Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from an intaglio engraved in
Cesnola. The Phoenician
figures of Horus and Thot
which I have reproduced
were pointed out to me by
my friend Clermont-Ganneau.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
after an intaglio
engraved in M. de Vogué.
Their mistress came to see the stranger who had thus treated her servants, took her into her service, and confided to her the care of her lately born son. Isis became attached to the child, adopted it for her own, after the Egyptian manner, by inserting her finger in its mouth; and having passed it through the fire during the night in order to consume away slowly anything of a perishable nature in its body, metamorphosed herself into a swallow, and flew around the miraculous pillar uttering plaintive cries. Astartê came upon her once while she was bathing the child in the flame, and broke by her shrieks of fright the charm of immortality. Isis was only able to reassure her by revealing her name and the object of her presence there. She opened the mysterious tree-trunk, anointed it with essences, and wrapping it in precious cloths, transmitted it to the priests of Byblos, who deposited it respectfully in their temple: she put the coffin which it contained on board ship, and brought it, after many adventures, into Egypt. Another tradition asserts, however, that Osiris never found his way back to his country: he was buried at Byblos, this tradition maintained, and it was in his honour that the festivals attributed by the vulgar to the young Adonis were really celebrated. A marvellous fact seemed to support this view. Every year a head of papyrus, thrown into the sea at some unknown point of the Delta, was carried for six days along the Syrian coast, buffeted by wind and waves, and on the seventh was thrown up at Byblos, where the priests received it and exhibited it solemnly to the people.* The details of these different stories are not in every case very ancient, but the first fact in them carries us back to the time when Byblos had accepted the sovereignty of the Theban dynasties, and was maintaining daily commercial and political relations with the inhabitants of the Nile valley.**
* In the later Roman period it was letters announcing the
resurrection of Adonis-Osiris that the Alexandrian women
cast into the sea, and these were carried by the current as
far as Byblos. See on this subject the commentaries of Cyril
of Alexandra and Procopius of Gaza on chap, xviii. of
Isaiah.
** It is worthy of note that Philo gives to the divinity
with the Egyptian name Taautos the part in the ancient
history of Phoenicia of having edited the mystic writings
put in order by Sanchoniathon at a very early epoch.
The city proclaimed Horus to be a great god.* El-Kronos allied himself with Osiris as well as with Adonis; Isis and Baalat became blended together at their first encounter, and the respective peoples made an exchange of their deities with the same light-heartedness as they displayed in trafficking with the products of their soil or their industry.
* This is confirmed by one of the names inscribed on the Tel
el-Amarna tablets as being that of a governor of Byblos
under Amenôthes IV. This name was read Rabimur, Anrabimur,
or Ilrabimur, and finally Ilurabihur: the meaning of it is,
“Muru is the great god,” or “Horus is the great god.” Muru is
the name which we find in an appellation of a Hittite king,
Maurusaru, “Mauru is king.” On an Aramoan cylinder in the
British Museum, representing a god in Assyrian dress
fighting with two griffins, there is the inscription
“Horkhu,” Harmakhis.