Phoenicians and
Minoans
Minoans Trade Far and Wide

2000-1400 BCE Minoans, who lived in Crete,
dominated trade in the eastern Mediterranean

Produce finest pottery of the time

Traded architectural style, burial customs, and
religious ritual

Big influence on Greece
Unearthing a Brilliant Civilization

Minoans named after King Minos

Knossos was the Minoan capital

Archaeologists found evidence of
advanced civilization

No fortifications meant not a lot of war

Wall paintings and painted vessels showed
athletic people who loved nature, boxing,
bull-leaping, wrestling

Artwork shows women in religious
ceremonies and suggests that women had
a higher rank here than in other societies

Sacrificed bulls and other animals to gods
(occasionally people)
Minoan Culture Ends

1200 BCE ended for unknown
reasons

Prior natural disasters could have
weakened it to allow invaders
from Greece to take over
Phoenicians Spread Culture

Phoenicians lived in eastern Mediterranean
(now Lebanon) and take over as the
dominant traders of the Mediterranean

Organized into city-states

Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon were important cities
and trading centers
Phoenician Shipbuilders

Remarkable shipbuilders and
seafarers

First to go beyond the Strait of
Gibraltar

Possible they made it around
Africa and even up to Britain but
not definite
Trading Around the Mediterranean

Purple dye (from snails) and papyrus produced by
Sidon and Tyre and Byblos

Built colonies along northern coast of Africa and
coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain

Spaced 30 miles apart

Tyre founded Carthage in about 725 BCE

Known as superb woodworkers

traded goods like wine, weapons, metals, ivory,
slaves from others
Phoenicia’s Great Legacy: The
Alphabet

merchants needed to record
transactions

phonetic alphabet

introduced it to other traders around the
Mediterranean

simplified alphabet allowed more
people to learn it

842 BCE eastern cities were captured by
the Assyrians, then Babylonians, then
Persians