Chapter I:
Phoenicia (Who were the Phoenicians? What were Phoenicia, woodwork, and the basis of the Phoenician development)?

Phoenicia, a combination of sea and forests, starts with an interface -- fight between Byblos, Egypt and the sea peoples. The Phoenicians could pass from being woodcutters and wood-traders on raft, to great high seas navigators. After having first developed a suitable technology for this form of navigation, came a know how in nearly all economic sectors, from exploitation of mineral and agricultural resources, to their transformation, and commercialization through an extraordinary chain of distribution.

Chapter II:
The Phoenician Economy (the Phoenician and Tyre purple; the Phoenicians glass artisans; the Phoenicians precious metals artisans; the Phoenicians ceramics artisans; the Phoenicians ivory artisans; the Phoenicians sailors; the Phoenicians traders; the Phoenicians shedders of economic well being)

The Phoenicians did not restrict themselves to offering luxury products and qualified services at high prices to the empires that surrounded them, but they were the first producers to have flooded the markets with their products. They did so for the masses also, at prices so low that poorer people and classes could buy them.

Chapter III:
The Phoenician culture (the Phoenicians alphabet inventors; the Phoenicians urbanites; the Phoenicians architects; the Phoenicians artists)

Apart from being the first shedders of economic well being, the Phoenicians were the first diffusers of culture at mass level, overcoming the illiteracy with the invention of a simplified alphabet which a kid could learn in one year. The Greeks contribution was limited to the systematic introduction of vowels using the sign of the redundant consonants of the Phoenician alphabet.

The Phoenician cities rise on promontories or on islands near the coast and mirror the need of defense and settlement of a people of navigators. They preferred the lagoon waters because they did not damage the keels. A noticeable technical apparatus was required not only for the site choice and the settlement edification, but for its conservation and defense too. Tyre may be the most eloquent example from this point of view.

Moreover, Tyre was a city full of temples, palaces, squares and markets, endowed with a powerful defense system of walls, towers and gates.

The Phoenician workers were so estimated that the King Solomon employed them without worrying about expenses.

The Phoenician cultural and artistic production had to suffer the affront of the conquering peoples and shows either its own creativity or the Egyptian and Greek influences consecutively.

Chapter IV:
The Phoenician worship (priests, rites and rituals; the Pantheon of Byblos; the Pantheon of Sidon; the Pantheon of Tyre; life after death)

According to the evidence given by Philo of Byblos who asserts to have translated his "Phoenician History" into Greek language from a Phoenician original written by Sanchoniathon from Beric, The Phoenicians were monotheists and Baal was adored as their only one God. Consequently, when polytheism was introduced Baal remains the principal divinity.

He was known by other names: Baal Shamaim, El, Melek, Ram, Elion, and Adonai. His female equivalent was Baalat, Ashtart, Elat and, in Carthage, Tanit (the difficulty in transcription of Phoenician names is due to the absence of vowels in the alphabet) -- connected to the cult of fertility, of love and of war.

The name El (the High, He, God) later may become one of the Lord of Jews, Jehovah, then of Muslim's Allah. At the pre-Islamic time, in Arabia, "Allat" was the name of one of the three female divinities adored in the temple of Mecca (and a source that enriched the Meccans); the other two were al-Uzza and al-Manat. The Koran refused faith in them, after a short time of uncertainty connected to the famous episode of Satanic Verses, which would have originally followed verse 20 from sura 53, called of the "Star". When the Prophet Muhammad realized the demonic origin of such an inspiration, he eliminated the verses at issue from the Sacred Book. The title of the novel "The Satanic Verses" written by Salman Rushdie is connected to that episode. It caused a large indignation among Muslims, mostly Shiites, and brought the fatwa sentencing him to death. The author, thereafter, was forced to live in hiding.

Chapter V:
The Phoenician seen by their enemies (The Phoenicians and the Western; the Phoenicians and the sacrifice of kids; the Phoenicians and the Jews)

Phoenician and Carthaginian history is noted most of all through writings (that need re-writing) of their Greek and Latin enemies. We just know through the writings of Josephus that very detailed annals are existing at Tyre, describing the events that had involved the city-state in the ancient times and were destroyed.

The image of Phoenicians drawn by Homer finds perfection in Herodotus, then followed by Polybio, Livy, Virgil, Cicero and the others, who supplied the ideological basis, having recourse to ambiguity and incorrect narratives.

The Latin writers propagated the idea that Carthaginian had barbarian usage and customs, such as the children sacrifice to the Gods, and coined a series of vocabulary such as "cannibalism", after the Roman defeat at Canne by Hannibal. Later, Saint Jerome, apart from the Phoenician kids holocaust, flogged the Punic erotic poems, making them pernicious and dissolute. Only recently, have we begun to interpret the function of the Tophet as a zone destined to collect the remains of the children precociously died. Israel's relationship with the Phoenicians, economically speaking was excellent. It was nearly biological, Tyre being a door open to the sea, and to the world trading at that time. However, politically and theologically, in other words ideologically, it was nearly catastrophic.

Chapter VI:
Phoenicia history in brief (The Phoenician expansion until the foundation of Carthage; from the Assyrian to the Babylonian domination; the Greek-Persian wars; Alexander the Macedonian; Phoenicia contested between the Ptolomies, Selucides and Aramenians; the Hellenistic impact on Phoenicia; Phoenicia until the Arab conquest)

Phoenicia history is difficult to go into deeply due to the lack of witnesses; it is the history of a tenacious people who knew how to reconstruct its cities-state, with renovated fervor after each invasion. At the beginning of the 4^th century B.C., there was an important and ephemeral political development. Arade and its new foundation Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre constituted a federation having a Parliament seated in Tripoli, remembered by Diodorus Siculus; it was the first of its kind in all the Mediterranean World. After Alexander The Great, there were big changes, due to the destruction, to the domination and compromises, which lead to a great endogenous cultural impoverishment. The presence of great Phoenician figures such as Zeno of Citium, Chrisippe of Soli or Thalis of Miletus, kept from oblivion the fact that the Greek language was imposed on the Phoenicians instead of their language. Further, pagan religion itself of which Israel was afraid of was practically converted to the cult of the Greek gods. Consequently, after a period of anarchy, Phoenicia had a period of peace under the Roman emperors and the first Christian emperors. They gave Byretus, Tyre and Sidon colonies status. In the 6^th century, a group of persecuted Christians created, in the North Lebanon, the Maronite Church. In 630, Arabs conquered Phoenicia, without encountering resistance, after thirty years of Persian and Byzantine pillaging.