Phoenicia and the northern nations after the death of Ramses III.—The first Assyrian empire: Tiglath-pileser I.—The Aramoans and the Khâti.
The cessation of Egyptian authority over countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression which it had made upon their constitution and customs. While the nobles and citizens of Thebes were adopting the imported worship of Baal and Astartê, and were introducing into the spoken and written language words borrowed from Semitic speech, the Syrians, on the other hand, were not unreceptive of the influence of their conquerors. They had applied themselves zealously to the study of Egyptian arts, industry and religion, and had borrowed from these as much, at least, as they had lent to the dwellers on the Nile. The ancient Babylonian foundation of their civilization was not, indeed, seriously modified, but it was covered over, so to speak, with an African veneer which varied in depth according to the locality.*
* Most of the views put forth in this part of the chapter
are based on posterior and not contemporary data. The most
ancient monuments which give evidence of it show it in such
a complete state that we may fairly ascribe it to some
centuries earlier; that is, to the time when Egypt still
ruled in Syria, the period of the XIXth and even the XVIIIth
dynasty.
Phoenicia especially assumed and retained this foreign exterior. Its merchants, accustomed to establish themselves for lengthened periods in the principal trade-centres on the Nile, had become imbued therein with something of the religious ideas and customs of the land, and on returning to their own country had imported these with them and propagated them in their neighbourhood. They were not content with other household utensils, furniture, and jewellery than those to which they had been accustomed on the Nile, and even the Phonician gods seemed to be subject to this appropriating mania, for they came to be recognised in the indigenous deities of the Said and the Delta. There was, at the outset, no trait in the character of Baalat by which she could be assimilated to Isis or Hathor: she was fierce, warlike, and licentious, and wept for her lover, while the Egyptian goddesses were accustomed to shed tears for their husbands only. It was this element of a common grief, however, which served to associate the Phonician and Egyptian goddesses, and to produce at length a strange blending of their persons and the legends concerning them; the lady of Byblos ended in becoming an Isis or a Hathor,* and in playing the part assigned to the latter in the Osirian drama.
* The assimilation must have been ancient, since the Egyptians of the Theban dynasties already accepted Baalat as the Hathor of Byblos.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from Prisse d’Avennes
This may have been occasioned by her city having maintained closer relationships than the southern towns with Bûto and Mendes, or by her priests having come to recognise a fundamental agreement between their theology and that of Egypt. In any case, it was at Byblos that the most marked and numerous, as well as the most ancient, examples of borrowing from the religions of the Nile were to be found. The theologians of Byblos imagined that the coffin of Osiris, after it had been thrown into the sea by Typhon, had been thrown up on the land somewhere near their city at the foot of a tamarisk, and that this tree, in its rapid growth, had gradually enfolded within its trunk the body and its case. King Malkander cut it down in order to use it as a support for the roof of his palace: a marvellous perfume rising from it filled the apartments, and it was not long before the prodigy was bruited abroad. Isis, who was travelling through the world in quest of her husband, heard of it, and at once realised its meaning: clad in rags and weeping, she sat down by the well whither the women of Byblos were accustomed to come every morning and evening to draw water, and, being interrogated by them, refused to reply; but when the maids of Queen Astartê* approached in their turn, they were received by the goddess in the most amiable manner—Isis deigning even to plait their hair, and to communicate to them the odour of myrrh with which she herself was impregnated.
* Astartê is the name taken by the queen in the Phoenician
version: the Egyptian counterpart of the same narrative
substituted for it Nemanous or Saôsis; that is to say, the
two principal forms of Hathor—the Hermopolitan Nahmâûît and
the Heliopolitan lûsasît. It would appear from the presence
of these names that there must have been in Egypt two
versions at least of the Phoenician adventures of Isis—the
one of Hermopolitan and the other of Heliopolitan origin.