In their own eyes, however, the Phoenicians don’t seem to have existed. ‘Phoenician’ was a label Greek writers used for Levantine mariners who spoke similar dialects of a language very different from their own. The term implied little about those people’s cultural or ancestral ties, and it apparently meant nothing to the people themselves: no one from the coastal cities or their overseas colonies ever to our knowledge described themselves as ‘Phoenician’.This essay gives a convenient summary of the arguments in Professor Quinn's recent book, In Search of the Phoenicians. Relevant past posts are here and links.
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