The Mediterranean Se The Phoenician Culture

The Mediterranean Sea is home to many great civilizations in our early history. Unlike the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, there is one Mediterranean civilization that did not have a land centric empire. The Phoenicians are the first civilization to create a long distance sea trading network in the ancient Mediterranean world. This trading network is significant in ancient Mediterranean history because of the archaeological remains discovered in different areas of the Mediterranean. These archeological remains show evidence of cultural interactions between the Phoenicians and other Mediterranean groups. The following essay will focus on the Phoenician maritime trading culture from 1200 BCE to 300 BCE and the examination of archaeological
Due to close proximity between the Mediterranean Sea and the city-state of Tyre, the Phoenicians established independent city-state ports throughout their city-state because they wanted to obtain the rich natural resources available in the Mediterranean Sea. (Peckman 2014) The independent city-state ports provided the Phoenician civilization with a framework in order to establish their maritime trading network. In the Phoenician Maritime Religion: Sailors, Goddess Worship, and the Grotta Regina article, Mark A. Christian states that the Phoenician maritime trade network was an assortment of large and small exchange networks throughout the Mediterranean Sea. (Christian 2013:181). The main reason the Phoenicians created the maritime trading network is to transport their resources and trading goods to other local Phoenician city-states that do not have those particular resources in the area (Peckman 2014). Several of the resources and trade goods the Phoenicians merchants traded in the city-states include bronze bowls, cedar wood for ship making, pottery from local groups in the Levant region, perfumes and a purplish dye called Murex (Peckman 2014:68). The Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to the Phoenicians as the “traders of purple” because the main trading commodity the Phoenicians provided to the Ancient Greeks and Romans is Murex (Peckman
This sea trading network expanded in many different areas in the Mediterranean, including areas of North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula and the southern region of the British Isles. The reason the Phoenician sea trading network prospered for hundreds of years is due to their use of the alphabet, establishing city-state ports and settlements/colonies throughout the Mediterranean, and their trading interactions between other Mediterranean groups. The Phoenician alphabet contributed to the success of the maritime trading network because the Phoenicians wanted to create a message with a specific code that always stayed the same and had the same meaning to other people who read the message. Originally the reason the Phoenicians created their trading network is to transport their resources and trading goods to other local Phoenician city-states that do not have those particular resources in the area. When the maritime trading network expanded in the ninth century BCE, the Phoenician needed to create new settlements or colonies in different areas of Mediterranean that are within the range of the trading network. This expansion allowed the Phoenicians to share their cultural customs, traditions, ideology, and technology with the native inhabitants living in their