History 8 Near East Phonecia

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Phoenicians Resources The Phoenicians had many natural resources, mostly exported through trades routes on the Mediterranean Sea. The raw exports included tin, silver, iron, ebony, horses, ivory, coral, honey, linen, oil, precious gems, and spices. Other exports included wool, wine, pottery, and perfume. Another export was timber. This very popular raw material came from the forests of Lebanon. These rich forests held trees of cedar, pines, and firs. The final and most important export from Phoenicia is the purple die from the city of Tyre. This Tyrian dye was extremely expensive, and showed power and wealth, and sometimes even royalty. This dye, made from sea snails found off the waters of the Phoenician coast, was one of the, if not the most important export of the Phoenician trade web. I got my information from this website: http://www.localhistories.org/phoenicians.html Another good resource is pg. 71-72 in the Manual. JBoyce

Phoenicians Trade (edits by RB)

The Phoenicians were great artisans who lived around 2,000 years ago. had great boats to transport their goods from place to place. This includes ostrich eggs, murex; a very expensive and rare purple dye (a pound=a pound of gold), blown and colored glass, cedar wood, and wine, etc. They were not an agricultural based society, but they were quite successful in trading. Even though they had almost no land empire, they were the greatest mariners of their time! Their skilled and complex[? ] allowed their trading to progress faster and also allowed the spread of different cultural ideas to travel faster. However, they did not develop a specific artistic style since they made goods to fit other people's preferences. They didn't develop their own traditional art, but they did invent the alphabet, or the early start of our modern one today. (used pages 70-54 in manual and class notes) ~Stefania Ciurea

Phoenicians culture/religion

Phoenicians Government The Phoenician government was a loose confederation of city-states and never became a united country. Mountains separated each area. Some of the biggest city-states of Phoenicia were Sidon, Carthage, Tyre, Byblos, and Beirut. In fact, the Phoenicians' constant search for more profit led to jealously, and fighting among the city-states [1]. Each separate city-state was under its own government and had its own god and king. [2] To get an idea of where Phoenicia is on a map, here is a link to a picture: [3] Noel Higgason

What was the significance of the alphabet?

The alphabet was Phoenicia's greatest contribution to ancient history. It set the foundation for the Greek alphabet, which was the basis for the Roman alphabet, which we use today. Their alphabet was so revolutionary because unlike those before it, where the symbols evolved from pictographs and were related to ideas, this one had symbols which were related directly to sounds. For example, Qof, the modern Q, meant monkey even though it looks nothing like a monkey. One thing that the Phoenician alphabet lacked was vowels, which the Greeks added later.

For more information, click the link [4], or look on p72 in the manual.

To see what the symbols looked like, click any of the "alphabet" links. (The ones without the link are without it because they do not refer to the Phoenician alphabet)

Phoenicians reason for fall of kingdom.

Even though the Phoenicians had rich literature, little is known about how the kingdom fell. Invading countries simply built on top of old Phoenician cities, so little is left to tell the tale of their collapse. The writings themselves are no longer available to us because the fragile papyrus that they were written on have long since disintegrated. Manual Pg. 73 Philip Kensinger