Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/846

810 P H (E P H (E at once began the siege. It lasted seven months, and, though the king, with enormous toil, drove a mole from the mainland to the island, he made little progress till the Persians were mad enough to dismiss the fleet and give him command of the sea through his Cyprian and Phoenician allies. The town was at length forced in July 332 ; 8000 Tyrians were slain, 30,000 inhabitants sold as slaves, and only a few notables, the king Azemilcus, and the Cartha ginian festal envoys, who had all taken shelter in the fane of Hercules, were spared (Arr., ii. 13, 15 sy.). Tyre thus lost its political existence, and the foundation of Alexandria presently changed the lines of trade and gave a blow per haps still more fatal to the Phoenician cities. The Phoeni cians thenceforth ceased to be a great nation, though under the Greeks Tyre and Sidon were still wealthy towns, the seats of rich merchants. Sources and Helps. The only at all continuous records of ancient tradition are the account of Phoenician mythology by Philo of Byblus, the extracts of the Tyrian annals by Josephus from Menander of Ephesus, and what Justin in the 18th book of his abridgment of Pompeius Trogus has taken from Timreus. Every thing else has to be pieced together in mosaic fashion. The chief help is Movers s unfinished work, Die Phonizier, i., ii. 1-3 (Bonn, 1841-56), which must be compared with his article " Phoenizien," in Ersch and Gruber (1848). Both works are learned and indis pensable, but to be used with caution wherever the author s judg ment on his material is involved, especially in the treatment of the mythology, which is merely syncretistic, whereas it is essential to a right understanding of this subject to distinguish the peculiari ties of the several Semitic nations. Selden, DC diis Syris (London, 1617), is still a valuable mine. The best recent contributions are those of Baudissin, Studien zur semitischcn Religionsgcschichtc (Leipsic, 1876, 1878). For the colonial history Bochart s monu mental Chanaan (Caen, 1646) is not superseded even by Movers, who, as has been wittily observed, has created with the help of etymo logy Phcenician chambrcs de reunion ; and, though Olshausen (N. Rhein. 3Ius., 1853, p. 321 sq.} does not go quite so far, both he and Miillenhoff (Deutsche AUcrthumskunde, i., 1870) follow the steps of Movers much too closely. A good corrective is given by Meltzer (Gesch. d. Karthager, i., 1879), though he, again, is sometimes too sceptical. Movers is best on the history proper ; and the admirable sketch in Grote s History of Greece should also be consulted. See also Duncker,- Gesch. des Alterthums, and Maspero, Hist. anc. dc I Orient. (A. v. G.) Art. Of Phoenician buildings few remains now exist on Phoenician soil; the coast has always been, and still is, densely peopled, and the builders of successive generations, like those of the present day, have regarded ancient edifices as their most convenient quarries. Phoenician architecture had its beginning in the widening and adaptation of caves in the rocks ; the independent buildings of later times, constructed of great blocks of unhewn stone, are direct imitations of such cave -dwellings. As Syrian limestone (which is the material employed) does not admit of the chiselling of finer details, the Phoenician monuments are somewhat rough and irregular. Not a vestige remains of the principal sanctuary of this ancient people, the temple of Melkart in Tyre ; but Renan dis covered a few traces of the temple of Adonis near Byblus, and a peculiar mausoleum, Burj al-Bezzak, still remains near Amrit (Marathus). It may also be conjectured that the conduits of Ras al-Ain, south of Tyre, are of ancient date. Various notices that have come down to us render it probable that the Phoenician temples, in the erection of which great magnificence was undoubtedly displayed, were in many respects similar to the temple at Jerusalem ; and confirmatory evidence is afforded by the remarkable remains of a sanctuary near Amrit, in which there is a cella in the midst of a large court hewn out of the rock, and other buildings more of an Egyptian style. In the domain of art originality was as little a characteristic of the Phoenicians as of the Hebrews ; they followed foreign and especially Egyptian models. This influence is mainly evident in sculptured remains, in which Egyptian motifs such as the Urseus frieze and the winged sun-disk not unfrequently occur. It was in the time of the Persian monarchy that Phcenician art reached its highest development ; and to this period belong the oldest remains, numismatic as well as other, that have come down to us. The whole artistic movement may be divided into two great periods : in the first (from the earliest times to the 4th century B.C.) Egyptian influence is predominant, but the national Phoenician element is strongly marked ; while in the second Greek influence has obtained the mastery, and the Phoenician element, though always making itself felt, is much less obtrusive. In the one period works of art, as statues of the gods and even sculptured sarcophagi, were sometimes imported direct from Egypt (such statues of the gods have been found even in the western colonies) ; in the other Greek works were procured mainly from Rhodes. The Phoenicians also adopted from the Egyptians the custom of depositing their dead in sarcophagi. The oldest examples of those anthropoid stone coffins are made after the pattern of Egyptian mummy-cases ; they were painted in divers colours, and at first were cut in low relief ; afterwards, however, towards and during the Greek period, the contours of the body began to be shown in stronger relief on the cover. Modern excavations show that, besides stone coffins (in marble or basalt), which indeed cannot be considered the oldest kind of receptacle, the Phoenicians employed coffins of wood, clay, and lead, to which were often attached metal plates or, at times it may be, decorations in carved wood. Embalming also seems to have been frequently practised as well as covering the body with stucco. Great care was bestowed by the Phoeni cians on their burial-places, and their cemeteries are the most important monuments left to us. The tombs are subterranean chambers of the most varied form : the walls and roof are not always straight ; sometimes there are two tiers of tombs one above the other, often several rows one behind the other. While in early times a mere perpendi cular shaft led to the mouth of these excavations, at a later date regular stairs were constructed. The dead were deposited either on the floor of the chamber (often in a sarcophagus) or, according to the later custom, in niches. The mouths of the tombs were walled up and covered with slabs, and occasionally cippi were set up. The great sepul chral monuments (popularly called mayhdnl, "spindles") which have been found above the tombs near Amrit are very peculiar : some are adorned with lions at the base and at the top with pyramidal finials. Besides busts (which belong generally to the Greek period), the smaller objects usually discovered are numerous earthen pitchers and lamps, glass wares, such as tear-bottles, tesserae, and gems. Unrifled tombs are seldom met with. Literature. For topography and art, see Renan, Mission de Phenicie (Paris, 1846) ; for language, Schroder, Die ph onizische Sprachc (Halle, 1869), and Stade in Morgenldndische Forschungcn (1875, p. 167) ; and for inscriptions, Corp. Inscr. Son. (Paris, 1881, and following years). (A. SO.) PHCENIX. Herodotus (ii. 73), speaking of the animals in Egypt, mentions a sacred bird called "phoenix," which he had only seen in a picture, but which the Heliopolitans said visited them once in five hundred years on the death of its father. The story was that the phoenix came from Arabia, bearing its father embalmed in a ball of myrrh, and buried him in the temple of the sun. Herodotus did not believe this story, but he tells us that the picture represented a bird with golden and red plumage, and closely resembling an eagle in size and shape. The story of the phoenix is repeated with variations by later writers, and was a favourite one with the Romans. There is only one phoenix at a time, says Pliny (N.H., x. 2), who, at the close of his long life, builds himself a nest with twigs of cassia and frankincense, on which he dies ; from his corpse is generated a worm which grows into the young