The Legend

The legend of the Phoenix has been around for centuries: The Phoenix is a supernatural creature, living for 500 years. Once its life span is over, the Phoenix builds its own funeral pyre, and throws itself into the flames. As it dies, it is reborn anew, and rises from the ashes to live another 500 years. Alternatively, it lays an egg in the burning coals of the fire which hatches into a new Phoenix, and the life cycle is repeated.

The Phoenix was the symbol of the great civilization of Phoenician people who lived in the East Mediterranean around 4000 BC and invaded the whole Mediterranean area which was known as the Phoenician Sea.

Historical records show a group of coastal cities and heavily forested mountains inhabited by a Semitic people, the Canaanites, around 4000 BC. These early inhabitants referred to themselves according to their city of origin, and called their nation Canaan. They lived in the narrow East Mediterranean coast and the parallel strip mountains of Lebanon. Around 2800 BC Canaanites traded cedar timber, olive oil and wine from Byblos for metals and ivory from Egypt. The Canaanites who inhabited that area were called Phoenicians by the Greeks (from the Greek word phoinos, meaning ‘red’) in a reference to the unique purple dye the Phoenicians produced from murex seashells. The Phoenicians mastered the art of navigation and dominated the Mediterranean Sea trade for around 500 years. They excelled in producing textiles, carving ivory, working with metal and glass. The Phoenicians built several local cities in East Mediterranean such as Byblos (Near Beirut), Antardus (Tartous) and Ramitha (Lattakia). They established trade routes to Europe and Western Asia. Phoenician ships circumnavigated Africa a thousand years before those of the Portuguese. They founded colonies wherever they went in North and South Mediterranean; in Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Marseilles, Cadiz, and Carthage around the first Millennium B.C.

Around 1600 B.C. the Phoenicians invented 22 ‘magic signs’, called the alphabet, and passed them onto the world. The Phoenicians gave the alphabet to the Greeks who adopted it; the evolution of the Phoenician Alphabet led to the Latin letters of present-day.