History of Phoenicia

by George Rawlinson

On the whole, it seems most probable that the Phoenicians began with their own hieroglyphical system, selecting an object to represent the initial sound of its name, and at first drawing that object, but that they very soon followed the Egyptian idea of representing the original drawing in a conventional way, by a few lines, straight or curved. Their hieroglyphic alphabet which is extant is an alphabet in the second stage, corresponding to the Egyptian hieratic, but not derived from it. Having originally represented their alef by an ox’s head, they found a way of sufficiently indicating the head by three lines {...}, which marked the horns, the ears, and the face. Their beth was a house in the tent form; their gimel a camel, represented by its head and neck; their daleth a door, and so on. The object intended is not always positively known; but, where it is known, there is no difficulty in tracing the original picture in the later conventional sign.

The Phoenician alphabet was not without its defects. The most remarkable of these was the absence of any characters expressive of vowel sounds. The Phoenician letters are, all of them, consonants; and the reader is expected to supply the vowel sounds for himself. There was not even any system of pointing, so far as we know, whereby, as in Hebrew and Arabic, the proper sounds were supplied. Again, several letters were made to serve for two sounds, as beth for both b and v, pe for both p and f, shin for both s and sh, and tau for both t and th. There were no forms corresponding to the sounds j or w. On the other hand, there was in the alphabet a certain amount of redundancy. Tsade is superfluous, since it represents, not a simple elemental sound, but a combination of two sounds, t and s. Hence the Greeks omitted it, as did also the Oscans and the Romans. There is redundancy in the two forms for k, namely kaph and koph; in the two for t, namely teth and tau; and in the two for s, namely samech and shin. But no alphabet is without some imperfections, either in the way of excess or defect; and perhaps we ought to be more surprised that the Phoenician alphabet has not more faults than that it falls so far short of perfection as it does.

The writing of the Phoenicians was, like that of the majority of the Semitic nations, from right to left. The reverse order was entirely unknown to them, whether employed freely as an alternative, as in Egypt, or confined, as in Greece, to the alternate lines. The words were, as a general rule, undivided, and even in some instances were carried over the end of one line into the beginning of another. Still, there are examples where a sign of separation occurs between each word and the next;[0139] and the general rule is, that the words do not run over the line. In the later inscriptions they are divided, according to the modern fashion, by a blank space;[1310] but there seems to have been an earlier practice of dividing them by small triangles or by dots.

The language of the Phoenicians was very close indeed to the Hebrew, both as regards roots and as regards grammatical forms. The number of known words is small, since not only are the inscriptions few and scanty, but they treat so much of the same matters, and run so nearly in the same form, that, for the most part, the later ones contain nothing new but the proper names. Still they make known to us a certain number of words in common use, and these are almost always either identical with the Hebrew forms, or very slightly different from them, as the following table will demonstrate:—

Phoenician Hebrew English
Ab {...} {...} father
Aben {...} {...} stone
Adon {...} {...} lord
Adam {...} {...} man
Aleph {...} {...} an ox
Akh {...} {...} brother
Akhar {...} {...} after
Am {...} {...} mother
Anak {...} {...} I
Arets {...} {...} earth, land
Ash {...} {...} who, which
Barak {...} {...} to bless
Bath {...} {...} daughter
Ben {...} {...} son
Benben {...} {...} grandson
Beth {...} {...} house, temple
Ba’al {...} {...} lord, citizen
Ba’alat {...} {...} lady, mistress
Barzil {...} {...} iron
Dagan {...} {...} corn
Deber {...} {...} to speak, say
Daleth {...} {...} door
Zan {...} {...} this
Za {...} {...} this
Zereng {...} {...} seed, race
Har {...} {...} mountain
Han {...} {...} grace, favour
Haresh {...} {...} carpenter
Yom {...} {...} day, also sea
Yitten {...} {...} to give
Ish {...} {...} man
Ishath {...} {...} woman, wife
Kadesh {...} {...} holy
Kol {...} {...} every, all
Kol {...} {...} voice
Kohen {...} {...} priest
Kohenath {...} {...} priestess
Kara {...} {...} to call
Lechem {...} {...} bread
Makom {...} {...} a place
Makar {...} {...} a seller
Malakath {...} {...} work
Melek {...} {...} king
Mizbach {...} {...} altar
Na’ar {...} {...} boy, servant
Nehusht {...} {...} brass
Nephesh {...} {...} soul
Nadar {...} {...} to vow
‘Abd {...} {...} slave, servant
‘Am {...} {...} people
‘Ain {...} {...} eye, fountain
‘Ath {...} {...} time
‘Olam {...} {...} eternity
Pen {...} {...} face
Per {...} {...} fruit
Pathach {...} {...} door
Rab {...} {...} lord, chief
Rabbath {...} {...} lady
Rav {...} {...} rain, irrigation
Rach {...} {...} spirit
Rapha {...} {...} physician
Shamam {...} {...} the heavens
Shemesh {...} {...} the sun
Shamang {...} {...} to hear
Shenath {...} {...} a year
Shad {...} {...} a field
Sha’ar {...} {...} a gate
Shalom {...} {...} peace
Shem {...} {...} a name
Shaphat {...} {...} a judge
Sopher {...} {...} a scribe
Sakar {...} {...} memory
Sar {...} {...} a prince
Tsedek {...} {...} just

The Phoenician numerals, so far as they are known to us, are identical, or nearly identical, with the Hebrew. ’Ahad {...} is “one;” shen {...}, “two;” shalish {...}, “three;” arba {...}, “four;” hamesh {...}, “five;” eshman {...}, “eight;” ’eser {...}, “ten;” and so on. Numbers were, however, by the Phoenicians ordinarily expressed by signs, not words—the units by perpendicular lines: | for “one,” || for “two,” ||| for “three,” and the like; the tens by horizontal ones, either simple, {...}, or hooked at the right end, {...}; twenty by a sign resembling a written capital n, {...}; one hundred by a sign still more complicated, {...}.

The grammatical inflexions, the particles, the pronouns, and the prepositions are also mostly identical. The definite article is expressed, as in Hebrew, by h prefixed. Plurals are formed by the addition of m or th. The prefix eth {...} marks the accusative. There is a niphal conjugation, formed by prefixing n. The full personal pronouns are anak {...} = “I” (compare Heb. {...}); hu {...}, “he” (compare Heb. {...}); hi {...}, “she” (compare Heb. {...}); anachnu, “we” (compare Heb. {...}); and the suffixed pronouns are -i, “me, my;” -ka, “thee, thy;” -h (pronounced as -oh or -o), “him, his” (compare Heb. {...}); -n “our,” perhaps pronounced nu; and -m, “their, them,” pronounced om or um (compare Heb. {...}). Vau prefixed means “and;” beth prefixed “in;” kaph prefixed “as;” lamed prefixed “of” or “to;” ’al {...} is “over;” ki {...} “because;” im {...}, “if;” hazah, zath, or za {...}, “this” (compare Heb. {...}); and ash {...}, “who, which” (compare Heb. {...}). Al {...} and lo {...} are the negatives (compare Heb. {...}). The redundant use of the personal pronoun with the relative is common.

Still, Phoenician is not mere Hebrew; it has its own genius, its idioms, its characteristics. The definite article, so constantly recurring in Hebrew, is in Phoenician, comparatively speaking, rare. The quiescent letters, which in Hebrew ordinarily accompany the long vowels, are in Phoenician for the most part absent. The employment of the participle for the definite tenses of the verb is much more common in Phoenician than in Hebrew, and the Hebrew prefix m is wanting. The ordinary termination of feminine singular nouns is -th, not -h. Peculiar forms occur, as ash for asher, ’amath for ’am (“people”), zan for zah (“this”), &c. Words which in Hebrew are confined to poetry pass among the Phoenicians into ordinary use, as pha’al ({...}, Heb. {...}), “to make,” which replaces the Hebrew {...}.[1311]

“It is strange,” says M. Renan, “that the people to which all antiquity attributes the invention of writing, and which has, beyond all doubted, transmitted it to the entire civilised world, has scarcely left us any literature."[1312] Certainly it is difficult to give the name of literature either to the fragments of so-called Phoenician works preserved to us in Greek translations, or to the epigraphic remains of actual Phoenician writing which have come down to our day. The works are two, and two only, viz. the pretended “Phoenician History” of Sanchoniathon, and the “Periplus” of Hanno. Of the former, it is perhaps sufficient to say that we have no evidence of its genuineness. Philo of Byblus, who pretends that he translated it from a Phoenician original, though possibly he had Phoenician blood in his veins, was a Greek in language, in temperament, and in tone of thought, and belonged to the Greece which is characterised by Juvenal as “Græcia mendax.” It is impossible to believe that the Euemerism in which he indulges, and which was evidently the motive of his work, sprang from the brain of Sanchoniathon nine hundred years before Euemerus existed. One is tempted to suspect that Sanchoniathan himself was a myth—an “idol of the cave,” evolved out of the inner consciousness of Philo. Philo had a certain knowledge of the Phoenician language, and of the Phoenician religious system, but not more than he might have gained by personal communication with the priests of Byblus and Aphaca, who maintained the old worship in, and long after, his day. It is not clear that he drew his statements from any ancient authorities, or from books at all. So far as the extant fragments go, a smattering of the language, a very moderate acquaintance with the religion, and a little imagination might readily have produced them.

A few extracts from the remains must be given to justify this judgement:—“The beginning of all things,” Philo says,[1313] “was a dark and stormy air, or a dark air and a turbid chaos, resembling Erebus; and these were at first unbounded, and for a long series of ages had no limit. But after a time this wind became enamoured of its own first principles, and an intimate union took place between them, a connection which was called Desire {pothos}: and this was the beginning of the creation of all things. But it (i.e. the Desire) had no consciousness of its own creation: however, from its embrace with the wind was generated Môt, which some call watery slime, and others putrescence of watery secretion. And from this sprang all the seed of creation, and the generation of the universe. And first there were certain animals without sensation, from which intelligent animals were produced, and these were called ‘Zopher-Sêmin,’ i.e. ‘beholders of the heavens;’ and they were made in the shape of an egg, and from Môt shone forth the sun, and the moon, and the lesser and the greater stars. And when the air began to send forth light, by the conflagration of land and sea, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great downpours, and effusions of the heavenly waters. And when these were thus separated, and carried, through the heat of the sun, out of their proper places, and all met again in the air, and came into collision, there ensued thunderings and lightnings; and through the rattle of the thunder, the intelligent animals, above mentioned, were woke up, and, startled by the noise, began to move about both in the sea and on the land, alike such as were male and such as were female. All these things were found in the cosmogony of Taaut (Thoth), and in his Commentaries, and were drawn from his conjectures, and from the proofs which his intellect discovered, and which he made clear to us.”