ThePhoenicians were people that originally came from the coastal zone which corresponds to the present Lebanon. The name comes from a Greek word (Phoniks) which means “purple red”. The main Phoenician cities were Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. They were city-states and had a king as their head.

The main Phoenician activity was sea trade. The Phoenician territory, in fact, did not allow the development of irrigation agriculture.The Phoenicians covered long distances by sea and they first mapped out the routes to towards the Western Mediterranean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, towards the Atlantic coast of Africa and Europe. They also travelled to Britain for trade in tin. They followed to different systems of navigation: the first called coasting trade was along the coastal zone between the inhabitant areas, the second one, called seagoing shipping, which faced wide distances on the open sea

The Phoenicians spread out nearly into the whole Mediterranean Sea. From Tyre they left for Crete and Carthage, then they came to Sicily and Sardinia. From here they went to Spain for corn trade and then they went to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Phoenicians according to the historians, invented the phonetic alphabet which was formed by twenty-two signs. They wrote from right to left. Their archaeologists thought the Phoenicians should have some archives in order to keep written documents. After the conquest of Carthage, they built some libraries but none of them are left today. So the piece of information we have are found in literary Latin and Greek books.

The Phoenicians were polytheist, that is they worshipped many gods. They also had the cult of the dead. In fact they believed in a life after death. The dead person was lied in the tomb with things such as amulets, jewels, weapons, that could be useful to him in his second life

In our city many Phoenician traces have been found.The name Panormus means “all harbour”. Before the eight century B.C., the Phoenicians inhabited the promontories and the islets near the Sicilian coast and had commercial relationswith the native population. When the Greek settlers arrive there, in order to inhabit and cultivate the Sicilian lands, the Punic colony transferred to the western port and formed the nuclei of three towns: Motya, Solunto and Palermo.The present aspect of Palermo, is the result of the filling in of a wide and indented inlet where two rivers, the Kemonia and the Papireto flowed. Remains of the town walls, which protected the ancient centre of the town and which dated back to the Punic-Phoenician Age, are visible.The town walls were made up of a double curtain-wall of squared stones. It was filled with broken stones. The necropolis is one of the most important remains of our city and dates back to the Phoenicians or the Punic Age. It occupied a large area comprised of Piazza Indipendenza, Corso Calatafimi, Corso Pisani, Via Cappuccini and Via Danisinni.

                                                                                              © S.Lannino 2001