Phoenician Lesson: 3 class periods, four class periods if both activities are used. Greek Lesson: 4 class periods; 5 or more periods if the extension activity is used. Roman lesson: 3 class periods Capstone Lesson: 2 class periods, three or more class periods if both activities are used.
Our first lesson will be about the Phoenicians, who invented the alphabet inherited
by the Greeks, Romans, and eventually, us.
Guiding Questions:
Who were the Phoenicians and where did they live?
When and why did they invent the alphabet?
What did their alphabet look like?
Can we see some early forms of our own letters in this very old alphabet?
Learning Objectives:
After completing this lesson students will be able to:
Describe the Phoenicians as a trading people who lived long ago on the shores
of the Mediterranean.
Understand that the Phoenicians invented the first form of our alphabet.
Say why the alphabet was important for the Phoenicians.
Compare some of the Phoenician letters to our letters.
Write a short paragraph (with the teacher or alone) on a topic related to
learning or using the Phoenician alphabet.
A short narrative description of the Phoenicians is included below. You could
use it, together with the maps and illustrations provided, to introduce your
students to the Phoenicians. In order to do the activities outlined here you
will need to download or project the The
Phoenician World and the The EDSITEment Phoenician
Alphabet Page.
The Phoenicians were a trading people who came from the eastern part of the Mediterranean
Sea. Their two main cities were Sidon and Tyre. They had very wonderful ships,
built with timber from Lebanon, and they traded in all sorts of good things: metals,
cloth, purple dye, fine jewelry and craft work, salt, wine and olives, grain,
and many other things. The Phoenicians were sailors and city dwellers, and as
they grew more and more prosperous and populous they did not spread out into the
land as other people might. Rather, they founded many new cities, or colonies,
all around the Mediterranean Sea. Be sure to show your students that some of these
colonies were as distant from Phoenicia as the southern coast of Spain. You could
also point out Carthage, in North Africa. Carthage was the most famous of the
Phoenician colonies. It became a very powerful city, and later on in time it became
Rome's adversary in a battle for dominance over the western Mediterranean.
Two Activities based on the Phoenician Alphabet
Phoenician Alphabet Activity: Speak about the Phoenicians' extensive trading
all around the Mediterranean and show your students some pictures of the Phoenician
ships.
Now use your
map to show the students Tyre and Athens, Greece. (We'll be using Athens
again in the Greek part of the unit.) Ask the children to pretend that they
are Phoenician merchants trading purple cloth from Tyre for olive oil from
Athens. They are stationed at Athens, and they must stay there to continue
with their business. But they must also report back to Tyre about how much
they've sold and what new supplies they will need. How will they send the
message? (Answer: They will have to send a letter, probably with the next
ship.)
Then ask the students if the Phoenician traders could write a letter if they didn't
have an alphabet. Using the EDSITEment
Phoenician Alphabet page the teacher could show the students the Phoenician
alphabet. S/he could say something like: "Three thousand years ago, when the ancient
Phoenicians wrote letters, this is the alphabet they used." Do the children recognize
any of the old Phoenician letters? Several are easy to recognize once you see
that the form is slightly different from what we are used to.
Point out that A and S, for instance, are nearly the same
as they are now, except that they are lying sideways ["S" is the second to last letter of this alphabet].
Again, the teacher could show the students that O looks just the
same now as it did three thousand years ago, and so does T.
Encourage your students to draw further comparisons. (Ask about the letters in
the “D” and “E” position, for
instance. Do they look somewhat familiar?)
Congratulate the children on being able to identify letters that are about
3,000 years old and come from a different language! Let the children count the
letters and copy some of the strange ones. They'll see that this first alphabet
has fewer letters than ours, and they will notice many other differences.
You
could talk with the class about how things change form and appearance as they
develop. For instance, you could ask the children if they think that they will
look the same when they are 12, or when they're grown up, as they do now. Just
like people, the alphabet changes its appearance over time.
Possible assignments:
Ask the children to write (or write with them) a short story or descriptive
paragraph about a Phoenician child who is learning the alphabet.
Alternatively, write with them, or ask them to write, the letter the Phoenicians
traders wrote back to Tyre. They could tell about their success at Athens
and request more things to sell.
Assessment Activity:
Conclude the lesson by asking the children to identify Phoenicia and the Mediterranean
Sea on the
map. Can the children trace the route from Tyre to Athens? Can they show the
Phoenician colonies? Ask the children what sorts of things the Phoenicians loaded
onto their boats to trade.
Finally, ask the children who invented the alphabet
that would someday become our alphabet. Why would a trading people need an alphabet?
Can they remember some of the letters the Phoenicians invented that we still use?
Extending the Lesson:
If any of your students suggested that it might be just as easy to write with
pictures, there are two wonderful Just
So stories by Rudyard Kipling—through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet
Public Library—that show in a very amusing way why it is so important
to have letters. They are called "How
the First Letter was Written" and "How the First Alphabet was Made". They would
also be available in any collection of Kipling's stories for children.
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