In broadly recapitulating the routes their vessels took around the earth, we have indicated the line of their colonization. We cannot do more in this place than hint at the wanderings of Baal (q. v.), Astarte (q. v.), and Melkarth (q. v.), as the principal allegories in which the myth couched the primitive traditions of their set- tlements abroad. The whole of the Mediterranean, with its islands and coast, had been made theirs by rapid strides. Commencing with neighboring Cyprus, they proceeded to Cythium, to Rhodes, Crete, the Cycladic and Sporadic Isles, Cilicia, Lycia, and Caria, Chios, Sa- mos, Tenedos, Bithynia, the Euxine, Samothrace, Lem- nos, Thasos (whither they had come "in search of Eu- ropa"), Bceotia, and Eubcea. More difficult was the occupation of Sicily and the neighboring islands, where Motya, Machanetti, Panormus, and other cities, testify to their successful settlements. Thence also, by way of Malta, they sailed to Africa, and founded Carthage, which afterwards possessed herself of all the colonies in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. In Sardinia and the Ba- learic Islands they had commercial establishments at Caralis (Cagliari), Minorca, Iviza, Elba. Spain was one of their earliest and principal settlements, where they founded Cadiz, Malago, Belon, Abdarach, and other cit- ies. It is also more than probable, although we have mi distinct evidence on the point, that they had colonies in the tin districts of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, as also on the Baltic. They settled, further, both on the north-west coast of Africa (Mauritania, Cerne), and on its north coast (Hippo, Utiea, Leptis, Hadrumetum). How far Phoenicians may have had a more than tem- porary sojourn in India (Ophir=? Abhira), whither they went by way of the Red Sea, we are unable to determine at present.
5. Reliyion. — The same lack of genuine and authentic information, of which we have spoken before, baffles our endeavors to arrive at anything like a proper under- standing of the real character of the religion of the Phoenicians. The mutilated scraps contained in classi- cal writers can be of as little use for its full reconstruc- tion as the uncertain allusions of the Bible. As to Sanchoniatho. extracts of whose Phoenician writings (in Philo of Byblus's Greek version) are, as has been mentioned above, supposed to have survived in Euse- bius, all that can be said regarding them is that we have more than ample reasons to suspect both the author, the translator, and the Church father, not of wilful mis- interpretation, but of a certain want of candor in doing that full and fair justice to both sides which we expect
from a historian of our day. A few broken votive and sacrificial stones, a few coins and unshapely images, make up the rest of our sources of information for the present. A few years hence, however, we may, if our excavations are carried on with unflagging zeal, and are as successful as they have been of late years, have as ample a supply to work upon as we have now respect- ing the once — hardly fifteen years ago — much more un- known land of Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib, if not with respect even to Greece and Rome. It will be suf- ficient here to indicate that Phoenician, like Canaanitic religion, in general consisted in a worship of the pow- ers of nature under their favorable or creative ( = fe- male), and unfavorable or destroying, yet also begetting ( -male) aspects. Still more concretely were these rep- resented in the different phases of life, as child (Adonis), youth (Esmun), man (Baal-Hercules), or old man (Be- litan) ; again, as kings (Moloch) or queens (Astarte), and other characters most fitting to the idea symbolized in them. Their chief (visible) representatives — the sun, the moon, the planets, and the elements — were re- vered as supreme deities, who, at the same time, were also the special Numina of particular tribes, places, and seasons, and some of their general designations, such as King (-jbE), Lord CjllX), Almighty (£s<), etc., are also found in the Bible. To the supreme class of deities (niJT^Sl S^T^S) belong Baal and Astarte, with their different attributes and ramifications, e. g. Baal- samim, D^a b"n = Zfi'c 'OXv^ttioc, Optimus Max- imus, Baalitan, Baal Ram, Baal Mon ; Baal Melkarth, Xn-.p -yfQ, king of the city (Tyre) ; Astarte = Tanith, ~1^, generally with the epithet H2"), the great one, who appears identical with the Egypto-Persian war- and moon-goddess Tanaith. Corresponding to this triad in the Syro-Sidonian worship, we meet in Northern Phoenicia with the two Sidonian tribes: El (^X) or Kronos, the founder of Byblus and Berytus; Baaltis (T6™3. my lady) — Aphrodite (Astronoe, Beruth) ; and Adonis (Gauas, Eljun, Esmun, etc.). Besides oth- er well-known deities, such as Moloch and Dagon (Der- keto,Atergatis) — for all of which we refer to the special articles treating of them — we find a certain mysterious number of minor gods, variously denominated the strong ones (Kabiri), or the children of the Just One (Zadik, p"1"^, "PSD), the principal patrons of the seafarers, worshipped alike by all the Phoenician tribes (Dioscuri. Paitaci: Chusor-Phtha [Chusartis], Astarte, Cadmus [Clp] or Taaut, Adod, and principally Esmun ["jECX =iEsculapius]). These, together with the infernal or Chthonic deities, Muth (ME = death), further a god- dess known only to us as " Persephone" (daughter of Jephta with the Samaritan Sichemites), or Dido (rYTi*U=the wandering one), or generally Elothi= my lady, my goddess, etc., are, as far as we know at present, the chief representatives of the Phoenician Pantheon, which, be it observed by the way, appears to have been almost as catholic in the reception of foreign deities as that of imperial Rome. Like the Greeks, and after them the Romans, the Phoenicians also deified certain natural phenomena and "elements" (sun, moon, stars, water, lire, earth, air), personal attributes, abstract ideas, allegories, the seasons of life, of the year, of the day, trades and professions, and even animals: prob- ably as symbols only at first. The serpent (Agatho- diemon, Esmun, Typhon), the bull (Ashteroth-Karna- im), the lion, the ass (symbol of Shemitic Baal-worship) f the dog, fishes, doves, goats, etc., are found either repre- senting divinities, or merely sacred to them. Anything like an investigation into the various phases of Phoeni- cian mythology, which, stretching from the remotest prehistoric days far into the first Christian centuries, must needs contain the most contradictory, apparently irreconcilable, elements and data, lies beyond the scope