(c) Greater Phenicia.—A sketch of the history of Pheenicia would be incomplete without a notice of the many ports, especially in the Mediterranean, where its people settled, and from which came many of those articles of commerce which made them renowned. Some of these settlements can be traced back to the 15th cent. B.c. There may have been some before that time; but records fail us. In some of these places the Phoenicians seem to have had real colonies, in others merely ‘ fac- tories,’ where their traders received the wares of the neighbouring country to export them to their own land. Cyprus was very early settled by them, and although the Greeks afterwards took much of the island, the towns of Kition and Idalion flour- ished up to Roman times (see Cyprus). The islands of the ASgean Sea (including Crete, Rhodos,
Kythsra, and many others) were occupied by them —as many scholars hold—even in pre-Homeric times (cf. Bérard, ‘Les Phéniciens et les potmes Homériques,’ in Revue de Vhistoire des Religions, xxxix. 173-228 and 419-460). The advance of the Greeks, and consequent expulsion of the Pheenicians from these islands, seems to have led to an in- creased interest in the settlements in the West Mediterranean, some of which, at least, had been founded long before. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, Gaulos, Tarshish, and Gades in Spain, various places in N. Africa, including the famous Carthage, were settled by them, and were in con- stant communication with the home country. Many of these settlements have been assigned by history and tradition to certain Pheenician cities, e.g. Utica and Carthage to Tyre, and Carthage itself seems to have established new trading ports on the opposite coast of the Mediterranean. (For settlements outside the Mediterranean, see para- graph in small type below). ΜῈ
ii. THE PEOPLE.—The origin of the Phoenician people is wrapped in mystery. According to their own traditions of the 5th cent. B.c., they dwelt formerly by the Erythreean Sea (Herod. vii. 89 ; cf. i. 1), te. the Indian Ocean, including the Persian Gulf. This tradition is repeated by other classical authors—Strabo, Justin, Pliny, e¢ al. Justin en- larges the story by a statement that an earthquake was the cause of their movement, and that they dwelt then near the ‘ Assyrian lake’ (XVIII. iii. 2) ; and Strabo (who in I. ii. 35 regards the story of the migration as untrustworthy) says (in XVI. iii. 4) that in the Persian Gulf are two islands—Turos and Arados—whose temples resemble those of the Phenicians, and that the inhabitants of these islands say that the Phcenician islands are named after them, and their towns are settlements from themselves. Sayce (note to Herod. i. 1) suggests that the similarity of names gave rise to the whole legend, and points out that the names are really different, as according to Ptolemy and Pliny the real name of the island in the Persian Gulf was Tylos, while the Pheenician city Tyre was Ἂς, and the Phenician Arados was properly Arvad. Fail- ing historical evidence, we are led to such testimony as we can get from language, anthropology, and religion. his is avowedly incomplete at the present time; but the material available shows the Pheenicians of the Syrian coast to have been a Semitic people, who took part in the great migration to the West which at different times sent also the Aramans to Syria and the Hebrews and their kin to Palestine.
It has long been known that the activity of the Phonicians was not confined to the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, and it has been suspected that the Phoenicians of the Syrian coast were perhaps only one branch of a race which had settle- ments in other parts of the Semitic world. A work entitled, Punt und die siidarabischen Reiche, by Eduard Glaser, the famous traveller in South Arabia, appeared in the end of 1899, in which evidence has been gathered from the records of Egypt and the South Arabian fnscriptions to show that these conjec- tures are supported by history. According to Glaser, the land of Punt, so often mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions, was a large part of the coasts of East Africa and South Arabia. Thence the Egyptians obtained incense, gold, etc. From this land were established several colonies, including Mashonaland and Socotra. But the remains in the former place are evidently Phenician, various signs indicate the identity of the races inhabiting the land of Punt, and the name itself is identical with ‘ Phenician.’ Thus we must in future speak of two branches of the Phnician people,a Northern on the coasts of Syria, and a Southern (of the same race, language, and origin as the Northern) which left the Erythrean Gulf at a very early period, and ceased from that time to influence the other members of the race. The confirmation or otherwise of this theory must depend on earner evidence of the Babylonian and 8. Arabian
ptions.
iv. ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE.—(a) The Phe- nician alphabet is purely consonantal, and consists of 22 charasters, written from right to left. Tra-
PHENICIA
dition says that this was the first alphabet in vented— ‘Pheenices primi, fama si creditur, aus! Mansuram rudibus vocem signare figuris.'—(Lucan),
It is, however, generally recognized that the in- vention consists in the taking over of signs used originally by other peoples to denote syllables, and the adaptation of these to denote simple sounds, together with the simplification of what were originally pictorial or hieroglyphic characters. Together with this we must recognize that some letters were not taken over directly, but were formed by slight modifications of those thus re- ceived (thus the sign for the monet aspirate ᾧ is formed from that of the simple A by the addition of a stroke to the left). Various opinions are held as to the originalsource. Until lately the favourite view has been that the Phcenicians borrowed their characters from the Egyptian. This was also held in ancient times, and is mentioned in Tacitus— ‘Primi per figuras animalium Agyptii sensus mentis effingebant . . . et literarum semet inven- tores perhibent; inde Pheenicas, quia mari pre- pollebant, intulisse Gracie gloriamque adeptos, tamquam Teppererint que μὲν eetea (Ann. xi. 14). Supporters of this opinion are divided as to whether the Pheenician characters were derived directly from the hieroglyphs or from the hieratic writing. Much has been written of late to show that the Babylono-Assyrian cuneiform is the real source of the Pheenician alphabet. This opinion was also held in early times. Pliny says, ‘ Litteras semper arbitror Assyriis fuisse, sed alii apud Aigyptios a Mercurio, ut Gellius, alii apud Syros repertas volunt’ (Nat. Hist. vii. § 37). The widespread use of the cuneiform characters about the time to which is assigned the invention of the Pheenician alphabet, is used to support this hypothesis. A third view held by some corresponds in some degree with the last mentioned by Pliny, and derives the Phenician characters from the Cypriote, which are connected with the so-called Hittite characters. This opinion is altogether too undeveloped at Peeeene to be judged properly. Nor is it easy to