CHAPTER II. EARLY HISTORY AND INFLUENCES
BEGINNINGS OF THE HISTORY AND CIVILISATION OF PHŒNICIA
According to the opinion of eminent geologists Phœnicia was an inhabited country at some wholly prehistoric period, long before the first appearance of the Phœnicians. Nevertheless neither skulls nor other portions of the skeletons of the primitive, prehistoric inhabitants have been found there up to the present time. But on the floor of particular caves, of which there are many on the western slopes of Lebanon, are certain strata composed of the remains of burnt coal and ashes, potsherds, splinters of the bones of animals, and flint stones of various shapes. The whole, as it were, cemented together by calcareous sinter, into a kind of brecciated mass as hard as stone. The bones of animals have been declared to be those of a species no longer extant, but they exhibit no trace of having been modelled. On the other hand the flints, which exist in great quantities, are regarded as products which are certainly the work of human hands. At least, experts who have gone deep into this department of inquiry, have expressed the conviction that shapes such as these exhibit could not have come into existence in any other way, by means of any fall of rock or chance splitting of masses of flint. Unfortunately, however, a class of shapes is in question concerning whose origin doubt and hesitation are permissible. There is no object amongst them which bears on the face of it either the unmistakable impress of a tool or a sure sign of polishing or careful fashioning. It also seems as though the deposits on the floors of those grottos which have been the principal subjects of investigation had in no instance remained undisturbed. Further confirmation must consequently be looked for before the existence of a population of Phœnicia which was prehistoric in the geological sense, can be regarded as an established fact, and even then the generation which exclusively employed tools of such a rough form as these flint fragments must in any case have been, would be divided by an immeasurable gulf from the generations which were subsequently established in the same country.
It is in no way probable that when the Phœnicians chose the lowlands on the west side of the Lebanon chain as their place of abode they took possession of a tract of country which had as yet practically no population. But we have not the slightest grounds for guessing the stage of civilisation of the predecessors whom they encountered there, nor to what race these belonged. Certain scholars have indeed sought to answer the question, why it was in Phœnicia that in early times a much higher development of civilisation appeared than in most of the other countries inhabited by members of the Semitic family of peoples, by the hypothesis that the branch of Semites which immigrated there found, as did those who settled in Babylonia, a population entirely different in endowments and descent, and who had long been in possession of a many sided civilisation; with these they may have intermingled, and from the complete amalgamation first proceeded that section of humanity, which bears in history the name of Phœnicians. This hypothesis has no other foundation than the idea that otherwise it would be necessary to attribute to a Semitic people qualities which are denied to the Semitic family generally.
As already shown, the exact point of time at which the race of Phœnicians established its claims to a home in Phœnicia, cannot be computed. It is still more impossible to fix its date than it is to determine the first commencement of historical development in Egypt and Babylonia, because in Phœnicia there is a total lack of monuments which might afford some kind of glimpse at such far remote distances of the past as are revealed by the earliest monuments of Egyptian and Babylonian origin. It may, however, be regarded as established that a consistent development, preparing the way for results which are known to history, began much later in Phœnicia than in the Nile Valley and the territory at the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Like the Babylonians and Egyptians, the Phœnicians were subsequently unable to refrain from drawing up a chronological scheme of their own history, embracing an inconceivably long period. At least Julius Africanus, a Christian chronographer who wrote in the first quarter of the third century A.D., mentions incidentally that there were versions of Phœnician history in which the latter was made to go back no less than 30,000 years. But this is quite a modest total when we remember that Babylonians are said to have asserted that their reckoning extended back 480,000 years. In what manner the enormous number of 30,000 years was attained may be guessed. A brief span of time would be filled by historical occurrences and lists of rulers.
As to primitive history, properly so called, or if it is preferred, the sojourn of the Phœnician people in its first and original home, it is probably not touched on in any way. In all probability the lion’s share was accorded to the gods, and to a plan of arrangement designed to bring the doctrine of the rule of the gods on earth, and especially in Phœnicia, into the framework of a regular chronological system. Such a scheme was required, because the lists of rulers were not limited to the enumeration of historical personages, but began with mythical figures and with gods. Therefore, on the whole, there is nothing behind these high figures, if they have been accurately reported, beyond a chronology of the Phœnician cosmogony and stories of the gods.
[ca. 2750 B.C.]
Of much more ancient origin and of much greater positive value is another date which is given by Herodotus. He asserts that during his stay at Tyre, which may be placed in the year 450 B.C., certain priests of the sanctuary there which was consecrated to the god Hercules (i.e. Melkarth) responded to his question as to how long the temple had been standing, by saying that that temple had been erected when the town was founded, and that that event had happened 2300 years before. According to this the founding of Tyre would fall somewhere in the year 2750 B.C. B. G. Niebuhr has declared himself very sceptical of the trustworthiness of the informants to whom Herodotus owed this intelligence. But even if their estimate is not to be taken as exact, and was not derived direct from records of the founding of the temple, and if it is also uncertain whether Herodotus was not merely informed of the period at which, in Phœnicia, the founding of the oldest city in that country began, still in itself few objections can be found to the correctness of this estimate as on the whole an approximately accurate date. It stands to reason that on practical grounds it was to the interest of the priesthood of that temple to bring exaggerated notions of its age into circulation. But in doing this, since they expressly invoke the notorious age of the town, they had every inducement to keep within the bounds of what was generally regarded as possible. At best, therefore, their estimate will be the earliest date with which the contemporary inhabitants of Phœnicia believed that they might associate their historical recollections generally. It was not merely a date such as is derived from simple love of romancing; otherwise they would have gone further back. In fact about twenty-five hundred years before Christ the Canaanites had actually taken up their abode in Phœnicia.
THE STAR OF THE EAST
As everything points to the presumption that we have no historical information which stands in the way of free invention as to the age of the towns, this fact should serve to confirm the theory that the origin of the towns of Phœnicia did not take place under the influence of historical events of a violent character, and that the character of the conformation of the soil of the whole territory which favoured the isolation of the different sections, had its effect at a very early stage of their development. This was all the more to be expected because the rest of the Canaanites exhibited only slight tendencies towards national unity, a want which may perhaps be explained by the probability that their original home was also the border territory of the cultivated land of Syria, and that presumably the force of circumstances under which the transition to the life in fixed abodes was completed had not been enough to banish all remains of the nomad’s disposition. Even at the time of the immigration of the Israelitish tribes, the land west of Jordan was not, according to all appearance, thickly populated, and although along the Syria coast, a greater density of population had long prevailed, yet even in Phœnicia itself the first scattered settlements had little of the character of townships until the development of an active maritime trade, which continually drew fresh sections of the inhabitants of the lowlands to the neighbourhood of the landing-places. But for this very reason the fact that subsequently every separate section of the Phœnician country was referred to solely as the appendage and domain of each great coast city, should not lead us to the conclusion that these sections corresponded to a primitive division of the Phœnician race into separate branches. What this phenomenon really points to is rather mainly an historical effect arising from the geographical peculiarities of Phœnicia. And if the population was not everywhere of pure Phœnician origin, especially in the northern districts—it apparently received continual accessions from the territory of Lebanon and the inland country south of the latter—it is still not to be admitted that distinctions of tribe influenced the choice of the country to be settled.
There is a special tendency to assign a peculiar position to the men of Byblus and Berytus. But the reasons which have prompted it are by no means conclusive; the fact that these two towns are not mentioned in the table of peoples is explained by the general application of the term “Sidonian.” It is true that in another passage of the Old Testament (Joshua xiii. 5) the Byblites are apparently not included under the general name of Sidonians. But if the general sense of this passage has not been distorted by numerous interpolations, which can scarcely be conceded, still, the independent and separate importance of Byblus will appear as a historic fact and not as one to be referred to the prehistoric founding of the city by a tribe of non-Phœnician origin. A writer who, as in this case, wishes to point out to his fellow tribesmen the tracts of country they are to subdue, concerns himself rather with states and political units than with ethnological problems. As regards the separate existence of Byblus, we need only ask the question whether as a town not founded by Phœnicians it could have become what it did: namely, a pre-eminently sacred place, a centre of religious life and thought which had no second in this country—in fact, the Mecca of the Phœnicians. The coins of this city make it clear that to them “Kaddischat” (i.e., the “holy”) and Gebal (i.e., Byblus) were regarded as identical names. Here special honour was paid to “El” or, as the Greeks said, Kronos, who was the highest conception of God in Phœnician theology. Here, too, the service of the “Lady of the City,” Astarte, acquired, with all the unrestraint of the primitive sensuousness inherent in the notion of a goddess of love and vitality, a more distinct and potent shape than in the rest of Phœnicia. In the territory of Byblus, moreover, lay the scenes in which love once united the goddess with the youthful ruler Adonis, the most beautiful of the gods, and where at the instigation of a jealous deity, his deadly enemy, her lover met his early death from the tusk of a wild boar.
[ca. 2800 B.C.]
The surmises concerning the diverse origin of the original inhabitants of the towns of Phœnicia lose still more importance from the fact that, like Syria generally, Phœnicia first becomes the scene of historical events only in connection with the development of other countries, and had evidently long before then been subjected to foreign influences. One of the most ancient records of the history of the world, a relief which the Egyptian King Sneferu caused to be set upon a rock in the Wady Magharah, shows us the Egyptians, somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., as conquerors of the Mentiu [or Mentu], the nomad tribes of Mount Sinai.
In this warlike expedition they fought for the possession of the tracts of that inhospitable mountain region where copper ore was to be found, but long before this there appear to have been manifold relations between the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and the people of Anterior Asia—relations which rested mainly on the exchange of merchandise. For instance, it was doubtless as an article of commerce that the produce of those copper mines first became known in Egypt. It was only when this source threatened to fail them that the nation, little warlike as its temper was, determined by the subjection of the predatory inhabitants of the mountains to secure itself a regular supply of the invaluable ore which was not obtainable in Egypt. Whether, as has been assumed, the operation of friendly relations went so far that the influence of ancient Egyptian art may even be traced in the most ancient statues of Babylonia, is a question which must remain undecided. The stiff appearance of the figures which has been taken as a sign of this is probably better explained by the hardness of the material in which the works were executed in order that they might be able to last for all time, and also by the lack of convenient tools. On the other hand, even in the treatment of separate portions of the body, more attention is paid to the shape of the internal structure on which the outer depends, and more regard had to the modelling than is found in the formal style, where the chief attention is paid to rendering the general outline, and which is characteristic of Egyptian art. These differences are the beginning of a line of development peculiar to the sculpture of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Still, even in the Egypt of the pyramid age, there is much which points to very early commercial relations, regularly subsisting between it and the Semitic countries.
Far greater importance must be attached to the influence exercised by the Babylonian civilisation on the nationalities of Syria, before the conditions which are seen to have prevailed in historical times began to take visible shape. Although it may have begun to make itself felt later than that which came from Egypt, this influence was still from the first more enduring and penetrating. Two routes led the civilisation of Babylonia to the countries of the west. The one ascends the course of the river Euphrates, and has its outlet somewhere at the top of the Bay of Issus, in the northeast of the interior of Syria. Here the land of the Kheta borders the Euphrates, or, as the Assyrians name it, the land of Khatti. It was chiefly from this territory, that is, from the extreme northwest of Mesopotamia, that the Babylonian—subsequently the Assyrio-Babylonian civilisation—made its way into Syria, and similarly in Syria itself it spread mainly in the direction of from north to south. The wide circuit which it takes is necessitated by the fact that it is only on the upper course of the Euphrates that the great Syrian desert, which extends between the eastern borders of Palestine and the right bank of the Euphrates, comes to an end.
The other route also shuns the great desert land and turns in a southwesterly direction from the estuary of the two rivers towards the north of Arabia. From here also Babylonian civilisation only reached Palestine and Syria by a circuitous path which led moreover through tracts of country whose natural conformation refuses its inhabitants any impulse towards the reception of an advanced civilisation. This route, however, supplies a more direct connection with the actual starting-point and home of the civilisation of Babylonia. In all ages the zone of this southern thoroughfare, which stretches from the country of the Euphrates to the land east of Jordan and down to the south of Palestine, has in great part formed a home for nomads and semi-nomads. Of all Eastern nations, Babylonia exercised in the west of Palestine and the coast plains of Syria the greatest influence on the unstable populations of this zone. The habits of life which from all time have distinguished most of the tribes dwelling here,—namely, the Bedouin habits,—can only be pursued so long as each separate tribe has a wide range. As during long periods of isolation the layers of air that cover the steppe roll up into balls of cloud which suddenly break in heavy storms on the surrounding countries; so when the density of the population has increased to such an extent that this zone can no longer feed its inhabitants, a movement sets in which induces whole tribes to seek a new home in the cultivated land in the neighbourhood, and thus once more leave sufficient space for those who remain behind. Whilst the lands of the nomads give up their surplus population, those tribes which previously dwelt farther off arrive in the near neighbourhood of the arable districts, and gradually approach the level of the inhabitants of the latter. That form of existence which is the only one possible in the purlieus of a zone habitable only for nomads and semi-nomads, necessitates, from the very facts of the case, that most of the attainments of the civilisation of other and more happily situated countries must forever remain of little value to the dwellers of that district. The civilisation of Babylonia could no more be imitated here as a whole than any other phase of development resting on division of labour, on wealth, and the development of the idea of property.
Such regulated conditions and restrictions of the will of the individual as prevailed in Babylonia must, in any case, have always been in the highest degree repugnant to the unrestrained inhabitants of this zone, which lived only in the present, and must have seemed by no means worth striving after, as even in the present day European conditions have no attraction for most of the dwellers in Arabia. The ingenious products of industry they no doubt regarded as desirable valuables and adornments, and sought to obtain them without thinking of the possibility of learning to make such things for themselves. The only inventions which they really adopted were certain simple and practical ones, the use of which gave them light, and whose employment was permitted even by the primitive existence which they led, and besides these they received whole series of religious conceptions in which they imagined themselves to perceive an important increase and extension of their own knowledge. On the other hand, the wanderings to and fro which prevailed amongst the tribes, secured a rapid and general diffusion of any acquisitions they might make.
Phœnician Vase
The influence of Babylonia on the rise of the civilisation of Syria would consequently, as far as regards the immigration of the Canaanites and the lands in the south of the great Syrian desert considered as its route, have been at first limited to a few main features. On the other hand the influence which the same civilisation acquired in Syria from the north, by virtue of its early extension in the countries of the upper course of the Euphrates, was probably equally old and far more complete. The race of the Hittites concerning whose origin and descent little is known, may have had a special part in this as intermediaries. But it is uncertain when the presence of this influence in Syria begins. The peoples of Syria were made in the highest degree susceptible to Babylonian civilisation by the fact that by descent and language they belong primarily to the Semites. For although the civilisation of Babylonia is probably not originally the product of a Semitic race, yet in Babylonia itself individual tribes of Semitic origin had made this civilisation their own in an age which belongs to the prehistoric period, and had transformed it so as to give it a Semitic character. And the elements of culture which penetrated into Syria from the northern territories of the Euphrates had passed through still further modifications and adaptations, and had laid aside whatever was foreign to the Semites. Merely on this account, it is obvious that what was transmitted could have retained little that was of a specifically Babylonian complexion. Everything in Syria which seems to bear this character on the face of it was, perhaps, just because this is so distinctly obvious, not borrowed in very ancient times, more probably adopted later; for the relations with the Assyrians lasted for centuries, and there was, speaking generally, no geographical boundary on the northeast between Syria and the countries of the Euphrates. At best such phenomena are due to a revival and renovation which left little standing that bore a true Syrian stamp, even if anything of the kind was attempted. Even the Assyrians themselves took all the trouble imaginable to copy the Babylonians as exactly as possible, and the peoples of Syria, who were still less independent in spirit, did the same so far as they were under the influence of the Assyrians. And even many centuries before the power of the Assyrians reached such a height that they were compelled to adjust themselves to it, they had derived everything that we call cultivation from the Babylonian sphere of civilisation.
Above all, the religious conceptions of the peoples of Syria were remoulded by it. Most of the attempts which were made with the object of formulating the native beliefs into a system were only brought about subsequently, as the Assyrio-Babylonian example became known. But not merely the interpretation of the existing worship and belief, not only the theology must have become more and more closely assimilated to the Assyrio-Babylonian pattern, but also, in the course of time, the names and artistic representations of the gods. For instance, we are informed that in the towns of the Philistine plains a god of the name of Dagon enjoyed specially high honour. He is frequently represented on coins, bearded and with long locks of hair, and holding a fish in either hand: the lower half of the body ends in a fish’s tail covered with scales and provided with fins. Both the name and the manner of representation distinctly point to a connection with Babylonia. In this case, according to all appearance, we are not dealing with a god whose worship was only introduced by the Philistines, but with an ancient Canaanite deity. He was also worshipped by the Canaanites of the interior. If we may trust the statement of Philo, in the Phœnician accounts of the beginnings of human civilisation it was to Dagon that the discovery of the nourishing properties of corn and the invention of the plough were ascribed. Now amongst the gods of Babylonia there is also found a god named Dagon or Dakan who figures in several inscriptions as the author of the laws, and it is also known that there were Babylonian legends which referred the first regulations of human life to teachings said to have been imparted by beings who were half men, half fish. Further, in Babylonian and Assyrian art we frequently find such hybrid creatures as well as human forms disguised as fish, the head of a fish’s skin, which hangs down the back being placed on the head of each figure. Up till now, however, we have no explanation of what these figures are meant to signify nor do we know by what name they were called. Nevertheless a model of this kind probably furnished the original for that representation of Dagon which was usual amongst the Canaanites. If he passed as the god of agriculture and its rules, he might still have adopted this shape. In any case the form is proof of Babylonian influence. As to the name, it is very probable that it was really of Semitic origin, but reached the Canaanites by way of Babylonia together with the conception of the god of the cultivation of the soil, which it denoted, and this may even have happened when they had not yet fixed their abode in Palestine. But as regards the pictorial representation, it is in the highest degree improbable that a people of essentially inland origin should from the first have imagined the divine protector and patron of agriculture as half man, half fish, and with fishes in his hands. The Canaanites can only have lighted on this strange manner of representing him when they had been already long established in Palestine, when divine beings of this form had become known to them through numerous designs imported from Babylonia, and it seemed as though no essential distinction existed between the conception of these beings and that of Dagon. Presumably the most decisive point of union was afforded by the name Dagon. Etymologically it signifies no more than a god of “corn” = dagan, but it also sounds like the word dag which means “fish,” and so easily lends itself to a double meaning which directly justifies and explains the design afterwards adopted from the name of the god.
In other cases Babylonian names seem to have dislodged the original designations of Syrian deities. But the same may be said of the Egyptian influences which, penetrating into Syria from the south, and especially into the coast districts, encountered those of Babylonia and Assyria.
With all this it must not be forgotten that the civilisation of the peoples of Syria did not stop at mere borrowing. In its beginnings it was not indeed an independent and uniform creation; but still the diversities of the separate districts lent it a certain variety, and the distribution of the different tribes gave a great deal of individuality. We may presume that the civilisation of the districts connected with the countries on the Euphrates first reached a considerable height and that then the other parts of Syria, in their various degrees, merely followed this development. In some details the influence of the earliest civilisation of northern Syria, or at least a special connection with it, betrays itself among the Phœnicians.
[ca. 1500 B.C.]
The gods Anat and Reschuf, seem to have reached the Phœnicians from North Syria at a very early period. So far, indeed, it is only certain that they were worshipped by the Phœnician colonists on Cyprus. However, the name Anat appears in the names of several towns in the Holy Land (in Beth-Anat and perhaps also in Anatoth), and a trace of the name Reschuf is still recognisable in the name of the coast town Arsuf. Portraits of these deities are displayed on the monuments of the Egyptians, who had appropriated them during their intercourse with Syria. The circumstance that the Egyptians were fond of representing both deities with the town goddess of Kadesh on the Orontes, points to Reschuf as well as Anat having been received into the Phœnicians’ system of gods from the pantheon of the northern portion of Syria. From the closing sentence of the treaty which Ramses II concluded with the Kheta [Hittites], it even seems that Anat was worshipped in many towns in the Hittite kingdom.
THE COLONIES
The settlement of the island of Cyprus by Phœnicians must have begun at a very early period, and probably took place at the beginning of the complete occupation of the mainland. In this process Phœnicia acquired an outland only a day’s journey from the coast of Syria, with favourable harbours on the side facing that coast, and sources of wealth of the most various kinds. The Phœnicians were most attracted by copper, the “Cyprian earth,” which along with iron and silver was found in the mountain range in the middle of the southern half of the island. It is probable that they acquired that masterly skill in mining which was the wonder of ancient times, not in Lebanon, but in the process of exploiting the copper treasures of Cyprus.
In most places there is no trace in historical times of distinction between autochthonous Cypriotes and descendants of the immigrant Phœnicians. It is only in places where there is a continuous flow of maritime intercourse from Phœnician districts, that we find an element of pure Phœnician nationality in the inhabitants. The political conditions of the island took shape quite in the same form as in Phœnicia and in Canaanitish Palestine. Here, too, the more flourishing municipal communities acquired supremacy over the neighbouring districts under the sovereign superintendence of town kings; in this way, it is true, they did not form an organic unit of political independence, but they formed different kingdoms of small area which corresponded to an equal number of town districts. Certain dynasties succeeded for a while in reducing several of these town districts to subservience, but at the first opportunity the league of kingdoms which had been thus expanded breaks up very easily into its original constituents.
Excavations recently carried on in Cyprus have brought to light seals on which are engraved pictorial representations of Babylonian form, and inscriptions in Babylonian cuneiform writing, with names of ancient Babylonian sovereigns. These seals which reach Cyprus in the form of rarities in the course of barter and exchange, show how ancient are the trade communications extending from the districts about the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris to the shore lands of northern Syria.
The wars which the Egyptians repeatedly waged from about 2830 B.C. with the Bedouin races of Sinai, exercised upon the political relations of Syria no more influence than the punishment executed by the Egyptian king, Pepi, upon an Aamu tribe, the Herusha, so that for the whole period of time from 2750 B.C., until the rise of the second [New] Theban Kingdom of Egypt, there is no political incident to note further than the conjecture that about the year 1950 B.C. one of the Elamite sovereigns of Babylonia appears to have reduced a large part of Syria to ephemeral subservience. Before the beginning of the second half of the second millennium B.C., must also be placed the commencement of the colonising activity of the Phœnicians, the first forcible occupation of Cyprus, possibly also the inauguration of trade with the large islands of the Grecian archipelago in the farther west. Moreover, before this point of time, under the influence of the states of Mesopotamia, the culture of those lands to the northeast and to the north of Syria had begun to take on the complexion which makes them similar to the culture of Babylonia. Many productions of this superimposed culture were already popularised in Egypt in the time of the Middle [Old Theban] Kingdom.
Whether the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, to which the Middle Kingdom was exposed, was preceded by upheavals in the political relations of Syria is not known. The Hyksos, at the time of their expulsion, appear to have found support in the population of southern Palestine. The conquest of the Hyksos’ stronghold of Avaris [Ha-Uar] under the Theban king Aahmes (I), is closely connected with the conquest of the town of Sherohan [Sharhana] in southwestern Palestine, and it is from this point that can be traced the beginning of the attempt by the Pharaohs to subdue Syria. To what a wide extent Egyptian culture must have expanded in the Syrian lands during the period in which the Canaanite princes ruled the provinces of Lower Egypt may be easily gathered.
The so-called expulsion of the Hyksos mainly consisted in the removal of a foreign dynast and his troops, and not in the expatriation of a whole people; yet the battles which this result entailed had hardened the Egyptians into a warlike race, and the national army thus created gave the kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties a weapon which they utilised for centuries afterwards, partly to reduce broad stretches of foreign territory to their sovereignty or supremacy, partly also from time to time to impose new constitutions on the reduced territories, and to pillage to the fullest extent districts whose inhabitants had proved rebellious. In the most important centres they subdued, they placed Egyptian garrisons, introduced Egyptian officials to collect taxes as they became due, erected strongholds in places where, for strategical reasons, they seemed likely to be of advantage; a king of the XXth Dynasty even goes so far as to boast of having raised a temple to Amen in Canaan. They are animated, however, by no set intention to incorporate one province after another with their empire; their nearest concern is to press as far north as possible, to the North Syrian foreland of the Euphrates. They succeeded from time to time, although always for a short space only, in procuring free communication with the banks of the great mysterious torrent which did not run north as did their own Nile at home, but flowed in the direction of the distant south. Here was the turning-point of the trade route along which the “bluestone of Babel” and so many other rare products of Mesopotamia found their way to the “wretched” Ruthennu, the inhabitants of Syria. Thus at a comparatively cheap rate could be produced a number of the coveted articles which the commerce between northern Syria and the Canaanite country had made expensive.
Concerning events that take place in Phœnicia the Egyptian monuments of this time give us little information. Aahmes seems to have visited this scene of action, for by the country of Zahi, which is mentioned in an inscription of his, the Egyptians understand that slice of Syria to which Phœnicia belongs.
Without compromising themselves by a useless defence, the cities of Phœnicia already appear to have done homage to Tehutimes I, and to have discharged tribute. They must have been well content for the sovereigns of Egypt to rout the robber hordes of the mountains in Lebanon and Bekaa, and for a foreign jurisdiction and a foreign power to restore peace and order in northern Syria by the force of arms. True, they themselves did not always escape from these encounters with impunity. Tehutimes III repeatedly entered Phœnicia at the head of his army. On his return from Tunep in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, he sacked at harvest time the whole country of Zahi. The great corn stores lying ready to be threshed were commandeered, and an equal store of wine and oil. In the thirty-fourth year he took two cities of the land of Zahi, and in one of his last campaigns he destroyed the city of Arkali, i.e., Akko. In the reports of the campaigns of Tehutimes III there is no mention of Tyre and Sidon. By the term “dwellers in the harbour” (their overthrow being alluded to in a poetical description of the power of this monarch) we should, however, comprehend the inhabitants of the coast towns of Phœnicia. Gaza and Joppa are repeatedly mentioned at this time.
In the annals of Tehutimes III, Keft ships and Kepuna ships laden with timber are mentioned. In the poetical description of victory mentioned above, the land of Kefa is placed together with Asebi, i.e., with Cyprus or with a territorial portion of this island. We may hazard the conclusion that in Kefa are comprehended the islands of the “great sea,” i.e., of the Mediterranean; at all events it is not to be looked for in Phœnicia. Otherwise Tehutimes III would have included Kefa as the scene of his achievements in the annals along with Zahi and the lands of the Ruthennu. Moreover, the Keft people, represented by the Egyptians, do not in the slightest degree resemble the Canaanites. Clearly the Egyptian artists do not find in them the characteristic features which they are so fond of representing in the Semites of Anterior Asia, even until they pass into the régime of caricature.
The successor of Tehutimes III was Amenhotep II, of whose campaign in Syria we have but fragmentary evidence. His rule and that of his son Tehutimes IV lasted but a short while. Then came Amenhotep III, who reigned more than thirty-six years, and to him succeeded Amenhotep IV, called Khun-aten, the strangest of all the Pharaohs, who held his court not at Thebes, but in a new imperial capitol which he built for himself in the city known to-day as Tel-el-Amarna. He it was who had thoughts of converting the Egyptian religion to a monotheistic system. A particularly lucky stroke of fate has saved from ruin at Tel-el-Amarna a number of historical documents of the most valuable nature, which belonged to the state archives of Khun-aten, and which have only recently come to light from the hidden repositories in which they were preserved from destruction.
[ca. 1400-1200 B.C.]
It was the discovery of these tablets that first gave the means for estimating correctly the extension of Babylonian civilisation in Anterior Asia even at this period. In those Syrian districts which were completely under the dominion of Egypt, men used the Babylonian cuneiform character and the Semitic idiom of Babylonia in written intercourse with the Egyptian court, and like the Aramaic in the Persian epoch, this idiom was the official language of diplomatic negotiations, and was consequently studied even in Egypt itself.
The confusion which followed in Egypt on the decease of the unwarlike Khun-aten, facilitated a gradual increase in the power of the kingdom of the Kheta, already forwarded by the policy of that prince and his predecessor which had been directed rather to maintaining their possessions than to an extension of power. The peoples of Syria were left to themselves until, under Hor-em-heb, Egypt again began to acquire internal cohesion; Seti I, however, was the first who was able to reconquer much of the lost territory. He managed to advance through Syria, to the frontiers of the Kheta kingdom, and to return home with a rich booty. His son and successor, Ramses II, renewed the struggle for the possession of northern Palestine, and conducted, with varying success and through long years, a war against the Kheta and their allies. Finally a treaty of peace was concluded between the two powers, by which little more was left to the Egyptians than the dominion over the coast lands of Palestine, in which they were from henceforth able,—at least while Ramses II ruled,—to maintain themselves undisturbed. A strip of the Phœnician coast may also have remained under the suzerainty of this Pharaoh.
The arrangement with the Kheta remained in effect, not merely down to the close of the long reign of Ramses II, but also during that of his son Meneptah, and placed the districts of Syria where Egypt retained a free hand in a state of dependence for several generations. One of the Pharaohs of the XXth Dynasty, Ramses III, also succeeded in re-establishing for a short time the dominion of Egypt, at least in the south of Palestine. In the eighth year of this king’s reign, the kingdom of the Kheta succumbed to the onslaught of a national migration for which a host of tribes from distant countries had joined together. Carrying their wives and children with them, the invaders made their way through Syria to the eastern frontier of Egypt. Amongst the tribes from which this enterprise started the Egyptians make mention of the Pursta (Pulista?). It is not impossible that this name denotes that same people to whom Palestine owes its name, the foreign nation of the Philistines. The assertion that the Askalonians, i.e., the Philistines, destroyed Sidon, is not to be taken quite literally, and only to be regarded as referring to the devastation and plundering of a part of Phœnicia. The repulse of the Pursta and their allies is one of the last signs of life still displayed by the effete Egypt of the period of the XXth Dynasty. The later Ramessides soon entirely lost that dominion over the districts of southern Palestine which Ramses II could still call his own. Centuries went by before armed intervention in the affairs of Syria could be again ventured on from the Nile Valley.
By the sixteenth century B.C., and before that date, though how much earlier it is impossible to say, the Phœnicians were familiar with the whole of the Ægean Sea, which they had probably reached in the first instance by way of the south coast of Asia Minor and the island of Rhodes. From the harbours of Rhodes it was a simple matter to sail to the smaller isles of the archipelago, and so, by easy stages, to the Ægean coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that, in pursuit of their commercial enterprises, they visited every nook and corner of this part of the Mediterranean, establishing factories where the conditions were favourable, and trading-stations on islands near the shore, or at such points on the mainland as seemed least liable to attack, instructing the natives in the art of mining where minerals were to be had, or taking the work in hand themselves.
VOYAGES AND TRADING-STATIONS
The records of their presence which have come down to us are scanty, and in some cases of doubtful authenticity. The statements of Greek authors to the effect that certain cities, buildings, or forms of worship, were erected or instituted by the Phœnicians, often mean no more than that their real origin was unknown. The names of Cyclopean, Pelasgian, and Phœnician were indiscriminately bestowed on all relics of venerable antiquity, and even when the Homeric poems were composed, the Phœnician occupation of the Greek archipelago lay far back in the remote past. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Phœnicians appear only as dwellers in Phœnicia, or the land of Sidon, mariners and traders, whose business leads them to and fro in great waters, far from their homes, and who now and again cast anchor in one spot for a twelvemonth or so, as occasion offers. We hear much of their doings, of the splendour of their goblets of wrought silver, and their embroidered stuffs, the product of Sidonian looms; of the jewels of gold and amber they offer for sale; of their dishonest and knavish tricks, of how they cheat simple folk of their property, and then sell them into slavery, induce maidservants to come on board their galleys with stolen goods and their masters’ children, and then, quickly hoisting sail, carry off the sons of noble houses to be sold as slaves at the next port they reach. But this is no true description even of the period when the Greek epics came into being, except in so far as it makes Sidon the chief depot of the unmatchable products of the art and industry of northern Syria. The episodes in the Odyssey which treat of Phœnician knavery are later interpolations. Nor are the deductions as to Phœnician expansion drawn by certain scholars from certain proper names in Greece very convincing, as, for all their ingenuity, they rest on internal evidence alone.
The Phœnicians colonised Rhodes, as they had colonised Cyprus, though not to the same extent. The centre of their settlements was Jalysus, opposite the coast of Asia Minor, at the northern end of the island; Cameiros, on the east, is also said to have been a Phœnician city. They established settlements in several of the Sporades and Cyclades, in Thera, Melos (where they found sulphur and alum), and Oliaros (Antiparos). The island of Cythera supplied them with a station for the purple murex fishery, and a starting-point for voyages to the west and to the Peloponnesian coast. Whether they had any settlements in Crete is uncertain, but they certainly had some close to the coast of Thrace, for Herodotus speaks with wonder and admiration of their gold mines in the island of Thasos. They are said, but on insufficient evidence, to have colonised Samothrace. Nor is it impossible that some venturesome mariners may have sailed through the Hellespont and Bosphorus to the Pontus Euxinus, and established Phœnician factories on the north coast of Asia Minor.
Schliemann’s excavations at Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Orchomenos, and other discoveries of the relics of pre-Homeric civilisation, have brought to light a number of objects unmistakably Phœnician, or copied from Phœnician models, which prove that, in externals at least, the civilisation of the islands and coasts of the Ægean had far more affinity with that of northern Syria than with that which was destined to arise in Hellas. To take but a single example, the walls of Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mycenæ, when complete, must have borne a strong resemblance to those of the strongholds of Palestine and northern Syria, as represented in Egyptian works of art. We do indeed find some attempts at originality among the relics of this period, as, for instance, in the shapes and decorations of the earthen vessels of Argolis, but, generally speaking, the foreign element preponderates; though it must remain an open question whether everything that indicates the ascendency of Asia Minor in this early stage of civilisation came by way of the sea, or whether some of it may not have been due to the gradual spread of Asiatic influences. Of Egyptian influence, direct or indirect, there is hardly a trace.
Phœnician Bottle with Triple Body
We must not, however, exaggerate the range of Phœnician influence. The great cities in which it was dominant perished early, and little or nothing of it penetrated to the interior of the mainland. Nor do the Phœnicians seem ever to have been undisputed masters of the Ægean; their stations were early abandoned, in Rhodes they had to maintain their ground against the Carians and were finally ousted by the Dorians. The north of Cyprus was early peopled by Greeks. In details and externals, there are many links between this early pre-Homeric civilisation and that which we find reflected in the Greek epics, but such remains of the former as survived were confined to a few island and seaboard tribes, and even among them, were undergoing a process of transformation. Its most important legacy was an acquaintance with the practical arts. The Phœnician vessels, sorry craft as they were, served as models to the Greeks, Phœnician gains by sea spurred them to imitation, and we are probably right in supposing that they learnt from the Phœnicians how to steer by the pole-star at night. A few details of the architecture of Tiryns, Mycenæ, and Hissarlik were adopted by the later architecture of Greece, though the difference of material had deprived them of their significance. Technical art in certain places and industries long remained faithful to patterns of Asiatic origin, as is manifest in the pottery of Melos and Rhodes, some bronzes lately discovered in Crete, and above all, as we should expect, in the manufactures of Cyprus.
The most important acquisition which the Greeks owed to the Phœnicians, was the art of writing, and the Canaanite alphabet, which, however, the latter had not acquired themselves at the time when North Syrian influence was in the ascendant in Greece. The Greeks adopted it at a later period, as they had shortly before adopted a system of weights and measures, closely akin to that which obtained in northern Syria, though they do not seem to have owed this last solely to the Phœnicians. Their commercial institutions and pecuniary transactions may have followed Phœnician models in many respects; for example, the Phœnicians were the first people whose commerce beyond sea made it necessary for them to insure legal protection for life and property by means of securities.
Where large numbers of Phœnicians lived together on foreign soil, they united to form distinct corporations with magistrates of their own. It was to the interest of these scattered communities to maintain intimate relations with some great city in their native land, and the mutual obligations thus incurred, were associated with the worship of the local divinity of the mother city. If, however, a Phœnician merely desired to make a brief stay in some foreign port, he put himself under the protection of a resident of good repute, and became his guest. At parting, a potsherd was broken in two, one half being kept by the host, and the other by the departing guest, who was thenceforth bound to extend a like protection to his former host, any member of his family, or any person employed in his affairs. When the latter desired to recommend any one to the protection of his former protégé, he gave him the broken potsherd to present as his credentials; if the two halves fitted, the bearer’s identity was established. Among the Greeks, this system of reciprocal hospitality (proxenia), took the place of the modern consular service. The Phœnicians in Greek cities were also money-lenders, and advanced loans at interest on ships and cargo, and in banking the Greeks probably learned much from them. It is unlikely that such a city as Carthage, into which wealth flowed from all quarters, should have been without a regular banking system, and a kind of money market. From Crete and Cythera, the Phœnicians sailed to the western end of the Mediterranean, allured no doubt by rumours of the mineral wealth of Spain. Sicily, Malta, Gozzo, Cossura, and the African coast, west of the great Syrtis, were at first no more to them than necessary anchorages and stations for obtaining provisions on the long voyage through the straits that divided Europe from Africa to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The development of Phœnician colonies followed the sea route to Tartessus, and it was not until the route was well established that certain places along it rose into importance. Cadiz, the farthest point of it, was older than Utica; Lixos, on the African coast, beyond the straits, was said to be older than Cadiz. Tarshish yielded not only silver in immense quantities, but gold, lead, and other metals; the fisheries were profitable, and probably even then tin and amber found their way from the far north to the countries at the western end of the Mediterranean basin.
The Sidonians had been foremost in occupying the Ægean; the western half of the Mediterranean was the sphere of Tyrian enterprise. With the sole exception of Leptis Magna, on the western margin of the great Syrtis, every Phœnician colony there, as far as our information goes, was founded either from Carthage or directly from Tyre. Carthage sends tribute and ambassadors to the temple of Hercules at Tyre, her founders are the founder of Tyre and the goddess Dido, whom legend transforms into a Syrian princess. The Tyrian Melkarth is the reputed progenitor of the Carthaginians; it is he who subdued the Libyan tribes who opposed the first colonists, and who opened a gateway to the Atlantic to his people, setting up great pillars of rock on either hand, as beseems a god whose token is two pillars. The most important Phœnician settlement in the south of Sicily was Heracleia Minoa or Rosh Melkarth, i.e., Melkarth’s Head (Cape Melkarth). Again, just as the Greeks sometimes called Phœnician wares “Sidonian,” so certain articles of Phœnician commerce are called in Old Latin sarranic, a word derived directly from Sur. The fact that the Tyrians represented Phœnicia in western waters does not necessarily imply their supremacy at home. It seems more likely that they had, by right of discovery, a kind of monopoly of the trade with Tarshish and the western Mediterranean—a situation paralleled by the partition of the world between Spain and Portugal when the two sea-routes to the Indies were first discovered. The enormous profits of this trade, however, undoubtedly secured Tyre the leading place in Phœnicia, after the loss of the colonies in the Ægean.
But even in the west, the Phœnicians could not maintain their footing against the Greeks, and on the entrance of the latter into Sicily, soon after the middle of the eighth century, they abandoned most of their possessions in that island. On the opposite coast of Africa, their colonies seem to have been more numerous, and since the rise of Carthage, their influence had spread far into the interior. There they came in contact with tribes wholly incapable of competing with them, and Punic became the common language of the country, just as Arabic did at a later period, though whether the cities there owed their origin to Tyrians, Carthaginians, or natives, we are unable to say. There were other Phœnician colonies beyond the straits, which are said to have been destroyed by native tribes. When they were founded, when destroyed, and how long an interval had elapsed before Hanno of Carthage went forth, in the middle of the fifth century, to establish fresh colonies there, are questions to which we have no answer. Punic mariners seem to have been the first to visit the Canary Islands, and, according to the report that has come down to us, Hanno’s expedition reached a point sixteen days’ journey south of Cape Verde on the coast of New Guinea.
Our information concerning the voyages of Phœnicians to the north, in search of the tin which the nations of antiquity valued so highly, is vague in the extreme. Ezekiel mentions tin among the metals brought by Tarshish to the Tyrian market, but he may refer to that which was obtained from Lusitania and Galicia. On the other hand, the Gaditanians are said to have brought it by sea from the Cassiterides or Tin Islands (the coast of Britain), and the story goes that a merchant of Cadiz who steered his vessel on the rocks, in order to preserve the secret of the route from the Romans who were tracking him, was compensated for his loss out of the public funds. Again, the hypothesis that the Phœnicians actually got as far as the Baltic shore, to traffic for amber with the inhabitants of Samland, though conceivable, rests on nothing but conjecture. It is possible that they never went as far as Cornwall, and merely pretended that the tin of Spain was the product of the northern isles to evade the risk of competition.
Phœnician enterprise was directed to the west rather than to the east, and chose the way of the sea rather than that of the land. The reason was simple; sea-transport was exposed to fewer risks, and tribes in a low stage of civilisation accorded to settlers and merchants who came among them to barter treasures from the remotest ends of the earth, for the raw produce of the soil, a very different welcome from what they could expect from the rulers of the civilised East. But, few as their settlements were, the Phœnicians, nevertheless, drove a thriving trade with oriental nations. The products of Armenia must have come into the Tyrian market before the days of Ezekiel; Syria and Palestine supplied Phœnicia with food, with raw material and articles of commerce, and with labour for her wharves. In the time of Herodotus, the spices of Arabia passed through the hands of Phœnician merchants, and he mentions that in Egypt there was a Tyrian quarter of the city [Memphis] and a temple of the “foreign Aphrodite,” presumably Astarte.
The Phœnicians do not seem to have felt bound to interfere with the Israelite occupation of the land west of Jordan, and, with a few insignificant exceptions, the two nations appear to have lived side by side in peace; a state of things advantageous to both parties.
[1100 B.C.]
The migration of the Pursta, by destroying the Hittite empire, gave rise to a number of petty states, whose impotence may be estimated by the fact that in 1110, Tiglathpileser I, King of Assyria, pressed forward to the very shores of the Mediterranean. But more than two hundred years had yet to elapse before the kings of Assyria could seriously contemplate the conquest of Phœnicia. Tyre, strong in her monopoly of the trade with Tarshish, remained mistress of the seas, and mother of remote colonies long after the glory of Phœnicia had waned in the Ægean, and entered upon the heritage of Sidon, which had formerly held a similar position. Whether there was any political compact in virtue of which she took the lead in Phœnician affairs, we cannot tell; the foundations of her supremacy were her fleet and commerce, and the gradual extension of her sovereignty to a wider area.
The list of the kings of Tyre supplies useful chronological references for Jewish history, and to this accident we owe it that Josephus has preserved some extracts from Menander’s Annals of Tyre. The first monarch mentioned in these extracts is the son and successor of Abibaal, Hiram, who ruled Tyre from 969 [980] to 936 B.C.[b]
Tyre from the Mainland