Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/43

 ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS. 23 diffusion of Greek culture, came to efface all differences. First there was that of Arvad, which is hardly mentioned by the Greek and Roman historians at all ; it was, however, very ancient, for the Arvadites figure among the sons of Canaan in the genealogies of Genesis, 1 but we know hardly anything of its history. The oblivion in which it has rested is explained by the situation of this group of towns. It was masked, so to speak, by the Lebanon, which cut it off from lower Syria and the valley of the Orontes. It was thus a little aside from the path of those Egyptian and Assyrian conquerors whose disputes for the possession of the country were so often renewed. Moreover it appears that the Arvadites leaving to others the risks and profits that attended voyages to very distant countries, were contented with a coasting trade to Cyprus and Rhodes, and along the southern shores of Asia Minor. Thanks to this prudent commerce the whole district of Arvad became very prosperous. To the south of the island the coast described a wide gulf or bay, not unlike that of Genoa, and bordered with many rich villages and small towns, of which Marath was the chief. 2 The rich shipowners of Arvad had their country houses, their farms, and their tombs upon the main land (see Fig. 6). According to Strabo their island was no more than seven stades, or about 1,416 yards, in circumference; it was therefore small enough for the crowded masses of human beings who found shelter behind its formidable walls (Fig. /) ; there was no room in it for the dead. Gebal, or Byblos was the centre of another Phoenician community which preserved its own individuality until the last days of antiquity. There religious sentiment seems to have been more intense and to have played a more important part than anywhere else in Phoenicia. "Byblos," says M. Renan, "appears more and more to me to have been a sort of Jerusalem of the Lebanon.'' 3 Both in language and in bent of mind the Giblites seem to have been more like the Hebrews than the rest of the Phoenicians. In the great Byblos inscription, which is one of the most precious monuments of Semitic epigraphy, the King Jehawmelek (about 500 B.C.) addresses his great goddess, the lady Baalat-Gebail, in terms which might well, with some exceptions, have issued from the lips 1 Genesis x. 15-18. 2 RENAN, Mission de Phenicie, p. 21. 3 Ibid., p. 215.