"What was the need of writing the Phoenician traders?"- You ask.Let's look in more detail in the Phoenician language.
Phoenician writing system - one of the oldest in the world.Its appearance is attributed to the XV century BC.It was the first phonetic alphabet and writing, that is, one that uses the letters that have defined and fixed sound, and sometimes even important.
How did the Phoenician alphabet?
appearance of the Phoenician alphabet is associated not only with the release of the peoples of the Middle East Phoenicians ethnic group, but also with the occupation of the Phoenicians themselves.
For centuries, they were traders, so writing can be said, grew out of the kind of activity.What was the need of writing the Phoenician traders?It's very simple - to record and describe the products to conduct their financial transactions, as well as to enter into agreements with its partners: the Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Egyptians, as well as with other civilizations of the ancient world.
The Phoenician alphabet is different from the others?
Writing ancient Phoenicians absorbed the properties of many of his linguistic "families".On the one hand it is the alpha-phonetic, i.e. each letter represents some fixed sound, from which, in turn, for words.This principle adopted for its alphabet Greeks and then the Romans, creating respectively Greek and Latin alphabet, gave rise to all modern European languages.
On the other hand, each letter of the Phoenician alphabet carries a specific and continuing lexical meaning, for example, the first letter (read as "a") is "Bull".Thus, in the formation of the Phoenician alphabet has played a huge role ieroglifnaya ancient Egyptian tradition, where each letter is assigned to only a specific lexical meaning, which does not change regardless of the context in which used one or the other character.
So what was the need of writing the Phoenician traders?First of all, to communicate with their neighbors.
The current state of the Phoenician alphabet
Today Phoenician alphabet is used solely for research purposes, because the Phoenician ethnicity long ago ceased to exist, and assimilated, first the Greeks and then the Arabs and the Jews, and then the Turks.However, it should be noted that the Phoenician language was not lost, the records made it, preserved in the form of scribbled clay and gold plates.
Thus, we learned the history of the emergence of the Phoenician alphabet, as well as what was needed writing Phoenician traders.