| Who are the Phoenicians and how did they affect trade and pottery? | |
The Phoenicians are important to the study of Greek pottery because they brought Near Eastern and Egyptian trade goods, with foreign styles of decoration, to Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea in their merchant ships.(1) They might also have carried Greek pottery to foreign ports on their ships; much of the Greek pottery that is in museums today comes from sites in Etruria, which is in present-day Italy.
Besides simply carrying foreign merchandise, the Phoenicians also created their own products and absorbed and adapted Egyptian and Near Eastern artistic styles to their own crafts.(2) Through the Phoenician traders the Greeks were exposed to a many hybrid styles from multiple cultures. The Greeks selectively appropriated Eastern decoration, techniques, and forms for their ceramic potting and painting industry, particularly during the Greek Orientalizing period of the 8 th to 7 th centuries BCE.(3)
Though the Assyrian annals, the Bible, and Greek and Roman authors refer to the Phoenicians, the cultural identity of these maritime traders is still unclear to scholars.(4) The Phoenicians are credited with giving the alphabet to the Greeks and to the Carthaginians, yet the purported immense quantities of Phoenician written documents have mostly been lost and along with them a clear understanding of Phoenician culture.(5) The Phoenicians were regarded in history as ingenious and adventurous seafarers and traders, which resulted in imaginative stereotyped reputations of the Phoenicians as "cheaters and hucksters...insatiable mongers and unscrupulous profiteers."(6)
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Phoenicia refers to a small strip of land in the Levant bordered by Southern Syria to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Northern Palestine to the south, and the Lebanon mountains to the east. 'Border' is a questionable term, because territory was shifting throughout Phoenician history, and Phoenicia seems to refer more to a collection of independent cities acting as centers of trade than to a unified culturally or ethnically based kingdom or empire. Three prominent Phoenician cities are Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. The Phoenicians also set up colonies in foreign lands, including Greece and the islands of the Aegean as their trade spread to the West.(7)
Throughout their histories the Hittites and Assyrians to the North, and the Egyptians to the South of Phoenicia were expanding and fighting over their borders; this fighting often took place in the realm of Phoenicia. This placed Phoenicia in a tenuous position. The Phoenicians, however, seemed to be cunning businessmen and strategists; they fared better than many other satrapies by making themselves allies through supply and demand. They provided necessary goods to their powerful neighbors.(8) They sold wood to Egypt and metal to Assyria.(9) Archaeological evidence suggests that at least some of the metal supply for Assyria came from Cyprus, Crete, Thasos, and other parts of Greece.(10) The Phoenicians also provided maritime knowledge and skills to the Persians when they were warring with Egypt and Greece.(11) A Phoenician double-shekel coin minted in Sidon around 345 BCE shows a Phoenician war galley.
Author: Gina Hander
(1) There has been scholarly debate about whether Phoenician traders were responsible for transporting goods to Greece, or whether the Greek traders brought Eastern goods back to Greece. The second opinion was based to some extent on a surmise that the city of Al Mina along the northern coast of Syria was a Greek trading city. However, current thought seems to be that Eastern goods came to Greece by Phoenician ships. John Nicholas Coldstream, "Greeks and Phoenicians In the Aegean," Phönizier im Westen , Madrider Beiträge 8, (1982):261-275.
(2) Phoenician ivory carvings were directly influenced by Egyptian and Syrian motifs and decorative styles. Irene J. Winter, "Phoenician and North Syrian Ivory Carving in Historical Context: Questions of Style and Distribution," Iraq 38, (1976):2.
(3) Hurwitt discusses the obvious Oriental influences and motifs on Greek pottery, but that the Greeks altered and changed the Oriental influences to suit their personal taste. Jeffrey M. Hurwitt, "The Edge of Disorder," The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 BCE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1985):125-134.
(4) Glenn E. Markoe, Phoenicians (Berkeley: University of California Press 2000):11.
(8) For a general history of Phoenicia and its relations with its neighbors see: Glenn E. Markoe, "History," in Phoenicians (Berkeley: University of California Press 2000):14-67.
(10) Phoenicians mined copper in Cyprus. Crete is rich in phosphorus-bearing iron ore and there is evidence of iron working center, but not necessarily run by Phoenicians. The island Cythera near the Greek Laconian mainland has iron-rich hematite deposits though there is no archaeological evidence yet found connecting the Phoenicians to this island. There is literary and archaeological evidence for Phoenician mines in Thasos. Markoe, Phoenicians , 171-173.
