The Language.--The Remains.
The Phoenician language bore a strong affinity to the Hebrew, through
which alone the inscriptions on coins and monuments can be interpreted,
and these constitute the entire literary remains, though the Phoenicians
had doubtless their archives and written laws. The inscriptions engraved
on stone or metal are found chiefly in places once colonies, remote from
Phoenicia itself. The Phoenician alphabet forms the basis of the Semitic
and Indo-European graphic systems, and was itself doubtless based on the
Egyptian hieratic writing. Sanchuniathon is the name given as that of the
author of a history of Phoenicia which was translated into Greek and
published by Philo, a grammarian of the second century A.D. A considerable
fragment of this work is preserved in Eusebius, but after much learned
controversy it is now believed that it was the work of Philo himself.