Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/843

 PHCENICIA 807 civil troubles (Sallust, Jug., 78), and is therefore presumably one of the oldest. Less certain are the accounts that the sister cities (Ea and Sabratha were founded, the former by Phoenicians from Sicily, the latter from Tyre (Sil. Ital., iii. 256 sq.). The district Emporia on the Lesser Syrtis was named from its many Phoenician trading towns. Here, on the river Cinyps, corn produced three- hundredfold, and a great trade-road led inland to the land of the Garamantes. That the commercial town of Tacape (Kabis) and the island of Muninx (Jirba), with its purple-dyeing trade, were Phoe nician is proved by inscriptions, and Capsa, in inland Numidia, was deemed a foundation of the Tyrian Hercules (Oros., v. 15). Among the Phoenician towns in Africa proper Achulla was Melitan (Steph., s.v. &quot;&quot;AxoXXa&quot;), Lesser Leptis and Hadrumctum Tyrian (Pliny, v. 76 ; Solin., 27, 9), as was also Aoza (Menander), that is, rather the L T zita of Strabo and Ptolemy (cp. Wilmanns on C.I.L., viii. 68), 5| miles inland from Leptis, than Auzia in inland Maure- tania. On the north coast Carthage and Utica are Tyrian colonies, and probably also Hippo Zarytus, though Sidon, on a coin, claims it and other Tyrian colonies as her daughters (Movers, Phonizicr, ii. 2, p. 134). The unidentified town of Canthele and the island Eudeipne are called Liby-Phcenician (Steph., s.rv.), and this name in later times denoted the Phoenicians in Africa apart from and in contrast to Carthage. The Semitic populations were thickly sown over all this region, but we cannot generally distinguish Phoenician colonies, Carthaginian foundations, and native settlements that had become Punic. Chalce, on the coast east of Oran, in the country of the Masa&amp;gt;syli, was Phoenician, but their great domain was the Atlantic coast of Mauretania. Tingis and Zelis, if originally Berber, became thoroughly Phoenician cities (Mela, ii. 6, 9 ; Strabo, iii. 140); the chief colony here was Lixus (Ps.-Scylax, 112), a city accounted greater than Carthage. Southward, on the so-calleol KO.XTTOS EjUTroptKoj, and onwards to the mouth of the Dra river Tyrian colonies lay thick, and here a great trade-route went inland to the country of the Blacks. These colonies were ruined by the invasion of the Pharusii and Nigritoe (Strabo, xvii. 826), who spread destruction just as did the Almoravids when they issued from the same region in the llth century ; the Carthaginians saved the rem nant of their kinsmen by senoling Hanno to found the new colony of Thymiaterium and plant 30,000 Liby- Phoenicians in the old ports of Karikon Teichos, Gytte, Acra, Melitta, and Arambys. The most westerly point reached by the Phoenicians was the For tunate Island (the largest of the Canaries, probably), which later fancy painted in glowing colours after intercourse with so distant a region had ceased (Diod., v. 20). The trading connexions of the Phoenicians reached far beyond their most remote colonies, and it must have been their knowledge of Africa which encouraged Pharaoh Xecho to send a Phoenician expedition to circumnavigate Africa. This greatest feat of ancient seamanship was actually accom plished in 611-605 B.C., at a time when the mother-country had already lost its independence, and the colonial empire had but a shadow of its former splendour. The power of Tyre rested directly on her colonies, which, unlike the Greek colonies, remained subject to the mother-city ; we read of rebellions in Utica and Citium which were put down by arms. The colonies paid tithes of all their revenues and sometimes also of booty taken in war to the Tyrian Hercules, and sent envoys to Tyre for his chief feast. But Tyre was too remote long to exercise as effective a control over her dependencies as was possible to the more favourably placed Carthage ; the relation gradually became looser, and the more substantial obligations of the colonies ceased to be discharged ; yet Carthage certainly paid tithes to the Tyrian Hercules as late as the middle of the 6th century B.C. Fragments of History. Josephus (Ant., viii. 5, 3, and Ap., i. 17, 18) has fortunately preserved extracts of two Hellenistic historians, Dius and Menander of Ephesus, which supply at least the skeleton of the history of the golden age of Tyre. From them we learn that Hiram (or rather Hlrom) I., son of Abibal, reigned from 980 to 946 B.C. He enlarged the insular town to the east by filling up the so-called fvpvX^pov, united the temple of Baal-Shamaim with the main island by a mole, placed in it a golden pillar, and splendidly renewed the temples of Hercules l and Astarte. The inhabitants of Utica so the text must be corrected 1 This is the Ageuorium at the northern extremity of the island (Arr., ii. 24). Except in this point the topography of Renan (Miss, de Phen., p. 546 sq., and PI. Ixix.) is here followed. having ceased to pay tribute, Hiram reduced them in a victorious expedition, after which he founded the feast of the awaking of Hercules in the month Peritius. The Tyrian annals also mentioned the connexion of Hiram with Solomon king of Jerusalem. The relations of Phoeni cians and Israelites had been generally friendly before this ; it appears from Judges v. 17, Gen. xlix. 13, 20, that Asher, Zebulon, and Dan acknowledged some dependence on Sidon, and had in return a share in its commerce ; and the only passage in the older period of the judges which represents Israelites as subject to Sidonians, and again casting off the yoke, is Judges x. 12, which perhaps refers to the time of power of the Canaanites of Hazor (Graetz, i. 412). The two nations drew closer together under the kings. Hiram built David s palace (2 Sam. v. 11), and also gave Solomon cedar and fir-trees, as well as workmen for his palace and temple, receiving in exchange large annual payments of oil and wine, and finally the cession of a Galikean district (Cabul), in return for the gold he had supplied to decorate the interior of the temple. The temple was quite in Phce- nician style, as appears particularly in the two pillars Jachin and Boaz. We may also judge that it was Hiram s temples that led Solomon to propose to himself a similar work. 2 One commercial result of the alliance with Solomon was the united expedition from Eziongeber on the Gulf of Akaba to Ophir (Malabar). 3 The oldest known Phoenician inscription (C.I.S., No. 5) is of a servant of &quot;Hiram king of the Sidonians,&quot; a title which, as we have seen, is quite suitable for the king of Tyre. Hiram s grandson Abdas- tarte I. (929-920) was murdered by his foster-brothers, and the eldest took the regal title (920-908), but in the last twelve years of his reign he shared his throne with a scion of the old house, [Abd]Astarte II. (908-896). His brother Astharym or Abdastharym (896-887) was murdered by a third brother Phelles, who, in turn, after a reign of but eight months, was slain by Ithobal I., priest of Astarte, whose reign (887-855) marks a return to more settled rule. Ithobal was beloved of the gods, and his intercession put an end to a year of drought which Josephus recognized as that which is familiar to us in the history of Elijah and Ahab. In 1 Kings xvi. 3 1 Ithobal appears as Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians. At this time the Tyrians still continued to ex pand mightily. Botrys in Phoenicia and Aoza in Africa are foundations of Ithobal ; the more famous Carthage owed its foundation to the civil discords that followed on the death of King Metten I. (849-820). According to the legend current in later Carthage (Justin, xviii. 4,3-6,9), Metten s son Phygmalion (820-773), who began to reign at the age of nine, slew, when he grew up, his uncle Sicharbas, the priest of Hercules and second man in the kingdom, in order to seize his treasures. The wife of Sicharbas was Elissa, Phygmalion s sister, and she fled and founded Carthage. Truth and fable in this legend are not easy to disentangle, but as Elissa is named also in the Tyrian annals she is probably historical. From the time of Ithobal downwards the further progress of Phoenicia was threatened by a foreign power. The older campaigns of the empires of the Euphrates and Tigris against the Mediterranean coast had left no abiding results neither that of the Chaldteans in 1535 or 1538 (Eus., Can., No. 481), nor that of Tiglath Pileser I., c. 1120 B.C. 4 - The date 11 or 12 Hiram which Josephus gives for the building of the temple (Ant., viii. 3, 1 ; Ap. i. 18) must in the Tyrian annals have referred to the cutting of wood in Lebanon for the native temples, which Josephus then misinterpreted by 1 Kings v. 6[20] sq. 3 So Caldwell, Comp. Gram. o/Draridian Languages, p. 66 ; Burnell, Indian Antiquary, 1872, p. 230. The decisive argument is that the Hebrew word for &quot; peacocks&quot; can only be the Tamil tokei [see, how ever, OPHIK]. 4 He had the control of the ships of the Aradians ; Mthiaut, Ann. des rois d Assyrie, p. 50.