Famed for providing the model for the alphabet and being among the most storied merchants and explorers of all time, the Phoenicians remain mysterious
The Phoenicians seem to have originated as a Semitic people from the Levant (equivalent to the modern coasts of Syria, Lebanon and Israel), stretching 320 kilometres from ancient Aradus (modern Arwad, Syria) to Mt Carmel and the town of Dor in Northern Israel. They were famed sea travellers and traders whose reach stretched throughout the Mediterranean to Spain, the western coast of Africa, and beyond. One anecdote about the extent of Phoenician mercantile ambition is that the murex sea snail – which was the source of the specific colour purple for dyes in the ancient world (known as Tyrian or Royal purple), and only found along the Phoenician coastline – was worked almost to extinction. Some theories hold that the Greek word Phoenicia (phoinix) itself meant ‘land of purple’ (the Greek word for the purple was phoinikes) – we don’t know for certain what they referred to themselves as, probably as inhabitants of each particular city. The Phoenicians had begun trading the murex dye in 1200 BCE, perhaps centuries earlier.
The Age of the Phoenicians is usually dated between around 1200 and 550 BCE, although Phoenician influence lasted into the 2nd century BCE. From around 550 BCE, however, Carthaginian civilisation took over as the dominant influence, especially in the western Mediterranean. Carthage was the most famous Phoenician colony (most matters related to the Carthaginians continued to be known as Poeni or Punic after their Phoenician origins – such as the various Punic wars fought with Rome).
Along with trade in coveted luxury items, the Phoenicians were in demand as seamen and they also spread their knowledge of seamanship, navigation and (perhaps most importantly) the alphabet.
This, obviously useful, mode of common communication between traders set up letter forms in various alphabets still obvious today (such as in the Greek and Latin alphabets) but also conventions such as reading right-to-left and horizontal text.
It was also a purely alphabetic script (with 22 characters) rather than a pictographic or hieroglyphic script where symbols could represent ideas or things. The Phoenician alphabet (developed around 1050 BCE) did not represent vowels, however, only consonants so in modern terms is an abjad or abgad – where vowels are implicit or inferred. It was soon adopted by the cultures the Phoenicians came into contact with, such as the Greeks. Although the term alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha and beta), it is obvious that that order came itself from Phoenician where the first letters were alep, bet, giml, dalt �
