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Very little is found beyond broken marble, cisterns, wine-presses cut
in the rock and some sarcophagi hewn in rock. All this debris gives us
little information and we know very little more of the Phoenicians than
Greek writers and Jewish prophets have taught us.
=Political Organization of the Phoenicians.=--The Phoenicians never
built an empire. Each city had its little independent territory, its
assemblies, its king, and its government. For general state business
each city sent delegates to Tyre, which from the thirteenth century
B.C. was the principal city of Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were not a
military people, and so submitted themselves to all the
conquerors--Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians. They
fulfilled all their obligations to them in paying tribute.
=Tyre.=--From the thirteenth century Tyre was the most notable of the
cities. Its island becoming too small to contain it, a new city was
built on the coast opposite. Tyrian merchants had founded colonies in
every part of the Mediterranean, receiving silver from the mines of
Spain and commodities from the entire ancient world.
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