Phoenician Alphabet: Did you mean...?

Both the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians extensively colonized vast areas of Europe, along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. In doing so, they spread their culture, which strongly influenced the local tribes. For the Greeks, this is...

Your vowels were invented in Greece, giving birth to the first "true" alphabet. Watch as your new toga-clad friend turns your consonant abjad into a consonant-vowel alphabet. It's such a useful mapping of letters to sounds that neighbor...

Carthage was founded by the Phoenician city of Tyre in the 9th century BCE, and along with many other cultural practices, the city adopted aspects of the religion of its founding fathers. Polytheistic in nature, such important Phoenician...

Mesrop Mashtots (360/370 - c. 440 CE) invented the Armenian alphabet in 405 CE. Besides greatly increasing levels of literacy in the country, the language permitted ordinary people to read the Bible for the first time, thus helping to further...

Phoenician grinning mask, 4th century BCE, found in a grave at San Sperate in Sardinia. Masks like these were used to ward off evil. (Cagliari Museo Archeologico Nazionale)

A scene depicting a bird sacrifice, a common practice in the Phoenician religion from the sarcophagus of Ahiram, king of Byblos, 10th century BCE. Beirut National Museum.

One of the stranger ancient scripts one might come across, Ogham is also known as the 'Celtic Tree Alphabet'. Estimated to have been used from the fourth to the tenth century CE, it is believed to have been possibly named after the Irish...

This white marble anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin shows a male head wearing a Egyptian style headdress. Phoenician art was influenced by many different traditions. Coffins of this Gaeco-Egyptian style have been found in large numbers at...

Melqart (also Melkarth or Melicarthus) was an important Phoenician god and patron deity of the city of Tyre. Associated with the monarchy, sea, colonization, and commercial enterprise, both at home and abroad the god is a significant, if...

This video covers the basic development of the Etruscan Alphabet from the Archaic to Neo-Etruscan period. The 2 book referenced at the end of the video: The Etruscan Language by Larissa and Giuliano Bonfonte http://amzn.to/1cXgfTk...