The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. No sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. It was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds.
In Phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of gardens. Mount Lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost entirely from Coele-Syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of the sea. At frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front: these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history. To the north were the Zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might. Arvad,* which was used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories. An Astartê reigned there, as also a sea-Baal, half man, half fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.**
* The name Arvad was identified in the Egyptian inscriptions
by Birch, who, with Hincks, at first saw in the name a
reference to the peoples of Ararat; Birch’s identification,
is now accepted by all Egyptologists. The name is written
Aruada or Arada in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
** The Arvad Astartê had been identified by the Egyptians
with their goddess Bastît. The sea-Baal, who has been
connected by some with Dagon of Askalon, is represented on
the earliest Arvadian coins. He has a fish-like tail, the
body and bearded head of a man, with an Assyrian headdress;
on his breast we sometimes find a circular opening which
seems to show the entrails.
The whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. The courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of any kind. This bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset of hostile fleets and the surges of the Mediterranean.*
* The antiquity of the wall of Arvad, recognised by
travellers of the last century, is now universally admitted
by all archæologists.
There was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored in cisterns—still in use among their descendants. In the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt water.*
* Renan tells us that “M. Gaillardot, when crossing from the
island to the mainland, noticed a spring of sweet water
bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.... Thomson and
Walpole noticed the same spring or similar springs a little
to the north of Tortosa.”