they“invented observing the stars in sailing”and by using the Pole Star
became thefirst to sail at night beyond the sight of land over the open
waters.
Beginning in the ninth centuryBCE, the Phoenician world became more
complicated with the arrival of a new power from the east, the Assyrians.
Wisely, the Phoenicians chose to bow to the weight of the ferocious Assyrian
war machine, striking a deal under which they paid a large tribute in silver.
Tyre lost control over much of its Syrian and Anatolian trade to the
Assyrians themselves, but the conquerors did have an important place for
the Phoenicians in their overall commercial scheme. Wool, a staple in the
Mesopotamian export trade for millennia, was now directed to Phoenician
cities where it was woven and dyed purple, then sent to various destinations
within the empire, including back to Assyria. The Phoenicians could also
help to assure the Assyrians a large and steady supply of metals: gold and
silver to power their economy and bronze and iron to equip their armies.
Phoenician ports became the Assyrian Empire’s window to a new and virtually
untapped storehouse of metals, the western Mediterranean.
Despite increasingly exorbitant demands for tribute and not being allowed
to trade with Assyria’s enemy Egypt, the Phoenician cities generally bene-
fited from their position in the Assyrian system, at least for a while. Assyrian
markets were open to Phoenician goods, and the empire provided security
and stability. The Canaanite–Phoenicians had always enjoyed a happy bal-
ance of palace-based and private sector trade, but under Assyrian control this
shifted, reflecting a decline in Phoenician state power. Long-distance over-
land trade came into the hands of independent merchant houses operating
through a system of agents. This system did not endear Phoenician political
authorities to Assyrian rule, and in the late eighth and seventh centuriesBCE
they became party to several unsuccessful attempts at throwing off the
imperial yoke. Tyre was not destroyed but was forced to pay an onerous
exaction in gold. Sidon, considered as less essential in the Assyrian commercial
scheme, paid for a rebellion by being sacked and wasted.
The Assyrian presence helps to explain the most important role the
Phoenicians played in the history of trade, their push across the Mediterranean.
The collapse of Mycenaean power several centuries earlier had opened the
western Mediterranean, but the vacuum had yet to befilled. The need to pay their
tribute in silver as well as the opportunity to serve as the connection between
the interior of Southwest Asia and the lands ringing the Mediterranean drove
the Phoenicians westward to seek new sources of metal. In the end their goal
became nothing less than a monopoly over the natural resources of the
western Mediterranean. A key strategy in Phoenician trade was to create
a demand for a new product, usually a luxury item that would appeal to
a local elite, who would then organize production of the commodity
the Phoenicians were seeking. Among goods the Phoenicians commonly
offered were wine, olive oil, unguents, perfumes, cosmetics, jewelry, trinkets,
64 Of purple men and oil merchants