Phoenician texts keep the title Baal Zaphon / Baal-zephon.
That is the same seafarer role as Phoenician Baal Zaphon.
Phoenician seafarers added rituals for safe winds before voyages.
Kothar-wa-Khasis builds Baal’s house “in the midst of the high places of Sapanu.” The Phoenician title Baal Zaphon means “Baal of (Mount) Zaphon / the North.” It covers storm, fertility, and seafaring protection.
In Phoenician belief systems, the significance of high mountains like Hermon was related to their use as places of ascent.
The Phoenicians often venerated deities such as Baal, and high places like Hermon were dedicated to various deities for ritual observances, including sacrifices and oracular rites.
The Phoenicians and Canaanites associated Hermon with Baal, a major deity in their pantheon.
Atlantis may have been a fabulous land, but the Phoenicians or Canaanites had a knowledge of a country beyond the sea.
The Phoenician sailors began to strike out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
He thinks the Chivim of Votan were the Hivim, or Givim, who were descended of Heth, son of Canaan, Phœnicians; they were the builders of Accaron, Azotus, Ascalon, and Gaza.
There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was the Bel of the Phœnicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and Phœnicians.
Not alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phœnicians was drawn from the same source.
This connects the Phœnicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.
The Phœnicians tell us, "Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?)." Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis.
In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and "circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing." It would thus appear that this singular rite, practised as we have seen by the Atlantidæ of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.
This not only connects the Phœnicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Phœnicians.
There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phœnicians.
We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Phœnicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Phœnicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Phœnicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Phœnicians.
This would show that the first Phœnician came long after this line of the kings or gods, and that he was a foreigner, as compared with them; and, therefore, that it could not have been the Phœnicians proper who made the several inventions narrated by Sanchoniathon, but some other race, from whom the Phœnicians might have been descended.
There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the Phœnicians migrated from the shores of the Erythræan Sea, and this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf; but there was a very old city of Erythia, in utter ruin in the time of Strabo, which was built in some ancient age, long before the founding of Gades, near the site of that town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain.
And this may have been the starting-point of the Phœnicians in their European migrations.
The Phœnicians, in common with the Indians, practised human sacrifices to a great extent; they worshipped fire and water, adopted the names of the animals whose skins they wore--that is to say, they had the totemic system--telegraphed by means of fires, poisoned their arrows, offered peace before beginning battle, and used drums.
The extent of country covered by the commerce of the Phœnicians represents to some degree the area of the old Atlantean Empire.
Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judæa was derived from the Phœnicians.
It would appear probable that, while other races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the Phœnicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Phœnician stock, and the people of America.
Upon the Syrian sea the people liveWho style themselves Phœnicians.
The Phœnicians were also sun-worshippers.
"According to the traditions of the Phœnicians, the Gardens of the Hesperides were in the remote west." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," p.
We shall show hereafter that the invention of gunpowder dates back to the days of the Phœnicians, and may have been derived by them from Atlantis.
The Adites worshipped the gods of the Phœnicians under names but slightly changed; "their religion was especially solar...
Bryant says, "Ad and Ada signify the first." The Persians called the first man "Ad-amah." "Adon" was one of the names of the Supreme God of the Phœnicians; from it was derived the name of the Greek god "Ad-onis." The Arv-ad of Genesis was the Ar-Ad of the Cushites; it is now known as Ru-Ad.
It has been customary to assume that the Bronze Age was due to the Phœnicians, but of late the highest authorities have taken issue with this opinion.
73) gives the following reasons why the Phœnicians could not have been the authors of the Bronze Age: First, the ornamentation is different.
In the next place, the form of burial is different in the Bronze Age from that of the Phœnicians.
"In the third place, the Phœnicians, so far as we know them, were well acquainted with the use of iron; in Homer we find the warriors already armed with iron weapons, and the tools used in preparing the materials for Solomon's Temple were of this metal."
383.) He says, "It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phœnicians--the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans--should have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phœnicians carried to the people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead.
If the civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phœnicians would have done as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal.
On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phœnicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the south-east."
"The Phœnicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the Scandinavian coasts.
The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with the use of iron as well as the Phœnicians, and it has already been seen that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch.
We must look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phœnicians in attempting to identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes.
It will be the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of Phœnicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before the discovery of iron.
We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing to prove that the Phœnicians were the first navigators.
If such a commerce really existed before the time of the Phœnicians, it would not be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended also to the people of the age of bronze in Switzerland.
For the merchants of the Bronze Age we must look beyond even the Tokhari, who were contemporaries of the Phœnicians.
And as this commerce could not, as we have seen, have been carried on by the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, or Phœnicians, because their civilizations flourished during the Iron Age, to which this age of bronze was anterior, where then are we to look for a great maritime and commercial people, who carried vast quantities of copper, tin, and bronze (unalloyed by the lead of the south of Europe) to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy?
We shall find, as we proceed, that the Phœnicians were unquestionably identified with Atlantis, and that it was probably from Atlantis they derived their god Baal, or Bel, or El, whose name crops out in the Bel of the Babylonians, the Elohim, and the Beelzebub of the Jews, and the Allah of the Arabians, And we find that this great deity, whose worship extended so widely among the Mediterranean races, was known and adored also upon the northern and western coasts of Europe.
If the bronze implements of Europe had been derived from the Phœnicians, Greeks, Etruscans, or Romans, the nearer we approached the site of those nations the greater should be the number of bronze weapons we would find; but the reverse is the case.
yet been obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form, until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phœnicians, Hebrews, and Cushites, but.
"According to the Phœnicians, the art of writing was invented by Taautus, or Taut, 'whom the Egyptians call Thouth,' and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thouth, or Thoth, otherwise called 'the first Hermes,' in which we clearly see that both the Phœnicians and Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence, and to an older nation, from which both peoples received it." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p.
The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon, shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phœnicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phœnician y (yod) into i (iota).
The letters, then, which we owe to the Phœnicians, are A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Z.
When the emblems--which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions, where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated--were placed in the hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans, and afterward the Phœnicians, men with whom time was valuable, the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it, as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.
Now it is known that the Phœnicians wrote from right to left, and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so did the Phœnicians slope their letters to the left.
We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our own day to the time of the Phœnicians, o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle.
Now where did the Phœnicians get it?
The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phœnicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then it passed into : the archaic Greek form is ; the later Greeks made , from which it passed into the present form, N.
The Carthaginian Phœnicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus, .
It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed to the Phœnicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for b.
It would appear as if both the Phœnicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another.
All this proves that the similarities in question did not come from Phœnicians having accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phœnician alphabet was formed.
The Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful commercial race, the Phœnicians, who were the merchants of the world fifteen hundred years before the time of Christ, were a part.
The name of the Phœnicians signified red. Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.
He groups the Assyrians, Phœnicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians, Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people of the Caucasus into one body, and designates them as "dark whites." The Himyarite Arabs, as I have shown, derived their name originally from their red color, and they were constantly depicted on the Egyptian monuments as red or light
The Barbarians who are alluded to by Homer and Thucydides were a race of ancient navigators and pirates called Cares, or Carians, who occupied the isles of Greece before the Pelasgi, and antedated the Phœnicians in the control of the sea.
The Phœnicians worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the other the injurious powers of the sun.
The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central Americans, Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful hereditary priesthood.
The Phœnicians believed in an evil spirit called Zebub; the Peruvians had a devil called Cupay.
The Phœnicians,
The legends of the Phœnicians, preserved by Sanchoniathon, tell us that Taautos, or Taut, was the inventor of the alphabet and of the art of writing.
We will see hereafter that the Hebrews and their Flood legend are closely connected with the Phœnicians, whose connection with Atlantis is established in many ways.
It refers altogether to the Mediterranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians.
And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the Aryans, the Phœnicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge;
The Phœnicians apparently were the first nation in the Eastern Hemisphere to use a phonetic alphabet, the characters being regarded as mere signs for sounds.
It would be natural to assume that the Egyptians were an early colony from Atlantis (as they actually were) and that they carried away with them the primitive type of writing which has thus left its traces on both[8] hemispheres, while the Phœnicians, who were a sea-going people, obtained and assimilated the later form of alphabet during their trading voyages with the people of the west.
Diodorus Siculus relates that the Phœnicians discovered "a large island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules several days' sail from the coast of Africa."
The early Etruscans, the Phœnicians, including the Carthaginians and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of this race, while the Basques of to-day have probably more of the Akkadian than of any other blood which flows in their veins.
The Atlantioi are tied to Mount Atlas or Phoenician colonies, and the Gorgones link to Perseus’ myth.
The Atlanteans are either an indigenous people dwelling about Mount Atlas in North Africa or are based on the Phoenician colonies of the region.
Is it more difficult to believe that the early Frisians, being hardy and intrepid marine adventurers, sailed to the Mediterranean, and even proceeded farther, than that the Phœnicians sailed to England for tin, and to the Baltic for amber?
They attribute the introduction of it to Kadmus, a Phenician.
The names of their oldest letters, from Alpha to Tau, agree so exactly with the names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Phenician will have been nearly connected, that we cannot doubt that the Hebrew was the origin of the Phenician.
But the form of their letters differs so entirely from that of the Phenician and Hebrew writing, that in that particular no connection can be thought of between them.
The name Kadmus comes too near the word Kadhemar for us not to believe that Kadmus simply meant a Phenician.
His name was Teunis, called familiarly by his followers Neef Teunis, or Cousin Teunis, who had chosen the Mediterranean as the destination of his expeditions, and must have been deified by the Tyrians at the time when the Phenician navigators began to extend their voyages so remarkably, sailing to Friesland in order to obtain British tin, northern iron, and amber from the Baltic, about 2000 years before Christ.
The voyage came to an end without any advantage, because the Joniers and the Phœnicians were always quarrelling, so that Nearchus himself could not keep them in order.
When we were at a cable and a half distance from them the Phœnicians began to shoot, but Friso did not reply till the first arrow fell six fathoms from his ship.
The Phœnicians (Puniers or Carthaginians) are a bastard race of the blood of Frya, Finda, and Lyda.
The Romans, moreover, live at enmity with the Phœnicians; and their priests, who wish to assume the sole government of the world, cannot bear the sight of the Gauls.
First they took from the Phoenicians Marseilles—then all the countries lying to the south, the west, and the north, as well as the southern part of Britain—and they have always driven away the Phœnician priests, that is the Gauls, of whom thousands have sought refuge in North Britain.
The Phoenician history: the Phoenician sea trade that the book ties to Neef Teunis and Thyrhisburgt.
Europa, a Phoenician princess, was abducted by Zeus, and their son, Minos, became the progenitor of the Minoan civilization.
The speaker highlights the linguistic and cultural adaptations that took place as the Philistines settled in Canaan, likely adopting the local language of Phoenician.
These peoples, including the Philistines, likely had interactions with the Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, and other Mediterranean civilizations, suggesting that their arrival in Canaan was part of a broader network of trade and cultural exchange.
He suggests that a maritime culture, potentially similar to the Minoans or Phoenicians, could have navigated between Europe and these islands, making the hypothesis of Atlantis plausible within the bounds of Plato's description.
Phoenicians in the Levant View Map
The Phoenicians are often thought to be a somewhat mysterious people, long held to be a lost civilization due to the lack of Phoenician written sources.
The Phoenicians are primarily placed in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
Bronze Age (circa 3000–1200 BCE): The Phoenicians first became prominent during the late Bronze Age.
Iron Age (circa 1200–539 BCE): The Phoenician civilization reached its height during the early to mid-Iron Age.
Usually noted for their theocratic state—a state with a primarily maritime empire—the Phoenicians built an expansive and complex trading network that stretched the length of the Mediterranean Sea.
However, there is far more to the Phoenicians than their mercantile ability.
Phoenician craftsmen produced outstanding works, including exemplary glass products and the prestigious dye known as Tyrian purple, worn by elites throughout the ancient world.
Perhaps most impressive of all is the Phoenician alphabet—the oldest known consonantal alphabet in the world.
The Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets all owe their existence to the Phoenicians, as their convenient and easily adapted alphabet was spread around the Mediterranean through their trading empire.
There is so much more to the Phoenicians than you might think.
Despite the relative lack of sources, their influence was enormous, their rise to power rapid and impressive, and the echoes of Phoenician civilization can even be seen today.
Hopefully, you will get some sense of this in today's video as we try to answer the question: Who were the Phoenicians?
The Phoenicians were Canaanites—the name given to a collection of Semitic-speaking civilizations clustered on the Mediterranean shores of the southern Levant during the second millennium BC.
The Phoenicians were most likely the successors of the Bronze Age Canaanites who dwelt in what is now southern Lebanon.
However, some historians believe that the Phoenicians may have immigrated to their lands in the Levant.
Herodotus, writing in the 4th century BC, asserted that the Phoenicians originated from the region of the Arabian Sea in the early third millennium BC.
Most scholars tend to the view that the Phoenicians were the result of millennia of population continuity in the Levant.
Phoenician culture most likely developed from the Ghassulian culture—a people typified by small settlements of agricultural peoples who migrated into the southern Levant from further north.
It is during the 15th century BC that the Phoenicians first truly enter the historical record.
During the reign of the conquering Pharaoh Thutmose III, the Phoenician cities of the Levant were brought under Egyptian control, along with all of Syria.
The Phoenician cities, the most important of which were Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos, came under Egyptian rule but were largely autonomous.
Phoenician cities grew wealthy from their constant trade with Egypt.
By 1200 BC, the Phoenicians had developed sophisticated shipbuilding techniques, producing large merchant vessels with robust mortise-and-tenon joints.
The Phoenician trading empire emerged in the 12th century BC after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, a period of political and social upheaval that saw the fall of major Mediterranean and Near Eastern powers.
With these empires weakening, the Phoenicians expanded their influence across the Mediterranean.
Phoenician society was organized around city-states, autonomous urban centers that controlled their surrounding territories.
Over time, councils and assemblies developed, leading some to consider Phoenician city-states as proto-democratic in nature.
The Phoenician economy was centered on trade.
The Phoenicians exported timber, glass, textiles, and, most famously, Tyrian purple—a luxury dye obtained from sea snails.
Phoenician religion was polytheistic and varied by city-state, with each city having its own chief deity and accompanying pantheon.
The Phoenicians practiced ritual sacrifices and offerings, but there is debate over whether they engaged in human sacrifice.
Phoenician art was influenced by neighboring cultures, including Egyptian, Assyrian, and Northern Syrian styles.
Phoenician glassmaking was highly prized, and their purple dye was the pinnacle of their textile production.
The decline of the Phoenicians began in the 9th century BC when the Assyrian Empire forced them into vassalage.
The Phoenician cities continued to pay tribute to the Assyrians and, later, the Babylonians, but their autonomy gradually diminished.
Phoenician independence ended completely in the 4th century BC when Alexander the Great besieged and destroyed Tyre.
Despite a brief resurgence of Phoenician influence in the west through Carthage, the Phoenician city-states in the Levant were absorbed into the Roman Empire by the 1st century BC.
Given his focus on ethnography and geography, he might have included brief observations about the inhabitants—perhaps their reputation as traders or seafarers, which would align with the later Greek understanding of the Phoenicians.
Phoenician Coins: Attested on 2nd century BC Phoenician coins from Berytus.
Description: The city of Tyre, a major Phoenician port, is prophesied in the Bible to be destroyed and sunk into the sea.
Summary: The Phoenicians were master seafarers and traders, spreading their alphabet and culture across the Mediterranean.
Sidonians: Inhabitants of Sidon, a principal Phoenician city, contemporaneous with the Israelites.
Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites: Phoenician tribes, contemporaneous with the Phoenicians and Israelites.
Tyre was a major Phoenician city-state and played a crucial role in the spread of Phoenician culture and commerce across the Mediterranean.
Phoenician Powerhouse: Tyre was one of the most powerful and influential city-states of the Phoenician civilization.
Its position made it a significant player in regional trade and a major center of the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician cosmogony describes the universe's origin from chaotic gas, leading to the birth of gods and the creation of the sun, moon, and stars.
Fragment 2: Phoenician History Book 1 PE 1.9.30-10.42)
After setting out these definitions in his preface, Philo next begins his interpretation of Sanchuniathon and he presents the Phoenician theology roughly as follows:
“For,” he says, “they considered him, the lord of heaven, to be the only god and called him Beelsamen, which is ‘Lord of Heaven’ in Phoenician, Zeus in Greek.”
The Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite."
The Phoenicians call him Death and Pluto.
"When Thabion, the very first hierophant of the Phoenicians since the beginning of time, had interpreted all these things allegorically and had combined them with natural and cosmic phenomena, he transmitted them to the priests and to the prophets who led the rites.
Now Kronos, whom the Phoenicians call El, who was in their land and who was later divinized after his death as the star of Kronos, had an only son by a local bride named Anobret, and therefore they called him Ieoud.—Even now among the Phoenicians the only son is given this name.—When war’s gravest dangers gripped the land, Kronos dressed his son in royal attire, prepared an altar and sacrificed him.”
The same author, again dealing with the letters of the Phoenicians, translating from the works of Sanchuniathon, says such wondrous things about the creeping and venomous beasts, which certainly perform nothing beneficial for humans, but rather effect ruin and destruction for whomever they strike with deadly and cruel venom.
“So Taautos himself regarded as divine the nature of the serpent and snakes, as did the Phoenicians and Egyptians after him; for this animal, according to the tradition established by him, was fiery and the most filled with breath of all crawling things.
The Phoenicians call it Good Demon.
"Pherecydes too, took his materials from the Phoenicians and dealt with the divine attributes of the god he called Ophioneus (Snake-like) and with Ophionides, about whom we will have more to say.
The theology of the Phoenicians has this character.
The trustworthiness of these accounts is deduced from the gods’ appellations, even now prevalent in the cities and villages settled by the Phoenicians, and from the account of the rites performed among each of these cities and villages.
Such, then, is the theology of the Phoenicians.
The Phoenicians understand Kronos according to the interpretation of a similar name or according to some allegory, as one may gather from the second book of the work on Phoenicia by Herennius Philo.
There has been and is much disagreement among theologians about the god honored among the Hebrews… The Roman Varro says, in discussing him, that among the Chaldaeans in their mysteries he is called Iao, which stands for “intelligible light” in the Phoenician language, as Herennius says.
Appendix IIOther Phoenician Cosmogonies
Apart from that of Eudemus we find the Phoenician mythology according to Mochos.
The god Bel of the legend was the Baal of the Phœnicians, who, as we shall show, were of Atlantean origin.