Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/114

 92 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. priority of Phoenician settlement by another road. The civiliza- tion of Phoenicia was entirely derived from Egypt, Chaldsea and Assyria, and was far older than that of Greece, besides , which Cyprus was nearer to the coast of Syria than to that of Ionia. The Phoenicians put themselves in movement sooner than the Greeks, and as they had a shorter distance to go, they must have arrived first. However, it is likely that the early colonists included members of other Syrian tribes. The name of Amathos recalls that of Hamath, a well-known city in the upper valley of the Orontes ; while Kittim, or Chittim, the vocable used by the Hebrew scribes in speaking of Cyprus, reminds us of those Khetas who were so long masters of northern Syria. 1 It was on the southern and eastern coasts that the Phoenician influence was first established, and there it had the longest duration ; the most incontestably Syrian towns in the island were KLtion, Paphos and Amathos, and they were all on the south coast. The first-named of the three seems to have been the oldest and most important of all the Phoenician settlements, 2 and to have carried on the liveliest trade with the continent and the interior of the island. Its name (as in the Kittim of the Hebrews) was given to the rest of the island, and we find that the Jewish prophets applied it indiscriminately to the whole of that western world which they looked upon as the dependency of Phoenicia. 3 As for Paphos and Amathos we have already described their sacred character ; Idalion and Golgos, in the same region, were perhaps less populous ; but their temples, and especially that of Idalion, were hardly less celebrated even in the fourth century. Scylax calls Lapethus, on the northern coast, a " city of the Phoenicians." 4 1 The geographical term applied to Cyprus in the Bible is there written Kittim with a kaf, but various things allow us to suppose that kaf had two pronunciations, one hard and the other aspirated. This would explain the orthography XeVt/Aa, XeVi/xos, adopted by JOSEPHUS (Ant. Jud. i. vi. i). If the latter corresponded to the real pronunciation of the word it is possible that this was at bottom the same as Kheta or Hittite, when the initial consonant was a heth. M. Renan thinks this primitive identity not unlikely. 2 Cicero, in speaking of Zeno, the stoic philosopher, calls him a Phoenician because he was born at Kition (JDe Finibus, iv. 20). Suidas does the same. 3 ISAIAH xxiii. i and 2 ; Numbers xxiv. 24. 4 SCYLAX, Periplus, 103, AaTn/tfos, ^OIVIKOJV. Ch. Muller has clearly proved