Trade in the Ancient World: The History and Legacy of Trade in Europe, the Near East, and Africa during Antiquity by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2020-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

East Meets West

Ancient Greek language, religion and art were all heavily influenced by the Phoenicians, but from 800 BCE onwards, as Greek mariners increasingly took to the seas to exploit the new trade opportunities created by the growing network of foreign markets in the Mediterranean, they would also come into contact with another major cultural influence from the East: the Persian Empire.

The wealthy Near Eastern kingdoms had been largely responsible for the growth of ancient trade, but after the fall of the Assyrian Empire at the end of the 7th century BCE, the eastern and western halves of the Mediterranean began to have more significant interactions with one another, both culturally and economically. Babylon briefly dominated the eastern Mediterranean after the Assyrians’ decline, but once Cyrus the Great, the father of the Achaemenid Empire, captured Babylon in 539 BCE, the Persian civilization controlled the whole of the Near East until the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The Achaemenid Empire was highly international. Persian kings were accepting of different cultures and were happy to assimilate foreign philosophies, religions and art into their own culture. They controlled an array of peoples who spoke different languages and had markedly different ways of living, and when they conquered a new territory, they would allow its inhabitants to retain their own culture completely, only requiring that the proper taxes be paid to the Persian royal treasury.

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