An ancient nation of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its territory included what are today coastal areas of modern Israel and Lebanon. The Phoenicians were famed as traders and sailors. They developed an alphabet that was eventually adapted by the Greeks and Romans into the alphabet used in writing English. In the Phoenicians' alphabet, the marks stand for individual sounds rather than for whole words or syllables, as in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
(Acts 21:2). (See PHENICIA.)