The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only ; additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.
The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.
The history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies; it is sometimes described as an "incubator of Western civilization" and saw the emergence of some of the earliest and most advanced civilisations, including those of Egypt, Greece, and the Fertile Crescent. The Levant in the Eastern Mediterranean was among the first regions in the world to display permanent human habitation as early as 12,000 BC. The Mediterranean Sea was an important route for merchants, travellers, and migrants in antiquity, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between various peoples as well as colonisation and conquest. The Roman Empire maintained nautical hegemony over the sea for centuries and is the only state to have ever controlled all of its coast.
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of and the deepest recorded point is in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. It lies between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west–east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Alexandretta, on the southeastern coast of Turkey, is about . The north–south length varies greatly between different shorelines and whether only straight routes are considered. Also including longitudinal changes, the shortest shipping route between the multinational Gulf of Trieste and the Libyan coastline of the Gulf of Sidra is about . The water temperatures are mild in winter and warm in summer and give name to the Mediterranean climate type due to the majority of precipitation falling in the cooler months. Its southern and eastern coastlines are lined with hot deserts not far inland, but the immediate coastline on all sides of the Mediterranean tends to have strong maritime moderation.
The countries surrounding the Mediterranean and its marginal seas in clockwise order are Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine (Gaza Strip), Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco; Cyprus and Malta are island countries in the sea. In addition, Northern Cyprus (de facto state) and two overseas territories of the United Kingdom (Akrotiri and Dhekelia, and Gibraltar) also have coastlines along the Mediterranean Sea. The drainage basin encompasses a large number of other countries, the Nile being the longest river ending in the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean Sea encompasses a vast number of islands, some of them of volcanic origin. The two largest islands, in both area and population, are Sicily and Sardinia.
Names and etymology
Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Magnum ("Great Sea") or Mare Internum ("Internal Sea") and, starting with the Roman Empire, Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea"). The term Mare Mediterrāneum appears later: Solinus apparently used this in the 3rd century, but the earliest extant witness to it is in the 6th century,Vaso Seirinidou, "The Mediterranean" in Diana Mishkova, Balázs Trencsényi, European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, series European Conceptual History 3, , 2017, p. 80 in the work of Isidore of Seville. It means 'in the middle of land, inland' in Latin, a compound of ('middle'), ('land, earth'), and ('having the nature of'). The Latin word is a calque of Greek (; 'inland'), from (, 'in the middle') and (, 'of the earth'), from (, 'land, earth'). The original meaning may have been 'the sea in the middle of the earth', rather than 'the sea enclosed by land'.Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed, 2001, s.v. In Modern Arabic, it is known as () 'the [White] Middle Sea'. In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was ( or ) 'the Sea of the Romans' or 'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was later extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were () ("the Sea of Syria") and () ("the Sea of the West").Vaso Seirinidou, "The Mediterranean" in Diana Mishkova, Balázs Trencsényi, European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, series European Conceptual History 3, , 2017, p. 80 The Ancient Egyptians called the Mediterranean Wadj-wr/Wadj-Wer/Wadj-Ur. This term () was the name given by the Ancient Egyptians to the semi-solid, semi-aquatic region characterized by papyrus forests to the north of the cultivated Nile Delta, and, by extension, the sea beyond. The Carthaginians called it the "Syrian Sea". In ancient Syriac texts, Phoenician epics and in the Hebrew Bible, it was primarily known as the "Great Sea", , , (Numbers; Book of Joshua; Ezekiel) or simply as "The Sea" (1 Kings). However, it has also been called the "Hinder Sea" because of its location on the west coast of the region of Syria or the Holy Land (and therefore behind a person facing the east), which is sometimes translated as "Western Sea". Another name was the "Sea of the Philistines", (Book of Exodus). In Modern Hebrew, it is called , 'the Middle Sea'. The Ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean simply ('the Sea') or sometimes ('the Great Sea'), ('Our Sea'), or ('the sea around us'). According to Johann Knobloch, in classical antiquity, cultures in the Levant used colors to refer to the cardinal points: black referred to the north (explaining the name Black Sea), yellow or blue to east, red to south (e.g., the Red Sea), and white to west. This would explain the Greek , the Bulgarian , the Turkish , and the Arab nomenclature described above, "White Sea".Johann Knoblock. Sprache und Religion, Vol. 1 (Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1979), 18; cf. The Old English name for the Mediterranean was the Wendel-sæ, or "Vandal Sea", after the Vandals who had occupied the shores of North Africa in the Migration Period. One name for the Mediterranean in Old (West) Norse appears to have been Jórsalahaf, the "Sea of Jerusalem". The "Hreiðsea", Hreiðmarar, mentioned on the Rök runestone might also refer to the Mediterranean. Ancient Iranians called it the "Roman Sea", in Classic Persian texts was called () which may be from Middle Persian form, (). In Classic Persian texts it was called ) "The Western Sea" or "Syrian Sea". In Turkish, it is the 'the White Sea'; in Ottoman, , which sometimes means only the Aegean Sea.Diran Kélékian, Dictionnaire Turc-Français, Constantinople, 1911 The name is thought to be coming from the colors associated with the cardinal directions in Turkic tradition, where "Ak" (white) stands for the west. It may be to contrast with the Black Sea.Özhan Öztürk claims that in Old Turkish ak also means "west" and that hence means "West Sea" and that (Black Sea) means "North Sea". Özhan Öztürk. In Persian, the name was translated as , which was also used in later Ottoman Turkish. It is probably the origin of the colloquial Greek phrase .
History
Ancient civilizations
Major ancient civilizations were located around the Mediterranean. The sea provided routes for trade, colonization, and war, as well as food (from fishing and the gathering of other seafood) for numerous communities throughout the ages. The earliest advanced civilizations in the Mediterranean were the Egyptians and the Minoans, who traded extensively with each other. Around 1200 BC the eastern Mediterranean was greatly affected by the Bronze Age Collapse, which resulted in the destruction of many cities and trade routes.
Two other notable Mediterranean civilizations in classical antiquity are the Greek city-states and Phoenicians, both of whom extensively colonized the coastlines of the Mediterranean.
Darius I of Persia, who conquered Ancient Egypt, built a canal linking the Red Sea to the Nile, and thus the Mediterranean. Darius's canal was wide enough for two triremes to pass each other with oars extended and required four days to traverse.Rappoport, S. (Doctor of Philosophy, Basel). History of Egypt (undated, early 20th century), Volume 12, Part B, Chapter V: "The Waterways of Egypt", pp. 248–257 (online). London: The Grolier Society.
Following the Punic Wars in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, the Roman Republic defeated the Carthaginians to become the preeminent power in the Western Mediterranean region. When Augustus founded the Roman Empire, the Romans referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea"). For the next 400 years, the Roman Empire completely controlled the Mediterranean Sea and virtually all its coastal regions from Gibraltar to the Levant, giving the sea the nickname "Roman Lake".
Middle Ages and empires The Western Roman Empire collapsed around 476 AD. The east was again dominant as Roman power still existed on in the Byzantine Empire formed in the 4th century from the eastern half of the Roman Empire. During that time, another power arose in the 7th century, and with it the religion of Islam, which soon swept across from the east; at its greatest extent, the Arabs, under the Umayyads, controlled the Iberian Peninsula, making a new phase of art and culture in the region.
A variety of foodstuffs, spices and crops were introduced to the western Mediterranean's Spain and Sicily during Arab rule, via the commercial networks of the Islamic world. These include sugarcane, rice, cotton, alfalfa, oranges, lemons, apricots, spinach, eggplants, carrots, saffron and bananas. The Arabs also continued extensive cultivation and production of olive oil (the Spanish words for 'oil' and 'olive'—aceite and aceituna, respectively—are derived from the Arabic al-zait, meaning 'olive juice'), and pomegranates (the heraldic symbol of Granada) from classical Greco-Roman times.
The Arab invasions disrupted the trade relations between Western and Eastern Europe while disrupting trade routes with Eastern Asian Empires. This, however, had the indirect effect of promoting trade across the Caspian Sea. The export of grains from Egypt was re-routed towards the Eastern world. Products from East Asian empires, like silk and spices, were carried from Egypt to ports like Venice and Constantinople by sailors and Jewish merchants. The Viking raids further disrupted the trade in western Europe and brought it to a halt. However, the Norsemen developed the trade from Norway to the White Sea, while also trading in luxury goods from Spain and the Mediterranean. The Byzantines in the mid-8th century retook control of the area around the north-eastern part of the Mediterranean. Venetian ships from the 9th century armed themselves to counter the harassment by Arabs while concentrating trade of Asian goods in Venice.