"Son of man, because Tyre said concerning Jerusalem 'Aha, the gate of the peoples is broken; it has swung open to me. I shall be replenished, now that she is laid waste,' therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers....And she shall become plunder for the nations, and her daughters on the mainland shall be killed by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord." - Book of Ezekiel 26: 1-14

Across the eastern Mediterranean there has been discovered a great number of objects whose appearance or materials are extraneous to local cultures, whether it was an Egyptian amulet in Greece, a Greek vase in Africa, or thousands of strange amulets in Gibraltar. The remains are evidence that a huge amount of goods was once moved from one land to another, systematically transported and traded across the Mediterranean by the ancient commercial network of the Phoenicians. Beginning in the 13th century BCE, and lasting for more than a millennium, this civilization dominated the most important body of water known to the ancients. With their formidable ships and skills in trading, they made a name for themselves by trading between Egypt, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Sardinia, Spain, and eventually all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, establishing themselves as the undisputed lords of the sea.

A network of this size, with hundreds of colonies and thousands of ships, had to be well coordinated, and it was thanks to important cities along the Mediterranean coast. One of the most crucial cities in the system was hidden beneath the Greek, Roman, and Crusader ruins of Lebanon: the ancient city of Tyre.