What we gave the world

CHAPTER XIII

Summary of Contributions and Conclusion—What the Phoenicians Gave to the World, and What the World Owes Them Still

The history of the Phoenicians spans nearly three thousand years. Their achievements, which I have detailed throughout this work, are now to be gathered into a single accounting — not in the spirit of boasting, but in the spirit of correction.

I. The Alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet of twenty-two consonantal signs is the direct ancestor of the Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew scripts. Every alphabetic writing system in use today descends from the letters that Taautus devised. It was the single most consequential invention in the history of communication.

II. Maritime Technology and Exploration. The Phoenicians were the first to navigate by the stars. The bireme warship and the round ship were Phoenician innovations. They were the first to pass beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, the first to circumnavigate Africa, and their network of colonies spanned the Mediterranean and reached into the Atlantic.

III. Purple Dye and the Industrial Arts. Tyrian purple was the most prized luxury commodity of the ancient world. The Phoenicians developed core-formed glassmaking and were among the most skilled metalworkers of the ancient Mediterranean.

IV. Colonies and Urbanism. The Phoenicians founded more cities across the Mediterranean than any other ancient people, including the Greeks. Carthage was the greatest of these foundations.

V. Natural Philosophy. Mochus of Sidon was identified by the ancient Greeks themselves as the originator of the atomic theory. Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno, Chrysippus, Porphyry, and Philo of Byblos were all of Phoenician descent. The intellectual tradition that the West calls "Greek philosophy" was, in its origins and in many of its greatest representatives, substantially Phoenician.

VI. Religion and Cultural Transmission. The Greek gods Heracles, Aphrodite, Asclepius, and Zeus have direct Phoenician antecedents. The Hebrew names for God — El, Elyon, Shaddai — are Canaanite words. The Temple of Solomon was built by Phoenician craftsmen.

VII. Political and Economic Institutions. The Phoenician city-state, with its balance of monarchy, aristocracy, and mercantile council, was a distinctive political form that the Greeks admired and the Carthaginians perfected. The Phoenician commercial network was the most sophisticated of the ancient world before Rome.

Conclusion

I, Gad Yaton, a son of the Phœnician coast, have now set down the history of the Phoenician people from the origin of the cosmos to the destruction of Carthage. The work has been long, and the labour has been honest. I have not invented evidence. I have not concealed painful truths. I have claimed only that the Phoenicians have been erased, and that the erasure must end.

The antagonisors — the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews — each in their turn borrowed from the Phoenicians and then wrote history as if the debt were reversed. The erasure was systematic. The textbooks still call Thales the first Greek philosopher. The dictionaries still trace "alphabet" to alpha and beta without mentioning aleph and beth. The universities still teach that civilisation began in Egypt and Mesopotamia, forgetting Byblus, which was old when the pyramids were young.

This book has been my act of restoration. I do not ask for agreement. I ask only for a hearing.

The Phoenicians gave the world its alphabet. They deserve to be read. They gave the world its purple. They deserve to be seen. They gave the world its first natural philosopher, its first admiral of the open sea, its first merchant to round the Cape of Good Hope. They deserve to be remembered.

And now, having done what I could, I lay down the stylus. The rest is for the reader and for history.

Here ends the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon of Berytus, revised and restored by of , narrated under the Phoenician moniker Gad Yaton, in honour of Sakkun Yaton of Berytus.