Phoenicia was celebrated from a remote antiquity for the manufacture of textile fabrics. The materials which she employed for them were wool, linen yarn, perhaps cotton, and, in the later period of her commercial prosperity, silk. The “white wool” of Syria was supplied to her in abundance by the merchants of Damascus,[81] and wool of lambs, rams, and goats seems also to have been furnished by the more distant parts of Arabia.[82] Linen yarn may have been imported from Egypt, where it was largely manufactured, and was of excellent quality;[83] while raw silk is said to have been “brought to Tyre and Berytus by the Persian merchants, and there both dyed and woven into cloaks."[84] The price of silk was very high, and it was customary in Phoenicia to intermix the precious material either with linen or with cotton;[85] as is still done to a certain extent in modern times. It is perhaps doubtful whether, so far as the mere fabric of stuffs was concerned, the products of the Phoenician looms were at all superior to those which Egypt and Babylonia furnished, much less to those which came from India, and passed under the name of Sindones. Two things gave to the Phoenician stuffs that high reputation which caused them to be more sought for than any others; and these were, first, the brilliancy and beauty of their colours, and, secondly, the delicacy with which they were in many instances embroidered. We have not much trace of Phoenician embroidery on the representations of dresses that have come down to us; but the testimony of the ancients is unimpeachable,[86] and we may regard it as certain that the art of embroidery, known at a very early date to the Hebrews,[87] was cultivated with great success by their Phoenician neighbours, and under their auspices reached a high point of perfection. The character of the decoration is to be gathered from the extant statues and bas-reliefs, from the representations on pateræ, on cups, dishes, and gems. There was a tendency to divide the surface to be ornamented into parallel stripes or bands, and to repeat along the line a single object, or two alternately. Rosettes, monsters of various kinds, winged globes with uræi, scarabs, sacred trees, and garlands or blossoms of the lotus were the ordinary “motives."[88] Occasionally human figures might be introduced, and animal forms even more frequently; but a stiff conventionalism prevailed, the same figures were constantly repeated, and the figures themselves had in few cases much beauty.
The brilliancy and beauty of the Phoenician coloured stuffs resulted from the excellency of their dyes. Here we touch a second branch of their industrial skill, for the principal dyes used were originally invented and continuously fabricated by the Phoenicians themselves, not imported from any foreign country. Nature had placed along the Phoenician coast, or at any rate along a great portion of it, an inexhaustible supply of certain shell-fish, or molluscs, which contained as a part of their internal economy a colouring fluid possessing remarkable, and indeed unique, qualities. Some account has been already given of the species which are thought to have been anciently most esteemed. They belong, mainly, to the two allied families of the Murex and the Buccinum or Purpura. Eight species of the former, and six of the latter, having their habitat in the Mediterranean, have been distinguished by some naturalists;[89] but two of the former only, and one of the latter, appear to have attracted the attention of the Phoenicians. The Murex brandaris is now thought to have borne away the palm from all the others; it is extremely common upon the coast; and enormous heaps of the shells are found, especially in the vicinity of Tyre, crushed and broken—the débris, as it would seem, cast away by the manufacturers of old.[810] The Murex trunculus, according to some, is just as abundant, in a crushed state, in the vicinity of Sidon, great banks of it existing, which are a hundred yards long and several yards thick.[811] It is a more spinous shell than the M. brandaris, having numerous projecting points, and a generally rough and rugged appearance. The Purpura employed seems to have been the P. lapillus, a mollusc not confined to the Mediterranean, but one which frequents also our own shores, and was once turned to some account in Ireland.[812] The varieties of the P. lapillus differ considerably. Some are nearly white, some greyish, others buff striped with brown. Some, again, are smooth, others nearly as rough as the Murex trunculus. The Helix ianthina, which is included by certain writers among the molluscs employed for dyeing purposes by the Phoenicians,[813] is a shell of a completely different character, smooth and delicate, much resembling that of an ordinary land snail, and small compared to the others. It is not certain, however, that the helix, though abounding in the Eastern Mediterranean,[814] ever attracted the notice of the Phoenicians.
The molluscs needed by the Phoenician dyers were not obtained without some difficulty. As the Mediterranean has no tides, it does not uncover its shores at low water like the ocean, or invite man to rifle them. The coveted shell-fish, in most instances, preferred tolerably deep water; and to procure them in any quantity it was necessary that they should be fished up from a depth of some fathoms. The mode in which they were captured was the following. A long rope was let down into the sea, with baskets of reeds or rushes attached to it at intervals, constructed like our lobster-traps or eel-baskets, with an opening that yielded easily to pressure from the outside, but resisted pressure from the inside, and made escape, when once the trap was entered, impossible. The baskets were baited with mussels or frogs, both of which had great attractions for the Purpuræ, and were seized and devoured with avidity. At the upper end of the rope was attached to a large piece of cork, which, even when the baskets were full, could not be drawn under water. It was usual to set the traps in the evening, and after waiting a night, or sometimes a night and a day, to draw them up to the surface, when they were generally found to be full of the coveted shell-fish.[815]
There were two ways in which the dye was obtained from the molluscs. Sometimes a hole was broken in the side of the shell, and the fish taken out entire.[816] The sac containing the colouring matter, which is a sort of vein, beginning at the head of the animal, and following the tortuous line of the body as it twists through the spiral shell,[817] was then carefully extracted, either while the mollusc was still alive, or as soon as possible after death, as otherwise the quality of the dye was impaired. This plan was pursued more especially with the larger species of Purpuræ, where the sac attained a certain size; while with a smaller kinds a different method was followed. In their case no attempt was made to extract the sac, but the entire fish was crushed, together with its shell, and after salt had been added in the proportion of twenty ounces to a hundred pounds of the pulp, three days were allowed for maceration; heat was then applied, and when, by repeated skimming, the coarse particles had been removed, the dye was left in a liquid state at the bottom. It was necessary that the vessel in which this final process took place should be of lead, and not of bronze or iron, since those metals gave the dye a disagreeable tinge.[818]
The colouring matter contained in the sac of the Purpuræ is a liquid of a creamy consistency, and of a yellowish-white hue. On extraction, it is at first decidedly yellow; then after a little time it becomes green; and, finally, it settles into some shade of violet or purple. Chemical analysis has shown that in the case of the Murex trunculus the liquid is composed of two elementary substances, one being cyanic acid, which is of a blue or azure colour, and the other being purpuric oxide, which is a bright red.[819] In the case of the Murex brandaris one element only has been found: it is an oxide, which has received the name of oxyde tyrien.[820] No naturalist has as yet discovered what purpose the liquid serves in the economy, or in the preservation, of the animal; it is certainly not exuded, as sepia is by the cuttle-fish, to cloud the water in the neighbourhood, and enable the creature to conceal itself.
Concerning the Phoenician process of dyeing, the accounts which have come down to us are at once confused and incomplete. Nothing is said with respect to their employment of mordants, either acid or alkali, and yet it is almost certain that they must have used one or the other, or both, to fix the colours, and render them permanent. The gamins of Tyre employ to this day mordants of each sort;[821] and an alkali derived from seaweed is mentioned by Pliny as made use of for fixing some dyes,[822] though he does not distinctly tell us that it was known to the Phoenicians or employed in fixing the purple. What we chiefly learn from this writer as to the dyeing process is[823]—first, that sometimes the liquid derived from the murex only, sometimes that of the purpura or buccinum only, was applied to the material which it was wished to colour, while the most approved hue was produced by an application of both dyes separately. Secondly, we are told that the material, whatever it might be, was steeped in the dye for a certain number of hours, then withdrawn for a while, and afterwards returned to the vat and steeped a second time. The best Tyrian cloths were called Dibapha, i.e. “twice dipped;” and for the production of the true “Tyrian purple” it was necessary that the dye obtained from the Buccinum should be used after that from the Murex had been applied. The Murex alone gave a dye that was firm, and reckoned moderately good; but the Buccinum alone was weak, and easily washed out.
The actual tints produced from the shell-fish appear to have ranged from blue, through violet and purple, to crimson and rose.[824] Scarlet could not be obtained, but was yielded by the cochineal insect. Even for the brighter sorts of crimson some admixture of the cochineal dye was necessary.[825] The violet tint was not generally greatly prized, though there was a period in the reign of Augustus when it was the fashion;[826] redder hues were commonly preferred; and the choicest of all is described as “a rich, dark purple, the colour of coagulated blood."[827] A deep crimson was also in request, and seems frequently to be intended when the term purple ({porphureos}, purpureus) is used.
A third industry greatly affected by the Phoenicians was the manufacture of glass. According to Pliny,[828] the first discovery of the substance was made upon the Phoenician coast by a body of sailors whom he no doubt regarded as Phoenicians. These persons had brought a cargo of natrum, which is the subcarbonate of soda, to the Syrian coast in the vicinity of Acre, and had gone ashore at the mouth of the river Belus to cook their dinner. Having lighted a fire upon the sand, they looked about for some stones to prop up their cooking utensils, but finding none, or none convenient for the purpose, they bethought themselves of utilising for the occasion some of the blocks of natrum with which their ship was laden. These were placed close to the fire, and the heat was sufficient to melt a portion of one of them, which, mixing with the siliceous sand at its base, produced a stream of glass. There is nothing impossible or even very improbable in this story; but we may question whether the scene of it is rightly placed. Glass was manufactured in Egypt many centuries before the probable date of the Phoenician occupation of the Mediterranean coast; and, if the honour of the invention is to be assigned to a particular people, the Egyptians would seem to have the best claim to it. The process of glass-blowing is represented in tombs at Beni Hassan of very great antiquity,[829] and a specimen of Egyptian glass is in existence bearing the name of a Usurtasen, a king of the twelfth dynasty.[830] Natrum, moreover, was an Egyptian product, well known from a remote date, being the chief ingredient used in the various processes of embalming.[831] Phoenicia has no natrum, and not even any vegetable alkali readily procurable in considerable quantity. There may have been an accidental discovery of glass in Phoenicia, but priority of discovery belonged almost certainly to Egypt; and it is, upon the whole, most probable that Phoenicia derived from Egypt her knowledge both of the substance itself and of the method of making it.
Still, there can be no doubt that the manufacture was one on which the Phoenicians eagerly seized, and which they carried out on a large scale and very successfully. Sidon, according to the ancients,[832] was the chief seat of the industry; but the best sand is found near Tyre, and both Tyre and Sarepta also seem to have been among the places where glassworks were early established. At Sarepta extensive banks of débris have been found, consisting of broken glass of many colours, the waste beyond all doubt of a great glass manufactory;[833] at Tyre, the traces of the industry are less extensive,[834] but on the other hand we have historical evidence that it continued to be practised there into the middle ages.[835]
The glass produced by the Phoenicians was of three kinds: first, transparent colourless glass, which the eye could see through; secondly, translucent coloured glass, through which light could pass, though the eye could not penetrate it so as to distinguish objects; and, thirdly, opaque glass, scarcely distinguishable from porcelain. Transparent glass was employed for mirrors, round plates being cast, which made very tolerable looking-glasses,[836] when covered at the back by thin sheets of metal, and also for common objects, such as vases, urns, bottles, and jugs, which have been yielded in abundance by tombs of a somewhat late date in Cyprus.[837] No great store, however, seems to have been set upon transparency, in which the Oriental eye saw no beauty; and the objects which modern research has recovered under this head at Tyre, in Cyprus, and elsewhere, seem the work of comparatively rude artists, and have little æsthetic merit. The shapes, however, are not inelegant.