They were further unified by their maritime and trading interests, thus allowing modern historians to characterize them as a distinct civilization however, the Phoenicians never considered themselves as having a shared ethnic identity.

Politically autonomous, these city-states shared a common language and script as well as several distinctive cultural characteristics and traits.

Instead, they coalesced into several fiercely independent city-states, the most important of which were Arwad, Byblos, Berot (modern Beirut), Sidon, Sarepta, and Tyre. The Phoenician people were preeminent merchants, sailors, explorers, and settlers, who-unlike their Syrian and Canaanite neighbors-never sought to create a unified military empire or kingdom. ( Elegant Tanagra figurines enchanted ancient Greece.) The Greeks first used the term Phoenician at some point during the ninth to seventh centuries B.C., but-significantly-it has no known equivalent in any of the languages of the ancient Near East, including Phoenician itself. Another popular theory was that the word could be linked to the legendary king Phoinix, believed by some to have instigated the use of purple dye in the city of Tyre. The Greeks themselves were unclear on the origins of the word, phoínix, and as it could be used to signify a reddish purple color, it came to be regarded as an allusion to the purple fabric for which the Phoenicians were famed. The name “Phoenician,” given to them by the Greeks, is thought to relate to purple. Strictly speaking, there was no one kingdom called “Phoenicia” but a series of cities occupying a strip of land along the coast of modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and northern Israel. Masters of the seaĪlthough the Phoenicians were among the most influential of the Mediterranean peoples of the first millennium B.C., they are also one of the least understood by modern historians.

Download buy tyrian purple