Languages of ancient civilizations. What did the Phoenician traders need writing for?

"Why did the Phoenician traders need writing?" - you ask. Let's look at the Phoenician language in more detail.

The Phoenician script is one of the oldest in the world. Its appearance is attributed to the XV century BC. It was the first phonetic and alphabetic writing, that is, one that uses letters that have a definite and fixed sound, and sometimes even a meaning.

How did the Phoenician script appear?

The appearance of the Phoenician script is associated not only with the identification of the Phoenician people from the Middle East ethnos, but also with the occupation of the Phoenicians themselves.

From time immemorial they were traders, therefore writing, one might say, grew out of the sort of their activity. What did the Phoenician traders need writing for? Everything is very simple - to write down and describe the goods, to conduct their financial operations, and also to conclude contracts with their partners: Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Egyptians, and also with other civilizations of the ancient world.

What is the difference between the Phoenician script and others?

The writing of the ancient Phoenicians absorbed the properties of many of their linguistic "relatives." On the one hand, it is alphabetically-phonetic, that is, each letter represents some fixed sound, from which, in turn, words are composed. This principle was adopted for its alphabet by the Greeks, and then by the Romans, creating accordingly the ancient Greek and Latin alphabets, which gave rise to all modern European languages.

On the other hand, each letter of the Phoenician alphabet carries a concrete and permanent lexical meaning, for example, the first letter (read as "a") has the meaning "bull". Thus, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic tradition played an important role in the formation of the Phoenician script, where each letter is given an exclusively specific lexical meaning that does not change, regardless of the context in which a particular symbol is used.

So what did the Phoenician traders need writing for? First of all, to communicate with their neighbors.

The modern state of the Phoenician alphabet

Nowadays the Phoenician script is used exclusively for scientific purposes, because the Phoenician ethnos long ago ceased to exist and assimilated first with the Greeks, then with the Arabs and Jews, and then with the Turks. However, it should be noted that the Phoenician language was not lost, the records made on it were preserved in the form of clay and gold tablets.

Thus, we learned the history of the appearance of the Phoenician script, and also why the writing was necessary to the Phoenician merchants.