The Phoenicians

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2014

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a people from the Levant who were accomplished sailors and traders, and who taught the Greeks their alphabet. He called them the Phoenicians, the Greek word for purple, although it is not known what they called themselves. By about 700 BC they were trading all over the Mediterranean, taking Egyptian and Syrian goods as far as Spain and North Africa. Although they were hugely influential in the ancient world, they left few records of their own; some contemporary scholars believe that the Phoenicians were never a unified civilisation but a loose association of neighbouring city-states.

With:

Mark Woolmer Assistant Principal at Collingwood College, Durham University

Josephine Quinn Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford

Cyprian Broodbank Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at University College London

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:47.0	Hello in his masterpiece the histories the Greek writer Herodotus describes how the
0:51.6	alphabet first came to Europe. He explains
0:54.4	that merchants from the Eastern Mediterranean settled in Greece, bringing a
0:58.3	writing system which they taught to the locals the first time, according to Herodotus,
1:02.3	that the Greeks had seen or used in
1:04.4	alphabet. These merchants were the Phoenicians, famed in the ancient world as sailors
1:08.8	and traders. They seemed to have originated in what we'd now call Lebanon, but in the second millennium
1:14.0	BC they spread their influence all over the Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria.
1:19.2	Both the Romans and Greek wrote about their activities, but the Phoenicians themselves left frustratingly little
1:24.0	evidence of their activities, and the true extent in nature of Phoenician culture is still the
1:28.6	subject of considerable debate. With me to discuss the Phoenicians are Mark Womer, Assistant Principal at Collingwood College, Durham University,
1:37.0	Josephine Quinn, Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford, and Cyprian Broodbank Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology
1:45.3	at University College London. Mark Womer, can you tell us about the origins of the Phoenicians
	...

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