White Marble Anthropoid Coffin
In the 800 BC there was an explosion of trade in the Phoenician harbors. They were soon handling international trade from all across the Mediterranean, such as Cyprus, Sicily, the Glades, and Egypt. They spanned the near East from Egypt to Mesopotamia and Iran. Their civilization was very water and trade based culture. A culture that was not all there own, rather a combination of the civilizations that they traded with. As seen here with the coffin, the male headdress is influenced by the Egyptian stylings, the quality of the stone work suggests the deceased to be quite wealthy.
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Gold Libation Bowl With Six Bulls
Phoenicians had settled in across the Mediterranean Sea, including Sicily. There was heavy trade between the western Greeks and the Phoenicians. They did not just trade objects, they traded ideas and styles. This bowl is most likely a product of the Greeks however there is heavy Phoenician influence. This was not only a phenomenon of the eastern Mediterranean, the Phoenicians were sea bearing peoples, and travelled and founded colonies in the western side of the Mediterranean, trading materials and ideas all along the way.
Phoenician Tablet
Phoenician became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by sea faring Phoenician traders across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet was modified by the many cultures they ran into during their crusades, they are the ancestor of modern Arabic script, while Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Arabic script. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin, the Cyrillic, and the Coptic) was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to represent vowels.
As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most of the shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written to be mirrored.
Gold Earrings
Phoenician earrings, gold sheet in the shape of an ahnk soldered to a hoop, were among the many similar earrings from over seventy Phoenician tombs excavated at Tharros. The style of earring was originally a tradition of Canaanites in the second millennium BC, Egyptians soon caught on to the fad. Similar earrings occur in tombs at Carthage and Sicily. Burial customs at Tharros followed the fashions of Carthage. The body was provided with amulets and personal objects and laid on its back with the feet towards the door of the tomb, which faced east. Written spells and gifts invoked the gods' protection.
Clay Mask
Most likely imported from Carthage, the most important Phoenician colony, this mask made of red clay was buried in a tomb to scare away any evil spirits and protect the dead as they transition into the afterlife. Phoenician society followed Canaanite culture in burial ceremonies, when the physical body dies, the npš (usually translated as "soul") departs from the body to the land of Mot. Bodies were buried with grave goods, and offerings of food and drink were made to the dead to ensure that they would not bother the living. Dead relatives were venerated and sometimes asked for help.
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