The people called Phoenicians lived in independent coastal cities such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Follow ships, timber, purple dye, metalwork, settlements, and alphabetic writing across a connected Mediterranean without turning those rival ports into a single nation. Inside this episode: - Independent Levantine port cities - Ships, timber, craft, and purple dye - Trading settlements across the Mediterranean - How alphabetic writing spread and changed Sources include The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Penn Museum resources on Phoenician cities, seafaring, craft production, trade, and alphabetic writing. This episode is a researched narrative summary. Historical records may be incomplete, translated differently, or interpreted differently by scholars. We distinguish documented facts, estimates, disputed interpretations, and later stories where ma ...