Phoenician Colonies: Trade Networks Across the Mediterranean

Phoenician colonies were the trading towns and harbours founded by the cities of Tyre and Sidon across the Mediterranean between roughly the 10th and 6th centuries BC. From Cyprus to North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and the Atlantic coast of Spain, Phoenician merchants built a sea network that moved silver, purple cloth, luxury goods and ideas. It linked the eastern and western Mediterranean for the first time on a large scale and gave rise to the city of Carthage.

A small homeland with a big sea

The Phoenicians lived in a string of independent port cities on the coast of what is now Lebanon and northern Israel, including Byblos, Sidon, Tyre and Arwad. They called themselves by their city names or as Canaanites; “Phoenician” is a Greek name, probably linked to the purple dye for which they were famous (see Tyrian Purple).

Their homeland was squeezed between the mountains and the sea, with little farmland. The cities lived by trade and crafts, exporting cedar from the Lebanon mountains, dyed cloth, glass and finely worked metal and ivory. After the upheavals around 1200 BC, which ruined many older powers, the Phoenician cities recovered quickly and moved into the gap left in Mediterranean trade.

Tyre took the lead. Under King Hiram I, traditionally dated to the mid-10th century BC, it became the most powerful of the Phoenician cities. The Hebrew Bible describes Hiram supplying cedar and craftsmen to Solomon and sending joint trading voyages.

Why they went west

Historians point to several motives. The most important was metal. Southern Spain, the region the Greeks called Tartessos, had rich silver deposits around the Rio Tinto, and the Atlantic routes gave access to tin. Silver was the main means of payment in the Near East, and the Phoenician cities needed large amounts.

From the 9th century BC the Assyrian Empire demanded heavy tribute from the Levantine cities, often in silver and luxury goods. Many historians argue that this pressure pushed Tyre to secure distant sources of metal, though how much it drove expansion is debated. Population growth and the need for grain may also have played a part.

The colonies

The first steps were close to home. Kition, on the south coast of Cyprus, became a Phoenician city in the 9th century BC and remained one for centuries. Phoenician traders also worked in Crete, Rhodes and the Aegean, where Greek writers remembered them as both merchants and kidnappers.

Further west, the key foundation was Gadir, modern Cádiz, on an island just beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. Roman-era writers placed its founding around 1100 BC, but excavations suggest the Phoenician town dates to the 9th or 8th century BC; finds at nearby Huelva show contact by the 10th or 9th century BC. Gadir’s temple of Melqart, the god of Tyre, became famous throughout the ancient world. Lixus on the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Utica in Tunisia were also said to be very early foundations.

The most important colony of all was Carthage, founded according to tradition in 814 or 813 BC by settlers from Tyre led by the princess Elissa, known to the Romans as Dido; archaeology confirms a settlement by the late 9th or 8th century BC (see Founding of Carthage).

Between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, Phoenicians settled in western Sicily at Motya, Panormus (Palermo) and Soluntum, and in Sardinia at Nora, Sulcis and Tharros. They established themselves on Malta and Gozo and, according to Diodorus of Sicily, founded Ebusus on Ibiza in the mid-7th century BC. Dozens of small settlements lined the coast of Andalusia, such as Toscanos and Morro de Mezquitilla.

What they traded

Phoenician ships carried a mix of bulk goods and luxuries. Silver, copper and tin moved east, while purple-dyed textiles, cedar, glass beads and vessels, carved ivories, engraved metal bowls, jewellery, wine and olive oil moved west and were traded with local peoples. Amphorae made in Phoenician styles are found in great numbers at western sites.

The biblical prophet Ezekiel, in a lament for Tyre written in the 6th century BC, gives a long list of the city’s trading partners and goods, including silver, iron, tin and lead from Tarshish, often identified with southern Spain. Although poetic, it captures how central trade was to Tyre’s identity.

Colonies were not only markets. Many were farming towns, workshops and religious centres. Local peoples, from the Tartessians of Spain to the Nuragic communities of Sardinia, were active partners who adopted Phoenician goods, techniques and sometimes writing.

Life and religion in the colonies

Colonists took their gods with them. Melqart, the patron god of Tyre, had temples at Gadir, Kition and elsewhere, and colonies often sent offerings back to his sanctuary in the mother city. Astarte, Baal Hammon and Tanit were also widely worshipped, and the temple of Astarte at Kition was one of the largest religious buildings in Cyprus.

In Carthage, Motya, Sardinia and other western sites, archaeologists have found open-air sanctuaries called tophets, where the cremated remains of infants and young animals were buried in urns under inscribed stones. Whether these were child sacrifices, as Greek and Roman writers claimed, or cemeteries for children who died young, is still debated.

Colonial towns were usually built on small islands, headlands or river mouths that offered safe harbours and easy defence. Motya, for example, sat on a small island in a lagoon off western Sicily, linked to the mainland by a causeway. Such sites show that the Phoenicians thought first as sailors.

Rivals and successors

From the 8th century BC Greek cities also founded colonies in Sicily, southern Italy and later the far west (see Greek Colonization in the Archaic Period). The two networks traded with each other but also competed, especially in Sicily, where Phoenicians held the west of the island and Greeks the east.

In the east, Tyre suffered long sieges, first by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the early 6th century BC and later by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. As the mother city weakened, Carthage took over the leadership of the western Phoenician world. It built its own empire, protected the old colonies and fought Greek Sicily and later Rome in the Punic Wars.

Myths and facts

One popular claim is that Phoenician sailors reached Britain or even the Americas. There is no reliable archaeological evidence for Phoenician voyages to the Americas, and the idea that they traded directly for Cornish tin is uncertain; tin may have reached them through intermediaries.

Herodotus reports that sailors in the service of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II sailed around Africa around 600 BC. Herodotus himself doubted part of the story, and modern historians remain divided on whether the voyage happened.

Timeline

• c. 970-930 BC: Approximate reign of Hiram I, when Tyre becomes the leading Phoenician city.
• 10th-9th century BC: Earliest Phoenician contacts and finds in southern Spain, notably at Huelva.
• 9th century BC: Kition in Cyprus becomes a Phoenician city.
• 814/813 BC: Traditional date for the founding of Carthage by settlers from Tyre.
• 8th century BC: Settlements at Motya in Sicily and in Sardinia; Gadir established as a town.
• c. 654 BC: Traditional date for the founding of Ebusus on Ibiza.
• c. 585-573 BC: Nebuchadnezzar II besieges Tyre for about 13 years.
• 6th century BC: Carthage begins to lead the western Phoenician colonies.

Why it matters

The Phoenician colonies created the first trading network to span the whole Mediterranean. They spread the alphabet, new crafts, crops and religious ideas, and helped draw the peoples of Spain, Sardinia and North Africa into a wider ancient world. Without them there would have been no Carthage, and the history of the western Mediterranean, including Rome’s rise, would have taken a very different shape.