The truth of the damning charges made against this great race.

They invented the alphabet and modern navigation and introduced wine to Europe. But after the sacking of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC and the destruction of their famous library, the world was left with very little evidence of Phoenician life and culture.

The Greeks and Romans describe them as a race of unscrupulous profiteers, grubby merchants – and worse. They were seen as a morally corrupt race who forcibly prostituted their daughters in sacred rituals and killed their own young in an attempt to win over their violent gods. But were they truly evil or victims of a vicious propaganda campaign?