Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/838

 802 PHOENICIA Xakura), and farther north at Promontorium Album (Ras al-Abyad). It is not known how far inland the Phoenician territory extended ; the limit was probably different at different times. Both the maritime district, partly under artificial irrigation, and the terraces, laid out with great care on the mountain-sides, were in antiquity in a high state of cultivation; and the country more especially that portion which lies north of the Kasimlye (Litani) along the flanks of Lebanon still presents some of the richest and most beautiful landscapes in the world, in this respect far excelling the Italian Riviera. The lines of the lime stone mountains, running for the most part parallel to the sea, are pierced by deep river- valleys ; those that debouch to the south of the Kasimiye have already been mentioned in the article PALESTIXE ; the most important of those to the north are the Xahr Zaherani, Al-Auwali, Damur (Tamy- ras), Nahr Beirut, Nahr al-Kelb (Lycus), Nahr Ibrahim (Adonis), Nahr Abu Ali (Kaddisha). The mountains are not rich in mineral products ; but it may be mentioned that the geologist Fraas has recently discovered indubitable traces of amber -digging on the Phoenician coast. The purple-shell (Murex trunculus and brandaris) is still found in large quantities. The harbours on the Phoenician coast which played so important a part in antiquity are nearly all silted up, and, with the exception of that of Beirut, there is no safe port for the large vessels of modern times. A few bays, open towards the north, break the practically straight coast-line ; and there are a certain nuir.b.r of small islands off the shore. It was, in the main, such points as these that the Phoenicians chose for their towns ; since, while affording facilities for shipping, they also enabled the Phoeni cians to protect themselves from attacks from the mainland, which was subject to them within but narrow limits. Race. The ethnographic relations of the Phoenicians have been the subject of much debate. As in Gen. x., Sidon, the firstborn of Canaan, is classed with the Hamites, many investigators are still of opinion that, in spite of their purely Semitic language, the Phoenicians were a distinct race from the Hebrews. They attach great weight to the peculiarities that mark the course of Phoenician civiliza tion, and, above all, to their political organization and colonizing habits, which find no analogies among the Semites. In favour of the opposite and more probable view, that the Phoenicians, like the Canaanites, are an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, it may be urged (1) that the account in Gen. x. is not framed on strict ethno graphic lines, and (2) that the absence from Phoenicia of all trace of an original non-Semitic form of speech cannot be reconciled with the theory of an exchange of language. The close connexion which existed from an early period between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians accounts for many coincidences in the matter of religion. Phoenician civilization, being on the whole of but little originality, may have been that of a Semitic people, who, from their situation on the narrow strip of country at the east end of the Mediterranean, were naturally addicted to trade and colonization. Language. Inscriptions, coins, topographical names pre served by classical writers, proper names of persons, and the Punic passages in the Pvenulw of Plautus combine to show that the Phoenician language, like Hebrew, belonged to the north Semitic group. Even the Phoenician which survived as a rustic dialect in north Africa till the 5th century of our era was very closely akin to Hebrew. Though it retained certain old forms obsolete in Hebrew, Phoenician, as we know, represents on the whole a later stage of grammatical structure than the language of the Old Testament. Its vocabulary, in like manner, apart from a few archaisms, coincides most nearly with later Hebrew. At a very early period Semitic words were adopted into Greek from Phoenician ; and it is also quite certain that the Phoenicians had at least a great share in the development and diffusion of the alphabetic character which forms the foundation of all European alphabets. We possess, however, only a few Phoenician inscriptions and coins of very early date. The longest and most im portant of the inscriptions that on King Eslnnun azar s tomb is in letters which, while very ancient in certain of their features, present a series of important modifications of the original type of the Semitic alphabet, as it can be fixed by comparison of the oldest documents. Still more divergent from the ancient characters are the forms of the letters on the Phoenician, i.e., Punic, .monuments of north Africa. (A. so.) Religion. Considering the great part which the Phoeni cians played in the movements of ancient civilization, it is singular how fragmentary are our sources of know ledge for all the most essential elements of their his tory. What we are told of their religion is only in appearance an exception to this rule. Eusebius in the Pracparatio Evanyelica cites at length from the Greek of Pliilo of Byblus a cosmogony and theogony professedly translated from a Berytian Sanchuniathon, who wrote 1221 B.C. But that this work is a forgery appears from the apocryphal authorities cited, and the affinity displayed with the system of Euhemerus. The forger was Pliilo himself, for the writer borrows largely from Hesiod and was therefore a Greek ; he gives Byblus the greatest pro minence in a history professedly Berytian, and was there fore a Byblian ; and finally Pliilo was a fanatical Euhemer- ist, and the admitted object of the work was to make converts to that system. The materials used by Philo were, however, in all probability mainly genuine, but so cut and clipped to fit his system that they must be used with great caution and constantly controlled by the few scattered data that can be gathered from authentic sources. The two triads of Hannibal s oath to Philip of Macedon (Polyb., vii. 9, 2) Sun, Moon, and Earth, and Rivers, Meadows, and Waters contain the objects on which all Phoenician worship is based. Rivers were generally sacred to gods, trees to goddesses ; mountains, too, were revered as nearer than other places to heaven ; and bretylia or meteoric stones were held sacred as divine messengers. Philo s second generation of men (Genos and Genca) first worshipped the plants of the earth, till a drought ensued and they stretched out their hands towards the sun as the Lord of Heaven or Beelsamen (Baal-Shamaim), an indication that the worship of heavenly bodies was regarded as a later development of religion. Baudissin, on the other hand, has lately maintained that all Phoenician deities were astral and only manifested themselves in the terrestrial sphere, that the things holy to them on earth were symbols, not dwelling-places, of the gods. And there seems to be little doubt that this was the theory of later Phoenician theology, as appears in the legend of the fiery star of the queen of heaven that fell into the holy stream at Aphaca (Sozom., ii. 5, 5), in the coincidence of the names of sacred rivers with those of the celestial gods, and in the name Zei&amp;gt;s GaAacro-tos (Hesych.) for a Sidonian sea-god. But surely this theory was devised to remove a contradiction which theologians felt to be involved in the popular religion. In the latter logical consistency is not necessarily to be presumed, and astral and terrestrial worships might well exist side by side. In historical times the astral element had the ascendency ; the central point in religion, and the starting-point in all Phoenician mythology, was the worship of the Sun, who has either the Moon or (as the sun-god is also the heaven-god) the Earth for wife. In Byblus, for_which alone we possess some details of the local cult, El was the founder and