A Short History of the Phoenicians by Mark Woolmer - 9781350153936

A Short History of the PhoeniciansRevised Edition\nAuthor(s): Mark Woolmer\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, United Kingdom\nImprint: Bloomsbury Academic\nISBN-13: 9781350153936, 978-1350153936\nSynopsis\nOffering new insights based on recent archaeological discoveries in their heartland of modern-day Lebanon, Mark Woolmer presents a fresh appraisal of this fascinating, yet elusive, Semitic people. Discussing material culture, language and alphabet, religion (including sacred prostitution of women and boys to the goddess Astarte), funerary custom and trade and expansion into the Punic west, he explores Phoenicia in all its paradoxical complexity. Viewed in antiquity as sage scribes and intrepid mariners who pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and as skilled engineers who built monumental harbour cities like Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians were also considered (especially by their rivals, the Romans) to be profiteers cruelly trading in human lives. Th.