THE NAVIGATION AND COLONIES OF THE PHENICIANS.
At the time when Babylonia, on the banks of the Euphrates, flourished
under the successors of Hammurabi in an ancient and peculiar
civilisation, and Assyria was struggling upwards beside Babylonia on the
banks of the Tigris, strengthening her military power in the Armenian
mountains and the ranges of the Zagrus, and already beginning to try her
strength in more distant campaigns, a Semitic tribe succeeded in rising
into eminence in the West also, in winning and exerting a deep-reaching
influence on distant and extensive lands. It was a district of the most
moderate extent from which this influence proceeded, its dominion was of
a different kind from that of the Babylonians and Assyrians; it grew up
on an element which elsewhere appeared not a favourite with the Semites,
and sought its points of support in settlements on distant islands and
coasts. By this tribe the sea was actively traversed and with
ever-increasing boldness; by circumspection, by skill, by tough
endurance and brave ventures it succeeded in extending its dominion in
ever-widening circles, and making the sea the instrument of its wealth
and the bearer of its power.
On the coasts of Syria were settled the tribes of the Arvadites,
Giblites and Sidonians (I. 344). Their land extended from the mouth of
the Eleutherus (Nahr el Kebir) in the north to the promontory of Carmel
in the south. A narrow strip of coast under Mount Lebanon, from 10 to 15
miles in breadth and some 150 miles in length, was all that they
possessed. Richly watered by the streams sent down from Lebanon to the
sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the
spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. The
Eleutherus is followed to the south by the Adonis (Nahr el Ibrahim), and
this by the Lycus (Nahr el Kelb); then follow the Tamyras (Nahr Damur),
the Bostrenus (Nahr el Auli[63]), the Belus (the Sihor Libnath of the
Hebrews, now Nahr Naman), and lastly the Kishon. Above the shore rise
hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on Lebanon
splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the
vast forests (I. 338) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as
Tacitus says,[64] and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit
of Lebanon. Ammianus speaks of the region under Lebanon as full of
pleasantness and beauty. The upper slopes of the mountain furnish
pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. The high
mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from
the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the
Roman Caesars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks
across Lebanon[65]), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before
them lay the sea. At an early period they must have become familiar with
that element. The name of the tribe which the Hebrew Scriptures call the
"first-born of Canaan" means "fishermen." The places on the coast found
the sea the easiest means of communication. Thus the sea, so rich in
islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the
Sidonians, Giblites and Arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages
the fishermen and navigators of the coast.
We found that the beginning of civilisation in Canaan could not be
placed later than about the year 2500 B.C., and we must therefore allow
a considerable antiquity to the cities of the Sidonians, Giblites,
Arvadites, Zemarites and Arkites. The settlement on the site of Sidon
was founded, no doubt, before the year 2000 B.C., and that on the site
of Byblus cannot certainly be placed later than this period.[66] The
campaigns which the Pharaohs undertook against Syria and the land of the
Euphrates after the expulsion of the Shepherds could not leave these
cities unmoved. If the Zemar of the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. is
Zemar (Simyra) near Aradus, and Arathutu is Aradus itself, the
territories of these cities were laid waste by this king in his sixth
campaign (about the year 1580 B.C.); if Arkatu is Arka, south of Aradus,
this place must have been destroyed in his fifteenth campaign (about the
year 1570 B.C.). Sethos I. (1440-1400 B.C.) subdued the land of Limanon
(_i.e._ the region of Lebanon), and caused cedars to be felled there.
One of his inscriptions mentions Zor, _i.e._ Tyre, among the cities
conquered by him. The son and successor of Sethos I., Ramses II., also
forced his way in the first decades of the fourteenth century as far as
the coasts of the Phenicians. At the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, between
Sidon and Berytus, the rocks on the coast display the memorial which he
caused to be set up in the second and third year of his reign in honour
of the successes obtained in this region.[67] In the fifth year of his
reign Ramses, with the king of the Cheta' defeats the king of Arathu in
the neighbourhood of Kadeshu on the Orontes, and Ramses III. about the
year 1310 B.C., mentions beside the Cheta who attack Egypt the people of
Arathu, by which name, in the one case as in the other, may be meant the
warriors of Aradus.[68] If Arathu, like Arathutu, is Aradus, it follows,
from the position which Ramses II. and III. give to the princes of
Arathu, that beside the power to which the kingdom of the Hittites had
risen about the middle of the fifteenth century B.C., and which it
maintained to the end of the fourteenth,[69] the Phenician cities had
assumed an independent position. The successes of the Pharaohs in Syria
come to an end in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Egypt
makes peace and enters into a contract of marriage with the royal house
of the Cheta; the Syrians obtain even the preponderance against Egypt
(I. 152), to which Ramses III. towards the end of the fourteenth century
was first able to oppose a successful defence.
The overthrow of the kingdom of the Hittites, which succumbed to the
attack of the Amorites (I. 348) soon after the year 1300 B.C., must have
had a reaction on the cities of the Phenicians. Expelled Hittites must
have been driven to the coast-land, or have fled thither, and in the
middle of the thirteenth century the successes gained by the Hebrews who
broke in from the East, over the Amorites, the settlement of the Hebrews
on the mountains of the Amorites, must again have thrown the vanquished,
_i.e._ the fugitives of this nation, towards the coast.
With this retirement of the older strata of the population of Canaan to
the coast is connected the movement which from this period emanates
from the coasts of the Phenicians, and is directed towards the islands
of the Mediterranean and the AEgean. It is true that on this subject only
the most scanty statements and traces, only the most legendary
traditions have come down to us, so that we can ascertain these advances
only in the most wavering outlines. One hundred miles to the west off
the coast of Phoenicia lies the island of Cyprus. On the southern coast
of this island, which looked towards Phoenicia, stood the city of
Citium, Kith and Chith in the inscriptions of the Phenicians, and
apparently Kittii in those of the Assyrians. Sidonian coins describe
Citium as a daughter of Sidon.[70] After this city the whole island is
known among the Semites as Kittim and Chittim; this name is even used in
a wider sense for all the islands of the Mediterranean.[71] The western
writers state that before the time of the Trojan war Belus had conquered
and subjugated the island of Cyprus, and that Citium belonged to
Belus.[72] The victorious Belus is the Baal of the Phenicians. The date
of the Trojan war is of no importance for the settlement of the
Phenicians in Cyprus, for this statement is found in Virgil only. More
important is the fact that the settlers brought the Babylonian cuneiform
writing to Cyprus. This became so firmly rooted in use that even the
Greeks, who set foot on the island at a far later time, scarcely before
the end of the ninth century, adopted this writing, which here meanwhile
had gone through a peculiar development, and had become a kind of
syllabic-writing, and used it on coins and in inscriptions even in the
fifth century B.C.[73] The settlement of the Sidonians in Cyprus must
therefore have taken place before the time in which the alphabetic
writing, _i.e._ the writing specially known as Phenician, was in use in
Syria, and hence at the latest before 1100 B.C. How long before this
time the settlement of the Phenicians in Cyprus took place can, perhaps,
be measured by the fact that the Cyprian alphabet is a simplification of
the old Babylonian cuneiform writing. The simplified form would
undoubtedly have been driven out by the far more convenient alphabetic
writing of the Phenicians if the Cyprian writing had not become fixed in
use in this island before the rise of the alphabetic writing. Further,
since the Phenicians, as we shall see, set foot on the coast of Hellas
from about the year 1200 B.C. onwards, we must place the foundation of
the colonies on the coasts nearest them, the settlement in Cyprus,
before this date, about the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.
What population the Phenicians found on Cyprus it is not possible to
discover. Herodotus tells us that the first inhabitants of the island
were Ethiopians, according to the statements of the Cyprians. It is
beyond a doubt that not Citium only, but the greater part of the cities
of the island were founded by the Phenicians, and that the Phenician
element became the ruling element of the whole island.[74] It is Belus
who is said to have conquered Cyprus, and to whom the city of Citium is
said to belong; _i.e._ Citium worshipped the god Baal. At Amathus, to
the west of Citium, on the south coast of the island, which was called
the oldest city on Cyprus, and which nevertheless bears a distinctly
Semitic name (Hamath), Adonis and Ashera-Astarte were worshipped,[75]
and these deities had also one of their oldest and most honoured seats
of worship at Paphos (Pappa in the inscriptions), on the west coast. The
Homeric poems represent Aphrodite as hastening to her altar at Paphos in
Cyprus. Pausanias observes that the Aphrodite of Cyprus was a warlike
Aphrodite,[76] and as the daughters of the Cyprians surrendered
themselves to the foreign seamen in honour of this goddess,[77] it was
the Astarte-Ashera of the Phenicians who was worshipped at Amathus and
Paphos. The Zeus of the Cyprian city Salamis (Sillumi in the
inscriptions of the Assyrians), to whom, according to the evidence of
western writers, human sacrifices were offered, can only be Baal Moloch,
the evil sun-god of the Phenicians. In the beginning of the tenth
century B.C. the cities of Cyprus stood under the supremacy of the king
of Tyre.[78] The island was of extraordinary fertility. The forests
furnished wood for ship-building; the mountains concealed rich veins of
the metal which has obtained the name of copper from this island.[79]
Hence it was a very valuable acquisition, an essential strengthening of
the power of Sidon in the older, and Tyre in the later, period.
Following Zeno of Rhodes, who wrote the history of his home in the first
half of the second century B.C.,[80] Diodorus tells us: The king of the
Phenicians, Agenor, bade his son Cadmus seek his sister Europa,[81] who
had disappeared, and bring back the maiden, or not return himself to
Phoenicia. Overtaken by a violent storm, Cadmus vowed a shrine to
Poseidon. He was saved, and landed on the island of Rhodes, where the
inhabitants worshipped before all other gods the sun, who had here
begotten seven sons and among them Makar. Cadmus set up a temple in
Rhodes to Poseidon, as he had vowed to do, and left behind Phenicians to
keep up the service; but in the temple which belonged to Athena at
Cnidus in Rhodes he dedicated a work of art, an iron bowl, which bore an
inscription in Phenician letters, the oldest inscription which came from
Phoenicia to the Hellenes. From Rhodes Cadmus came to Samothrace, and
there married Harmonia. The gods celebrated this first marriage by
bringing gifts, and blessing the married pair to the tones of heavenly
music.[82]
Ephorus says that Cadmus carried off Harmonia while sailing past
Samothrace, and hence in that island search was still made for Harmonia
at the festivals.[83] Herodotus informs us that Cadmus of Tyre, the son
of Agenor, in his search for Europa, landed on the island of Thera,
which was then called Callisto, and there left behind some Phenicians,
either because the land pleased him or for some other reason. These
Phenicians inhabited the island for eight generations before Theras
landed there from Lacedaemon. The rest went to the island of Thasos and
there built a temple to Heracles, which he had himself seen, and the
city of Thasos. This took place five generations before Heracles the son
of Amphitryon was born. After that Cadmus came to the land now called
Boeotia, and the Phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and
taught the Hellenes many things, among others the use of writing,
"which as it seems to me the Hellenes did not possess before. They
learnt this writing, as it was used by the Phenicians; in the course of
time the form of the letters changed with the language. From these
Phenicians the Ionians, among whom they dwelt, learnt the letters,
altered their form a little, and extended their use. As was right, they
called them Phenician letters, since the Phenicians had brought them
into Greece. I have myself seen inscriptions in Cadmeian letters (_i.e._
from the time of Cadmus) in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at
Thebes."[84] According to the narrative of Hellanicus, Cadmus received
an oracle, bidding him follow the cow which bore on her back the sign of
the full moon, and found a city where she lay down. Cadmus carried out
the command, and when the cow lay down wearied, where Thebes now stands,
Cadmus built there the Cadmeia (the citadel of Thebes).[85] According to
the statement of Pherecydes Cadmus also built the city of Thebes.[86]
With Hecataeus of Miletus Cadmus passes as the discoverer of letters;
according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the
art of mining.[87]
The direction of the Phenician settlements, which proceeds in the AEgean
sea from S.E. to N.W., cannot be mistaken in these legends. First
Rhodes, then the Cyclades, then the islands on the Thracian coast,
Samothrace and Thasos, were colonised; and at length, on the strait of
Euboea, the mainland of Hellas was trodden by the Phenicians, who are
said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence
over the Hellenes. The legend of Cadmus goes far back among the Greeks.
In the Homeric poems the inhabitants of Thebes are "Cadmeians." The
Thebaid praised "the divine wisdom of Cadmus;" in the poems of Hesiod he
leads home Harmonia, "the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite," and Pindar
describes how the Muses sang for "the divine Cadmus, the wealthiest of
mortals, when in seven-gated Thebes he led the ox-eyed Harmonia to the
bridal-bed."[88] Agenor, the father of Cadmus, is a name which the
Greeks have given to the Baal of the Phenicians.[89] Cadmus himself, the
wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a
goddess,--who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble,
bring gifts and sing,--whose wife was worshipped as the protecting
goddess of Thebes,[90]--whose daughters, Ino, Leucothea and Semele, are
divine creatures, whom Zeus leads to the Elysian fields,[91]--can only
be a god. He seeks the lost Europa, and is to follow the cow which bears
the sign of the full moon. We know the moon-goddess of the Phenicians,
who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned Astarte, who
wears a cow's head, the goddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus
the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. "The great temple of Astarte at
Sidon," so we find in the book of the Syrian goddess, "belongs, as the
Sidonians say, to Astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of
Europa, the sister of Cadmus." The meaning of the word Europa has been
discussed previously (I. 371). Cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-goddess,
who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy
marriage, is the Baal Melkarth of the Phenicians. The death-bringing
Istar-Astarte is changed into Bilit-Ashera, into the fruit-giving
goddess;[92] the gloomy Europa changes into Harmonia, the goddess of
union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants
deadly gifts. It is the myth of Melkarth and Astarte which the Greeks
present to us in the story of Cadmus; with this myth they have connected
the foundation of the Phenician settlements in Rhodes, Thera,
Samothrace, Thasos and Boeotia; they have changed it into the foundation
of these colonies. The name Cadmus means the man of the East; to the
Hebrews the Arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as Beni
Kedem, _i.e._ sons of the East.[93] To the Greeks the Phenicians were
men of the East, just as to the English of the thirteenth century the
merchants of Lubeck were Easterlings. The citadel of Thebes, which the
men of the East built, preserved the name of Cadmus the son of the East,
and kept it alive among the Greeks.
What we can gather from Grecian legend is confirmed by some statements
of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the Phenicians.
Thucydides informs us that the Phenicians colonised most of the islands
of the AEgean.[94] Diodorus has already told us with regard to Rhodes
that in the temples of this island were Phenician works of art and
inscriptions, and that in Rhodes the sun-god and the seven children
which he begot there were worshipped. In the number eight made by these
deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the
Phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the Baal of the Phenicians (I.
357). And if Diodorus mentions Makar among the seven sons of the sun-god
of Rhodes,--if according to others Rhodes, like Cyprus, was called
Macaria,--Makar is a Greek form of the name Melkarth. We further learn
that on the highest mountain summit in Rhodes, on Atabyris, Zeus was
worshipped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was
offered yearly to Cronos. In Atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the
Semitic Tabor, _i.e._ the height. We found above that the Phenicians
worshipped Baal under the form of a bull, and the Greeks are wont to
denote Baal Moloch by the name of Cronos.[95] These forms of worship
continued to exist even when at a later time Hellenic immigrants had got
the upper hand in Rhodes. It was the Dorians who here met with
resistance from the Phenicians at Camirus and Ialysus; they got the
upper hand, but admitted Phenician families into their midst,[96] and
continued their sacred rites. Diodorus informs us that the Phenicians
whom Cadmus had left behind on Rhodes had formed a mixed community with
the Ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had
performed the sacred duties.[97] Even at a later time Rhodes stood in
close relation with Phoenicia, especially with the city of Aradus.[98]
Thus it happened that the colonies which the Rhodians planted in the
seventh and sixth centuries in Sicily, Gela and Acragas, carried thither
the worship of Zeus Atarbyrius. Zeus Atarbyrius was the protecting deity
of Acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on
the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. The
coins of Gela also exhibit a bull.[99] Of the island of Thera, Herodotus
told us that the Phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight
generations, _i.e._ for more than 250 years according to his
computation. Herodotus names the chief of the Phenicians whom Cadmus
left behind on Thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected
there.[100] The descendants of these Phenicians were found here by the
Greek settlers from Laconia. It is certain that even in the third
century B.C. the island worshipped the hero Phoenix.[101] Of the island
of Melos we learn that it was occupied by Phenicians of Byblus, and
named by them after their mother city;[102] the island of Oliaros near
Paros was, on the other hand, according to Heracleides Ponticus,
occupied by the Sidonians.[103] Strabo informs us that Samothrace was
previously called Melite (Malta); from its height (the island is a
mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit
reaches 5000 feet) it obtained the name of Samos, "for high places are
called Sami;"[104] as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this
meaning, like the name Melite, belongs to the Phenician language.
Ephorus has already told us (p. 56) that the Samothracians sought for
Harmonia at their festivals; Diodorus represents Cadmus as celebrating
the marriage with Harmonia on Samothrace as well as at Thebes, and we
learn from Herodotus that the Cabiri, _i.e._ the great gods of the
Phenicians, were worshipped on Samothrace; votive tablets of the island
dating from Roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods,"
_i.e._ to the Cabiri.[105] The islands of Imbros and Lemnos also
worshipped the Cabiri; Lemnos especially worshipped Hephaestus, who had a
leading place in this circle.[106] The island of Thasos is said,
according to the statement of the Greeks, to have been called after a
son of Phoenix, or Agenor, of the name of Thasos, who was consequently a
brother of Cadmus. Herodotus saw on the island a temple which the
Phenicians had built to Heracles, _i.e._ to Baal-Melkarth, and the mines
which they had made on the coast opposite Samothrace; "they had
overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."[107]
Herodotus also tells us that the temple of Aphrodite Urania on the
island of Cythera off the coast of Laconia was founded by the
Phenicians, and Pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred
temple of Urania among the Hellenes; the wooden image in this temple
exhibited the goddess in armour. Aphrodite Urania is with the Greeks the
Syrian Aphrodite; if she was represented on Cythera in armour it is
clear that she was worshipped there by the Phenicians as Astarte-Ashera,
_i.e._ as the goddess of war and love.[108]
Not in the islands only, but on the coasts of Hellas also, the
Phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in
the form of worship belonging to them. On the isthmus of Corinth
Melicertes, _i.e._ Melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting
navigation; Corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.[109] Aphrodite,
whose shrine stood on the summit of Acrocorinthus, was worshipped by
prostitution like the Ashera-Bilit of the Phenicians. In Attica also, in
the deme of Athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess of Cythera,
which king Porphyrion, _i.e._ the purple man, the Phenician, is said to
have founded there at a very ancient time "before king Actaeus."[110]
At Marathon, where Heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name
represents the Phenician city Marathus, rose a fountain which had the
name Makaria, _i.e._ Makar,[111] the name of Melkarth, which we have
already met with in Cyprus and Rhodes, and shall meet with again. More
plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in Hymettus at the village
of Spata attest the ancient settlement of the Phenicians on the Attic
coast. These are chambers dug deeply into the rock after the Phenician
manner, with horizontal roofs after the oldest fashion of Phenician
graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. The ornaments and
works in glass, ivory, gold and brass discovered here, which are made
after Babylonian and Egyptian models, can only have been brought by the
Phenicians.[112] The citadel of Thebes, as has been said, retains the
name of Cadmus; the poetry of the Greeks praised the mighty walls, the
seven gates of Thebes. We know the number seven of the great Phenician
gods; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the gods of
the sun, the moon and the five planets;[113] and the Greeks have already
admitted to us that they received the wearing of armour, the art of
mining and masonry and finally their alphabet from Cadmus, _i.e._ from
the Phenicians, the Cadmeans of Thebes.
In the Homeric poems Europa, the daughter of Phoenix, bears Minos to
Zeus. The abode of Minos is the "great city" of Cnossus in Crete; he
receives each nine years the revelations of his father Zeus; for his
daughter Ariadne Daedalus adorns a dancing place at Cnossus. After his
death Minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his
decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.[114] His
descendants rule in Crete.[115] Later accounts tell us that Zeus in the
form of a bull carried off Europa from Phoenicia, and bore her over the
sea to Crete. The wife of her son Minos, Pasiphae, then united with a
bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the Minotaur, _i.e._
the Minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.[116] The son of Minos,
Androgeos (earth-man) or Eurygyes (Broadland), was destroyed in Attica
by the bull of Marathon, who consumed him in his flames.[117] To avenge
the death of Androgeos Minos seized Megara, and blight and famine
compelled the Athenians to send, in obedience to the command of Minos,
seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to Crete, who were then
sacrificed to the Minotaur.[118] Others narrate that Hephaestus had given
Minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign
vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to
Minos.[119] When Daedalus retired before the wrath of Minos from Crete to
Sicily, Minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found,
according to Herodotus, a violent death.[120] The king of the Sicanians,
so Diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm
bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. The Cretans
buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret
place, and built upon them a temple to Aphrodite, and as they could not
return to Crete because the Cretans had burned their ships, they
founded the city Minoa in Sicily; but the tomb of Minos was shown in
Crete also.[121]
A bull-god carries the daughter of Phoenix over the sea to Crete and
begets Minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with Pasiphae,
_i.e._ the all-shining, the Minos-bull, to which in case of blight and
famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the
Semites; Androgeos succumbs to the heat of the bull of Marathon, an iron
man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. These
legends of the Greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the
rites observed in Crete from the coast of Syria, of the settlement of
Phenicians in Crete. The bull-god may be the Baal Samim or the Baal
Moloch of the Phenicians; Europa has already revealed herself to us as
the moon-goddess of the Phenicians (p. 58); Pasiphae is only another
name for the same goddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry
heaven. We know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were
offered to Baal Moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-god, and that
these sacrifices were burnt. Ister, a writer of the third century B.C.,
tells us quite simply; In ancient times children were sacrificed to
Cronos in Crete.[122] Before the harbour of Megara lay an island of the
name of Minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe,
the Athenians offered peace-offerings at the Thargelia, "in the place of
human sacrifices,"[123] that the consuming sun might not kill the
harvest. The name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames
of the bull of Marathon, prove that beside the worship of the Syrian
goddess at Athmonon, and the worship of Melkarth at Marathon, the
worship of Baal Moloch had penetrated as far as Megara and Attica.
Minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from
time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death
is judge of the dead, is himself a god; his proper name is Minotaur, a
name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. When
Baal Melkarth had found and overcome Astarte, after he had celebrated
with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the Phenician
myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. The
Phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there
in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater
proximity.[124] Minos goes to Sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his
life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of Astarte-Ashera,
with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this
marriage is changed from the goddess of war into the goddess of love.
The tombs of Minos in Crete, Sicily, and finally at Gades, of which the
Greeks speak, are in the meaning of the Phenician myth merely
resting-places of the god, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into
new power. The Greeks made Minos, who continued to live in the
under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of
the souls themselves. On the southern coast of Sicily, at the mouth of
the Halycus, lay the city which the Greeks called Minoa or
Heraclea-Minoa after Minos. To the Phenicians it was known as Rus
Melkarth (p. 78), a title which proves beyond doubt that Minos was one
of the names given by the Greeks to this god of the Phenicians.
The worship of Baal Moloch, which the Phenicians brought to Crete and
the shores of Megara and Attica, was not all that the Greeks personified
in the form of Minos; they did not confine themselves to one side of
the myth of Baal Melkarth. When Grecian colonists settled subsequently
in Crete they found the cities of the Phenicians full of artistic
capacity, and their life regulated by legal ordinances. Thus their
legend could place the artist Daedalus, the discoverer and pattern of all
art-industry, beside Minos, and refer to Minos the ordinances of the
cities. Zeus himself had revealed these arrangements to him. At a later
time the Greek cities of Crete traced their own institutions back to
Minos; here and there they may perhaps have followed a Phenician model,
or they may have given out that such a model had been followed. Plato
represents Minos as receiving the wise laws which he introduced into
Crete from Zeus. With Aristotle also Minos is the founder of the Cretan
laws.[125] In the circle of the Cabiri the sky-god Baal Samim was the
protector and defender of law (I. 377).
Lastly, Minos is with the Greeks at once the representation and
expression of the dominion which the Phenicians exercised in ancient
times over the islands of the AEgean sea, before the settlements of the
Greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the ships of the
Greeks took the lead in these waters. In the age of the Heroes, so
Herodotus tells us, Minos established the first naval empire; the
Carians, who inhabited the islands, he made his subjects; they did not
indeed pay tribute, but they had to man his ships whenever
necessary.[126] "The oldest king," says Thucydides, "of whom tradition
tells us that he possessed a fleet was Minos. He ruled over the greatest
part of the Greek sea and the Cyclades, which he colonised, driving out
the Carians and making his sons lords of the islands."[127] Minos, as a
king ruling by law, is then said to have put an end to piracy.
The Phenicians could not certainly have left out of sight the largest of
the islands, which forms the boundary of the AEgean sea; and the
traditions of the Greeks can hardly go wrong if they make this island
the centre of the naval supremacy of Minos, _i.e._ of the supremacy of
the Phenicians over the Cyclades. Crete must have been the mainstay of
their activity in the AEgean, just as Thebes was the point on the
mainland where they planted the firmest foot. The title Minoa seems to
lie at the base of the name of Minos, a title borne not only by the
island off Megara and the city in Sicily, but also by two cities in
Crete (one on the promontory of Drepanum, the other in the region of
Lyctus), by some islands near Crete, a city in Amorgus, and a city in
Siphnus. The name Minoa (from _navah_) could mean dwelling; it is
certain evidence of a Phenician settlement. But the Phenicians have left
traces of their existence in Crete beside the names Minos and Minoa and
the forms of worship denoted by them. Coins of the Cretan cities Gortys
and Phaestus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. Near the
Cretan city of Cydonia the Jardanus, _i.e._ the Jordan, falls into the
sea; the name of the city Labana goes back to the Phenician word
_libanon_, i.e. "white." Cnossus, the abode of Minos in Homer and
Herodotus,[128] was previously named Kairatus; _Karath_ in Phenician
means city. Itanus, in Crete (_Ethanath_ in the Semitic form), is
expressly stated to be a foundation of the Phenicians.[129]
With regard to the state of civilisation reached by Syria before the
year 1500 B.C., we may draw some conclusions from the fact that not
merely did the civilisation of Egypt influence the shepherds of Semitic
race who ruled over Egypt at that period, but that Semitic manners and
customs left behind traces in Egypt (I. 128). Hence we may assume that
the Syrians carried their wine and their oil to the Nile at the time
when their kinsmen ruled there (1950-1650 B.C.). The civilisation of
Syria appears more clearly from the tributes imposed by Tuthmosis III.
on Syria, which are here and there illustrated by the pictures
accompanying the inscriptions of this Pharaoh. The burdens imposed on
the Syrians consist not only of corn, wine, oil and horses; not only of
gold, silver and iron, but also of arms and works of art, among which
the pictures allow us to recognise carefully-decorated vessels. On the
other hand, it is clear from the fact that the Babylonian weights and
measures were in use in Syria at this time (I. 304) that the Syrians
before this period were in lively intercourse with the land of the
Euphrates, that even before the sixteenth century B.C. caravans must
have traversed the Syrian deserts in every direction, and even then the
Syrians must have exchanged the products of their land for Babylonian
stuffs and the frankincense which the Arabians on their part carried to
Babylon. The dependence of Syria on Egypt under the Tuthmosis and
Amenophis can only have augmented the intercourse of the Syrians with
the land of the Nile. Afterwards Sethos I. (1440-1400) caused wood to be
felled on Lebanon; it must have been the places on the coast under
Lebanon which carried to Egypt in their ships, along with the wine and
oil of the coast and the interior, the wood so necessary there for
building and exchanged it for the fabrics of Egypt. Wood for building
could not be conveyed on the backs of camels, and the way by sea from
the Phenician towns to the mouths of the Nile was far easier and less
dangerous than the road by land over rocky heights and through sandy
deserts. Hence, as early as the fifteenth century B.C., we may regard
the Phenician cities as the central points of a trade branching east and
west, which must have been augmented by the fact that they conveyed not
only products of the Syrian land to the Euphrates and the Nile, but
could also carry the goods which they obtained in exchange in Egypt to
Babylonia, and what they obtained beyond the Euphrates to Egypt. At the
same time the fabrics of Babylon and Egypt roused them to emulation, and
called forth an industry among the Phenicians which we see producing
woven stuffs, vessels of clay and metal, ornaments and weapons, and
becoming pre-eminent in the colouring of stuffs with the liquor of the
purple-fish, which are found on the Phenician coasts. This industry
required above all things metals, of which Babylonia and Egypt were no
less in need, and when the purple-fish of their own coasts were no
longer sufficient for their extensive dyeing, colouring-matter had to be
obtained. Large quantities of these fish produced a proportionately
small amount of the dye. Copper-ore was found in Cyprus, gold in the
island of Thasos, and purple-fish on the coasts of Hellas. When the fall
of the kingdom of the Hittites and the overthrow of the Amorite princes
in the south of Canaan augmented the numbers of the population on the
coast, these cities were no longer content to obtain those possessions
of the islands by merely landing and making exchanges with the
inhabitants. Intercourse with semi-barbarous tribes must be protected by
the sword. Good harbours were needed where the ships could be sheltered
from storm and bad weather, where the crews could find safety from the
natives, rest and fresh stores of water and provisions. Thus arose
protecting forts on the distant islands and coasts, which received the
ships of the native land. Under the protection of these intercourse
could be carried on with the natives, and they were points of support
for the collection of the fish and the sinking of mines.
In order to obtain the raw material necessary for their industry no less
than to carry off the surplus of population, the Phenicians were brought
to colonise Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Thera, Melos, Oliarus, Samothrace,
Imbros, Lemnos and Thasos. In the bays of Laconia and Argos, in the
straits of Euboea,[130] purple-fish were found in extraordinary
quantities. The Phenicians settled in the island of Cythera in the bay
of Laconia, which, as Aristotle says, was once called Porphyrussa from
its purple-fish,[131] and there erected that ancient temple to the
oriental Aphrodite, Aphrodite in armour, just as in Attica in the deme
of Athmonon they founded the temple of the Syrian Aphrodite and
excavated the tombs on Hymettus.[132] Midway between the straits of
Euboea and the bay of Corinth, which abounded with purple-fish, rose the
strong fortress of the Cadmeia, and on Acrocorinthus the shrine of
Ashera.
Herodotus and Thucydides told us above (p. 67) that the Carians
inhabited the islands of the AEgean sea. These were they whom Minos had
made subject to his dominion. Beside this, we are informed more
particularly that the Carians had possessed the island of Rhodes, which
lay off their coast, and had dwelt on Chios and Samos (I. 571). What
degree of civilisation was reached by the population of the islands of
the AEgean sea before the Phenicians came into relations with them may be
inferred to some extent from the discoveries made in the island of
Thera. In and beneath three layers of ashes and tufa caused by vast
eruptions of the volcanos of this island have been discovered stone
instruments, pottery of the most rudimentary kind, in part with the
rudest indications of the human face and figure, and beside these
weapons of copper and brass. In the upper layers of the tufa we find far
better pottery decorated in the Phenician style. On Melos also, and in
the tombs at Camirus in Rhodes, vessels of the same kind have been
discovered; and, finally, in the highest of the layers at Thera are gold
ornaments of the most various kinds, and ornaments of electron, _i.e._
of mixed gold and silver, all of a workmanship essentially non-Hellenic.
From these facts we may draw the conclusion that the ships of the
Phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in brass
and copper, their pottery and ornaments; that the Carians of the
islands, following these patterns, raised their own efforts to a higher
stage, and that afterwards the Phenicians themselves settled in the
islands and made themselves masters of them. Perhaps we may even go a
step further. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on
the Trojan coast, we find exactly the same primitive pottery, with the
same indications of human forms, as in Thera, while in the refuse lying
above this are idols and pottery adorned after Phenician patterns, which
correspond exactly to the idols of Cyprus, as well as ornaments like
those of Thera. Hence in this region also we may assume that the
Phenicians gave the impulse and the example to the development of
civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of Adramyttion on
the Trojan coast repeats the name of a Phenician foundation on the coast
of North Africa (Adrames, Hadrumetum), and even Strabo ascribes the
worship of the Cabiri to some places on the Trojan coast.[133] Far more
definite traces of the Phenician style and skill are in existence on the
shore of the bay of Argos. The ancient tombs which have been recently
discovered behind the lions' gate at Mycenae are hewn in the rocks after
the manner of the Phenicians. As in the ancient burying-places of the
Phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral
chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most
ancient custom in Phoenicia. The masks of beaten gold-leaf which were
found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are
evidence of a custom which the Phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces
of Egyptian coffins.[134] The corpses are covered with gold ornaments
and other decorations. There is a large number of weapons and ornaments
of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution
exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. The
ornaments remind us of Babylonian and Assyrian patterns; the idols in
burnt clay are in the Phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms,
antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the
East; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached
the bay of Argos in Phenician ships. Still there are grave reasons for
refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of
the Phenicians. The numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who
rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional
custom either with regard to the Phenicians or the Hellenes, but which
Thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the Carians.[135] We learn,
moreover, even from the Homeric poems, that the Carians loved gold
ornaments, and further, that the Greeks improved their armour after the
pattern of the Carians (I. 572). As we also find the double axe of the
Carian god, the "Zeus Stratius" as the Greeks called him, the "axe-god,"
the Chars-El in the Carian language (I. 573), on some ornaments of the
tombs of Mycenae, the supposition forces itself upon us that Carians from
the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of Argos. In
any case, the tombs of Mycenae, both from their position and their
contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed
their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the
Phenicians.
Can we fix the time at which the Phenicians first set foot on the
islands of Hellas? Herodotus tells us that Troy was taken in the third
generation after the death of Minos.[136] If we put three full
generations, according to the calculation of Herodotus, between the
death of Minos and the conquest of Ilium, the first event took place 100
years before the second. Since, according to the data of Herodotus, the
capture of Ilium falls in the year 1280 or 1260 B.C., Minos would have
died in the year 1380 or 1360 B.C. The landing of the Phenicians on
Thasos and the expedition of Cadmus from Phoenicia beyond the islands to
Boeotia are placed by Herodotus five generations before Heracles, and
Heracles is placed 900 years before his own time. If we reckon upwards
from the year 450 or 430 B.C., Heracles lived about the year 1350 or
1330 B.C., and Cadmus five generations, _i.e._ 166-2/3 years, before
this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 B.C.[137] On the island of
Thera, Herodotus further remarks, the Phenicians whom Cadmus left
behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, _i.e._ 266-2/3 years,
before the Dorians came to the island.[138] Melos was also occupied by
Dorians, who asserted in 416 B.C. that their community had been in
existence 700 years,[139] according to which statement the Dorians came
to Melos in the year 1116 B.C. With this event the Phenician rule over
the island came to an end. If we assume that Thera, which is close by
Melos, was taken from the Phenicians by the Dorians at the same time as
the latter island, the eight generations given by Herodotus for the
settlements of the Phenicians on Thera would carry us back to the year
1382 B.C. (1116 + 266-2/3), a date which is certainly in agreement with
his statement about the death of Minos, but contradicts the date given
for Cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of Herodotus, left
behind the settlers on Thera and Thasos when he first sailed to Boeotia.
Herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of
legend. The five generations which separated Cadmus from Heracles were
for him, no doubt, Polydorus, Labdacus, Laius, Oedipus and Polynices;
for the three generations between the death of Minos and the capture of
Troy we find in Homer only two, Deucalion and Idomeneus.[140] But we can
still find from Herodotus' calculations how far back the Greeks placed
the beginning and the end of the empire of the Phenicians over their
islands and coasts. Beyond this the chronographers do not give us any
help. Eusebius and Hieronymus (Jerome) place the rape of Europa in the
year 1429 or 1426 B.C.; the rule of Cadmus at Thebes in the year 1427
B.C. or 1319 (1316) B.C.; the settlement of the Phenicians on Thera,
Melos, and Thasos in the year 1415 B.C.; the beginning of the rule of
Minos in the year 1410 B.C., or, according to another computation, in
the year 1251 B.C.[141]
We can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the
settlements of the Phenicians in the AEgean sea. In the lower strata of
the excavations at Hissarlik, on the coast of Troas, clay lentils have
been found with Cyprian letters upon them.[142] Since the Greeks
declared that they learnt their alphabet from the Phenicians and Cadmus,
and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the Phenicians which lies at
the root of the Greek, the Cyprian letters can only have been brought
thither by Phenician ships from Cyprus before the discovery of the
Phenician letters, or from the islands off the Trojan coast occupied by
the Phenicians, from Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace; otherwise they must
have come to the Troad at a later time by Cyprian ships or settlers, a
supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains
discovered with or near the lentils. Among the sons of Japheth, the
representative of the northern nations, Genesis mentions Javan, _i.e._
the Ionian, the Greek; and enumerates the sons of Javan: Elisha,
Tarshish, Chittim, and Dodanim or Rodanim--the reading is
uncertain.[143] It is a question whether the genealogical table in
Genesis belongs to the first or second text of the Pentateuch, _i.e._
whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the
tenth century B.C. In any case it follows that in the beginning of the
eleventh or tenth century B.C. the name and nation of the Ionians was
known not only in the harbour-cities of Phoenicia, but in the interior
of Syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts
of the Mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these Ionians.
Chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of Cyprus; the
Rodanim are the inhabitants of Rhodes (Dodanim would have to be referred
to Dodona); Elisha is Elis in the Peloponnese, or the island of Sicily,
if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and
islands;[144] Tarshish is Tartessus, _i.e._ the region at the mouth of
the Guadalquivir. If Ezekiel mentions the purple which the Phenicians
bring from "the isles of Elishah,"[145] the islands and coasts of the
AEgean sea are plainly meant, on which the Phenicians collected the fish
for their purple dye. This much is clear, that at least about the year
1000 B.C. not only the islands and coasts of the AEgean were known in
Syria, but even then the name of the distant land of Tarshish was
current in Syria. We shall further see that as early as 1100 B.C.
Phenician ships had passed the straits of Gibraltar. Hence we may
conclude that the Phenicians must have set foot on Cyprus about the year
1250 B.C., and on the islands and coasts of Hellas about the year 1200
B.C.
Thucydides observes that in ancient times the Phenicians had occupied
the promontories of Sicily and the small islands lying around Sicily, in
order to carry on trade with the Sicels.[146] Diodorus Siculus tells us
that when the Phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they
settled in the island of Melite (Malta), owing to its situation in the
middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for
their ships. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is
said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.[147] On the south-eastern
promontory of Malta there was a temple of Heracles-Melkarth,[148] the
foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still
more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given
by the Phenician inscriptions found there. The island, like the
mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought
after in antiquity. On Gaulus also, a name mentioned on Phenician coins,
are the remains of a Phenician temple. Between Sicily and the coast of
Africa, where it approaches Sicily most nearly, lay the island of
Cossyra, coins of which bear Phenician legends. Along with a dwarfish
figure they present the name "island of the sons,"[149] _i.e._ no doubt,
the children of the sun-god whom we met with in Rhodes. On the east
coast of Sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with
the mainland (now Isola degli Magnisi), the city of Thapsos, the name of
which reveals its founders; _Tiphsach_ means coming over, here coming
over to the mainland. In the same way the promontory of Pachynus
(_pachun_ means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of
Phoenicus are evidence of Phenician colonisation. On the south coast of
Sicily, not far from the mouth of the Halycus, the Phenicians built that
city which is known to the Greeks as Makara and Minoa, or Heracleaminoa;
the coins of the city present in Phenician characters the name
Rus-Melkart, _i.e._ "head (promontory) of Melkarth."[150] Off the west
coast of Sicily the Phenicians occupied the small island of Motye.[151]
On this coast of the larger island, on Mount Eryx, which rises steeply
out of a bald table land (2000 feet above the sea), they founded the
city of Eryx, and on the summit of the mount, 5000 feet high, they
built a temple to the Syrian Aphrodite. In Diodorus it is Eryx the son
of Aphrodite who builds this temple; AEneas then adorns it with many
votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."[152] Virgil
represents the temple as being founded on the summit of Eryx, near to
the stars, in honour of Venus Idalia, _i.e._ the goddess worshipped at
Idalion (Idial) on Cyprus by the immigrants from the East, who, with
him, are the companions of AEneas.[153] The courtezans at this temple,
the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in
a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen[154]), even
without the Phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of
its Syrian origin. The mighty substructure of the building is still in
existence. Daedalus is said to have built it for the king of the
Sicanians (p. 64). Beside the Syrian goddess, the Phenicians also
worshipped here the Syrian god Baal Melkarth. According to the account
of Diodorus, Heracles overcame Eryx in wrestling, and so took his land
from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.[155] The
kings of Sparta traced their origin to Heracles. When Dorieus, the son
of Anaxandridas, king of Sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that
the crown had fallen to his brother Cleomenes, the oracle bade him
retire to Eryx; the land of Eryx belonged to the Heraclids because their
ancestor won it. The Carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this
right; Dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.[156] On
the north coast of Sicily, Panormus (Palermo) and Soloeis were the most
important colonies of the Phenicians. Panormus, on coins of the
Phenicians Machanath, _i.e._ the camp, worshipped the goddess of the
sexual passion; Soloeis (_sela_, rock) worshipped Melkarth. In a hymn to
Aphrodite, Sappho inquires whether she lingers in Cyprus or at
Panormus.[157] Motye, Soloeis and Panormus were in the fifth century the
strongest outposts of the Carthaginians in Sicily.[158]
On Sardinia also, as Diodorus tells us, the Phenicians planted many
colonies.[159] The mountains of Sardinia contained iron, silver, and
lead. According to the legend of the Greeks, Sardus, the son of Makeris,
as the Libyans called Heracles, first came with Libyans to the island.
Then Heracles sent his brother's son Iolaus, together with his own sons,
whom he had begotten in Attica, to Sardinia. As Heracles had been lord
of the whole West, these regions belonged of right to Iolaus and his
companions. Iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of
and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was
afterwards known by the name of Iolaus; then he sent for Daedalus out of
Sicily and erected large buildings, which, Diodorus adds, are still in
existence; but in Sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour
paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in Agyrion, "where,"
as Diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly
sacrifices are offered."[160] Makeris, the supposed father of Sardus,
is, like Makar, a form of the name Melkarth. If Sardinia and the whole
West as well as Eryx is said to have belonged to Heracles, if Heracles
sends out his nearest relations to Sardinia, if the artist Daedalus is
his companion here as he was the companion of Minos in Crete and Sicily,
it becomes obvious that the temples of Baal Melkarth on the coasts of
Sardinia and Sicily lie at the base of these legends of the Greeks, that
it was the Phenicians who brought the worship of their god along with
their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of
the Sardinian mountains in copper. As we already ventured to suppose (I.
368), Iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of Baal.[161]
The legend of the Greeks makes Heracles, _i.e._ Baal Melkarth, lord of
the whole West. As a fact, the colonies of the Phenicians went beyond
Sardinia in this direction. Their first colonies on the north coast of
Africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest
Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.[162] In the
legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) Hippo is named beside Tyre
and Citium as a daughter of Sidon. When a second Hippo was afterwards
founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of Sardinia, at
the mouth of the Ubus, the old Hippo got the name of "Ippoacheret," and
among the Greeks "Hippon Zarytos," _i.e._ "the other Hippo."[163] Ityke
(_atak_, settlement, Utica), on the mouth of the Bagradas (Medsherda),
takes the next place after this Hippo, if indeed it was not founded
before it. Aristotle tells us that the Phenicians stated that Ityke was
built 287 years before Carthage,[164] and Pliny maintains that Ityke was
founded 1178 years before his time.[165] As Carthage was founded in the
year 846 B.C. (below, chap. 11), Ityke, according to Aristotle's
statement, was built in the year 1133 B.C. With this the statement of
Pliny agrees. He wrote in the years 52-77 A.D., and therefore he places
the foundation of Ityke in the year 1126 or 1100 B.C.
About the same time, _i.e._ about the year 1100 B.C., the Phenicians had
already reached much further to the west. In his Phenician history,
Claudius Iolaus tells us that Archaleus (Arkal, Heracles[166]), the son
of Phoenix, built Gadeira (Gades).[167] "From ancient times," such is
the account of Diodorus, "the Phenicians carried on an uninterrupted
navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in Africa,
and not a few in Europe, in the regions lying to the west. And when
their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had
collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the
pillars of Heracles, which is called Oceanus. First of all, on their
passage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of Europe a
city which they called Gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place,
chiefly a beautiful temple to Heracles, with splendid offerings
according to the custom of the Phenicians. And as this temple was
honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it
was held in great reverence. When the Phenicians, in order to explore
the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the shore of
Libya, they were carried away far into the Oceanus by a strong wind, and
after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island
opposite Libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so
beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be
intended for the dwelling of the gods rather than men."[168] Strabo
says, the Gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the Tyrians send a
colony to the pillars of Heracles. When those who had been sent reached
the straits of Mount Calpe they were of opinion that the promontories
which enclosed the passage, Calpe and the opposite headland of Abilyx in
Libya,[169] were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of
the travels of Heracles, which the oracle mentioned. So they landed on
this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the Axitani
(Sexi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there
they turned back. Those sent out after them sailed through the straits,
and cast anchor at an island sacred to Heracles, 1500 stades beyond the
pillars, opposite the city of Onoba in Iberia; but as the sacrifices
were again unfavourable they also again turned home. Finally, a third
fleet landed on a little island 750 stades beyond Mount Calpe, close to
the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the Baetis. Here, on the east
side of the island, they built a temple to Heracles; on the opposite
side of the island they built the city of Gadeira, and on the extreme
western point the temple of Cronos. In the temple of Heracles there were
two fountains and "two pillars of brass, eight cubits in height, on
which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."[170] This
foundation of Gades, which on the coins is called Gadir and Agadir,
_i.e._ wall, fortification, the modern Cadiz, and without doubt the most
ancient city in Europe which has preserved its name, is said to have
taken place in the year 1100 B.C.[171] If Ityke was founded before 1100
B.C. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of
Gades soon after that date. Hence the ships of the Phenicians would have
reached the ocean about the time when Tiglath Pilesar I. left the Tigris
with his army, trod the north of Syria, and looked on the Mediterranean.
The marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a
path for the waves of the Mediterranean to the boundless waters of the
Atlantic Ocean might implant in the Phenician mariners who first passed
beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the
pillars which the god set up to mark the end of the earth; in the
endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in
which their sun-god went to his rest. That Gades, on the shore of the
sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship
of Melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the
supposed death of Heracles[172]) and the awakening of the god with the
sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact
which requires no explanation. The legends of the Hesperides, the
daughters of the West, in whose garden Melkarth celebrates the holy
marriage with Astarte (I. 371), of the islands of the blest in the
western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant
fertility and favoured climate of Madeira and the Canary islands.
The land off the coast of which Gades lay, the valley of the
Guadalquivir, was named by the Phenicians Tarsis (Tarshish), and by the
Greeks Tartessus. The genealogical table in Genesis places Tarsis among
the sons of Javan. The prophet Ezekiel represents the ships of Tarshish
as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to Tyre. "The ships of Tarshish,"
so he says to the city of Tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou
replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."[173] The
Sicilian Stesichorus of Himera expresses himself in more extravagant
terms. He sang of the "fountains of Tartessus (the Guadalquivir) rooted
in silver." The Greeks represent the Tartessus, the river which brought
down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver
mountain,[174] and according to Herodotus the first Greek ship, a
merchantman of Samos, which was driven about the year 630 B.C. by a
storm from the east to Tartessus, made a profit of 60 talents.[175]
Aristotle tells us that the first Phenicians who sailed to Tartessus
obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the
ships could not carry the burden, so that the Phenicians left behind the
tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new
tackle of silver.[176] Poseidonius says that among that people it was
not Hades, but Plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. Once the forests
had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire,
flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold
and silver. On the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver,
tin and white gold mixed with silver. This soil the rivers washed down
with them. The women drew water from the river and poured it through
sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the
sieve.[177] Diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the
forests on the Pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which
the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that
many streams were formed of pure silver. To the native inhabitants the
value of silver was so little known that the Phenicians obtained it in
exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the
silver to Asia and all other nations. The greed of the merchants went so
far that when the ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity
of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and
replaced it with silver. Strabo assures us that the land through which
the Baetis flows was not surpassed in fertility and all the blessings of
earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver,
copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and
excellence. The gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by washing,
as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. In the sands of
gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and
requiring very little purification. Stone salt was also found there, and
there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent
wool, of corn and wine. The coast of the shore beyond the pillars was
covered with shell-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in
fish (the tunnies and the Tartessian murena so much sought after in
antiquity),[178] which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the
beach. Corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were
exported from this fortunate land.[179]
If the Phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon
Cyprus and Rhodes, the islands of the AEgean and the coasts of Hellas,
their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their
trade lucrative. That subsequently in the twelfth century they also took
into possession the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa by means
of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and
metals of the West was very lively and increasing in Syria and in Egypt,
in Assyria and Babylonia. The market of these lands must have been very
remunerative to the Phenicians in order to induce them to make their
discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. If the
Phenicians about the year 1100 B.C. were in a position to discover the
straits of Gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised
navigation for a long time. The horizon of the Greek mariner ended even
in the ninth century in the waters of Sicily, and in the fifth century
B.C. the voyage of a Greek ship from the Syrian coast to the pillars of
Heracles occupied 80 days.[180] After the founding of Gades the
Phenicians ruled over the whole length of the Mediterranean by their
harbour fortresses and factories. Their ships crossed the long basin in
every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. They
showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation
than the Babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and
astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the Assyrians in
the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the
Phenicians were building Gades; they were more venturesome and enduring
on the water than their tribesmen the Arabians on the sandy sea of the
desert. In the possession of the ancient civilisation of the East their
mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the Thracians and
Hellenes, the Sicels, the Libyans and Iberians which the Portuguese and
the Spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Robinson, "Palestine," 3, 710.
[64] Tac. "Hist." 5, 6.
[65] Renan, "Mission de Phenicie," p. 836.
[66] Vol. i. pp. 344, 345.
[67] Vol. i. p. 151.
[68] Vol. i. p. 153.
[69] Vol. i. p. 344.
[70] The legend runs, "From the Sidonians, Mother of Kamb, Ippo,
Kith(?), Sor," Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 134.
[71] Isaiah xxiii. 1, 19; Jeremiah ii. 10; Ezekiel xxvii. 6; Joseph.
"Antiq." 1, 6, 1.
[72] Virgil, "AEn." 1, 619, 620.
[73] Brandis, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1873, s. 645 ff.
[74] Herod. 7, 90.
[75] Stephan. Byz. [Greek: Amathous].
[76] "Odyss." 8, 362; Tac. "Annal." 2, 3; Pausan. 1, 14, 6; Pompon.
Mela, 2, 7.
[77] Vol. i. p. 359.
[78] Joseph. "in Apion." 1, 18; "Antiq." 8, 5, 3, 9, 14, 2.
[79] Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 239, 240.
[80] Diod. 5, 56.
[81] In Homer Europa is not the daughter of Agenor but of Phoenix ("Il."
14, 321), just as Cadmus, Thasos, and Europa are sometimes children of
Agenor and sometimes of Phoenix. In Hdt. 1, 2 it is Cretans who carry
off Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.
[82] Diod. 4, 2, 60; 5, 56, 57, 58, 48, 49.
[83] Ephor. Frag. 12, ed. Mueller.
[84] Herod. 4, 147; 2, 45, 49; 5, 58, 59.
[85] Frag. 8, 9, ed. Mueller.
[86] Frag. 40-42, 43-45, ed. Mueller.
[87] Frag. 163, ed. Mueller.
[88] "Theog." 937, 975; Pind. "Pyth." 3, 88 _seqq._
[89] Movers, "Phoeniz." 1, 129, 131.
[90] Plut. "Pelop." c. 19.
[91] Pind. "Olymp." 2, 141.
[92] Vol. i. 271.
[93] Movers, "Phoeniz." 1, 517.
[94] Thac. 1, 8.
[95] Vol. i. 363, 364.
[96] Athenaeus, p. 360.
[97] Diod. 5, 58.
[98] Boeckh. C. I. G. 2526.
[99] Hefter, "Goetterdienste auf Rhodos," 3, 18; Welcker, "Mythologie,"
1, 145; Brandis, "Munzwesen," s. 587.
[100] Schol. Pind. "Pyth." 4, 88; Pausan. 3, 1, 7, 8; Steph. Byz.
[Greek: Membliaros].
[101] Boeckh. C. I. G. 2448.
[102] Herod. 4, 147; Steph. Byz. [Greek: Melos].
[103] Steph. Byz. [Greek: Oliaros].
[104] Strabo, pp. 346, 457, 472; Diod. 5, 47.
[105] Vol. i. 378; Herod. 2, 51; Conze, "Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres,"
_e.g._ s. 91.
[106] Strabo, p. 473; Steph. Byz. [Greek: Imbros]; vol. i. 378.
[107] Herod. 2, 44; 6, 47.
[108] Herod. 1, 105; Pausan. 1, 14, 7; 3, 23, 1.
[109] Pausan. 10, 11, 5; Boeckh, "Metrologie," s. 45.
[110] Pausan. 1, 2, 5; 1, 14, 6, 7.
[111] Strabo, p. 377; Pausan. 1, 32, 5.
[112] [Greek: ATHENAION s' g'], 1877, and below, chap. xi.
[113] Brandis, "Hermes," 2, 275 ff. I cannot agree in all points with
the deductions of this extremely acute inquiry.
[114] "Il." 14, 321; 18, 593; "Odyss." 19, 178; 11, 568.
[115] "Odyss." 11, 523.
[116] Diod. 4, 60.
[117] Serv. ad "AEneid." 6, 30.
[118] Hesych. [Greek: ep' Eurugun agon]; Plut. "Thes." c. 15; Diod. 4,
65.
[119] Apollodor. 1, 9, 26; Suidas, [Greek: Sardonios gelos].
[120] Herod. 7, 110.
[121] Diod. 4, 76-78; Schol. Callim. "Hymn. in Jovem," 8.
[122] Istri frag. 47, ed. Mueller.
[123] Istri frag. 33, ed. Mueller.
[124] Muellenhoff, "Deutsche Alterthumskunde," i. 222.
[125] Plato, "Minos," pp. 262, 266, 319, 321; "De. Legg," _init._;
Aristot. "Pol." 2, 8, 1, 2; 7, 9, 2.
[126] Herod. 1, 171; 3, 122; 7, 169-171.
[127] Herod. 1, 4.
[128] Herod. 3, 122.
[129] Strabo, p. 476; Steph. Byz. [Greek: Itanos].
[130] Pausan. 3, 21, 6.
[131] Aristotle, in Steph. Byz. [Greek: Kythera].
[132] Above, p. 63.
[133] Strabo, p. 479.
[134] Below, chap. 11.
[135] Thuc. 1, 8.
[136] Herod. 7, 171.
[137] Herod. 2, 44, 145.
[138] Herod. 4, 147.
[139] Thuc. 5, 112.
[140] Herod. 5, 89; "Il." 13, 451; "Odyss." 19, 178.
[141] Euseb. "Chron." 2, p. 34 _seqq._ ed. Schoene. Even in Diodorus, 4,
60, we find two Minoses, an older and a younger.
[142] Lenormant, "Antiq. de la Troade," p. 32.
[143] Genesis x. 2-4: 1 Chron. i. 5-7.
[144] Kiepert, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1859.
[145] Ezek. xxvii. 7.
[146] Thuc. vi. 2.
[147] Diod. v. 12.
[148] Ptolem. 4, 3, 47.
[149] _Ai benim_; Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 355, 359, 362.
[150] Heracl. Pont. frag. 29, ed. Mueller; Gesen. "Monum." p. 293;
Olshausen, "Rh. Mus." 1852, S. 328.
[151] Thuc. 6, 2.
[152] Diod. 4, 83.
[153] "AEn." 5, 760.
[154] Diod. 4, 83; Strabo, p. 272; Athenaeus, p. 374; Aelian, "Hist. An."
4, 2; 10, 50.
[155] Diod. 4, 23.
[156] Herod. 5, 43.
[157] Steph. Byz. [Greek: Solous]. Sapphon. frag. 6, ed. Bergk; it is
possible that Panormus on Crete may be meant.
[158] Thuc. 6, 2.
[159] Diod. 5, 35.
[160] Diod. 4, 24, 29, 30; 5, 15; Arist. "De mirab. ausc." c. 104;
Pausan. 10, 17, 2.
[161] Movers ("Phoeniz." 1, 536) assumes that Iolaus may be identical
with Esmun (I. 377).
[162] Sallust, "Jugurtha," 19, 1.
[163] Movers, _loc. cit._ s. 144.
[164] "De mirab. ausc." c. 146.
[165] "Hist. nat." 16, 79.
[166] Arkal or Archal may mean "fire of the All," "light of the All."
[167] Etym. Magn. [Greek: Gadeira].
[168] Diod. 5, 19, 20.
[169] On the meaning given in Avienus ("Ora marit") of Abila as "high
mountain," and Calpa as "big-bellied jar," cf. Muellenhoff, "Deutsche
Alterthumsk," 1, 83.
[170] Strabo, pp. 169-172. Justin (44, 5) represents the Tyrians as
founding Gades in consequence of a dream. In regard to the name cf.
Avien. "Ora marit," 267-270.
[171] Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 622. Strabo (p. 48) puts the first
settlements of the Phenicians in the midst of the Libyan coast and at
Gades just after the Trojan war, Velleius (1, 2, 6, in combination with
1, 8, 4), in the year 1100 B.C. Cf. Movers, _loc. cit._ S. 148, note 90.
The Greeks called both land and river Tartessus. The pillars of the
Tyrian god "Archaleus," are with them the pillars of their "Heracles,"
which he sets up as marks of his campaigns. Here, opposite the mouth of
the Tartessus, they place the island Erythea, _i.e._ the red island on
which the giant Geryon, _i.e._ "the roarer," guards the red oxen of the
sun: Erythea is one of the islands near Cadiz; Muellenhoff, Deutsche
"Alterthumsk:" 1, 134 ff.
[172] Sall. "Jugurtha," c. 19.
[173] Ezek. xxvii. 12, 25.
[174] In Strabo, p. 148; Muellenhoff, _loc. cit._ 1, 81.
[175] Herod. 4, 152.
[176] "De mirab. ausc." c. 147.
[177] In Strabo, p. 148.
[178] Aristoph. "Ranae," 475.
[179] Diod. 5, 35; Strabo, p. 144 _seqq._
[180] Scylax, "Peripl." c. 111.