![]() Oher prominent city-states, including Byblos, Sidon, Sarepta, Arwad, and Berot (modern-day Beirut) then emerged over the next centuries along the Phoenician coast. ![]() The first major Phoenician city-state, Tyre, was founded around 2000 BCE. Rather, their realm was organised into a series of city-states, with the heartland along the coastal plains of the eastern Mediterranean region of the Levant (modern-day Southern Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Israel). Strictly speaking though there was never one kingdom or country by the name of Phoenicia. The Phoenicians called themselves the Canaanites, also meaning purple people in the Semitic language. The name comes from the Greek term “phionix”, which signified blood-red or purple, an allusion to the Phoenicians’ famous dark purple fabric – a rare and prized commodity across the ancient world. The ancient Greeks were the ones who came up with the name “Phoenician”, denoting the Semitic / Canaanite culture that spanned the ancient Mediterranean basin. View of the Tunis from the ruins of the Phoenician city Carthage, Tunisia. It is intended as background reading for a number of Odyssey Traveller tours in the lands of the ancient Phoenicians, including Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia. This article explores who the Phoenicians were and the importance of their purple dye during ancient history. Thus, the purple garments were the main reason for the Phoenician’s wide-ranging expeditions, which ultimately helped to facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles of civilization. In doing so, they established overseas colonies as sites for gathering murex and manufacturing the purple dye, and as trading posts. So exorbitantly expensive – worth literally more than their weight in gold – garments made of purple cloth became associated with power and wealth, worn only by the very elite.Īs the basis for their trading empire, the Phoenicians maintained a monopoly on the expensive Tyrian dye, expanding across the Mediterranean, Iberian Peninsular, and North Africa in search for beds of the precious murex shell. The natural dye’s difficulty of manufacture, striking deep purple color, and resistance to fading made it highly desirable and expensive as a clothing dye. The most expensive and treasured product of the Phoenician civilization was the famous Tyrian purple dye (also known as Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye) extracted from the mucus of the murex shellfish. Their expansive maritime trade network lasted over a millennium, during which they amassed large amounts of wealth developing the most sought-after products in the ancient world. As skilled merchants and sea people, they grew to be the dominant commercial power of much of classical antiquity, expanding their sphere of influence from their home in the Levant region (modern-day Southern Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Israel) throughout the Mediterranean sea and beyond. ![]() The Phoenicians: A Civilization Built on Purple DyeĪncient Phoenicia was a maritime civilization which came to prominence in the mid-12th century BCE.
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