A few words may be added here on Phoenician the- ogony and cosmogony, which, as far as they are known to us, give evidence of the enormous amount of thought bestowed by the thinkers of that people on the enigma of creation. The Deity was, in accordance with the an- tique mind, presupposed. Speculation never questioned its eternal existence, the original quality of each of its two principal — male and female — sides, and the way in which, out of their union, sprang the universe. Accord- ing to the system of Eudemus, Time, Desire, and Mist formed the first triad of existence; and from the embrace of the last two sprang air and " motion of air," out of which again was produced the mundane egg. The cos- mogony, according to Sanchoniatho on the other hand, assumes, in the beginning of all things, a gloomy and
agitated air, and a turbid chaos of thickest darkness, which for a long course of ages was without limits. The wind becoming enamoured with its own essence, Mot sprang into being, as a kind of thick, putrid fluid, which contained all germs. The first beings created from this were without intellect; and from them, again, came in- tellectual beings, Zopha-Semin (D^HIB hS1^), watch- men, or beholders of the heavens. "And it began to shine Mot, also the sun and the moon, the stars and the great planets. The glowing sun, heating sea and earth, raised vapors, which produced clouds and winds, light- ning and thunder, and at their crash the beings began to awake in terror, and male and female moved on land and sea." The wind Kolpia further produced with Baau (1H3 of Genesis) Aion and Protogonos, the first mor- tals. Aion first discovered the art of nutriment from fruit-trees; and their children, Genos and Genea, who dwelt in Phoenicia, first worshipped Baalsamin, or the sun. Genos begat Light, Fire, and Flame, out of whom came giants, Cassius, Libanus, Antilibanus, and Brat hys. Their sons invented the art of constructing huts of reeds and meshes and the papyrus, and the art of mak- ing coverings for the body out of the skins of wild beasts. After them came the inventors of hunting and fishing, the discoverers of iron, of the art of navigation, etc. One of their descendants was Elyon (probably the God whose priest was Melchisedec, Gen. xiv, 18, etc.; Abraham, in his reply to the king of Sodom, emphati- cally adds "Jehovah" to El-Elyon), who with his wife Beruth begat an Autochthon, afterwards called Uranos (heaven), and his sister Ge (earth). They had issue four sons, Ibis, Betylus, Dagon, and Atlas ; and three daugh- ters, Astarte, Iihea, and Dione. Chronos deposed his father, subsequently killed him, and travelled about in the world. He then assigned the whole of Phoenicia to Astarte, to Athene he gave Attica, and to Taut Egypt. The country being involved in war, he offered up his two sons, Jeud and Muth (rHO, Pluto), in expiation. He afterwards bestowed the city of Byblus upon the goddess Baaltis (Dione), and Berytus upon Poseidon and the Kabiri. Taut made the first images of the countenances of the gods Chronos and Dagon, and formed the sacred characters of the other elements; and the Kabiri, the seven sons of Sydyc, and their eighth brother Asklepios, first set them down in memory. "Thabion," Eusebius (Pr. Ev. i, 10) continues, " the first hierophant, allegorized these things subsequently, and, mixing the facts with physical and mundane phenomena, he deliv- ered them down to those that celebrated orgia, and to the prophets who presided over the mysteries, and to their successors, one of whom was Isiris, the inventor of three letters, the brother of Chna, the first Phoeni- cian."
6. Language. — The most important intellectual in- vention of man, that of letters, was universally asserted by the Greeks and Romans to have been communicated by the Phoenicians to the Greeks. The earliest written statement on the subject is in Herodotus (v, 57, 58), who incidentally, in giving an account of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, says that they were by race Gephy- rasans; and that he had ascertained by inquiry that the Gephyrreans were Phoenicians, among those Phoenicians who came over with Cadmus into Boeotia, and instruct- ing the Greeks in many other arts and sciences, taught them likewise letters. It was an easy step from this to believe, as many of the ancients believed, that the Phoenicians invented letters (Lucan, Pharsal. iii, 220, 221). This belief, however, was not universal; and Pliny the Elder expresses his own opinion that they were of Assyrian origin, while he relates the opinion of Gellius that they were invented by the Egyptians, and of others that they were invented by the Syrians {Nat. Hist, vii, 57). Now, as Phoenician has been shown to be nearly the same language as Hebrew, the question arises whether Hebrew throws any light on the time or the mode of the invention of letters, on the question
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of wIki Invented them, or on the universal belief of an- tiquity thai the knowledge of them was communicated i" the Greeks by the Phoenicians. I'he answer is a< follows: Hebrew Literature i- as silent as Greek litera- ture respecting the precise date ol the invention of let- ters, and the name of the inventor <>r inventors; bnl the names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet are in accordance with the belief thai the Phoenicians commu- nicated the knowledge of letters to the •■neks: tor many of the names of letters in the Greek alphabet, though without meaning in the Greek, have a meaning in the corresponding letters of Hebrew. For example: the first four letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, are nol to be explained through the Greek language; but the corresponding tirst four letters of the Hebrew alphabet, viz. Alepb, Beth, Gimel, Da- leth, being essentially the same words, are to be ex- plained in Hebrew. Tims in Hebrew Aleph or Eleph means an ox; Beth or Bayith a house ; Gamal, a camel ; and Deletb a door. The same is essentially, though n< >t always so clearly, the case with almost all the sixteen earliest Greek letters said to have been brought over from Phoenicia b3 Cadmus, \ B FA E FIKAMNOIIPST; and called on this account Phoenician or Cadmeian let- ters (Herodot, /. c; Pliny. Hist. Nat. vii. .".7: .1. li. GreekGram. i, p. 2). The sixth letter, afterwards dis- used, and now generally known by the name of l>i- gamma (from Dionysius, i. 20), was unquestionably the same as the Hebrew letter Yav (a hook). Moreover, as to writing, the ancient Hebrew letters, substantially the same as Phoenician, agree closely with ancient Greek letters— a fact which, taken by itself, would not prove that the Greeks received them from the Phoeni- cians, as the Phoenicians might possibly have received them from the Greeks; but which, viewed in connec- tion with Greek traditions on the subject, and with the significance of the letters in Hebrew, seems reasonably conclusive that the letters were transported from Phoe- nicia into Greece. It is true thai modern Ilelirew writ- ing and the later Greek writing <<( antiquity have not much resemblance to each other: hut this is owing partly to gradual changes in the writing of Greek let- ters, ami partly to the fact that the character in which Hebrew Bibles are now printed, called the Assyrian or square character, was not the one originally in use anion- i he .u w -. but seems to have been learned in the Babylonian captivity; and afterwards gradually adopted by them on their return to Palestine (Gesenius, Ge&ch. der Hebraischen Sprach* und Schrift, p. 150). See Al- ph \l.i I.