This is an absolutely phenomenal summary, Daniel. The only thing I wish it had more of is personal stories about individual Phoenicians — which, given the thoroughness with which the Romans razed Carthage, are understandably hard to come by.

I’m nowhere near as read-up on Phoenician civilization as I should be — but from what I’ve read, I get the impression that it’s incredibly hard to draw sharp distinctions between Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Canaanites, Ugaritic people, Israelites, etc., etc. There’s so much cross-pollination with the surrounding cultures (Hittites, Egyptians, Mitanni, much later the Greeks, etc.) in terms of pantheon, vocabulary and ways of life, that it often seems unclear whether there was any overarching Canaan-ic cultural identity at all, or just a loosely similar group of peoples who happened to speak related languages. Can you recommend any good scholarly sources to help make some sense of this?

Also, have you read the Sanchuniathon? I haven’t had a chance yet, but I’ve been reading a lot about it lately, and I’m intrigued. Even though it’s probably a much later work, it does seem to contain fascinating little hints of the old Phoenician religion. I mean, the Norse Eddas and Beowulf were both written down after the countries in question were Christianized — but that hasn’t stopped scholars from combing those works for cultural clues.