Phoenicia

Phoenicia was a thalassocratic ancient Semitic civilization, that originated in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the west of the Fertile Crescent. It included the coastline of what is now Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Syria, and south-west Turkey, though some of its colonies later reached the Western Mediterranean (most notably Carthage) and even the Atlantic Ocean. The civilization spread across the Mediterranean between 1500 BC and 300 BC.Phoenicia is an Ancient Greek term used to refer to the major export of the region, cloth dyed Tyrian purple from the Murex mollusc, and referred to the major Canaanite port towns, and it does not correspond exactly to a cultural identity that would have been recognised by the Phoenicians themselves. Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to those of Ancient Greece, perhaps the most notable of which were Tyre, Sidon, Arwad, Berytus, Byblos and Carthage. Each city-state was a politically independent unit, and it is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality. In terms of archaeology, language, lifestyle, and religion there was little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other residents of the Levant.