Between 286 and 197 BC, Phoenicia (except for Aradus) fell to the Ptolemies of Egypt, who installed the high priests of Astarte as vassal rulers in Sidon (Eshmunazar I, Tabnit, Eshmunazar II). However, its North African offspring, Carthage, continued to flourish, mining iron and precious metals from Iberia, and using its considerable naval power and mercenary armies to protect its commercial interests, until it was finally destroyed by Rome in 146 BC at the end of the Punic (Phoenician) Wars.Īs for the Phoenician homeland, following Alexander it was controlled by a succession of Hellenistic rulers: Laomedon (323 BC), Ptolemy I (320), Antigonus II (315), Demetrius (301), and Seleucus (296). The rise of Hellenistic Greece gradually ousted the remnants of Phoenicia’s former dominance over the Eastern Mediterranean trade routes, and Phoenician culture disappeared entirely in the motherland (northern Canaan). He gained control of the other cities peacefully.
Alexander was exceptionally harsh to Tyre, executing 2000 of the leading citizens, but he maintained the king in power. In 350 or 345 BC a rebellion in Sidon led by Tennes was crushed by Artaxerxes III.Īlexander the Great took Tyre in 332 BC following the Siege of Tyre. Some of the Phoenician population migrated to Carthage and other colonies following the Persian conquest, as it is roughly then that we first hear of Carthage as a powerful maritime entity. Phoenician influence declined after this. Phoenicia was divided into four vassal kingdoms by the Persians: Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, and Byblos and prospered, furnishing fleets for the Persian kings. They were the first civilization to create the bireme.Ĭyrus the Great conquered Phoenicia in 539 BC. The Phoenicians often traded by means of a galley, a man-powered sailing vessel. Tyre is the most thoroughly excavated city of the Phoenician homeland. Though ancient boundaries of such city-centered cultures fluctuated, the city of Tyre seems to have been the southernmost. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC, between the period of 1200 BC to 900 BC. Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, lying mainly along the coast of modern day Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel.
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