Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/841

PHOENICIA 805 vessels, from the common round yaOAos, to the great Tar- .shish ships, the East-Indiamen so to speak of the ancient world, had a speed which the Greeks never rivalled. Of the extent of the Phoenicians trade in the last days of Tyre s glory Ezekiel (xxvii. 12-25) has left a lively picture, which shows how large was the share they had in overland as well as in naval commerce. It was they, in fact, who from the earliest time distributed to the rest of the world the wares of Egypt and Babylon (Herod., i. 1). To the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris there were two routes : the more northerly passed obliquely through Mesopotamia and had on it the trading places of Haran (Carrhse), Canneh (Ctenae), and Eden ; the other, more southerly, had Sheba (Sabsea) for its goal, and led down the Euphrates, passing Asshur (Sura) and Chilmad (Charmande). There were other routes in the Persian and Macedonian period, but they do not belong to the present history. Actual inland settlements of the Phoenicians seem to have been few ; we know of one near the head of the northern trade road, Laish, which was lost to the Danites in the time of the judges (Judges xviii.), and one on the southern route, Eddana on the Euphrates (Steph. B., s.v.), which corresponds in name with Eden, but is not the same place, but perhaps rather the Giddan of Isidore of Charax ( 1). In the Arabian caravan trade in perfume, spices, and incense for worship the Phoenicians had a lively interest (Herod., iii. 107). These wares were mainly pro duced not in Arabia but in eastern Africa and India ; but Sheba in Yemen was the emporium of the whole trade, and the active commerce of this rich and powerful state in the times before the Persian is seen better than by any direct testimony from the exact knowledge of the Sabaean lands shown in Gen. x., from the many references to Arabia and Sheba in the Assyrian monuments, and from such facts as Euting s discovery at Taima in the heart of Arabia of an Aramaic inscription of the 6th century B.C., composed by a man with an Egyptian name. 1 In Egypt Phoenician trade and civilization soon took firm root ; they alone were able to maintain their Egyptian trade and profits in the anarchic times of the XXIIId to the XXVth Dynasties (825-650 B.C.), times like those of the Mameluke beys, in which all other foreign merchants were frightened away and the Greek legend of the inhos pitable Busiris originated. 2 The Tyrians had their own quarter in old Memphis (Herod., ii. 112), but there never were real colonies of the Phoenicians in Egypt. That in matters economic Syria and Palestine depended on Phoenicia might have been inferred even if we had not the express testimony of Ezekiel that these lands were in cluded in the sphere of Tyrian trade ; so too was Togarmah, an Armenian district. Cilicia was important to the Phoenicians as the natural point of shipment for wares from the Euphrates regions ; and the opposite island of Cyprus attracted them by its store of timber for shipbuilding, and of copper. Both these countries were originally peopled by the non-Semitic Kittim, who have left their name in the Cilician district Cetis and the Cyprian city Citium ; but they came under profound Semitic influences, mainly those of the Phoe nicians, who on the mainland had settlements at Myri- andus (Xen., Anab., i. 4, 6) and Tarsus, 3 while in Cyprus Citium which to the last remained the chief seat of the Phoenician tongue and culture was held to have its foundation from Belus (Steph., s.v. " Aa7r?/#os "), and Car- pasia from Pygmalion (Id., s.v.). Pseudo-Scylax ( 103), 1 Noldeke, in Sitzb. Berl. Ak., 1884, p. 813 sq. 2 XdX/STjs, the herald of Busiris, is simply 2P3, "dog." 3 Tarsus was founded by Aradians, Dio Chr. , xxxiii. 40. Ai , a city of the Phrenicians in Hecatreus, fr. 259, is probably not ^Egse but Gaxa- writing in 346 B.C., knows Carpasia, Cerynea, and Lapethus as Phoenician ; but the view that Phoenician sway in Cyprus was very ancient and that the Phoenicians were gradually driven back by the Greeks appears not to be sound. On the contrary, the balance of power seems to have varied greatly; the Assyrian tribute-lists of 673 and 667 (Schrader, K.A.T., p. 354 sq.) contain but two names of Phoenician cities in Cyprus, Sillii (Soli) and Kartihadast (probably NewPaphos); not one of the later Phoenician kingdoms is mentioned, so that presumably none of them then existed, and not one of the ten Cyprian kings mentioned appears to be Phoenician by name. Menander tells us (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) that the kings of Tyre ruled over Cyprus at the close of the 8th century ; but a very clear proof that there was no ancient and uninterrupted political connexion with Phoenicia lies in the fact that the Cyprian Greeks took the trouble to frame a Greek cuneiform character modelled on the Assyrian. The Homeric poems represent the Phoenicians as present in Greek waters for purposes of traffic, including the pur chase and capture of slaves, but not as settlers. Tradition (see especially Thucyd., i. 8) is unanimous in representing the Carians and Phoenicians as having occupied the islands of the ^Egean before the migrations of the Greeks to Asia Minor, but so far as the Phoenicians are concerned this holds only of the southern islands afterwards occupied by Dorians where they had mining -stations, and also establishments for the capture of the murex and purple- dyeing. 4 The most northerly of the Cyclades on which we can prove a Phoenician settlement is Oliarus (Steph., s.v.), which was occupied by Sidonians, probably with a view to the use of the marble quarries of Paros, which lies opposite. Similarly the Byblians occupied Melos (Steph., s.v.), which produced a white pigment (Melian earth), alum, and sulphur. Two great islands were held as main seats of the purple trade, Cythera (Herod., i. 105) and Thera, with the neighbouring Anaphe (Herod., iv. 147 ; Steph., s.v. " Me/x/3Ata/3os "), as also the town Itanus at the eastern extremity of Crete (Steph., s.v.). Specially famous was the purple of the Laconian waters, the isles of Elishah of Ezekiel xxvii. 7. Farther east the Phoenicians were settled in Rhodes. 5 The Greek local tradition about the Phoe nicians seems, in Thera and Rhodes, to embody real his torical reminiscences, and it is confirmed for Thera and Melos by the discoveries of Phoenician pottery and orna ments in the upper strata of the tuff, and for other places by peculiar cults which survived among the later Dorian settlers. Thus the Aphrodite Urania of Cythera was identical with the Oriental goddess of love at Paphos, and Herodotus (i. 105) makes her temple to be founded from Ascalon ; the coins of Itanus (Mionnet, ii. 284 sq.) show a fish-tailed deity ; in Rhodes human sacrifices to Cronus were long kept up (Porph., De Abs., ii. 54). The legends of Rhodes and Crete have a character quite distinct from that of other Greek myths, and so give lasting testimony to the deep influence in both islands of even the most hideous aspects of Phoenician religion ; it is enough to refer in this connexion to the stories of the eight children of Helios in Rhodes, of Europa, the Minotaur, and the brazen Talos in Crete. The pre-Hellenic inhabitants of the islands, the Carians and their near kinsmen the Eteo- cretans or Mnoitse (probably identical with the PHILISTINES, q.v.), had no native civilization, and were therefore wholly under the influence of the higher culture of the Phoenicians. But on the Greeks too the Phoenicians had no small influ- 4 As an enormous supply of murex was needed for this industry, the conjecture of Duncker is probably sound, that the purple stations were the oldest of all Phoenician settlements. 5 Rodauim, 1 Chron. i. 7, by which Dodanim in Gen. x. 4 must be corrected ; see Ergias (?) and Polyzelus, in Athen., viii. p. 360 D.