Phoenicia (
Phoenician 
, Canaan or Kana'an, nonstandardly,
Phenicia; pronounced
/f?'n??i?/[2],
Greek F?????? Phoiníke,
Latin Phœnicia) was an ancient
civilization centered in the north of ancient
Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day
Lebanon, extending to parts of
Israel,
Syria and
Palestine. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising
maritime trading culture that spread across the
Mediterranean during the period 1550 BCE to 300 BCE. Though ancient boundaries of such city-centered cultures fluctuated, the city of
Tyre seems to have been the southernmost.
Sarepta (modern day Sarafand) between
Sidon and Tyre, is the most thoroughly excavated city of the Phoenician homeland. The Phoenicians often traded by means of a
galley, a man-powered sailing vessel and are credited with the invention of the
bireme.
[3]It is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single ethnicity. Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to ancient Greece. Each city-state was an independent unit politically, although they could come into conflict, be dominated by another city-state, or collaborate in leagues or alliances. Tyre and Sidon were the most powerful of the Phoenician states in the Levant, but were not as powerful as Tyre's colony Carthage.[citation needed]
The Phoenicians were also the first state-level society to make extensive use of the alphabet, and the Canaanite-Phoenician alphabet is generally believed to be the ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. Phoenicians spoke the Phoenician language, which belongs to the group of Canaanite languages in the Semitic language family. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to North Africa and Europe where it was adopted by the Greeks, who later passed it on to the Romans and Etruscans.[4] In addition to their many inscriptions, there were a considerable number of other types of written sources left by the Phoenicians, which have not survived. Evangelical Preparation by Eusebius of Caesarea quotes extensively from Philo of Byblos and Sanchuniathon.
The question of the Phoenicians' origin persists. Archaeologists have pursued the origin of the Phoenicians for generations, basing their analyses on excavated sites, the remains of material culture, contemporary texts set into contemporary contexts, as well as linguistics. In some cases, the debate is characterized by modern cultural agendas. Ultimately, the origins of the Phoenicians are still unclear where they came from and just when (or if) they arrived, and under what circumstances, are all still energetically disputed.
