The industrial arts

What we made.

Letters, purple, glass, jewelry, cedar, ships. From the restoration of Gad Yaton, and from the stones in the museums.

1. 

   Twenty-two letters

   The alphabet

   Taautus invented signs a sailor could learn. Cadmus carried them. Every letter on this screen is a grandchild.

2. 

   The colour of kings

   Tyrian purple

   Twelve thousand snails for a cloak. They named us for the dye. Then they wore it as if they had made it.

3. 

   Fire of Sidon

   Glass

   Sidon learned to trap light in sand. Beads, bowls, faces in paste — a craft that moved west with the ships and never went home empty.

4. 

   Gold, glass, the eye

   Jewelry

   Necklaces from Tharros and Carthage, glass faces, gold uraei. What the body wore, the grave kept. The museums still have our throats.

5. 

   Wood of the gods

   Cedar of Lebanon

   Gilgamesh came for it. Egypt built with it. Solomon paneled a temple with it. The mountain still stands.

6. 

   Byblos to the Pillars

   The sea road

   Not an empire of governors. A web of harbors. The same letters, the same weights, the same gods.