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The Rise and Fall of the Phoenician Empire
Phoenicia was never a single empire but a string of independent coastal cities. Follow them from about 1200 BCE through Assyrian, Persian and Greek rule.
Persia and Asia
Phoenician People and Seafaring
The city-states of the Levant coast, their ships, trade, colonies and alphabet.
The Ancient Civilization of the Phoenicians: A New Discovery
No single new find explains the Phoenicians, but shipwrecks, excavations and ancient DNA studies have refined the picture. Here is what is known and its limits.
The Ancient Civilization of the Phoenicians: A People of the Sea
Phoenician religion and daily life: Baal, Astarte and Melqart, open-air temples, burial customs and the culture of the Levantine coastal towns.
The Ancient Phoenician Alphabet: A Legacy of Writing and Culture
How the 22-letter Phoenician script worked: a consonant-only, right-to-left alphabet built on a small set of signs that ordinary traders could learn.
The Ancient Phoenicians: A Legacy of Trade and Exploration
Tyrian purple dye, glass, cedar, ivory and metals: what the Phoenician cities traded, who bought it and how their commercial networks worked.
The Ancient Phoenicians: Maritime Masters of the Mediterranean
Phoenician shipbuilding explained: round merchant ships and oared galleys, cedar timber, navigation by coast and stars, and the harbours they used.
The Ancient Phoenicians: The First to Sail the Oceans
The Phoenicians were not the first ocean sailors, but they did make Atlantic voyages to Spain and Morocco. Evidence versus legend, including the Africa story.
The Rise of the Phoenicians: A Maritime Empire
How Tyre and other Phoenician cities planted trading colonies from Cyprus to Spain and North Africa, and why they did it, from tradition and archaeology.
The Story of the Phoenician Alphabet: A Legacy of Writing
How the Phoenician script passed to the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, and fed Hebrew, Aramaic and other scripts, with the key changes at each step.
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