THE SCRIPTURAL, POLITICAL, AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF THE PHŒNICIAN NATIONS,—BUT ESPECIALLY OF THE KINGDOM OF TYRUS, AND THE MIGRATION TO THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.
CHAPTER I.
(2349—1600 B. C.)
THE NATIONS OF PHŒNICIA.
2349 Before Christ.] In reviewing the history of the great Phœnician family, an interest of a strong and peculiar character is now given to it from the new and apparent fact, that the Nations of that family were not annihilated—in its literal sense—by the Babylonian, Macedonian, or the Roman, at the great capitals, Sidon, Tyrus, and Carthage.
The Phœnicians as a people, will now possess an interest in the mind of the English and American reader (and of all Europe) of no common character:—for "all time" forward the History of Tyrus (and of Israel) must be regarded as being blended with that of the Western Hemisphere;—and as a consequence, with the Anglo-Saxon race: whose colossal tread, ere a century shall have passed, will obliterate every minor footprint on the Western Continent,—for the Institutions of Alfred and of Washington—freedom-founded—tower, like sheltering Palm-trees, over the desert sands of the previous Nations.
The Phœnicians claim with absolute certainty the most remote antiquity for the foundation of their "house;" for as the history of Nations requires no date antecedent to that of the Deluge,—that of Phœnicia is traceable to that event—[2349 B. C.]—and as a consequence, the first Book of MOSES is the fountain from which all the channels of certain and early knowledge are derived. From the Sacred Volume we learn that the three and only Sons of Noah "were Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan." Japheth was the eldest, and from him is supposed to have descended the family of Europe. To Shem, the second son, is traceable the House of Israel, and to that august family was granted by The Almighty, the Sacred Covenant, the Holy-laws, and the Nativity of the Blessed Saviour.
The family of the youngest Son—Ham—is traceable with the same certainty as that of his next elder brother: while that of Japheth, the firstborn, is left in comparative obscurity.
The branch of our History now before the reader, contemplates the fate and family of the last Son of Noah, and to those points only will attention now be directed;—and at the conclusion the reader will not fail to observe, that Noah's malediction upon the youngest offspring of his last child, was not uttered by the insulted Patriarch in vain. The cause of that curse is familiar to every reader, but for the argument to follow, it is necessary to bring it forward in this place.