Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Very little is known about the Canaanite language, except what can be gathered from the El-Amarna letters written by Canaanite kings to Pharaohs Amenhopis III (1402 - 1364 BCE) and Akhenaton (1364 - 1347 BCE). It appears that the Phoenician language, culture, and writing were strongly influenced by Egypt (which controlled Phoenicia for a long time), as king Rib-Adda of Byblos admits in one of his letters to the pharaoh.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/17/the-phoenician-alphabet--language/.