Phoenicia

The Phoenician alphabet was the ancestor of many modern alphabets, including the Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets. As the Phoenician traders interacted with different cultures, their alphabet was adopted and adapted by these cultures. For example, the Greeks modified the Phoenician alphabet to better represent their own language, introducing vowels and adding new letters. Over time, these modified versions of the Phoenician alphabet evolved into distinct writing systems.

Phoenicia grew wealthy through its thriving maritime trade network. The Phoenicians were skilled seafarers and merchants who engaged in long-distance trading of valuable goods such as purple dye, timber, glass, and metals. They established colonies and trading posts across the Mediterranean, which brought them economic prosperity and influence. Additionally, their expertise in shipbuilding and navigation gave them a competitive advantage in the ancient trading world.

Introducung an efficient means of writing alphabetically.

The 'colonies' they established were in fact trading stations. This allowed them to trade extensively in local produce and cross-trade between areas as well as just in their own produce of timber, food and dyes.

The exception was their colony Carthage, which grew in strength to establish its own trading colonies in the western Mediterranean.

1. The were the Ancient inhabitants of Lebanon. The Phoenicians were probably the most commercially astute people of the Ancient World.

2. They developed a purple dye which was a big hit for monarchs around the Mediterranean who needed the colour for their tunics.

3. Carthage in North Africa was a Phoenician colony. It was the same Carthage that battled Rome for supremacy in the Middle East.

4. They had a few kings called Hiram. One of whom helped supply the cedar trees for King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

5. Their Main cities were Sidon and Tyre. Both of which still exist in Lebanon today.

6. They developed an early alphabet that influenced the Greeks. Not bad for a people who were more known for their sea trading exploits than anything else.

7. They were not a major power but did set up colonies in Spain, North Africa and Cyprus that enhanced their reach.

Trading posts from which they ran ships to carry good between the centres, from which trade they made a handsome profit.

First, the opted for trade rather than conquest to solve a population crisis; then their inventiveness - astral navigation, seamanship, inventing alphabetic writing.

The alphabet.

Each of the independent city-states had their own laws.

Out of sight of land they used astral navigation. The got as far afield as the Canary Islands and Cornwall.

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. Today merchant ships continue the custom.

The home of the Phenicians in Africa was originally Libya.

Orontes River.

Pirates, shipwreck, adverse weather.

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains of what is now Lebanon. They were the major sea-traders of the Mediterranean, and they went everywhere. When the Phoenicians began using the alphabet as a simple and easy way to keep track of their trades, it was exposed to everyone. Also they show the other countries that ships could travel around the globe trading important commodities. That was not practiced by other culture of the time who just raised stock and traded with those animals.

There job specializations were farmers, farmer workers, church workers, warriors, etc. The Social class was working class, social class, and the middle class.

Those were very different. Cuneiform was hard to learn with many symbols. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters so it was easier to master.

This is uncertain - they migrated from the east - the area of Persia, as did other Semitic peoples. Their earlier location is unknown.

They were expert seamen, and took their goods to far off countries and exchanged them for valuable goods to import and onsell, eg sold trade goods from the Eastern Mediterranean and came back with tin from Cornwall in the UK, the textiles they provided to Cornwall got them the tin needed for making bronze which was scarce in the Mediterranean area.

The main concentration was in Asia, in today' Lebanon and southern Syria. They established an important colony in Carthage in today's Tunisia.

A great trading empire

The Phoenicians lived in a two hundred mile long strip bordering the Mediterranean Sea, so they were sea traders. They made purple cloth that was very expensive and prized among royalty that was made from a dye produced by a sea snail called a murex. They also had many cedar trees growing there, so they used them to build boats and furniture. They were excellent sea traders who produced the first alphabet that consisted of 22 consonants and they gave it away, the Greeks took this alphabet and turned it into their own alphabet.

The alphabetic writing system, copied by Greek, Roman and modern European languages.

Phoenicia was not an empire. It was a collection of independent city-states in today's Lebanon and Syria. As i dependent mini-states, they met the challenge of an expanding population by turning to trade rather than trying to conquer more land.

We are often told that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet. Regardless of who put pen to papyrus to create it, the Phoenician contribution was none-the-less major and critical. They were the major sea-traders of the Mediterranean, and they went everywhere. When the Phoenicians began using the alphabet as a simple and easy way to keep track of their trades, it was exposed to everyone.