Cultures

Phoenicians

Peoples

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Phoenicians." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/cultures/phoenicians.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Phoenicians. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/cultures/phoenicians

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-phoenicians,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Phoenicians},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/cultures/phoenicians},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Phoenicians were the Canaanite city dwellers of the Levantine coast, above all Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, whose trade and colonies carried them across the Mediterranean to Carthage and beyond. Each city kept its own divine pair, such as Melqart and Astarte at Tyre, and the sanctuaries travelled with the merchants. The alphabet they used was adapted by the Greeks and stands behind most alphabets in use today. Classical writers accused them of child sacrifice at the tophet, a charge archaeologists still argue over.

Facts

Origins

Origin Region

The Levantine coast at Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, with colonies across the Mediterranean as far as Carthage and Iberia. 1

Language Family

Phoenician, a Canaanite language within Northwest Semitic, whose alphabet is the ancestor of the Greek and so of most alphabets in use today. 2

Disputed

Principal Religious Traditions

Each city kept its own divine pair, Melqart and Astarte at Tyre among them, and the sanctuaries travelled with the colonies. The child sacrifice that Greek and Roman writers allege at Carthage is argued over, and the tophet burials are read both as evidence for it and against it. 3

Practice

Practice Status

Discontinued as a state religion 3

Learn More

Melqart, Tanit and the Tophet Question

Phoenician religion is Canaanite religion continued into the first millennium BCE, with each city keeping its own divine pair. Tyre had Melqart, whose name means king of the city, and Astarte. Sidon had Eshmun, a healing god, and Astarte. Byblos had a goddess called simply the Lady of Byblos. Melqart's cult included an annual awakening, and Greek writers identified him with Herakles, which is how his temples appear in their accounts.

At Carthage the pairing became Baal Hammon and Tanit, whose emblem, a triangle with a disc and a bar above it, is the most reproduced Phoenician religious sign. The Carthaginian and other western sanctuaries known as tophets contain urns holding the cremated remains of infants and young animals beneath dedicatory stelae, and what they represent is one of the sharpest disputes in the field. Greek and Roman writers, and the Hebrew Bible, describe Phoenician child sacrifice. Some archaeologists read the deposits instead as a cemetery for infants who died naturally, and others hold that the ancient reports are broadly correct. The atlas records the dispute as live and does not settle it.

Almost no Phoenician literature survives. What is known comes from inscriptions, from archaeology and from hostile or distant outsiders, and that is a constraint on every statement above.

The Alphabet, the Colonies and a Name Nobody Used

Josephine Quinn's study opens with a difficulty the atlas keeps. There is little evidence that the people called Phoenicians thought of themselves as one people. They identified as Tyrians, Sidonians and Byblians, the collective label is Greek, and the modern picture of a Phoenician nation was assembled in the nineteenth century and afterwards put to national use in more than one country.

What is not in doubt is what they did. From the coastal cities of what is now Lebanon they ran the carrying trade of the early first millennium BCE, planting settlements at Carthage, in Sicily, Sardinia, Ibiza and southern Spain, and reaching the Atlantic. Carthage became a power in its own right and fought Rome three times before its destruction in 146 BCE.

The consequential bequest is the alphabet. The linear consonantal script developed in the Levant was carried by traders to the Aegean, where Greeks added signs for vowels, and from Greek it passed to Etruscan and Latin and so to most of the writing systems of Europe. It also went east into Aramaic, and from there to Hebrew, to Arabic and to the scripts of India. A commercial notation of twenty two signs became the vehicle of most of the world's scripture.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Aleph

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Aleph is the first sign of the thirty-sign Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, opening the fixed order recorded on the school abecedary tablets from Ras Shamra."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Ayin

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Ayin is the twentieth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Samekh in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Beth

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Beth is the second sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, standing immediately after Aleph in the order the school abecedary tablets from Ras Shamra record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Canaanite Religion

Each city kept its own divine pair drawn from the Canaanite pantheon, Melqart and Astarte among them at Tyre.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Richard Miles's Carthage Must Be Destroyed, The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, published by Allen Lane in 2010, is a scholarly history of Carthage and its Phoenician Punic religious and..."

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Daleth

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Daleth is the fifth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Kha in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Endovelicus

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The best attested of the pre-Roman deities of the western Iberian Peninsula, known entirely from a single hilltop sanctuary at Sao Miguel da Mota, near Terena in the Alentejo region of Portugal..."

Source Jose d'EncarnacaoJose d'Encarnacao

Eshmun

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The healing god of Sidon, identified by Greek writers with Asclepius and worshipped at a major sanctuary at Bustan esh-Sheikh near the city, where excavated dedications and a therapeutic spring..."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Gimel

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Gimel is the third sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Beth in the abecedary order preserved on the school tablets from Ras Shamra."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

This source names Phoenicians directly: "He is the sixth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Daleth in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Heth

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Heth is the ninth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Zayin in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

In Search of the Phoenicians

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Josephine Quinn's In Search of the Phoenicians, published by Princeton University Press in 2018, argues against treating the Phoenicians as a single unified ethnic or religious group at all..."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Kaph

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Kaph is the twelfth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Yod in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Lamed

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Lamed is the fourteenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Shin's early placement in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z

This source names Phoenicians directly: "David Sacks's book is a popular reference work, structured as twenty-six per-letter biographies of the Roman alphabet tracing each letter's Phoenician, Greek and Etruscan descent, phonetic value and..."

Source Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to ZDavid Sacks

Mediterranean Sea

Carried the cult of Melqart and Astarte from Tyre to colonies across the western basin

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Melqart

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The tutelary god of Tyre, whose name is generally read as "King of the City"."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Mem

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Mem is the fifteenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Lamed in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Nun

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Nun is the seventeenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Dhal in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Pe is the twenty-first sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Ayin in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Phoenician

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The pantheon of the Phoenician city states of the Levantine coast, Tyre, Sidon and Byblos chief among them, and of their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Phoenician and Punic Religion

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The religion of the Phoenician city states and their Mediterranean diaspora, from the early first millennium BCE Levantine coast through the Punic colonies of North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and..."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Qoph

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Qoph is the twenty-third sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Sade in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Resh

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Resh is the twenty-fourth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Qoph in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Sade

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Sade is the twenty-second sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Pe in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Samekh

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Samekh is the nineteenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Za in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Shin

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Shin is the thirteenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, and its position is the abecedary's best known oddity: it sits between Kaph and Lamed, near the middle of the sequence, rather than..."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Tanit

This source names Phoenicians directly: "The presiding goddess of Carthage from at least the fifth century BCE onward, titled "Face of Baal" (pene Baal) and paired with Baal Hammon as the city's two chief deities, her name eventually..."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Taw

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Taw is the twenty-seventh sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Ghayn in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record, and the last of the signs Ugaritic shares with the..."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Teth

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Teth is the tenth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Heth in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind

This source names Phoenicians directly: "A comprehensive scholarly history by David Diringer, published by Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications in London in 1948, tracing the origin and development of alphabetic writing from..."

Source The Alphabet: A Key to the History of MankindDavid Diringer

Ugaritic

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Ugaritic is a cuneiform alphabet of thirty signs, pressed into clay with a wedge-tipped stylus in the same physical technique as Mesopotamian cuneiform but sharing none of its sign shapes and none..."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Ugaritic Letters

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Ugaritic Letters are the thirty cuneiform signs of the alphabet used to write the Northwest Semitic language of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from roughly the fourteenth century BCE until the city's..."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Waw

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Waw is the seventh sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following He in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Yod

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Yod is the eleventh sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Teth in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Zayin

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Zayin is the eighth sign of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, following Waw in the abecedary order the Ras Shamra school tablets record."

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Zeno of Citium

This source names Phoenicians directly: "Zeno of Citium (circa 334 to circa 262 BCE) was a Cypriot philosopher of Phoenician merchant stock who founded Stoicism at Athens."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors