ABSTRACT
Speaking generally the country of Phoenicia is that part of Syria which extends from the Nahr al-Kabîr, i. e. the “Great River” (Eleutherus) in the north to Mount Carmel on the south, but Joppa was sometimes considered to be Phoenician territory. The Phoenicians were Semites and belonged to the Canaanite peoples, though they and the neighbouring peoples called them “Sidonians.” The Greeks called them “Phoenicians,” Φοίνικες,, and their land “Phoinike,” Φοινίκη. Some derive “Phoenician” from the Greek φοινός, “blood red,” and not from φοινιξ, the “date palm,” which does not grow readily in the country, so the Phoenicians were the “red men.” Unlike the Semites generally, the Phoenicians loved the sea, and their ships on the sea and their caravans by land carried the produce of Egypt and Babylonia to the ends of the known world. The language of the Phoenicians, like the Hebrew and the dialect of Moab, was descended from the old Canaanite language, and belonged to the Northern Semitic Group of languages.
