ecide as to the Egyptian and Assyrian theories, The selection of the characters to which the Pheenician are referred seems arbitrary, and a succession of intermediate formsis wanting. Either view seems to be historically possible, neither proved. The Phenician alphabet like most others, seems to have only incompletely represented the sounds of the language. Two words beginning in Pheenician with the same letter are represented in Greek by different letters, s=Tupos, x= Σιδών. These characters are identical with those found on the Siloam inscription in Juda and the Moabite Stone, and on early Jewish coins, and may thus be called Canaanitish (in the large sense) as well as Phenician. The early Greek alphabet was also derived from the Pheenician (cf. Herod. v. 58), though soon altered in many ways to suit the needs of the Greek language.
(6) The language of Pheenicia is pure Semitic, and belongs to the same branch of that family as the Hebrew, the Moabitish, and the Semitic glosses in the Tel el-Amarna letters, forming with these (and probably other dialects of which we have no remains) the so-called Canaanitish group. The materials for an exact comparison with Hebrew are wanting. The inscriptions (with the single exception of CJS i. 5, see above under ‘ Sources’) are later than the 6th cent., and mostly of the 4th and later, when the language h probably suffered a certain amount of decay. The Punic passages in Plautus are of the end of the 3rd cent., and can be used only with care (cf. Néldeke, Die semitischen Sprachen, p. 25f.), and the vowel letters in the inscriptions are rare. The consonante
PHCENICIA
are the same as in Hebrew, but many words were probably, pronounced with different vowel sounds rom those used in the same words in Hebrew. The wau conversive with the imperfect, so familiar in Hebrew, is wanting in the Phenician, which, on the other hand, seems to have formed a kind of luperfect with kan (CIS 93). Words, too, that ame rare or poetical in Hebrew were in common use in Phenician. The later language shows the same weakening and confusion of gutturals that marks late Hebrew.
LirzraTurE.—On the Phonician alphabet see de Rougé, Memoires sur Vorigine égyptienne de Valphabet phénicien, 1874 ; Deecke, ‘‘ Ursprung d. altsemitischen Alphabets aus d. neu- gsm Keilschrift,’ in ZDMG xxxi. 102{f.; and cf. Zimmern, 4d. |. 667 ff.; Isaac Taylor’s, The Alphabet 2, where the Egyptian ΠΕΣ is accepted ; Ball, ‘Origin of the Phonician Alphabet,’ in PSBA, 1893, 892-408; Berger, L’écriture dans lantiquité. Conder, in The Bible and the East, p. 74 ff., supports the Cypriote
origin.
riba inesciyeoese enonllented in the French ΟἹ ; the words in them are collected in Bloch’s Phenicisches Glossar (Berlin, 1891); and esp. by Lidzbarski, Handbuch d. nordsemitischen Epi ΠΡΙ Ε Vihear 1898), The wordsin Plautus are discussed ἘΠῚ ildemeister in Ritschl’s edition of Plautus, vol. ii. fasc. 5 ¢ pzig, 1884). A fuller discussion of these by Prof. D. 5
argoliouth will appear in a forthcoming number of the Classical Review. The only grammar of Phosnician is Schréder’s Phaeni- zische Grammatik (Halle, 1869). Of., further, article on Lanavaae or OT.
vy. CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT.—The Phe- nicians never appear in history as one united people under one government. Their pouGee! history Tesolves i into the history of their chief cities. Naturally a quiet and unwarlike people (Jg 187), the country folk were probably content with the simpler forms of local or pecsisecbal government usual among Eastern ples, depending for help
in time of need upon the city that was nearest to them or which they had originally left as settlers. In the cities the government was more conven- tional. Kings of Sidon, Tyre, Gebal, Kition, and Idalion are mentioned in the OT, in foreign
records, and on the Phenician inscriptions. From Menander’s list of the kings of Tyre we can see that the monarchic power remained in the same family, except when revolutions broke the order of succession. As to the constitution of the court circle, we can only gather from our knowledge of Carthage, and of the Semitic states bordering on Pheenicia, that there existed an aristocracy which probably owed its existence in early times to pro- minent position in the tribes. In some of the cities a body of ten chiefs (Justin, xvii. 6. 1) seems to have been prominent in international business. This seems to have been part of a larger council of a hundred men. Of the organization of the traders, the most important part of the population, we know nothing. A tradition in Justin (xviii. 3) seems to indicate the presence of a large slave pulation. Among the different cities it was inevitable that one or another should gain some pre-eminence over the others, This is historically proved by the fact that at one time Sidon gave its name to the Pheenician people as a whole, while in OT times Tyre evidently had some kind of supre- macy. For the Persian period Diodorus Siculus (xvi. 41) mentions a federal government with head- quarters at Tripolis, where Arvad, Sidon, and Tyre held a common council. Even when under the sway of foreign powers, the chief Phcenician cities seem to have always maintained a large amount of self-government in internal affairs; and under the Romans we know that Sidon, Tyre, and Tripolis retained the rank of ‘ free cities,’ with the right to appoint their own councils and magistrates.