Levantine coast · Iron Age
Phoenician City-States
The seafarers who exported the alphabet
1,200 BCE – 539 BCE · 661 years
A network of maritime trading city-states whose alphabet became the ancestor of Greek, Latin, and most Western scripts.
Where it sits on the calendar
Government
City-state
Writing system
Phoenician alphabet
Estimated peak population
400,000
How it ended
Invasion or conquest
Traits
Bronze metallurgy Iron metallurgy Long-distance trade Astronomical record-keeping Urban planning Seafaring Monumental architecture Irrigation agriculture Standing army Codified law
How Phoenician City-States ended
Core cities were absorbed by the Neo-Babylonian and later Persian empires.
See other civilizations that fell the same way →Notable for
- Alphabet ancestral to Greek and Latin scripts
- Mediterranean-wide trade colonies including Carthage
- Purple (Tyrian) dye production
Who else was alive at the same time
8 other civilizations in this dataset overlap with Phoenician City-States's 661-year span.
See every overlap involving Phoenician City-States →