THE PHOENICIANS
THE PHOENICIAN PEOPLE
=The Land.=--Phoenicia is the narrow strip of country one hundred and
fifty miles long by twenty-four to thirty wide, shut in between the
sea of Syria and the high range of Lebanon. It is a succession of
narrow valleys and ravines confined by abrupt hills which descend
towards the sea; little torrents formed by the snows or rain-storms
course through these in the early spring; in summer no water remains
except in wells and cisterns. The mountains in this quarter were
always covered with trees; at the summit were the renowned cedars of
Lebanon, on the ridges, pines and cypresses; while lower yet palms
grew even to the sea-shore. In the valleys flourished the olive, the
vine, the fig, and the pomegranate.
=The Cities.=--At intervals along the rocky coast promontories or
islands formed natural harbors. On these the Phoenicians had founded
their cities; Tyre and Arad were each built on a small island. The
people housed themselves in dwellings six to eight stories in height.
Fresh water was ferried over in ships. The other cities, Gebel,
Beirut, and Sidon arose on the mainland. The soil was inadequate to
support these swarms of men, and so the Phoenicians were before all
else seamen and traders.
=Phoenician Ruins.=--Not a book of the Phoenicians has come down to us,
not even their sacred book. The sites of their cities have been
excavated. But, in the words of the scholar sent to do this work,
"Ruins are not preserved, especially in countries where people are not
occupied with them," and the Syrians are not much occupied with ruins.
They have violated the tombs to remove the jewels of the dead, have
demolished edifices to secure stone for building purposes, and
Mussulman hatred of chiseled figures has shattered the sculptures.[37]
Very little is found beyond broken marble, cisterns, wine-presses cut
in the rock and some sarcophagi hewn in rock. All this debris gives us
little information and we know very little more of the Phoenicians than
Greek writers and Jewish prophets have taught us.
=Political Organization of the Phoenicians.=--The Phoenicians never
built an empire. Each city had its little independent territory, its
assemblies, its king, and its government. For general state business
each city sent delegates to Tyre, which from the thirteenth century
B.C. was the principal city of Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were not a
military people, and so submitted themselves to all the
conquerors--Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians. They
fulfilled all their obligations to them in paying tribute.
=Tyre.=--From the thirteenth century Tyre was the most notable of the
cities. Its island becoming too small to contain it, a new city was
built on the coast opposite. Tyrian merchants had founded colonies in
every part of the Mediterranean, receiving silver from the mines of
Spain and commodities from the entire ancient world. The prophet
Isaiah[38] calls these traders princes; Ezekiel[39] describes the
caravans which came to them from all quarters. It is Hiram, a king of
Tyre, from whom Solomon asked workmen to build his palace and temple
at Jerusalem.
=Carthage.=--A colony of Tyre surpassed even her in power. In the
ninth century some Tyrians, exiled by a revolution, founded on the
shore of Africa near Tunis the city of Carthage. A woman led them,
Elissar, whom we call Dido (the fugitive). The inhabitants of the
country, says the legend, were willing to sell her only as much land
as could be covered by a bull's hide; but she cut the hide in strips
so narrow that it enclosed a wide territory; and there she constructed
a citadel. Situated at the centre of the Mediterranean, provided with
two harbors, Carthage flourished, sent out colonies in turn, made
conquests, and at last came to reign over all the coasts of Africa,
Spain, and Sardinia. Everywhere she had agencies for her commerce and
subjects who paid her tribute.
=The Carthaginian Army.=--To protect her colonies from the natives, to
hold her subjects in check who were always ready to revolt, a strong
army was necessary. But the life of a Carthaginian was too valuable to
risk it without necessity. Carthage preferred to pay mercenary
soldiers, recruiting them among the barbarians of her empire and among
the adventurers of all countries. Her army was a bizarre aggregation
in which all languages were spoken, all religions practised, and in
which every soldier wore different arms and costume. There were seen
Numidians clothed in lion skins which served them as couch, mounted
bareback on small fleet horses, and drawing the bow with horse at full
gallop; Libyans with black skins, armed with pikes; Iberians from
Spain in white garments adorned with red, armed with a long pointed
sword; Gauls, naked to the girdle, bearing enormous shields and a
rounded sword which they held in both hands; natives of the Balearic
Islands, trained from infancy to sling with stones or balls of lead.
The generals were Carthaginians; the government distrusted them,
watched them closely, and when they were defeated, had them crucified.
=The Carthaginians.=--Carthage had two kings, but the senate was the
real power, being composed of the richest merchants of the city. And
so every state question for this government became a matter of
commerce. The Carthaginians were hated by all other peoples, who found
them cruel, greedy, and faithless. And yet, since they had a good
fleet, had money to purchase soldiers, and possessed an energetic
government, they succeeded in the midst of barbarous and divided
peoples in maintaining their empire over the western Mediterranean for
300 years (from the sixth to the third century B.C.).
=The Phoenician Religion.=--The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians had a
religion similar to that of the Chaldeans. The male god, Baal, is a
sun-god; for the sun and the moon are in the eyes of the Phoenicians
the great forces which create and which destroy. Each of the cities of
Phoenicia has therefore its divine pair: at Sidon it is Baal Sidon (the
sun) and Astoreth (the moon); at Gebel, Baal Tammouz and Baaleth; at
Carthage, Baal-Hamon, and Tanith. But the same god changes his name
according as he is conceived as creator or destroyer; thus Baal as
destroyer is worshipped at Carthage under the name of Moloch. These
gods, represented by idols, have their temples, altars, and priests.
As creators they are honored with orgies, with tumultuous feasts; as
destroyers, by human victims. Astoreth, the great goddess of Sidon,
whom they represented by the crescent of the moon and the dove, had
her cult in the sacred woods. Baal Moloch is figured at Carthage as a
bronze colossus with arms extended and lowered. When they wished to
appease him they laid children in his hands who fell at once into a
pit of fire. During the siege of Carthage by Agathocles the principal
men of the city sacrificed to Moloch as many as two hundred of their
children.
This sensual and sanguinary religion inspired other peoples with
horror, but they imitated it. The Jews sacrificed to Baal on the
mountains; the Greeks adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of
Aphrodite, and Baal Melkhart of Tyre under the name of Herakles.
PHOENICIAN COMMERCE
=Phoenicians Occupations.=--Crowded into a small territory, the
Phoenicians gained their livelihood mainly from commerce. None of the
other peoples of the East--the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the
Assyrians, nor the barbarian tribes of the West (Spaniards, Gauls,
Italians) had a navy. The Phoenicians alone in this time dared to
navigate. They were the commission merchants of the old world; they
went to every people to buy their merchandise and sold them in
exchange the commodities of other countries. This traffic was by
caravan with the East, by sea with the West.
=Caravans.=--On land the Phoenicians sent caravans in three directions:
1.--Towards Arabia, from which they brought gold, agate, and onyx,
incense and myrrh, and the perfumes of Arabia; pearls, spices,
ivory, ebony, ostrich plumes and apes from India.
2.--Towards Assyria, whence came cotton and linen cloths, asphalt,
precious stones, perfumery, and silk from China.
3.--Towards the Black Sea, where they went to receive horses,
slaves, and copper vases made by the mountaineers of the Caucasus.
=Marine Commerce.=--For their sea commerce they built ships from the
cedars of Lebanon to be propelled by oars and sails. In their sailing
it was not necessary to remain always in sight of the coast, for they
knew how to direct their course by the polar star. Bold mariners, they
pushed in their little boats to the mouth of the Mediterranean; they
ventured even to pass through the strait of Gibraltar or, as the
ancients called it, the Pillars of Hercules, and took the ocean course
to the shores of England, and perhaps to Norway, Phoenicians in the
service of a king of Egypt started in the seventh century B.C. to
circumnavigate Africa, and returned, it is said, at the end of three
years by the Red Sea. An expedition issuing from Carthage skirted the
coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea; the commander Hanno wrote an
account of the voyage which is still preserved.
=Commodities.=--To civilized peoples the Phoenicians sold the products
of their industry. In barbarous countries they went to search for what
they could not find in the Orient. On the coast of Greece they
gathered shell-fish from which they extracted a red tint, the purple;
cloths colored with purple were used among all the peoples of ancient
times for garments of kings and great lords.
From Spain and Sardinia they brought the silver which the inhabitants
took from the mines. Tin was necessary to make bronze, an alloy of
copper and tin, but the Orient did not furnish this, and so they
sought it even on the coasts of England, in the Isles of Tin (the
Cassiterides). In every country they procured slaves. Sometimes they
bought them, as lately the slavers bought negroes on the coast of
Africa, for all the peoples of this time made commerce in slaves;
sometimes they swooped down on a coast, threw themselves on the women
and children and carried them off to be retained in their own cities
or to be sold abroad; for on occasion they were pirates and did not
scruple to plunder strangers.
=The Secrets Kept by the Phoenicians.=--The Phoenicians did not care to
have mariners of other peoples come into competition with them. On the
return from these far countries they concealed the road which they had
travelled. No one in antiquity knew where were the famous Isles of the
Cassiterides from which they got their tin. It was by chance that a
Greek ship discovered Spain, with which the Phoenicians had traded for
centuries. Carthage drowned the foreign merchants whom they found in
Sardinia or on the shore of Gibraltar. Once a Carthaginian
merchantman, seeing a strange ship following it, was run aground by
the pilot that the foreigner might not see where he was going.
=Colonies.=--In the countries where they traded, the Phoenicians
founded factories, or branch-houses. They were fortified posts on a
natural harbor. There they landed their merchandise, ordinarily
cloths, pottery, ornaments, and idols.[40] The natives brought down
their commodities and an exchange was made, just as now European
merchants do with the negroes of Africa. There were Phoenician markets
in Cyprus, in Egypt, and in all the then barbarous countries of the
Mediterranean--in Crete, Greece, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, on
the coasts of Spain at Malaga and Cadiz, and perhaps in Gaul at
Monaco. Often around these Phoenician buildings the natives set up
their cabins and the mart became a city. The inhabitants adopted the
Phoenician gods, and even after the city had become Greek, the cult of
the dove-goddess was found there (as in Cythera), that of the god
Melkhart (as at Corinth), or of the god with the bull-face that
devours human victims (as in Crete).
=Influence of the Phoenicians.=--It is certain that the Phoenicians in
founding their trading stations cared only for their own interest. But
it came to pass that their colonies contributed to civilization. The
barbarians of the West received the cloths, the jewels, the utensils
of the peoples of the East who were more civilized, and, receiving
them, learned to imitate them. For a long time the Greeks had only
vases, jewels, and idols brought by the Phoenicians, and these served
them as models. The Phoenicians brought simultaneously from Egypt and
from Assyria industry and commodities.
=The Alphabet.=--At the same time they exported their alphabet. The
Phoenicians did not invent writing. The Egyptians knew how to write many
centuries before them, they even made use of letters each of which
expressed its own sound, as in our alphabet. But their alphabet was
still encumbered with ancient signs which represented, some a syllable,
others an entire word. Doubtless the Phoenicians had need of a simpler
system for their books of commerce. They rejected all the syllabic signs
and ideographs, preserving only twenty-two letters, each of which marks
a sound (or rather an articulation of the language). The other peoples
imitated this alphabet of twenty-two letters. Some, like the Jews, wrote
from right to left just as the Phoenicians themselves did; others, like
the Greeks, from left to right. All have slightly changed the form of
the letters, but the Phoenician alphabet is found at the basis of all
the alphabets--Hebrew, Lycian, Greek, Italian, Etruscan, Iberian,
perhaps even in the runes of the Norse. It is the Phoenicians that taught
the world how to write.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Renan ("Mission de Phenicio," p. 818) says, "I noticed at Tripolis
a sarcophagus serving as a public fountain and the sculptured face of it
was turned to the wall. I was told that a governor had placed it thus so
as not to provide distractions for the inhabitants."
[38] See ch. xxiii.
[39] See chs. xxvi., xxvii., xxviii.
[40] These idols, one of their principal exports, are found wherever the
Phoenicians traded.