vi. CIVILIZATION AND COMMERCE.—The people were originally, in all probability, largely agri- cultural. The inscription of Thothmes ΠῚ. men- tions among the spoil of Phoenicia, ‘ good bread and various bread, corn in grain, flour. . . and all good fruits of the land.’ But though the agri-
PHCENICIA 8598
cultural class doubtless existed throughout ita history, it soon yielded in importance to those of the Manufacturers, merchants, and seamen, who received raw material from various parts of the known world, and sent it forth again in new and more useful or more beautiful forms, or contented themselves with simply acting as intermediaries with profit to themselves. Their navigation, origin- ally taken up for business purposes, became later a great source of influence and probably of wealth to them, when they provided a navy for their Persian Tulers. Phoenicia was eens mercantile, and was warlike only when commercial life was threatened. Situated on the only part of the Syrian coast that had any pretence to natural harbours, and hemmed in he lofty mountains on the north and east, its people naturally turned to the sea. And so the sea soon carried their ships ; its shells gave them their valuable dyes, and its sand the material for their glass. The meeting of the land trade-routes from Asia and Africa, and of the sea-routes from all parts of the Medi- terranean, made alike the history and the civiliza- tion of Phenicia. The land-routes existed for natural reasons; the sea-routes were due to the skill and enterprise of the sailors who pushed their way from island to island, and cape to cape, until they reached the southern capes of Spain, and passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. Yet the people do not seem to have been very original or inventive, and their chief merit seems to have been rather the power of adapting and fitting for commercial purposes the arts they learned from others. They had, too, the advantage of being able to collect in one place the products of many lands, and thus of producing an effect on the imagination of peoples which gave them a glory not all their own. Glass was one of the manu- factured articles for which they gained much credit, and tradition came to ascribe its invention to them (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 65); but it had been made ‘from time immemorial’ in Egypt, and the art of making it was probably taken by the Pheenicians from that country. The dyed wares of Pheenicia were renowned throughout the ancient world, and the abundance of the murezx on their coasts (see COLOURS in vol. i. p. 457) gave full cueeranity, for the production of the most brilliant colours then known; but the art of dyeing prob- ably came from Babylonia. Their weaving and embroidery were alike famous and sought after ; but we are still ignorant as to how much progress in these arts was due to native workers. Gold, silver, iron, tin, and lead were imported by them long before the days of Ezekiel, and were wrought into forms of beauty that were known to the Homeric poems (Jl. xxiii. 740 ff; Odyss. iv. 618) ; but their artistic forms show undoubted marks of large foreign influence. Amber, it is now known, was dug in Pheenicia itself, but was also probably received by the ordinary trade-routes BS the Baltic, and objects made of it have been found in the ruins of Mycene.
The artistic side of Pheenician life (with a rather large commercial appearance in it) is well repre- sented in the various objects which have been dug up or discovered in Pheenicia itself, but more ex- tensively in Cyprus and Carthage and a few more of the old Pheenician colonies. The pottery dis- covered belongs mostly to the Greco-Roman times, and most of its excellences seem to be due to foreign influence. Earlier specimens, supposed to be Pheenician, are both of the painted and incised varieties, but are not at all remarkable. The metal-work is more interesting, and the statuettes of bronze are curious if not particularly beautiful. The bronze bowls of Cyprus and the celebrated cup (discovered at Preneste) of silver, overlaid
860 PHGNICIA
PH ENICIA
a —
with gold, with figures in low-relief, alike bear witness to the influence of Egyptian and Assyrian art. The same applies to the seals and cylinders, which do not usually show a very fine finish, and are generally of serpentine, sometimes of glass, etc. The chief feature of this sculpture was the application of colour to give emphasis to certain parts of the figure. Their architecture is only partially known to us from very imperfect remains. A marked feature in their building is the employ- ment of the natural solid rock, as far as possible. This is the case with the old walls of Sidon, much of the funeral architecture, and the famous mono- lith house of Amrith. There seems to have been no vault in Pheenician architecture, the roof being terraced, as in Syria at the present day. The columns, cornices, and other decorations are almost entirely foreign, largely Egyptian. The tombs were in caves, and sarcophagi were used, and sometimes massive monuments like the so-called ‘Hiram’s tomb’ towered above the burying-place. The architecture of their temples was probably Egyptian. That in all these arts the Phenicians were reputed to be skilful workmen we know from the OT account of the relations between Solomon and Hiram of Tyre. A namesake of the Pheenician king made for the temple at Jerusalem the two great pillars of bronze, the molten sea, and other objects of beauty and utility (1 K 7ff.). To recon- struct these from the descriptions given has been a desire of many writers on ancient art, but there is and must be much uncertainty as to the details of the work. See art. PILLAR.