Phoenicia

a country on the E. shore of the Levant, stretching inland to Mount Lebanon, at first extending only 20 miles. N. of Palestine, but later embracing 200 m. of coast, with the towns of Tyre, Zarephath, Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad. The country comprised well-wooded hills and fertile plains, was rich in natural resources, richer still in a people of remarkable industry and enterprise.

Of Semitic stock, they emerge from history with Sidon as ruling city about 1500 B.C., and reach their zenith under Tyre 1200-750, thereafter declining, and ultimately merging in the Roman Empire. During their prosperity their manufactures, purple dye, glass ware, and metal implements were in demand everywhere; they were the traders of the world, their nautical skill and geographical position making their markets the centres of exchange between East and West; their ships sailed every sea, and carried the merchandise of every country, and their colonists settled all over the Mediterranean, Ægean, and Euxine, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in Africa, in Britain, and the countries on the Baltic.

Her greatest colony was Carthage, the founding of which (823 B.C.) sapped the strength of the mother-country, and which afterwards usurped her place, and contended with Rome for the mastery of the world. But Phoenicia's greatest gift to civilisation was the alphabet, which she herself may have developed from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and which, with its great merit of simplicity, has, slightly altered, at length superseded among civilised nations every other system.