History of Phoenicia

the Phoenicians-Ch

e Phoenicians withi

ally with the Israel

l seat of the natio

tics of the Phoenic

udacity in enterpr

ness of intellect-

inst them of ba

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n the primitive writing; the vowel sounds do but modify more or less the general sense, and are unexpressed until the languages begin to fall into decay. The roots are, almost all of them, more or less physical and sensuous. They are derived in general from an imitation of nature. "If one looked only to the Semitic languages," says M. Renan,31 "one would say, that sensation alone presided over the first acts of the human intellect, and that language was primarily nothing but a mere reflex of the external world. If we run through the list of Semitic roots, we scarcely meet with a single one which does not present to us a sense primarily material, which is then transferred, by transitions more or less direct and immediate, to things which are intellectual." Derivative words are formed from the roots by a few simple and regular laws. The noun is scarcely inflected at

ing to the latter writer, "the Semitic race is to be recognized almost entirely by negative characteristics; it has no mythology, no epic poetry, no science, no philosophy, no fiction, no plastic arts, no civil life; everywhere it shows absence of complexity; absence of combination; an exclusive sentiment of unity."35 It is not very easy to reconcile these two views, and not very satisfactory to regard a race as "characterised by negatives." Agreement should consist in positive features, and these may perhaps be found, first, in strength and depth of the

a very strong, evidence of ethnic character. Counter-evidence may no doubt rebut the prima facie presumption; but in the case of the Phoenicians no counter-evidence is producible. They belong to exactly that geographic zone in which Semitism has always had its chief seat; t

iew, while the historic leads decidedly to an opposite conclusion. There is a far closer analogy between the Palestinian group of languages-Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, and the Assyro-Babylonian, than between either of these and the Aramaic. The Aramaic is scanty both in variety of grammatical forms and in vocabulary; the Phoenici

ians, who, being disturbed by an earthquake, left their native land, and settled first of all in the neighbourhood of the Assyrian Lake, and subsequently on the shore of the Mediterranean, where they built a city which they called Sidon on account of the abundance of the fish; for the Phoenicians call a fish sidon."311 The "Assyrian lake" of this passage is probably the Bahr Nedjif, or "Sea of Nedjif," in the neighbourhood of the ancient Babylon, a permanent sheet of water, varying in its dimensions at different seasons, but generally about forty miles long, and from ten to twenty broad.312 Attempts have been made to discredit this entire story, but the highest living authority on the subject of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians

stics, we shall find ourselves upon surer ground, though even here there are certain points which are debateable. The following is

not only for the things that they did, but for many that they did not. They were the first systematic traders, the first miners and metallurgists, the greatest inventors (if we apply such a term to those who kept an ever-watchful lookout for the inventions of others, and immediately applied them to themselves with some grand improvements on the original idea); they were the boldest mariners, the greatest colonisers, who at one time held not only the gorgeous East, but the whole of the then half-civilised West in fee-who could boast of a form of government approaching to constitutionalism, who of all nations of the time stood highest in practical arts and sciences, and into whose laps there

nation. Always labouring in their workshops at home in mechanical and ?sthetic arts, they were at the same time constantly seeking employment abroad, ransacking the earth for useful or beautiful commodities, building cities, constructing harbours, founding colonies, introducing the arts of life among wild nations, mining and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos

ledge of the stars, these bold mariners penetrated to the shores of Scythia in one direction; to Britain, if not even to the Baltic, in another; in a third to the Fortunate Islands; while, in a fourth, they traversed the entire length of the Red Sea, and entering upon the Southern Ocean, succeeded in doubling the Cape of Storms two thousand years before Vasco di Gama, and in effecting the circumnavigation of Africa.317 And, wild as the seas were with which they had to deal, they had to deal with yet wilder men. Except in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and perhaps Italy, they came in contact everywhere with savage races; they had to enter into close relations with men treacherous, bloodthirsty, covetous-men who were almost always thieves, who were frequently cannibals, sometime

vid and Solomon are well known; but the continued alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted less attention. Solomon took wives from Phoenicia;320 Ahab married the daughter of Ithobalus, king of Sidon;321 Phoenicia furnished timber for the second Temple;322 Isaiah wound up his prophecy against Tyre with a consolation;323 our Lord found faith in the Syro-Phoenician woman;324 in the days of Herod Agrippa, Tyre and Sidon still desired peace with Jud?a, "because their country was nourished by the king's country."325 And similarly Tyre had friendly relations with Syria and Greece, with Mesopotamia and Assyria, with Babylonia and Chal

, in logic or metaphysics, either their writings would have been preserved, or at least the Greeks would have made acknowledgments of being indebted to them.331 But it is only in the field of practical matters that any such acknowledgments are made. The Greeks allow themselves to have been indebted to the Phoenicians for alphabetic writing, for advances in metallurgy, for improvements in shipbuilding, and navigation, for much geographic knowledge, for exquisite dyes, and for the manufacture of glass. 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 inventi

urn for business, or ability for dealing with it, so we think there are nations, to whom no one would deny high intellectual power, without the capacity in question. In its most perfect form it has belonged but to a small number of nations-to the Phoenicians, the Venetians, the Genoese, the English, and the Dutch. It implies, not so much high intellectual power, as a combination of valuable, yet

ions of an enemy are entitled to little weight. The cry of "perfide Albion" is often heard in the land of one of our near neighbours; but few Englishmen will admit the justice of it. It may be urged in favour of the Phoenicians that long-continued commercial success is impossible without fair-dealing and honesty; that where there is commercial fair-dealing and honesty, those qualities become part and parcel of the national character, and determine national polic

lance, to the Cypriots,336 who were a mixed people recruited from various quarters.337 In complexion they belonged to the white race, but were rather sallow than fair. Their hair was generally dark, though it may have been sometimes red. Some have regarded the name