Phoenician Exploration

Phoenician Exploration, the journeys and colonization of Phoenician traders in the first millennium bc, the first major exploratory effort in recorded history. Phoenicia, roughly present-day Lebanon, was ideally placed for trade by land as well as sea, situated between the empires of Egypt and the Hittites, and its people were also known for producing glass, a sought-after purple dye, and wood from the cedar groves of Lebanon. Settlement was in fortified city states such as Tyre, Sidon (now Şaydā), and Byblos. It is thought that Phoenician sailors were the first to discover how to navigate using the North Star, and with this knowledge they began to expand their voyages outside the Mediterranean. They were commissioned by King Solomon of Israel in about 950 bc to sail into the Red Sea on a trading mission that probably took them to the south-west coast of India (where their cultural influence has been identified) and Sri Lanka, and they founded the city of Gades (present-day Cádiz) on the Atlantic coast of Spain. In about 600 bc, the Greek historian Herodotus later recorded, the Egyptian pharaoh Necho, seeking an alternative to rebuilding the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea that had fallen into disuse, commissioned a group of Phoenicians to sail clockwise round Africa (which he assumed to be not much larger than his own kingdom) to see if it represented a viable alternative trade route. The expedition took three years to circumnavigate the 36,600-km (22,900-mi) coastline of Africa, stopping twice (probably near present-day Cape Town and Senegal) to raise a crop of wheat before continuing. The absence of any corroborating report from other sources has led some historians to disbelieve the account. However, Herodotus’ remark that, when sailing west round the southern tip of the continent, the sailors found the Sun to their north at midday (correct for the Southern hemisphere) today seems the most authentic detail of the story, even though Herodotus disbelieved it himself.

When Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre in 573 bc after a 13-year siege, the northern African coastal city of Carthage, which had been established as a trading post in the 9th century bc, emerged as the dominant Phoenician city state. From here, their attention turned to the west. They seized control of all passage through the straits of Gibraltar, and discovered Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores. Two notable expeditions in the 5th century bc led even further: one, commanded by Himilco, followed the coast of France and crossed the English Channel to Cornwall, source of the tin in which Phoenicians had been trading as middlemen for years; in the other, Hanno led a reported 30,000 colonists (though this number seems improbably large) on a journey southward down the Atlantic coast of Africa, establishing six colonies and exploring the Senegal and Gambia rivers, and the coast as far south as Sierra Leone or Cameroon.

In the following century Greek sailors began to challenge Phoenician dominance in the Mediterranean, and the Punic Wars that ended with the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 bc also ended the history of Phoenician exploration.