The Phoenicians thrived during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Originating in modern-day Lebanon in early antiquity, the Semitic-speaking sailors hailed from important city-states like Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos in Lebanon, and expanded across the Mediterranean, founding cities like Cadiz in southwestern Spain and Carthage in North Africa.

In an era when brutal conquest and depopulation were standard foreign policy methods, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians all treated the Phoenician city-states with surprising gentleness, not wanting to too greatly traumatize what was the ancient world¡¯s equivalent of the goose that laid the golden egg.

The trading connections, knowledge of sailing, and skilled shipwrights protected these progenitors of the Greek alphabet from undue violence for centuries, until their culture vanished under the hegemony of Rome.