The Phoenicians, Cananeos of race and Semites of language, settled down 7,000 years ago, in a weak land strip between the sea and the Lebanon mounts. They were capable, intelligent and laborious people, that became rich with the commerce of two products that they had near their work: the purple to dye the fabric, which they extracted from murex, an snail of the sea, and the wood of the cedars from Lebanon mountains. They were great navigators and good retailers. They lived in state cities, prosperous and independent ones and they were great perfume lovers. With these antecedents and with a great fleet of light ships, of streamlined prow, they were frightful in the sea and they were prepared to open factories in all the Mediterranean, that after a time they will become cities. They bought all class of noble and useful metals, and they sold cedar woods to the Egyptians and they manufactured articles to the inhabitants of the Greek islands, to the southern Italian and to the Spanish coasts. We have not too many news about the aromatic products that they used, but we have, and many, of the enormous amount of perfume vessels that they manufactured. We find the remainder of their steps or their stay in all the periplus that they did, in all the factories where they established and above all in all the cities that they founded, particularly Carthage, but also, Cyprus, Crete, Malaga, Cadiz and Ibiza and so many others. We can say in connection with the perfumery that, aside from the glass vessels or the vitreous paste, that they changed or they sold, and that we find them in all the archaeological museums of the Mediterranean, that they were the essence providers for their colonies inhabitants. Without sinning of exaggerated, we dare to say that the Phoenicians became the first perfume distributors of the Mediterranean basin.
When Tiro, the last Phoenician city, fell into the Alexander’s hands, after more than 6,000 years of stay, all the won ones that could, they fled to Carthage that was already a great metropolis of Phoenician roots. The Carthaginians continued their original customs and, among them, the use of the perfumes, but they did not distinguish in abusing of them. The Carthaginians became a town of conquerors, and after 118 years of wars against the Romans, Carthage finished in a city so Romanised as the same Rome.
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