Phoenician Alphabet: Did you mean...?

This light grey limestone stela was inscribed with six lines of Phoenician/Punic inscription; the upper line is almost lost. There is a lotus flower flanked by two standards at the lower part. There is a dedication to the goddess Tanit and...

Carthage was founded by the Phoenician city of Tyre in the 9th century BCE, and along with many other cultural practices, the city adopted aspects of the religion of its founding fathers. Polytheistic in nature, such important Phoenician...

Mesrop Mashtots (360/370 - c. 440 CE) invented the Armenian alphabet in 405 CE. Besides greatly increasing levels of literacy in the country, the language permitted ordinary people to read the Bible for the first time, thus helping to further...

Your vowels were invented in Greece, giving birth to the first "true" alphabet. Watch as your new toga-clad friend turns your consonant abjad into a consonant-vowel alphabet. It's such a useful mapping of letters to sounds that neighbor...

One of the stranger ancient scripts one might come across, Ogham is also known as the 'Celtic Tree Alphabet'. Estimated to have been used from the fourth to the tenth century CE, it is believed to have been possibly named after the Irish...

Melqart (also Melkarth or Melicarthus) was an important Phoenician god and patron deity of the city of Tyre. Associated with the monarchy, sea, colonization, and commercial enterprise, both at home and abroad the god is a significant, if...

Phoenician grinning mask, 4th century BCE, found in a grave at San Sperate in Sardinia. Masks like these were used to ward off evil. (Cagliari Museo Archeologico Nazionale)

A scene depicting a bird sacrifice, a common practice in the Phoenician religion from the sarcophagus of Ahiram, king of Byblos, 10th century BCE. Beirut National Museum.

This white marble anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin shows a male head wearing a Egyptian style headdress. Phoenician art was influenced by many different traditions. Coffins of this Gaeco-Egyptian style have been found in large numbers at...

Canaan was the name of a large and prosperous ancient country (at times independent, at others a tributary to Egypt) located in the Levant region of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel. It was also known as Phoenicia. The origin...