Name: ___________________________________________________________________Period: __________ Date: __________
Phoenicians
Standard: Analyze the origins, structures, and interactions of complex societies in the ancient Eastern
Mediterranean from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE.
Essential Question: What were the origins, structures, and interactions of complex societies in the ancient
Eastern Mediterranean from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE?
Describe early trading networks in the Eastern Mediterranean; include the impact Phoenicians had on
the Mediterranean World.
Location:
Accomplishments:
City-States:
Trade Networks:
Explain the development and importance of writing; include cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and the
Phoenician alphabet.
Phoenician Alphabet
Development:
Importance:
Phoenicians
Standard: Analyze the origins, structures, and interactions of complex societies in the ancient Eastern
Mediterranean from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE.
Essential Question: What were the origins, structures, and interactions of complex societies in the ancient
Eastern Mediterranean from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE?
Describe early trading networks in the Eastern Mediterranean; include the impact Phoenicians had on
the Mediterranean World.
Location:
 modern Lebanon
 set up colonies along North Africa, Spain, Sicily
& Sardinia
City-States:
 never unified
 had several wealthy city-states
 spaced ports every thirty miles (the length you
could sail in a day)
 hard to take over - if one city-state was attacked
or taken over, the other city-states could still live
on
 Carthage of North Africa
o greatest colony
o set-up by the people of Tyre
o 814 BCE
Accomplishments:
 development of city-states
 established large trade networks
 developed writing as a way of recording
transactions clearly and quickly
Trade Networks:
 traded what they retrieved from other lands
 ex. wine, weapons, precious metals, ivory and
slaves
 important trade centers
 Byblos that traded papyrus
 Tyre that produced and traded red-purple dye
 Sidon produced and traded red-purple dye
 remarkable at ship building and seafarers
 controlled trade throughout the Mediterranean
Sea and into the Atlantic Ocean
 connected cultures throughout the region
 first Mediterranean people to go out past the
Strait of Gibraltar
Explain the development and importance of writing; include cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and the
Phoenician alphabet.
Phoenician Alphabet
Development:
 developed by the Phoenicians
 form of phonetics = used symbols to represent
sounds
Importance:
 introduced writing systems to trade partners
 influenced the Greeks to use this system of
writing as well