The Phoenicians. You will not find this in Lebanese history books: "[The Phoenicians] were despised as cheaters and hucksters, who could not be trusted; as insatiable mongers and unscrupulous profiteers, who kidnapped the helpless and traded in human lives; and as a licentious and morally corrupt race of people, who prostituted their daughters and butchered their infant children in honour of their gods. The Phoenicians' pejorative image as schemers and connivers has survived in the modern vernacular; 'Jezebel', our term for the quintessential shameless woman, was, in fact a Tyrian princess." From Glen Markoe, The Phoenicians, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 200), p. 10.