Rock the Ship, Baby
January 15, 2025 2:37 AM   Subscribe

"The famous king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II was lately enthroned when a group of Phoenician sailors watched their boat sink in shallow water off the coast of Spain ... The sailors would have been beside themselves watching the boat go down in just 7 feet of water, but before they could recover it and bring it to the shore around 65 yards away, a storm suddenly descended on La Playa de la Isla in the town of Mazarron, southeastern Spain": Divers Recover Ancient Shipwreck Amazingly Preserved for 2,600 Years Beneath Spanish Waters.

What particularly caught my attention:
The Phoenicians thrived during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Originating in modern-day Lebanon in early antiquity, the Semitic-speaking sailors hailed from important city-states like Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos in Lebanon, and expanded across the Mediterranean, founding cities like Cadiz in southwestern Spain and Carthage in North Africa.

In an era when brutal conquest and depopulation were standard foreign policy methods, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians all treated the Phoenician city-states with surprising gentleness, not wanting to too greatly traumatize what was the ancient world’s equivalent of the goose that laid the golden egg.

The trading connections, knowledge of sailing, and skilled shipwrights protected these progenitors of the Greek alphabet from undue violence for centuries, until their culture vanished under the hegemony of Rome.
posted by taz (16 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hegemons ruin everything!
posted by otherchaz at 3:05 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


Fascinating, but I don’t quite get the bit about Nebuchadnezzar.

until their culture vanished under the hegemony of Rome

My old teacher used to say the Carthaginians were to the Phoenicians what the Americans were to the British.
posted by Phanx at 4:18 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]



The trading connections, knowledge of sailing, and skilled shipwrights protected these progenitors of the Greek alphabet from undue violence for centuries, until their culture vanished under the hegemony of Rome.


Not quite vanished. Arabs from Tunisia westward speak a very distinct dialect of "Arabic" because it is largely Carthaginian written in Arabic script.
posted by ocschwar at 4:50 AM on January 15 [7 favorites]


But yeah, you had to be polite to the Phoenicians because they knew how to reach the Tin Isles.
posted by ocschwar at 4:51 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]


Phanx, Nebuchadnezzar II took over the throne of the Second Babylon Empire in 605 BC, 2630 years ago – so basically, just what was in the news at the time! :)
posted by taz at 4:54 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]


Some more pictures and details.
posted by Mitheral at 4:58 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]


Arabs from Tunisia westward speak a very distinct dialect of "Arabic" because it is largely Carthaginian written in Arabic script.

Not sure about "largely". There's a bunch of linguistic admixture, like Maltese, with which it is mutually comprehensible. Or so I understand.

For more on the Punic language, check out this guy.

(Fun Fact: There is a Punic connection to the word "Gorilla" )
posted by BWA at 6:01 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure Roman Hegemony can be blamed for destroying Phoenician culture, which had been fairly strained by years of invasion and occupation by the Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians and other empires of the area. Obviously, Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean didn't help things, and Carthage was fairly thoroughly destroyed, which ended the only large Phoenician cultural/political force left in the area, but the Romans weren't all that fussed about "making people Roman" as long as they paid their taxes and didn't revolt. I'm not saying it wasn't an empire, with all that implies, but, if Phoenician culture could survive the Neo-Assyrians, it could survive Roman.

And some aspects of Phoenician culture, like child sacrifice (apparently in fulfillment of oaths), needed to be lost anyway, although others, like, you know, the alphabet, are very nice.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:52 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


For many years, the wreck had been covered by a protective metal box. But a group of experts who studied the wreck site between 2017 and 2019 found that the metal box was sinking and threatened to crush the shipwreck.-Smithsonian article linked above.

Just imagining people sailing by or swimming around and seeing this large metal box. Did they know a 2,600 year old boat was resting inside it?

I love time capsules like these, as it's amazing what researchers can find from pollen or little dead bugs, that can speak so much more to voices that have been silent for a couple millennia.
posted by Atreides at 7:35 AM on January 15 [4 favorites]


Cartago Delenda Est
posted by supermedusa at 8:26 AM on January 15 [4 favorites]


Carthago servanda est!
posted by taz at 9:07 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


Luckily the only product lost on this journey was a batch of low grade copper.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:02 AM on January 15 [4 favorites]


a batch of low grade copper.

Meaning 'not very pure'?

Impurities give iron all the properties we set such store by in steel, and I wonder whether such impure copper made better bronze than the unadulterated stuff.
posted by jamjam at 2:24 PM on January 15 [1 favorite]


It’s a joke? Based on the meme about Ea-Nasir, the recipient of a very ancient bad Yelp review and literally the only thing 99% of the population knows about Babylon?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:24 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]


Wow, do you suppose Ea-Nasir has overcome "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept"? Probably. Without a tune!

(Get Ea-Nasir a tune!)
posted by clew at 4:51 PM on January 15 [1 favorite]


Well, no point sailing all the way to Britain and back with tin if you don't have high grade copper to add to it..
posted by ocschwar at 6:10 PM on January 15 [1 favorite]


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