Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/49

ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS. 29 Thothmes and Rameses was then the first military power of the world, and it must have been a great advantage for the Phoenicians to be able to claim at need the protection of those princes or of their generals. On the high seas they might, as we should phrase it, fly the Egyptian flag, and cover themselves with its prestige. 1 Favoured thus by a vassalage which hardly affected their freedom, the Sidonians began by visiting all the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. In the north they established themselves upon the southern littoral of Asia Minor ; they took up strong positions in the islands of Cyprus and Crete, whence it was easy to make the coasts of Rhodes and the Sporades on the one hand, and of the Cyclades on the other, without losing the last glimpse of land. 2 They seem to have appeared very early at Thera (Santorini), at Melos (Milo), and at many other points in the archipelago. They may even have mounted thence to the Thracian islands, to Thasos, whose mines they worked so long. :i We may even believe that they passed the Hellespont and penetrated to the Euxine, to bring from its farther shores the copper and iron of the Chalybes, and the tin of the Caucasus. In no part of the Hellenic main-land was their influence more strongly felt than in Bceotia. This is proved by the myth of Cadmus, or " the Oriental " (from kedem, east), who is said to have imported the alphabet into Greece, and to have founded the city of Thebes. 4 In the Peloponnesus, their presence is to be traced in Argolis ; but it was in the island of Cythera, off Laconia, that they were chiefly established. There they set up 1 On the presence of the Phoenicians in Egypt and the part they played there, see the interesting observations of BRUGSCH (Histoire de CEgypte, pp. 142-150). He shows that the Tyrians were something more than stranger merchants kept outside the ordinary framework of Egyptian society. In papyri dating from the nineteenth dynasty there are many examples of Semitic names borne by officials of Pharaoh's court. The same writer shows that a certain number of gods of Asiatic origin were then introduced into the Egyptian pantheon. Of these the chief were Reshep, Bes, Kadesh, and Anta. 2 DIODORUS has preserved the tradition of these relations between Rhodes and the east. He makes Danaus and the Egyptians, Cadmus and the Phoenicians visit that island (v. Iviii. i, 2). According to his story Cadmus left there a great bronze lebes, or cauldron, covered with Phoenician characters, as a mark of his visit. 3 HERODOTUS, ii. 44 ; vi. 4 Upon the establishment of the Phoenicians in Boeotia, see especially M. FR. LENORMANT'S paper entitled La Legende de Cadmus et les Etablissements phcnidens en Grece (8vo, 1867, Levy).