Colonies in antiquity

Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city or metropolis rather than from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis often remained close, and took specific forms during the period of classical antiquity. Generally, colonies founded by the ancient Phoenicians, Carthage, Rome, Alexander the Great and his successors remained tied to their metropolis, though Greek colonies of the Archaic and Classical eras were sovereign and self-governing from their inception. While earlier Greek colonies were often founded to solve social unrest in the mother-city by expelling a part of the population, Hellenistic, Roman, Carthaginian, and Han Chinese colonies served as centres for trade (entrepôts), expansion and empire-building.

Egyptian settlement and colonisation is attested from about 3200 BC onward, all over the area of southern Canaan, by almost every type of artifact: architecture (fortifications, embankments and buildings), pottery, vessels, tools, weapons, seals, etc. Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to Egypt, from regions such as Arad, En Besor, Rafiah, and Tel Erani. An area of permanent settlement may have been administered from Tell es-Sakan, which is the largest Egyptian settlement in the region. An Early Bronze Age brewery belonging to an Egyptian settlement was found in Tel Aviv. Shipbuilding was known to the ancient Egyptians as early as 3000 BC, and perhaps earlier. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that the earliest dated ship — dating to 3000 BC – may have belonged to the Pharaoh Aha.

The Phoenicians were the major trading power in the Mediterranean in the early part of the first millennium BC. They had trading contacts in Egypt and Greece, and established colonies as far west as modern Spain, at Gadir (modern Cádiz), and modern Morocco, at Tingis and Mogador. From Spain and Morocco, the Phoenicians controlled access to the Atlantic Ocean and the trade routes to Britain and Senegal.

The most famous and successful of Phoenician colonies was founded by settlers from Tyre in 814–813 BC and called Kart-Hadasht (Qart-ḥadašt, literally "New Town"), known in English as Carthage. The Carthaginians later founded their own colonies in the western Mediterranean, notably a colony in southeast Spain, Carthago Nova, which was eventually conquered by their enemy, Rome.

According to María Eugenia Aubet, Professor of Archaeology at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona:

The earliest presence of Phoenician material in the West is documented within the precinct of the ancient city of Huelva, Spain... The high proportion of Phoenician pottery among the new material found in 1997 in the Plaza de las Monjas in Huelva argues in favour, not of a few first sporadic contacts in the zone, but of a regular presence of Phoenician people from the start of the ninth century BC. The recent radiocarbon dates from the earliest levels in Carthage situate the founding of this Tyrian colony in the years 835–800 cal BC, which coincides with the dates handed down by Flavius Josephus and Timeus for the founding of the city.

The nature of the origins of Dʿmt (founded c. 800 BCE around Ethiopia's Tigray Region) regarding the role played by Sabaeans from Sheba in South Arabia continues to be debated by historians. Evidence of strong Sabaean influence includes Sabaic inscriptions and Sabaean temples. As of 2017, scholars of South Arabian archaeology and epigraphy tended to favour a migration and/or colonisation, while scholars of African archaeology tended to stress an indigenous origin. However writing in 2025 Alfredo González-Ruibal [es] said that "idea of colonisation as such has been discarded".

In 2019, Sabaean inscriptions were found in Somaliland and Puntland, as well as a Sabaean temple whose inscriptions say its construction was ordered by the admiral of Sheba's fleet. González-Ruibal said "we can perhaps discern two different models: a proper colonialist one along the northern Somali seaboard, with direct intervention of the state and aimed at the extraction of resources, and a diasporic model in the northern Horn, led by élites who soon mixed with local people, while maintaining ties with their ancestral homeland".