Before the Greeks and Romans, the Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean. The centre of their territory was the city-state of Tyre, which is in modern-day Lebanon. Phoenician civilization lasted from approximately 1550 to 300 BCE, when the Persians, and later the Greeks, conquered Tyre.
They were excellent sailors and took advantage of their strategic position at the crossroads of Eastern and Western cultures. Their areas of influence extended from the Fertile Crescent in the east, through the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic Ocean. The Phoenicians did not have a central government. Similar to the Greeks, their civilization consisted of a number of independent city-states. Their settlements and trading partners lined the coast of the Mediterranean, touching three continents.
They were at the transition point for the movement of goods, trade, and people out of the Mediterranean. It is believed that their location at the intersection of important trade routes is part of the reason the Phoenicians developed such impressive maritime skills. Despite their prominent place in history, researchers know little about the Phoenicians beyond what other civilizations have documented. The surviving evidence only talks about Phoenicians as traders. It gives us no information about their culture.
In Homer’s Odyssey, for example, Phoenicians are portrayed as both skilled seafarers and clever. They were also considered potentially deceitful traders at the same time. One of the primary sources of information available about Phoenician culture comes from Herodotus. His stories support the simplistic view of Phoenicians as cunning seafarers. In one story, the Phoenicians, while sailing to collect tin from a place only they knew about, saw they were being followed by a Greek ship. They decided to sail very close to shallow water and strand themselves on a reef so that when the Greek ship followed, they would also be stranded.
The Phoenicians knew that it was crucial that nobody should have any information about their trading practices. In recent years, archaeologists have tried to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge about the Phoenicians. Underwater archaeology plays a particularly important role in learning about this maritime culture. But, despite many efforts, finding archaeological evidence that’s been buried in the Mediterranean for 3,000 years has proved challenging. Deborah Cvikel is an underwater archaeologist at the Leon Recanti Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel.
Her work often involves the excavation of shipwrecks in areas where the Phoenicians travelled. The oldest shipwreck she has studied is a Byzantine site found off the coast of Israel. It dates back to around 500 CE. Her colleagues at the Institute where she works have excavated ships that date as early as 400 BCE. The oldest identified Phoenician ships date back to 700 BCE.
That is because there isn’t much underwater archaeological evidence of the Phoenicians to be found. Most of the discoveries are accidental. Someone might go diving and see a big pile of stones that don’t belong there, or sometimes investigators get information from fishermen.