PHOENICIAN

BASIC FACTS ON PHOENICIA

• 1550 BC to 300 BC
• Possibly descendants from Canaanites who were pushed out of Palestine.
• Along the coast of Mediterranean
• Location allowed them to become experts in trade, being on the coast.
• Thrived as a maritime trader and manufacturing center from 1500-332 BCE

ADVANCED CITIES

• Tyre and Sidon were the most powerful city-states
• Byblos and Baalbek were the most important spiritual/ religious centers.
• Sidon was an important city-state who provided the Alphabet and also founded Tyre
• Phoenician city-states took form 3200 BC; firmly established by 2750 BCE
• All of these city-states lay along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea

Social Structure:
The social structure concluded of Aristocracy being the highest part of the ladder followed by, lesser business men, craftsmen, dealers, shopkeeper, entrepreneurs, normal working man and finally slaves.

Phoenician religion consisted of gods and goddesses and were influenced by other cultures. They worshipped a triad of deities, names depending on the city in which they were. The nature of the gods stayed the same despite the different names. The primary god was El or most likely known as Baal, the ruler of the universe.

Every main city was ruled by a king. Kingship was the oldest form of government, the kings power was limited by the Merchant families who worked on public affairs. The kings also worked with a council of elders.

A federation on a long scale was not possible in Phoenicia, because there was no sense of political unity that blinded the city states together.

PHOENICIAN ALPHABET

• Alphabetic writing system that became root of the western alphabets.
• Some used language belonging to the Semitic family and is now referred to as Phoenician.
• some also they used cuneiform script
• Byblos developed the very first alphabet in the 15th century BCE.
• It had 22 letters and was later adopted by Greeks then Romans.

The writing system they developed was called Abjad. It was a consonant alphabet with no vowels. It was written right to left in horizontal lines and included 22 letters. There was variation of the letters forms in different regions and times. The shapes and names of the letters are traced back to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Invented the glass blowing technique and started mass production and exports of glass. They developed the very first alphabet in the 15th century BCE. Discovered the purple-red liquid that came from the Murex shells making it into a dye.

SKILLED IN

• Ship building
• Glass making
• Production if dyes
• Metal working
• Manufacture of luxury and common goods

They began trading beads of hunting dogs wine and metals with Greece, Britain, Iberian peninsula and with most of southern Mediterranean.

Artifacts include blown glass, Murex shells, ivory carvings, Terra cotta Masks and Protomes.

The Phoenician civilization contributed greatly in the sense that they improved trading and manufacturing skills. They created something great by taking other civilizations techniques and made them work for them in a way no one else had though about. The phoenicians taught and were taught by what they could reach. They showed improvement and transformation in the way of living.

MLA

• "Ancient Scripts: Phoenician." Ancient Scripts: Phoenician. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
• "Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History." The Phoenicians (1500–300 B.C.). N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
• "History of the Phoenicians." History of the Phoenicians. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
• "Phoenician Art." Phoenician Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
• "TimeMaps." Atlas of World History. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014