1. Now I am going to talk to you about the
Phoenicians. Originally, these skilful sailors and
traders who brought us the alphabet used to live
in the desert, in what is known, today, as Jordan.
But, in the course of the time, they managed to
win a home for themselves along the eastern
shore of the Mediterranean. That was just to the
north of Palestine, in a land which was, at a time,
known as Phoenicia and at another, as Lebanon.
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2. In the desert the Phoenicians led a
nomadic life. When they arrived in Phoenicia, they
adopted more settled ways and quickly became
town-dwellers. But they remained wanderers at
heart. Earlier, they had wandered endlessly over
the sands on their camels. Now, they took to ships
and began to wander endlessly over the sea.
At first, it is true, they were much less
important as traders and seamen than Ancient
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3. Greeks. For quite a long time, they kept to the
coasts and refused to sail out into the open
Mediterranean. Down to about 1200 BC, most of
their trade was with Ancient Egypt, which they
were able to reach by following their own
shoreline southwards. But by 1000 BC, they sailed
from one end of the Mediterranean to the other
bartering their goods everywhere.
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4. Commerce became the Phoenician’s life.
So they didn’t limit their trade to the ‘Great Blue’,
I mean, the Mediterranean Sea. Soon, they sailed
through the Straits of Gibraltar onto the Atlantic
Ocean all the way to today’s England.
When Phoenicians travelled over these
vast areas, they didn’t simply do business. They
founded trading posts and cities like Carthage in
Tunisia, and Icosium (Algiers) and Hippo (Annaba),
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5. in present-day Algeria. They also spread ideas and
inventions. One invention which was of particular
importance for human civilization, and which was
spread by the Phoenician, was alphabetic writing.
The Phoenicians needed a practical system of
writing to carry on their international trade, and
an alphabet was the solution. Their alphabet was
probably adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The Phoenician alphabet was eventually adopted
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6. – and adapted – by the Greeks and later by the
Romans. By the way, the Greek word “Byblos”
‘book’ was taken from “Byblos”, a Phoenician city
which exported papyrus. Do you know how this
city is called today? ...
Adapted from Victor Skipp, Out of the Ancient World
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