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Phoenicians....
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The Phoenician Period - 1200 to 330 BCE
900 Years of Trade and Influence
The term "Phoenician" is used by scholars to distinguish the Iron Age from
the Bronze Age in the Levant, although the culture is essentially the same
as the Canaanite and the people never referred to themselves as
"Phoenicians," a Greek term. Unfortunately we have little information about
the Phoenicians written by themselves. This is not because they were not
culturally important nor because they didn't write - after all they invented
the alphabet -, but due to a situation created by a mixture of
environmental, political, and economic factors. The city of Byblos has given
its name to the Greek word for "book," the word which became the name of the
Christian holy book, the Bible, for the Phoenicians were the Western world's
major dealers in papyrus, buying from the Egyptians who were not seafarers,
and dealing it around the Mediterranean to Greeks,
Romans, and anyone else
with money or trade. |
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But papyrus, like paper, biodegrades. Many papyrus
scrolls in Egypt survived largely by chance, because of the extremely dry
climate. Other texts were painted on the walls of tombs and
temples. The
Phoenicians wrote primarily on papyrus and few but fragments remain. All
that survives are hardly a few dozen commemorative engravings on stone. Much
of what we know comes from the writings of those with whom they traded or
who, like the Greeks, were their rivals, and none too flattering in their
jealousy. The Phoenicians were characterized by their chief competitors as
intelligent, shrewd, cunning, proud, arrogant, mysterious, and intensely
religious. In fact, the writing system of the Phoenicians is the source of
the writing systems of nearly all of Europe, including Greek, Russian,
Hebrew, Arabic, and the
Roman alphabet (which you are reading now) which is
used even for non-European languages like Indonesian and Vietnamese. |
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The best seafarers and ship builders of the ancient world
were the Phoenicians. The famous Lebanese cedar tress covering the slopes of
mountains of their native land was a perfect material for construction of
strong seaworthy ships. The Phoenicians made important contributions to the
marine science, having been credited with the division of a circle into 360
degrees and having reliable celestial reference points. |
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We do know that the Phoenicians essentially continue
Canaanite religion, culture, and language. When they recover from the
invasions of "the Sea Peoples" from the west, Israelites from the
south-east, and Aramaeans from the north-east, their territory becomes
limited to a narrow strip of land along the coast extending from
Syria to
Israel. In response to this, they become among the greatest sailors and
traders of any age. |
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