[470] 2 Kings xi. 3-20.
[471] They fall about 830 B.C. The minority of the king is clear, and the verses iv. 4 ff. points to the incursion of the Philistines into Judah, mentioned p. 252.
[472] 2 Kings xii. 17, 18. The occurrence is recorded after the twenty-third year of Joash, and the twenty-third year was 815 B.C.
[473] The subjugation of Edom can only have taken place after the year 803 B.C., i. e. after the march of Bin-nirar II. to the sea-coast. Bin-nirar enumerates Edom among the tribute-paying tribes of Syria. On this and on the date of Uzziah's accession, cf. Book IV. chap. 2.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CITIES OF THE PHENICIANS.
The voyages of the Phenicians on the Mediterranean; their colonies on the coasts and islands of that sea; their settlements in Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, the islands of the Ægean, Samothrace, and Thasos, on the coasts of Hellas, on Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia; their establishments on the northern edge of Africa in the course of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C.; their discovery of the Atlantic about the year 1100 B.C., have been traced by us already. Of the internal conditions and the constitution of the cities whose ships traversed the Mediterranean in every direction, and now found so many native harbours on the coasts and islands, we have hardly any information. We only know that monarchy existed from an ancient period in Sidon and Tyre, in Byblus, Berytus, and Aradus; and we are restricted to the assumption that this monarchy arose out of the patriarchal headship of the elders of the tribes. These tribes had long ago changed into civic communities, and their members must have consisted of merchant-lords, ship-owners, and warehousemen, of numerous labourers, artisans, sailors, and slaves. The accounts of the Hebrews exhibit the cities of the Philistines, the southern neighbours of the Phenicians on the Syrian coast, united by a league in the eleventh century B.C. The kings of the five cities of the Philistines combine for consultation, form binding resolutions, and take the field in common. We find nothing like this in the cities of the Phenicians. Not till a far later date, when the Phenicians had lost their independence, were federal forms of government prevalent among them.
The campaigns of the Pharaohs, Tuthmosis III., Sethos, and Ramses II., did not leave the cities of the Phenicians untouched (I. 342). After the reign of Ramses III., i. e. after the year 1300 B.C., Syria was not attacked from the Nile; but the overthrow of the kingdom of the Hittites about this period, and the subjugation of the Amorites by the Israelites, forced the old population to the coast (about 1250 B.C.). One hundred and fifty years later a new opponent of Syria showed himself, not from the south, but from the east. Tiglath Pilesar I., king of Assyria (1130-1100 B.C.), forced his way over the Euphrates, and reached the great sea of the western land (p. 42). His successes in these regions, even if he set foot on Lebanon, could at most have reached only the northern towns of the Phenicians; in any case they were of a merely transitory nature.
The oldest city of the Phenicians was Sidon; her daughter-city, Tyre, was also founded at a very ancient period. We found that the inscriptions of Sethos I. mentioned it among the cities reduced by him. The power and importance of Tyre must have gradually increased with the beginning of a more lively navigation between the cities and the colonies; about the year 1100 B.C. her navigation and influence appears to have surpassed those of the mother-city. If Old Hippo in Africa was founded from Sidon, Tyrian ships sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, discovered the land of silver, and founded Gades beyond the pillars. Accordingly we also find that Tyre, and not Sidon, was mistress of the island of Cyprus.