History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Episode 32. Beyond the Horizon: Phoenician Navigation and the Birth of Global Trade
The fascinating maritime prowess of the Phoenicians transformed ancient commerce through strategic innovation and bold exploration. Their geographical position along the Levantine coast allowed them to create unprecedented trade networks spanning the entire Mediterranean world and beyond, forever altering how goods and wealth moved across civilizations.
Master shipbuilders, the Phoenicians developed sophisticated vessels that revolutionized maritime travel. Their merchant ships optimized cargo capacity with broad, round designs, while their warships evolved from simple rowboats into multi-level biremes and triremes featuring metal rams for naval combat. Greek observers like Xenophon marveled at their meticulous ship organization, where every item had its designated place for maximum efficiency during emergencies—an early example of logistics management that modern businesses would recognize.
What truly distinguished Phoenician traders was their development of navigational techniques that transformed sea travel. Starting with cautious coastal journeys, they gradually mastered open-water navigation using astronomical positioning, with the pole star as their primary guide. Their understanding of seasonal weather patterns and currents enabled long-distance voyages previously thought impossible. Their most remarkable achievement may have been circumnavigating Africa around 600 BCE, a three-year journey where they planted and harvested wheat along their route—a voyage that wouldn't be replicated for over two millennia.
The Phoenicians' commercial brilliance extended to their monetary system, primarily based on silver. This choice reflected silver's perfect balance of characteristics: durability, divisibility, portability, and appropriate scarcity. Their economic network connected regions as diverse as Spain (providing metals), Egypt (supplying fine linen), Arabia (trading spices and frankincense), and Mesopotamia (offering manufactured goods). Perhaps most significant was their creation of a 22-character alphabet that democratized literacy among merchants, forever changing how business could be documented and conducted.
Explore this remarkable civilization that prioritized trade over conquest, showing how innovation in transportation, communication, and finance can create lasting prosperity—lessons that remain relevant in today's interconnected global economy.
To support the podcast through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/HistoryOfMoneyBankingTrade
Visit us at https://moneybankingtrade.com/
Visit us on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyBankingTrade
Welcome podcast listener. I am Mike D and you are listening to the History of Money, banking and Trade podcast. My goal is to expand your knowledge of the history and evolution of trade, along with money, banking and credit, from ancient civilizations to present-day market innovations. I truly hope you find these episodes to be informative and entertaining. I have an MBA and around 20 years working in various financial roles, but I am not a historian. However, I find if I study the history of financial changes, modern trade and complex finance is much easier to understand.
Speaker 1:When we last left off, we were exploring the unique and fascinating backdrop of the Phoenician geographical location, which led them to dominate sea trade, connecting them to various cultures and facilitating the exchange of goods like no other culture had done before them. We also discussed how the purple dye and the Phoenician innovations in textiles became synonymous with wealth. The purple dye and the Phoenician innovations in textiles became synonymous with wealth. Furthermore, we discussed how their shipbuilding allowed them to venture into uncharted waters. We explored how their decentralized city-state functioned competitively yet cohesively, creating a formidable network of commerce, and even expanded their reach as traders in North Africa, sicily and even Spain, marking them as pioneers in ancient colonization efforts Around 700 BCE, when Sennacherib was the king of Assyria, it appears that the Phoenicians had made great leaps of progress with their shipbuilding.
Speaker 1:First of all, they made boats faster and more powerful by adding rowers on two different levels, one above the other, therefore doubling the number of rowers. Greeks called them biremes. A lot of history had been lost in this period concerning the Phoenicians. However, the ships were represented in Sinocorib sculptures depicting the Phoenicians, so therefore, that's how we kind of really got to know exactly how their ships looked. According to Greek accounts, phoenician ships were either merchant ships or warships. The merchant ships were broader and rounder. They were propelled by both oars and sails, but the sails were the main mode of transportation, especially in the open seas. Each of them had a single mast of modest height to which a sail was attached. Now, it appears that the sail was that of a square sail. As long as there was a tailwind, the merchant captain used his sail, of course, and when it died away or became adverse, he would use his oars. Another thing that's quite interesting is that these ships also had much smaller safety boats as well. That's quite fascinating to me, because when I think of ancient societies, the idea of planning for safety is not something that I typically think of, that they would plan for, but in fact they did. And another thing, too, is the fact that I typically think of that they would plan for, but in fact they did. And another thing, too, is the fact that they can build these small safety boats also means that they had great engineering skills that they can actually build the boats that can equip to hold these. So that adds to the layer of their great shipbuilding skills that they had. And this is 700 BCE, so this is the timeframe we're talking about. And this is 700 BCE, so this is the time frame we're talking about.
Speaker 1:The warships of the Phoenicians in the earliest times were probably of a class that were long, open rowboats in which the rowers sat on one level of 15 or 25. The boat had a heavy, sharp metal spike or a beak that was used for ramming. These warships would eventually get upgraded to a bi-ream, which were decked, had masts and had sails, and the rowers would have sat at two different elevations. These would then get superseded by the tri-reams, which came into use among the Phoenicians before the end of the 6th century BCE. In the 3rd century BCE, their Carthage cousins employed in war, a warship that was four levels and then they upgraded to make five levels. So the ships just kept on getting bigger and bigger as time went on and in reality what ended up happening is the ancient world saw a naval's arms race kind of happening, where the Greeks and the Romans were trying to keep up with the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians.
Speaker 1:Xerxes, the powerful Persian king who ruled from around 486 BCE to 465 BCE, had controlled a wide range of peoples that had various skills at shipbuilding and sailing. At some point he more or less commissioned a great race between a large group of nations that included the peoples of places like Phoenicia, cyprus, egypt, lycia and Ionia, just to name a few. Apparently, the great race was won by the Phoenicians of Sidon. Xenophon was really impressed with the Phoenician shipbuilding For one. It was built to defend against hostile ships in the open seas and it was designed so that the sailors could live somewhat comfortably. And, more importantly, the ships were designed to carry large quantities of merchandise, which the owner carries with him for his own profit.
Speaker 1:But what really impressed Xenophon the most was how organized everything was, from the beds for the sailors to the location of where the essentials were all stored, the captain's assistant, who was called the lookout man, knew where everything was at all times. Xenophon apparently interviewed a lookout man and was sort of asking him questions and trying to get an idea of where everything was and kind of really just getting a what-if kind of scenario in his head. So what he was doing is he's kind of really just getting a what if? Kind of scenario in his head. So what he was doing is he's kind of asking him hey, where is everything? How is the ship arranged? What would happen if a storm were to arise at sea? And would it be possible to make sure that you could get to everything? Is something missing or would something be wanting if it was not arranged properly? So in other words, what he was trying to do is he's just trying to verify every single detail of the ship and see if it was really thought out thoroughly beforehand and to see if it was arranged properly so that no time would be wasted in an emergency. And really it sounds like Xenophon had come out thoroughly impressed. And really it sounds like Xenophon had come out thoroughly impressed.
Speaker 1:It's because of their shipbuilding and management that their navigation evolved from cautious sailing, whereas they would generally stay in sight of land by hugging the coast so that they could steer directly for the shore if the seas got a little rough or some sort of emergency happened, if the seas got a little rough or some sort of emergency happened. In addition, they initially only sailed in the daytime and what they would do is they would just cast anchor at nightfall or they would just simply just come ashore and they would just wait for dawn and just kind of go back out. But eventually they got a little bit bolder and they moved down the learning curve and they got a little bit better understanding of the seas and a little bit better understanding of the coasts and the islands relative to one another. They also figured out the seas had certain characteristics depending upon the seasons. They had figured out how to read Mother Nature and pick up on the signs of pending bad weather or if the weather had favored them. But, just as important, they were able to sail out of sight of land because they developed a good understanding of the winds and if it could be trusted to continue to be steady and if they were well assured of the direction of the land they wished to make. Well assured of the direction of the land they wished to make. They were then able to sail in at night when the weather was clear, by using the stars as a guidance system, with the pole star being the main star they used.
Speaker 1:The Earth's tilt gives us our seasons, but it also affects how we see the night sky. When it's winter, the Earth's tilt is away from the sun. When it's summer, the Earth's tilt is towards the sun. The most important thing for navigation is the tilt itself isn't stable. In fact, the tilt is always slowly wobbling. To give you an idea of what the Earth's spin would kind of look like, think of a top that's spinning and how it kind of wobbles, especially when it slows down. It's kind a wobble. Well, that's kind of the wobble that the earth makes, and this wobble is known as the axial precession. To give you an idea what I'm talking about, we currently use polaris as our north star because it is directly above the north pole. In the southern hemisphere they use polaris australis. However, as the axial precession takes place, polararis will no longer be above the North Pole. In another 13,000 years, the North Pole will point towards the new North Star. The star will be known as Vega. However, during the Phoenician heyday, from around 1700 BCE until just after 300 CE, khoshab and Ferkat were twin North Pole stars, though neither was as close to the pole as Polaris is now. On a side note, this axial precession has had major effects on Earth's climate. For example, about 5,000 years ago, the Sahara Desert was still a savanna.
Speaker 1:The Phoenicians made maps of the seas and the stars. As you can imagine, these maps were extremely valuable to the Phoenicians and thus were basically top secret materials. Being in the coast of the Mediterranean was probably a blessing in disguise for them as well. The reason being is the Mediterranean is nearly tideless and far less rough than the open ocean. The small amount of tides in the Mediterranean Sea are caused by the connection to the Atlantic Ocean. The tides in the Mediterranean Sea come from the Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar, so there is something to be said for cutting your teeth in safer waters while you still kind of figure out navigation, the different kind of weather patterns and shipbuilding.
Speaker 1:I wonder if they were closer to rough waters like the South China Sea or the Northern Atlantic, if they would have been scared away from the open ocean navigation? Would they have been scared away before they even got started, or would they have got started at a much later time. It's quite possible that either one would have happened. But regardless of those hypotheticals, they were able to sail farther and farther away. They were able to reach the English Isles and were able to sail west to the coast of Africa. Whether they proceeded further into the south, to the Azores or to the Cape Verde Islands and even across to the Baltic, we don't really know. It's kind of uncertain. It is possible that from time to time some of the more adventurous of the traders may have reached that far, but their regular, settled and established navigation did not, we believe, extend beyond Sicilian islands and the coast of Cornwall to the northwest and down past the Canaries. Give you an idea how wide-ranging their trade was.
Speaker 1:The Phoenicians had some sort of trade with the following countries mentioned as carrying on active trade with the Phoenician metropolitan areas. They had traded with northern Syria. They had traded with Damascus, judah, babylonia, assyria, southern Mesopotamia, armenia, anatolia, the Ionian Greeks, cyprus, greece, spain, and this is just their main trading partners. They also had other trading partners that were outside these particular regions. So their trading network basically touched anywhere in the known world at these particular regions. So their trading network basically touched anywhere in the known world at this particular time and, if you break it down even further, each particular region kind of really specialized in certain goods that they would have traded with the Phoenicians. So, for example, in northern Syria, they would have furnished the Phoenician merchants with fine linen and cotton and certain precious stones, which would have included coral and emeralds and rubies. Syria of Damascus would have given them the wine of Helban and white wool and the dainty fleeces of sheep and lambs that fed on the upland pastures.
Speaker 1:Judah and the land of Israel supplied corn of superior quality and included grains, honey and oil. Egypt sent fine linen for the sales of their pleasure boats, along with natron for glassworks and papyrus of their pleasure boats, along with Natron for glassworks and papyrus. Their exports going back to Egypt consisted of wine, and I'm not talking just a bit here and there. No, we're talking about sending a ton of wine on a very large scale. They also sent tin and, of course, their highly demanded purple fabrics and other manufactured articles. Arabia was an interesting trade partner because they sent spices and frankincenses and Arabia also traded wool and goat's hair and clothes for chariots, gold, precious stones, ivory and ebony. The thing is, is ivory and ebony weren't locally produced in Arabia and therefore most of it would have likely flowed in through India. So in other words, the trade originated in India and was funneled through Arabia.
Speaker 1:So all these particular goods and this is just a few of them that I mentioned were kind of flowing into the Phoenician city-states. But it really kind of begs the question so what was kind of really going the other way? Well, to be honest, no one really is 100% sure and there really aren't any accounts, and a lot of it kind of goes back to what I had said previously, in that a lot of the written records from the Phoenicians and later the people of Carthage were destroyed and a lot of times the information that we do get from Phoenicia and Carthage are from rival cities that may not have their best interests in mind. So sometimes there's just kind of a gap in our knowledge. And in this particular case there is a little bit of a gap in the sense that we have information coming in but we don't really necessarily have the information that's kind of going out. But we're pretty sure that something was going the other way. It is presumed that there is most likely some kind of manufactured goods, such as cotton or linen fabrics or pottery or some kind of utensils and metals or beads or some kind of other jewelry. That's kind of really going the other direction in the trade. And like, for example, the issue with the Arabs were they were mostly nomadic in nature so they probably didn't require a lot of goods, but the trade would have differed between the northern Arabians versus the southern Arabians because the southern Arabians were typically more settled than the northern Arabians, so the southern Arabians would have wanted a little bit more luxurious items than, say, the northern Arabians. So that's the thing about trade is your trading partners, how they live their life, is ultimately going to determine the kind of goods that are going to be kind of swapped back and forth, and the Arabians are a perfect example of that. But ultimately the problem with the Arabians and the Phoenicians in general is that there's just not a lot of information. So a lot of times there's a lot of speculation that kind of goes into play, in that what we think would have been traded back and forth and honestly, a lot of times what we get is just through archaeological digs. So you see items in southern Arabia that are of Phoenician origin, so then we know that well, this good had been traded from the Phoenicians to southern Arabia because it originated in Phoenicia. But the problem is we don't really see those goods in Phoenicia that had originated in southern Arabia, and so that's kind of the problem.
Speaker 1:The Babylonian and Assyrian trade was primarily done through overland caravans through the Assyrian desert. From there the goods were often transferred to the rivers, and because the Phoenicians had often supplied the highly valued purple dye goods, these would have often been so precious that they were packed in cedar chests. Much of these goods from Mesopotamia were ultimately shipped to places like the various Greek city states. Going the other way were the much-needed tin. The Babylonians and the Assyrians were themselves traders and tried to keep the Arabian and the Indian traffic in their own hands. The Arabians were more friendly, but they too, just like the Assyrians and the Babylonians, would want to protect their trade and try to prevent their rivals from intersecting with the Phoenician trade.
Speaker 1:Armenia supplied horses and mules. There were so many colts that were bred each year. They were so highly prized that once the Persians became the dominant player in the Near East, the monarchs would have extracted these colts as regular items of tributes, and at one point there were no fewer than 20,000 of them annually sent to the kings of Persia, central Asia Minor and the Ionian Greeks supplied slaves copper and brass. With regards to the slaves, not only did they trade with them, but they were also known for kidnapping men, women and children. Many of these slaves, especially the girls, would have originated from the Black Sea region.
Speaker 1:Cyprus furnished timber, greece proper sent shellfish to enable the Phoenician cities to increase their manufacture of the purple dye. Spain was extremely rich in natural resources. Thus silver, iron and tin and lead were sent. They also sailed up to the Sicilian islands and the coast of Cornwall, which was especially known for procuring tin. The thing is is what I said prior, is tin was extremely rare. In fact, up until the Phoenicians reached the British Isles, essentially the only source of tin was from modern Afghanistan. This area of Cornwall would be known as the Tin Islands. The Phoenicians also traded with the west coast of Africa. From there, they were able to procure ivory from elephants, lions and deerskins, and most likely gold.
Speaker 1:Once Carthage was more established by the Phoenicians, herodotus said that when the Carthaginians arrived with their goods, their ships would raise a great smoke for the natives to see. From there, they would come to the beach and show the people their samples, and the people would lay out the equivalent of gold that they think their wares were worth. Then the Carthaginians would withdraw to a distance. The Carthaginians would then come back ashore again and they would look. If they thought that the gold was enough, they would take it and go their way. But if they did not seem to think that there was sufficient amount of gold, they would go back to their ship and once again they would wait patiently. Then the others would approach and add more gold. The Carthaginians would wait patiently until they were satisfied that there was enough gold. Herodotus said that they themselves never actually touched the gold until it came up to the worth of the goods. Nor did the natives ever carry off the goods until the gold was taken away.
Speaker 1:Now this story is quite controversial. A lot of people question the veracity of it. A lot of people don't seem to believe that it actually happened that way. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but this is the story that Herodotus says that the Phoenicians were able to use to communicate with the local natives without actually being able to communicate them through any kind of written or spoken language. So there had to be some kind of communication that was going on, because they didn't speak the same language, obviously, and they were trading with each other At first. When they first started dealing with each other, there had to be some kind of informal communication that was happening. How that happened, I don't know. Herodotus probably really didn't know either, but this is the story that he came up with, whether it was through communicating with other people and this is second-hand or third-hand or even fourth-hand sources. Either way, this is how Herodotus had determined how the Phoenicians had facilitated trade with local populations when there wasn't any kind of spoken language between the two.
Speaker 1:One thing you may have noticed is that many of these trading partners would have sent goods to Phoenicia through land routes, because they obviously weren't sailing into Arabia or central Anatolia. So what I'm getting is that they weren't just sailors and sea traders, they were also participating in caravan overland trade routes as well. Of course, overland trade can be potentially dangerous and risky, because gangs of thieves, especially the ones that hide out in the mountains, would often scout these trade routes, looking for an easy score. Therefore, traders would often form up in large groups. These would allow them to get some kind of economies of scale as well as share costs for security and other provisions.
Speaker 1:The trade between the Phoenicians and Egypt was very extensive. The wares of Egypt are mentioned by Herodotus as a portion of the merchandise that were brought to Greece before the time of the Trojan War. The one thing that Egypt coveted but couldn't produce was wine, because grapes just couldn't be grown locally. So the Egyptians looked to the Phoenicians to supply them with barrels of wine that were purchased using Nubian gold. But it wasn't just wine. They also needed timber, which was purchased with gold and other commodities such as linen, papyrus and even cowhide. The wood itself would have been logged and brought to the coast for shaping before sending out to Egypt and other kingdoms.
Speaker 1:And before I move on, I just wanted to make something clear. While they participated in overland caravans, the sea trade of the Phoenicians was still their bread and butter and their most extensive trade routes. But I just wanted to kind of highlight that they didn't just solely rely on sea trade, they also relied on overland trade. And it kind of makes sense because you kind of want to merge the two, because you can use both when you're doing certain kind of trades. So, for example, you can use the land between the two rivers right, so you can use the Euphrates and the Tigris River as a sea route, and then, when you get to the end of the rivers or you get to a port, you can offload to a caravan and remove all the items off the ship and then send it over land to your final destination. Now, generally speaking, when they use their sea routes, the trade would have happened directly with their own colonies that they had established. Or if they didn't have colonies actually established where they're trading, they just would have traded directly with the natives.
Speaker 1:With the exception of Carthage, the colonies of Phoenicia were designed as trading settlements so the local dominant commodity or commodities could be sent to Phoenicia as a secure monopoly. For example, cyprus was colonized for its copper mines and its timber. Thassos in the Aegean was set up for its gold mines. Sardinia and Spain were set up for their numerous metals. North Africa was there for its grains and its trade with the interior.
Speaker 1:Now it sounds like the Phoenicians were well versed at market prices and knew if the locals were sophisticated enough to know their worth, because the Phoenicians would often exploit the locals' lack of understanding of markets and quality by charging excessive rates for certain goods or they would have disposed the lesser quality of goods at higher prices. They would have also been able to obtain monopolies and drove the native products out of the market. So this is in part a big reason why the Phoenicians kind of had a bad reputation from people like the Greeks. But, like I said, a lot of the information that we get comes from the Greeks. The Greeks were their main trading rivals, so maybe some of the information we get isn't quite accurate or is painted in a bad light.
Speaker 1:Now where culture was more sophisticated, such as with the various Greek city-states and Egypt, they would sell their highest quality products, such as fabrics of crimson and violet and purple, and their painted vases and necklaces and bracelets and rings, along with their mirrors and their glass vessels. They would typically pay in silver and gold, but also they would have used certain commodities as a form of payment. By the time we get to this period, the people of ancient Mesopotamia had already kind of set the bar as using silver in particular gold to a lesser extent, but silver as the preferred medium of exchange. And this would have gone back basically a few thousand years to the Mesopotamians and really back to ancient Sumer and Akkad and Babylonia. And the reason why is because they had kind of really used silver as their preferred medium of exchange over grains, because grains kind of really started out as the preferred medium of exchange because grains were very practical and offered a lot of utility, because you can consume it and you wouldn't starve to death if you're getting paid in grains. But the problem with grains is that they could decay and they were prone to rot and weren't easily divisible and weren't as portable, because you might need a lot of it to make a formal payment.
Speaker 1:Silver, on the other hand, possessed a lot of characteristics that made it much more suitable to be used as a form of money For one. It's durable. It does not corrode or degrade easily, so it is reliable in the sense that it can store value over time. It's divisible. It can be divided into smaller units. So it is often stored and transferred in ingots, so it's like blocks of silver and eventually, when the Lydians come along, it will be turned into coinage. And the key thing is is when you make smaller units, you don't lose its value as you decrease the size, so you can maintain the value and maintain for precise transactions.
Speaker 1:Silver is easily portable, especially compared to other commodities like grain, like I just mentioned, and livestock. Livestock was often used as a form of wealth, but transferring cows can be quite expensive and trying to make a cow divisible could be a problem because you're going to kill the cow. So silver is much more easy to transport relative to other forms of commodities. And probably the most important thing is silver is scarce enough to have value, but not so rare that it cannot be used for everyday transactions. So that's why silver is used a lot more than gold, especially during this time period. Gold is used sometimes, but often used for more luxurious items and is not used in everyday transactions. Now, of course, everything that I just mentioned for silver will eventually be applied to gold. At a much later time, when people started getting into the gold standard, they want to go to a bimetal currency because they say that we don't have enough gold and if we use gold and silver it'll make their debt a little easier to manage. But that's for for a much, much, much later episode, maybe a few years down the road, when we get to that.
Speaker 1:Now, with regards to silver, they did have these mining operations in spain, and that in itself makes for a great story. It's probably a myth, but the story goes that there was a great fire in spain that had consumed much of the forests and therefore would have exposed the lands that were beneath it. Apparently, by the time the fires had finished up, the surface of the soil was found to be intersected by the streams of silver from the melting of the silver ore. Due to the intensity of the fires, the natives saw this silver and basically saw it as virtually a worthless metal. They didn't have any desire for it. So what they end up doing is just kind of traded it away with the Phoenician traders who had already frequented the country so they kind of already had familiarity with them and in return they were basically given wares that had relatively modest value at best. So it really sounds like the Phoenicians were able to make a killing on this particular trade. Now it should be noted that even in relatively newly explored places, it's really not uncommon for valuable metals to be practically accessible from the surface with virtually limited digging or just some minor scratching virtually limited digging or just some minor scratching. This kind of happened in California, as well as in Australia and in South Africa, as the early yields were pretty much at the surface.
Speaker 1:Mining as an operation has been going on for thousands of years. Much of it was probably happening before written language. However, the earliest mining operations of which we have written records was from the Egyptian pharaohs as far back as 2600 BCE. So by the time we get to the Phoenicians the idea of mining had been around for nearly 2000 years. Since much of the mining operations would have occurred pretty close to the Sinai, it's quite possible that much of the information obtained by the Phoenicians was given to them by the Egyptians Before the Phoenicians had made their way to Spain. It appears that much of their working knowledge came from copper mining operations in Cyprus. Knowledge came from copper mining operations in Cyprus. By the time they get to Sardinia they saw the rich deposits of copper and lead and figured it's best to use this place for extraction, not so much for colonization. But Spain was almost equivalent to the discovery of the New World by the Europeans. It is kind of ironic that it was the Spanish conquistadors that discovered the vast quantities of silver in Peru, especially the Potosí silver mines. But they also discovered silver in Bolivia and Mexico in the 16th century.
Speaker 1:For the Phoenicians, when they stumbled upon so many natural resources in Spain especially when it's going to be for trade with other kingdoms. Because what happened really with Spain and I'm kind of getting way ahead of myself is the Spanish Empire basically extracted these silver resources from the New World and sent it off to China and basically none of the silver ended up in Europe. It all basically went straight to China because the Spanish were importing all the Chinese goods because the Chinese could make goods cheaper and better than Europeans could. This was in the 1600s and 1500s. Sounds a lot like what we are going through today, but I'll get into it much later, obviously, when I get to the Spanish Empire. But another issue with Spain was Spain didn't reinvest into Spanish people and they didn't invest into resources. The elites wanted to live a lavish lifestyle and wanted to be rent seekers. They didn't want to reinvest into Spain and subsequently Spain fell apart. But that's for a total different episode and you know, hopefully we'll get into that when we get into the spanish empire.
Speaker 1:And but it is kind of interesting that spain was such a natural resource rich place and eventually all the resources were drained away from the iberian peninsula and eventually the spanish empire would have to go to the New World to get all the resources when at one point, spain was ground zero for having the most abundant resources in the known world. But at the time of the Phoenician colonies the metals that were in Spain were primarily silver, copper, iron, tin and lead were primarily silver, copper, iron, tin and lead. They also had a little bit of gold as well, but the Spanish silver, said Pliny, is the best in the world. But then when the Spanish empire gets to the New World and they get to the Potosi silver mines, that silver will be regarded as probably the best silver in the world. And the one thing Spain has always had is an abundance of lead. In fact, even to this very day, spanish exports account for about half of all lead consumed in Europe.
Speaker 1:Eventually, the mining operations will be taken over by Carthage and then by the Romans. However, their mines will be entirely slave labor, which in a lot of circumstances meant a death sentence, as they typically remained in the mines night and day, almost never seeing the sun. It isn't clear if the Phoenicians used slave labor. However, the Carthaginians were themselves Phoenicians and they would have inherited those mines from their forefathers. So therefore it would be easy to conclude that they probably just used the old system that was already functioning. So they likely used slave labor themselves.
Speaker 1:With all these various metals pouring into the Phoenician city-states from their numerous colonies and trading posts. Pouring into the Phoenician city-states from their numerous colonies and trading posts, they were able to transact by weighing out ingots of silver and gold. To a lesser extent, the ships they used to carry the ingots and the goods also contained images of the gods they used to protect the ships and provide safe passage. There was a single deity, which was the highest of all their deities, which was designated as El, or Great, or Ram, or Rimen Hai, which meant High, and Baal, which meant Lord, or Malik, or which meant King, or there was Elam, which meant Supreme, or Edoni, which meant my lord, or Bel-Samin, which is the lord of our heaven. Now, I bring all this up because you'll see these names.
Speaker 1:To this day, the religion of Phoenicia may have been introduced from its Mesopotamian neighbors, it's based on polytheism at its core and it's rooted in tribalism, with each city or region having a different deity. But at the head of the pantheon stood a god known as Baal, and I look at Baal, which is the lord, sort of how the Greeks had Zeus and, by time, the Romans. They had Jupiter. Baal originally started as a city god, sort of how Marduk was the patron god of Babylon. Tyre, especially, was dedicated to him. Since Tyre is one of, if not the most important Phoenician city-states, you can see how Baal would have kind of rose up the ranks of the gods in the region. In later times he was identified with the Egyptian god of Amun and worshipped as Baal-Haman. The female deity whose place corresponded to that of Baal in the Phoenician pantheon and who was potentially his companion or counterpart, was known as Astarte. El also rose up through the ranks as he was a special god of Byblos and was worshipped with a particular rites at Carthage.
Speaker 1:The Phoenician alphabet might be the greatest invention. They took the cumbersome hieroglyphics and cuneiform and simplified the writings that consisted of 22 characters. Now it is a bit of a controversy because some people point to the Canaanites as the inventors of the alphabet. So it is possible that it was the Canaanites and not the Phoenicians, but either way, this simplified form of writing would revolutionize the world as we know it. In Sumer, some scribes would spend as much as 12 years in schooling due to the sheer complexity of their system. This meant that only the wealthy could afford to get adequate schooling, so being literate was very limited to a very few people With the alphabet. Even relatively poor merchants could learn how to read and write or have a basic understanding of what was written, since the characters were expressed by the simplest possible forms and designed to sound out what was written phonetically.
Speaker 1:It is hypothesized that the Phoenicians started out as a hieroglyphical system, selecting objects that represented the initial sound of the name and then drawing that object. From there, it was just simplified further and further. The one notable difference from our present English alphabet is that the Phoenicians didn't have any characters that represented the vowel sounds, as it was all consonants and the reader is expected to supply the vowel sounds for himself. Several letters were made to serve for two sounds, as Beth was for B and V and P, e was for P and F, shin for both S and SH and Tau were for both T and TH. Since there was a bit of redundancy, the Greeks just omitted anything that was redundant. Also, there were no forms of corresponding to the sounds of J or W. The writing in the Phoenicians was like the majority of the nations, from right to left.
Speaker 1:Since the Phoenicians were probably the most successful long-distance traders, their alphabet spread to other regions of the Mediterranean. As such, it was adopted, with slight alterations, by the Etruscans and the Greeks, and then from them it was passed on to other nations in modern Europe, and then from them it was passed on to other nations in modern Europe. The interesting thing is, they essentially gave their trading partners, which were basically everyone, the idea and the template for developing their system of writing. Yet the Phoenicians have left us very little in terms of literature. Much of what we do have is Greek literature that was translated from Phoenician.
Speaker 1:In the end, the language of the Phoenicians were close to the Hebrew peoples, which makes a lot of sense, since they're neighbors and they had derived from the Kenyanite peoples. Therefore, the Phoenician numerical numbers were identical, or nearly identical, with the Hebrew numerical system as well. However, the Phoenicians ordinarily expressed numbers by signs and not words, so, in other words, they wouldn't write out the number 1 as O-N-E. Instead, they would put one horizontal line for the number one. Two would have had two horizontal lines, but they wouldn't spell out the number two.
Speaker 1:So, despite the fact that the Phoenicians' gift to the known world at the time was their alphabet, they were great traders and they were able to basically get goods from one side of the known world to the other. The problem for them was that they didn't have much of a navy at all and they certainly didn't have a land army. They were traders, they were businessmen, they weren't soldiers and because of it they were essentially conquered or vassal states to whoever was the major hegemic power of the Near East at the time. So, for example, various Phoenician cities would have agreed to pay annual tribute to the Assyrian kings in certain fixed sums and certain precious metals, and they would have further made other tribute payments in the form of whatever gifts that they could come up with and would have given it to the kings of Assyria, whoever was in charge, and in return they wouldn't have their city sacked and burnt to the ground.
Speaker 1:The Phoenicians were smart enough to understand that they couldn't fend off the Assyrians, as they were a nation of traders and sailors and not soldiers. As such, they promoted peace with the Assyrians and, unlike other little small city, they were not quick to rise up against their overlords like the other vassals. Therefore, they were able to retain their native monarchs and, more importantly, their laws and institutions and their religion and, most importantly, they were able to retain their long-distance trade. They were able to retain their long-distance trade. The Assyrians also realized that the Phoenicians could be a proxy for the Assyrians throughout the Mediterranean, so they wanted them to pursue some sort of diplomacy for the Assyrians in far-off places that they knew they could never get to. Additionally, they also feared that the Egyptians might exert some hegemony over them as well. All the Phoenicians needed to do was stay current with their fixed tribute and don't rise up.
Speaker 1:In a weird way, assyria offered them protection, as they were able to control access to the trade routes across the Near East, which, it was, of the highest importance to the Phoenicians. Basically, what it means was the caravans could traverse through these increasingly secure areas now that there were safeguards put in place by the ruthless Assyrians, kind of sort of how the Mongols had secured the Silk Road. In addition, this cooperation probably expanded its trade routes even further as Assyria conquered even more territories. So, for example, they were able to expand trade further east into Media and Persia. So, in a weird, odd way, assyria may have been a blessing in disguise for the Assyrians, despite the fact that they had to pay an excessive amount of tribute, but in a way it could be looked at as security.
Speaker 1:What Assyria was essentially offering them was an insurance policy that they were saying you're going to pay us tribute, but when you go into overland trade, into these new places, we're going to make sure that it's safe for you. It's the same reason why, when the Mongols conquered much of Asia, all of a sudden the Silk Road opened up and all these goods started flowing into Europe that weren't flowing into Europe before, because now, all of a sudden, the Silk Road was extremely safe. You can pass goods long distance where you couldn't before. So that's the unintended consequence of conquest. It's what I got into in my first episode when I talked about Sumer, when Sargon the Great had really been the first ever known conqueror who conquered people in far off places that had foreign customs and foreign languages and worshipped foreign gods. But the thing he did is he made trade more efficient by standardizing weights and measures and also made trade safer for people to pass through these places that were insecure just years prior.
Speaker 1:But the biggest problem with empires like the Assyrians and then later the Romans, were the fees for protection only got bigger and bigger as time went on. Then, when the inevitable poor administration happens in Mesopotamia or in Rome or wherever revolts are going to happen, then the government will need to access more and more from the vassals whether it's silver or horses or grain to feed the army on campaign. This usually leads to revolts in the empire. Even if Phoenicians don't rebel, their neighbors were almost certain to do so. Around 727 BCE, tiglath-palaster II had put down revolts in Syria, which basically spilled over into Phoenicia. Sidon and other cities upon the mainland were protected by strong and lofty walls.
Speaker 1:However, it appears that Tyre may have aligned with the rebels, since Tiglath-Balasar got what he needed in Syria. He agreed to the terms laid out by the Phoenicians, and in Tyre in particular. In reality, tiglath-balasar was smart enough to realize that he should leave Tyre intact, because he needed them to continue to have their economic success in their seafaring trade, because this would ultimately mean more tribute and resources in their seafaring trade. Because this would ultimately mean more tribute and resources. Now, it wasn't like there was some sort of laissez-faire attitude. Instead, assyria made sure to leave inspectors and other officials in Tyre's harbor. They were also required to pay 150 talents of gold per year, which turns out to be quite a bit, because if you do the calculations in conversion, it sounds like it's close to about 150 million US dollars.
Speaker 1:When Shalmaneser came to the throne, his analysis concluded that there were conflicts and some jealousness among the various Venetian city-states. The biggest thing that they noticed was that Tyre was the real big dog in the region and therefore Sidon had kind of hoped that they could once again become the local hegemon of the region. Luckily for Phoenicia, salmaneser had lost his throne in 722 BCE amid troubles among various kinds, and attention was therefore kind of drawn away to other quarters of the empire. The new ruler, sargon II, basically took a hands-off approach with the Phoenicians and essentially reverted back to the Phoenician approach of leaving them alone as long as they agreed to pay upon their local tribute in return for Assyrian protection. However, the Assyrian approach changed when Sennacherib came to the throne and basically his policy had reversed as soon as the affairs in Babylon had ceased to occupy him. He had then marched his full force of the empire towards the west and proclaimed his intention of crushing a Phoenician revolt that had been simmering.
Speaker 1:Now, these revolts really didn't necessarily start in Phoenicia. What had happened was in 705, sennacherib was facing a series of revolts, a series of revolts in particular from Hezekiah, the king of Judah because he had stopped paying his annual tribute to the Assyrians because he had saw various revolts that were happening back in Babylonia and in Assyria. Hezekiah provoked the Assyrians even more when he attacked Philistine cities that were loyal to Assyria and captured the Assyrian vassal king and imprisoned him in his capital of Jerusalem. Tyre also joined in this revolt as well, in part because the Babylonians had encouraged an anti-Assyrian settlement among the empire's western vassals. Predicament among the empire's western vassals.
Speaker 1:In 701 BCE, sennacherib attacked Syria and Phoenician cities. The king of Tyre knew he was doomed, so rather than face the fury of the Assyrians, he hopped on a boat and sailed away until he was beyond Sennacherib's reach. In his stead, sennacherib placed a puppet on the throne and oversaw the submission of many of the surrounding cities to his rule. Other vassals that had revolted quickly sued for peace to avoid retribution or at the very least save the cities from utter ruin. So in the end the Phoenicians kind of revolted a little bit, but they were sort of spared to a lesser extent. Other cities when they revolt they would be utterly raised to the ground, but the phoenicians were generally spared the total destruction other cities were facing, because the phoenicians had a lot to offer the assyrian kings in that they could offer the long-distance trade and tribute, so oftentimes they would be spared. And plus, the Phoenicians weren't necessarily a direct threat militarily to the Assyrians, so they wouldn't necessarily probably see them in the same light that, say, the Egyptians or even the Babylonians.
Speaker 1:Esarhaddon and his two brothers had disputed his succession after they had murdered his father. Many places had revolted when they saw local troubles in Assyria. Sidon revolted and Esarhaddon wasn't happy, so he decided to take care of the problem. Sidon's ruler was removed and the city was plundered and the treasures of the palace were carried off. Furthermore, much of the population was deported back to Assyria, because one of the things that Assyria did was they used deportation as a means of controlling the population. So if you had a situation where you might have revolted, what they would do is they would take people from one region of the empire, transport them to a new place and take the people that had revolted them and move them somewhere else. So in this particular case, the Sidonese people were getting a little bit unruly. So what you do is when you plunder the city, you take some of the people, move them out and and you can further control the population this way. So, since there was a little bit of a void because he just moved people out, new Assyrians had moved in that were easier to manage. Hasarhaddon had changed the name of the city of Sidon to Ir Hasarhaddon.
Speaker 1:Tyre, on the other hand, played ball and therefore was provided for. What Tyre was required to do was furnish Esarhadon with a fleet and man it with its own sailors. Esarhadon had secured the Levant around 673 BCE and decided to conquer Egypt, and he called on his subject allies for contingents of men, if not supplies of money, but when push came to shove, it appears that Tyre had supported Egypt instead. In 672, esarhaddon marched through Syria and Palestine and sent a detachment against Tyre with orders to his officers to occupy points off the coast opposite to the island of Tyre and would have cut off supplies of food and water. Within a few years, tyre surrendered to Assyria and Esarhaddon had conquered Egypt around 670 BCE.
Speaker 1:The Phoenicians probably suffered considerably less than the other subject nations under Assyrian rule, and their maritime traders suffered the least of all, since they were rarely ever brought into contact with the Assyrian rulers. There is something to be said about the fact that if you are a maritime trader. There is something to be said about the fact that if you are a maritime trader and you have a land power and you have the ability to hop on a ship and just skip town, well, it does make it a little easier. If things are kind of heating up and you want to go to, say, carthage, for example, and hang out there for a while, you can easily do that. In fact, that's kind of one of the big reasons why Carthage ends up becoming the main Phoenician city-state, because it could just go to North Africa and it doesn't have to worry about supplying whoever the local hegemon is in the Near East. And they don't have to give them all their reserves of gold and silver. They can just kind of supply their own selves with whatever they need, and they're way out of the reach of these land powers. They have no ability whatsoever to get to them. The only thing Carthage will ever have to worry about is other potential sea powers.
Speaker 1:Eventually the Assyrians were in decline, but not dead, but now the Babylonian cousins were vying to be their top dog in the Near East. The good thing about being in the Levant was they were able to kind of isolate themselves a bit from potential enemies, but it also had the unfortunate part of being stuck between the Mesopotamian powers who were in conflict. And then you had Egypt looking to get back to its glory days. Whether it was the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians, someone was vying for land and to be the hegemon of the Near East, including North Africa, despite Assyria being in decline, egypt still allied with them. But since Egypt was still weak as well, they saw an opportunity and they started to move northward, right through the Levant and into northern Syria. Tyre and other city-states prospered despite Egypt's moves. In a way, they probably just figured it's best to take the same approach they had taken with the Assyrians and maintain a friendly relationship with Egypt and the pharaoh, necho. In fact, it appears that Necho also granted to Tyre the remarkable favor of setting a trade colony in the Egyptian capital of Memphis.
Speaker 1:However, the real story between Necho II and the Phoenicians was told by Herodotus, as he claimed that Necho II had commissioned Phoenician sailors to circumnavigate Africa around 600 BCE. They would have started in the Red Sea and sailed clockwise around Africa. By all accounts, it took them about three years to complete the task. Now, three years seems excessive, but the reason it took so long was they had reportedly took wheat with them and then planted it and waited to harvest it and then sailed away. Now, according to Herodotus, he says that the Phoenicians had described how the sun had started to rise on the right side. So that meant that the Phoenician sailors had claimed that when they were sailing around Africa, they had the sun on the right hand side. This means that as they were sailing west around the southern end of Africa, the path of the sun was in the north, as it really would have been for someone sailing south of the Tropic of Capricorn around the southern end of Africa. Now, this may have also been a spot of luck, because, if it is true that they did make it around Africa, the water current on the west coast of Africa flows from south to north. I'm not sure when they were actually sailing up the west coast of Africa, but the prevailing wind direction is generally northeasterly during the dry season, the winter, and southwesterly during the wet season, which is the summer, and due west during the African monsoon season, meaning that the wind blows from the northeast towards the southwest in the cooler months and reverses to blow from the southwest during the warmer months. So I'm not sure if they would have been aided by wind direction, but the current certainly would have helped them Either way.
Speaker 1:The story of the Phoenicians rounding the African southern cape over 2,000 years ago, before Vasco da Gama, is quite amazing if it truly did happen. But the Phoenicians still had to figure out how to handle the impending war that was brewing. In 605 BCE, the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar, acting on behalf of his father, nebuchadnezzar, led the forces of Babylon against the audacious Pharaoh who had dared to affront the king of kings. The Egyptians and the remnants of the Assyrians met the full might of the Babylonians and the Median army led by Nebuchadnezzar II at Carchemish, where the combined Egyptian and Assyrian forces were utterly destroyed. This was the end of the Assyrians as we knew it, and therefore it ceased to exist as an independent power. Egypt retreated and was no longer a significant force in the ancient Near East.
Speaker 1:Babylonia reaches economic peak after 605 BCE, so now the Phoenicians were going to need to play ball with the Babylonians and the Medes to a lesser extent. Now the Babylonians had their eyes on the Nile. However, nebuchadnezzar did not stop to commence any sort of siege. He instead pursued Necho II up to the very frontier of Egypt and would have continued his victorious career into the Nile Valley. However, his elderly father had died in Babylon while he was engaged in Egypt and his immediate return to the capital was necessary if he were to avoid a disputed secession. This meant that the people in the Levant were sort of stuck in a state of confusion as to the conquest of Egypt was unfinished to the conquest of Egypt was unfinished. This had to be a bit unsettling, because they probably didn't know what to expect from the neighbors to the south or the neighbors to the east. The reason was the campaign had apparently been so brutal that it had the opposite effect, as this drew the Phoenicians and the Egyptians closer. Why? Because the Babylonians had apparently disgusted men more than she had terrified them. They somehow appeared to be even crueler than the Assyrians. As such, the Phoenicians and even the Palestinian states looked towards Egypt as a possible protector against the Babylonians. Look towards Egypt as a possible protector against the Babylonians. Therefore, it shouldn't be a surprise that Judea and the Phoenicians revolted from Nebuchadnezzar in 598 BCE and declared themselves independent.
Speaker 1:The Phoenicians were still under the hegemony of Tyre, and Tyre at its head had an enterprising prince by the name of Itabal, had an enterprising prince by the name of Itabal, the sieges of Tyre, sidon and Jerusalem were formed. Jerusalem submitted almost immediately. Sidon was taken after losing half of her defenders by pestilence, but Tyre continued to resist for a long space of 13 years because it was an island, but they were affected by a blockade of the city. Tyre, cut off from Lebanon, would find it difficult to increase or renew its navy. Therefore, according to Nebuchadnezzar, tyre, in 585 BCE, fell from her high estate. This would eventually shift the power in Phoenicia from Tyre to Sidon, as it became a preeminent navy.
Speaker 1:In fact, after the king of Tyre died, the citizens had enough of a monarchy and replaced it with judges. These were of the highest society and kind of were the highest of oligarchs, but their position wasn't set in stone as far as the length of time is concerned. So the tenure in office wasn't very assured. In fact, the first judge held the position for only two months, and then the second one only made it for 10 months, and the third was apparently for three months. And far off Carthage. There wasn't one, but two judges. This was something similar to what was happening in Sparta, and possibly it's where Rome got the idea of having two councils. However, the judges experiment meant a lack of stability, so the judges were then abolished by a popular movement and the kings of the old stock were restored. But that didn't happen in Carthage. Once Carthage got rid of the monarchy, that was gone for good. They were not going to go back to that, so they kept the two judges until Carthage was destroyed by Rome.
Speaker 1:Phoenicia under the Babylonian rule was exceptionally weak and, to make matters worse, the city-states no longer had a close relationship with Egypt. So therefore Phoenicia as a whole had to submit to attacks from Egypt around 565 BCE. And then things got even worse because they had lost control of Cyprus. However, on a bright side whether the Phoenicians realized it or not, but the Persians were growing in strength. But in the meantime they had about a 10-year stretch from about 538 BCE to about 528 BCE, where the Phoenicians appeared to have been in a rare interval of autonomy. Egypt was more concerned with their recent annexation of Cyprus and by default, that left Phoenicians alone. So therefore the Phoenicians could once again kind of get back to focusing on long-distance trade. They were able to rebuild their ships and send them off to faraway places. In addition, they were able to re-establish their extensive overland trade routes. From the tax revenue collected, they were able to repair and rebuild cities that were damaged by the Babylonians. So, therefore, peace and stability allowed the Phoenicians to go through a bit of a revival.
Speaker 1:However, something else was happening. The geopolitical landscape was once again changing in the Near East. Cyrus the Great had transformed a small group of semi-nomadic tribes into the mighty Persian Empire. He took a different approach to conquest, as he didn't rule through terror. Instead, he treated the conquered fairly and, more importantly, he allowed a high degree of autonomy and he preserved local customs and religions All the while their cousins in North Africa, the Carthaginians, were separating themselves from the Phoenicians, thereby forming their own distinct culture.
Speaker 1:If you like what you hear and want to donate to the show, you can visit us at patreoncom slash history of money banking trade or you can visit our website at moneybankingtradecom. You can help the show out a ton by leaving a five-star review. Also, I started to experiment a little bit with the show and I transformed the first episode of Sumer into a video format that I posted on to YouTube, and if you want to go and check it out for yourself, you can go to youtubecom slash at money banking trade and you can search for the episode on the Sumerian culture, and you can help the show out a ton by liking and subscribing to that as well. Anyway, thank you very much for taking your time to listen. I truly appreciate you listening and I really hope you enjoy these episodes. It does take a lot of time and hopefully you'll be around for the next episode or two. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.
