The history of the Phoenicians, explorers and merchants, is little
known. What a paradox for this ingenious people, who invented the
alphabet, to have left so few written traces of their existence. Their
literature, recorded on papyrus, has disappeared. And yet this
civilization fired the imagination of its contemporaries--the Jews in
particular--inspiring terror among the Romans and Greeks, who depicted
them as a cruel people who practiced human sacrifice. Their clients were
the pharaohs and the Assyrians, their ships criss-crossed the
Mediterranean, laden with the luxuries of the day such as wine, oil,
grain, and mineral ore. Buried beneath the modern cities of Lebanon, and
a few of Syria and Israel, ancient Phoenicia has resuscitated in this
volume.