ThePhoenicians
were people that originally came from the coastal zone which corresponds to the present
Lebanon. The name comes from a Greek word (Phoniks) which means purple red.
The main Phoenician cities were Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. They were city-states and had a
king as their head. |
The
main Phoenician activity was sea trade. The Phoenician territory, in fact, did not allow
the development of irrigation agriculture. |
The Phoenicians spread out nearly into the whole Mediterranean Sea. From
Tyre they left for Crete and Carthage, then they came to Sicily and Sardinia. From here
they went to Spain for corn trade and then they went to the Atlantic Ocean.
|
The Phoenicians according to the historians, invented the phonetic alphabet
which was formed by twenty-two signs. They wrote from right to left. Their archaeologists
thought the Phoenicians should have some archives in order to keep written documents.
After the conquest of Carthage, they built some libraries but none of them are left today.
So the piece of information we have are found in literary Latin and Greek books. |
The Phoenicians were
polytheist, that is they worshipped many gods. They also had the cult of the dead. In fact
they believed in a life after death. The dead person was lied in the tomb with things such
as amulets, jewels, weapons, that could be useful to him in his second life |
In our city many Phoenician traces have been found. © S.Lannino 2001 |