Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Story of the World: Chap 15 - Phonician Traders



This page is part of my history series where I share supplementary activities for Story of the World history chapters.  If you aren't using Story of the World, you can still use this page:  Just skip over the "While Reading Story of the World" section, and browse my suggestions of books and activities for learning about the Phoenicians. 



SUPPLEMENTARY BOOKS
I almost always supplement our Story of the World reading with pictures from other books.   Here's the books I used for this chapter.   Your library may have other books that would work just as well.

DISCLAIMER:  Here and elsewhere on the page, I include some links through which I can earn commission (but, even so, I highly suggest looking for these in your library first, which of course is free). 

The Phoenicians by Katherine Reece
I was so excited to actually find a children's book JUST ABOUT the Phoenicians in our library.  It had some good maps, pictures and illustrations we used--though I had to go to another source for pictures of Phoenician glass (they only showed a shaped glass bead).   While we didn't read further about the Phoenicians than the Story of the World text, this would have been a good source for that had we wanted to.  It also had info on modern Lebanon, where the area of the original homeland of ancient Phoenicia was located.


Bible Lands - Eyewitness Book
This is a great DK book about the various places mentioned in the Bible.  It's a respectful secular book that I thought I would use much more than I did throughout Story of the World, but I just ended up finding better illustrations elsewhere most of the time.  It did occasionally have something I used though, such as the illustrations of the Phoenician glassware and cloth I used to illustrate this chapter.





WHILE READING STORY OF THE WORLD

SECTION 1:  Phoenicia Traders
(Note:   The Revised and Original version are the same for this section, except for different maps and some slight punctuation changes).

Paragraphs 1- 2
We looked at some maps in The Phoenicians by Katherine Reece

Paragraph 3
We looked at pictures of ships and some of the trade goods mentioned in The Phoenicians (there's a great drawing of a Phoenician ship in the SOTW Activity pages too for kids to color).  
Paragraphs 4 - 6
We looked at the  glass bead shown in The Phoenicians and the pictures of blown glass vases shown on the page on the Phoenicians in Bible Lands (note, there's a newer version of this book but I'm not sure what pictures and information was changed in it).   A found a public domain image of a Phoenician glass bead which i shared below.   I imagine this also shows a little bit about how Phoenician men adorned themselves and wore their hair. 

Public Domain

Paragraph 7 - 8
Showed shell and purple cloth pictures from The Phoenicians and Bible Lands (found in pg 41 in the section on Money and Trade). You could also use the picture I found that shows the shells of the murex snails, and the cloth dyed with murex snail dye.   You can click on it to show a larger version where you can read the text.


This picture by  U.Name.Me and edited by TeKaBe
and by myself is licensed for sharing under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license




SECTION 2:   The Founding of Carthage
(Note:  The Revised version mentions in the text that Carthage was first settled around 814 BC/BCE.  In the original version it says, in a footnote to parents, not in the main text, that it was founded in 850 BC/BCE.   I'm assuming this was a correction or update with newer info).   

For this section I really wanted to find an image of a Phonician woman to use as an illustration of Dido, but it turns out that the Phoenicians were not fond of making images of themselves.   However, other nations did and I found some  depictions here.

We also used an illustration of a Phoenician city in Ancient Civilizations.




ACTIVITIES

My son loved watching the glass blowing video below...





HANDS ON ACTIVITIES
We didn't do these, but they looked fun....

Purple Dye Craft
No murex secretions involved!



LEARN ABOUT THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET
Did you know that our alphabet descended from the Phoenician alphabet?  The SOTW text didn't mention it, but it's one of their most important contributions to history.   Learn about it with the video and activity listed below.

The Alphabet, Video by Extra Credits History

Phoenician Alphabet Craft
They use clay, but Phoencians, being traders, more often used Egyptian papyrus.   You could also make a scroll to use, which was the way most papyrus was stored.


ADDITIONAL READING FOR OLDER STUDENTS

The Myth of Cadmus and the Founding of Thebes
Older students might be interested in reading another founding myth involving the Phoenicians:  Cadmus and the Founding of Thebes.   It's a fun story involving fighting a dragon.   While it does contain an un-detailed mention of sex (Zeus "lies with" the main character's sister, one of his many adulteries), apart from that it is pretty benign for a Greek myth.    This would be best for older children on their 2nd or later cycle through history, as it refers to Greek gods yet to be discussed in this volume.    


The Phoenician Alphabet in Archeology
A related archeology article about how the Greek alphabet derived from the Phoenician one (which mentions the myth).   You could follow this up by doing some activities with the Phoenician alphabet.


 

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HEADING PICTURE CREDITS
The picture of a Phoenician ship in the credits is licensed for sharing under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.   It was created by NMB and also attributed to Elie Plus.






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