Posts Tagged ‘Phoenician’
A National identity? Lacking this identity? Again, what is this new notion?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 28, 2020
A National identity? Lacking this identity? Again, what is this new notion?
Note: Re-edit of “Lacking a National identity? Is it a big deal?”
We don’t need to unite under an identity: All national identities everywhere were invariably built and sustained on myths, historical falsehood, and faked stories.
Any powerful colonial nation that gained an “identity” was forced upon its “citizens” by waging wars for fictitious claims and suffering millions of young soldiers fallen in battlefields.
What we need is to be unified under the banners of civil rights, human rights, sustainable environment, equitable and fair election laws and regulations, civil marriage, linked to fast communication technologies, access to social platforms, freedom of expression, laws not discriminating among genders, versatile opportunities to jobs and to applying our expertise, affordable education system, national health system…
What we need is to unite against any State invading our borders, bombing our infrastructure, humiliating us, destabilizing our society and economy.
What we need is to unify against any political current that has proven to work against democratic representations, racial demagoguery, sectarian political ideology.
What identity are we claiming?
Are we to emulate other Nations that based their “identity” on myths and falsehood?
Youth was sacrificed to institute a Nation and were never taken seriously because they are viewed as just meat for the canon and a burden to a stable political system…
There are sections in Lebanon (mostly Christian Maronites) advancing the French mandatory alternative of a “Phoenician” ancestors.
Currently, there are Lebanese testing their blood for DNA evidences of any physical “Phoenician inheritance“.
A few are wary that they won’t be found to have any Phoenician stain/strain and be caste off as “strangers”. What a load of crap.
The Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean Sea in 1,200 BC and the string of their City-States extended from southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, up to Haifa in Palestine.
The Phoenicians were famous for maritime trade and commerce and established many trading centers around the Sea. The written language has been around for 3,000 years, but the Phoenicians in the City-State of Byblos are credited for inventing the alphabet (currently in use with slight modifications.)
Before the Phoenicians and afterward, the Near East region of the Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine) has been invaded by a dozen warrior empires, many invaded us repeatedly.
For example, the empires in Iraq (Akkad, Babylon, Assyria), Egypt, Persia under various dynasties (at least four of them), Greece, Roman, Byzantium, Arabic, Ottoman, and finally the colonial powers of France and Britain.
All these warrior empires didn’t build anything worth showing as representative of civilization, until they invaded our region “The Land” and rounded off and hoarded the educated and master craftsmen to their capitals.
We are a region of multiple identities if we have to rely on occupation empires.
How about we identify with education and craftsmanship? I love this identity.
Let us focus on affordable efficient schooling system; let us encourage technical and craftsmanship schooling system.
Let us focus on building commercial ships; let us invest in railways and fast communication facilities; let us open up to knowledge facilities all over the world.
I love this identity; let us get to work and planning.
Another sections of Lebanese, mostly Muslim-Sunnis, would like to have an Arabic identity and pushing it too far to claiming that we are from the Arabian Peninsula. Are we Arabs? What that means?
The Islamic Arabic army that came from the Arabian Peninsula to fight the Byzantine Empire and later the Persian Empire barely numbered 7,000 men of war. The other three-fourth of the army that backed and supplemented the “Arabic army” was constituted from people and tribes living in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan wanting to defeat the Byzantium unforgiving Orthodox Church and domination.
How can we be descendant of the sparsely populated Arabian Peninsula?
The “Arabic identity” group would claim that our culture and civilization is Islamic Arabic. How that?
The cultural development during the Arabic Empire was shouldered by the scholars in Syria, Iraq, and Iran and they were mostly Christians. They would like to rely on the Arabic language as basis for our identity. Excellent idea.
Let us prove that the Arabic language is a viable foundation; let us infuse a new spirit in that dying language; let us translate the worthy manuscripts; let us invent new terms that have No religious connotation and spread the Arabic language as a universal language, valid to sustain modern civilization with fresh brains and advanced sciences and technologies. I will be for it and will support it vehemently.
But first, let these “Arabic” scholars recognize that the Arabic language has roots in the slang of the Land: Aramaic, and Syriac languages…
There are other factions wanting to claim that we are Muslims. How about the dozen minority religious sects? Are we to agree on a theocratic identity?
Turkish Ataturk cancelled the caliphate in 1925 and there is no caliphate anymore, anywhere. Tiny Lebanon has 19 “officially” recognized self-autonomous religious communities running our civil life. Let us get real.
A theocratic State will never pass and will never find unity for identity.
Should we hide behind a reality of disparate communities to establish the concept of plurality community government? Should 19 wrong sectarian identities constitute a valid identity?
Again:
What we need is to be unified under the banners of civil rights, human rights, sustainable environment, equitable and fair election laws and regulations, civil marriage, linked to fast communication technologies, access to social platforms, freedom of expression, laws not discriminating among genders, versatile opportunities to jobs and expertise, affordable education system, national health system…
What we need is to unify against any State invading our borders, bombing our infrastructure, humiliating us, destabilizing our society and economy.
What we need is to unify against any political current that has proven to working against democratic representations, racial demagoguery, sectarian political ideology.
Alphabet Chart? From petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, Haykazian, Mesropian and Phoenician alphabets?
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 19, 2017
Alphabet Chart? From petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, Haykazian, Mesropian and Phoenician alphabets?
Comparative Alphabet Chart, all based on Armenian petroglyphs and hieroglyphs from 12,000 to 2000 BCE, including Haykazian (Hyksos) script influencing Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician alphabets, etc. Also reviving Mesropian script which influenced Georgian and Albanian alphabets.
– Copyright Picture Melkon Armen Khandjian 2007.
Illustrious and immortal personalities: The Phoenician masters… Part 7
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 19, 2013
Illustrious and immortal personalities: The Phoenician masters…
Masters in architecture, engineering, cosmology, astronomy, philosophy, literature, history writing, agriculture, viticulture, food preservation, textile, dying…
1. Mochos the Sidonian, the geographer who wrote “Sacred Annals”.
Poseidonius believed that the concept of Atoms originated with Mochus
The Greek geographer Strabo (1st century AD) wrote:
“The Sidonians are skilled in beautiful arts, philosophy, sciences, astronomy, arithmetic… These sciences have come to the Greek and Egytians from the Phoenicians…”
2. Sanchuniaton of Berytus (Beirut) wrote “Phoenicia History” and is credited as the “Father of History“, centuries before Herodotus
3. Pythagoras mother was Phoenician and she sailed from the island of Samus to Lebanon Afka Temple in order for her son to receive the lustral consecration (baptized according to the rite that is still performed in Lebanon).
4. At least 11 tragic plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have subject matter and characters featuring Phoenician connection and references. These plays appeal to the loftiest and noblest virtues of the soul.
5. Clitomachus-Asdrubal (called Hasdrubal of Carthage) chaired Plato Academy in Athens
6. Philodemus of Gadara wrote “On Music”
7. Porphyrius of Tyre wrote “Treatise on the soul” and the commentaries on “The Dialogue of Plato“. He was for Plotinus, Aristotle and Homer what Plato Plato was to Socrates.
8. The French Combes-Dounou (1802) translated the 43 essays of Maximus of Tyre (70-130 AD)
9. Herrenius Philo of Byblos wrote “On cities and their famous men”, “On Books”, and “History of Adrian”
10. Appolonius of Tyre (60 BC) is the stoic philosopher who provided a “Tabulated account of the philosophers of the school of Zeno and their books”
11. Mago of Carthage wrote the masterful 28 volumes on agriculture “Treatise on Agriculture” and considered by the Romans as the “Father of Agriculture”
12. Longinus wrote “On the Sublime”
13. Nonnus wrote “Dionysiaca”
14. Melodious Romanos is considered the “Pindar of rhythmic poetry”
15. Nemesianus of Carthage wrote “Nautica”
16. Lucius Apuleinus of Madaura (125-180 AD) wrote fables in “Psyche” and “The Golden Ass”
17. Thales of Miletus was born and raised in one of Phoenicia city-State on the coast of current Turkey.
18. The Phoenicians built the city-State of Thebes in Greece, 3 centuries before Athens existed. This famous city generated the illustrious Amphion, Hesiod, Corinna, Pindar, Epaminondas, Plutarch…
19. Three out of the 7 Greek Wise-men were Phoenicians, and among them was Thales of Miletus.
The Pre-Homeric poetry was discovered in Ras Shamra (ancient city of Ugarit). Cyrus Gordon wrote in 1929:
“The greatest literature discovered since deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform…”
Actually, the mythical stories in Homers’s work were Phoenician stories in how they discovered the seas and oceans
Note: Read “6,000 years of peaceful contribution to mankind” by late Charles Corm
Adonis Diaries 