Regev/Painting the Mediterranean, 5. Phoenician Networks

The Eastern Mediterranean Basin - The Central Mediterranean Islands, Italy and North Africa - The Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic Phoenicians and the East: Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India The Canaanite-Phoenicians were famous for their entrepreneurial seafaring and navigation, which opened and mapped new seaways in the Mediterranean. They also traded on land as far east as Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and probably also India, and as far north as Anatolia, destinations also reached by sea. Textual and material evidence point to four trade routes or spheres of trade where Phoenicians operated. The spheres identified below reflect not only geographical zones but also chronological spheres of Canaanite-Phoenician activity and the gradual progress, though not entirely continuous linear movement, from the eastern to the western Mediterranean. 1. The eastern Mediterranean and the shores of Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, the Aegean islands, Crete, Cyprus, Greece, Cilicia and North Syria, and also, to a lesser degree, Lycia and Caria. Canaanite-Phoenician activity here started in the Middle Bronze Age, in the early 2nd millennium BCE. 2. The western Mediterranean and the Atlantic shores of southern Europe and western North Africa, namely Spain, Portugal, the Balearic Islands, and Morocco (Mauritania). Canaanite- Phoenician activity here started at the latest in the 10th century BCE. 3. North Africa and the central Mediterranean islands, namely Carthage and its area, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Malta. Canaanite-Phoenician activity here started in the late 2nd millennium BCE. 4. The Near East, Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India. In some parts of this geographical sphere Canaanite-Phoenician activity began in the Middle Bronze Age, in others in the Iron Age in the early 1st millennium BCE.