Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/32

 12 IllSTokY <>F Auf IN Plld.NICIA AM> ITS DKl'ENDENCIKS. so called Canaanitish populations of which the Phoenicians formed the eastern branch. Must we suppose that,, to reach their new home, they traversed the deserts of Arabia by a line of oases, or that they mounted the stream of the Euphrates and descended from its upper stretches upon the lands to the west and south- west ? We cannot tell ; all that we know is that those districts were; conquered from the savage tribes which had occupied them, that the new-comers took possession ot all the sites they fancied from where Aleppo and Damascus now stand, in the north, to the river of Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai in the south, and that while one section threw themselves upon Egypt and founded the power of the shepherd kings, the rest, the Phoenicians of history, settled upon the Syrian coast between Mounts Carmel and Casius, and there, in situations covered on the east by a thick curtain of hills, founded many cities for which a brilliant future was in store. To what family of peoples did the Phoenicians belong ? Relying upon the genealogical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis, some have supposed them to belong to the stem of Cush ; so that they would be cousins of the Egyptians, like the Canaanites, who, according to the same genealogy, were also sons of Ham. 1 But on the other hand since the Phoenician inscriptions have been deciphered it has been recognized that the Phoenician and Hebrew languages resembled each other very narrowly so narrowly that they might almost be called two dialects of one tongue. If this be so, ought we not rather to connect the Phoenicians with that great Semitic race of which the Hebrews are the most illustrious representatives ? We cannot say how close the relationship may have been, but in any case the Phoenicians must have been much more nearly connected with the Hebrews than with the Egyptians and the other nations whom we know as Cushites and Hamitcs. The difference of religion on which so much insistance is placed by those who would derive the Phoenicians and Hebrews from separate stocks, must have resulted from differences in the material conditions and destinies of the two nations. Habits, and, after a time, religious 1 LEPSILS, Die I'o'ikcr und Sprachen Africas. Einleitung Zitr nubischen Gram- matik, Weimar, 1880, pp. xc. cxii. MASPERO, Histoire ancienne, pp. 147-8. PH. BERGKR, La Pheniae, p. 2.