Phoenicians
From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Historical civilization.
Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic people who inhabited city-states in Canaan along the Levantine coast of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily in present-day Lebanon and parts of coastal Syria. Their maritime civilization expanded and contracted over time, with its cultural core stretching from Arwad to Mount Carmel. Through trade and colonization, the Phoenicians extended their influence across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula, leaving behind thousands of inscriptions.
In the Sherlock Holmes stories
- Dr. Watson remembered that Sherlock Holmes conceived the idea that the ancient Cornish language was akin to the Chaldean, and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin (DEVI 21).
