PHŒNICIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY, THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY
Of the sources for this history it is hardly possible to do more than to say that they hardly exist in any tangible form, and to echo Heeren’s complaint:
“The severest loss which ancient history has to mourn, a loss irreparable, is that of the destruction of the records that should inform us of the affairs, the government, and the enterprises of the Phœnicians. In proportion to the vast influence which this nation had in the civilisation of mankind by its own great inventions and discoveries (the invention of alphabetical writing is alone sufficient to show their importance), by its numerous colonies established in every quarter, and by its commerce extending even beyond these; the more sensibly we feel the gaps which the loss of these records leaves in the history of the human race. It is the conviction of the extent of this loss that gives the few fragments which have been preserved out of the great mass, a peculiar attraction to the historian; and though it may be impossible to compile from them a history of the Phœnicians, yet they will probably enable him to draw a tolerably faithful picture of the general character and genius of this nation in its various undertakings.”
The Phœnicians were a Semitic people, probably an early offshoot, like the Canaanites, from the parent stock; a people of remarkable industry, intelligence, and enterprise. Their country lay in southern Syria, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, a strip of land about two hundred miles in length by thirty-five at its greatest width. Phœnicia was never a united state, but rather a confederacy of cities. At the time of our earliest knowledge Sidon stood at the head, but in the thirteenth century, B.C. Tyre became the most important.
FIRST PERIOD—TO THE SUPREMACY OF TYRE (3800-1100 B.C.)
3800 B.C. The empire of Sargon of Agade is believed to have included Syria and the shores of the Mediterranean.
2750 Foundation of Tyre, according to Herodotus’ account.
1950 One of the Elamite sovereigns of Babylon appears to have reduced a large part of Syria to subservience, which state of affairs does not last long.
1635 Aahmes I visits Zahi (southern Phœnicia) in his invasion of Asia, after the expulsion of the Hyksos.