The Phœnicians
Phœnicia was a narrow strip of country on the southeastern coast of the great inland sea of antiquity, lying chiefly between Mount Libanus (Lebanon) and the Mediterranean shore, and extending for about one hundred and twenty miles north of Mount Carmel. Here lay the cities Tyre and Sidon, Byblus and Berytus, Tripolis and Ptolemais. The land was fertile, and rich in timber trees and fruits, such as the pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, and cedar; figs, olives, dates, pomegranates, citrons, almonds. Here was material for trade abroad, and comfort and prosperity at home, and the coast was so thickly studded with towns as almost to make one continuous populated line.
History and Government of Phoenicia
The history of Phœnicia is peculiarly a history of separate cities and colonies, never united into one great independent state, though now and then alliances existed between several cities in order to repel a common danger. Each city of Phœnicia was governed by a king or petty chief, under or with whom an aristocracy, and at times elective magistrates, appear to have held sway. But the genius of the race cared little for political development; they devoted themselves almost exclusively to commercial pursuits.
The Great Cities of Sidon and Tyre
Sidon was probably the more ancient of the Phœnician cities. Its richly embroidered robes are mentioned in the Homeric poems. It was the greatest maritime city of the ancient world until its colony, Tyre, surpassed it, and it seems to have been subject to Tyre in the time of David and Solomon. About 700 B. C., it became independent again, but was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, about 600 B. C., and became subject to Persia about 500 B. C. Under the Persian rule, it was a great and populous city, and, coming into the hands of Alexander the Great in 333 B. C., helped him with a fleet in his siege of Tyre. Its history ends with submission to Roman power, 63 B. C.
Tyre was a powerful city as early as 1200 B. C. The friendship of its king, Hiram, with Solomon is well known from the Hebrew Scriptures; and at this time the commerce of Tyre was foremost in the Mediterranean, and its ships sailed into the Indian Ocean from the port of Elath on the Red Sea. Tyre is celebrated for its obstinate resistance to enemies. Sargon, king of Assyria, besieged the city in vain for five years (721-717 B. C). Nebuchadnezzar took thirteen years (598-585 B. C.) to capture it only partially, and it was taken by Alexander the Great after a seven months’ siege, in 332 B. C. The old glory of Tyre departed with the transfer of its chief trade to the newly created city of Alexandria, though the indomitable energy of the Phœnicians again, in Roman times, made it a great seat of trade.
Phoenician Mariners Found Carthage
Phœnicia was at the height of prosperity from the eleventh to the sixth centuries B. C. As a colonizing country it preceded the Greeks on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, and sent ships to regions that the Greeks knew nothing of, save by report of the bold mariners of Tyre. Until the rise of Alexandria about 300 B. C., the sea trade of Phœnicia was rivaled only by that of Carthage, its own colony; and Phœnician merchants still kept up their great land trade by caravans with Arabia, central Asia and northern India, Scythia and the Caucasian countries.
By far the most renowned of all Phœnician colonies—famous in history for Hannibal’s heroic hate of Rome and warlike skill—was Carthage, in the center of the northern coast of Africa. The date of its foundation is put about 850 B. C. At Utica and Tunis, to the north and south, Phœnician settlements were already existing.
Vast Extent of Phoenician Commerce
The trade of Tyre and her sister cities reached almost throughout the world as then known. They imported the spices—notably the myrrh and frankincense—of Arabia; the ivory, ebony, and cotton goods of India; linen yarn and corn from Egypt; wool and wine from Damascus; embroideries from Babylon and Nineveh; pottery, in the days of Grecian art, from Attica; horses and chariots from Armenia; copper from the shores of the Euxine Sea; lead from Spain; tin from Cornwall. Phœnicia exported not only these articles of food and use and luxury, but the rich purple dyes made from the murex (a kind of shell-fish) of its own coast, the famous hue of Tyre, with which were tinged the silken costly robes of the despots. From Sidon went the famous glass produced in part from fine white sand, found plenteously near Mount Carmel. There was gold from Ophir, and interchange of cedar, sent by Hiram, king of Tyre, for building Solomon’s Temple, in barter for the wheat and balm and oil of Israel’s fertile land.
So important was the trade by caravans through Babylon with the interior of Asia that the great town Palmyra (or “Tadmor in the desert”) was founded or enlarged by Solomon to serve the traffic on its route through Syria to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Their Arts of Civilization Included Our Alphabet
As a money-making race the Phœnicians were skilled in arts by which the grand aim of its life could be attained. Great as they were at the dyeing vat and loom, adepts in working brass and other metals, and in fabricating glass, they were also the best ship builders and the most famous miners of their time. Their greatest service to civilization seems rather to have been in appropriating, developing, and spreading the ideas of others, especially in forming an alphabet for the Western world.
While the mythical story about Cadmus, taking his sixteen letters from Phœnicia into Greece, must be rejected, the European world owes to this race of traders the alphabetic symbols now in use. The gradual change of shape is easily traced in most of the signs as here given. The simple and ingenious device by which each sign stands for one elementary sound of human speech is largely due to the Phœnician people, as an improvement on the cumbrous hieroglyphics of Egypt. Of literature they have left nothing whatever recognized as really theirs.
Their Character and Religion
They had a name for craftiness in trade, and wealth led to worse than luxury,—to flagrant vice. Their religion was a kind of nature worship closely related to that of the Babylonians. They adored the sun and moon and five planets, the chief deities being the male Baal, and the female Ashtoreth or Astarte. At Tyre a deity was worshiped with the attributes of the Greek god Hercules. There was also the worship of Adonis, under the name of Thammuz, in the coast towns; and this included a commemoration of his death, a funeral festival, at which the women gave way to extravagant lamentations. It was Phœnician women that allured Solomon to their form of religion; it was a princess of Phœnicia, Jezebel, that brought Ahab, her husband, king of Israel, to ruin; that slew the prophets of God, and left a name proverbial of infamy in life, and for ignominious horror in her death. The work done by Phœnicia in the cause of human progress was chiefly important and interesting in material or practical things.