Robert Fisk on Phoenicians in Beirut

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Robert Fisk: Phoenician footprints all over Beirut (The Independent). Excerpt:

Today, the Persian-ruled city in Lebanon is exposed beneath the new souks of Beirut. It is part of the city's "Heritage Trail" – in Lebanon, the word heritage means what it says and does not carry the grotty reputation of Britain's tawdry historical re-creations – so that future generations can walk around the old/new city and "watch" its creation over the centuries in Roman streets and Crusader walls, a project overseen by Amira Solh, the young Cornell-trained urban planner who works for Solidere, the company that rebuilt Beirut. She has dreams of an interactive film display behind the underground Persian streets – and promises me there will be no English-style guides flouncing around in Persian costumes. This is serious history for serious people.

Nothing, of course, could be more serious than finding yourself under Persian rule. Roula el-Zein, an archaeologist and consultant for Solidere, described Beirut at the time as "just a small city belonging to Sidon, the city which had all the power". The Phoenicians, she says, "accepted Persian rule after the Babylonians left, and without any problem in assisting the Persian wars against Egypt. Sidon and Tyre were with the Persian kings" – King Baalshillem the Second and King Abdashart, for those who want to know. But when the Persians decided to attack Phoenician Carthage, things quickly went wrong.

"According to Herodotus," el-Zein says, "the Phoenicians of Sidon refused to build ships for the Persians and help them. And because of this, the Persians never finished their north African project." It makes sense. Why should the Phoenicians of Sidon and Beirut help their masters attack the Phoenicians of Carthage? It would be left to the Romans ("Carthaga delenda est") to destroy the city whose remains lie in modern-day Tunisia and whose land was sown with salt so that it could never be reinhabited.