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Long before people knew how to write, there lived a carpenter named Cadmus. One day he was at work on a house when he wanted a tool that he had left at home. Picking up a chip of wood, he wrote something on it and, handing it to his slave, told him to go to his home and give the chip to his wife, saying that it would tell her what he wanted. The slave, wondering, did as he was told. Cadmus’s wife looked at the chip, and without a word handed the tool to the amazed slave, who thought the chip in some mysterious way had spoken the message. When he returned to Cadmus with the tool, he begged for the remarkable chip, and when it was given him, hung it around his neck for a charm.
Cadmus’s slave and the chip
This is the story the Greeks told of the man they say invented the alphabet. We believe, however, that Cadmus was a mythical person, for the Greeks liked to make up such stories, and we think no one person made the alphabet. But Cadmus was a Phoenician and we do know that the Phoenician people invented the alphabet on which ours is based. You probably call it your A B C’s, but the Greeks had much harder names for the letters. They called A alpha , B beta , and so on. So the Greek boy spoke of learning his alpha beta , and that is why we call it the alphabet .
You may never have heard of Phoenicia or the Phoenician people. Yet, if there had been no such country as Phoenicia, you might now be learning at school to read and write in hieroglyphics or in cuneiform.
Up to this time, you know, people had very clumsy ways of writing. The Egyptians had to draw pictures, and the Babylonians made writing like chicken tracks. The alphabet that the Phoenicians invented had twenty-two letters, and from it we get the alphabet we use today.
Of course, we do not use just the same alphabet now that the Phoenicians did, but some of the letters are almost, if not quite, like those we now have after three thousand years. For instance, the
Phoenician A was written on its side—
E was written backward—
Z was written just the same—Z
O was written just the same—O
The Phoenicians lived next door to the Jews; like the Jews, they were Semites. Their country was just north of the kingdom of the Jews; that is, above it on the map and lying along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Phoenicians had a great king named Hiram who lived at the same time as Solomon. In fact, Hiram was a friend of Solomon and sent him some of his best workmen to help build a temple at Jerusalem. Yet Hiram himself and the Phoenicians did not believe in the Jewish God.
The Phoenicians worshiped idols named Baal and Moloch, which they called gods of the sun. They also believed in a goddess of the moon named Astarte and made sacrifices of live children to her idol, Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum; this is a real story and not a fairy tale. Just suppose you had been a child then!
The Phoenicians were great business people. They made many things to sell, such as objects carved from ivory, engraved gold and silver items, and beautiful glassware. They knew how to weave woolen and linen cloth, and were well known for the dyed cloth and robes that they manufactured.
They knew the secret of making a wonderful purple dye from the body of a little shell-fish that lived in the water near the city of Tyre. This dye was known as Tyrian purple from the name of that city, and it was so beautiful that kings’ robes were colored with it.
Tyre and Sidon were the two chief cities of Phoenicia, and once upon a time they were two of the busiest cities in the world.
In order to find people to sell to, the Phoenicians traveled in boats all over the Mediterranean Sea and even went outside this sea into the Great Ocean. This opening is now called the Strait of Gibraltar, but was then known as the Pillars of Hercules. They went as far as the British Isles and along the coast of Africa. Many other people in those days had not dared to go so far in boats; they thought they would come to the edge of the ocean and tumble off. But the Phoenicians had no such fear, and so they were the greatest sailors as well as the greatest traders of their times. Their ships were built from the cedar trees that grew on the slopes of their hills. The trees were called the cedars of Lebanon.
In one way, the Phoenicians were very short-sighted. They cut down all their wonderful cedar trees until almost none were left. Then no more ships—or anything else—could be made with the strong wood. Do you think we would ever do anything as foolish as that?
When the Phoenicians found good harbors for their boats, they often started little towns where they traded with the local people. Often they drove a hard bargain, trading purple cloth worth very little for gold or silver or other things worth a great deal. On the coast of north Africa, one of these towns they started was called Carthage. Carthage later grew to be very strong and wealthy—but you will have to wait a while until I come to that story.
