Deep, grounded answers are lacking because we don't have something like a theory of social/cultural evolution. Many potential factors are clearly not relevant:

Deep, grounded answers are lacking because we don't have something like a theory of social/cultural evolution. Many potential factors are clearly not relevant: was not a major population center like Egypt, was not particularly rich in resources, was not a serious military might like Persia (except, though, in maritime context), was not centralized (quarreling city-states). Economically it was based on slave labor like the entire region. It was an extrovert society (trading a lot, establishing seaside colonies all over the Med etc), but so were the Phoenicians. Maybe in the end it was just a non-linear cascade that is hard to explain "linearly" after the fact. Maybe using their interactions to copy and cross-fertilize what all the pre-existing cultures had to offer created a domino effect where one thing led to another (eg. improved script -> better education -> smarter logistics -> more spare time -> more philosopher-scientists -> more mathematics, you get the picture). Its equally important to understand what caused the eventual decline. The depressing fact that "progress" is not monotonic. Could we be heading toward a new middle ages?