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Hi everybody from Wondery Welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

It's great to have you all here and thanks for joining me.

When we try to get a handle on the Iron Age Mediterranean, assuming we know anything

at all about the topic, our minds probably turn to the Greeks.

After all, they're the ones who stand at the foundation of what we so vaguely call

Western civilization, ensuring they've had millennia of good public relations to

burnish their image and their place in history.

But they weren't the only people on the move in the Iron Age Mediterranean, far from it.

The people we call Phoenicians were every bit as important, if not more so, to building

the networks, trade routes, and shared culture that created the Mediterranean that defined

both that period and the ages to come.

But who were the Phoenicians and how and why did they come to play such a crucial role

in shaping the Iron Age Mediterranean?

We couldn't hope to have a better guide to these topics than today's guest.

Carolina Lopez Ruiz is professor of the history of religions, comparative mythology, and

the ancient Mediterranean world in the Divinity School and the Department of Classics at the

University of Chicago.

In addition to numerous book chapters and articles, she's written several books, including

when the gods were born, Greek cosmogenies in the Near East, Tartesos and the Phoenicians

in Iberia, and most recently Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean, which I

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