Armenians and Phoenicians: Two Forgotten Peoples and Rival

Nave armena

Journalist [ENA] For centuries the Phoenicians have been celebrated as the great navigators of the Mediterranean, but a rereading of historical and linguistic sources reveals that the Armenians also played a fundamental role in ancient naval history. The Phoenicians: Merchants of the Sea From the coast of present-day Lebanon, the Phoenicians developed, as early as the 2nd millennium BC, an impressive commercial network.

Their ships sailed the Mediterranean from Tyre to Carthage, from Gades (Cadiz) to Cyprus. They carried precious woods, purple dye, glass, and metals, leaving traces everywhere through their alphabets and trading posts. Their fame as navigators derived from their commercial skills and their ability to colonize new lands. The Armenians: Forgotten Navigators Different, but equally important, was the case of the Armenians. Though today landlocked, ancient Armenians had access to three strategic fronts: the Black Sea, the Mediterranean through Cilicia, and the great Mesopotamian rivers. Here they developed a naval culture that has remained hidden in the memory of languages.

Linguists such as Lia Avetisyan have shown that naval terms traditionally attributed to the Greeks and Romans (bireme, trireme, dromon) can be read through Armenian roots, with meanings such as “I will carry” or “I will command.” Even the famous lateen sail may have Armenian origins: lat in Grabar (Classical Armenian) means “fragment,” hence mat latin—“the mast of the fragment.” Armenian Cilicia: the “Genoa of the East” With the Kingdom of Cilicia (11th–14th centuries), Armenians consolidated a true maritime power. The ports of Ayas and Korikos rivaled Venice and Genoa in commercial intensity.

Armenian fleets, often allied with Crusaders and Byzantines, played a central role in Mediterranean trade and naval warfare of the time. Armenians and Phoenicians: Two Approaches to the Sea The Phoenicians were primarily merchant-colonizers, capable of founding cities and commercial bases everywhere. The Armenians, on the other hand, were strategists and technical innovators, transforming the sea into a political, military, and symbolic instrument—reading ships and sails even through the lens of their own language. A Memory to Be Recovered Historiography has fixed the Phoenicians as the navigators par excellence, while forgetting the Armenians, whose role was obscured by centuries of wars and the loss of maritime outlets

Today, thanks to new linguistic and archaeological interpretations, a different picture emerges: Armenia was not only a land of mountains and monasteries, but also of naval routes, thriving ports, and ships that crossed the Mediterranean.