A Phoenician trade timeline covering Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, the alphabet, Carthage, Mediterranean colonies, Assyrian and Persian rule, and Alexander's siege of Tyre.
From Bronze Age Byblos to Alexander's siege of Tyre, Phoenician city-states built antiquity's great maritime trading network. This timeline follows their ports, alphabet, colonies from Carthage to the Atlantic, and the empires that finally absorbed them.
Byblos is already a major coastal trading center by the third millennium BC, exchanging cedar and goods with Egypt.
Egyptian and Near Eastern records show the Late Bronze Age as a prosperous era for these trading centers.
Around 1500 BC Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arwad grow as independent maritime city-states along the Levantine coast.
While many regional powers collapse c. 1200-1150 BC, Phoenician cities keep political independence and maritime trade.
In the early Iron Age Phoenicians plant ports, warehouses, and settlements across the Mediterranean and toward the Black Sea.
A 22-letter consonantal alphabet develops among Phoenician cities and later spreads via trade to Greece and beyond.
Phoenician mariners help re-link long-distance trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 10th century BC.
Under Hiram I (c. 969-936 BC) Tyre becomes the richest and most powerful Phoenician city-state.
Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (from 858 BC) starts campaigns that force Phoenician cities into tributary relationships.
Classical tradition dates the founding of Carthage (Qart-Hadasht, 'New City') by Tyrian settlers to about 814 BC.
By the late 8th century BC Phoenicians and Greeks have planted trading posts around the entire Mediterranean.
By about 738 BC most of the northern Levant is annexed; only Tyre and Byblos retain relative autonomy as tributaries.
Phoenician and Carthaginian traders push past the Strait of Gibraltar, seeking Atlantic tin routes as far as Britain.
In the 7th century BC Sidon rebels and is destroyed by Assyrian king Esarhaddon, who rebuilds a new city on its ruins.
After Cyrus takes Babylon (539 BC), Phoenician cities become key naval assets of the Achaemenid Empire.
Phoenician shipbuilders and crews help Xerxes I bridge the Hellespont and fight at Salamis in 480 BC.
Alexander the Great takes island Tyre after a roughly seven-month siege in 332 BC, ending independent Phoenician city-state power.
After Alexander's death in 323 BC, Phoenicia falls under Seleucid rule as Hellenistic successor states reshape the Levant.
Rome destroys Carthage in 146 BC, ending the greatest western offshoot of the Phoenician trading world.
Though political independence is gone, Phoenician alphabet, purple dye, glass, and sea routes shape later Mediterranean culture.
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