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 …