Seafaring Traders Minoans and Phoenicians

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Seafaring TradersMinoans and Phoenicians

• Spreading Culture Beyond the Fertile Crescent

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Minoans

• Powerful seafaring people
• Dominated trade in the Mediterranean 2000
  BCE-1400 BCE
• Based on island of Crete
• Cities unfortified

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Minoan Culture

• Knossos Capital
• Advanced and thriving culture
• King Minos
• Colorful painted walls
• Athletic people
• Loved nature
• Boxing, wrestling, bull jumping
• Women
• In religious ceremonies, priestesses
• Mother Earth Goddess
• Sacrifice
• Bulls and other animals
• Sometimes people

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Minoans Mysterious End

• Natural disaster? Over population? Invasion?
• Had previously withstood earthquakes
• 1470 BCE earthquake and volcano
• Didnt rebuild
• Lasted another 300 years
• Invaders from Greece may have taken advantage of
  a weakened state

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The Phoenicians

• Rose to power after Crete
• Modern Lebanon
• Founded a number of wealthy city-states
  important trading centers
• Shipbuilders/seafarers first to pass straights of
  Gibraltar
• Africa?

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Commercial Outposts

• Cities 30 miles apart
• Sidon and Tyre purple dye (murex snails)
• Berytus and Byblos Papyrus
• Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain Fish
• Carthage (North Africa)
• Trade Goods wine, weapons, precious metals,
  ivory, and slaves

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Great Legacy The Alphabet

• Needed to record transactions quickly
• Symbols represent sounds (Phonetic)
• Aleph beth
• Introduced writing to trade partners
• Simplified writing made literacy more accessible
• Assyrians captured Eastern cities and homeland
  controlled by the Babylonians alphabet stuck
  around

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