Phoenician Religion
Generally, a triad of deities dominates Phoenician Pantheon. They are a king of gods, a mother goddess of fertility, a young God whose destiny is to born, to die and to reborn every year as Vegetation does during the seasons. Names of gods may change from city to city.
The main deities were El, Baalat, and Baal, forming the foundation of the religious system. El was the creator of the world and Baalat was his wife. The latter was considered a kind of great mother, who gave warmth, fertility and security to man and was also known as Asher.
Known to Sumerians as Innin, to Babylonians and Assyrians as Ishtar and to Egyptians as Isis, Asher was a goddess of fecundity and love.
But the most worshipped was Baal, god of rain and vegetation, who would die each year and then would reborn to recall seasons.
Religion in Carthage
Religious life in Carthage followed more or less Tyre’s model. The dominant god was Baal Hammon. Mother goddess was Tanit. The young god of vegetation, was both Melqart, god of Tyre, and Eshmun, god of healing.
Tanit’s symbol consisted of a triangle with a horizontal bar and an overlaying bow or circle. The bar showed a sun and a rising moon.
Priests practiced religious functions in simple temples provided with an enclosure and a betyl in the middle. A betyl was a sacred stone believed to be the dwelling place of the god. Rites were often held on altars built in high-altitude areas.
Moloch or sacrifice of children
Phoenicians sacrificed land products, animals and even children to gods. The sacrifice of children, called moloch, was indeed a typical element of Phoenician religious system. In case of wars, famines, epidemics or hard times, they sacrificed the newborn firstborn of noble families into the fire.
They also had a developed cult of the dead. Deceased was buried in rocks and guarded inside singular sarcophagi. Near it they put food, clothes, and various objects to help the dead in the world beyond.
In Cagliari, Sardinia, on a hill called Tuvixeddu, there is one of the largest Phoenician necropolis in the Mediterranean.
Sacred prostitutes
According to Phoenicians, animals and women fertility and economic prosperity were related to the coupling of gods. So they reproduced the sacred coupling in the temple, between priests, or faithfuls, and the sacred prostitutes.
Phoenician Tophet
Numerous archaeological evidence record the existence of tophet, open-air sanctuaries with terracotta urns, containing ashes and bones of young children. Together with stone stelees with votive figures and inscriptions they served as a thanksgiving to gods or as requests for divine goodwill.
As the tophet was a public sanctuary, probably it also gathered remains of dead children early.
One last aspect of religion was the consultation of oracles.
Phoenician art
Practical and functional requirements that make it more often similar to craftsmanship characterize Phoenician and Carthaginian artistic production.
In the Phoenician world, stone reliefs (sarcophagus and stele) and terracotta figures were very popular.
The “masks” and the “protomes” of terracotta had a funeral destination.
Masks depicted a human face with mouth and eyes openings. Protomes depicted a face and upper torso without openings.
There are many finds in gold, silver, hardstone and polychrome glass jewelery. Numerous scarabs and stone amulets made by hardstone and statuettes and utensils by ivory.
Small and precious glass objects, including human-shaped pendants, necklaces, amulets, were high-tech products. Generally they featured spiral, zigzag, festoon or plumage motifs.
Pottery with its variants of colors and shapes was of fundamental importance for Phoenician trade.
Industry and crafts
The mountainous area in which Phoenicians lived did not favor agriculture. So they devoted themselves to trade and crafts. They were able to work fabric, dyeing them with purple extracted from bush, a sea shell. 
They were also skilled in working glass.
Purple industry played a key role. The name Phoinikes attributed to this people is of Greek origins and comes from phoinix, which means purple red.
So the name refers to the typical Phoenician industry of purple coloring of fabrics.
Phoenicians were also able to carve precious stones, and were very skilled in ivory processing, colored glassware processing and jewelry.
Phoenician Trade
Phoenicians were great traders: they mainly exported cedar wood furnishings, glassware containers and purple-painted fabrics and imported raw materials.
They had great skills in the field of shipbuilding. They used very tall trees of cedar woods that grew in the mountains to obtain straight and long trunks, suitable for shipbuilding.Naturally a resin covered cedar wood and this made it water-resistant.
Phoenician ships
Boats built by Phoenicians were true vessels with a keel, a sturdy wooden beam under the hull, and a rudder that allowed them to give direction to the boat.
Phoenicians were the first to use the anchor formed by an iron bar and a wooden cross. They improved nautical art by refining the orientation techniques. By day, they were able to navigate using the various characteristics of the coast as their point of reference. By night they were able to orient themselves thanks to the Polar Star. In fact Greek called it Phoenician Star. In addition, Phoenicians studied tides and recorded on board newspapers what happened during their journeys.
Invention of the alphabet
The greatest merit of Phoenicians is the invention of alphabet.
Before Phoenicians, population used very complex writing methods.
One of them was Sumerian writing, formed by wedge-shaped signs. The hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians was based on images.
Phoenician alphabet was much simpler and easier to remember than Sumerian or Egyptyan alphabet because it only had 22 signs. Each sign represented a sound or articulation of language. For this reason, this type of writing is called phonetic writing. The 22 signs used by the Phoenicians represented only consonants, in fact, only later Greeks added vowels.
Phoenician alphabet, being very practical, spread throughout the Mediterranean. Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet originated from it. Greeks added vowels to this alphabet. The alphabet we use today comes from Latin, and in a way from Phoenician’s one.
source:
“Mozia” guide by Nino Sammartano La medusa Editor