Phoenicians

A detailed Summary of Phoenicians

Phoenicians were the people who lived in the lands called Phoenicia. These people are famous for being great sailors and traders, and inventing the alphabet. Even though they are very important, we know very little about them. Knowledge about Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chinese was a lot more than the Phoenicians. We got more information about Phoenicians from other colonies than from the Phoenicians themselves. They were known to a lot of people back in the ancient times. One person, called Pomponius Mela, wrote about them (Edey 1):

"The Phoenicians were a clever race, who prospered in war and peace. They excelled in writing and literature, and in other arts, in seamanship, in naval warfare, and in ruling an empire" (Moorey 66) (Harden 19).

They were the greatest sea traders at that time. They started to appear in the east part of the Mediterranean, in a place now called Lebanon. The time when Phoenicians started to appear is still a mystery. Some people say they started to appear in 1200 BC, but others say in 1000 BC. Later they started colonizing in the west part of the Mediterranean. The east part is called Phoenicia East and the west is called Phoenicia West (Edey 3).

"Phoenicia was not a unified state but a g

Most of the Phoenicians worked as sailors, traders, artisans, explorers or boat-builders. They went to a lot of places. They traded with Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Babylonians, Africans, and Spanish people. The whole Mediterranean world was like their store (Edey 5).

Another reason the Phoenicians were not well known is because of the invasions. The powerful forces were the Assyrians and Babylonians, who were to the east of Lebanon; the Egyptians were to the south; and the Hittites were to the north. A desert broke their connection. Because they only had land armies, they had to get at each other by going along the Canaanite coast. Controlling the ports was very important, and everyone tried to control it. Because of this there were a lot of wars. A lot of things were destroyed (Edey 13).

roup of city-kingdoms" ("Encarta" 1). The independent cities were always competing and were always becoming jealous of each other, even though they spoke the same language and worshipped the same gods. This is why they did not come together and form a large empire. They called themselves by their city name, like Tyrians, Byblians and Carthaginians. The word "Phoenician" comes from Homer, which means "a dark red or purplish-brown color" (Edey 10). They were called that because they made a rich purple dye (Edey 4).

The Tyrian dye was famous in Phoenicia. The color of this dye was purple. The dye was found in about 1000 BC. It was found in snail glands. Each snail had about one or two drops of this dye. After that it was put outside for two weeks. Because of this one sixteenth of it was evaporated. It took 60,000 snails just to produce one pound of dye. This made the

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Approximate Word count = 1139
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History