The Phoenicians originated on the Levantine coast of Syria-Palestine and are often considered to be the Iron Age descendants of the Canaanites, the Bronze Age civilization mentioned in the Bible. They were a Semiticspeaking people who, at the dawn of the first millennium BC, were organized into powerful and wealthy independent city-states: Tyre, a thriving metropolis and commercial centre that later established dozens of settlements throughout the Mediterranean region, including Carthage; Sidon, praised in antiquity as a production centre of intricate and highly desired glass and silverware, purple dye, and embroidery; Byblos, famous for its timber and for having produced the earliest Phoenician writing; and Arados, one of the northernmost Phoenician cities on an island off the coast of present-day Syria. From these sites, Phoenician merchants, craftsmen, and settlers migrated in the ninth century BC, first to Cyprus, where they established several urban centres, the most famous of which was Kition. The migration west continued in the eighth century BC as Phoenicians founded settlements in Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, the western coast of North Africa, Iberia, and the Balearic Islands, and in this same period, started to settle in Egypt and in Greek communities
