As a money-making race the Phœnicians were skilled in arts by which
the grand aim of its life could be attained. Great as they were at
the dyeing vat and loom, adepts in working brass and other metals,
and in fabricating glass, they were also the best ship builders and
the most famous miners of their time. Their greatest service to
civilization seems rather to have been in appropriating, developing,
and spreading the ideas of others, especially in forming an alphabet
for the Western world.
While the mythical story about Cadmus, taking his sixteen letters
from Phœnicia into Greece, must be rejected, the European world owes
to this race of traders the alphabetic symbols now in use. The
gradual change of shape is easily traced in most of the signs as
here given. The simple and ingenious device by which each sign
stands for one elementary sound of human speech is largely due to
the Phœnician people, as an improvement on the cumbrous
hieroglyphics of Egypt. Of literature they have left nothing
whatever recognized as really theirs.