Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/70

 FH(ENICIA

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PHCENICIA

to come to honourable terms with him. In 701 Sen- nacherib conquered the revolting cities of Syria anil Phrenicia. Eluhcus fled to Cyprus and Tubaal was made king.

In 680 .\bd-Melkarth, his successor, rebelletl against the Assyrian domination, but fled before Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib. Sidon was practically de- stroyed, most of its inhabitants carried off to Assyria, and their places filled by captives from Babylonia and Elam. During the reign of Asshurbanipal (668-625 B. c.) Tyre was once more attacked and conquered, but, as usual, honourably treated. In 606 the Assyr- ian empire itself was demolished by the allied Baby- lonians and Medes, and in 605 Nabuchadonosor, son and successor of Nabopolassar, after having conquered Elam and the adjacent countries, subdued (586 B. c.) Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, and Egj^pt. As the Tyrians had command of the sea, it was thirteen years before their city surrendered, but the long siege crippled its commerce, and Sidon regained its ancient position as the leading city. Phoenicia was passing through its final stage of national independence and glory. From the fifth century on, it was continually harassed by the incursions of various Greek colonies who gradually absorbed its commerce and industry. It passed repeatedly under the rule of the Medo- Persian kings, Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and finally Xer.xes, who attacked the Athenians at Salamis with the aid of the Phoenician navy, but their fleet was defeated and destroyed. In 332, it was finally and completely conquered by Alexander the Great, after whose death and subsequent to the partition of his great Macedonian empire amongst his four generals, it fell to Laodemon. In 314, Ptolemy attacked Lao- demon and annexed Phoenicia to Egypt. In 198 B. c, it was absorbed by the Seleucid dynasty of Syria, after the downfall of which (65 a. d.), it became a Roman province and remained such till the Moham- medan conquest of Syria in the seventh century. Phoenicia now forms one of the most important Turkish vilayets of Syria with Beyrout as its prin- cipal city.

The whole political history and constitution of Phoenicia may be summarized as follows: The Phoenicians never built an empire, but each city had its little independent territory, assemblies, kings, and government, and for general state business sent dele- gates to Tyre. They were not a military, but essen- tially a seafaring and commercial people, and were successively conquered by the Egj'ptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, to whom, because of their great wealth, they fulfilled all their obligations by the payment of tribute. Although ble.ssed with fertile land and well provided by nature, the Phoenicians, owing to their small territory and comparatively large population, were compelled, from the very remotest antiquity, to gain their livelihood through commerce. Hence, their numerous caravan routes to the East, and their wonderful marine com- merce with the West. They were the only nation of the ancient East who had a navy. By land they pushed their trade to Arabia for gold, agate, onyx, incense, and myrrh; to India for pearls, spices, ivory, ebony, and ostrich plumes; to Mesopotamia for cotton and linen clothes; to Palestine and Egypt for grain, wheat, and barley; to the regions of the Black Sea for horses, slaves, and copper. By sea they en- circled all the Mediterranean coast, along Syria, North Africa, Asia Minor, the ^Egean Sea, and even Spain, France, and England. A logical result of this remarkable commercial activity was the founding in Cyprus, Egj-pt, Crete, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, Spain, Asia Minor, and Greece of numerous colonies, which became important centres of Pha-nician com- merce and civilization, and in due time left their deep mark upon the history and civilization of the classical nations of the Mediterranean world.

Owing to this activity also, the Phoenicians devel- oped neither literature nor arts. The work done by Iheiii for Solomon shows that their architectural and mechanical .skill was great only in superiority to that of the Hebrews. The remains of their architecture are heavy and their Eesthetic art is primitive in char- acter. In literature, they left nothing worthy of preservation. To them is ascribed the simplification of the primitive, pictorial or ideographic, and syllabic systems of writing into an alphabetic one consisting of twenty-two letters and written from right to left, from which are derived all the later and modern Semitic and European alphabets. This tradition, however, must be accepted with some modification. There is also no agreement as to whether the basis of this Phoenician alphabet is of Egyptian (hieroglyphic and hieratic) or of Assyro-Babylonian (cuneiform) origin. Those who derive it from a Cypriot prototype have not as yet sufficiently demonstrated the plau- sibility and probability of their opinion. The recent discovery of numerous Minoan inscriptions in the Island of Crete, some of them dating as early as 2000 B. c, has considerably complicated the problem. Other inventions, or improvements, in science and mechanics, such as weights and measures, glass manu- facture, coinage, the finding of the polar star, and navigation are perhaps justly attributed to the Pha'nicians. Both ethnographically and linguistic- alh', they belong to the so-called Semitic group. They were called Canaanites, and spoke a dialectical variety of the Canaanite group of Western Semitic tongues, closely akin to the dialects of the Semitic inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, and Canaan. A few specimens of their language, as it was spoken by the colonies in North Africa towards the end of the third century b. c, may still be read in Plautus, from which it appears to have already attained a great degree of consonantal and vocal decay. The dialect of the inscriptions is more archaic and less corrupt.

Our information concerning the religion of the Phoenicians is meagre and mainly found in the Old Testament, in classical traditions, and legends. Of special interest, however, are the votive inscriptions in which a great number of proper names generally construed with that of some divinity are found. Pha-nician polytheism, like that of the other Semitic nations, was based partly on Animism and partly on the worship of the great powers of nature, mostly of astral origin. They deified the sun and the moon, which they considered the great forces that create and destroy, and called them Baal and Astaroth. Each city had its divine pair: at Sidon it was Baal Sidon (the sun) and Astarte (the moon); at Gebel, Baal Tummuz and Baaleth; at Carthage, Baal Hamon and Tanith. But the same god changed his name according as he was conceived as creator or destroyer; thus Baal as destroyer was worshipped at Carthage under the name of Moloch. These gods, represented by idols, had their temples, altars, and priests. As creators they were honoured with orgies and tumultuous feasts; as destroyers, by human vic- tims. Astoreth (Venus), whom the Sidonians repre- sented by the crescent of the moon and the dove, had her cult in the sacred woods. Baal Moloch was figured at Carthage as a bronze colossus with arms extended and lowered. To appease him children were laid in his arms, and fell at once into a pit of fire. When Agathocles besieged the city the principal Carthaginians sacrificed to Moloch as many as two hundred of their children. Although this sensual and sanguinary religion inspired the surrounding nations with horror, they, nevertheless, imitated it. Hence, the Hebrews frequently sacrificed to Baal on the mountains, and the Greeks adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of Aphrodite, and Baal Melkart of Tyre under the name of Herakles. The principal Pha'nician divinities are Adonis, El, Eshmon, liaal,