Phoenician

“ The long isthmus, and the peninsula in which it ends, have been compared to the stalk and blossom of a flower.5175 The flower was the ancient Gades, the modern Cadiz. The Phoenician occupation of the site is witnessed to by Strabo, Diodorus, Scymnus Chius, Mela, Pliny, Velleius Paterculus, Ælian and Arrian,5176 and is further evidenced by the numerous coins which bear the legend of “Agadir” in Phoenician characters.5177 But the place itself retains no traces of the Phoenician occupation. ”

“ So the extraordinary Phoenician civilization was almost purely a mercantile, a business civilization, and though it left an impress on the life that came after, this impress was faint indeed compared to that left, for instance, by the Greeks with their many-sided development. Yet the Greek civilization itself fell, because this many-sided development became too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character, at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to govern both themselves and others. ”

“ From Caria stretched out, like a string of stepping-stones between Asia and Europe, the hundred islets of the Ægean, Cyclades, and Sporades, and others, inviting settlers, and conducting to the large islands of Crete and Euboea, and the shores of Attica and the Peloponnese. It is impossible to trace with any exactness the order in which the Phoenician colonies were founded. A thousand incidental circumstances—a thousand caprices—may have deranged what may be called the natural or geographical order, and have caused the historical order to diverge from it ”

“ The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad, Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis, and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos1135 and the Romans to their Saturn. ”

“ The difficulty of interpretation is greatly increased by the fact that single words are very seldom separated from one another, and that vowel-letters are used extremely sparingly. We therefore come but too often upon very ambiguous groups of letters. In spite of this, our knowledge of Phoenician has made considerable progress of late. Some assistance is also got from Greek and Latin writers, who cite not only many Phoenician proper names, but single Phoenician words: Plautus in particular inserts in the Poenulus whole passages in Punic, some of which are accompanied by a Latin translation. ”

“ CHAPTER VII—ÆSTHETIC ART Recent discoveries of Phoenician artistic remains— Phoenician sculpture—Statues and busts—Animal forms—Bas- reliefs—Hercules and Geryon—Scenes on sarcophagi— Phoenicians metal castings—Jachin and Boaz—Solomon’s “Molten Sea”—Solomon’s lavers—Statuettes in bronze— Embossed work upon cups and pateræ—Cup of Præneste— Intaglios on cylinders and gems—Phoenician painting—Tinted statues—Paintings on terra-cotta and clay.
Phoenician æsthetic art embraced sculpture, metal-casting, intaglio, and painting to a small extent. ”

“ Æon, discovered that life might be sustained by the fruits of trees. Their immediate descendants were called Genos and Genea, who lived in Phoenicia, and in time of drought stretched forth their hands to heaven towards the sun; for him they regarded as the sole Lord of Heaven, and called him Baal-samin, which means ‘Lord of Heaven’ in the Phoenician tongue, and is equivalent to Zeus in Greek. ”

“ But all their truly astronomical writings are lost, and only by a somewhat speculative piecing together of scattered evidences can an estimate of their knowledge be formed. The inter-relations of the Phoenicians with the early Hellenes were frequent and far-reaching, and in the Greek presentation of the legends concerning constellations a distinct Phoenician, and in turn Euphratean, element appears. ”

“ From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw “a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"315 to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces of Phoenician industry in tunnels, adits, and air-shafts, while manufactured vessels of various kinds in silver, bronze, and terra-cotta, together with figures and gems of a Phoenician type, attest still more widely their manufacturing and commercial activity. ”

“ But to argue thus is to ignore the extreme scantiness and casual character of the notices which have reached us bearing upon the early Phoenician history. No writer has left us any continuous history of Phoenicia, even in the barest outline.1452 Native monumental annals are entirely wanting. We depend for the early times upon the accident of Jewish monarchs having come into contact occasionally with Phoenician ones, and on Jewish writers having noted the occasions in Jewish histories. ”

“ Independently of this, the majority of modern critics admit it as demonstrated that the primitive abode of the Phoenicians ought to be placed upon the Lower Euphrates, in the midst of the great commercial and maritime establishments of the Persian Gulf, agreeable to the unanimous witness of all antiquity."313
If we pass from the probable origin of the Phoenician people, and their place in the Semitic group, to their own special characteristics, we shall find ourselves upon surer ground, though even here there are certain points which are debateable. ”

“ The colonisation of the island by the Phoenicians, asserted by Diodorus,5123 is entirely borne out by the remains, which include a Phoenician inscription of some length,5124 coins with Phoenician legends,5125 and buildings, believed to be temples, which have Phoenician characteristics.5126 Some of the blocks of stone employed in their construction have a length of nearly twenty feet,5127 with a width and height proportionate; and all are put together without cement or mortar of any kind. ”

“ In the Homeric stories ships of the Sidonians, though not unknown, make rare appearances, and other early legends of the Greeks, which make mention of Phoenician visits to Hellenic coasts, imply that they were unusual phenomena, which aroused much local curiosity and were long remembered. The strangeness of the Phoenician mariners, the unfamiliar charm of their cargoes--such were the impressions left on Greek story by the early visits of Phoenician ships. ”

“ Indeed, we may perhaps infer that even the coast of Asia Minor, near as it was to the Phœnician settlements at Kamirus and elsewhere, could have held but little intercourse with the Phœnicians of Egypt from the fact that the Cypriote syllabary was so long in use upon it, and that the alphabets afterwards employed were derived only indirectly from the Phœnician through the medium of the Greek.
One point more now alone needs to be noticed. The long-continued influence upon early Greek culture which we ascribe to the Phœnicians cannot but have left its mark upon the Greek vocabulary also. ”

“ Phoenicians settled in Attica, particularly at Phalerum and the Piræus, and had their own places of worship and interment. Six sepulchral inscriptions have been found, either in Athens itself or at the Piræus,14316 five of them bilingual,14317 which mark the interment in Attic soil of persons whose nationality was Phoenician. ”

“ When Movers and Kenrick published their valuable works on the history of Phoenicia, and the general characteristics of the Phoenician people, it was quite impossible to do more than form conjectures concerning their architecture from a few coins, and a few descriptions in ancient writers. It is now a matter of comparatively little difficulty to set before the public descriptions and representations which, if they still leave something to be desired in the way of completeness, are accurate, so far as they go, and will give a tolerably fair idea of the architectural genius of the people. ”

“ Greek philosophy was studied in the schools of Sidon;14460 and at Byblus Phoenician mythology was recast upon a Greek type. At the same time Phoenician art conformed itself more and more closely to Greek models, until all that was rude in it, or archaic, or peculiar, died out, and the productions of Phoenician artists became mere feeble imitations of second-rate Greek patterns.
The nation gave itself mainly to the pursuit of wealth. The old trades were diligently plied. Tyre retained its pre-eminence in the manufacture of the purple dye ”

“ From the Sporades and Cyclades the advance was easy to the islands of the Northern Ægean, Lemnos, Imbrus, Thasos, and Samothrace. The settlement of the Phoenicians in Thasos is attested by Herodotus, who says that the Tyrian Hercules (Melkarth) was worshipped there,572 and ascribes to the Phoenicians extensive mining operations on the eastern shores of the island between Ænyra and Coenyra.573 A Phoenician occupation of Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothrace is indicated by the worship in those islands of the Cabeiri,574 who were undoubtedly Phoenician deities. ”

“ The remains of the temple have been identified, and will be described in a future chapter. They have the massive character of all early Phoenician architecture.
Among other Phoenician settlements in Cyprus were, it is probable, Salamis, Ammochosta (now Famagosta) , Tamasus, and Soli. Salamis must be regarded as originally Phoenician on account of the name, which cannot be viewed as anything but another form of the Hebrew “Salem,” the alternative name of Jerusalem.527 Salamis lay on the eastern coast of the island at the mouth of the main river, the Pediæus. ”

“ There is also at the Piræus an altar,14318 which a Phoenician must have erected and dedicated to a Phoenician god, whom he worshipped on Attic soil apparently without let or hindrance. The god’s name is given as “Askum-Adar,” a form which does not elsewhere recur, but which is thought to designate the god elsewhere called Sakon, who corresponded to the Grecian Hermes.14319 Moreover, there is evidence of the Phoenicians having worshipped two other deities in their Attic abodes, one a god who corresponded to the Greek Poseidon and the Roman Neptune, the other the Babylonian and Assyrian Nergal. ”

“ Among the bronze objects found,1258 some may have been merely ornaments, others stands for rings, bracelets, and the like. One terra-cotta vase from Dali seems made for holding pigments,1259 and raises the suspicion that Phoenician, or at any rate Cyprian, beauties were not above heightening their charms by the application of paint.
Women in Phoenicia seem to have enjoyed considerable freedom. ”

“ Phoenicia Proper has furnished no earthen vessels, either whole or in pieces, that can be assigned to a time earlier than the Greco-Roman period,851 nor have any such vessels been found hitherto on Phoenician sites either in Sardinia, or in Corsica, or in Spain, or Africa, or Sicily, or Malta, or Gozzo. The only places that have hitherto furnished earthen vases or other vessels presumably Phoenician are Jerusalem, Camirus in Rhodes, and Cyprus ”

“ It cannot, however, be taken seriously as an account of genuine Phoenician beliefs. For Sanchuniathon is a mere literary fiction; and Philo's treatment is vitiated by an obvious attempt to explain the whole system of religion on the principles of Euhemerus, an agnostic who taught the traditional mythology as primitive history, and turned all the gods and goddesses into men an women; and further by a patriotic desire to prove that Phoenicia could outdo Greece in the venerable character of its traditions, that in fact Greek mythology was simply a feeble and distorted version of the Phoenician. ”

“ But in the Phoenician sculpture the repose is overdone; except in the expression of faces, there is scarcely any life at all. The figures do nothing; they simply stand to be looked at. And they stand stiffly, sometimes even awkwardly, rarely with anything like elegance or grace. The heads, indeed, have life and vigour, especially after the artists have become acquainted with Greek models;716 but they are frequently too large for the bodies whereto they are attached, and the face is apt to wear a smirk that is exceedingly disagreeable. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the Phoenicians were a people of great practical ability, with an intellect quick to devise means to ends, to scheme, contrive, and execute, and with a happy knack of perceiving what was practically valuable in the inventions of other nations, and of appropriating them to their own use, often with improvements upon the original idea. ”

“ Phoenician civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet; (4) to Phoenicise them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor the policy of Carthage. ”

“ The ceramic art of the Phoenicians is not very remarkable. Phoenicia Proper is deficient in clay of a superior character, and it was probably a very ordinary and coarse kind of pottery that the Phoenician merchants of early times exported regularly in their trading voyages, both inside and outside the Mediterranean. ”

“ Some short epigraphs on Assyrian gems, tablets, and cylinders belong apparently to about the same period. The series of Phoenician and Cilician coins begins soon after this, and continues to the time of the Roman supremacy in Western Asia. The soil of Phoenicia Proper, and of the various countries where the Phoenicians established settlements or factories, as Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Southern Gaul, Spain, and North Africa, has also yielded a large crop of somewhat brief legends, the “inscription of Marseilles"0134 being the most important of them. ”