phoenician

Early example of a "world-economy" surrounded by empires. The high point of Phoenician culture and sea power is usually placed c. 1200–800 BC.

Many of the most important Phoenician settlements had been established long before this: Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Smyrna, Arwad, and Berytus, all appear in the

A7marna tablets. Archeology has identified cultural elements of the Phoenician zenith as early as the 3rd millennium BC.

The league of independent city-state ports, with others on the islands and along other coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, was ideally suited for trade between the Levant area, rich in natural resources, and the rest of the ancient world. During the early Iron Age, in around 1200 BC an unknown eventoccurred, historically associated with the appearance of the Sea Peoples from the north. They weakened and destroyed the Egyptians and the Hittitesrespectively. In the resulting power vacuum, a number of Phoenician cities rose as significant maritime powers.

The societies rested on three power-bases: the king; the temple and its priests; and councils of elders. Byblos first became the predominant center from where the Phoenicians dominated the Mediterranean and Erythraean Sea routes. It was here that the first inscription in the Phoenician alphabet was found, on the sarcophagus of Ahiram Later, Tyre gained in power. One of its kings, the priest Ithobaal ruled Phoenicia as far north as Beirut, and part of Cyprus. Carthage was founded in 814 BC under Pygmalion of Tyre The collection of city-states constituting Phoenicia came to be characterized by outsiders and the Phoenicians as Sidonia or Tyria. Phoenicians and Canaanites alike were calledSidonians or Tyrians, as one Phoenician city came to prominence after another.