* A fragment of a popular tale preserved in the British

Museum, and mentioned by Birch, seems to show us Astartê in

her character of war-goddess, and the sword of Astartê is

mentioned by Chabas. A bas-relief at Edfû represents her

standing upright in her chariot, drawn by horses, and

trampling her enemies underfoot: she is there identified

with Sokhît the warlike, destroyer of men.

** This conception of the Syrian goddesses had already

become firmly established at the period with which we are

dealing, for an Egyptian magical formula defines Anîti and

Astartê as “the great goddesses who conceiving do not bring

forth young, for the Horuses have sealed them and Sit hath

established them.”

*** The Baal of Lebanon is mentioned in an archaic

Phoenician inscription, and the name “Holy Cape” (_Rosh-

Qodshu_), borne in the time of Thûtmosis III. either by

Haifa or by a neighbouring town, proves that Carmel was held

sacred as far back as the Egyptian epoch. Baal-Hermon has

already been mentioned.

**** The source of the Jordan, near Baniâs, was the seat of

a Baal whom the Greeks identified with Pan. This was

probably the Baal-Gad who often lent his name to the

neighbouring town of Baal-Hermon: many of the rivers of

Phoenicia were called after the divinities worshipped in the

nearest city, e.g. the Adonis, the Bêlos, the Asclepios, the

Damûras.

They required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them

at the high places,* but they were also pleased--and especially the

goddesses--to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes

bare and branchless (_ashêrah_), long continued to be living emblems

of the local Astartês among the peoples of Southern Syria. Side by side

with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the

temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn

into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric

origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the

house of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of

his intelligence and vital force.

* These are the “high places” (bamôth) so frequently

referred to by the Hebrew prophets, and which we find in the

country of Moab, according to the Mesha inscription, and in

the place-name Bamoth-Baal; many of them seem to have served

for Canaanitish places of worship before they were resorted

to by the children of Israel.

The worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more

bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. The

Baalim thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common

blood such as generally contented their brethren in Chaldæa or Egypt:

they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. Among

several of the Syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the

firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted,

either by a money payment or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.**

* This fact is proved, in so far as the Hebrew people is

concerned, by the texts of the Pentateuch and of the

prophets; amongst the Moabites also it was his eldest son

whom King Mosha took to offer to his god. We find the same

custom among other Syrian races: Philo of Byblos tells us,

in fact, that El-Kronos, god of Byblos, sacrificed his

firstborn son and set the example of this kind of offering.

** Redemption by a payment in money was the case among the

Hebrews, as also the substitution of an animal in the place

of a child; as to redemption by circumcision, cf. the story

of Moses and Zipporah, where the mother saves her son from

Jahveh by circumcising him. Circumcision was practised among

the Syrians of Palestine in the time of Herodotus.

At important junctures, however, this pretence of bloodshed would fail

to appease them, and the death of the child alone availed. Indeed, in

times of national danger, the king and nobles would furnish, not merely

a single victim, but as many as the priests chose to demand.* While they

were being burnt alive on the knees of the statue, or before the sacred

emblem, their cries of pain were drowned by the piping of flutes or the

blare of trumpets, the parents standing near the altar, without a sign

of pity, and dressed as for a festival: the ruler of the world could

refuse nothing to prayers backed by so precious an offering, and by a

purpose so determined to move him. Such sacrifices were, however, the

exception, and the shedding of their own blood by his priests sufficed,

as a rule, for the daily wants of the god. Seizing their knives, they

would slash their arms and breasts with the view of compelling, by this

offering of their own persons, the good will of the Baalim.**

* If we may credit Tertullian, the custom of offering up

children as sacrifices lasted down to the proconsulate of

Tiberius.

** Cf., for the Hebraic epoch, the scene where the priests

of Baal, in a trial of power with Elijah before Ahab,

offered up sacrifices on the highest point of Carmel, and

finding that their offerings did not meet with the usual

success, “cut themselves... with knives and lancets till the

blood gushed out upon them.”

The Astartês of all degrees and kinds were hardly less cruel; they

imposed frequent flagellations, self-mutilation, and sometimes even

emasculation, on their devotees. Around the majority of these goddesses

was gathered an infamous troop of profligates (_kedeshîm_), “dogs of

love” (_kelabîm_), and courtesans (_kedeshôt_). The temples bore little

resemblance to those of the regions of the Lower Euphrates: nowhere do

we find traces of those _ziggurat_ which serve to produce the peculiar

jagged outline characteristic of Chaldæan cities. The Syrian edifices

were stone buildings, which included, in addition to the halls and

courts reserved for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood,

and storehouses for provisions: though not to be compared in size with

the sanctuaries of Thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds

in time of need, and were capable of resisting the attacks of a

victorious foe.* A numerous staff, consisting of priests, male and

female singers, porters, butchers, slaves, and artisans, was assigned

to each of these temples: here the god was accustomed to give forth his

oracles, either by the voice of his prophets, or by the movement of his

statues.** The greater number of the festivals celebrated in them

were closely connected with the pastoral and agricultural life of

the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close, the principal

operations of the year--the sowing of seed, the harvest, the vintage,

the shearing of the sheep. At Shechem, when the grapes were ripe, the

people flocked out of the town into the vineyards, returning to the

temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when the fruit had

been trodden in the winepress.***

* The story of Abimelech gives us some idea of what the

Canaanite temple of Baal-Berîth at Shechem was like.

** As to the regular organisation of Baal-worship, we

possess only documents of a comparatively late period.

*** It is probable that the vintage festival, celebrated at

Shiloh in the time of the Judges, dated back to a period of

Canaanite history prior to the Hebrew invasion, i.e. to the

time of the Egyptian supremacy.

In times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a

famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high

places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom

they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their

dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.*

*Cf., in the Hebraic period, the scene where the priests of

Baal go up to the top of Mount Carmel with the prophet

Elijah.

Almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the Jordan,

were monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious

reverence. Such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call

them, “menhirs,” reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of

a tableland; dolmens, formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two

roughly hewn supports, cromlechs, or, that is to say, stone circles, in

the centre of which might be found a beth-el. We know not by whom were

set up these monuments there, nor at what time: the fact that they

are in no way different from those which are to be met with in Western

Europe and the north of Africa has given rise to the theory that they

were the work of some one primeval race which wandered ceaselessly

over the ancient world. A few of them may have marked the tombs of

some forgotten personages, the discovery of human bones beneath them

confirming such a conjecture; while others seem to have been holy places

and altars from the beginning. The nations of Syria did not in all cases

recognise the original purpose of these monuments, but regarded them as

marking the seat of an ancient divinity, or the precise spot on which he

had at some time manifested himself. When the children of Israel caught

sight of them again on their return from Egypt, they at once recognised

in them the work of their patriarchs. The dolmen at Shechem was the

altar which Abraham had built to the Eternal after his arrival in the

country of Canaan. Isaac had raised that at Beersheba, on the very spot

where Jehovah had appeared in order to renew with him the covenant that

He had made with Abraham. One might almost reconstruct a map of the

wanderings of Jacob from the altars which he built at each of his

principal resting-places--at Gilead [Galeed], at Ephrata, at Bethel, and

at Shechem.* Each of such still existing objects probably had a history

of its own, connecting it inseparably with some far-off event in the

local annals.

* The heap of stones at Galeed, in Aramaic _Jegar-

Sahadutha_, “the heap of witness,” marked the spot where

Laban and Jacob were reconciled; the stele on the way to

Ephrata was the tomb of Rachel; the altar and stele at

Bethel marked the spot where God appeared unto Jacob.

[Illustration: 235.jpg TRANSJORDANIAN DOLMEN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

[Illustration: 238.jpg A CROMLECH IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF HESBAN, IN THE

COUNTRY OF MOAB]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

Most of them were objects of worship: they were anointed with oil, and

victims were slaughtered in their honour; the faithful even came at

times to spend the night and sleep near them, in order to obtain in

their dreams glimpses of the future.*

* The menhir of Bethel was the identical one whereon Jacob

rested his head on the night in which Jehovah appeared to

him in a dream. In Phoenicia there was a legend which told

how Usôos set up two stellæ to the elements of wind and fire,

and how he offered the blood of the animals he had killed in

the chase as a libation.

Men and beasts were supposed to be animated, during their lifetime, by

a breath or soul which ran in their veins along with their blood, and

served to move their limbs; the man, therefore, who drank blood or ate

bleeding flesh assimilated thereby the soul which inhered in it. After

death the fate of this soul was similar to that ascribed to the spirits

of the departed in Egypt and Chaldæa. The inhabitants of the ancient

world were always accustomed to regard the surviving element in man as

something restless and unhappy--a weak and pitiable double, doomed to

hopeless destruction if deprived of the succour of the living.

They imagined it as taking up its abode near the body wrapped in a

half-conscious lethargy; or else as dwelling with the other _rephaim_

(departed spirits) in some dismal and gloomy kingdom, hidden in the

bowels of the earth, like the region ruled by the Chaldæan Allât, its

doors gaping wide to engulf new arrivals, but allowing none to escape

who had once passed the threshold.*

* The expression _rephaim_ means “the feeble”; it was the

epithet applied by the Hebrews to a part of the primitive

races of Palestine.

There it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of

inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the Phoenician

idea, was Mout (Death),* the grandson of El; there the slave became the

equal of his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything

which could raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted

on their entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night

before them.

*Among the Hebrews his name was Maweth, who feeds the

departed like sheep, and himself feeds on them in hell. Some

writers have sought to identify this or some analogous god

with the lion represented on a stele of Piraeus which

threatens to devour the body of a dead man.

[Illustration: 240.jpg A CORNER OF THE PHOENICIAN NECKROPOLIS AT ADLUN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph in Lortet.

The corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in

linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition,

was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid

rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a

sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets,

jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household

utensils, together with meat and drink. The entrance was then closed,

and on the spot a cippus was erected--in popular estimation sometimes

held to represent the soul--or a monument was set up on a scale

proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had

belonged.* On certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at

the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world

by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of

the gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger

and thirst of the dead man.** The chapels and stellæ which marked the

exterior of these “eternal” *** houses have disappeared in the course

of the various wars by which Syria suffered so heavily: in almost all

cases, therefore, we are ignorant as to the sites of the various cities

of the dead in which the nobles and common people of the Canaanite and

Amorite towns were laid to rest.****

* The pillar or stele was used among both Hebrews and

Phoenicians to mark the graves of distinguished persons.

Among the Semites speaking Aramaic it was called _nephesh_,

especially when it took the form of a pyramid; the word

means “breath,” “soul,” and clearly shows the ideas

associated with the object.

** An altar was sometimes placed in front of the sarcophagus

to receive these offerings.

*** This expression, which is identical with that used by

the Egyptians of the same period, is found in one of the

Phoenician inscriptions at Malta.

**** The excavations carried out by M. Gautier in 1893-94,

on the little island of Bahr-el-Kadis, at one time believed

to have been the site of the town of Qodshu, have revealed

the existence of a number of tombs in the enclosure which

forms the central part of the tumulus: some of these may

possibly date from the Amorite epoch, but they are very poor

in remains, and contain no object which permits us to fix

the date with accuracy.

In Phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the

vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something

of their original arrangement. Sometimes the site chosen was on level

ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down

to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to

circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above

the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled

up. They were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly

arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the

objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed

with a slab of stone. Elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with

sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.*

* Such was the necropolis at Adlûn, the last rearrangement

of which took place during the Græco-Roman period, but

which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an

Egyptian necropolis of the XVIIIth or XIXth dynasty, that we

may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin

back to the time of the Pharaonic conquest.

In this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of façade similar

to that of the Egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at

external ornament. The vaults were on the ground-level, but were not

used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the

dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them

forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes

of burial. Except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom “the

mouth of the pit had devoured” dreaded the visits of the living, and

resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves

from them. Their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor

silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to

be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to

deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to

turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with

all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. These imprecations have not,

however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which

they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied

by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and

the close of the Roman supremacy. When the modern explorer chances to

discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker,

it is hardly ever the case that the bodies whose remains are unearthed

prove to be those of the original proprietors.

[Illustration: 242.jpg VALLEY OF THE TOMB OF THE KINGS]

[Illustration: 242-text.jpg]

The gods and legends of Chaldæa had penetrated to the countries of

Amauru and Canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and

their system of writing: the stories of Adapa’s struggles against the

south-west wind, or of the incidents which forced Irishkigal, queen of

the dead, to wed Nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts

of Syrian princes. Chaldæan theology, therefore, must have exercised

influence on individual Syrians and on their belief; but although we

are forced to allow the existence of such influence, we cannot define

precisely the effects produced by it. Only on the coast and in the

Phoenician cities do the local religions seem to have become formulated

at a fairly early date, and crystallised under pressure of this

influence into cosmogonie theories. The Baalim and Astartês reigned

there as on the banks of the Jordan or Orontes, and in each town

Baal was “the most high,” master of heaven and eternity, creator of

everything which exists, though the character of his creating acts was

variously defined according to time and place. Some regarded him as the

personification of Justice, Sydyk, who established the universe with the

help of eight indefatigable Cabiri. Others held the whole world to be

the work of a divine family, whose successive generations gave birth

to the various elements. The storm-wind, Colpias, wedded to Chaos, had

begotten two mortals, Ulom (Time) and Kadmôn (the First-Born), and these

in their turn engendered Qên and Qênath, who dwelt in Phoenicia: then

came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the Sun, imploring

him, as Lord of the Heavens (_Baalsamîn_), to put an end to their woes.

At Tyre it was thought that Chaos existed at the beginning, but chaos

of a dark and troubled nature, over which a Breath (_rûakh_) floated

without affecting it; “and this Chaos had no ending, and it was thus for

centuries and centuries.--Then the Breath became enamoured of its own

principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this change was

called Desire:--now Desire was the principle which created all things,

and the Breath knew not its own creation.--The Breath and Chaos,

therefore, became united, and Mot the Clay was born, and from this clay

sprang all the seed of creation, and Mot was the father of all things;

now Mot was like an egg in shape.--And the Sun, the Moon, the stars,

the great planets, shone forth.* There were living beings devoid of

intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings,

who were called _Zophesamîn_, or ‘watchers of the heavens.’Now the

thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent

beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began

to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea.”

* Mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water,

is probably a Phoenician form of a word which means _water_

in the Semitic languages. Cf. the Egyptian theory, according

to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have

given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by

Khnûmû into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced

the heavens and the earth.

A scholar of the Roman epoch, Philo of Byblos, using as a basis some

old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been

classified by Sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed

these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how

the world was brought out of Chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn

of civilization in Phoenicia and the legendary period in its history.

No doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in

accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved

their substance more or less faithfully. Beneath the veneer of

abstraction with which the Greek tongue and mind have overlaid the

fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas

which is to be met with in most Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian

or Babylonian. At first we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating

in eternal waters, the primordial Nû or Apsû; then the slime which

precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the

mud of the Nile under the hand? of Khnûmû; then the hatching forth of

living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures,

such as the Lakhmû, the Anshar, and the Illinu of Chaldæan speculation;

finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings.

[Illustration: 246.jpg]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet

des Médailles_.

The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean,

with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which

differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it

presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it

as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring

tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths,

and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. No sooner

had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole

family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to

civilized order. It was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring

race should trace its descent from the winds.

In Phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough

to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt

of gardens. Mount Lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it

almost entirely from Coele-Syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of

the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky

shore of the sea. At frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles

from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front:

these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still

smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its

own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history.

To the north were the Zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich,

brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours,

or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might. Arvad,* which was

used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together

on an island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand

yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the

limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five

stories. An Astartê reigned there, as also a sea-Baal, half man, half

fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.**

* The name Arvad was identified in the Egyptian inscriptions

by Birch, who, with Hincks, at first saw in the name a

reference to the peoples of Ararat; Birch’s identification,

is now accepted by all Egyptologists. The name is written

Aruada or Arada in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

** The Arvad Astartê had been identified by the Egyptians

with their goddess Bastît. The sea-Baal, who has been

connected by some with Dagon of Askalon, is represented on

the earliest Arvadian coins. He has a fish-like tail, the

body and bearded head of a man, with an Assyrian headdress;

on his breast we sometimes find a circular opening which

seems to show the entrails.

The whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost

ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. The

courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of

any kind. This bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of

sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset

of hostile fleets and the surges of the Mediterranean.*

* The antiquity of the wall of Arvad, recognised by

travellers of the last century, is now universally admitted

by all archæologists.

[Illustration: 248.jpg]

There was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the

inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored

in cisterns--still in use among their descendants. In the event of

prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in

time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up

in mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which

was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring;

the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell,

and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt

water.*

* Renan tells us that “M. Gaillardot, when crossing from the

island to the mainland, noticed a spring of sweet water

bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.... Thomson and

Walpole noticed the same spring or similar springs a little

to the north of Tortosa.”

[Illustration: 249.jpg Page Image]

The harbour opened to the east, facing the mainland: it was divided

into two basins by a stone jetty, and was doubtless insufficient for

the sea-traffic, but this was the less felt inasmuch as there was a safe

anchorage outside it--the best, perhaps, to be found in these waters.

Opposite to Arvad, on an almost continuous line of coast some ten or

twelve miles in length, towns and villages occurred at short intervals,

such as Marath, Antarados, Enhydra, and Karnê, into which the surplus

population of the island overflowed. Karnê possessed a harbour,

and would have been a dangerous neighbour to the Arvadians had they

themselves not occupied and carefully fortified it.*

* Marath, now Amrît, possesses some ancient ruins which have

been described by Renan. Antarados, which prior to the

Græco-Roman era was a place of no importance, occupies the

site of Tortosa. Enhydra is not known, and Karnê has been

replaced by Karnûn to the north of Tortosa. None of the

“neighbours of Arados” are mentioned by name in the Assyrian

texts; but W. Max Müller has demonstrated that the Egyptian

form _Aratût_ or _Aratiût_ corresponds with a Semitic plural

_Arvadôt_, and consequently refers not only to Arad itself,

but also to the fortified cities and towns which formed its

continental suburbs.

The cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the

slope of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain

celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: Lebanon,

with its wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the

east the mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a

pass through which ran the road which joined the great military highway

not far from Qodshu. The influence of Arvad penetrated by means of this

pass into the valley of the Orontes, and is believed to have gradually

extended as far as Hamath itself--in other words, over the whole of

Zahi. For the most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast

between G-abala and the Nahr el-Kebîr; Simyra at one time acknowledged

its suzerainty, at another became a self-supporting and independent

state, strong enough to compel the respect of its neighbours.* Beyond

the Orontes, the coast curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a

group of wind-swept hills ending in a promontory called Phaniel,** the

reputed scene of a divine manifestation, marked the extreme limit of

Arabian influence to the north, if, indeed, it ever reached so far.

* Simyra is the modern Surnrah, near the Nahr el-Kebîr.

** The name has only come down to us under its Greek form,

but its original form, Phaniel or Penûel, is easily arrived

at from the analogous name used in Canaan to indicate

localities where there had been a theophany. Renan questions

whether Phaniel ought not to be taken in the same sense as

the Pnê-Baal of the Carthaginian inscriptions, and applied

to a goddess to whom the promontory had been dedicated; he

also suggests that the modern name _Cap Madonne_ may be a

kind of echo of the title _Rabbath_ borne by this goddess

from the earliest times.

Half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, Arka,* Siani,** Mahallat,

Kaiz, Maîza, and Botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland

on the bend of some minor stream. Botrys,**** the last of the six,

barred the roads which cross the Phaniel headland, and commanded the

entrance to the holy ground where Byblos and Berytus celebrated each

year the amorous mysteries of Adonis.

* Arka is perhaps referred to in the tablets of Tel el-

Amarna under the form Irkata or Irkat; it also appears in

the Bible (Gen. x. 17) and in the Assyrian texts. It is the

Cassarea of classical geographers, which has now resumed its

old Phoenician name of Tell-Arka.

** Sianu or Siani is mentioned in the Assyrian texts and in

the Bible; Strabo knew it under the name of Sinna, and a

village near Arka was called Sin or Syn as late as the XVth

century.

*** According to the Assyrian inscriptions, these were the

names of the three towns which formed the Tripolis of

Græco-Roman times.

**** Botrys is the hellenized form of the name Bozruna or

Bozrun, which appears on the tablets of Tel el-Amarna; the

modern name, Butrun or Batrun, preserves the final letter

which the Greeks had dropped.

Gublu, or--as the Greeks named it--Byblos,* prided itself on being the

most ancient city in the world. The god El had founded it at the dawning

of time, on the flank of a hill which is visible from some distance

out at sea. A small bay, now filled up, made it an important shipping

centre. The temple stood on the top of the hill, a few fragments of its

walls still serving to mark the site; it was, perhaps, identical with

that of which we find the plan engraved on certain imperial coins.**

* _Gublu_ or _Gubli_ is the pronunciation indicated for this

name in the Tel el-Amarna tablets; the Egyptians transcribed

it _Kupuna_ or _Kupna_ by substituting _n_ for _l_. The

Greek name Byblos was obtained from Gublu by substituting a

_b_ for the _g_.

** Renan carried out excavations in the hill of Kassubah

which brought to light some remains of a Græco-Roman temple:

he puts forward, subject to correction, the hypothesis which

I have adopted above.

Two flights of steps led up to it from the lower quarters of the town,

one of which gave access to a chapel in the Greek style, surmounted by

a triangular pediment, and dating, at the earliest, from the time of the

Seleucides; the other terminated in a long colonnade, belonging to the

same period, added as a new façade to an earlier building, apparently in

order to bring it abreast of more modern requirements.

[Illustration: 252.jpg]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet

des Médailles_.

The sanctuary which stands hidden behind this incongruous veneer is, as

represented on the coins, in a very archaic style, and is by no means

wanting in originality or dignity. It consists of a vast rectangular

court surrounded by cloisters. At the point where lines drawn from the

centres of the two doors seem to cross one another stands a conical

stone mounted on a cube of masonry, which is the beth-el animated by

the spirit of the god: an open-work balustrade surrounds and protects it

from the touch of the profane. The building was perhaps not earlier

than the Assyrian or Persian era, but in its general plan it evidently

reproduced the arrangements of some former edifice.*

* The author of the _De Deâ Syrâ_ classed the temple of

Byblos among the Phoenician temples of the old order, which

were almost as ancient as the temples of Egypt, and it is

probable that from the Egyptian epoch onwards the plan of

this temple must have been that shown on the coins; the

cloister arcades ought, however, to be represented by

pillars or by columns supporting architraves, and the fact

of their presence leads me to the conclusion that the temple

did not exist in the form known to us at a date earlier than

the last Assyrian period.

At an early time El was spoken of as the first king of G-ablu in the

same manner as each one of his Egyptian fellow-gods had been in their

several nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable

prelude to the beginning of human history. Grandson of Eliûn who had

brought Chaos into order, son of Heaven and Earth, he dispossessed,

vanquished, and mutilated his father, and conquered the most distant

regions one after another--the countries beyond the Euphrates, Libya,

Asia Minor and Greece: one year, when the plague was ravaging his

empire, he burnt his own son on the altar as an expiatory victim, and

from that time forward the priests took advantage of his example

to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of public danger or

calamity.

[Illustration: 253.jpg]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet

des Médailles_.

He was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut

in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from

his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. He was the incarnation of

time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer

sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the

fields. An Astartê reigned with him over Byblos--Baalat-Gublu, his own

sister; like him, the child of Earth and Heaven. In one of her aspects

she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness

and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was

represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hâthor; but

in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in

whom the Greeks recognised the popular concept of Aphroditê. Tradition

tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the

youthful god known by the title of _Adoni_, or “My Lord.” We scarce know

what to make of the origin of Adonis, and of the legends which treat him

as a hero--the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of

a certain King Kinyras and his own daughter Myrrha is a comparatively

recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness

of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put

to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar. Baalat-Gublu wept over her

lover’s body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and

Adonis, ransomed by her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less

passionate than it had been before the catastrophe. This is nothing else

than the Chaldæan legend of Ishtar and Dûmûzi presented in a form more

fully symbolical of the yearly marriage of Earth and Heaven. Like the

Lady of Byblos at her master’s approach, Earth is thrilled by the first

breath of spring, and abandons herself without shame to the caresses of

Heaven: she welcomes him to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours

forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. Them comes summer and

kills the spring: Earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself

of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy

numbness of winter have passed away. Each year the cycle of the seasons

brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of

the world; each year Baalat falls in love with her Adonis and loses him,

only to bring him back to life and lose him again in the coming year.

The whole neighbourhood of Byblos, and that part of Mount Lebanon in

which it lies, were steeped in memories of this legend from the very

earliest times. We know the precise spot where the goddess first caught

sight of her lover, where she unveiled herself before him, and where at

the last she buried his mutilated body, and chanted her lament for the

dead. A river which flows southward not far off was called the Adonis,

and the valley watered by it was supposed to have been the scene of this

tragic idyll. The Adonis rises near Aphaka,* at the base of a narrow

amphitheatre, issuing from the entrance of an irregular grotto, the

natural shape of which had, at some remote period, been altered by the

hand of man; in three cascades it bounds into a sort of circular basin,

where it gathers to itself the waters of the neighbouring springs, then

it dashes onwards under the single arch of a Roman bridge, and descends

in a series of waterfalls to the level of the valley below.

* Aphaka means “spring” in Syriac. The site of the temple and

town of Aphaka, where a temple of Aphroditê and Adonis still

stood in the time of the Emperor Julian, had long been

identified either with Fakra, or with El-Yamuni. Seetzen was

the first to place it at El-Afka, and his proposed

identification has been amply confirmed by the researches of

Penan.

[Illustration: 256.jpg VALLEY OF THE ADONIS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

[Illustration: 256a.jpg THE AMPHITHEATRE OF APHAKA AND THE SOURCE OF THE

NAHH-IBRAHIM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

The temple rises opposite the source of the stream on an artificial

mound, a meteorite fallen from heaven having attracted the attention of

the faithful to the spot. The mountain falls abruptly away, its summit

presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action

of summer sun and winter frost. As the slopes approach the valley they

become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from

every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base

of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the

moist yet sunny Spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are

not too steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing mould. It would

be hard to find, even among the most picturesque spots of Europe, a

landscape in which wildness and beauty are more happily combined, or

where the mildness of the air and sparkling coolness of the streams

offer a more perfect setting for the ceremonies attending the worship of

Astartê.*

* The temple had been rebuilt during the Roman period, as

were nearly all the temples of this region, upon the site of

a more ancient structure; this was probably the edifice

which the author of _De Deâ Syrâ_ considered to be the

temple of Venus, built by Kinyras within a day’s journey of

Byblos in the Lebanon.

In the basin of the river and of the torrents by which it is fed, there

appears a succession of charming and romantic scenes--gaping chasms

with precipitous ochre-coloured walls; narrow fields laid out in

terraces on the slopes, or stretching in emerald strips along the

ruddy river-banks; orchards thick with almond and walnut trees; sacred

grottoes, into which the priestesses, seated at the corner of the roads,

endeavour to draw the pilgrims as they proceed on their way to make

their prayers to the goddess;* sanctuaries and mausolea of Adonis at

Yanukh, on the table-land of Mashnaka, and on the heights of Ghineh.

According to the common belief, the actual tomb of Adonis was to be

found at Byblos itself,** where the people were accustomed to assemble

twice a year to keep his festivals, which lasted for several days

together.

* Renan points out at Byblos the existence of one of these

caverns which gave shelter to the _kedeshoth_. Many of the

caves met with in the valley of the Nahr-Ibrahîm have

doubtless served for the same purpose, although their walls

contain no marks of the cult.

** Melito placed it, however, near Aphaka, and, indeed,

there must have been as many different traditions on the

subject as there were celebrated sanctuaries.

At the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open

the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring,

the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a

corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the

gardens of Adonis--terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and

barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown. These were set out at the door of

each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants

had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away.

For several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads

dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with

their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about

over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of

despair, and to endless appeals: “Ah, Lord! Ah, Lord! what is become of

thy beauty.” Once having found the image, they brought it to the feet

of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with

sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud,

placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their

feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais,

placed it solemnly in the tomb.*

* Theocritus has described in his fifth Idyll the laying out

and burial of Adonis as it was practised at Alexandria in

Egypt in the IIIrd century before our era.

The close and dreary summer passes away. With the first days of

September the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing

away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents

into the hollows of the valleys. The Adonis river begins to swell with

the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with

it. The wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast,

and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a

kind of crimson fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight

of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who

donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able

to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was

brought back from the shades into new life. Shouts of joy immediately

broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning

goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in

expressions of mad and amorous delight. Wives and virgins--all the

women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of

their hair--were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves

at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together,

the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred

treasury.**

* The same phenomenon occurs in spring. Maundrell saw it on

March 17, and Renan in the first days of February.

** A similar usage was found in later times in the countries

colonised by or subjected to the influence of the

Phoenicians, especially in Cyprus.

Berytus shared with Byblos the glory of having had El for its founder.*

The road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its

course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky

summits: before reaching Palai-Byblos, it passes over a headland by a

series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of “ladder” similar

to that which is encountered lower down, between Acre and the plains of

Tyre.

* The name Berytus was found by Hincks in the Egyptian texts

under the form. Bîrutu, Beîrutu; it occurs frequently in the

Tel el-Amarna tablets.

The river Lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of

this steep headland. It forms at the present time a torrent, fed by

the melting snows of Mount Sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. It was

better circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early

years of the Boman conquest, sailors from Arvad (Arados) were accustomed

to sail up it as far as one of the passes of the lower Lebanon, leading

into Cole-Syria. Berytus was installed at the base of a great headland

which stands out boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking

promontory to be met with in these regions from Carmel to the vicinity

of Arvad. The port is nothing but an open creek with a petty roadstead,

but it has the advantage of a good supply of fresh water, which pours

down from the numerous springs to which it is indebted for its name.*

According to ancient legends, it was given by El to one of his offspring

called Poseidon by the Greeks.

* The name Beyrut has been often derived from a Phconician

word signifying _cypress_, and which may have been applied

to the pine tree. The Phoenicians themselves derived it from

Bîr, “wells.”

Adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the

attempt, and the maritime Baal secured the permanence of his rule by

marrying one of his sisters--the Baalat-Beyrut who is represented as a

nymph on Græco-Roman coins.* The rule of the city extended as far

as the banks of the Tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron

fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at

him to prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. The

bar formed of shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were

regarded as evidences of this conflict.**

* The poet Nonnus has preserved a highly embellished account

of this rivalry, where Adonis is called Dionysos.

** The original name appears to have been Tamur, Tamyr, from

a word signifying “palm” in the Phoenician language. The

myth of the conflict between Poseidon and the god of the

river, a Baal-Demarous, has been explained by Renan, who

accepts the identification of the river-deity with Baal-

Thamar, already mentioned by Movers.

Beyond the southern bank of the river, Sidon sits enthroned as “the

firstborn of Canaan.” In spite of this ambitious title it was at first

nothing but a poor fishing village founded by Bel, the Agenor of the

Greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely

towards the south-west.* It grew from year to year, spreading out over

the plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief

cities of the country--a “mother” in Phoenicia.**

* Sidon is called “the firstborn of Canaan” in Genesis: the

name means a fishing-place, as the classical authors already

knew--“nam piscem Phonices _sidôn_ appellant.”

** In the coins of classic times it is called “Sidon, the

mother--_Om_--of Kambe, Hippo, Citium, and Tyre.”

The port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken

reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula,

continue parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow

passages in these reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island,

which is always above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke

of rocks, and furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the

continental city.* The necropolis on the mainland extends to the east

and north, and consists of an irregular series of excavations made in a

low line of limestone cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves

of the Mediterranean long prior to the beginning of history. These tombs

are crowded closely together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and

are separated from each other by such thin walls that one expects every

moment to see them give way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. Many

date back to a very early period, while all of them have been re-worked

and re-appropriated over and over again. The latest occupiers were

contemporaries of the Macedonian kings or the Roman Cæsars. Space was

limited and costly in this region of the dead: the Sidonians made the

best use they could of the tombs, burying in them again and again, as

the Egyptians were accustomed to do in their cemeteries at Thebes and

Memphis. The surrounding plain is watered by the “pleasant Bostrênos,”

and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be the most beautiful

in all Syria--at least after those of Damascus: their praises were sung

even in ancient days, and they had then earned for the city the epithet

of “the flowery Sidon.” **

* The only description of the port which we possess is that

in the romance of Olitophon and Leucippus by Achilles

Tatius.

** The Bostrênos, which is perhaps to be recognised under

the form Borinos in the Periplus of Scylax, is the modern

Nahr el-Awaly.

Here, also, an Astartê ruled over the destinies of the people, but a

chaste and immaculate Astartê, a self-restrained and warlike virgin,

sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid

morning star.* In addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped

a Baal-Sidon, and other divinities of milder character--an Astartê

Shem-Baal, wife of the supreme Baal, and Eshmun, a god of medicine--each

of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in

some neighbouring village in the mountain. Baal delighted in travel, and

was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of Phoenicia

in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. The

immodest Astartê, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion,

had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people,

but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her

namesake at Byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately

coarse character by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. She possessed

in the suburbs her chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides,

where she was served by the usual crowd of _Ephébæ_ and sacred

courtesans. Some half-dozen towns or fortified villages, such as

Bitzîti,** the Lesser Sidon, and Sarepta, were scattered along the

shore, or on the lowest slopes of the Lebanon.

* Astartê is represented in the Bible as the goddess of the

Sidonians, and she is in fact the object of the invocations

addressed to the mistress Deity in the Sidonian

inscriptions, the patroness of the town. Kings and queens

were her priests and priestesses respectively.

** Bitzîti is not mentioned except in the Assyrian texts,

and has been identified with the modern region Ait ez-Zeîtûn

to the south-east of Sidon. It is very probably the Elaia of

Philo of Byblos, the Biais of Dionysios Periegetes, which

Renan is inclined to identify with Heldua, Khan-Khaldi, by

substituting Eldis as a correction.

Sidonian territory reached its limit at the Cape of Sarepta, where the

high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins

into which Phoenicia is divided. Passing beyond this cape, we come first

upon a Tyrian outpost, the Town of Birds;* then upon the village of

Nazana** with its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain

hemmed in by low hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and

gardens in the suburbs of Autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of

boats moored at a short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs

and islands furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and

temples of Tyre, and a protection from its foes.

* The Phoenician name of Ornithônpolis is unknown to us: the

town is often mentioned by the geographers of classic times,

but with certain differences, some placing it to the north

and others to the south of Sarepta. It was near to the site

of Adlun, the Adnonum of the Latin itineraries, if it was

not actually the same place.

** Nazana was both the name of the place and the river, as

Kasimîyeh and Khan Kasimîyeh, near the same locality, are

to-day.

*** Autu was identified by Brugsch with Avatha, which is

probably El-Awwâtîn, on the hill facing Tyre. Max Müller,

who reads the word as Authu, Ozu, prefers the Uru or Ushu of

the Assyrian texts.

It was already an ancient town at the beginning of the Egyptian

conquest. As in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced

in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most

venerable in the world. After the period of the creating gods, there

followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three

generations of minor deities--heroes of light and flame--who had learned

how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants,

associated with the giant peaks of Kasios, Lebanon, Hermon, and Brathy;*

after which were born two male children--twins: Samem-rum, the lord of

the supernal heaven, and Usôos, the hunter. Human beings at this time

lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to

shameful vices.

* The identification of the peak of Brathy is uncertain. The

name has been associated with Tabor: since it exactly

recalls the name of the cypress and of Berytus, it would be

more prudent, perhaps, to look for the name in that of one

of the peaks of the Lebanon near the latter town.

[Illustration: 267.jpg THE AMBROSIAN ROCKS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet

des Médailles_.

Samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became

in later times the Tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts,

papyrus, or other reeds: Usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation

of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing

himself with their skins. A conflict at length broke out between the two

brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering

hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil.

Usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took

the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub

against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction,

and the forest was set on fire. Usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled

it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea,

bearing him, the first of his race, with it.

* The text simply states the material facts, the tempest and

the fire: the general movement of the narrative seems to

prove that the intervention of these elements is an episode

in the quarrel between the two brothers--that in which

Usôos is forced to fly from the region civilized by

Samemrum.

Landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to

fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. He poured

out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after

his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had

inaugurated.

[Illustration: 268.jpg]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet

des Médailles_.

The town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called

Tyre, the “Rock,” and the two rough stones which he had set up remained

for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its

inhabitants. It was asserted of old that the island had not always been

fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. Two peaks

looked down upon it--the “Ambrosian Rocks”--between which grew the olive

tree of Astartê, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger.

An eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk:

the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed

in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. Usôos, the Herakles,

destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build

boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and

disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and

as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, Tyre rooted itself fixedly

opposite the mainland. Coins of the Roman period represent the chief

elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes

the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelæ only. From

this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island;

Astartê herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to

the admiration of the faithful a fallen star--an aerolite which she had

brought back from one of her journeys.

[Illustration: 269.jpg TYRE AND ITS SUBURBS ON THE MAINLAND]

Baal was called the Melkarth. king of the city, and the Greeks after»

wards identified him with their Herakles. His worship was of a severe

and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his

priests, like those of the Egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore

garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused

permission to married women to approach the altars.*

* The worship of Melkarth at Gados (Cadiz) and the functions

of his priests are described by Silius Italicus: as Gades

was a Tyrian colony, it has been naturally assumed that the

main features of the religion of Tyre were reproduced there,

and Silius’s account of the Melkarth of Gades thus applies

to his namesake of the mother city.

Festivals, similar to those of Adonis at Byblos, were held in his honour

twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his

glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar

orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation

of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a

refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was

celebrated with great joy. His temple stood in a prominent place on the

largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. It served to

remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests

relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the

Phoenicians on the shores of the Mediterranean. The town had no supply

of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of Arvad to

provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore,

to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on

the hillsides of the mainland. The waters of the well of Eas el-Aîn

had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could

procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war

the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had

collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.**

* The festival commemorating his death by fire was

celebrated at Tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the

greater number of the Tyrian colonies.

** Abisharri (Abimilki), King of Tyre, confesses to the

Pharaoh Amenôthes III. that in case of a siege his town

would neither have water nor wood. Aqueducts and conduits of

water are spoken of by Menander as existing in the time of

Shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing

their construction to a very remote antiquity.

The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven

hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points

of its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader

channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have

a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a

lengthened siege.

* According to the writers who were contemporary with

Alexander, the strait was 4 stadia wide (nearly 1/2 mile),

or 500 paces (about 3/8 mile), at the period when the

Macedonians undertook the siege of the town; the author

followed by Pliny says 700 paces, possibly over--mile wide.

From the observations of Poulain de Bossay, Renan thinks the

space between the island and the mainland might be nearly a

mile in width, but we should perhaps do well to reduce this

higher figure and adopt one agreeing better with the

statements of Diodorus and Quintus Curtius.

Like the coast region opposite Arvad, the shore which faced Tyre, lying

between the mouth of the Litany and ras el-Aîn, was an actual suburb

of the city itself--with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its

cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. Here the inhabitants of

the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired

for refreshment during the heat of the summer. To the north the little

town of Mahalliba, on the southern bank of the Litâny, and almost hidden

from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the Bekaa,

and the high-road to Coele-Syria.* To the south, at Ras el-Aîn, Old Tyre

(Palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into Galilee by way of

the mountains.**

* Mahalliba is the present Khurbet-Mahallib.

** Palrotyrus has often been considered as a Tyre on the

mainland of greater antiquity than the town of the same name

on the island; it is now generally admitted that it was

merely an outpost, which is conjecturally placed by most

scholars in the neighbourhood of Ras el-Aîn.

Eastwards Autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to

protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was

built, facing the insular temple of Melkarth, protector of mariners,

a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the

mainland.* The latter divinity was probably the representative of the

legendary Samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while Usôos

had founded his on the ocean. He was the Baalsamîm of starry tunic, lord

of heaven and king of the sun.

* If the name has been preserved, as I believe it to be, in

that of El-Awwâtîn, the town must be that whose ruins we

find at the foot of Tell-Mashûk, and which are often

mistaken for those of Palastyrus. The temple on the summit

of the Tell was probably that of Heracles Astrochitôn

mentioned by Nonnus.

As was customary, a popular Astartê was associated with these deities of

high degree, and tradition asserted that Melkarth purchased her favour

by the gift of the first robe of Tyrian purple which was ever dyed.

Priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and

in several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained

the devotees of the goddess. Behind Autu the ground rises abruptly, and

along the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood,

are the remains of the most important of the Tyrian burying-places,

consisting of half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries,

where whole families lie together in their last sleep. In some spots the

chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger,

and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of

the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of Upper Egypt.

They present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. The

entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and

colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. At one

place only, near the modern village of Hanaweh, a few groups of figures

and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the

burying-place of some chief of very early times.

[Illustration: 273.jpg THE SCULPTURED ROCKS OF HANAWEH]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Lortet.

These figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild

ravine. They vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies

being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn,

at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the Asiatic

garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in

profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of

a certain skill. Whether they are to be regarded as the product of a

primitive Amorite art or of a school of Phoenician craftsmen, we are

unable to determine. In the time of their prosperity the Tyrians

certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. The wind-swept

but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of

the Lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable

industry--remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns,

pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields,

interspersed with oil and wine presses. The Phoenicians took naturally

to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as

to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the

Mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later

times.*

* Their taste for agriculture, and the comparative

perfection of their modes of culture, are proved by the

greatness of the remains still to be observed: “The

Phoenicians constructed a winepress, a trough, to last for

ever.” Their colonists at Carthage carried with them the same

clever methods, and the Romans borrowed many excellent

things in the way of agriculture from Carthaginian books,

especially from those of Mago.

Among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully

practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them

no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat

and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. From

Arvad to Tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central

parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying

breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and

shady woods. The whole region was independent and self-supporting, the

inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in

the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant

lands. To insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of

labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war.

The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and

from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria. Along almost the

entire eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of

defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity

by the additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebîr and Litany. Its

slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees

and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and

snow. Hunters’ or shepherds’ paths led here and there in tortuous courses

from one side of the mountain to the other. Near the middle of the

country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications

between the littoral and the plain of the interior. They branched off on

either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south

of Qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This

region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at

one time Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the

same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the

desert.

* Magara is mentioned in the _Anastasi Papyrus_, No. 1, and

Chabas has identified it with the plain of Macra, which

Strabo places in Syria, in the neighbourhood of Eloutheros.

** The name Lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns

of Seti I.

The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by

oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of

the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned

lions known to Asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course,

crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called Shaua,

which is probably the Sannîn of our times. While one of these roads,

running north along the lake of Yamuneh and through the gorge of Akura,

then proceeded along the Adonis* to Byblos, the other took a southern

direction, and followed the Nahr el-Kelb to the sea.

* This is the road pointed out by Renan as the easiest but

least known of those which cross the Lebanon; the remains of

an Assyrian inscription graven on the rocks near Aîn el-

Asafîr show that it was employed from a very early date, and

Renan thought that it was used by the armies which came from

the upper valley of the Orontes.

Towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of

the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for

the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote

date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to

the summit of the promontory. Commerce followed these short and direct

routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although

they offered access into the very heart of Phoenicia. Invaders would

encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending

itself readily to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the

foot of the Lebanon range, they would find themselves entrapped in a

region of slippery defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the

rock, and almost inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in

places that a handful of resolute men could have held them for a long

time against whole battalions. The enemy preferred to make for the two

natural breaches at the respective extremities of the line of defence,

and for the two insular cities which flanked the approaches to

them--Tyre in the case of those coming from Egypt, Arvad and Simyra

for assailants from the Euphrates. The Arvadians, bellicose by nature,

would offer strong resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves

to be conquered without a brave struggle with the enemy, however

powerful he might be.* When the disproportion of the forces which they

could muster against the enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting

an open conflict, their island-home offered them a refuge where they

would be safe from any attacks.

* Thûtmosis III. was obliged to enter on a campaign against

Arvad in the year XXIX., in the year XXX., and probably

twice in the following years. Under Amenôthes III. and IV.

we see that these people took part in all the intrigues

directed against Egypt; they were the allies of the Khati

against Ramses II. in the campaign of the year V. and later

on we find them involved in most of the wars against

Assyria.

Sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland

might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but

such submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest

occasion for regaining their liberty. Conquered again and again on

account of the smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged

by their reverses, and Phoenicia owed all its military history for a

long period to their prowess. The Tyrians were of a more accommodating

nature, and there is no evidence, at least during the early centuries of

their existence, of the display of those obstinate and blind transports

of bravery by which the Arvadians were carried away.*

* No campaign against Tyre is mentioned in any of the

Egyptian annals: the expedition of Thûtmosis III. against

Senzauru was directed against a town of Coele-Syria

mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets with the orthography

Zinzar, the Sizara-Larissa of Græco-Roman times, the Shaizar

of the Arab Chronicles. On the contrary, the Tel el-Amarna

tablets contain several passages which manifest the fidelity

of Tyre and its governors to the King of Egypt.

Their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question,

which they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial

interests. As soon as they had learned from a short experience that

a certain Pharaoh had at his disposal armies against which they could

offer no serious opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and

thought only of obtaining the greatest profit from the vassalage to

which they were condemned. The obligation to pay tribute did not appear

to them so much in the light of a burthen or a sacrifice, as a means

of purchasing the right to go to and fro freely in Egypt, or in the

countries subject to its influence. The commerce acquired by these

privileges recouped them more than a hundredfold for all that their

overlord demanded from them. The other cities of the coast--Sidon,

Berytus, Byblos--usually followed the example of Tyre, whether from

mercenary motives, or from their naturally pacific disposition, or from

a sense of their impotence; and the same intelligent resignation with

which, as we know, they accepted the supremacy of the great Egyptian

empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier centuries in their submission

to the Babylonians. Their records show that they did not accept this

state of things merely through cowardice or indolence, for they are

represented as ready to rebel and shake off the yoke of their foreign

master when they found it incompatible with their practical interests.

But their resort to war was exceptional; they generally preferred to

submit to the powers that be, and to accept from them as if on lease the

strip of coast-line at the base of the Lebanon, which served as a site

for their warehouses and dockyards. Thus they did not find the yoke of

the stranger irksome--the sea opening up to them a realm of freedom

and independence which compensated them for the limitations of both

territory and liberty imposed upon them at home.

The epoch which was marked by their first venture on the Mediterranean,

and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. The gods

had taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had

taken to the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.*

They were not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or

inspired thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. They had at home

sufficient corn and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and

even to administer to a life of luxury. And if they lacked cattle, the

abundance of fish within their reach compensated for the absence of

flesh-meat.

* According to one of the cosmogonies of Sanchoniathon,

Khusôr, who has been identified with Hephsestos, was the

inventor of the fishing-boat, and was the first among men

and gods who taught navigation. According to another legend,

Melkarth showed the Tyrians how to make a raft from the

branches of a fig tree, while the construction of the first

ships is elsewhere ascribed to the _Cabiri_.

Nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast

which induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were

badly protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the

wind set in from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource

against the wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. It was the

nature of the country itself which contributed more than anything else

to make them mariners. The precipitous mountain masses which separate

one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult,

while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. Commerce

endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the

devious ways of this highwayman’s region, and it accomplished its

purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing

had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast.

The continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases of the limestone

cliffs, and the superincumbent masses tumbling down into the sea formed

lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed

the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke

continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach

them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these

people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless

amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad

successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other

towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, from the VIth

Egyptian dynasty onwards, when the Pharaohs no longer hesitated to

embark troops at the mouth of the Nile for speedy transmission to the

provinces of Southern Syria, and it was by this coasting route that the

tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of

Egypt. The trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those

mysterious Kefâtiu of whom the name only was known in later times. When

the Phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the Lebanon, they

had probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow

the beaten tracks which they had already made. We have every reason to

believe that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in

the country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization

readily to the exigencies of a maritime career.*

* Connexion between Phoenicia and Greece was fully

established at the outbreak of the Egyptian wars, and we may

safely assume their existence in the centuries immediately

preceding the second millennium before our era.

In their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign

element, both of slaves and freemen, but the Egyptians confounded them

all under one name, Kefâtiu, whether they were Cypriotes, Asiatics, or

Europeans, or belonged to the true Tyrian and Sidonian race. The

costume of the Kafîti was similar to that worn by the people of the

interior--the loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in

tiring the hair they adopted certain refinements, specially a series

of curls which the men arranged in the form of an aigrette above

their foreheads. This motley collection of races was ruled over by an

oligarchy of merchants and shipowners, whose functions were hereditary,

and who usually paid homage to a single king, the representative of the

tutelary god, and absolute master of the city.*

* Under the Egyptian supremacy, the local princes did not

assume the royal title in the despatches which they

addressed to the kings of Egypt, but styled themselves

governors of their cities.

The industries pursued in Phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of

other parts of Syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at Tyre and

Sidon could not be distinguished from those of Hamath or of Carchemish.

[Illustration 282.jpg ONE OF THE KAFÎTI FROM THE TOMB OF RAKHMIRÎ]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the coloured sketches by Prisse

d’Avennes in the Natural Hist. Museum.

All manufactures bore the impress of Babylonian influence, and their

implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same

as those in use among the Chaldæans. The products of the country

were, however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed

from Phoenicia every year bound for all parts of the known world, and

additional supplies had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring

peoples, who thus became used to pour into Tyre and Sidon the surplus

of their manufactures, or of the natural wealth of their country. The

Phoenicians were also accustomed to send caravans into regions which

they could not reach in their caracks, and to establish trading stations

at the fords of rivers, or in the passes over mountain ranges. We

know of the existence of such emporia at Laish near the sources of the

Jordan, at Thapsacus, and at Nisibis, and they must have served the

purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of the world. The

settlements of the Phoenicians always assumed the character of colonies,

and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the colonists

never lost the manners and customs of their native country. They

collected together into their _okels_ or storehouses such wares and

commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and,

transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all

parts of the world.

Not only were they acquainted with every part of the Mediterranean, but

they had even made voyages beyond its limits. In the absence, however,

of any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they

followed must be a subject of conjecture. They were accustomed to relate

that the gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation,

had shown them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their

example to make voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. El of

Byblos was the first to leave Syria; he conquered Greece and Egypt,

Sicily and Libya, civilizing their inhabitants, and laying the

foundation of cities everywhere. The Sidonian Astartê, with her head

surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the next to begin her wanderings

over the inhabited earth. Melkarth completed the task of the gods by

discovering and subjugating those countries which had escaped the notice

of his predecessors. Hundreds of local traditions, to be found on all

the shores of the Mediterranean down to Roman times, bore witness to the

pervasive influence of the old Canaanite colonisation. At Cyprus, for

instance, wo find traces of the cultus of Kinyras, King of Byblos and

father of Adonis; again, at Crete, it is the daughter of a Prince of

Sidon, Buropa, who is carried off by Zeus under the form of a bull; it

was Kadmos, sent forth to seek Buropa, who visited Cyprus, Rhodes, and

the Cyclades before building Thebes in Boeotia and dying in the forests

of Illyria. In short, wherever the Phoenicians had obtained a footing,

their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon the

mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous

thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious

speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing

vessels. They made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping

in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to

the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night

under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their

vessels up the beach until the morrow. They did not shrink when it was

necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their

course by the Pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long

distances out of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short

time voyages previously deemed long and costly.

* The Greeks for this reason called it Phonikê, the

Phoenician star; ancient writers refer to the use which the

Phoenicians made of the Pole-star to guide them in

navigation.

It is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as

pirates--indeed, they hardly knew themselves--and their peaceful or

warlike attitude towards vessels which they encountered on the seas,

or towards the people whose countries they frequented, was probably

determined by the circumstances of the moment.* If on arrival at a

port they felt themselves no match for the natives, the instinct of the

merchant prevailed, and that of the pirate was kept in the background.

They landed peaceably, gained the good will of the native chief and

his nobles by small presents, and spreading out their wares, contented

themselves, if they could do no better, with the usual advantage

obtained in an exchange of goods.

* The manner in which the Phoenicians plied their trade is

strikingly described in the _Odyssey_, in the part where

Eumaios relates how he was carried off by a Sidonian vessel

and sold as a slave: cf. the passage which mentions the

ravages of the Greeks on the coast of the Delta. Herodotus

recalls the rape of Io, daughter of Inachos, by the

Phoenicians, who carried her and her companions into Egypt;

on the other hand, during one of their Egyptian expeditions

they had taken two priestesses from Thebes, and had

transported one of them to Dodona, the other into Libya.

They were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had

exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety

how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer.

Their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords,

incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets,

necklaces, amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs

dyed purple or embroidered with gay colours. At times the natives, whose

cupidity was excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt

to gain possession of them either by craft or by violence. They would

kill the men who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during

the night. But more often it was the Phoenicians who took advantage of

the friendliness or the weakness of their hosts.

[Illustration: 286.jpg Page Image]

They would turn treacherously upon the unarmed crowd when absorbed in

the interest of buying and selling; robbing and killing the old men,

they would make prisoners of the young and strong, the women and

children, carrying them off to sell them in those markets where slaves

were known to fetch the highest price. This was a recognised trade, but

it exposed the Phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them

objects of an undying hatred. When on these distant expeditions

they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious

consequences. A mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the

bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their

cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of

repairing the damage, and, unable to obtain help in any of the places

they might visit, their prospects were of a desperate character. They

soon, therefore, learned the necessity of establishing cities of refuge

at various points in the countries with which they traded--stations

where they could go to refit and revictual their vessels, to fill up the

complement of their crews, to take in new freight, and, if necessary,

pass the winter or wait for fair weather before continuing their voyage.

For this purpose they chose by preference islands lying within easy

distance of the mainland, like their native cities of Tyre and Arvad,

but possessing a good harbour or roadstead. If an island were not

available, they selected a peninsula with a narrow isthmus, or a rock

standing at the extremity of a promontory, which a handful of men could

defend against any attack, and which could be seen from a considerable

distance by their pilots. Most of their stations thus happily situated

became at length important towns. They were frequented by the natives

from the interior, who allied themselves with the new-comers, and

furnished them not only with objects of trade, but with soldiers,

sailors, and recruits for their army; and such was the rapid spread of

these colonies, that before long the Mediterranean was surrounded by an

almost unbroken chain of Phoenician strongholds and trading stations.

[Illustration: 288.jpg AN EGYPTIAN TRADING VESSEL OF THE FIRST HALF OF

THE XVIIIth DYNASTY]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

All the towns of the mother country--Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, and

Sidon--possessed vessels engaged in cruising long before the Egyptian

conquest of Syria. We have no direct information from any existing

monument to show us what these vessels were like, but we are familiar

with the construction of the galleys which formed the fleets of the

Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty. The art of shipbuilding had made

considerable progress since the times of the Memphite kings. Prom the

period when Egypt aspired to become one of the great powers of the

world, she doubtless endeavoured to bring her naval force to the same

pitch of perfection as her land forces could boast of, and her fleets

probably consisted of the best vessels which the dockyards of that

day could turn out. Phoenician vessels of this period may therefore be

regarded with reason as constructed on lines similar to those of the

Egyptian ships, differing from them merely in the minor details of the

shape of the hull and manner of rigging. The hull continued to be built

long and narrow, rising at the stem and stern. The bow was terminated

by a sort of hook, to which, in time of peace, a bronze ornament was

attached, fashioned to represent the head of a divinity, gazelle, or

bull, while in time of war this was superseded by a metal cut-water made

fast to the hull by several turns of stout rope, the blade rising some

couple of yards above the level of the deck.* The poop was ornamented

with a projection firmly attached to the body of the vessel, but

curved inwards and terminated by an open lotus-flower. An upper deck,

surrounded by a wooden rail, was placed at the bow and stern to serve

as forecastle and quarterdecks respectively, and in order to protect

the vessel from the danger of heavy seas the ship was strengthened by

a structure to which we find nothing analogous in the shipbuilding of

classical times: an enormous cable attached to the gammonings of the

bow rose obliquely to a height of about a couple of yards above the

deck, and, passing over four small crutched masts, was made fast again

to the gammonings of the stern. The hull measured from the blade of the

cut-water to the stern-post some twenty to five and twenty yards, but

the lowest part of the hold did not exceed five feet in depth. There was

no cabin, and the ballast, arms, provisions, and spare-rigging occupied

the open hold.**

* To get a clear idea of the details of this structure, we

have only to compare the appearance of ships with and

without a cut-water in the scenes at Thebes, representing

the celebration of a festival at the return of the fleet.

** M. Glaser thinks that there were cabins for the crew

under the deck, and he recognises in the sixteen oblong

marks on the sides of the vessels at Deîr el-Bahari so many

dead-lights; as there could not have been space for so many

cabins, I had concluded that these were ports for oars to be

used in time of battle, but on further consideration I saw

that they represented the ends of the beams supporting the

deck.

The bulwarks were raised to a height of some two feet, and the thwarts

of the rowers ran up to them on both the port and starboard sides,

leaving an open space in the centre for the long-boat, bales of

merchandise, soldiers, slaves, and additional passengers.* A double set

of steering-oars and a single mast completed the equipment. The latter,

which rose to a height of some twenty-six feet, was placed amidships,

and was held in an upright position by stays. The masthead was

surmounted by two arrangements which answered respectively to the top

[“gabie”] and _calcet_ of the masts of a galley.** There were no shrouds

on each side from the masthead to the rail, but, in place of them, two

stays ran respectively to the bow and stern. The single square-sail was

extended between two yards some sixty to seventy feet long, and each

made of two pieces spliced together at the centre. The upper yard

was straight, while the lower curved upward at the ends. The yard was

hoisted and lowered by two halyards, which were made fast aft at the

feet of the steersmen. The yard was kept in its place by two lifts which

came down from the masthead, and were attached respectively about eight

feet from the end of each yard-arm. When the yard was hauled up it was

further supported by six auxiliary lifts, three being attached to each

yard-arm. The lower yard, made fast to the mast by a figure-of-eight

knot, was secured by sixteen lifts, which, like those of the upper yard,

worked through the “calcet.”

* One of the bas-reliefs exhibits a long-boat in the water

at the time the fleet was at anchor at Puanît. As we do not

find any vessel towing one after her, we naturally conclude

that the boat must have been stowed on board.

** The “gabie” was a species of top where a sailor was placed

on the look-out. The “calcet” is, properly speaking, a

square block of wood containing the sheaves on which the

halyards travelled. The Egyptian apparatus had no sheaves,

and answers to the “calcet” on the masts of a galley only in

its serving the same purpose.

The crew comprised thirty rowers, fifteen on each side, four top-men,

two steersmen, a pilot at the bow, who signalled to the men at the helm

the course to steer, a captain and a governor of the slaves, who formed,

together with ten soldiers, a total of some fifty men.* In time of

battle, as the rowers would be exposed to the missiles of the enemy,

the bulwarks were further heightened by a mantlet, behind which the oars

could be freely moved, while the bodies of the men were fully protected,

their heads alone being visible above it. The soldiers were stationed

as follows: two of them took their places on the forecastle, a third was

perched on the masthead in a sort of cage improvised on the bars forming

the top, while the remainder were posted on the deck and poop, from

which positions and while waiting for the order to board they could pour

a continuous volley of arrows on the archers and sailors of the enemy.**

* I have made this calculation from an examination of the

scenes in which ships are alternatively represented as at

anchor and under weigh. I know of vessels of smaller size,

and consequently with a smaller crew, but I know of none

larger or more fully manned.

** The details are taken from the only representation of a

naval battle which we possess up to this moment, viz. that

of which I shall have occasion to speak further on in

connection with the reign of Ramses III.

The first colony of which the Phoenicians made themselves masters was

that island of Cyprus whose low, lurid outline they could see on fine

summer evenings in the glow of the western sky. Some hundred and ten

miles in length and thirty-six in breadth, it is driven like a wedge

into the angle which Asia Minor makes with the Syrian coast: it throws

out to the north-east a narrow strip of land, somewhat like an extended

finger pointing to where the two coasts meet at the extremity of the

gulf of Issos. A limestone cliff, of almost uniform height throughout,

bounds, for half its length at least, the northern side of the island,

broken occasionally by short deep valleys, which open out into creeks

deeply embayed. A scattered population of fishermen exercised their

calling in this region, and small towns, of which we possess only the

Greek or Grecised names--Karpasia, Aphrodision, Kerynia, Lapethos--led

there a slumbering existence. Almost in the centre of the island two

volcanic peaks, Troodes and Olympos, face each other, and rise to

a height of nearly 7000 feet, the range of mountains to which they

belong--that of Aous--forming the framework of the island. The spurs of

this range fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out

either into stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into

great maritime flats fringed with brackish lagoons. The valley which

lies on the northern side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an

almost unbroken level. A scarcely perceptible watershed divides the

valley into two basins similar to those of Syria, the larger of the

two lying opposite to the Phoenician coast. The soil consists of black

mould, as rich as that of Egypt, and renewed yearly by the overflowing

of the Pediæos and its affluents. Thick forests occupied the interior,

promising inexhaustible resources to any naval power. Even under the

Koman emperors the Cypriotes boasted that they could build and fit out

a ship from the keel to the masthead without looking to resources beyond

those of their own island. The ash, pine, cypress, and oak flourished

on the sides of the range of Aous, while cedars grew there to a greater

height and girth than even on the Lebanon. Wheat, barley, olive trees,

vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the altar, medicinal plants

such as the poppy and the _ladanum_, henna for staining with a deep

orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and fingertips of the

women, all found here a congenial habitat; while a profusion everywhere

of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air with their

penetrating odours--spring violets, many-coloured anemones, the lily,

hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose--led the Greeks to bestow

upon the island the designation of “the balmy Cyprus.” Mines also

contributed their share to the riches of which the island could boast.

Iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and other precious

stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times the

neighbourhood of Tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the

Romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name “Cyprium,”

and the word passed from them into all the languages of Europe. It is

not easy to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the

island belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the Kefâtiu,

who frequented the Asiatic shores of the Mediterranean from a very

remote period. In the time of Egyptian supremacy they called their

country Asi, and this name inclines one to connect the people with the

Ægeans.* An examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs

of the island seems to confirm this opinion. These consist, for the most

part, of weapons and implements of stone--knives, hatchets, hammers, and

arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different

kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design--pitchers with

contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail variety,

provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles.

* “Asi,” “Asîi,” was at first sought for on the Asiatic

continent--at Is on the Euphrates, or in Palestine: the

discovery of the Canopic decree allows us to identify it

with Cyprus, and this has now been generally done. The

reading “Asebi” is still maintained by some.

[Illustration: 294.jpg Map of Cyprus]

The pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it

consists of incised geometrical designs. Copper and bronze, where we

find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed

in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making

daggers. There is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and

yet Cyprus had already at this time entered into relations with the

civilized nations of the continent.* According to Chaldæan tradition,

it was conquered about the year 3800 B.C. by Sargon of Agadê: without

insisting upon the reality of this conquest, which in any case must have

been ephemeral in its nature, there is reason to believe that the island

was subjected from an early period to the influence of the various

peoples which lived one after another on the slopes of the Lebanon.

Popular legend attributes to King Kinyras and to the Giblites [i.e. the

people of Byblos] the establishment of the first Phoenician colonies in

the southern region of the island--one of them being at Paphos, where

the worship of Adonis and Astartê continued to a very late date. The

natives preserved their own language and customs, had their own chiefs,

and maintained their national independence, while constrained to submit

at the same time to the presence of Phoenician colonists or merchants on

the coast, and in the neighbourhood of the mines in the mountains. The

trading centres of these settlers--Kition, Amathus, Solius, Golgos, and

Tamassos--were soon, however, converted into strongholds, which

ensured to Phonicia the monopoly of the immense wealth contained in the

island.**

* An examination into the origin of the Cypriotes formed

part of the original scheme of this work, together with that

of the monuments of the various races scattered along the

coast of Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean; but I

have been obliged to curtail it, in order to keep within the

limits I had proscribed for myself, and I have merely

epitomised, as briefly as possible, the results of the

researches undertaken in those regions during the last few

years.

** The Phoenician origin of these towns is proved by

passages from classical writers. The date of the

colonisation is uncertain, but with the knowledge we possess

of the efficient vessels belonging to the various Phoenician

towns, it would seem difficult not to allow that the coasts

at least of Cyprus must have been partially occupied at the

time of the Egyptian invasions.

Tyre and Sidon had no important centres of industry on that part of the

Canaanite coast which extended to the south of Carmel, and Egypt,

even in the time of the shepherd kings, would not have tolerated the

existence on her territory of any great emporium not subject to the

immediate supervision of her official agents. We know that the Libyan

cliffs long presented an obstacle to inroads into Egyptian territory,

and baffled any attempts to land to the westwards of the Delta: the

Phoenicians consequently turned with all the greater ardour to those

northern regions which for centuries had furnished them with most

valuable products--bronze, tin, amber, and iron, both native and

wrought. A little to the north of the Orontes, where the Syrian border

is crossed and Asia Minor begins, the coast turns due west and runs

in that direction for a considerable distance. The Phoenicians were

accustomed to trade along this region, and we may attribute, perhaps, to

them the foundation of those obscure cities--Kibyra, Masura, Euskopus,

Sylion, Mygdalê, and Sidyma*--all of which preserved their apparently

Semitic names down to the time of the Roman epoch. The whole of the

important island of Rhodes fell into their power, and its three ports,

Ialysos, Lindos*, and Kamiros, afforded them a well-situated base of

operations for further colonisation. On leaving Rhodes, the choice of

two routes presented itself to them. To the south-west they could see

the distant outline of Karpathos, and on the far horizon behind it the

summits of the Cretan chain. Crete itself bars on the south the entrance

to the Ægean, and is almost a little continent, self-contained and

self-sufficing.

* No direct evidence exists to lead us to attribute the

foundation of these towns to the Phoenicians, but the

Semitic origin of nearly all the names is an uncontested

fact.

[Illustration: 297.jpg THE MUREX TRUNCULUS]

It is made up of fertile valleys and mountains clothed with forests,

and its inhabitants could employ themselves in mines and fisheries. The

Phoenicians effected a settlement on the coast at Itanos, at Kairatos,

and at Arados, and obtained possession of the peak of Cythera, where, it

is said, they raised a sanctuary to Astartê. If, on leaving Rhodes, they

had chosen to steer due north, they would soon have come into contact

with numerous rocky islets scattered in the sea between the continents

of Asia and Europe, which would have furnished them with as many

stations, less easy of attack, and more readily defended than posts on

the mainland. Of these the Giblites occupied Melos, while the Sidonians

chose Oliaros and Thera, and we find traces of them in every island

where any natural product, such as metals, sulphur, alum, fuller’s

earth, emery, medicinal plants, and shells for producing dyes, offered

an attraction. The purple used by the Tyrians for dyeing is secreted by

several varieties of molluscs common in the Eastern Mediterranean; those

most esteemed by the dyers were the _Murex trunculus_ and the _Murex

Brandaris_, and solid masses made up of the detritus of these shells

are found in enormous quantities in the neighbourhood of many Phoenician

towns. The colouring matter was secreted in the head of the shellfish.

To obtain it the shell was broken by a blow from a hammer, and the small

quantity of slightly yellowish liquid which issued from the fracture was

carefully collected and stirred about in salt water for three days.

[Illustration: 298.jpg DAGGER OF ÂHMOSIS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

It was then boiled in leaden vessels and reduced by simmering over a

slow fire; the remainder was strained through a cloth to free it from

the particles of flesh still floating in it, and the material to be dyed

was then plunged into the liquid. The usual tint thus imparted was that

of fresh blood, in some lights almost approaching to black; but careful

manipulation could produce shades of red, dark violet, and amethyst.

Phoenician settlements can be traced, therefore, by the heaps of shells

upon the shore, the Cyclades and the coasts of Greece being strewn

with this refuse. The veins of gold in the Pangaion range in Macedonia

attracted them off the Thracian coast* received also frequent visits

from them, and they carried their explorations even through the tortuous

channel of the Hellespont into the Propontis, drawn thither, no doubt by

the silver mines in the Bithynian mountains** which were already being

worked by Asiatic miners.

* The fact that they worked the mines of Thasos is attested

by Herodotus.

** Pronektos, on the Gulf of Ascania, was supposed to be a

Phoenician colony.

Beyond the calm waters of the Propontis, they encountered an obstacle to

their progress in another narrow channel, having more the character of a

wide river than of a strait; it was with difficulty that they could make

their way against the violence of its current, which either tended to

drive their vessels on shore, or to dash them against the reefs which

hampered the navigation of the channel. When, however, they succeeded in

making the passage safely, they found themselves upon a vast and stormy

sea, whose wooded shores extended east and west as far as eye could

reach.

[Illustration: 299.jpg ONE OF THE DAGGERS DISCOVERED AT MYCENÆ, SHOWING

AN IMITATION OF EGYPTIAN DECORATION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile in Perrot-Chipiez.

From the tribes who inhabited them, and who acted as intermediaries,

the Phoenician traders were able to procure tin, lead, amber, Caucasian

gold, bronze, and iron, all products of the extreme north--a region

which always seemed,to elude their persevering efforts to discover

it. We cannot determine the furthest limits reached by the Phoenician

traders, since they were wont to designate the distant countries and

nations with which they traded by the vague appellations of “Isles

of the Sea” and “Peoples of the Sea,” refusing to give more accurate

information either from jealousy or from a desire to hide from other

nations the sources of their wealth.

The peoples with whom they traded were not mere barbarians, contented

with worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants

of the iEgean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the East,

possessed an independent and growing civilization, traces of which are

still coming to light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses,

palaces, utensils, ornaments, representations of the gods, and household

and funerary furniture,--not only in the Cyclades, but on the mainland

of Asia Minor and of Greece. No inferior goods or tinsel wares would

have satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities

as Troy and Mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of

Egypt and Syria--costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought

weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate

design--such objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the

sovereigns and nobles of Memphis or of Babylon. For articles to offer in

exchange they were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products

of their own country. Their craftsmen, though less successful in general

technique than their Oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable

artistic intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. Accustomed at

first merely to copy the objects sold to them by the Phoenicians,

they soon developed a style of their own; the Mycenaean dagger in the

illustration on page 299, though several centuries later in date than

that of the Pharaoh Ahmosis, appears to be traceable to this ancient

source of inspiration, although it gives evidence of new elements in

its method of decoration and in its greater freedom of treatment. The

inhabitants of the valleys of the Nile and of the Orontes, and probably

also those of the Euphrates and Tigris, agreed in the, high value they

set upon these artistic objects in gold, silver, and bronze, brought

to them from the further shores of the Mediterranean, which, while

reproducing their own designs, modified them to a certain extent; for

just as we now imitate types of ornamental work in vogue among nations

less civilized than ourselves, so the iEgean people set themselves the

task through their potters and engravers of reproducing exotic models.

The Phoenician traders who exported to Greece large consignments

of objects made under various influences in their own workshops, or

purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back as a return

cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the towns of the

West, which eventually found their way into the various markets of Asia

and Africa. These energetic merchants were not the first to ply this

profitable trade of maritime carriers, for from the time of the Memphite

empire the products of northern regions had found their way, through the

intermediation of the Haûinibû, as far south as the cities of the

Delta and the Thebaid. But this commerce could not be said to be

either regular or continuous; the transmission was carried on from one

neighbouring tribe to another, and the Syrian sailors were merely the

last in a long chain of intermediaries--a tribal war, a migration, the

caprice of some chief, being sufficient to break the communication,

and even cause the suspension of transit for a considerable period.

The Phoenicians desired to provide against such risks by undertaking

themselves to fetch the much-coveted objects from their respective

sources, or, where this was not possible, from the ports nearest the

place of their manufacture. Reappearing with each returning year in

the localities where they had established emporia, they accustomed the

natives to collect against their arrival such products as they could

profitably use in bartering with one or other of their many customers.

They thus established, on a fixed line of route, a kind of maritime

trading service, which placed all the shores of the Mediterranean in

direct communication with each other, and promoted the blending of the

youthful West with the ancient East.

[Illustration: 302.jpg TAILPIECE]