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>> Okay. Welcome back and what we're going to do is
for this part of this week is to look at a short video
on Phoenician history.
[ Silence ]
So what you see here on this scene is a map
of what we would call the Middle East;
you can see Egypt down at the bottom.
You can see the Black Sea up at the top
and just below the Black Sea is a map of modern day Turkey
where you find some of the Hittites, which are colored sort
of greenish blue and then in between Egypt Hittites,
this is where the Phoenicians are and you can see a few cities
on this map; you can see Tyre, you can see Byblos,
you can see Dor, so those are important Phoenician cities.
And one thing to note here; these are city states
so remember the definition of a city state,
it's separate government, separate military,
separate economy and these Phoenician city states really
suffered because of their form government
because what you find is that the Hittites
up here were actually going to war with Egypt for a good part
of time and of course the one way
that these great nations could get to each other was
through the Phoenician city states.
So every once in a while,
the Phoenician city states would get together,
form a little confederacy but usually it was too late
and the Phoenicians really didn't thrive
until you have a breakdown in both Egypt and the Hittite area.
[ Silence ]
All right, so a little bit about the Phoenicians;
so as I mentioned, they have city states.
You find the first villages growing into cities
around 2500 BC and as I just mentioned, in the early part
of Phoenician history, they had a really difficult time
because they were constantly being invaded
by both the Egyptians and the Hittites and in particular,
between 1800 BC and 1400 BC,
Phoenician territory is essentially Egyptian
so the Egyptians take over this area
and the Egyptians play a really big role in sort
of keeping down the Phoenicians.
[ Silence ]
Once the Phoenicians were free of Egyptian rule,
starting around 1400 BC, this is when they really sort of come
into their own and they become very famous and very wealthy
because of the direction that they went so if you remember
that map that I just showed you, you've got Egypt to the south,
you've got the Hittite kingdoms up in the north.
To the east, you've got deserts and then beyond that,
you've got Mesopotamia
so the Phoenicians really didn't have a space to expand except
for along Mediterranean so what they do is they build their
ships and then they become a seafaring people.
Now they made quite a bit of money on material that they made
and then shipped throughout these regions
so one was purple dye and most of the purple dye was made
out of seashells and purple was a royal color.
So it was a color that in some civilizations you could not wear
unless you were part of the royal family.
Another thing that they became famous for was glass
and either this week or when we get to the Roman Period,
I will have a podcast just on glassmaking
but you find Phoenician glass all
over the Mediterranean during this period and probably one
of the most famous materials that they traded
with were the cedars of Lebanon and you find even going back
to Gilgamesh, which was written probably
around 2700 BC mentioning these famous trees.
If you live in the western part of the country
and if you're going to build a fence, you usually build it
out of cedar or redwood and the reason for that is
because it's rot resistant.
Another thing about cedar is that it smells really good
so the Egyptians really like that for decorating objects,
burning incense and so on.
And of course Egypt doesn't have forests
so they needed large trees and this was a place
where they ended up getting them; and Mesopotamia,
exactly the same thing.
Another thing the Phoenicians are famous for is
that during this big seafaring period, they were setting
up colonies and these colonies became trading posts
so one really important thing
to remember is you've got the Greeks --
and I know I haven't talked about Greek history yet --
you have the Greeks going out into colonies as well
and the Phoenicians and the Greeks meet up
and something very famous happens.
[ Silence ]
The thing that happens that's very famous is that the Greeks,
during their Dark Age, which lasts from about 1100
to about 800 or 900 BC totally forgot to write,
now it just so happens that the Phoenicians could write
and so during this colonization process, the Phoenicians
and the Greeks come together, the Greeks borrow the --
or sorry -- they borrow the Phoenician alphabet
and what I've give you here is sort of the timeline
of how the alphabet that you're probably taking notes
in came down to us.
So it was adopted by the Greeks, spread to the Etruscans,
who are northern Italians, spread to the Romans
and then it was passed down to us.
[ Silence ]
And then this is the last slide on Phoenician history
and you don't have to remember all of this; the reason I wanted
to put this up on the slide is because I wanted to sort
of impress upon you how difficult it is
for a civilization to advance
when they're controlled by outside forces.
So as I put here and you already know this,
Egypt controlled Phoenicia for about 400 years and then
that stopped when the Egyptians had a collapse
and Hittites were collapsing.
Unfortunately for the Phoenicians you have the rise
of the Assyrians and they took over.
Then you've got the rise of the Persians and they take
over Phoenicia till about 330 BC
and then you've got the Greeks invading
with Alexander the Great and he conquers these people
and you really don't have Phoenician city states
by the time you get down to Rome.
So when the Romans come in and take over this territory,
which is around 63BC, the Phoenicians have [inaudible].
So things to remember about the Phoenicians;
they were great seafarers, they did a lot with trade
and of course our alphabet we use today comes down from them.