast and, leaving gold in exchange for the goods, depart again to some distance from the place. The Carthaginians (or Phoenicians), then going shore, weigh the gold and, if the quantity seems sufficient for the goods, they take it up and sail away; but if it is not equivalent they return to their ships, never touching the gold until it is made adequate to the merchandise, nor the natives the merchandise before the other party has taken the gold.¹⁰

The passage above is from Herodotus, a prominent Greek historian of the fifth century B.C.E. Aside from Phoenician access to African gold, the quote reveals much about the particular form of barter devised by the maritime-entrepreneurs to help obtain trades on favorable terms. As with many successful entrepreneurs throughout history, the Phoenicians’ profit-seeking innovations were not limited to the procurement, manufacture, and distribution of goods. The sale of said goods—the point at which wealth is transferred from seller to buyer—is an opportune time for innovative thinking as well, and one of which the maritime-entrepreneurs took full advantage.

With the shrewdness for which they were alternately admired and despised, the Phoenicians were quite adept at devising highly profitable transactions. Perhaps the most illuminating example in this regard is their exchange of inexpensive Greek pottery for the costly precious metals offered by the tribes of the modern-day African nation of Senegal. The people of these tribes were thrilled with the ornate Greek amphorae, vases, and bowls that the light-skinned traders laid on their beaches. However, the tribesmen remained ignorant of the value of the abundant yellow seams that they walked upon every day, and the maritime-entrepreneurs profited richly from their ignorance.

Aside from art obtained from trade with the Greeks, the Phoenician “merchandise” to which Herodotus refers also included an assortment of western Asian and southern European jewelry, all of which would have seemed quite exotic to people who had never had any contact with the West. It should also be noted that gold was Africa’s primary attraction for the Phoenicians, while it is possible there were other goods obtained from these coastal tribes. For example, those who commissioned Hanno’s African expedition had expressed an interest in both ivory and slaves, though it remains unclear whether either was obtained on this particular voyage.

Notably, black slaves had already made their way to the “civilized” world, albeit in limited numbers, as some were serving in the courts of high-ranking officials in Egypt. Especially since the Phoenicians had long been involved in the trade of Greek and other Mediterranean slaves, it is possible they played a role in obtaining these more exotic slaves for their longtime customers in Egypt. As such, the maritime-entrepreneurs may have the rather dubious distinction of being the first “Western” traders in black slaves.

Some hundred or so years later, they found another essentially remote society to trade with in exchange for another coveted metal—tin, an important alloy in the production of bronze and a useful metal in its own right. The maritime-entrepreneurs were eager to obtain large quantities of tin, both for their own purposes and to obtain yet another prized commodity that could be traded elsewhere. This is what motivated the Phoenicians to brave the treacherous waters of the north Atlantic to reach the land of the northern Celts. They traded with the Celts of Iron Age Ireland and the Britons, a Celtic tribe who were the dominant ethnicity in southern England at the time.

The islands south of Cornwall, presently known as the Scilly Islands, were named the “Tin Islands” by the Phoenicians. Due to the lucrative trade in tin that ensued, they ranked the islands and the northern Celtic world among their most significant seaborne discoveries. In fact, this new trade route was, according to George Rawlinson, a nineteenth-century Oxford professor of ancient history, “so highly prized that a Phoenician captain, finding his ship followed by a Roman vessel,” would have “preferred running it upon the rocks to letting a rival nation learn the secret of how the tin-producing coast might be approached in safety.”¹¹ Certainly, whether it was the gold trade with the West Africans, the art trade with the Greeks, or the tin trade with the northern Celts, the maritime-entrepreneurs guarded their routes jealously.

The Phoenicians had long known that the more varied and exotic their offerings were, the greater the opportunities for highly profitable trades. Moreover, they recognized that exoticism was to a large extent a function of distance. From the perspective of traders from western Asia, the Phoenician port city of Tyre, teeming with the most desirable goods from across the entire Mediterranean, was considered the warehouse of the Great Sea.

For such traders, Phoenician products themselves were often desirable but not particularly exotic. However, goods from trading outposts in the western Mediterranean certainly were, and the maritime-entrepreneurs were adept at procuring the highest possible price for items that only they, as “lords of the sea,” were equipped to provide. Of course, this elaborate profit-making scheme was contingent upon the preservation of Phoenicia’s maritime commercial supremacy, including its exclusive knowledge of ­certain trade routes.

It is believed by some scholars that Phoenician trade networks extended east from the British Isles to the Baltic Sea. There is evidence to suggest that the Phoenicians, whose necklaces were often made from amber, might have enjoyed access to the amber-rich Baltic region. However, it is also possible that the amber was obtained in southern Europe, where it was transported via overland trade from farther north. So the Phoenician Baltic trade theory remains unconfirmed, though compelling.

Less plausible are the more outlandish theories regarding the geographical reach of Phoenician trade, particularly those suggesting that it extended to the Polynesian islands, present-day Brazil, Newfoundland, or elsewhere in the New World. Moreover, in light of how the maritime-entrepreneurs’ proven accomplishments still stand as marvels of nautical skill and daring, the wilder speculations are both poorly founded and unnecessary.

From an Iron Age Mediterranean perspective, black Africa and the British Isles were almost new worlds in their own right. With respect to Africa, this lack of familiarity with and understanding of black society is underscored in the most shocking terms in Hanno’s candid travel diary. He recounts how he and his men tried, unsuccessfully, to capture some male creatures that Hanno alternately refers to as “gorillas” and “men.” He then describes the capture of “three of the women.” Hanno continues, “They bit and scratched those who carried them off, because they had no desire to come with us. So, we killed them and skinned them and brought the skins back to Carthage.”¹²

It is unclear whether or not the captured females were human, but the confused language of his account indicates that the western Phoenician commander was at the very least perplexed by the appearance of some non-Caucasoid African tribes. Certainly, the possibility that the maritime-entrepreneurs brought human skins back to Carthage as an exotic import serves as a chilling reminder of just how limited contact was between the West and the southern portions of the “dark continent.”

It is also a reminder of how historically significant these Phoenician expeditions were. Certainly, it would be difficult to overstate the impact of bringing that region and the land of the island Celts (as opposed to the continental Celtic peoples of modern-day Spain and France) into greater contact with the urban civilization of the Mediterranean. Both of these somewhat isolated regions were lagging technologically, economically, and otherwise in comparison with Phoenician civilization, of which Carthage had become the hub.

Carthage: Sea Power of the West

A Tyrian colony; the people made

Stout for the war, and studious of their trade:

Carthage the name; belov’d by Juno more

Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore.

——VIRGIL, THE AENEID

Elisha, the monarch who founded Carthage, was the granddaughter of King Mattan of Tyre. Her North African colony would prove to be the most consequential of the overseas territories claimed by the Phoenician race, destined to eclipse Tyre, Sidon, and the original city-states of Queen Elisha’s ancestors. Indeed, the center of gravity in the Phoenician world would continue to shift westward from Tyre to Carthage. By the sixth century B.C.E., when the city-states of eastern Phoenicia had already fallen under the military jurisdiction of the Assyrian Empire, the Carthaginians had become the dominant power of the western Mediterranean.

Over the course of their storied seven-hundred-year history, the Carthaginians established a strong identity, independent in some respects from their forebears on the other side of the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, these western Phoenicians still maintained important ties to their motherland—the city-state of Tyre. For example, each year, as an expression of cultural and religious solidarity, a delegation of prominent Carthaginians would sail east to offer a sacrifice at Tyre’s most sacred temple, Melqart.

Commercially, there was a strong sense of kinship between Carthaginian and Tyrian maritime-entrepreneurs. Although the business operations of one city were usually conducted independently of the other, the eastern and western Phoenicians would often work in tandem to counter competing commercial fleets, particularly those of Greece. Clearly, as a Mediterranean-wide naval and territorial presence, Greater Phoenicia had become better equipped to protect and expand its commercial interests, which is precisely why its leading merchants were such ardent colonialists. Although colonization was seen by the Phoenicians in primarily commercial terms, an important by-product of their westward expansion was the spread of the culture and technology of western Asia to the western Mediterranean and beyond.

The Phoenician Legacy: Pollinators, Producers, and Pirates

Pollinators

You are filled with heavy cargo in the heart of the sea.

Your oarsmen take you out to the high seas.

When your merchandise went out on the seas, you satisfied many nations;

with your great wealth and your wares you enriched the kings of the earth.

“LAMENT FOR TYRE,” EZEKIEL 27:25, 26, 33

The biblical passages above are an expression of the curious mix of admiration and envy with which the Phoenicians were viewed by other nations. They also confirm the maritime-entrepreneurs’ widely recognized role as the leading maritime adventurers and international traders of the era. The voyages to the Atlantic coast of Africa and to the British Isles are perhaps the most dramatic examples of how the maritime-entrepreneurs expanded the “known world” through their profit-driven discoveries of previously unknown or highly obscure regions. Their maritime exploits in the Indian Ocean and the Black Sea were less momentous but still stand as noteworthy examples of their nautical prowess.

However, aside from enlarging the map of the known world through commerce, the Phoenicians also pioneered a form of cultural and artistic exchange involving every corner of that map. Within their own region, the Phoenicians would often serve as intermediaries, exchanging one of their trading partner’s goods for that of another. Jewelry from Greece, for example, would be traded for linen made in Egypt that, in turn, could be sold in Phoenicia. Similarly, the maritime-entrepreneurs were known to trade a wide variety of goods for Egypt’s monkeys and crocodiles that would be sold to trading partners from western Asia. These merchants would then supply the Phoenicians with such exotic Eastern fare as carpets from Mesopotamia, spices from the Arabian Peninsula, pearls from Persia, and finely woven shawls from Kashmir.

Of course, these regional trading partners also partook in the more exotic imports that the Phoenicians brought back from Africa’s Atlantic coast and the British Isles. Meanwhile, the peoples of those more remote regions marveled at the ornate art and jewelry that the maritime-entrepreneurs had transported from Phoenician settlements and trading partners. Although its activities were motivated entirely by the pursuit of profit, as a conduit between such distinct and distant societies, this peculiar race of maritime merchants broadened the cultural horizons of peoples across large swaths of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Such archaeological findings as Iron Age African gold in Sardinia, a former Phoenician colony, stand as compelling artifacts of the maritime-entrepreneurs’ role as the “pollinators” of their era. Just as bees do, by carrying and spreading pollen among different flowers, and in the process helping to create something new (i.e., a new generation of flowers), the Phoenicians created new combinations and connections as an incidental by-product of their intercontinental commercial activities. Many of these had entirely unforeseen and enduring impacts upon the course of human history.

The impact of the rich flow of novel goods and ideas that the maritime-entrepreneurs conveyed between distant regions was felt most strongly by their longtime trading partners across the Mediterranean and western Asia. Commenting on the influence of the maritime-entrepreneurs’ African exploits, Harden concluded that, “There is no doubt that it was the Phoenicians and not the Greeks, whose African colonies were never powerful, nor the Egyptians, whose trade was confined to the Nile basin and its immediate hinterland, who passed on the products of this huge area…to the civilized Mediterranean World.”¹³

Regarding the British Isles, despite the Phoenicians’ best efforts to conceal their route to these remote tin-rich territories, it was uncovered by espionage conducted by the Romans—archrivals of the western Phoenicians of Carthage. Shortly thereafter, by following the course plotted by the maritime-entrepreneurs, the Romans commenced their own involvement with the land that would, by the middle of the first century c.e., become a Roman colony and would remain so for more than three hundred and fifty years. Britain became the site of large Roman settlements such as “Loudon,” which became London. Of course, the fact that the English and Gaelic languages are written with the Latin alphabet is another lasting consequence, among many, of Roman contact with the British Isles. To some extent, these phenomena can be traced to Phoenicia, the first of the great Mediterranean civilizations to establish ongoing contact with the British Isles.

Producers

In his introduction to The Innovators: The Essential Guide to Business Thinkers, Achievers and Entrepreneurs, the British broadcaster/author William Davis described entrepreneurs as people who are “not content with reacting events; they want to control them.”¹⁴ This entrepreneurial drive for greater control is precisely why the activities of the Phoenicians, once relegated mostly to trade, gradually spread in several other directions. As discussed, among these were territorial acquisition and the development of colonial agricultural and related industries. However, another important branching out was the manufacture of goods, including some that the maritime-entrepreneurs had previously obtained from other civilizations.

From wine making to textiles and carpentry, industry was always a vital component of the economic life of the Phoenicians. Moreover, particularly as the colonial adventures of the maritime-entrepreneurs brought their civilization into contact with wider plots of cultivable land, they proved themselves to be excellent farmers and herders. The Phoenicians had long been admired for their superior shipbuilding skills and their dazzling purple-dyed textiles. However, over time, as their unrivaled skills in maritime trade and exploration enlarged their inventory of materials, their reputation for craftsmanship extended well beyond watercraft and fabrics.

It is telling that Ezekiel’s writings on his people’s northern neighbors, set down in the seventh century B.C.E., pertain primarily to their nautical and trading skills, with just one laudatory nod to Phoenician textile-making skills. Some three hundred years later, as recorded in the Old Testament book of Chronicles, the Hebrews of that era were clearly awed by the breadth of Phoenician handiwork:

His father was a man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson, also to grave any manner of graving, and to devise any device; that there may be “a place” appointed unto him with thy skillful men…¹⁵

It is notable that gold is the first material mentioned. The Phoenicians had refined the art of shaping gold and other metals through the use of small molds, a skill that drew praise from other contemporary civilizations. Among these were the rival Greeks and Romans, generally considered to have been more advanced in the visual arts than the Phoenicians. Excavations at the site of the Phoenician colony in Sardinia uncovered a varied collection of necklaces, amulets, and ointment jars laden with this impressive metalwork.

Also found in these Sardinian excavations, alongside the metal-ornamented products, were remarkable examples of Phoenician glasswork. Regarding the latter, the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder set down in writing what seemed to have been the consensus view in the Mediterranean world that a group of Phoenician maritime traders had accidentally “discovered” glass. “There were no stones to support their cooking-pots, so they placed lumps of soda from their ship under them. When these became hot and fused with the sand on the beach, streams of an unknown liquid flowed, and this was the origin of glass.”¹⁶

Whether or not they were the originators of glass, there is no question that the Phoenicians were skilled makers and shapers of this important material. Phoenician colonies at Rhodes and Malta were the sites of thriving glass industries and, curiously, Malta is still a center of glass production, utilizing methods that are believed to be enduring relics of the island nation’s Phoenician roots. Furthermore, archaeologists have unearthed shapely glass vessels of Phoenician origin, finely cut and molded, from the sites of the royal palaces of ancient Assyria and Israel. At the same sites, they also found Phoenician-made furniture fashioned from an impressive combination of ivory and glass. Sleek cushions and fine upholstery from Phoenicia (and later Carthage) were also highly regarded among the leading civilizations of antiquity.

Nonetheless, while the Phoenicians demonstrated great skill in shaping various materials, the aesthetic quality of their output does not always compare favorably with that of their contemporaries’ artistic works. This accounts for why the maritime-entrepreneurs often had more success trading the artistic works of the Greeks and the Egyptians than those of their own civilization. However, as they were always on the lookout for higher yields, some grew discontented with mere middleman profits on such transactions. So, like the unscrupulous distributors of our own time who will slap a forged brand-name label on a purse held together by a rubber band, the Phoenicians entered and possibly originated the “knockoff” business.

Excavations at Carthage and elsewhere in the western Mediterranean indicate that, with respect to what Harden describes as “goods of the Egyptian type,” a significant change seems to have taken place around the turn of the seventh century B.C.E. At that point, the origins of such goods shift from Egypt to Phoenician production facilities in Carthage and Phoenicia. One giveaway betraying the non-Egyptian manufacture of these products is their somewhat inferior quality relative to the Egyptian originals they were designed to replicate. In her People of the First Cities, the American archaeological journalist Ruth Goode observed that “the work of the Phoenician craftsmen has been found in all cities of the ancient world, from Mesopotamia to Italy and Spain,” and “the Phoenician craftsmen cleverly imitated all the styles of the times.”¹⁷

So, alongside more innovative ways of “endowing resources with a greater capacity to generate wealth,” the Phoenicians helped pioneer the controversial yet enduring form of entrepreneurship commonly known as the knockoff business. In our globalized modern economy, the production of knockoff products has never been more prevalent. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the annual production and sale of counterfeit products has reached a staggering $250 billion.¹⁸

Moreover, there is often a copycat element in businesses that are not knockoff operations per se. After all, there is just as much imitation as inventiveness behind some of the greatest innovation-oriented entrepreneurial successes of our own era—from JetBlue to Facebook, Chipotle to the Android smartphone. Unlike, for example, the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line or SixDegrees.com, the brands listed above did not define a new product/service category. Instead, they tweaked existing concepts and, perhaps more importantly, promoted their “new and improved” versions aggressively and effectively. These entrepreneurs, like the Phoenicians, recognized the value in building upon the ideas and designs of others instead of reinventing the wheel.

Pirates

“For indeed, among the barbarians there were in former times none who were seafarers, except the Etruscans and the Phoenicians, the one on account of trade, the other for the sake of piracy.”¹⁹ This quote from the great Roman orator Cicero, from his classic work The Republic, published in 54 B.C.E., is reflective of the violent hatred that many Romans still held for the memory of Carthage, the Phoenician rival that Rome had finally and permanently vanquished during the previous (second) century. As such, it can hardly be construed as a dispassionate analysis of the Phoenician character. In fact, Cicero derides the maritime civilization as a nation of seafaring barbarians, which in light of Phoenicia’s great advances, is at best an outrageous oversimplification.

However, Cicero was certainly not the first foreign writer to accuse the maritime-entrepreneurs of piracy. Some four hundred years earlier, Herodotus described a harrowing instance of such piracy in considerable detail: “the Phoenicians arrived then at this land of Argos, and began to dispose of their ships’ cargo.” Subsequently, this cargo attracted the attention of a large group of women curious about what items might be available for purchase. Among these women was Io, whose father was the king of the Greek city-state of Argos. Herodotus continues, “all of a sudden the Phoenicians, passing the word from one to another, made a rush upon them; and the greater part of the women escaped by flight, but Io and certain others were carried off. So they put them on board their ship, and forthwith departed, sailing away to Egypt.”²⁰

Some three hundred and fifty years before Herodotus’ time, Homer, writing in the voice of the fictional Greek hero Odysseus, offers a remarkably similar illustration of the deceit and avarice of the maritime-entrepreneurs in The Odyssey. Introducing a “man of Phoenicia,” the Greek poet describes him as “well versed in guile, a greedy knave.”²¹ Then, as the narrative in the classic epic poem proceeds, this loathsome merchant-sailor attempts, unsuccessfully, to sell the Greek hero into slavery in Libya. Such a harsh depiction of the merchant-sailor from the pen of Greece’s most renowned poet is certainly telling.

A similar tone of resentment, and even revulsion, can be found in some of the Hebrews’ observations regarding the maritime-entrepreneurs with whom they often traded. One of many of Ezekiel’s screeds against the supposed immorality of the Phoenicians reads as follows, “You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground.”²² Like the Greek critics of the Phoenicians, the Hebrew prophet also makes reference to “trading the persons of men.”²³ Clearly, among at least two contemporaneous Mediterranean civilizations, the commercial practices of the maritime-entrepreneurs were seen as predatory. However, particularly with respect to the Greeks, who competed for maritime supremacy with Phoenicia and even warred with it at times, it is difficult to know how much of this criticism derived from legitimate grievances as opposed to a sense of competition and envy.

The evidence seems to suggest that the Phoenicians did, in fact, engage in piracy, particularly with respect to the smaller and more primitive Mediterranean societies. Where they were unlikely to face an effective resistance, some of the more rapacious maritime-entrepreneurs would abduct strong men, attractive women, and anyone else from the native population who might fetch a high price from a slave buyer. Then, at another port of call, they would proceed to sell this pirated “cargo.”

However, antiquity’s greatest maritime commercial empire was not administered by fools. The maritime-entrepreneurs were savvy enough to know that while piracy and other forms of theft might be profitable ways of preying on the weak, those practices would not sustain their far-flung network of trade and production centers. They recognized that each of the “nodes” on that network was predicated on some sort of business relationship with the natives of those territories. With some notable exceptions, such as their flagrant violation of a territorial understanding with the natives of Sardinia, the Phoenicians generally recognized that these relationships necessitated at least a modicum of trust and, if not affection, at least a sense of mutual respect.

Certainly, they managed to maintain mutually beneficial relations with some of their important trading partners. The strength and duration of some of their commercial relationships are striking, particularly a trading partnership with Egypt that spanned more than fifteen hundred years. That relationship, coupled with the fact that another Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, described the maritime-entrepreneurs as “traders the world honored,”²⁴ suggests that Phoenicia was a reliable trading partner. Nevertheless, there is no question that the legacy of its fabled seafaring entrepreneurs is tainted by a capacity for highly duplicitous dealings, particularly the scourge of piracy. In that regard, Phoenicia was the first but far from the last of the great entrepreneurial civilizations to engage in predatory practices.

Europa

Whether it was due to questionable business practices, competitive pressures, or some combination of both, the maritime-entrepreneurs were mostly reviled in the Greco-Roman world and the Greeks and Romans would ring the death knell, respectively, of the Phoenicians and the western Phoenicians of Carthage. Although there were long periods in which they traded with each other, the maritime-entrepreneurs of the original Phoenician city-states and the Greeks often coveted the same trade routes and territories.

Such competition intermittently exploded into hostilities, and as the Greeks became more powerful, their enmity would prove a considerable detriment to the survival of Phoenicia’s original city-states. Over subsequent centuries, as the locus of the Phoenician world shifted to Carthage and the Romans overtook the Greeks, the rivalry between the two western Mediterranean powers descended into some of the most terrible carnage the world had yet seen.

After several hundred years of almost unfettered commercial expansion, Phoenicia’s strategic position was gradually weakened by a succession of expansionary western Asian powers. Around 870 B.C.E., the conquests of the Assyrian King Assurnasirpal II brought him to the Phoenician coast. Wisely forgoing any armed resistance, the militarily inferior Phoenicians decided to welcome this powerful monarch with, as he noted to his court scribe, “gold, silver, tin, copper, copper vessels, linen robes with many colored borders, big and little apes, ebony, boxwood, ivory, and walrus tusks.”²⁵ This colorful and varied display of their impressive wares was not only a form of tribute but also a reminder of Phoenician commercial prowess and how it might be of service to the Assyrian Empire.

As it happened, the Assyrians, like the Neo-Babylonians and Persians who followed, were generally content to be the dominant power of western Asia while allowing the Phoenicians to retain varying degrees of autonomy. Meanwhile, the power balance of maritime strength in the Mediterranean was tilting toward Greece, and by the seventh century B.C.E., the Phoenician character of some eastern Mediterranean islands was being challenged by more vigorous Greek trade and colonization. Nonetheless, the Phoenician trade was still brisk.

Although their golden age had passed and their territories were now satellite city-states of militarily superior western Asian powers, the Phoenicians were still more or less free to trade and preserve their way of life. Eventually even Tyre, as Massa noted, “Renounced the kind of grand ambitions which had long been abandoned by the other cities along the Syrian coast.”²⁶ The maritime-entrepreneurs had resigned themselves to the new political realities because they “were content to be merchants, more knowledgeable, quicker to spot a good deal, more shifty and thrifty, and, therefore, richer than their enemies.”²⁷

Despite their wealth, the maritime-entrepreneurs’ city-states were no longer truly independent. As such, they were expected to assist their overlords commercially and, where necessary, even militarily. In 539 B.C.E., when the territories held by the Neo-Babylonians were seized by the Persians, the latter enlisted the Phoenicians to help rebuild the commercial and civil infrastructure of Judaea. Sixty years later, faced with the military might of the Greeks, Persia converted the merchant-sailor fleet into its own Mediterranean navy. Of course, the vassal city-states of Phoenicia had no choice but to acquiesce. Two hundred years later, when the Hellenic world (comprising Greece and Macedonia) finally prevailed over Persia, Alexander the Great’s army razed the city walls of Tyre, signaling the end of eastern Phoenician civilization.

However, the flame of Phoenician civilization was still alight in Carthage and its western Mediterranean colonies, which at the time included Sardinia, Corsica, the western half of Sicily, and several territories in Spain. The competitive pressures between Carthage and the decidedly noncommercial nation of Rome were minimal, and in fact, the two powers were allies for two and a half centuries before hostilities erupted over Sicily in 264 B.C.E. A formidable force by then, the Roman military evicted the Carthaginians from Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica over the following thirty years.

In 218 B.C.E., the legendary Hannibal, intent on reclaiming Carthage’s honor and territory, took the fight to the Italian peninsula itself. After Hannibal’s series of stunning victories over Rome on its home territory, his enemies eventually regained their foothold, and by 211, Carthage was in retreat. Intent on quashing the “African” invaders once and for all, by 200, Rome’s terms of peace had effectively outlawed the existence of a Carthaginian navy. Now, with all of its western Mediterranean colonies in the enemy’s hands and without its primary line of defense, Carthage was left to wither for several decades before the Romans came in for the final blow around 148 B.C.E.

Those who had survived the extended siege and destruction of their city would be sold into slavery, and the Phoenicians on both sides of the Mediterranean had been permanently crushed by the European powers by 145 B.C.E.. The latter, having destroyed Phoenicia’s civilization, persisted in undermining its reputation. As noted above, the Romans, even those writing long after 145 B.C.E., referred to the vanquished Carthaginians as barbarians. For their part, the ancient Greeks, would see to it that “the people of the Lebanon,” as Herm wrote, “went down in history as a crowd of avaricious, thieving, deceitful traders.”²⁸

So, it is fitting that Europe, our word for the continent of the Greeks and Romans, stems from Europa, the Greek name for a beautiful Phoenician woman abducted by Zeus and carried off to Crete for an illicit affair. The European powers of the Mediterranean had, with some justification, accused the Phoenician merchants of piracy. Yet, like Zeus, these powers had practiced some piracy of their own upon this commercially brilliant maritime civilization, appropriating vital aspects of its enterprise, its seafaring technologies, its advanced western Asian urban civilization, and even its alphabet. So, although Phoenicia originated beyond the boundaries of Europe, the legacy of its maritime-entrepreneurs would endure within the same continent that had destroyed or, perhaps more aptly, abducted it.