Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/53

 ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS. 33 displaced, and as the horizon of the Phoenicians retired westwards so did the shores known to them by that name, which was never, in truth, very definite in its application. At the period when Phoenician power was at its zenith it signified generally the lands by which the Mediterranean was bordered on the west, just as to Europeans the West Indies meant for centuries the whole conti- nent of America, north and south, with the islands which cluster about it. 1 But whatever the origin of the name may have been, it is certain that Tarshish occupied a very large space in the minds of the Phoenicians. " They called those vessels that went long voyages ships of Tarshish, just as the English called theirs Indiamen even when they did not go near India." These ships must have been more solidly built and of greater tonnage than those engaged in the coasting trade with the ports of Syria and the ygaean, but unfortunately it is not their portraits that we must recognize in those sculptured reliefs of the Sargonid period in which Phoenician galleys are represented. 3 Some of these by their rounded stems and sterns seem to be cargo-carriers (Fig. 8), while others, with a sharp beak or ram, are " men-of-war " (Fig. 9) ; we can point to no monument on which the form and aspect of 1 FR. LENOTJMANT, Tarschisch, Etude d' Ethnographic et de GcograpJ.ie liblique (Revue des Questions historiques, 1882, ist July). 2 PH. BERGER, La Ph'enicie, p. 32. The phrase "ships of Tarshish " is thus employed in several passages of the Bible (i Kings x. 23; 2 Chronicles ix. 31) where actual voyages to Tarshish cannot be referred to, as the question of the moment is the traffic with Ophir, which was carried on by the Red Sea. We may conclude that the expression has the same generic force in this verse from EZEKIEL (xxvii. 25) : " The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market ; and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas." 3 We are enabled to recognize Phoenician galleys in these sculptured ships by the words of the inscription known as The Annals of Sennacherib, where it is related that in order to reach the rebels from Lower Chaldasa, who had taken refuge in the land of Elam, Sennacherib crossed the Persian Gulf in vessels of Syria. The truth of this is, in all probability, that he caused a flotilla to be built by Phoenician carpenters, on the Lower Euphrates, whence he could descend towards the "great sea of the rising sun." The bas-reliefs discovered by Sir Henry Layard must be understood as dealing with the return of the rebels as captives. " The men of Bit-Yaken with their gods and the men of Elam, I captured them, says Senna- cherib, I did not leave one. I embarked them in vessels and transported them to the opposite shore." M. Oppert has furnished us with a translation of this text, which appears in Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. i. p. 40, line 31 et seq. VOL. I. 1'"