PHOENICIAN-LEBANESE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORLD
During the 2nd
millennium BC, the Phoenicians devised a unique technique of writing. Instead of
having a different symbol or sign stand for each word, as had the Egyptians,
they used the same sign whenever a particular sound occurred. The sequence of
letters was named the Alphabet, after the first two letters in the list Alpha
and Bet. The Phoenician Alphabet had 22 letters and was the direct
ancestor of later alphabets: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Armenian. One
common misconception about the Phoenician Alphabet is that it contained no
vowels. However, the first letter is an Alpha or an A in today's Alphabet. It
also contained an I and an O.
In the First century,
Roman Berytus (Beirut) was already well known for its school of law. Beirut was
called "Mother of Laws" and had, along with Rome and Constantinople,
one of only three law schools of antiquity. One of the most renowned law
teachers, Papinien, professed, 1800 years before the United Nations, that all
men are created equal. Interestingly enough, is the fact that one of the
co-authors of the United Nations Human Rights Charter was also Lebanese, Dr.
Charles Malik.
Pythagoras, the inventor
of the multiplication tables, the founder of the hypothenuse theorem, and
discoverer of the magic of numbers, was born and raised in Sidon.
Paper money has found
its origin in the Tyrian, a Carthagenian use of inscribed triangular pieces of
leather.
The Phoenicians, in
pursuit of commercial outlets and subsequently for the protection of their
trade routes, had to develop vessels over 100 feet long, which were capable of
traversing the Mediterranean and sailing into the Atlantic, reputedly reaching
the Americas more than two millenniums before the Vikings. A Phoenician
fleet circumnavigated the African Continent, proving that it was surrounded by
water, about two millenniums before Vasco de Gama managed to duplicate their
feat.
Sidon and Tyre were
reputed to produce the finest purple dye for garments. The dye was extracted
from the murex, a mollusc found on the Mediterranean shore. In the 4th
century, 12 ounces (325g) of purple dye was selling for the equivalent of
$25,000 US. This high price made it accessible only to the extremely
rich, mostly royalty, which is why it later became known as royal purple.
Built in Baalbeck (City
of Baal), or Heliopolis (City of the Sun in Greek). The largest Roman temple,
the temple of Jupiter has the size of a city block. Its base is made of block
stones, each having 60 ft length, weighing 1,400,000 lbs and needing some
40,000 men to move it.
Mochios of Sidon
discovered the existence of the Atom, and formulated its theory more than 3000
years ago.
The properties of the
North Star and its viability as a navigational reference were discovered by the
Phoenicians. So closely associated with them that it was called the
"Phoenician Star" up until the 19th century.
The Invention of
transparent glass is universally attributed to the Phoenicians of the first
century BC.
The princess of Tyre,
Europa, gave her name to the Continent. She was the sister of Cadmus, and the
daughter of Aginor (King of Tyre). Myth has it that she was kidnapped by
a Greek God named Zeus and taken to Greece. Cadmus took the Alphabets with
him and went searching for his sister, where he found her living happily in
Greece.
