The Merchant Caste
It's just business.
The Phoenicians traveled the Mediterranean long before the Greeks and Romans, trading, establishing settlements and refining the art of navigation. But who these legendary merchant sailors really were, has long remained a mystery.
There is debate amongst historians whether “Phoenicia” was ever a unified society or consisted of a national identity. Rather, it was a loose alliance of many city-states beginning in modern-day Lebanon and Syria, and expanding throughout the Mediterranean.
‘In Search of the Phoenicians’ author, Josephine Quinn makes the startling claim that the Phoenicians never actually existed. She argues that the notion of these sailors as a coherent people with a shared identity, history, and culture is a product of modern nationalist ideologies – and a notion very much at odds with the ancient sources.
“They did not in fact exist as a self-conscious collective or “people”. The term “Phoenician” itself is a Greek invention, and there is no good evidence in our surviving ancient sources that these Phoenicians saw themselves, or acted, in collective terms above the level of the city or in many cases simply the family.”1
Josephine Quinn shows how the belief in this historical mirage has blinded us to the compelling identities and communities these people really constructed for themselves, based not on ethnicity or nationhood but on cities, family, colonial ties, commerce, and religious practices.
Other historians have come to the same conclusion; “The categorization of the Phoenicians as a single group with a common ethnic origin is based mostly on geographic and historical conditions, and the way in which they were viewed by others, not the way they viewed themselves.”2
Now where have I heard of a group of dispersed people, linked in similar fashion?
Being a society of independent city-states, the Phoenicians apparently did not have a term to denote the land of Phoenicia as a whole; instead, demonyms were often derived from the name of the city, an individual hailed from e.g. Sidonian for Sidon, Tyrian for Tyre etc. If the Phoenicians had an endonym to denote the land overall, some scholars believe that they would have used “Canaan” and therefore referred to themselves as “Canaanites”.3
“Canaanite” (Kena’ani) in the Hebrew language had come to be not an ethnic designation, so much as a general synonym for ‘merchant’ or ‘trader’, as it is interpreted in, for example, Book of Job 40:30 or Book of Proverbs 31:24.4
A passage from Augustine (354-430), himself of Punic ancestry, has often been interpreted as indicating that they called themselves Canaanites. Augustine writes: “When our rural peasants are asked what they are, they reply, in Punic, Chanani, which is only a corruption by one letter of the alphabet of what we would expect: What else should they reply except that they are Chananei?”5
German author Wolfgang Röllig (1932-2023) agrees: “We are confronted here with a rather imprecise concept of the Phoenicians. This need not surprise us unduly since the nation itself never developed an idea of “Phoenician” as a national concept. In contexts where we might expect such an ethnonym to occur we find only the term “Canaanite” used. We need not pursue this further here, but we must make it clear that the term “Phoenician” was first employed by the Greeks, and we are still not certain about its etymological derivation.”6
The word “Phoenician” derived from the Greek; φοῖνιξ phoînix, which meant Tyrian purple or crimson in reference to the purple dye they produced and traded. So in conclusion, the Phoenicians called themselves “Canaanites”, which meant “Merchants”, and they continued to do so even in Carthage.
As a mercantile power concentrated along coastal lands, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military, relying mostly upon mercenaries when conflict arose. Thus, as neighbouring empires began to rise, the Phoenicians increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rulers. During most of the centuries of vassalage by foreign powers the Phoenicians generally managed to remain relatively independent and prosperous.
Under the Assyrians (858-608 BC), the Phoenicians remained in a state of vassalage, subordinate to the Assyrians but allowed a certain degree of freedom. Relative to other conquered peoples in the empire, the Phoenicians were treated well, due to their importance as a source of income and even diplomacy for the expanding empire.
Even when Phoenicia fell directly under Assyrian administration the most powerful of the city states remained outside of direct control, as subsequent rulers did not wish to meddle in their internal affairs, lest they deprive their empire of a key source of capital.
Babylonian rule (605-538 BC) over Phoenicia was brief, and the Phoenician city-states frequently rebelled against their Babylonian overlords. When Tyre revolted, Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC), king of Babylon and his army laid siege to Tyre – after an incredible 13 years of siege the city finally capitulated under favourable terms. Tyre even briefly became a republic headed by their own elective magistrates.
The Persian period (539-332 BC), continued the trend which began under the Assyrians, of the Phoenicians being treated with a relatively lighter hand by most rulers. Many of the city states were allowed considerable autonomy and continued to flourish, leveraging their role as intermediaries, shipbuilders and traders.
Local Phoenician kings were allowed to remain in power and even given the same rights as Persian governors, such as hereditary offices and minting their own coins and could continue to conduct their political and mercantile affairs with relative freedom.
There was very limited Greek settlement and administration in Phoenicia during the Hellenistic period (332-63 BC). Phoenicians continued with their past activities – in language, institutions and certainly in their cults. They were also allowed to maintain commercial links with their western colonies.
The Roman Empire then ruled the province from 62 BC up to the 640s when the Muslim Arabs invaded the region successfully, and a process of Islamisation and Arabisation started. By this time though, Phoenician influence and wealth had mostly migrated to the Western Mediterranean.
Clearly governance over large territories and populations was not a requirement for the merchants to achieve prosperity. The merchants primary goal was profit, they understood that trade brought wealth, and wealth bought influence. This arrangement suited both parties, as merchants could trade freely under the protection of a powerful military, and the foreign ruler rewarded with vast capital otherwise unattainable.
This same practice was successfully adopted by the powerful Italian Maritime Republics that emerged during the Middle Ages, especially by the Venetian Republic.
As archaeologist James B. Pritchard (1909-1997) notes; “They became the first to provide a link between the culture of the ancient Near East and that of the uncharted world of the West… They went not for conquest as the Babylonians and Assyrians did, but for trade. Profit rather than plunder was their policy.”7
This particular mercantile trait is noticeably a characteristic of another Canaanite people – the Hebrew race, and has continued into our modern era.
“Jews have been an integral part of the United States since its very beginnings and as such have made valuable contributions to its social and commercial growth, at the same time maintaining an enviable reputation for benevolence and good citizenship. However in one aspect they did have a direct influence on the foundations of the United States – that is thru their commercial activities. The early Jewish colonists were the links between the colonies of the Atlantic coast and the rest of the world.”8
Josephine Crawley Quinn, In Search of the Phoenicians, 2017 p.22.
Jonathan Yogev, The Rephaim; Sons of the Gods, 2021 p.101.
Wolfgang Röllig, On the Origin of the Phoenicians, 1983 p.79.
James B. Pritchard, introduction to The Sea Traders, by Maitland A. Edey, 1974 p.7.
Miriam K. Freund, Jewish Merchants in Colonial America, 1939 p.9-10.