The Entire History of the Phoenicians (2500 - 300 BC) // Ancient History Documentary

cornwall land of blue skies and beaches holiday homes bird watchers and biking expeditions a picturesque corner of britain and a part of england for over a thousand years [Music] yet underneath the surface a different culture still clings on here a different language traditions and folklore testament to the celtic rulers who once held sway [Music] for in reality this rugged land has more in common with brittany and wales than it does england for the cornish the open sea flanking to north and south has always been a highway not a barrier it's the same today just as it was in ancient times the landscape here is starkly beautiful peaceful coves rolling hills and wild moors amidst ancient hedgerows and field boundaries some of them dating back thousands upon thousands of years to the bronze age and earlier unusual vegetation holds sway too vegetation that grows nowhere else on the island as a result of the warm weather of the gulf stream yet such is the remoteness of the place the rocky ground unsuited for industrial scale agriculture few large modern settlements grew up here leaving castles ancient hill forts and stone circles still standing on the landscape for millennia [Music] in recent years excavations at prominent sites like tintagel castle famous in arthurian legend as the birthplace of the mythic king revealed early medieval trade links all across europe and beyond for during that so-called dark age following the roman withdrawal from britain this place was one of the most important commercial centers in the entirety of the north atlantic but how far back did these international links run in order to find out we have to go back much further long before the romans ever set foot on these islands three thousand years ago europe was a very different place peopled by chariot riding pagan clans divided into distinct groups by archaeologists based on their material remains for the most part just like today these were insular looking groups of people perhaps united by a similar culture and religious ideas though unfortunately not much more can be said concretely due to a complete lack of written sources in cornwall the remains of this time can still be seen today the famous wild horses of this region originated in that ancient time transplanted here from the eurasian steppe along with their breeders during the murky epoch following the stone age the vast stone boundaries erected by these people known as reeves stretch far into the distance even settlements like grimm's pound can still be seen up on dartmoor along with tiny holdouts of the woodland which once coated all of europe then sometime around 1000 bc amidst the turmoil of a new age of iron in the aftermath of the late bronze age collapse strangers arrived on british shores [Music] we know that ancient brits were already taking to the sea at this time the dover and theraby boats tell us that much large craft designed primarily to hug shores along with genetic evidence suggesting at least some heritage from the continent but these new ships carrying travelers from the east they were different originating in a different world in fact one of city builders c-spanning commerce writing for these travelers at their roots well over 3 000 miles away in what is now lebanon and israel half a world away besides that it happened we know nothing of this first meeting was it set up by middlemen along the coast of what is now france or instigated by explorers striking out anew we simply can't say [Music] yet the evidence of these iron age wanderers showing up in the archaeological record is indisputable in fact evidence of semitic travelers from the levant has also been found all along the seashores of the mediterranean and beyond [Music] cutting a path all the way from the levant to britain but why had they come this far north past the pillars of hercules into the wild atlantic well we do know the answer to that one the evidence for it can be found all over the peninsula tin [Music] an especially rare and sought after metal one of the main components in bronze making and a commodity that's still mined here today indeed the very name of britain itself may have derived from the one that these wanderers gave the island baratanak meaning land of tin however if those seafarers did write histories of their voyages none have survived to the present all of their writing having disappeared along with the parchment it was written on [Music] in order to explore their story we must turn to later writers [Music] as early as 4 45 bc herodotus speaks of the british isles as the tin islands or cassiterides the greek explorer pythius of masalia writer of the now lost earliest account of the north atlantic mentioned the tin trade as does polybius and diodorus of sicily it's even been argued that this trade existed as far back as 1500 bc but who were those wanderers of course they were the phoenicians some of the most successful traders in history often called the first true seafarers of europe and often credited with the first true alphabet one which the english language is written in today praised by homer and herodotus as expert ship builders in the bible the prophet ezekiel refers to them as merchants to the people of many coastlines later they were even commandeered by the british empire and all manner of other bizarre theories such as their involvement in the building of king solomon's temple have linked them to nationalist movements all across the continent yet outside of myth their very real story often hamstrung by a total lack of their own contemporary sources is one of the most fascinating of any in human history [Music] hundreds of years before the greeks started their great outward expansion this was arguably the first seafaring culture to span the entirety of the mediterranean sea and beyond but first for centuries one with no competition to speak of [Music] but who were these phoenicians and how did they manage to not only sail to the ends of the earth thousands of kilometers across the dark waters of the mediterranean sea but to link up all of its shores into an interconnected web of trading centers long before anyone else attempted anything of the like well let's find out [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to history time as always i'm your host pete kelly the research and initial scripting of this episode was undertaken by the great history with psy go check out his channel for epic ancient history content this video is part of a collaboration with two other excellent history channels the histocrat and stefan milo we've all made videos related to ancient carthage so i highly recommend going and watching their videos after you've finished this one [Music] but first before we embark on this hour-long voyage into the ancient history of the mediterranean sea i'd like to just take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video it's magellan tv right that's lunch for just a small monthly fee you can find more than 3 000 documentaries on practically any subject you can think of history geography science culture and much much more all streamed directly to your phone your tablet and your smart tv my personal recommendation and a series that i've been loving recently is the lives of the pharaohs a multi-part collection of documentaries looking at the fascinating ancient history of egypt there are also loads more documentaries on many aspects of the ancient world now i've teamed up with magellan to offer you an exclusive month-long free trial head on over to tri dot magellan tv dot com forward slash history time or click on my link in the description below and for a limited time magellan are offering a buy one get one free gift card so you can share the gift of knowledge with those closest to you head on over to my magellan page in the description below to take advantage of this limited offer now back to the ancient world [Music] to say that the cities of southern spain have a rich history would be an understatement these lively port cities like malaga cartagena and cadiz to name just a few are where romans vandals visigoths berbers arabs and of course castilians all left their mark however what most people don't realize is that the founding of many of these cities pre-dates all of these disparate peoples by centuries for they are some of the oldest cities on the continent though a scattering of relatively large settlements did exist here in pre-history the walled copper age metropolis of los melares tells us that much yet archaeology suggests that the first true city builders in spain seem to have arrived from elsewhere [Music] in the early 1960s archaeologists discovered the vestiges of an ancient cemetery near the resort town of al-munakar in spain at first they thought they'd excavated the remains of early greek colonists who had set up shop in the region however it soon became clear that the ceramics being uncovered here were from a place even further to the east than greece [Music] their design was typical of those found in the iron age world of the ancient near east specifically the lands known in early antiquity as kanan in the decades that followed several sites with similar artifacts were discovered not only throughout spain but in morocco malta sardinia sicily and even as we have seen as far away as britain the archaeologists concluded that the discovery of these near eastern ceramics as well as the canaanite writing often inscribed upon them was no fluke but confirmation that a group of people the greeks called phoenicians had settled on mass throughout the mediterranean certainly by the 9th and 8th centuries bc and possibly much earlier there is a problem however there is no known instance of a phoenician ever calling themselves a phoenician or any other collective term for their people in their inscriptions a scattering of which survive they describe themselves in terms of their individual families and cities not in terms of a common culture [Music] the archaeology speaks of this too the city of biblos for example looked more to egypt than its neighbours sidon looked to greece and persia whereas tyre held close links with judea and jerusalem yet for the most part besides a handful of references to a corpus of now lost books not only can the phoenicians the very people usually credited with transmitting the very first alphabet to the greeks no longer speak for themselves [Music] but those who did write about them almost unanimously despised everything they were [Music] what would we know of greece or rome if every history had been lost or purposely destroyed besides those written by their enemies their libraries burned temples desecrated thus telling the history of the phoenicians is a detective story nevertheless since the 1800s it's been attempted at first by french scholars such as ernest rehnan who undertook the first wide scale excavations in the levant [Music] excavations which have continued near continuously for well over 150 years and much has been learned in that time the story of the phoenicians begins much earlier than the middle centuries of the iron age when their far-flung colonists made port all over the mediterranean world already in the middle bronze age they were famous for their maritime and mercantile activities [Music] archaeology suggests their entire society geared itself toward the sea in fact and a brief look at the mountainous terrain around their cities coated by thick cedar forest and impassable ravines tells us why just like other ancient seafaring people from cornwall to norway the sea was a highway and much easier to traverse than the hinterlands [Music] uniquely placed at a crossroads between the vast empires of antiquity the phoenicians were the ultimate middlemen as long as they paid homage to larger states such as egypt and assyria left to their own devices whilst benefiting from all the latest technological improvements from the wider world whilst adding quite a few of their own and gradually growing rich over the centuries for their customers were many it's thought that it was they who first invented the keel an integral part of ships to this day indeed their cargo vessels perhaps born on the trade route taking timber down to egypt were not only massive but ingenious able to send small forests of cedar trees or other cargo southwards along the coast but why did they call themselves phoenicians well we don't know that they did in fact they probably didn't it's a greek word often associated with a unique purple dye produced along the levantine coast in ancient times a dye extracted from the murex sea snail which would later be associated with royalty even down to our age today initially due to the monumental efforts required to produce it by the 4th century bc greek writer theopompus sings the praises of this dye claiming it to be worth its weight in silver it's clear from its adoption by royal elites that this was a highly prized resource and extremely expensive cultivated from around 1 500 bc onwards perhaps in part an explanation for the success of the phoenicians a single vat required the harvesting of tens of thousands of sea snails living only in phoenician waters an alternate explanation is that the phoenicians may have had reddish hair regardless of the origin of the name by the first millennium bc greek speaking peoples were calling this region which today makes up most of lebanon as well as parts of syria and northern israel phoenicia and the land's inhabitants phoenicians however as we have seen the phoenicians had been around long before their interactions with the greeks they were the descendants of the canaanite peoples of the bronze age and spoke a version of that same language as well as practicing nearly the same religion as these ancestors now we must turn to their homeland [Music] today lebanon is a picturesque mountain nation unfortunately mired in recent years by civil war and sectarian violence pulled into the struggles of neighbouring powers it has a long history of this for much of its past making up a province of a larger empire the evidence of that history can still be seen near everywhere you look the largest roman temple found anywhere in the world in fact stands here at balbeck [Music] once an oracle and pilgrimage site dedicated to the god jupiter the sheer scale of the remains here have baffled researchers for centuries with their immense size underneath the surface here and at nearly every major city along this coastline the foundations are much older remnants of a time before the romans when this region dictated its own fate when this land was known by a different name famous in the bible and other contemporary records as canaan hundreds of canaanite towns and cities have been found all over the levant and it is from canaan that the phoenicians sprung and like kanan phoenicia itself was never a unified kingdom but a federation of relatively independent city-states each with its own ruler the most famous of whom like hiram and pygmalion of tyre survive in history with mere shreds of evidence for their existence for most however we have but a name or in the case of the important city-state of seiden for the most part nothing at all like the later greek city-states they shared a common religion language and customs worshiping gods such as baal and reshef according to some gods they made human sacrifices to [Music] but they went their own way politically by at least 3000 bc the prominent phoenician cities of biblos tyre sidon beirut and ahwad had not only been firmly established but were prosperous maritime trading hubs their location at the nexus of many age-old eastern mediterranean trade routes linking asia north africa and europe attracted many different peoples from all over the known world [Music] though several mid-bronze age empires coveted the area it would be the egyptians who would have the longest and most lasting influence on phoenicia [Music] between the 16th to the 13th centuries bc [Music] the pharaohs of egypt's new kingdom reigned nearly uncontested in most of canaan including the area that would later become known as phoenicia however things drastically changed in the 12th century bc when groups of migrants and marauders collectively known as the sea peoples showed up along the shores of the empires and kingdoms of the eastern mediterranean no one knows exactly what happened why they had left their homes but one thing is clear the world after their arrival would never be the same i actually just made a two and a half hour effort to find out who the sea peoples were which you can watch here according to egyptian ugaritic cypriot and other textual sources the sea peoples ravaged the levant and contributed to what historians today call the late bronze age collapse of the 12th century bc these often violent series of events brought about the total destruction of what was once the hittite empire in anatolia as well as bringing an end to egyptian domination in canaan finally after the dust had settled several new kingdoms and states formed in the power vacuum it was created all throughout the levant including the phoenician city-states now completely independent of egyptian rule interestingly unlike many of their neighbors the phoenician city-states were left relatively unscathed by the sea people's attacks [Music] leaving scholars to suggest the sea peoples may have colluded with or simply paid off the invaders regardless the survival of cities such as biblos and tyre along with the absence of egyptian authority now allowed the phoenician city-states to end up dominating the region economically [Music] one of the few bronze age powers to survive in a new age of iron testament to the adaptability of these city-states internal changes were happening too though its exact origins remain shrouded in mystery in the years between 1200 and 1000 bc phoenician writing likely an extension of earlier canaanite writing systems begins to show up in the archaeological record perhaps most important of all at biblos five royal inscriptions dating to this time notably including the ahiram sarcophagus show the existence of a 22 character alphabet one of the first of its kind found anywhere in the world a cutting cutting-edge democratizing writing system compared to the elite controlled cuneiform and hieroglyphics that came before another important structure from this time is the temple of the obelisks here we can see egyptian hieroglyphics gradually give way to the phoenician alphabet a much easier system to learn particularly for merchants wishing to keep records and contact trade partners the use of this alphabet was then spread by phoenician merchants throughout the maritime trade into parts of north africa and europe phoenician ports became trade hubs for all sorts of goods the most famous of all being their region's prized cedar trees great timber for building ships particularly for egypt which has almost no forests to speak of this is a trade that would continue for thousands of years to come [Music] phoenician merchants also traded in manufactured goods crafted from stone precious metals wood wool and even ivory from south of the sahara such items were traded at numerous overseas destinations by seafaring phoenician merchantmen who in return brought back gold silver precious stones spices and other valuable commodities one might wonder just how such a small group of city-states with relatively few natural resources other than timber and a little farmland could have been involved in the trade of such a large variety of goods [Music] well one way was to act as the middlemen for trade between other states their contacts being vast [Music] phoenician artisans were also known to take raw materials imported in other countries and turned them into beautiful finished goods that were priced all over the world [Music] yet this alone wouldn't have been enough to transform the phoenicians into the great economic powerhouse that they became the only way that they could reach their full potential was for themselves to expand into other areas areas possessing a variety of natural resources and goods to trade natural resources no one else in the east had access to the main problem for the phoenician city-states was that they already lived in a crowded neighborhood and didn't themselves have the resources or the manpower to conduct large-scale military operations if a phoenician city-state wanted to expand its wealth or influence then it would have to find other untapped sources of revenue and so naturally they took to the seas [Music] over the span of just a few centuries setting up trading colonies all over the mediterranean world in places as far away from their homeland as sicily sardinia southern spain and probably most famous of all the ancient city of carthage along the coast of northern africa in what is today tunisia [Music] even in the later classical age greek and roman writers still marveled at the feats of phoenician sailors especially those from tyre and seiden in the 1st century a.d for example the roman geographer pliny the elder says the following once tyre was an island separated from the mainland by a very deep sea channel 700 yards wide but now joined to it by the works constructed by alexander the great when besieging the place and formerly famous as the mother city from which sprang the cities of leptis utica and the great rival of rome's empire in coveting world sovereignty carthage and also caddith which she founded outside the confines of the world but the entire renown of tyre now consists in a shellfish and a purple dye though ancient writers believe that the phoenician colonies may have been first founded in the 12th century bc modern scholars tend to estimate a more recent date perhaps around 900 or 800 bc for most of them though no doubt smaller way stations existed before the establishment of permanent cities most of these colonies ended up being temporary settlements but others would eventually go on to become immense commercial and military powers surpassing even the cities from which they came [Music] carthage it's a name that rings out in history for centuries the focal point of the mediterranean most successful by far of all the phoenician cities and according to many founder of europe's first empire the story of carthage is a tragic one almost always framed by its total defeat by rome in the punic wars vicious world conflicts fought for dominion over the waterways of the mediterranean massive sea battles numbering tens of thousands on each side numbers that arguably wouldn't be surpassed until modern naval warfare nearly 2 000 years later for carthage a defeat so complete and brutal that this once mighty confederation was not only silenced forever but its once verdant fields salted its population killed or sold into slavery the city would rise again but never as an independent power peopled now by a different culture today the city and the vast empire it once held lives on only in archaeology and the writings of its enemies 500 years before the first confrontation between the two maritime powers when rome was still a tiny village on the palatine hill phoenician traders sailed their ships the length and breadth of the mediterranean in search of goods to be sold or traded for a handsome profit of course there were great risks in making such a long sea voyage but the enormous profit that could be made made the risks worthwhile the key was to trade a product that was unique very desirable hard to get or desperately needed for other products that were common in the land of the people with whom you were trading these products may be rare and desirable somewhere else the trader now had something with which he could once again make a profit though no doubt some plied the sea roads during the bronze age by the beginning of the iron age ship technology was at a level that the entire sea could be traversed in a matter of weeks before this time ancient sailors didn't usually sail out of the site of land or at night but these concerns meant little to the phoenicians using the stars landmarks and eventually nautical instruments they navigated the sea making port all along its shores ultimately leaving their mark on the disparate peoples they came upon far from an isolating experience by the 800s every 30 miles or so a colony seems to have sprung up way stations for ambitious merchants to make their fortune many cities we know today had their roots with the phoenicians notably cadiz in spain was a large well-established mercantile center it's even thought these newcomers began to influence the various celtic and iberian peoples of the peninsula on the islands of the sea sardinia corsica and sicily widespread colonization took place not just commercial activity and in all likelihood a shreds of evidence on sardinia such as the norris stone suggests wars were fought between independent leaders and incoming merchant powers perhaps supported by swords for hire as carthage later was wars left almost completely unrecorded in any surviving histories though initially the colonization of the mediterranean may have been motivated by the prospect of commercial gain today some scholars have argued that years of reduced rainfall and drought may have also been a factor this environmental catastrophe would have resulted in plummeting crop yields for phoenicia's ever-expanding population with little territory of their own outside of their cities the phoenicians only option may have been to take to the seas in search of a better life resulting in a permanent phoenician population in the mediterranean due to its proximity to their homeland the first area believed to have been colonized by phoenician traders perhaps as early as the 11th century bc was the nearby island of cyprus a land replete with valuable minerals and metals such as copper the largest phoenician community here was based at kition which began as a small trading outpost but eventually grew into a prosperous cosmopolitan city that after some time even contained a large greek population [Music] evidence of other phoenician settlements has been found on the nearby islands of rhodes vera crete fasos and milos [Music] along with those of the aegean the phoenicians established a sizeable presence in what is today italy before long though they had to compete here with greek colonists for example in sicily the historian thucydides states that phoenician colonists had originally established themselves all over the island to conduct trade with its native inhabitants the arrival of greek colonists however forced them to abandon most of these settlements and to constrain their activities to the north west notably at matia salunto and palermo [Music] this was also a much safer area for them due to its proximity to the phoenician settlements in north africa [Music] archaeological findings at matia have confirmed thucydides account of a phoenician settlement there shortly after the establishment of early greek colonies such as naxos and syracuse in the early 730s bc [Music] as we have seen though the furthest phoenician colonies were in what is today spain and just possibly further to the north in what is now france and britain though evidence of these is yet to be found here the phoenicians conducted trade with the locals offering items such as glass oil and ceramics in return for silver and tin but this wasn't the only place venetian explorers visited at least one inscription talks of a voyage south from the pillars of hercules in the 5th or 6th centuries bc under a merchant captain named hanno the navigator going all the way down the coast of africa to the south of the sahara they even apparently made landfall before returning indeed it is in africa the most visible remnants of these people can be seen the most famous and powerful of all phoenician colonies being situated along the north coast here the two most prominent were utica founded by colonists from sidon and of course carthage in myth founded by the legendary queen dido following the trojan war in reality thought to have been colonized from tyre [Music] due to good farmland and perhaps fewer native inhabitants these colonies overall prospered earlier than many of their peers which may have motivated their inhabitants to create more permanent settlements and cities rather than temporary trading posts [Music] in time many of these cities would become the nucleus for larger states and eventually at least in the case of carthage the establishment of new colonies of its own ultimately leading to an empire that not only rivaled rome for supremacy in the mediterranean but ultimately taught rome much about war empire and society the romans essentially absorbing the carthaginian state along with much of its infrastructure commercial ties and military strategies during the latter part of the 20th century the discovery and excavation of such settlements and colonies has greatly aided our understanding of phoenician life and material culture [Music] though many phoenician inscriptions have been uncovered throughout the mediterranean world and the near east especially stone tablets sarcophagi and ornate metal utensils other than the names of kings or dedications to various deities few contain any significant details in regards to history [Music] while there are several references in greek and roman sources to the works of phoenician authors perhaps most notably the early christian bishop eusebius who talks of a whole range of phoenician books unfortunately copies of these works have yet to be uncovered in order to have been preserved they would have needed to have been copied from the leather or papyrus they were written on at some point in the past this copying by roman or medieval researchers is what saved the ancient greek writings from oblivion phoenicians however largely disappearing as a cultural group had no spiritual successors and no such luck [Music] in 332 bc after spilling over the borders of the persian achaemenid empire last of the great near eastern empires of the ancient world a massive army arrived in phoenicia after centuries of commercial competition out on the wide open sea the greeks had come to the phoenician homeland for this was the invasion force of alexander the great king of the far off mountain kingdom of macedon biblos and sidon soon submitted and according to alexander's chronicler aryan he'd wanted to take the city of tyre peacefully too seeking to make a symbolic sacrifice at the city's temples phoenicia never had a single capital but tyre jewel of the coast came closest ringed by immense sea and land walls home to 30 000 people at its height [Music] proudly defiant and knowing the effects such a concession would have on their authority the priests of the city resolutely refused the young macedonian king [Music] alexander ordered a siege one of the most hard fought of the entire war [Music] seven months later during which time a massive causeway had been built from the mainland to the heart of the city situated on an island alexander's troops finally got in killing thousands of its inhabitants [Music] in total according to the greek sources thirty thousand of the surviving tyrions and some unfortunate carthaginians were sold into slavery after which instead of honoring the phoenician gods alexander made a sacrifice to hercules holding a procession in his honor some citizens of tyre had fled to carthage during the siege which would survive as the last bastion of phoenician culture for another century until conquest by another greek influenced state rome [Music] the rest of phoenicia soon surrendered by alexander's time much had changed since the golden age of phoenicia between the years 1000 and 800 bc talked off at inscriptions at biblos and tyre but how and why did that golden age come to an end well whilst the greeks had few enemies to contend with in their homelands besides other greeks often free to conduct their overseas activities with little stopping them the phoenicians had to deal with vast empires on their doorstep empires which collapsed in the bronze age allowing the phoenicians to flourish but soon those old empires would re-emerge with the new age of iron as we have seen most of our post-bronze age sources on the phoenicians come from the texts of others the earliest being those of the assyrians inscriptions of the assyrian king tiglath pelessa the first who ruled between 1114 and 1076 bc claims to have visited the area around the phoenician city of arwad bringing back with him to assyria the region's prized cedar trees egyptian texts as well as the hebrew bible also mention phoenician cedarwood being an item of great value this though was just the beginning around 870 bc the assyrian king ashanasipal the second also mentions several military campaigns in the area and by the reign of his son shall manasir iii the assyrian presence in phoenicia had become more or less permanent though there were frequent rebellions for example several cities such as biblos and arwad formed anti-assyrian coalitions with their non-phoenician neighbours things in phoenicia cooled after shall manaseer's death mostly due to internal problems within the assyrian empire itself however new assyrian incursions into the region came with the reign of tigalath palassa the third in the 740s bc and by the reign of sennacherib four decades later fear had compelled most of the phoenician kings to submit to a syrian rule by then assyria was clearly calling the shots in the eastern mediterranean [Music] eventually extending its control over the island of cyprus too however foreign domination of the region didn't necessarily mean that local rulers couldn't personally benefit from the new political order becoming an ally or vassal of assyria offered rulers and their kingdoms various protections against their local rivals for example during the reign of sennacherib's successor asaridan the phoenician city of taya became a vassal of assyria its king baal was able to swear unquestioned loyalty to asaradon and of course provide tribute and military aid in this case the use of tyre's navy whenever called upon in return though baal was given extensive control over several other port cities including biblos akko and dor this unquestionably made him the most powerful phoenician ruler of his time a client king of the assyrians like herod with the romans perhaps [Music] despite this baal eventually did revolt against isahedon though tyre was forced to resubmit to a syrian rule shortly afterward another king abdi milkuti of sidon rose up against assyrian rule during this period of civil war allying with another prince named sanduari the king of kundi and sizu although the two were ultimately defeated and after attempting to flee into the sea were according to the assyrians plucked out of the waters by asar hadan decapitated and paraded through the streets of nineveh [Music] when the assyrian empire finally fell by around 615 bc many of the kingdoms of the levant including those of phoenicia were able to rule themselves independently for a time until the rise of the next empire one which inherited much of the infrastructure left behind by assyria that of the neo-babylonians which in 585 bc under the king nebuchadnezzar easily began conquering much of the region with the exception of tyre which held out for over a decade until it too was finally forced to submit though on relatively favorable terms by around 540 bc the final vast near eastern empire of the ancient world that of the persian achaemenids under cyrus the great acquired phoenicia as one of its many possessions [Music] for the most part the persians allowed the phoenicians to run their own day-to-day affairs as they wished as long as they paid their taxes and allowed the persian forces to make use of their extensive navies which they did on several occasions including during their massive invasion of greece in 480 bc [Music] the exception to this was during the reign of cyrus's son cambises ii according to herodotus cambises wanted to launch a campaign against the carthaginians but the phoenicians especially the sailors from tyre refused due mostly to the fact that their ancestors had been amongst the founders of carthage and links between the two cities remained strong it's also during the years of persian rule as well as afterward that many greek writers and historians took an especially keen interest in the phoenicians though homer mentions them in the iliad herodotus is the first major writer to extensively comment on them and give substantial details about their culture and customs also crediting them for introducing the alphabetic script to the greek speaking world in his monumental work the histories he writes the following so these phoenicians including the gefraeians came with cadmos and settled this land and they transmitted much lore to the helenes and in particular taught them the alphabet which i believe the helene's did not have previously but which was originally used by all phoenicians with the passage of time both the sound and the shape of the letters changed because at this time it was mostly ionians who lived around the phoenicians they were the ones who were first instructed in the use of the alphabet by them and after making a few changes to the form of the letters they put them to good use but when they spoke of them they called them phoenician letters which was only right since these letters had been introduced to helus by phoenicians in reality the phoenicians may not have actually invented the alphabet which scholars now believe may have been developed by other canaanite peoples in egypt or the levant sometime during the middle or late bronze age they're also being a related script from south arabia probably born through mercantile connections however it seems that the phoenicians were among the first peoples to both utilize and spread the use of alphabetic writing throughout the mediterranean and beyond in 343 bc the cities of tyre and arwad revolted against the persian king artaxerxes iii but this rebellion was soon crushed other than this though phoenicia remained relatively calm and stable during its nearly two centuries of persian rule until in 332 alexander of macedon came to the levant alexander's arrival and subsequent conquest of phoenicia marked the beginning of the gradual hellenization of the region after his death in 323 phoenicia was hotly contested amongst his successors but eventually the region found itself within the confines of the greek celia sid empire ruled by one of alexander's generals gradually greek language culture architecture and religion began to permeate every aspect of phoenician life the age of the phoenicians was over the hellenistic age had begun in neighboring judea the culture of the jews survived albeit with a hellenistic influence in phoenicia however it wasn't to be the case like vikings in the early middle ages the phoenicians being victims of their own success merging with the peoples they came into contact with their culture gradually disappearing in some respects however all peoples of the mediterranean sea are phoenicians despite the new world that was forming around them one aspect of the phoenicians that changed little was their mastery over the sea especially when it came to maritime commerce their ships continued to traverse the mediterranean in order to find new and lucrative trade opportunities and probably due to this phoenician cities remained extremely prosperous continuing until about 62 bc when the romans took over phoenicia was incorporated into the roman province of syria by this time however many of the characteristics that had once made the phoenicians a distinct people had almost vanished as did references to them in literature and records of the time as we have seen however the legacy of the phoenicians is still with us today thanks for watching don't forget to like and subscribe for more history content leave a comment below if you enjoyed the video and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: History Time

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Length: 67min 26sec (4046 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/L0SERlambda]

"Europe's"?

[u/FreshlyScrapedSmegma]

Their catapults fired twice as fast.

[u/TheRealManjikarp]

So now Europe is claiming the Middle East and North Africa?

[u/RevivedMisanthropy]

Spain is in Europe I think

[u/DiscoShaman]

Yes