PHOENICIA PTOLEMAIS-AKE bronze (circa 187 BC)

DescriptionPtolemais was a port city in Palestine. Also called Ake, Akko, and Acre.Aside from giving us the alphabet for our written records, the Phoenicians had some noteworthy cultural aspects: a preference for trade over war, and a long term enthusiasm for human sacrifice, which they did a lot of until the Romans prohibited the activity. One could say that the Romans, with their bloody games, merely secularized the practice of public murder, but part of the Roman genius was the separation of entertainment from religious observance. The Phoenicians really liked child sacrifice, which was kind of different.Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.