CHAPTER VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION
Egypt and Babylonia were doubtless the greatest nations of remote antiquity, but Phœnicia was in some respects more wonderful than either. Here was a people occupying a tiny strip on the coast of the Mediterranean, its total population aggregated in a few scattered cities, yet, actuated by a common impulse, reaching out east and west, north and south, to the very limits of the known world, and weaving with its trading ships and caravans a web of unity between all the civilised nations of the eastern hemisphere.
Phœnicia itself was at most something like one hundred and fifty miles in length, and in width it varied from literally a few yards to at most thirty-five miles. But the territories that paid tribute through the merchants and explorers whose home was in this tiny centre, were as widely separated as India on the one hand, and the Atlantic islands off the west coast of Africa on the other.
The Phœnician explorers sailed far out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which for every other nation of antiquity represented the westernmost limits of the known world. Northward the Phœnician commerce stopped only with the confines of civilisation, and southward, on at least one occasion, the adventurous explorers went far beyond it, actually circumnavigating Africa—a feat which was not repeated by their successors for two thousand years.
This circumnavigation of Africa has been questioned, and, indeed, it must be admitted that it rests on rather scant evidence, as we have nothing for it but the authority of Herodotus. But it chanced that in the tale which Herodotus tells he unconsciously bears witness to the truth of the narrative, when he relates that the explorers claimed to have sailed into a region where they had the sun on their right; that is to say, to the north. Herodotus himself does not of course at all comprehend the meaning of this alleged phenomenon; he even asserts that he doubts the accuracy of this statement. Yet, as moderns view the matter, it is clear that this statement in itself is practically a demonstration that the explorers at least did go beyond the equator, and this being the fact, it seems not unreasonable to credit their claim to have made an entire circuit of the continent.
The Phœnicians were not conquerors except in a commercial sense; but, as the traders of the ancient world, they were the means of spreading civilisation to a degree unequalled by any other nation. In particular they colonised the Mediterranean; and they were credited, no doubt justly, by the Greeks with having introduced at least the elements of Egyptian and Babylonian culture to that nation. Their most famous feat in this direction was of course the introduction of the alphabet, which, as the traditions of the time relate, and as modern scholars are quite ready to believe, the Phœnician traders brought with them from the Orient.
THE PHŒNICIANS AND THE ALPHABET
As to the exact origin of this alphabet, modern scholars are still somewhat in doubt. The Greeks themselves ascribed its origin to the Egyptians, believing that the Phœnicians had adopted a modified alphabet from the hieroglyphics. There were others, however, among the ancients who ascribed the origin of the Phœnician alphabet not to Egypt, but to Babylonia, and curiously enough this discrepancy amongst ancient authorities is exactly matched by the discordant opinions of the scholarship of our own day. It is admitted on all hands that the Phœnicians did not themselves invent their alphabet. But whether the foundation upon which they built it was the hieroglyphic or hieratic script of the Egyptians, or the elaborate cuneiform syllabary of Mesopotamia, is not even now clearly established.
The theory of Egyptian origin found about the middle of the 19th century an able and strenuous advocate in the person of Viscount de Rougé, who elaborated the theory which specifically accounted, or attempted to account, for the different letters of the Phœnician alphabet as of Egyptian origin. He based his comparisons not upon the hieroglyphics, but on the modified forms of the hieratic script, believing with good reason that the Phœnicians obtained their alphabet at a very early date—perhaps something like 2000 B.C. He logically confined his analysis to an observation of the oldest specimens of the hieratic writings that were accessible, in particular using the Prisse Papyrus, which, as good fortune would have it, chanced to be written in a very clear, bold hand. This hieratic script, as is well known, follows the hieroglyphics themselves in using at once an alphabet, a syllabary, and a modified form of ideographs. It is one of the most curious facts in the history of human evolution that the Egyptians having advanced through the various stages of mental growth necessary to the evolution of an alphabet, should have retained the antique forms of picture writing and of syllabic representations of sounds after they had made the final analysis which gave them the actual alphabet, and that to the very last they should have used a jumble of the various forms of representation in all their writings. The feat of the Phœnicians, according to the theory of De Rougé, was to select from the Egyptian characters those that were purely, or almost purely, alphabetic in character, and recognising that these alone were sufficient, to reject all the rest. Simple as such a selection seems when viewed from the standpoint of later knowledge, it really must have required the imagination of the most brilliant genius to effect it.
The theory of De Rougé was so ably supported through comparison of the most ancient known inscriptions of the Phœnicians with the hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians that it was almost at once accepted by a large number of scholars, and for many years was pretty generally regarded as having solved the old-time puzzle of the origin of the Phœnician alphabet. More recently, however, the theory of De Rougé has been called in question and the old theory of Pliny, which ascribed the origin of the alphabet to the Babylonian script rather than the Egyptian, has been revived by modern archæologists. Professor Deecke attempted to derive the Phœnician alphabet from the later Assyrian. This attempt, however, has been characterised as refuting itself in the very expression, for it can hardly be in question that the Phœnician alphabet was in use long before the later Assyrian came into existence. A more logical attempt, however, has been made to draw a comparison between the Phœnician and the ancient Accadian, which was the classical speech of Mesopotamia and the model on which the later Assyrian itself was based. This theory, first suggested perhaps by Professor Wuttke, found an able advocate in Dr. J. P. Peters, and more recently has been sanctioned by the high authority of Professor Hommel. Their opinions on the other hand have been ardently combated by the advocates of the theory of De Rougé, and the subject is as yet too obscure and the data are too few for a final decision.
Whether the Phœnicians went to Egypt or to Mesopotamia, however, for their model, it is at least admitted on all sides that among this people originated the alphabet which was transmitted to the Greeks, and through the Greeks to all modern European nations. This fact should of itself suffice to give the Phœnicians a foremost place among the nations of antiquity, in the estimation of the modern critic.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS; RELIGION
It is a curious fact that the nation to which all Europe owes its alphabet should have been the one which has left us the fewest written records of all of the great nations of antiquity. It is not at all in question that the Phœnicians first developed a purely alphabetical script and transmitted it to the Greeks, yet there are no written monuments of Phœnicia herself preserved to us that are as ancient by some five hundred years as the oldest records of Greece, that have been found in the ruins of her so-called Mycenæan period. Indeed, the oldest records of Phœnician life, at present known, do not come from the territory of Phœnicia proper, but from her colonies. This anomaly has been explained by saying that the Phœnicians were not essentially a monumental people. They were seemingly but little solicitous to preserve records of their national life, the reason being, no doubt, that such records among the early nations were almost solely actuated by the desire of a great conquering monarch to preserve the memory of his own fame. As Phœnicia had no great conquering monarchs, as her conquests were all peaceful ones, lacking the element of dramatic picturesqueness, there was no one who had a personal interest in engraving inscriptions to tell her story to posterity.
Even so great a feat as the invention of the alphabet was probably looked upon by the Phœnicians as more or less a natural development growing out of their contact with Egypt and Babylonia. And, indeed, it is not through the Phœnicians themselves, but through the Greeks, that we are informed of the fact that our alphabet is of Phœnician origin.
So far as one is able to picture the actual manners and customs of the Phœnicians, in the period of their greatest power, one must think of them essentially as a matter-of-fact manufacturing and commercial nation, living in a few relatively large cities, and sending out colonies from these cities whenever the growth of population made such extension seem necessary. Sidon and Tyre were alternately the cities of greatest influence, but neither one apparently was at any period a really great city as regards actual count of population. Tyre in particular had its most important part built upon a small island, which afforded it wonderful opportunities for defence, as such conquerors as Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander found to their cost.
But this island as explored by modern investigators has seemed to be so limited in size as to prohibit any thought that its population was ever large. And it at once becomes clear how necessary it was that colonies should be sent out from time to time, since the population of any prosperous country is constantly increasing. It has even been suggested that the main population of Tyre must, at any given period of its prosperity, have been necessarily absent from its island home on voyages of war or peace, since the restricted area of the island itself makes it difficult to account otherwise for the distribution of such a number of men as was necessary to the equipment of the Phœnician navies and trading fleets.
A nation of traders must necessarily have a high degree of intelligence of a practical kind, but it would seem that the culture of the Phœnicians did not greatly advance beyond this. Their religion was always apparently of a very crude oriental type, akin to that of the Babylonians and of the early Hebrews. In literature they apparently never ranked with these neighbouring nations. Indeed, if they produced at any time a literature of significance, all traces of it are now lost, except certain fragments of doubtful authenticity that have come to us through the Greeks; the most important of these being the alleged writings of Sanchoniathon, as translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and preserved, in part, by Eusebius.[a]
Such knowledge as we have of the religion of the Phœnicians is derived from the writings of foreign authors, Greek, Roman, and Hebrew, and from the disputed work of Sanchoniathon just referred to. With this doubtful exception, all native literature on the subject has perished. Nor does art step in, as in the case of Egypt and Babylonia, to atone in some measure for the loss; a few coins and idols found in Cyprus are all the help it gives us in forming an idea of how the Phœnicians conceived of their gods. [Renan discovered the remains of a temple of Adonis near Byblus.]
In the Phœnician cosmogony, the beginning of all things was a moving and limitless chaos of utter darkness. After the lapse of ages this agitated air became enamoured of its own first principles, and from this embrace was generated Mot, which some interpret mud, and others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. From this the universe came forth, first living creatures without sensation, then intelligent beings (Zophasemin or beholders of the Sun), in shape like an egg. From this, too, the sun, moon, and stars were evolved, and the heat and light generated clouds, wind, and rain. At the sound of the tempest creatures male and female awoke, intelligent, but feeble and timid in mind, worshipping the products of the earth. Next, of Kol-pia (Wind) and his wife Baau (Night) were born mortals, Æon and Protogonos, whose children, Genos and Genea, dwelt in the land of Phœnicia and worshipped the Sun, Beelsamin, Lord of Heaven.
Sanchoniathon’s history tells how three sons were born to Æon and Protogonos,—Light, Fire, and Flame. These begot a gigantic race, whose names were bestowed upon the mountains, and of them sprang Memrumus and Hypsouranius (unless the latter name be merely the Greek version of the former). Hypsouranius fixed his dwelling in the island of Tyre, and by him and his race the various arts of mankind were invented.
Of the gods we are told that the progenitors of the race were Eliun and his wife Beruth, who dwelt near Byblus, the oldest city in Phœnicia. Ouranos (Heaven) son of Eliun, wedded his sister Ghe (Earth), and by her had four sons and three daughters. Cronos, the eldest son, deposed and ultimately slew his father, and it is he who assigned to the various other deities their offices and places of abode in Phœnicia.
The Phœnician religion was of a distinctively national type. The active and passive forces of nature were symbolised by male and female deities, as in Egypt, but the Phœnician gods were more definitely associated with the heavenly bodies than the Egyptian. It is doubtful whether Osiris and Isis were primarily identified with the Sun and Moon, but such was unquestionably the case with the Baal and Ashtoreth of Phœnicia. According to Sanchoniathon, the proper title of Baal was Beelsemin, Lord of the Heavens, or Sun. He was the principal Phœnician divinity, and thus his name came to be equivalent to Supreme God, and is more frequently used in this sense than with reference to his original character of Sun-god. In this sense, too, it was applied to other gods locally regarded as supreme, Melkarth, for example, is the Baal of Tyre; and it is therefore difficult to distinguish the character and attributes of Baal, Bel, or Belus from those of Cronos, Ouranos, and Moloch, who were likewise identified with the Sun. In the course of time, the later character so far prevailed over the earlier that the Sun became the object of a separate worship; a process to which we find analogies in the religions of Egypt and Greece. Baal was also identified with the planet Saturn, which presided over the rest, and was therefore their lord or Baal.
Phœnician Priest
(From a statuette in the Metropolitan Museum, New York)
The name of Ashtoreth or Astarte does not appear in early Greek writers, to them the principal goddess of the Phœnicians is Aphrodite or Venus Urania (the Celestial). It is said to be Phœnician, but we can gather from it no hint of the primary physical or cosmical character of the goddess who bore it. She was identified with the Moon, as distinguished from the Sun, and with Air and Water, as opposed to Fire. Herodotus says that the oldest seat of her worship was at Askalon, and identifies her with the Babylonian Mylitta and the Alitta or Alilat of Arabian tribes.
The worship of Mylitta at Babylon was accompanied by wanton rites, but these do not seem to have been associated at first with the character of Urania or Astarte, and in the Scriptures the religion of the Phœnicians is reprobated rather for its cruelty than for its licentiousness. It was from the worship of the goddess Mylitta, at Babylon, that the corruption of morals spread to the worship of Venus in Syria, Phœnicia, and Cyprus, tainting it with an impurity which formed no part of it originally.
The worship of Venus must have been established in Cyprus long before the Greeks began to colonise the island, though it owed its great development, in part at least, to their plastic imagination. Here, too, the license which characterised the worship of Mylitta prevailed, and the ports of the island became celebrated for the number and beauty of their courtesans. Large bodies of hierodulæ, at once prostitutes and ministers of the goddess, were attached to the temples of Venus in Asia, and afterward in Greece. The origin of this custom, evil as it was, must originally have been religious in character, for the daughters of noble Armenian families passed without reproach from the service of the goddess to marriage with their equals in rank. We find traces of the same customs in remote Phœnician settlements.
Cronos or Saturn is mentioned by Greek and Latin writers among the principal deities of Phœnicia and Carthage, but it is by no means certain which particular Phœnician god answered to the Cronos of the Greeks. The most characteristic circumstance we learn concerning him is that human sacrifices were made in his honour. “The Phœnician history of Sanchoniathon,” says Porphyry, “is full of instances in which that people, when suffering under great calamity … chose, by public vote, one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn.” In the fragmentary history preserved to us, we find no mention of such sacrifices, but in the siege under Alexander it was proposed to revive a custom obsolete for ages, and sacrifice a boy to Saturn. That such a practice prevailed in earlier times is certain; we trace it in the Phœnician colonies, and above all in Carthage. On the occasion of any extraordinary calamity an unusual number of victims was sacrificed, but human sacrifice was also part of the established ritual, and every year a youthful victim was chosen by lot.
Infants were burnt alive, and the most acceptable of all sacrifices was that of an only child. The image of Saturn was of brass, the outstretched hands were hollowed so as to receive the body of the child, which slid thence to a fiery receptacle below. Mothers brought their infants in their arms, and quieted them by caresses till the moment they were thrown into the flames, since any manifestation of reluctance would have rendered the sacrifice unacceptable to the god. Human sacrifices were not made to one god only, or to one answering to the Saturn of the Greeks and Romans; but since Saturn was reputed to have devoured his own children it was natural that they should call any god to whom infants were offered by his name. Wherever human sacrifices prevailed they assumed that Saturn was worshipped; but, although Chiun (mentioned by the prophet Amos) was undoubtedly the planet Saturn, it does not appear that infants were offered to him.
The gods hitherto mentioned belonged to Phœnicia as a whole, but Melkarth, “king of the city” was the tutelary god of Tyre, and by Tyrian colonies his worship was spread far and wide throughout the ancient world. Under the name of Melicertes he appears in Greek mythology as a Sea-god, and bears the synonym of “the wrestler,” an epithet of Hercules. The Egyptians worshipped Hercules as one of their great gods, but Herodotus found no trace to show that his worship had been brought from Egypt to Tyre.
We should expect to find among a seafaring people the worship of a god corresponding to the Greek Poseidon, but though several marine deities are mentioned by Sanchoniathon, very few traces of any such god appear in the public worship of Phœnicia. This may perhaps be explained by the circumstance that they brought their religious system with them to the shores of the Mediterranean. The mythology of Semitic nations appears to have contained no god to correspond with Neptune. The divinities who really presided over navigation among the Phœnicians were the Cabiri, the reputed sons of Vulcan, who were represented in the garb of smiths, and whose images were placed on the prows of Phœnician vessels.
If idolatry be defined as the worship of false gods the Phœnicians were idolaters, but they were not image-worshippers in the same sense as the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Their temples seem to have contained no representation of the deity, or at most, a rude symbol. What we know of their religion is merely external; to the more interesting question of what spiritual conceptions they attached to the names and attributes of their gods and the rites by which they were worshipped, we have no answer to give. The leading characteristic of the nation was practical activity, and the evidences of this were what foreigners saw and recorded. Our ignorance is the less to be regretted because the Phœnician religion had little influence in historic times on the beliefs of other nations or on the art and literature of the ancient world. Its genuine character survived at Carthage, and even after the fall of that colony it long retained its hold on such portions of northern Africa as had been subject to Carthaginian dominion.[b]
CULTURE; ART
That which gave the Phœnician culture of the period preceding the Egyptian supremacy its peculiar stamp, was the abundance of Babylonian elements, which had, however, been so thoroughly assimilated, that the civilisation of Phœnicia presented itself to the Egyptians as a perfected and independent one.
There was an astonishing number of cities and fortified places. Many branches of industry and a flourishing trade had increased the wealth of the inhabitants, and developed a considerable degree of luxury in their manners. At the same time, agriculture and stock-raising were extensively carried on. We know that the Egyptians imported great quantities of corn, wine, and oil from the land of Zahi, i.e., Syria and Phœnicia.
Babylonian and Assyrian influences cannot be distinguished in detail, but it seems probable that many of the borrowings in the field of religion came directly from Babylonia. The name of Astarte had already been given to the goddess worshipped in many places of Syria. The Phœnician priests may have had already the Babylonian robes in which they are later represented.
The religious art of Mesopotamia furnished the Phœnicians models for the representation of cherubs and other winged forms. This appears most plainly in the representation of the god Ilu, who is given not only a double pair of wings, but often, like some divinities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, a trailing caftan-like garment.
Moreover, it can readily be seen that the borrowing of the alphabet must have been preceded by long and numerous borrowings of a more material nature, and adaptations of arts.
The development of art in Syria was furthered by the great number of small states in the land. The love of display of all the petty princes increased the demand for jewels and costly vessels, especially for gold and silver work. The enormous profits of this trade were also doubtless an attraction to the Phœnicians.
In the articles of luxury that came to Egypt by way of tribute or of trade, the art and industry of the Nile Valley found much to learn. From them was obtained a greater supply of designs suitable for merely ornamental purposes, and also a hitherto unknown method of application for some ornaments. Thus, reliefs now and then contain full-faced figures of gods and men, and a greater preference for winged figures manifests itself. There are, in fact, but few fields in which the counter effect of unhindered intercourse with the inhabitants of Syria cannot be traced.
On the other hand, the peoples of Syria adopted much from the Egyptians and their civilisation. In Phœnicia, to be sure, this influence is not so plain as in the coast-land of Palestine, but it is none the less a certainty for all the succeeding periods. The Phœnician religion adopted the Egyptian gods Horus, Tehuti, Ptah, Bast, Hapi, and others. The Osiris myth gained considerable currency among the Phœnicians. In their attempts to determine the relations of the various gods the Phœnician priests may have followed Egyptian schemes; for both Phœnician and Egyptian theology establish eight divinities, or four pairs of gods, as world-forming powers under the rule of a chief god.
But the most important effect of the contact with Egypt is seen in the art, and particularly the religious art, of the Phœnicians. Much use is made of various signs and hieroglyphs, e.g., the full moon symbol, the hieroglyph for “life,” the serpent of Uræus, the hawk of Horus, the eye of Uzat. Scarabs, too, were quite extensively made.
Decorative patterns as well as sacred symbols were adopted by the Phœnicians from Egypt. The lotus flower and bud, and the nechef plant especially, came into vogue as designs for capitals.
Finally, it seems altogether probable that the Phœnicians in their intercourse both with Egypt and their neighbours in Syria borrowed not only forms, but methods in all fields of art and industry.
That an art which was bent principally upon assimilation and imitation was not able to attain any great consistency of development, nor feeling for unity of style, is not at all surprising. To find a language of form, in which Asiatic would combine with Egyptian to produce something new, was beyond its power; its mode of expression remains a kind of jargon, embellished with a little Greek, but which never stood higher than pigeon English among the idioms of the present. Where the Phœnician artist gives free play to the inventions of his own genius, he only produces creations that show a lack of genuine feeling for form, in no less degree than the rough and absurd mixture of totally different styles, of which he is so often guilty.
In their fame as inventors there is so much borrowed glory that it is questionable whether the founding of a single branch of industry is really to be ascribed to them. Their commercial capacity must be reckoned far higher than their creative ability, than all that they ever produced independently. A tenacious striving for enrichment by the gains of trade, which, full of a delight in undertaking, of shrewd determination and calculation, seeks its advantage without yielding to any difficulty or danger, is united with a mode of thought that bends circumstances to itself: that knows no consolidated national interests; that, in spite of the religious fears that pictured with horrors the fate of the soul of him who died abroad without ritualistic protection from the demon of the death hour, and in spite of a devoted attachment to the place of birth, is always ready to leave it as soon as it appears advantageous.[c]
THE PHŒNICIAN INFLUENCE ON HISTORY
If we sum up all that has been said to specify the place of the Phœnicians in the history of the world, we see that their position was more due to their circulation of the cultures of the eastern lands to western countries than to their own creations.
By their inventions and technical skill, activity, and industry they enriched and beautified the external life of the ancient people. By their courageous sea voyages, they extended the knowledge of the world and opened up new objects for discovery, and fresh fields for the spirit of enterprise. By their great intercourse and universal commerce, they introduced the products of distant cultured countries to the most backward races, and thus incited them to creations of their own. And if these advantages were of a material nature, and if the satisfaction of the desire for gain and profit were the aim and object of this selfish commercial people, they bore the seed of an advanced culture which elicited imitation which would not otherwise have been attempted.
The historical books of the Tyrians, mentioned by Josephus, with the exact account of the period, were not without influence on the Israelites and Greeks; and the tradition that the Phœnicians introduced the alphabet-writing to the European people, and were the founders of many religious forms and cult practices, and taught the sacred arts, shows that deeper elements of culture were fostered and circulated with the material benefits, and that trade and intercourse in their hands were active instruments for spiritual evolution, as their attention was not exclusively turned to the material, but also directed to spiritual advantages.
Through their colonies the Phœnicians became the creators of ordered state forms and legal institutions which put bounds and limitations to the common conditions of war. Activity was used for the welfare and salvation of mankind, and the arts of peace found a proper field for their beneficial development. This, however, is the sum of their influence. It would be appraising the Phœnicians too highly to regard them as the forerunners of the Greeks in religious wisdom, art, and poetry.
In religious doctrine they were more receptive than productive. They adopted most of the nature-symbolic divinities of the Babylonians, Egyptians, and other cultured races; and by mixing up different representations and symbols, they confused the ideas in a formless whole, and veiled them in mystic darkness. Instead of continuing through free speculation what is understood, or impressing an idiosyncratic national stamp on what was foreign, they reduced the fundamental elements to a complicated convolution of ideas devoid of clear forms or ethical foundation. As their life was so permeated with the mercantile spirit, they placed their divinities in direct relation with appearances of practical experience, and desecrated the deep doctrines by material significations, by lascivious use, and by cruel practices.
Given over to the sweet habits of life, they bemoaned in mourning services the instability and perishableness of all that is earthly, without seeking any faith in immortality or in the continuance of the soul beyond the borders of time. There are no traces or memorials of Phœnician poetry or literature.
Their cult, spoilt by unbridled or unnatural practices, was not of a character to express itself in holy inspiration and to give rise to religious hymns.
Their nature-gods, derived from the Tyrian Melkarth, were colourless symbolic figures, destitute of heroic deeds, or historical myths fitting for a popular epic. What room, indeed, was there for leisure and interest in poetry and heroic stories in a restless life of industry and trade?
But surely the Phœnicians did something great in building and sculpture? It is true that the temple of Jerusalem was built by Tyrian workmen, artists, and builders; that the temple buildings in Tyre, Aradus, Paphos, and Gades, in Carthage and Utica, excited the admiration of antiquity; that the buildings of King Hiram, the ruined temples in Malta and Gozo, the gigantic tombs and the circular “nurhage” in the Balearic Isles and in Sardinia, testify to architectural skill; but they are far inferior to those of the Egyptians, or of the cultured races of the Euphrates and Tigris. From what we gather from some descriptions, their temples were more noted for size and magnificence than for artistic taste.
Their materials were chiefly wood and metal, and from the description of the jewels, treasures, and ornaments of all kinds, which distinguished the fine buildings of the Phœnicians, we see that their fame was not due to the grand full forms of simple stone architecture, but to the rich ornamentation and brilliant variegation. The structure of the ships seems also to have been of the same character as the buildings. The Phœnician buildings cannot be compared with the Assyrian, which the recent excavations have brought to light; and much that was hitherto attributed to the Phœnicians is now found to be Ninevite art, and also in the West many remains of old Phœnician work are traced to the Etruscans.
Phœnician sculpture takes a still lower rank. The physical powers which work externally and internally in the creation and destruction of nature that they deified could not be represented in beautiful forms in art, like the ethical powers of the human heart with the Greeks. Their fetiches were demoniacal distortions, their images of gods were frightful, and the figures were overladen with symbols and attributes. The human form, the fundamental type of all organic art, found no free and natural expression, and the fantastic forms of animals and plants on their vessels were borrowed from the Assyrians and Babylonians. Pure form and natural beauty were quite wanting.[i]
“The stage of development,” says Gerhard, “of such artistic remains of the Phœnicians as are known to us, instead of putting them on a higher plane show that their fame in antiquity was due to their technical working of such materials, as iron, gold, ivory, glass, and purple; and to their usefulness as intermediaries which led to their being often called upon either to execute or to disseminate the higher art of interior Asia. They had a considerable influence upon Grecian art in early times, but at the time of its development, very little. The inartistic nature and the want of the plastic sense, peculiar to all Semitic races, was seen in the Phœnicians.”[m]
