A Short History of the Phoenicians

A Short History of the Phoenicians cover

A Short History of the Phoenicians

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Description

The Phoenicians present a tantalizing face to the ancient historian. Latin sources suggest they once had an extensive literature of history, law, philosophy and religion; but all now is lost. Offering new insights based on recent archaeological discoveries in their heartland of modern-day Lebanon, Mark Woolmer presents a fresh appraisal of this fascinating, yet elusive, Semitic people. Discussing material culture, language and alphabet, religion (including sacred prostitution of women and boys to the goddess Astarte), funerary custom and trade and expansion into the Punic west, he explores Phoenicia in all its paradoxical complexity. Viewed in antiquity as sage scribes and intrepid mariners who pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and as skilled engineers who built monumental harbour cities like Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians were also considered (especially by their rivals, the Romans) to be profiteers cruelly trading in human lives. The author shows them above all to have been masters of the sea: this was a civilization that circumnavigated Africa two thousand years before Vasco da Gama did it in 1498.

Product details

Published 30 Sep 2016
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 256
ISBN 9781780766171
Imprint I.B. Tauris
Illustrations 21 bw integrated, 3 maps
Dimensions 216 x 138 mm
Series Short Histories
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Mark Woolmer

Mark Woolmer is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient H…

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Bloomsbury Collections

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