Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler Page B
Authors: Nicholas Ostler
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including Nabupolassar, Nebuchadrezzar II and Nabonidus. The Aramaeans had made themselves very much part of the establishment.
This must be part of the explanation for the way in which, beginning in the eighth century, their language came to replace Akkadian as the universal medium of Mesopotamia, and soon (as Assyria conquered Syria and Palestine) established itself as the lingua franca of the whole Fertile Crescent. This was not a culture-led expansion, since the Aramaeans are not associated with any distinctive style or civilisation of their own; nevertheless, they were the ones who brought simple alphabetic writing, the invention of their neighbours the Phoenicians, into the heart of the old empire, where for over two thousand years all culture and administration had been built on skill in the complicated cuneiform writing. They had thereby revolutionised its communications, and perhaps its social structure as well. Twenty-two simple signs could now do the work previously requiring over six hundred.
While this was going on in Asia, the Phoenicians themselves, strung out along the Mediterranean coast of what is now Lebanon, were expanding, or rather exploring and exploiting, in the opposite direction. In language, the Phoenicians (or Canaanites, as they called themselves) were very similar to their neighbours inland and to the south, the Hebrews; but they had a very different attitude to their homeland.
’Phoenicia’ is a linguistic, and even more an economic, expression for the trading cities of coastal Lebanon. * There is no record of a political unit linking them even as a league, but from the middle of the second millennium BC this line of a dozen or so independent cities (Byblos, Sidon and Tyre the most famous among them) had established themselves as the preferred centres for the supply of copper and tin from Cyprus, timber from Lebanon and luxury goods, especially clothing and jewellery. Since either their suppliers or their customers (especially Egypt, for the timber) often lived overseas, this fostered the development of ships and the know-how for navigation. With these, uniquely in the Middle East, the cities had the wherewithal for exploration much farther afield. The original expeditions may have been earlier (ancient historians suggest the end of the twelfth century), but it is clear that by the eighth century there was a network of Phoenician settlements from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, with particular concentration on Sicily, Sardinia, the north-western shores of Africa and Cadiz (Phoenician
gader
, ‘the fortress’). Mostly they were trading posts, and above all mining outlets, rather than cities, but in one case the settlement became much more than a commercial venture. This was Carthage, situated on a natural harbour in modern Tunisia, and soon developing not just a trade network but an empire of its own, in North Africa, Sicily and Sardinia.
By their presence, the Phoenician settlements will have spread far and wide a sense of what the cultivated and literate society of the Near East was like, as well as opening up a long-distance export trade in metals. The Phoenicians were the globalisers of Mesopotamian culture. Most concretely, they spread knowledge of their alphabetic writing system to the Greeks and Iberians, and just possibly also to the Etruscans and Romans; so they can claim to have given Europe its primary education.
Phoenician could be heard all round the Mediterranean, especially in its islands and on its southern rim, for most of the first millennium BC. Yet linguistically it had very little long-term impact on Europe. The Greeks and others accepted, quite explicitly, the Phoenicians’ writing system as the basis of their own (using the term
phoinik$ēAia grámmata
), but not a single element of their language. This is partly perhaps a comment on how little of their culture the Phoenicians, always thinking of themselves as outsiders, only there on business, were in
This must be part of the explanation for the way in which, beginning in the eighth century, their language came to replace Akkadian as the universal medium of Mesopotamia, and soon (as Assyria conquered Syria and Palestine) established itself as the lingua franca of the whole Fertile Crescent. This was not a culture-led expansion, since the Aramaeans are not associated with any distinctive style or civilisation of their own; nevertheless, they were the ones who brought simple alphabetic writing, the invention of their neighbours the Phoenicians, into the heart of the old empire, where for over two thousand years all culture and administration had been built on skill in the complicated cuneiform writing. They had thereby revolutionised its communications, and perhaps its social structure as well. Twenty-two simple signs could now do the work previously requiring over six hundred.
While this was going on in Asia, the Phoenicians themselves, strung out along the Mediterranean coast of what is now Lebanon, were expanding, or rather exploring and exploiting, in the opposite direction. In language, the Phoenicians (or Canaanites, as they called themselves) were very similar to their neighbours inland and to the south, the Hebrews; but they had a very different attitude to their homeland.
’Phoenicia’ is a linguistic, and even more an economic, expression for the trading cities of coastal Lebanon. * There is no record of a political unit linking them even as a league, but from the middle of the second millennium BC this line of a dozen or so independent cities (Byblos, Sidon and Tyre the most famous among them) had established themselves as the preferred centres for the supply of copper and tin from Cyprus, timber from Lebanon and luxury goods, especially clothing and jewellery. Since either their suppliers or their customers (especially Egypt, for the timber) often lived overseas, this fostered the development of ships and the know-how for navigation. With these, uniquely in the Middle East, the cities had the wherewithal for exploration much farther afield. The original expeditions may have been earlier (ancient historians suggest the end of the twelfth century), but it is clear that by the eighth century there was a network of Phoenician settlements from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, with particular concentration on Sicily, Sardinia, the north-western shores of Africa and Cadiz (Phoenician
gader
, ‘the fortress’). Mostly they were trading posts, and above all mining outlets, rather than cities, but in one case the settlement became much more than a commercial venture. This was Carthage, situated on a natural harbour in modern Tunisia, and soon developing not just a trade network but an empire of its own, in North Africa, Sicily and Sardinia.
By their presence, the Phoenician settlements will have spread far and wide a sense of what the cultivated and literate society of the Near East was like, as well as opening up a long-distance export trade in metals. The Phoenicians were the globalisers of Mesopotamian culture. Most concretely, they spread knowledge of their alphabetic writing system to the Greeks and Iberians, and just possibly also to the Etruscans and Romans; so they can claim to have given Europe its primary education.
Phoenician could be heard all round the Mediterranean, especially in its islands and on its southern rim, for most of the first millennium BC. Yet linguistically it had very little long-term impact on Europe. The Greeks and others accepted, quite explicitly, the Phoenicians’ writing system as the basis of their own (using the term
phoinik$ēAia grámmata
), but not a single element of their language. This is partly perhaps a comment on how little of their culture the Phoenicians, always thinking of themselves as outsiders, only there on business, were in
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