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The Hidden Empire of the Phoenicians
A Timeline of Dispersed Control, Myth-Making, and Civilization Engineering
1. Babylon The Fracturing & the Veil (c. 600–500 BCE)
Fall of Babylon (539 BCE) under Cyrus the Great (Persians).
Traditionally told as the triumph of Persians.
But the Phoenicians, with their networks, gain the most:
They shift allegiance from Babylon to Persia.
Babylon’s myths of the Tower, the fall, the confusion of tongues can be read as allegories of Phoenician strategy: dispersal, hidden control through language.
Sea myths as misdirection: monsters, Leviathan, and chaos-waters = tools to scare rivals away from the sea lanes.
This myth-making is a kind of psychological warfare, hiding trade routes.
2. Persia The Eastern Arm (c. 500–300 BCE)
The Persian Empire looks like a land empire, but who runs the ports? Phoenician cities like Tyre and Sidon.
Naval supremacy: Persians never dominate the seas alone their fleet is essentially Phoenician.
Zoroastrianism parallels: dualism (Ahura Mazda vs. Ahriman) mirrors earlier Phoenician-Canaanite dualisms (Baal vs. Mot).
Suggests Phoenicians seeded Persia with cosmology as well as ships.
Here, we see the two-arm model:
Persia as the land arm.
Phoenicia as the sea arm.
Together they form one empire of control.
3. Greece & Rome The Western Arm (c. 300 BCE – 400 CE)
Alexander’s conquest (332 BCE): Tyre resists, but its networks persist.
Greek philosophy (especially Pythagoras, Plato) traces back to Phoenician-Canaanite/Egyptian mysteries.
Rome absorbs Carthage (146 BCE):
Ostensibly a total defeat of Phoenician power.
But in reality: Rome inherits the Phoenician infrastructure.
Carthaginian trade networks, gods (Saturn > Kronos > Roman Saturnalia), and money systems reappear in Rome.
The Vatican as Tyre reborn:
Rome shifts from a military empire > religious empire.
Christianity, originally anti-imperial (a break from money-sacrifice cycles), is turned into another Phoenician idol.
