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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 the North African ones.
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 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.[3] In addition to their many inscriptions, the Phoenicians wrote many books, which have not survived. Evangelical Preparation by Eusebius of Caesarea quotes extensively from Philo of Byblos and Sanchuniathon.
The name Phoenician, through Latin punicus, comes from Greek phoînix, often suggested as "Tyrian purple, crimson; murex" (from phoinos "blood red"[4]). Professor Michael Astour argues that phoînix is in fact not Greek and not from phoinos, but that it is a West Semitic loanword sourced probably "among the very people who were famous as crimson and purple dyers and whom the Greeks called Phoinikes".[5]
