Phoenicia
or Phe·ni·cia
an ancient kingdom on the Mediterranean, in the region of modern Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
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British Dictionary definitions for Phoenicia
/ (fəˈnɪʃɪə, -ˈniː-) /
an ancient maritime country extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Lebanon Mountains, now occupied by the coastal regions of Lebanon and parts of Syria and Israel: consisted of a group of city-states, at their height between about 1200 and 1000 bc, that were leading traders of the ancient world
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for Phoenicia
[ (fuh-nee-shuh, fuh-nish-uh) ]
An ancient nation of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its territory included what are today coastal areas of modern Israel and Lebanon. The Phoenicians were famed as traders and sailors. They developed an alphabet that was eventually adapted by the Greeks and Romans into the alphabet used in writing English. In the Phoenicians' alphabet, the marks stand for individual sounds rather than for whole words or syllables, as in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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