<P> Phoenicia (UK: / fɪˈnɪʃə / or US: / fəˈniːʃə /; from the Ancient Greek: Φοινίκη, Phoiníkē meaning either "purple country" or "land of palm trees") was a thalassocratic ancient Semitic civilization that originated in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the west of the Fertile Crescent . It included the coastline of what is now Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Syria, and south - west Turkey, though some of its colonies later reached the Western Mediterranean (most notably Carthage) and even the Atlantic Ocean . The civilization spread across the Mediterranean between 1500 BC and 300 BC . </P> <P> Phoenicia is an Ancient Greek term used to refer to the major export of the region, cloth dyed Tyrian purple from the Murex mollusc, and referred to the major Canaanite port towns, and it does not correspond exactly to a cultural identity that would have been recognised by the Phoenicians themselves . Their civilization was organized in city - states, similar to those of Ancient Greece, perhaps the most notable of which were Tyre, Sidon, Arwad, Berytus, Byblos and Carthage . Each city - state was a politically independent unit, and it is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality . In terms of archaeology, language, lifestyle, and religion there was little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other residents of the Levant . </P> <P> Around 1050 BC, a Phoenician alphabet was used for the writing of Phoenician . It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures . </P> <P> The name Phoenicians, like Latin Poenī (adj . poenicus, later pūnicus), comes from Greek Φοίνικες (Phoínikes). The word φοῖνιξ phoînix meant variably "Phoenician person", "Tyrian purple, crimson" or "date palm" and is attested with all three meanings already in Homer . (The mythical bird phoenix also carries the same name, but this meaning is not attested until centuries later .) The word may be derived from φοινός phoinós "blood red", itself possibly related to φόνος phónos "murder". It is difficult to ascertain which meaning came first, but it is understandable how Greeks may have associated the crimson or purple color of dates and dye with the merchants who traded both products . Robert S.P. Beekes has suggested a pre-Greek origin of the ethnonym . The oldest attested form of the word in Greek may be the Mycenaean po - ni - ki - jo, po - ni - ki, possibly borrowed from Egyptian fnḫw (fenkhu) "Asiatics, Semites", although this derivation is disputed . The folk etymological association of Φοινίκη with φοῖνιξ mirrors that in Akkadian, which tied kinaḫni, kinaḫḫi "Canaan" to kinaḫḫu "red - dyed wool". The land was natively known as knʿn (compare Eblaite ka - na - na - um, phn ka - na - na) and its people as the knʿny . In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani . Much later, in the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα khna, a name that Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix". The ethnonym survived in North Africa until the 4th century AD (see Punic language). </P>

What phoenician invention became the most influential in the western world