Tyre & Carthage: The History of the Phoenician Cities that Dominated the Mediterranean for Centuries

Across the eastern Mediterranean there has been discovered a great number of objects whose appearance or materials are extraneous to local cultures, whether it was an Egyptian amulet in Greece, a Greek vase in Africa, or thousands of strange amulets in Gibraltar. The remains are evidence that a huge amount of goods was once moved from one land to another, systematically transported and traded across the Mediterranean by the ancient commercial network of the Phoenicians. Beginning in the 13th century BCE, and lasting for more than a millennium, this civilization dominated the most important body of water known to the ancients. With their formidable ships and skills in trading, they made a name for themselves by trading between Egypt, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Sardinia, Spain, and eventually all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, establishing themselves as the undisputed lords of the sea.

A network of this size, with hundreds of colonies and thousands of ships, had to be well - coordinated, and it was thanks to important cities along the Mediterranean coast. One of the most crucial cities in the system was hidden beneath the Greek, Roman, and Crusader ruins of Lebanon: the ancient city of Tyre. "Seated at entrance to the sea," according to the prophet Ezekiel, Tyre was constructed on a purportedly impenetrable island. When Herodotus of Halicarnassus visited it in the 5th century BCE, Tyre was considered to be one of the oldest and wealthiest metropolises of the world, and indeed, the city can be directly associated with some of the most important stages in the history of mankind: the discovery of the alphabet; that of the purple pigment known as Tyrian Purple; the construction in Jerusalem of the Temple of Solomon; and the exploration of the seas by hardy navigators who sailed as far as the Western Mediterranean and founded trading centers at Utica, Cadiz and Carthage – a city that would ultimately assure a monopoly of Phoenician control over the maritime commerce in the region but eventually surpass the power of its founder. Today, Tyre is best known because of the famous siege conducted by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who blockaded the straits between the island and mainland before his final assault. Then a Greek city, it was followed in 64 BCE by Roman rule, and later a Crusader stronghold was constructed on this historically charged site.

Carthage is, without a doubt, one of the great ancient civilizations. At its peak, the wealthy Carthaginian empire dominated the Mediterranean against the likes of Greece and Rome, with commercial enterprises and influence stretching from Spain to Turkey, and at several points in history it had a very real chance of replacing the fledgling Roman empire or the failing Greek poleis (city - states) altogether as master of the Mediterranean. Although Carthage by far preferred to exert economic pressure and influence before resorting to direct military power (and even went so far as to rely primarily on mercenary armies paid with its vast wealth for much of its history, it nonetheless produced a number of outstanding generals, from the likes of Hanno Magnus to, of course, the great bogeyman of Roman nightmares himself: Hannibal. Through clever use of force projection, both by maintaining a large and very active navy to dominate the seaborne routes along which most of their vast trading empire’s lifeblood flowed and by paying allies with gold or recruiting mercenary armies to fight for them, Carthage was able to go from a minor Phoenician settlement to one of the most powerful trading empires of antiquity.

Unfortunately for the Carthaginians, it would not endure the next major confrontation. Certain foreign policy decisions led to continuing enmity between Carthage and the burgeoning power of Rome, and what followed was a series of wars which turned from a battle for Mediterranean hegemony into an all - out struggle for survival.