Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/40

 20 HISTORY or ART IN Pun NICIA AND ITS DKI-KN-DKNCIES. their supremacy extended to Hnmath, on the other side of the mountains, in the valley of the Orontes. While the Arvaclites thus enjoyed an uncontested supremacy in the north, the Syrians dominated, in the same fashion, the: whole of southern Phu-nicia, between the mouth of the Leontes and the country of the Philistines. For many centuries the other towns of that region were hardly more than provincial branches, so to speak, of Tyre. Tsor means a rock, and the modern name Sour is therefore more like the- ancient name than the Greek Ti'pos, or Tyre, which has been put into general use by the classic writers. Like those of Arvad, the founders of Tyre chose an island for the site of their to an. When they established themselves upon it it must have been separated from the main land by about three- quarters of a mile of water, which was quite enough for defence ; it put Tyre out of reach of any enemy but one who should be master of the sea. To compare small things with great, Tyre had a geographical situation analogous to that in which so much of the strength of England lies. She could defy oriental con querors like the kings of Xineveh and Babylon, and it was not until Alexander joined the island to the main land by an artificial isthmus that she fell. The creation of this causeway had other effects than the destruction of Tyre's impregnability. It arrested the passage of the sand which the currents swept along the coast, so that the harbours of the Phoenician city silted rapidly up, and in these days there is but one left, that which used to be called the Sidon harbour, which can receive a few small vessels. As for the other, the Egyptian harbour, it is so completely obliterated that modern explorers grope for its site, and even those who have most carefully examined the peninsula are not in accord as to where it was situated. 1 A sketch that we borrow from M. Renan shows what he thinks as to the position of the two harbours' 2 (Fig. 5)- The rocky island, or rather the group of rocky islands which were afterwards united and enlarged artificially to form the soil of 1 Upon this difficult question of topography see KENAN'S Mission de Phenicie, iv. ch. i. M. Renan recites and discusses the opinions of his predecessors, MM. de Berton, Poulain de Bossay, Movers, and others who have tried to throw light upon the same problem. 1 The shaded spaces show the ground filled in by Hiram, the lines of asterisks the actual trend of the shore.