[78], Phoenicia lacked considerable natural resources other than its cedar wood. By the mid-14th century BC, the Phoenician city-states were considered "favored cities" to the Egyptians. by Alan S. Kaye. 1st: /anan/ nn [citation needed] Pegged mortise-and-tenon joints proved effective enough to serve as a standard until late into the Roman Empire. The Canaanite-Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 letters, all consonants (and is thus strictly an abjad). "La literatura sobre fenicios en el territorio brasileo: orgenes y razones", PhD Thesis, Madrid - 2016. [112] In the Old Testament, a craftsman from Tyre is commissioned to build and decorate the legendary Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which "presupposes a well-developed and highly respected craft industry in Phoenicia by the mid-tenth century BC". [28] The name Phoenicians, like Latin Poen (adj. The most conspicuous vocalic development in Phoenician is the so-called Canaanite shift, shared by Biblical Hebrew, but going further in Phoenician. [67], According to a 2017 study published by the American Journal of Human Genetics, present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. Recent studies by Miriam Balmuth has also shown that a large part of Phoenicians' history has been influenced by political ideologies that started with the Greeks and the Romans and that the Phoenicians did not have a shared Phoenician identity which they identified with, choosing to identify with their city of origins such as Tyre and Sidon. By the end of the century, the Assyrians had been weakened by successive revolts, which led to their destruction by the Median Empire. Jongeling, K., Robert M. Kerr. In that function, some of them have slightly divergent forms: first singular /-n/ n and probably first plural /-nu()/. . The leading city-states were Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. From Proto-Northwest Semitic to Canaanite, * and * have merged into *, * and *z have merged into *z, and *, * and * have merged into *. Phoenician, together with Punic, is primarily known from approximately 10,000 surviving inscriptions,[60] supplemented by occasional glosses in books written in other languages. l- (/l, li/) could (rarely) be used to introduce desiderative constructions ("may he do X!"). Though Lebanon, particularly its coastal region, was the site of some of the oldest human settlements in the worldthe Phoenician ports of Tyre (modern r), Sidon (ayd), and Byblos (Jubayl . 1800 BCE) and Phoenician sites in Lebanon to reveal the . The shift is proved by Latin and Greek transcriptions like rs/ for "head, cape" /ru/ (Tiberian Hebrew r /ro/, ); similarly notice stressed /o/ (corresponding to Tiberian Hebrew /a/) sam/ for "he heard" /amo/ (Tiberian Hebrew ma /ma/, ); similarly the word for "eternity" is known from Greek transcriptions to have been lm/ /ulom/, corresponding to Biblical Hebrew lm /olm/ and Proto-Semitic lam /alam/ (in Arabic: lam /alam/). [52] As Cyrus began consolidating territories across the Near East, the Phoenicians apparently made the pragmatic calculation of "[yielding] themselves to the Persians. Late Punic epigraphy. [16] Historian Fawwaz Traboulsi sees Phoenicianism as a tool which only served the economic and political interests of Maronite elites. [62], Alexander's empire had a Hellenization policy, whereby Hellenic culture, religion, and sometimes language were spread or imposed across conquered peoples. The most prized Phoenician goods were fabrics dyed with Tyrian purple, which formed a major part of Phoenician wealth. , .. [115] At least one woman, Unmiashtart, is recorded to have ruled Sidon in the fifth century BC. [37][38][39][40] Some archaeologists working on the Persian Gulf have accepted these traditions and suggest a migration connected with the collapse of the Dilmun civilization ca. Phoenician goods have been found from Spain and Morocco to Russia and Iraq; much of what is known about Phoenician art is based on excavations outside Phoenicia proper. Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions. Unable to rely solely on this limited resource, the Phoenicians developed an industrial base manufacturing a variety of goods for both everyday and luxury use. However, it is more plausible that Phoenician immigrants brought it to Crete,[109] whence it gradually diffused northwards. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or abjad. 2005. Lebanon, country located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. [108] The legendary Phoenician hero Cadmus is credited with bringing the alphabet to Greece. Ancient DNA from the Phoenician remains found in Sardinia and Lebanon could provide insight into the extent of integration with settled communities and human movement during this time period . In later Punic, the laryngeals and pharyngeals seem to have been entirely lost. The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking people of somewhat unknown origin who emerged in the Levant around 3000 BC. Phoenician kings did not commemorate their reign through sculptures or monuments. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions 'The plan of the building, the chisel-dressed masonry, and the various decorative motifs are all clearly of Phoenician inspiration, as we now know. [74] Pottery kilns at Tyre and Sarepta produced the large terracotta jars used for transporting wine. . His successor Sennacherib suppressed further rebellions across the region. Ancient DNA study finds Phoenician from Carthage had European ancestry Morphologies of Asia and Africa. [65] Another study in 2006 found evidence for the genetic persistence of Phoenicians in the Spanish island of Ibiza. A Lebanese nationalist ideology. DNA reveals that modern Lebanese are direct descendants of ancient Canaanites Despite tumultuous history, there has been substantial genetic continuity in the Near East across the past 3,000 to 4,000 years European additions to Lebanese ancestry occurred around 3,750-2,170 years ago Study also provides clues about ancient Phoenicians [84][pageneeded] The significant output of these metals during the Phoenician and Carthaginian occupation strongly implied large scale mining operations. The original value of the Proto-Semitic sibilants, and accordingly of their Phoenician counterparts, is disputed. [31] Long vowels probably occurred only in open syllables. P.283. As in neighboring societies at the time, penalties for crimes were often severe, usually reflecting the principle of reciprocity; for example, the killing of a slave would be punished by having the offender's slave killed. P.10. and feminine /himt/ hmt. [96], The earliest Phoenician settlements outside the Levant were on Cyprus and Crete, gradually moving westward towards Corsica, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, and Sicily, as well as on the European mainland in Genoa and Marseilles. During the Seleucid Dynastic Wars (15763 BC), the Phoenician cities were mainly self-governed. Dated 700 BC, it is one of the oldest wrecks found in the Mediterranean. [118] The Phoenician sacred writings known to the ancients have been lost. Local Phoenician kings were allowed to remain in power and given the same rights as Persian satraps (governors), such as hereditary offices and minting their coins. [10], The recovery of the Mediterranean economy can be credited to Phoenician mariners and merchants, who re-established long-distance trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 10th century BC. In their cities by the sea, the air and soil were damp, and papyrus and leather moldered and rotted away. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. "Young Phoenicians" and the Quest for a Lebanese Language - JSTOR A team of biologists at Lebanese American University estimates that 1 in 17 persons around the Mediterranean carries genetic markers distinctive to the ancient Phoenician people who resided in what is now Lebanon. : . The Cippi of Melqart, a bilingual inscription in Ancient Greek and Carthaginian discovered in Malta in 1694, was the key which allowed French scholar Jean-Jacques Barthlemy to decipher and reconstruct the alphabet in 1758. The Phoenicians were long considered a lost civilization due to the lack of indigenous written records, and only since the mid-20th century have historians and archaeologists been able to reveal a complex and influential civilization. [citation needed], The Phoenicians were possibly the first to introduce the bireme, around 700 BC. But is it enough to split the whole identity? The great Greek thinkers are called Phoenicians. t "year" for earlier */sant/.[30]. Their expansive and enduring trade network is credited with laying the foundations of an economically and culturally cohesive Mediterranean, which would be continued by the Greeks and especially the Romans.[44]. [72] Archaeological research suggests that the Minoans gradually imported Near Eastern goods, artistic styles, and customs from other cultures via the Phoenicians. [62] When the Macedonians sought to appoint a new king over Sidon, the citizens nominated their candidate.[62]. In those records, it means "crimson" or "palm tree" and does not denote a group of people. However, by the early Iron Age (roughly 1300 BC), they had emerged as distinct people. The capital is Beirut. The case endings in general must have been lost between the 9th century BC and the 7th century BC: the personal name rendered in Akkadian as ma-ti-nu-ba-a-li "Gift of Baal", with the case endings -u and -i, was written ma-ta-an-baa-al (likely Phoenician spelling *) two centuries later. Stressed Proto-Semitic /a/ became Tiberian Hebrew // (/a/ in other traditions), but Phoenician /o/. The Phoenicians were not a nation in the political sense. Starting as early as 15th century BC, Phoenician leaders were "advised by councils or assemblies which gradually took greater power". The latest study led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England and in collaboration with universities from around the world, including Lebanon, Switzerland, and New Zealand, proves that most of the Lebanese ancestry is Phoenician.. The imperfect or prefix-conjugation, which expresses the present and future tense (and which is not distinguishable from the descendant of the Proto-Semitic jussive expressing wishes), is exemplified below, again with the root p--l. The current was elaborated by an early twentieth-century group of young Francophone philo-Phoenicians - mainly Lebanese Christians - who went by the sobriquet Les Jeunes Phniciens - the "Young Phoenicians."2 In short, these latter-day Canaanites viewed them-selves and the modern Lebanese as a singular, unique group, descendants of the Canaanite. [1] It constitutes identification of the Lebanese people with the ancient Phoenicians . Carthage would grow into a multi-ethnic empire spanning North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, the Balearic Islands, and southern Iberia, but would ultimately be destroyed by Rome in the Punic Wars (264146 BC) before being rebuilt as a Roman city. The lead researcher commented, "Whether you take a Christian village in the north of Lebanon or a Muslim village in the south, the DNA make-up of its residents is likely to be identical . Roane Tells Black Philadelphia's History from the Margins, Cash Reparations to Japanese Internees Helped Rebuild Autonomy and Dignity, New College Visiting Prof. Out of JobRufo's Public Remarks Suggest Politics the Motive, Recovering the Story of the Empress Messalina After a Roman Cancellation. In fact, all Lebanese have broadly similar sets of genetic markers. They argue that Arabization merely represented a shift to the Arabic language as the vernacular of the Lebanese people, and that, according to them, no actual shift of ethnic identity, much less ancestral origins, occurred. The ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet that is still in irregular use by modern Berber groups such as the Tuareg is known by the native name Tifinagh, possibly a derived form of a cognate of the name "Punic". Assyrian tribute records from the Phoenicians include "garments of brightly colored stuff" that most likely included Tyrian purple. [10] In the east of the Mediterranean region, the language was in use as late as the 1st century BC,[11] when it seems to have gone extinct there. The definite article was /ha-/, and the first consonant of the following word was doubled. Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A story The King was considered a representative of the gods and carried many obligations and duties concerning religious processions and rituals. In addition, according to some research, the same written forms of the enclitics that are attested after vowels are also found after a singular noun in what must have been the genitive case (which ended in /-i/, whereas the plural version ended in /-/). Their pronunciation can then be reconstructed somewhat differently: first-person singular /-iya()/ y, third-person singular masculine and feminine /-iyu()/ y and /-iya()/ y. A third practice reported in the literature is the use of the consonantal letters for vowels in the same way as had occurred in the original adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet to Greek and Latin, which was apparently still transparent to Punic writers: h for [e] and 'lep for [a].[18]. The team also found that one third of Lebanese have the markers for Phoenician descent, and that these are spread evenly through the population, among both Christians and Muslims. Wine played an important part in Phoenician religion, serving as the principal beverage for offerings and sacrifice. Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just In the study, published in American Journal of Human Genetics, scientists managed. Fifty amphorae, used to contain wine and oil, were scattered nearby.[91][92][93]. [54], The Phoenician area was later divided into four vassal kingdomsSidon, Tyre, Arwad, and Bybloswhich were allowed considerable autonomy. [16] The Phoenicians established colonies and trading posts across the Mediterranean; Carthage, a settlement in northwest Africa, became a major civilization in its own right in the seventh century BC. "A Sequence of Vowel Shifts in Phoenician and Other Languages. P.105 ff. 2009. They had some voice in the popular assemblies that began to emerge in some city-states. [citation needed], The Phoenicians established vineyards and wineries in their colonies in North Africa, Sicily, France, and Spain,[85] and may have taught winemaking to some of their trading partners. Phoenician art was largely centered on ornamental objects, particularly jewelry, pottery, glassware, and reliefs. Ugaritische Grammatik, Josef Tropper P.73-80. "The Course of History." Canaanites are a group of ancient Semitic-speaking peoples that emerged in the Levant in at least the third millennium BC. It is possible that Punic may have survived the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in some small isolated area: the geographer al-Bakri describes a people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in the city of Sirte in rural Ifriqiya, a region in which spoken Punic survived well past its written use. . Living Descendants of Biblical Canaanites Identified Via DNA [48][pageneeded] The city's name in Punic, Qart-adat (.mw-parser-output .script-phoenician{font-family:"ALPHABETUM Unicode","MPH 2B Damase",Aegean,Code2001,"Noto Sans Phoenician",FreeSans,"Segoe UI Historic",sans-serif} ), means "New City". P.3. It was written h but in late Punic also and because of the weakening and coalescence of the gutturals. Genetic study suggests present-day Lebanese descend from biblical [62] In the sixth century BC, during the period of Babylonian rule, Tyre briefly adopted a system of government consisting of a pair of judges with authority roughly equivalent to the Roman consul, known as sufetes (shophets), who were chosen from the most powerful noble families and served short terms. Their propensity for seafaring brought them into contact with numerous other civilizations. | History Today", "The Phoenicians and the Formation of the Western World", The Phoenicians and the Formation of the Western World, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm, https://www.britannica.com/place/Phoenicia, The Phoenician Inscriptions of the Cyprus Museum, "Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ", "Proto-Canaanite, Archaic Greek, and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell Fakhariyah Statue", "Tylos and Tyre. Their name is derived from their main export: a rare purple dye. Historians have determined a clear line of succession over centuries for some city-states, notably Byblos and Tyre. [111] Phoenician artisans were known for their skill with wood, ivory, bronze, and textiles. The Phoenicians appear to have weathered the crisis relatively well, emerging as a distinct and organized civilization in 1230 BC. Men could often deflect punishment to their wives, children, or slaves, even having them serve their sentence in their place. ", Schmitz, Philip C. "Phoenician-Punic Grammar and Lexicography in the New Millennium. 3rd fem. Some key surviving inscriptions of Phoenician are: Since bilingual tablets with inscriptions in both Etruscan and Phoenician dating from around 500 BC were found in 1964, more Etruscan has been deciphered through comparison to the more fully understood Phoenician. [19][20] The Phoenicians are also credited with innovations in shipbuilding, navigation, industry, agriculture, and government. Despite claims by various partisans of Lebanese nationalism to enlist the Phoenicians as their ancient progenitor, the Phoenicians never existed as a self-conscious community, let alone a nascent nation. In modern times, the language was first decoded by Jean-Jacques Barthlemy in 1758, who noted that the name "Phoenician" was first given to the language by Samuel Bochart in his Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan.[3][4]. Phoenician and Punic Morphology. The imperative endings were presumably /-/, /-/ and /-/[47] for the second-person singular masculine, second-person singular feminine and second-person plural masculine respectively, but all three forms surface in the orthography as /puul/ pl: -. They often relied upon senior officials from the noble and merchant classes; the priesthood was a distinct class, usually of royal lineage or leading merchant families. . Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. The Phoenician influence was visible in the "orientalization" of Greek cultural and artistic conventions. However, by the tenth century BC, Tyre rose to become the most powerful city. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts. Phoenicianism is based on the idea that Lebanon is unique in the Middle East for its location, people, and mission, and therefore should not be bound in any arrangement to neighboring countries, which are seen as inferior. If the Phoenicians had an endonym to denote the land overall, some scholars believe that they would have used "Canaan" and therefore referred to themselves as "Canaanites". They also lacked the territory and agricultural base to support a population large enough to raise an army of conquest. [27] The word is already attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B from the 2nd millennium BC, as po-ni-ki-jo. The chief cities of Phoenicia (excluding colonies) included Byblos, Sidon, Tyre . Paradoxically, Lebanese nationalists also speak about the Lebanese people in racial terms, claiming that the Lebanese are "pure" descendants of the Phoenician peoples, whom they view as separate from the ancient residents of the region, including ironically the Canaanites. Although they rarely had political power, women took part in community affairs. Furthermore, that all this happened centuries before the Arab-Islamic Conquest.[8]. w /-w/), h /-aha()/ for the feminine singular and hm /-hum(ma)/ for the masculine plural. [88] The first example of admiralty law also appears in the Levant. They are sometimes found in forms extended through the addition of -n or -t. Other prepositions are not like that: l "upon", . d "until", r "after", tt "under", , b(y)n "between". Phoenicia | Definition, Location, History, Religion, & Language The Phoenicians kept records of their rulers in tomb inscriptions, which are among the few primary sources still available. Like for other Semitic languages, Phoenician verbs have different "verbal patterns" or "stems", expressing manner of action, level of transitivity and voice. [5] It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until the mid-11th century BC, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads, and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC. [32], As is typical for the Semitic languages, Phoenician words are usually built around consonantal roots and vowel changes are used extensively to express morphological distinctions. PHOENICIANISM. Late Punic epigraphy. [111] The Iliad mentions the embroidered robes of Priams wife, Hecabe, as "the work of Sidonian women" and describes a mixing bowl of chased silver as "a masterpiece of Sidonian craftsmanship. Latin, the language of the soldiers and administrators, in turn fell before Greek, the language of letters of the eastern Mediterranean, by the 5th century ce. [47] As warfare was rare among the most mercantile Phoenicians, the army's commander was generally responsible for ensuring the defense and security of the city-state and its hinterlands. Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A - PLOS 2007. Few colonies had more than 1,000 inhabitants; only Carthage and some nearby settlements in the western Mediterranean would grow larger. The Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today - they created the . The wine trade with Egypt is vividly documented by shipwrecks discovered in 1997 in the open sea 50 kilometres (30mi) west of Ascalon, Israel. These enclitic forms vary between the dialects. Phoenicia was one of the first areas to be conquered by Alexander the Great during his military campaigns across western Asia. [1] It constitutes identification of the Lebanese people with the ancient Phoenicians. [citation needed] During the Bronze Age, they developed the keel. Tyre, Byblos, and Sidon all rebelled against Assyrian rule. During the rule of the priest Ithobaal (887856 BC), Tyre expanded its territory as far north as Beirut and into part of Cyprus; this unusual act of aggression was the closest the Phoenicians ever came to forming a unitary territorial state. Around 1050 BC,[36] the Phoenicians developed a script for writing their own language. [119], Several Canaanite practices are alleged in ancient sources and mentioned by scholars, such as temple prostitution[120] and child sacrifice. However, it is known that the governor was responsible for collecting taxes, implementing decrees, supervising judges, and ensuring the administration of law and justice. Such festival groups may also have composed the voting cohort for selecting members of the city-state's Assembly. While the traditional sound values are [] for , [s] for s, [z] for z, and [s] for ,[22] recent scholarship argues that was [s], s was [ts], z was [dz], and was [ts], as transcribed in the consonant table above. The written forms and the reconstructed pronunciations of the personal pronouns are as follows:[36][37], Singular: [7], Proponents of Phoenician continuity among Maronite Christians point out that a Phoenician identity, including the worship of pre-Christian Phoenician gods such as El, Baal, Astarte and Adon was still in evidence until the mid 6th century AD in Roman Phoenice, and was only gradually replaced by Christianity during the 4th and 5th centuries AD. While Arabness is not an ethnicity but a cultural identity, some ardent Arab nationalists, in Lebanon and elsewhere, talk about Arabness in racial and ethnic terms to elevate the descendants of Muhammad. [41], The first known account of the Phoenicians relates to the conquests of Pharaoh Thutmose III (14791425 BC). [19][20]: The system reflected in the abjad above is the product of several mergers. In the archaic Byblian dialect, the third person forms are h and w /-/ for the masculine singular (a.V. In the annals of the greatest Egyptian conqueror, Thutmose III (reigned 1479-26 bce ), the coastal plain of Lebanon, called Djahy, is described as rich with fruit, wine, and grain. [30][35] /n/ was also assimilated to following consonants: e.g. In. Middle Eastern Studies provides the most up-to-date academic research on the history and politics of the Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa as well as on Turkey, Iran and Israel, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [56] However, it is likely that arabization of the Punics was facilitated by their language belonging to the same group (both being Semitic languages) as that of the conquerors and thus having many grammatical and lexical similarities. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. However, the specifics of the role, or city defense, are unknown. They ascribe Phoenicianism to sectarian influences on Lebanese culture and the attempt by Lebanese Maronites to distance themselves from Arab culture and traditions. [44] Composite numerals are formed with w- "and", e.g. The old Semitic jussive, which originally differed slightly from the prefix conjugation, is no longer possible to separate from it in Phoenician with the present data. Professional historians have a consensus summed up by Lebanon's most prominent historian, Kamal Salibi: "between ancient Phoenicia and the Lebanon of medieval and modern times, there is no demonstrable historical connection". [11], Lebanese academic As'ad AbuKhalil writes that:[12], Phoenician achievements are exaggerated to the point that the Greek and Roman civilizations are perceived as inferior to the "Lebanese Phoenician civilization.". The area in which Phoenician was spoken includes the northern Levant and, at least as a prestige language, Anatolia, specifically the areas now including Syria, Lebanon, Western Galilee, parts of Cyprus and some adjacent areas of Turkey. [29] That must represent a borrowing into Punic. At least in its earlier stages, Phoenician society was highly stratified and predominantly monarchical. [70], In a 2020 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers have shown that there is substantial genetic continuity in Lebanon since the Bronze Age interrupted by three significant admixture events during the Iron Age, Hellenistic, and Ottoman period, each contributing 311 percent of non-local ancestry to the admixed population. [82] The Phoenicians established a second production center for the dye in Mogador, in present-day Morocco.
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