Who were the Phoenicians?

The Phoenicians were an ancient civilization that settled in what is now Lebanon and parts of Syria and Israel. It is estimated that they arrived in this region around the 30th century BC, but historians still haven’t been able to specify where they would have left – it is only speculated that from somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and on islands in the region, the Phoenicians set up several independent city-states, such as Byblos, Tire and Tripolis. Such cities reached their peak around the 12th century BC, when ancient powers that dominated this part of the Middle East – such as the Egyptian and Hittite empires – were weakened. Seizing the opportunity, the Phoenicians transformed their cities into important commercial centers. As they were not large producers of goods, they acted as a kind of importers and exporters in antiquity. That is, they bought wine from one region and sold it to another, which in turn produced oil and so on. To do so much business, the Phoenicians specialized in long sea voyages. Thanks to this merchant-adventurer spirit, they established colonization points – which looked more like large markets – in various areas of the Mediterranean Sea, such as in North Africa and on the coast of Italy and Spain. From the 9th century BC, however, this power was gradually crumbling in the face of the expansion of other civilizations in the Middle East, such as the Assyrians (in present-day Iraq) and the Persians (in Iran). In the 4th century BC, the Phoenician cities lost their commercial importance once and for all after being invaded by the empire of Alexander the Great.