The hereditary monarchy passed, so far as we can see, from the mother-cities to the oldest colonies only, i. e. the cities in Cyprus. In the other colonies the chief officers were magistrates, usually two in number.[496] They were called Sufetes, i. e. judges. In Carthage these two yearly officers, in whose hands lay the supreme administration of justice, and the executive, formed with 30 elders the governing body of the city. It seems that these 30 men were the representatives of as many original combinations of families into which the old houses of the city were incorporated. The connection of the colonies and mother-cities, both in general and more especially where the colony could dispense with the protection of the mother-city, were far more mercantile and religious than political. The colonies worshipped the deities of the mother-cities, and gave them a share in their booty. We also find that descendants of priests who had emigrated from the mother-city stood at the head of the temples of the colonies. In Carthage, where the priests of Melkarth wore the purple robe, the office was hereditary in the family of Bithyas, who is said to have left Tyre with Elissa.[497]
We are acquainted with the gods of the Phenician cities, and the mode in which they worshipped them; with El and Baal-Samim, Baal-Melkarth and Baal-Moloch, Adonis, Astarte and Ashera, with the rites of continence and mutilation, of sensual excess and prostitution, of sacrifice and fire-festival, which were intended to win their favour and grace. We observed that the protecting deities of the separate states had even before the days of Hiram been united in the system of the seven great gods, the Cabiri, at whose head was placed an eighth, Esmun, the supreme deity. We saw that in this system special meanings were ascribed to them in reference to the protection of peace and law, of industry and navigation; and we cannot doubt that with the riches which accumulated in the walls of the cities, with the luxury of life which these riches permitted, the lascivious and sensual side of the worship must have increased and extended.
The life led by the kings of the old Phenician cities is described as rich and splendid. We have already assumed that the princes of the Phenician cities had a rich share in the returns of trade, and indeed the fact can be proved from the Hebrew Scriptures for Hiram, king of Tyre. Ezekiel tells us, "The king of Tyre sits like a god in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; he dwells as in Eden, in the garden of God. Precious stones are the covering of his palaces: the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the chrysolite, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the carbuncle, the emerald, and gold; the workmanship of his ring-cases he bears upon him."[498] "His garments," we are told in a song of the Hebrews, "smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia; in ivory palaces the sound of harps gladdens him. At his right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir, in a garment of wrought gold: on broidered carpets she shall be brought to him; the young maidens, her companions, follow her."[499]
Hosea calls Tyre "a plantation in a pleasant meadow."[500] Of the city itself Ezekiel says, "The architects have made her beauty perfect. All her planks (wainscot) were of cypress, and her masts of cedar of Lebanon; the rudders are of oaks of Bashan, the benches of ivory, set in costly wood from the island of Cyprus. For sails Tyre spreads out byssus and gay woofs; blue and red purple from the islands of Elisa formed their coverlets."[501] In the description of Strabo, more than 500 years later, Tyre appears less magnificent. The houses of the city were very high, higher than at Rome; the city still wealthy, owing to the trade in her two harbours and her purple factories, but the number of these made the city unpleasant. Strabo does not mention any considerable building in the city. Of Aradus he says, "The smallness of the rock on which the city lies, seven stades only in circuit, and the number of inhabitants caused every house to have many stories. Drinking-water had to be obtained from the mainland; on the island there were only wells and cisterns."[502]
Scarcely any striking remains of the ancient buildings of Phœnicia have come down to our time. The ancient temples enumerated in the treatise on the Syrian goddess have perished without a trace; the temple of Melkarth of Tyre, the great temple of Astarte at Sidon, the temple of Bilit (Ashera) at Byblus,[503] although they were certainly not of a character easy to destroy. That the Phenicians were acquainted from very ancient periods with the erection of strong masonry was proved above. Not only have we the legend of the Greeks, that Cadmus taught them the art of masonry and built the famous walls of Thebes; we saw how Israel, about the year 1000 B.C., provided herself with masons, stone-cutters, and materials from Tyre. Hence we may also assume that the architecture of the temple and the royal palaces of Solomon described in the Books of Kings corresponded to the architecture of the Phenicians. The temples and palaces of the Phenicians consisted, therefore, of walls of large materials, roofed with beams of cedar; in the interior the materials were no doubt covered, as at Jerusalem, with planks of wood and ornaments of brass, "so that the stone was nowhere seen" (p. 183). Ezekiel has already told us that the planks of the roofs of the royal palace at Tyre were overlaid with gold and precious stones; and the Books of Kings showed us that even the floors were adorned with gold. All the remains of walls in Phœnicia that can be referred to an ancient period exhibit a style of building confined to the stone of the mountain range which hems the coast, and desirous of imitating the nature of the rocks. Blocks of large dimensions were used by preference; at first they were worked as little as possible, and fitted to each other, and the interstices between the great blocks were filled with smaller stones. Of this kind are the fragments of the walls which surround the rock on which the city of Aradus stood. Gigantic blocks, visible even now here and there, formed the dams of the harbours of Aradus, Sidon, Tyre, and Japho.[504] It was a step in advance that the blocks, while retaining the form in which they were quarried, were smoothed at the joints in order to be fitted together more firmly, and a further step still that the blocks were hewn into squares, though at first the outer surfaces of the squares were not smoothed. So far as remains allow us to see, the detached structures were of a simple and massive character, in shape like cubes of vast dimensions; the walls, as is shown by the city wall of Aradus, were joined without mortar, and in the oldest times the buildings appear to have been roofed with monoliths. Cedar beams were not sought after till larger spaces had to be covered. Beside old water-basins hewn in the rock, and oil or wine presses of the same character, we have no remains of ancient Phenician temples but those on the site of Marathus (now Amrit), a city of the tribe of the Arvadites, to the south of Aradus, and in the neighbourhood of Byblus.[505] The bases of the walls which enclose the courts and water-basins of the temple of Marathus can still be traced, as well as the huge stones which formed the three cellæ, the innermost shrines of this temple. On either side of a back wall formed of similar materials heavy blocks protrude, and are roofed over, together with this wall, by a great monolith, which protected the sacred stone or the image of the deity.[506] This heavy style of the city walls, dams, temples, and royal castles did not prevent the Phenicians, any more than the Egyptians, from building the upper stories of the dwelling-houses of their cities in light wood-work.
By far the most important remains of ancient Phœnicia are the rock-tombs, which are found in great numbers and extent opposite to the islands of Tyre and Aradus, as well as at Sidon, Byblus, and among the ruins of the other cities on the spurs of Lebanon; and which at Tyre especially spread out into wide burial-places, and several stories of tombs, one upon the other. In the same style we find to the west of the ruins of Carthage long walls of rocks hollowed out into thousands of tombs, and furnished with arched niches for the reception of the dead.[507] In the oldest period the Phenicians must have placed their dead in natural cavities of rock, and perhaps they erected a stone before them as a memorial. In Genesis Abraham buries Sarah in the cave of Machpelah, and Jacob sets up a stone on the grave of Rachel.[508] Afterwards the natural hollows were extended, and whole cavities dug out artificially for tombs. The tomb of David and the tombs of his successors were hewn in the rocks of the gorge which separated the city from the height of Zion (p. 177). The oldest of the artificial tombs in Phœnicia are doubtless those which consist of cubical chambers with horizontal hewn roofs. Round one or two large chambers lower oblong depressions are driven further in the rocks to receive the corpses. The entrance into these ancient chambers are formed by downward perpendicular shafts, at the bottom of which on two sides are openings into the chambers secured by slabs of stone laid before them. Shafts of this kind must be meant when the Hebrews say in a figure of the dead, "The mouth of the well has eaten him up." Later than the tombs of this description are those the entrance to which is on the level ground (which was then closed by a stone), which have roofs hewn in low arches, and side niches for the corpses. The arched chambers approached by steps leading downward, the walls of which are decorated after Grecian patterns on the stone, or on stucco, must originate from the time of the predominance of Greek art, i. e. of the days of Hellenism. The oldest style of burial was the placing of the corpse in the cavity, the grave-chamber, and afterwards in the depression at the side of this. At a later time apparently the enclosure of the corpse in a narrow coffin of clay became common here, as in Babylonia. Coffins of lead have also been found in the rock-tombs of Phœnicia. But beside these, heavy oblong stone-coffins with a simple slab of stone as a lid were in use in ancient times; along with flat lids, lids raised in a low triangle are also found; later still, and latest of all, are coffins and sarcophagi adorned with acroteria and other ornaments of the Greek style.[509]
In the flat limestone rocks which run at a moderate elevation in the neighbourhood of Sidon, and contain the vast necropolis of that city, there is a cavern, now called Mogharet Ablun, i. e. the cave of Apollo. Beside the entrance, in a depression covered by a structure attached to the rock-wall (the rock-tombs were supplemented and extended by structures attached to the wall), was found a coffin of blackish blue stone, the form of which indicates the shape of the buried person after the manner of the mummy-coffins of Egypt, and displays in colossal relief the mask of the dead in Egyptian style, with an Egyptian covering for the head and beard on the chin; the band round the neck ends behind in two hawk's heads. The inscription in Phenician letters teaches us that this coffin contained Esmunazar, king of Sidon. Similar sarcophagi in stone, in part expressing the form even more accurately, seven or eight in number, have been discovered in other chambers of the burial-place of Sidon, and in the burial-places of Byblus and Antaradus, but only in cubical, i. e. in more ancient chambers. Marble coffins of this kind have also been found in the Phenician colonies of Soloeis and Panormus in Sicily, and of the same shape in burnt earth in Malta and Gozzo. The Phenicians, therefore, came to imitate the coffins of the Egyptians. Similar imitation of Egyptian burial is proved by the gold plates found in Phenician chambers, which are like those with which we find the mouth closed in Egyptian mummies, and the discovery of golden masks in Phenician chambers,[510] which correspond to the gilding of the masks of the face of the innermost Egyptian coffins which immediately surround the linen covering. As the face-mask of the external coffin imitated the face of the dead in stone or in coloured wood, so also ought the inner gilded face to preserve the features of the dead. This imitation of the Egyptian style of burial among the Phenicians must go back to a great antiquity. It is true that Esmunazar of Sidon did not rule till the second half of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century B.C.[511] Yet the shape and style of his coffin reminds us of older Egyptian patterns; it is most like the stone coffins of Egypt which have come down from the beginning of the sixth century. And if the ancient tombs opened at Mycenæ behind the lion's gate belong to Carians influenced by Phenician civilisation (p. 74), if golden masks are here found on the face of the dead, the Phenicians must have borrowed this custom from the Egyptians as early as the thirteenth century, if not even earlier.
The remains which have come down to us of the sculpture, jars, and utensils of Phœnicia exhibit the double influence which the art and industry of the Phenicians underwent even at an early period. Agreeably to the close relations into which the Phenicians entered, on the one hand with Babel and Asshur, and on the other with Egypt, the effects of these two ancient civilisations meet each other on the coast of Syria. The arts of the kindred land of the Euphrates, the relations of which to Phœnicia were at the same time the older, naturally made themselves felt first. When Tuthmosis III. collected tribute in Syria at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Babylonian weight was already in use there; the jars which were brought to this king as the tribute of Syria are carefully worked, but as yet adorned with very simple and recurring patterns of lines. On the other hand, the ornaments found in the tombs of Mycenæ, gold-plates, frontlets, and armlets, exhibit ornaments like those figured on the monuments of Assyria; and the objects found in the rock-tombs on Hymettus, at Spata, point even more definitely to Babylonian patterns: winged fabulous animals and battles of beasts (a lion attacking a bull or an antelope[512]) are formed in the manner of the Eastern Semites, which brings the form of the muscles into prominence. We may assume that the influence of Egypt began with the times of the Tuthmosis and Amenophis, and their supremacy in Syria, and slowly gathered strength. The heavy style of Phenician buildings would not be made lighter or more free by the architecture of Egypt, which also arose out of building in rock. The temples of Phœnicia adopted Egyptian symbols for their ornaments; the monoliths of the roofs of those three cellæ at Marathus exhibit the winged sun's-disk, the emblem at the entrance of Egyptian temples; the chests for the dead and masks for the mummies of the Egyptians were imitated in the rock-tombs of Phœnicia. If the weaving of the Phenicians at first copied the ancient Babylonian patterns, they began under the stronger influence of Egypt to adorn their pottery and metal-work after Egyptian patterns. But they also combined the Babylonian and Egyptian elements in their art.[513] The oldest memorial of this combination is perhaps retained in that winged sphinx, which belongs to the time of the dominion of the shepherds in Egypt. In the graves on Hymettus pictures in relief of female winged sphinxes are found with clothed breasts and peculiar wings, in a treatment obviously already conventional. In Phœnicia itself are found reliefs of similar sphinxes, old men with a human face on either side of the tree of life, which meet us oftentimes in the monuments of Assyria. This combination, this use of Babylonian and Egyptian types and forms side by side, is seen most clearly on a large bowl found at Curium near Amathus, in Cyprus, and wrought with great care and skill.[514] It follows that the art of the Phenicians was essentially imitative and intended to furnish objects for trade. Of round works of sculpture we have only dwarfish deities (I. 378), the typical form of which was naturally retained, and a few lions coarsely wrought in the style of the plastic art of Babylon and Assyria.[515] The relation in which the lion stood to the god Melkarth naturally made the delineation of the lion a favourite object of Phenician art.
Phœnicia, though the home of alphabetical writing, has left us no more than two or three inscriptions, and Carthage has not left us a great number. Not that there was any lack of inscriptions in Phœnicia in ancient days. We have heard already of ancient inscriptions at Rhodes, Thebes, and Gades. Job wishes that "his words might be graven on rocks for ever with an iron chisel and lead."[516] The inscriptions of Phœnicia have perished because they were engraved like those inscriptions of Gades, on plates of brass. Beside the inscription on the coffin of Esmunazar, king of Sidon, already mentioned, of a date about 400 B.C., only two or three smaller inscriptions have been preserved, which do not go beyond the second century B.C. In this inscription Esmunazar speaks in person; he calls himself the son of Tabnit, king of the Sidonians, son of Esmunazar, king of the Sidonians. With his mother, Amastarte, the priestess of Astarte, he had erected temples to Baal, Astarte, and Esmun. He beseeches the favour of the gods for himself and his land; he prays that Dor and Japho may always remain under Sidon; he declares that he wishes to rest in the grave which he has built and in this coffin. No one is to open the tomb or plunder it, or remove or damage this stone coffin. If any man attempts it the gods will destroy him with his seed; he is not to be buried, and after death will find no rest among the shades.[517]
There is scarcely any side of civilisation, any forms of technical art, the invention of which was not ascribed by the Greeks to the Phenicians. They were nearly all made known to the Greeks through the Phenicians; more especially the building of walls and fortresses, mining, the alphabet, astronomy, numbers, mathematics, navigation, together with a great variety of applications of technical skill. If the discovery of alphabetic writing belongs to the Phenicians, the Babylonians were the instructors of the Phenicians in astronomy as well as in fixing measures and weights (I. 305). Yet this is no reason for contesting the statement of Strabo that the Sidonians were "eager inquirers into the knowledge of the stars and of numbers, to which they were led by navigation by night and the art of calculation."[518] In the same way the technical discoveries ascribed by the Greeks to the Phenicians were not all made in their cities; they carried on with vigour and skill what grew up independently among them as well as what they learnt from others. The making of glass was undoubtedly older in Egypt than in Phœnicia (I. 224). Egypt also practised work in metals before Phœnicia. Snefru and Chufu made themselves masters of the copper mines of the peninsula of Sinai before the year 3000 B.C. (I. 95), while the Phenicians can hardly have occupied the copper island off their coast (Cyprus) before the middle of the thirteenth century B.C. Artistic weaving and embroidery were certainly practised at a more ancient date in Babylonia than in the cities of the Phenicians. But all these branches of industry were carried on with success by the Phenicians. Sidon furnished excellent works in glass, which were accounted the best even down to a late period of antiquity. The dunes on the coast between Acco and Tyre, where is the mouth of the glass-river (Sihor Libnath),[519] provided the Phenician manufacturers with the earth necessary for the manufacture of glass. It was maintained that the most beautiful glass was cast in Sarepta (Zarpath, i. e. melting), a city on the coast between Sidon and Tyre.[520]