When Canaanites Became Phoenician Sailors

History runs deep at Tel Dor—45 feet deep to be exact! Layer upon layer of ancient cities, each built on the ruins of its predecessor, have formed this immense mound on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, about 12 miles south of Haifa. As extraordinary as the mound’s size is the large number of different people who have occupied or controlled the site. Following the Canaanites, who led Dor in a coalition of cities opposing Joshua (Joshua 11-1–15), the city experienced a series of conquests by Sikils—a Sea People tribe—Phoenicians, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. Despite this succession of conquests, the Phoenicians remained the dominant cultural force at Dor, which preserves one of the best records of their culture yet found.

In this first installment of a three-part article, Ephraim Stern, director of the Dor excavation, describes the city’s rise, its conquest by the Sikils and its reconquest by the Phoenicians. “The Many Masters of Dor, Part 2- How Bad Was Ahab?” BAR 19-02, will examine the Phoenician-Israelite city at Dor until its fall to the Assyrians in 733 B.C.E. “The Many Masters of Dor, Part 3- The Persistence of Phoenician Culture,” BAR 19-03, will look at the succession of absentee landlords—Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian—who ruled Dor until the city’s complete Hellenization in the third century B.C.E.

If you want to learn about the Phoenicians, come to Dor. But Dor, you may say, was not part of Phoenicia proper. True enough. Thereby hangs my tale.

Actually, the Phoenicians were late Canaanites—Canaanites of the first millennium B.C.E.a “Phoenician” was the name given to these people by the Greeks. The name apparently denotes the dark red or purple dye for which the Phoenicians were famous. The Phoenicians, however, continued to refer to themselves as Canaanites, or by the names of their principal cities—Sidonians, Tyrians, Biblians, Arwadians.

During the second millennium B.C.E., the Canaanites controlled not only Palestine, but Transjordan and Syria as well, all the way from Ugarit in the north down to the Egyptian border in the south. Beginning in about 1200 B.C.E., they were squeezed out of most of this area by numerous peoples of various origins- Arameans penetrated from the northeast, Hittites from the northwest, Israelites and Sea Peoples (Philistines, Sikils, Sherden, etc.) in the south and Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites in the east. By about 1150 B.C.E., Canaanite territory was reduced to the narrow coastal strip of Lebanon between Arwad and Tyre. Most of the Canaanite population lived in four main cities—Arwad, Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. From this point on, historians refer to this area as Phoenicia and to the people as Phoenicians.

Read the rest of The Many Masters of Dor, Part 1: When Canaanites Became Phoenician Sailors in the online Biblical Archaeology Society Library.