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The Phoenicians
History of the Phoenicians including their cities, kings, culture, achievements and contributions to civilization. More than 2,500 years ago Phoenician mariners sailed to Mediterranean and southwestern European ports. The Phoenicians were the great merchants of ancient times. They sold rich treasures from many lands.
These Phoenicians (the Canaanites, or Sidonians, of the Bible)were Semitic people. Their country was a narrow strip of the Syrian coast, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) long and 20 miles (32 kilometers) wide. The area now comprises Lebanon and parts of Syria and Israel. Their territory was so small that the Phoenicians were forced to turn to the sea for a living. They became the most skillful shipbuilders and navigators of their time. They worked thesilver mines of Spain, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, and founded the city of Cadiz on the southern coast of Spain. They sailed to the British Isles for tin and may have ventured around southern Africa. They founded many colonies, the greatest being Carthage.
The Phoenicians began to develop as a seafaring, manufacturing, and trading nation when the Cretans--the first masters of theMediterranean--were overthrown by the Greeks (see Aegean Civilization). Not only did they take the fine wares of the Eastern nations to the Western barbarians, but they also became skilled in making such wares themselves--especially metalwork, glass, and cloth. From a snail, the murex, they obtained a crimson dye called Tyrian purple. This was so costly that only kings and wealthy nobles could affordgarments dyed with it.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Phoenicians was a syllabic writing, developed in about 1000 BC at Byblos. From this city's name come the Greek word biblia (books) and the English word Bible. This form of writing was spread by the Phoenicians in their travels and influenced the Aramaic and Greek alphabets
There were two great cities of Phoenicia--Sidon, thecenter of the glass industry, and Tyre, the center of the purple-dye industry. In the middle of the 10th century BC, Tyre assumed the leadership of all Phoenicia. Friendly relations were established with the Hebrews, and King Solomon sent to King Hiram of Tyre not only for materials but also for skilled workmen to build the temple.
The Phoenicians supplied the great Persian fleets with which Dariusand Xerxes attacked Greece. Usually they submitted readily to foreign conquerors and paid tribute. In return they were allowed to pursue their commercial enterprises as they liked. Alexander the Great took Tyre in 332 BC, after one of the greatest sieges of history. In 64 BC Phoenicia came under the control of the Romans. The chief divinities of the Phoenician religion were the god Baal and thegoddess Astarte, or Ashtoreth. In times of great distress human sacrifices were offered to the god Moloch.
Today the small island on which Tyre once stood is connected with the mainland by a broad tongue of land. It grew out of the causeway built during Alexander's siege. The town is called Sur in Arabic. The Phoenicians of the Iron Age (first millennium B.C.) descended from the originalCanaanites who dwelt in the region during the earlier Bronze Age (3000-1200 H.C.), despite classical tradition to the contrary. There is archaeological evidence for a continuous cultural tradition from the Bronze to the Iron Age (1200 -333 s.c.) at the cities of Tyre and Z araphath. In the Amarna age (fourteenth century B.C.) many letters to Egypt emanated from King Rib-Addi of Byblos, King Abi-Milki ofTyre, and King Zimrida of Sidon, and in other New Kingdom Egyptian texts there are references to the cities of Beirut Sidon, Zaraphath, Ushu, Tyre, and Byblos. Additionally there is a thirteenth-century B.C. letter from the king of Tyre to Ugarit, and a Ugaritic inscription has turned up at Zaraphath. Despite these facts showing that the coastal cities were occupied without interruption or change...
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