PHOENICIA                                                                                  back to early civilizations page

  1. Location:

 - 150 - 200 miles (320 km) long  x 20 miles  (32 km) wide
 - originated from Greek word “phoinix” - meaning red
 - the color of their skin resembled that of a dark brown date palm
 - they were called red men by the Greeks and the english translation became Phoenicians
 - lived on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea
 - they made their livlihood by farming, fishing and trading
 - main cities were BYLOS, TYRE, BERYTUS (now Beirut, capital of Lebanon)
 - this area was controlled by Egypt during their New Kingdom
 - were conquered by the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians and later the Greeks  - INDEPENDENCE - from 1200 B.C. - 876 B.C.

  2. Main Way of Life: TRADE

 - EXPORT - cedar trees
 - IMPORT - raw materials such as iron, copper, tin, gold, silver, ivory for their own industry
 - they traded all over the Mediterranean and may have even travelled as far away as  England and Africa by
   600 B.C.
 - as they were traders, they have been described as carriers of other peoples’ civilizations

THE PHOENICIANS SPREAD THE NEAR EASTERN CIVILIZATION ALONG THE SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

  3. Writing:

 - we owe them the invention of our alphabet which started with Egyptian writing about 1800 B.C. and
    developed into Phoenician writing by 100 B.C.
 - their alphabet had 22 letters which were all consonant sounds
 - wrote from right to left
 - all alphabets since  have drawn from the Phoenicians
 - by 800 B.C. the Greeks adapted the alphabet together with their own letters to form their language which
    added  vowels
 - their language eliminated PICTOGRAPHS  substituted SYMBOLS to indicate sounds.
 - their system of writing did not need professional scribes as anyone who could learn the 22 symbols could
   write, ex. they took the symbol of a horse and replaced it with a symbol ‘b’
 - no symbols for vowels - they were used in oral speech
 - stopped writing on clay tablets about 1200 B.C.
 - used Egyptian papyrus instead with an ink pen
 -  Greeks first thought Phoenician writing and paper were some kind of magic and were suspicious of it