50 Fun Facts About Phoenicia

The Phoenicians grew rich on Tyrian purple, a dye extracted from the glands of which animals?

Sea snails gave so little dye that twelve thousand of them yielded only enough to colour the trim of a single garment. That scarcity made purple cloth a badge of rank.

Which Phoenician princess, carried off by Zeus disguised as a bull, is thought to have given a continent its name?

Europa was carried across the sea to Crete, where she became the island's first queen and the mother of King Minos.

According to Herodotus, Phoenician sailors hired by Egypt's Pharaoh Necho II spent three years doing what?

Sailing around Africa put the sun on the crew's right-hand side, a detail Herodotus refused to believe. It is exactly what sailors see south of the Equator.

Which general from the Phoenician colony of Carthage marched war elephants over the Alps to invade Italy?

Hannibal left Iberia with 37 elephants, and about 30 of them survived the march to fight in his first major victory in Italy.

Which conqueror captured the Phoenician island city of Tyre by building a causeway out to its walls?

Alexander the Great needed seven months to take the city, and sand piling up against his causeway has joined the old island to the mainland ever since.

Which Phoenician princess married King Ahab of Israel, her name later becoming a byword for a scheming woman?

Jezebel was the daughter of Ithobaal I, king of Tyre, and her feud with the prophet Elijah made her one of scripture's great villains.

The Roman writer Pliny claimed Phoenician traders were the first to stumble upon the making of which material?

Glass became a Phoenician speciality: they were antiquity's leading source of glassware, shipping flasks and beads across the Mediterranean.

The Phoenician home cities of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos all lie on the coast of which modern country?

Lebanon was the Phoenician heartland, yet its people never used that name for themselves: 'Phoenicia' was a label the Greeks gave them.

King Hiram of Tyre sent timber and craftsmen to help which Israelite king build the Temple in Jerusalem?

Solomon received architects, workmen, timber and gold from Hiram for the Temple, and scripture says both kings grew rich trading together.

Which tree gave Phoenicia its most lucrative early export and now appears on a Middle Eastern national flag?

Cedar was Phoenicia's one great natural resource, and neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia had adequate wood of their own, so both paid handsomely for the logs.

Rome's three wars with Carthage carry which name, from a Latin word recalling the city's Phoenician roots?

Punic comes from the Latin Punicus, meaning Carthaginian, a reminder that Rome's great rival had been founded by Phoenician settlers.

Phoenician traders sailed out beyond the Pillars of Hercules; what is that sea gateway called today?

The Strait of Gibraltar was only the start: beyond it the Phoenician merchant fleet built a series of bases along the Atlantic coast, beginning with Lixus.

In legend, which queen fled Tyre to found Carthage and later fell in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas?

Dido was also known as Elissa; in the tale she fled Tyre after her brother, King Pygmalion, had her husband murdered for his hidden gold.

Legend says Carthage's founding queen, offered only the land one object could cover, cut what into thin strips?

An oxhide cut into fine strips was long enough to ring a whole hill, which became the citadel called Byrsa, the Greek word for 'hide'.

The Greeks reshaped the consonant-only Phoenician alphabet by turning some of its letters into signs for what?

Vowels made Greek the earliest known alphabetic script to write every kind of sound systematically; the Phoenician throat consonant aleph became the Greek alpha.

The ruins of Carthage, the greatest Phoenician colony, sit in the suburbs of which modern country's capital?

Tunisia's capital, Tunis, rose to power in the medieval period, and the old Phoenician site later developed into one of its coastal suburbs.

Which Phoenician storm god, whose name means 'lord', had 450 prophets face Elijah on Mount Carmel?

Baal began as a title: scholars think it stood in for the storm god Hadad's true name, which came to be seen as too holy to speak aloud.

Which drink did Phoenician traders spread around the Mediterranean, shipping it in clay jars called amphorae?

Wine followed the Phoenicians west: the ancient Iberians began producing it from local grape varieties only after encountering them.

By the fourth century AD, Roman law allowed only which person to wear cloth dyed with Tyrian purple?

The emperor became so tied to the colour that 'donning the purple' came to mean taking the throne.

Hanno the Navigator of Carthage reported an island of hairy, hostile people whose name now belongs to which apes?

Gorillas were named in 1847, when the newly described ape was called after the Gorillai that Hanno's interpreters had pointed out on his Atlantic voyage.

Which Spanish port, founded by Phoenician traders as Gadir, ranks among the oldest cities of the West?

Cádiz keeps its Phoenician name: Gadir meant 'wall' or 'stronghold', and the same word lies behind the Moroccan city of Agadir.

The letter A descends from the Phoenician aleph, a sign that began as a drawing of which animal's head?

An ox gave the letter its name as well as its shape: aleph was the West Semitic word for the animal, and the Greeks later turned the sign into alpha.

The Phoenician letter bet, ancestor of our B, took its name from the word for which everyday thing?

A house is what bet meant, and the Greeks, who called the letter beta, joined it to alpha to give us the word 'alphabet'.

Phoenician writing settled on one fixed direction, the one Hebrew and Arabic still follow; which way did it run?

Right to left it ran, in horizontal lines built from just 22 letters, whereas the older scripts it grew from could run in several directions.

Which Roman senator is said to have ended every speech, whatever its subject, by demanding that Carthage be destroyed?

Cato the Elder had visited Carthage on a senatorial embassy and was shocked by its wealth, which he considered dangerous for Rome.

Zeno of Citium, a philosopher many historians regard as Phoenician, founded which school of thought in Athens?

Stoicism was taught by Zeno in Athens from about 300 BC; his birthplace, Citium, had both Phoenician and Greek inhabitants.

Which Greek poet praised the embroidered robes and a silver bowl made by the craftspeople of Phoenician Sidon?

Homer treats Sidonian work as the finest available in the Iliad, where the robes of Troy's queen and a prized mixing bowl are both credited to Sidon.

Greek legend credits which Phoenician prince, founder of Thebes, with bringing the alphabet to Greece?

Cadmus was credited by Herodotus with introducing Phoenician letters to the Greeks, and the acropolis of Thebes was named the Cadmeia in his honour.

What did Qart-hadasht, the Phoenician name behind the word Carthage, mean in the settlers' own language?

New City it was, yet Carthage went on sending annual tribute to Tyre, its mother city, for some time after its independence.

Phoenician crews supplied the bulk of which power's fleet in its wars against the Greeks, including Salamis?

Persia's king Xerxes blamed his defeat at Salamis on Phoenician cowardice and incompetence, and punished the crews harshly.

Greeks named which constellation, home of the North Star, 'Phoenician' after the sailors who steered by it?

Ursa Minor was the Phoenicians' guide at sea, and an ancient tradition has the philosopher Thales of Miletus measuring its stars for Greek use.

Which Phoenician goddess, linked with war and beauty, did the Greeks sometimes equate with their own Aphrodite?

Astarte was tied to war, royal power and beauty, and her symbol was the lion.

Which Spanish holiday island began as a Phoenician port, with remains of the first settlement at Sa Caleta?

Ibiza's port was founded by Phoenician settlers in 654 BC, and the island later came under the control of Carthage.

Which Sicilian city began as a small Phoenician settlement and later became a possession of Carthage?

Palermo was one of the three main Phoenician colonies on Sicily, along with Motya and Soluntum, and its settlers knew it as Ziz.

The letter O descends from the Phoenician ayin, a circular sign named after which part of the body?

The eye is what the round sign clearly pictured: ayin was the Semitic word for it, and the Greeks reused the circle for their own letter O.

Phoenician workshops painted and sold which unusual luxury objects to wealthy clients around the Mediterranean?

Ostrich eggs, finely detailed and painted, sat in a luxury range that also included carved clam shells, sculpted amber and ivory plaques.

The Phoenicians were possibly the first to build the bireme, a war galley distinguished by which feature?

Two rows of oars on each side drive the warship carved on a relief from Nineveh of about 700 BC, which shows the fleet of Tyre leaving port.

Which patron god of Tyre, honoured across the Phoenician colonies, did the Greeks identify with Heracles?

Melqart may have been central to the founding myths of many Phoenician settlements, and several tales of Heracles' exploits may trace back to him.

Arwad, a walled Phoenician island city, is today the only inhabited island belonging to which country?

Syria's lone inhabited island marked the northern end of the Phoenician cultural core, which stretched south from Arwad to Mount Carmel.

Which Phoenician colony, namesake of a city in New York State, was traditionally founded before nearby Carthage?

Utica is traditionally considered the first Phoenician colony in its region, and it kept its political and economic autonomy from its powerful neighbour until about 540 BC.

Carthage was headed by a pair of annually elected sufetes, a Phoenician title with which literal meaning?

Judges is the meaning the title shares with the Hebrew word for Israel's early tribal leaders, and the sufetes worked much like a pair of Roman consuls.

Which Babylonian king, conqueror of Jerusalem, is traditionally said to have besieged Tyre for thirteen years?

Nebuchadnezzar's thirteen-year siege rests on one ancient writer: Josephus is the only source to say how long it lasted.

The name of Tyre, built on an offshore island, is thought to come from a Semitic word meaning what?

Rock fits the place: the original town stood on a rocky formation off the coast, and the present city still covers a large part of that island.

Egyptian records call Phoenicia the land of the fenekhu, a word for which kind of craftsmen?

Carpenters is what fenekhu meant in Egyptian, a fitting label for a coast at the centre of the Levant's lumber trade.

A Phoenician trading ship that sank in the seventh century BC lies off Gozo in which country?

Malta's wreck lies 110 metres down off Gozo and was found by a sonar survey in 2007.

The cothon, found across the Phoenician world and best known from Carthage, was what kind of structure?

An artificial harbour gave ships a protected inner basin; at Carthage a rectangular merchant dock led to a second one reserved for military use.

The letter M descends from the Phoenician mem, a wavy sign named after which substance?

Water was the meaning of mem in West Semitic, and the wavy sign is believed to derive from the Egyptian hieroglyph for it.

The Egyptian-made sarcophagus of Sidon's king Eshmunazar II, with its long Phoenician inscription, is in which museum?

The Louvre's sarcophagus was likely carved in Egypt and captured as booty by the Sidonians during Cambyses II's conquest of that country in 525 BC.

The Roman Senate paid to translate a 28-book manual by the Carthaginian writer Mago on which subject?

Farming was a Carthaginian strength, the city being the granary of the central Mediterranean, and Mago's manual was uniquely retrieved and brought to Rome.

Phoenician shipwrights pioneered which pegged woodworking joint to fasten the planks of a seagoing hull?

Mortise and tenon joints locked with dowels spread from the Levant across the Mediterranean and went on to influence Greek and Roman shipbuilding.