Encyclopaedia Britannica - Ancient civilizations-2

construction and showed signs of overcrowding. The final blow seems to have been sudden, but the city was already dying. As the evidence stands, the civilization was succeeded in the Indus valley by poverty-stricken cultures, deriving a little from a sub-Indus heritage but also drawing elements from the direction of Iran and the Caucasus—from the general direction, in fact, of the northern invasions. For many centuries urban civilization was dead in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent.

Indus civilization: cooking potsHarappan cooking pots in use during the Indus civilization, c. 2300–2200 bce.Copyright J.M. Kenoyer/Harappa.com; Courtesy Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan

In the south, however, in Kathiawar and beyond, the situation appears to have been very different. There it would seem that there was a real cultural continuity between the late Indus phase and the Copper Age cultures that characterized central and western India between 1700 and the 1st millennium bce. Those cultures form a material bridge between the end of the Indus civilization proper and the developed Iron Age civilization that arose in India about 1000 bce.

Site overview of Mohenjo-daro, eastern Pakistan.Frederick M. Asher The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Zeidan, Assistant Editor.

Citation Information

Article Title: Indus civilization

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 01 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indus-civilization

Access Date: August 18, 2019

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Phoenicia

historical region, Asia

Phoenicia, ancient region corresponding to modern Lebanon, with adjoining parts of modern Syria and Israel. Its inhabitants, the Phoenicians, were notable merchants, traders, and colonizers of the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium bce. The chief cities of Phoenicia (excluding colonies) were Sidon, Tyre, and Berot (modern Beirut).

It is not certain what the Phoenicians called themselves in their own language; it appears to have been Kenaʿani (Akkadian: Kinahna), “Canaanites.” In Hebrew the word kenaʿani has the secondary meaning of “merchant,” a term that well characterizes the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians probably arrived in the area about 3000 bce. Nothing is known of their original homeland, though some traditions place it in the region of the Persian Gulf.

At Byblos, commercial and religious connections with Egypt are attested from the Egyptian 4th dynasty (c. 2613–c. 2494); extensive trade was certainly carried on by the 16th century, and the Egyptians soon established suzerainty over much of Phoenicia. The 14th century, however, was one of much political unrest, and Egypt eventually lost its hold over the area. Beginning in the 9th century, the independence of Phoenicia was increasingly threatened by the advance of Assyria, the kings of which several times exacted tribute and took control of parts or all of Phoenicia. In 538 Phoenicia passed under the rule of the Persians. The country was later taken by Alexander the Great and in 64 bce was incorporated into the Roman province of Syria; Aradus, Sidon, and Tyre, however, retained self-government. The oldest form of government in the Phoenician cities seems to have been kingship—limited by the power of the wealthy merchant families. Federation of the cities on a large scale never seems to have occurred.

The Phoenicians were well known to their contemporaries as sea traders and colonizers, and by the 2nd millennium they had already extended their influence along the coast of the Levant by a series of settlements, including Joppa (Jaffa, modern Yafo), Dor, Acre, and Ugarit. Colonization of areas in North Africa (e.g., Carthage), Anatolia, and Cyprus also occurred at an early date. Carthage became the chief maritime and commercial power in the western Mediterranean. Several smaller Phoenician settlements were planted as stepping stones along the route to Spain and its mineral wealth. Phoenician exports included cedar and pine wood, fine linen from Tyre, Byblos, and Berytos, cloths dyed with the famous Tyrian purple (made from the snail Murex), embroideries from Sidon, wine, metalwork and glass, glazed faience, salt, and dried fish. In addition, the Phoenicians conducted an important transit trade.

In the artistic products of Phoenicia, Egyptian motifs and ideas were mingled with those of Mesopotamia, the Aegean, and Syria. Though little survives of Phoenician sculpture in the round, relief sculpture is much more abundant. The earliest major work of Phoenician sculpture to survive was found at Byblos; it was the limestone sarcophagus of Ahiram, king of Byblos at the end of the 11th century.

Sarcophagus of AhiramCarved limestone sarcophagus of Ahiram, a king of Byblos, bearing a Phoenician inscription, 10th century bce; in the National Museum of Lebanon, Beirut.Courtesy of the National Museum of Lebanon, Beirut

Ivory and wood carving became Phoenician specialties, and Phoenician goldsmiths’ and metalsmiths’ work was also well known. Glassblowing was probably invented in the coastal area of Phoenicia in the 1st century or earlier.

Although the Phoenicians used cuneiform (Mesopotamian writing), they also produced a script of their own. The Phoenician alphabetic script of 22 letters was used at Byblos as early as the 15th century. This method of writing, later adopted by the Greeks, is the ancestor of the modern Roman alphabet. It was the Phoenicians’ most remarkable and distinctive contribution to arts and civilization.

Phoenician religion was inspired by the powers and processes of nature. Many of the gods they worshiped, however, were localized and are now known only under their local names. A pantheon was presided over by the father of the gods, El, but

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