Tea at Trianon: Banking, Trade & Commerce In Ancient Phoenicia

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Banking, Trade & Commerce In Ancient Phoenicia

From The Collector:

The turn of the 12th century BC in the Eastern Mediterranean was a turbulent time, to say the least. Because of reasons unknown, numerous tribes of barbarian seafarers were ejected from their homes in the northern Aegean around 1,200. The tribes formed a confederation and came sweeping into Anatolia and the Near East on a bloodthirsty rampage.

Mycenaeans ruling from the island of Crete were first to feel their wrath. The Sea Peoples torched Knossos and sent ancient Greece spiraling into a dark age. Then they landed on the shores of Egypt but were repelled by the forces of Ramses III after a hard-fought war. Despite being victorious, Egypt’s conflict with the Sea Peoples jeopardized its colonies in the Levant and plunged the state into a thousand-year decline.

The Hittite Empire, located in modern-day Turkey, also faced the onslaught of these marauding refugees: it was wiped off the face of the earth entirely. But there was one civilization that survived this calamity: ancient Phoenicia. (Read more.)