Phoenicians - Forgotten Civilization
"I have heard them [the Israelites] crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey — the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites." - Exodus 3:7
It is the most tragic irony of the historical literature that of the acclaimed inventors of the alphabet we have no more than traces and even his name.
The Phoenicians, had an enormous influence on the ancient world due to their tastes, knowledge, and ability to seize an opportunity when it arises.
As an an empire filled with courageous merchants and seafarers, they were the first to venture across a great distance, filling their ships with the finest the world has to offer.
The Phoenicians were a people that formed a civilization in the region of Palestine, precisely in the regions where today are Lebanon and part of Syria and Israel.
The name Phoenician, used to describe these people in the first millennium b.C, is a Greek invention, from the word phoinix, from the term "phoinikes", signifying the color purple-red and perhaps an allusion to their production of a highly prized purple dye.
What the Phoenicians actually called themselves is unknown, though it may have been the ancient term Canaanite.
The Phoenicians are also known as Sidonians, which is based on the city of Sidon.
Capable of creating commercial routes and great mysteries, they were also known for their religious rituals, where children were sacrificed, and by the first phonetic alphabet.
Their major cities were Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, and Arwad.
The Phoenicians did not develop a centralized civilization because of their organization in city-states.
This means that each Phoenician city had a structure of power and an economic policy different from the others.
The main Phoenician cities were Sidon and Tire, which had a very large economic development, and Byblos, also known as Gebal and the chief religious center of that town.
The Phoenicians lived in a region between the sea and the mountains.
Soil conditions were not ideal for the development of livestock and agriculture.
It was not without reason that they developed maritime commerce.
The forests of Lebanon cedars favored the construction of ships, as well as the timber trade.
The Phoenicians exported wood to Greece, Egypt, Palestine and other regions of the Mediterranean.
And carried wine from Greece to Egypt, papyrus from Egypt to Greece.
Present in the center of the Lebanon flag, cedar is the symbol tree of that country.
The Phoenicians were polytheists and worshiped a huge pantheon of divinities, most of neighboring cultures.
Among the gods they worshiped were Baal, Yam, Mot and Melcarte.
Ritual sacrifices, even of children, were quite common.
The triumph of the Phoenicians lies in three things: the Mediterranean Sea, trees with good quality timber and the recognized creativity of its people, who knew how to profit and enrich themselves through maritime commerce.
As they were masters in navigation, they would have created what would be the best boat of antiquity: a Birreme.
The Phoenicians also generated a formidable wealth selling their handicrafts, standing out the purple fabrics (of high value).
The purple coloration, which the Phoenicians managed to extract from small mollusks on their coast, for centuries was associated with royal or imperial power, hence the great status of the one who used them.
The Phoenicians developed several colonies in different parts of the Mediterranean Sea.
These colonies were created with the objective of having permanent access to new merchandise and new consumer markets of products produced by the Phoenicians.
The feitories of Phenicia about two thousand years later would inspire Spain and greatly the kingdom of Portugal in the time of the Great Navigations.
With them, the Canaanites were able to interact constantly with countless people for as long as the commercial warehouse.
The Phoenicians most successful colony was the city of Carthage.
It is important to emphasize the colony of Carthage, north of the African coast, which would become a powerful city-state and would wage three wars against Rome.
Carthage would become so prosperous that many historians and enthusiasts claim to have been the most powerful city-state for some centuries.
Carthage had General Anibal Barca, who gained eternal fame by crossing the Alps with his famous war elephants, commanding the Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War (218 b.C-201 b.C).
Curiosity to know that the siege tactic used by Anibal against the Romans in the Battle of Canãs, in 216 a.C, is one of the few of the Antiquity still taught in military schools.
The success of maritime trade of the Phoenicians began from 1500 b.C and had as its peak the period 1200 b.C and 800 b.C.
However, the prosperity of the Phoenicians attracted the greed of various foreign peoples.
First, the region was conquered by the Chaldeans of Nebuchadnezzar and then came the Persians of Darius I.
Finally, in the fourth century b.C, the region was conquered by the Macedonians of Alexander the Great.
From this episode, the highlight goes to the attack on the city of Tire, invaded and plundered by the Macedonians.
The region was conquered by Alexander after the victory in the Battle of That, in 333 a.C.
Although the city of Tire offers resistance, it underwent an enclosure of eight months and was sacked by this Macedonian king and its citizens enslaved.
What we know of them comes from others, from Egyptian, Asymptome, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, Seleucid, and Romans, their Egyptian clients, Asyrians.
Like the Greek name "Phoenicians" or the Hebrew "Canaanites".
The story of one of the greatest civilizations that ever existed on the face of the Earth almost erased.
The inventors of the alphabet remain nameless in history.
His story is still unknown to ordinary people.
And for the history she was almost forgotten.
Forgotten History.
Forgotten civilization.
Curiosity:
Hamsa was a Phoenician symbol, associated with Tanit, protector-goddess of Carthage, whose hand removed evil.
https://www.minds.com/blog/view/922112574323494912
Sources:
http://www.el-phoenician.com.au/how-to-entertain-the-phoenician-way/
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/phoenicians-creating-what-now-known-alphabet-006807
http://oestadodaarte.com.br/os-fenicios/
https://incrivelhistoria.com.br/fenicios-historia-caracteristicas/
https://www.sabedoriaecia.com.br/historia/15-coisas-que-voce-devia-saber-sobre-a-fenicia-e-sua-cultura/
https://www.livescience.com/56016-canaanites.html