Phoenician Ship Expedition

Last updated

The Phoenician Ship Expedition is a re-creation of a 6th-century BCE Phoenician voyage conceived by Philip Beale. The replica of an ancient Phoenician ship departed from Syria in August 2008, to sail through the Suez Canal, around the Horn of Africa, and up the west coast of Africa, through the Strait of Gibraltar and across the Mediterranean to return to Syria. The objective of the expedition was to prove that ships built by the ancient Phoenicians could withstand the conditions around the African coastline.

Contents

The expedition reached South Africa in January 2010 [1] and Beirut in October of the same year. [2]

The ship is twenty metres long and was constructed at Arwad Island, the site of an ancient Phoenician city-state just off the Syrian coast, by Syrian shipwright Khalid Hammoud, using traditional methods. [1] [2]

There is varied evidence for the Phoenicians exploring the coast of Africa. Engraved in Punic on a bronze belt at the Temple of Baal in Carthage, there is evidence of a Phoenician sailing down the east coast of Africa. It is said that the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator traveled for 35 days along the coast in the 5th century BCE. [3] In a story told by Herodotus, Phoenicians in the Egyptian area of Africa circumnavigated the continent. It is believed Herodotus was told this story when he traveled to Egypt. [4]

Phoenicians Before Columbus expedition

A second sea voyage was also completed. On 31 December 2019, the Phoenicia docked in the port of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. For this final voyage, Beale set out to demonstrate that the Phoenicians could have crossed the Atlantic Ocean long before Christopher Columbus. [5] The journey was launched on 28 September 2019 in the commune of Carthage, Tunisia, site of the ancient city of Carthage, [6] and reached Santo Domingo before 31 December 2019. [7]

One theory claimed that the Canaanites, who were later called Phoenicians by the Greeks, may have been the first to reach the Americas. Based on putative evidence of Punic inscriptions on the east coast of North America, the theory has been disproven by a number of scholars. The theory served as the inspiration for this voyage. [8]

Purchase by Latter Day Saints

The ship has been purchased by members of the Latter Day Saint movement, with the intent of restoring it and setting up a visitor's center in Iowa, US. Their website says, "we will unveil the magnificence of a historic ship that goes back 2,600 years from the time when Mulek and his people traveled from Jerusalem to the Heartland of America." [9] [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Necho II</span> Egyptian pharaoh

Necho II of Egypt was a king of the 26th Dynasty, which ruled from Sais. Necho undertook a number of construction projects across his kingdom. In his reign, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which in three years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa to the Strait of Gibraltar and back to Egypt. His son, Psammetichus II, upon succession may have removed Necho's name from monuments.

The Phoenician alphabet is a consonantal alphabet used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BCE. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melqart</span> Major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons

Melqart was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre and a major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. He may have been central to the founding-myths of various Phoenician colonies throughout the Mediterranean, as well as the source of several myths concerning the exploits of Heracles. Many cities were thought to be founded and protected by Melqart, no doubt springing from the original Phoenician practice of building a Temple of Melqart at new colonies. Similar to Tammuz and Adonis, he symbolized an annual cycle of death and rebirth.

Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer who lived during the fifth century BC, known for his naval expedition along the coast of West Africa. However, the only source of said voyage is a periplus translated into Greek.

Phoenician is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Himera (480 BC)</span> Battle of the Sicilian Wars

The Battle of Himera, supposedly fought on the same day as the Battle of Salamis, or at the same time as the Battle of Thermopylae, saw the Greek forces of Gelon, King of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, defeat the Carthaginian force of Hamilcar the Magonid, ending a Carthaginian bid to restore the deposed tyrant of Himera. The alleged coincidence of this battle with the naval battle of Salamis and the resultant derailing of a Punic-Persian conspiracy aimed at destroying the Greek civilization is rejected by modern scholars. Scholars also agree that the battle led to the crippling of Carthage's power in Sicily for many decades. It was one of the most important battles of the Sicilian Wars.

The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of three subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages, the others being Aramaic and Amorite. These closely related languages originate in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of an area encompassing what is today, Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Punic people</span> People from Ancient Carthage

The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians, were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term Punic, the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term Phoenician, is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a dialect of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danielle Eubank</span> American painter

Danielle Eubank is an American oil painter and expedition artist with a studio in Los Angeles, known for her paintings of bodies of water, as well as One Artist Five Oceans, in which she sailed and painted all of the world's oceans to raise awareness about climate change. All her artwork is done in an environmentally responsible manner, with high quality environmentally friendly materials. She was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2014–2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Carthage</span>

The city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC on the coast of Northwest Africa, in what is now Tunisia, as one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean created to facilitate trade from the city of Tyre on the coast of what is now Lebanon. The name of both the city and the wider republic that grew out of it, Carthage developed into a significant trading empire throughout the Mediterranean. The date from which Carthage can be counted as an independent power cannot exactly be determined, and probably nothing distinguished Carthage from the other Phoenician colonies in Northwest Africa and the Mediterranean during 800–700 BC. By the end of the 7th century BC, Carthage was becoming one of the leading commercial centres of the West Mediterranean region. After a long conflict with the emerging Roman Republic, known as the Punic Wars, Rome finally destroyed Carthage in 146 BC. A Roman Carthage was established on the ruins of the first. Roman Carthage was eventually destroyed—its walls torn down, its water supply cut off, and its harbours made unusable—following its conquest by Arab invaders at the close of the 7th century. It was replaced by Tunis as the major regional centre, which has spread to include the ancient site of Carthage in a modern suburb.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenicia under Roman rule</span> Period in the history of Lebanon from 64 BCE to the 7th century

Phoenicia under Roman rule describes the Phoenician city states ruled by Rome from 64 BCE to the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. The area around Berytus was the only Latin speaking and Romanized part of Aramaic-speaking Phoenicia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Carthage</span> Phoenician city-state and empire

Ancient Carthage was an ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropoleis in the world. It was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenicians and wine</span> Relationship between Phoenician culture and wine

The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine. Phoenicia was a civilization centered in current day Lebanon. Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa, the Greek Isles, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. Through contact and trade, they spread not only their alphabet but also their knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, including the propagation of several ancestral varieties of the Vitis vinifera species of wine grapes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenicia</span> Ancient Semitic maritime civilization

Phoenicia, or Phœnicia, was an ancient Semitic thalassocratic civilization originating in the coastal strip of the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenicians expanded and contracted throughout history, with the core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel in modern Israel covering the entire coast of modern Lebanon. Beyond their homeland, the Phoenicians extended through trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas</span> Archaeological theory

The theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas suggests that the earliest Old World contact with the Americas was not with Columbus or Norse settlers, but with the Phoenicians in the first millennium BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Beale</span> British sailor, adventurer and entrepreneur

Phillip Beale is a British sailor, adventurer, expedition leader and entrepreneur. He led the Borobudur Ship Expedition and the 2008–2010 Phoenician Expedition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples</span> Residents of the ancient Near East until the end of antiquity

Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Samaritans having a continuum into the present day.

Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenician–Punic literature</span>

Phoenician–Punic literature is literature written in Phoenician, the language of the ancient civilization of Phoenicia, or in the Punic language that developed from Phoenician and was used in Ancient Carthage. It is surrounded by an aura of mystery due to the few preserved remains. All that is left is a series of inscriptions, few of which are of a purely literary nature, coins, fragments of Sanchuniathon's History and Mago's Treaty, the Greek translation of the voyage of Hanno the Navigator and a few lines in the Poenulus by Plautus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenician settlement of North Africa</span>

The Phoenician settlement of North Africa or Phoenician expedition to North Africa was the process of Phoenician people migrating and settling in the Maghreb region of North Africa, encompassing present-day Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, from their homeland of Phoenicia in the Levant region, including present-day Lebanon and Syria, in the 1st millennium BC.

References

  1. 1 2 "Phoenicia - they've reached South Africa". sail-world.com. 29 January 2010. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Phoenicia proves the skeptics wrong by circumnavigating Africa". sail-world.com. 20 October 2010. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
  3. "The Circumnavigation of Africa". stor.org. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
  4. "The Alleged Phoenician Circumnavigation of Africa: Considered in Relation to the Theory of a South African Ophir". jstor.org. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
  5. "Phoenicia is back - now to cross the Atlantic". sail-world.com. 8 March 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  6. "Who reached America first – Columbus or the Phoenicians?". middleeasteye.net. 28 September 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  7. "Phoenicians Before Columbus Expedition". phoeniciansbeforecolumbus.com. 31 December 2019. Retrieved 4 April 2021.
  8. "Canaanites in America: A New Scripture in Stone?". journals.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
  9. "Join Us". Heartland Research. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  10. Nelson, Rian (14 December 2021). "Heartland Research Purchases Phoenicia (600 BC Replica Ship)". Book of Mormon Evidence. Retrieved 15 May 2022.