THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
1895) has advanced the hypothesis that the Phenician and Canaanitic migration was the second to take place from Arabia, probably between 2800 and 1600 b.c. While there are thus no ethnological or linguistic reasons for regarding the Phenicians as a separate people, the events of history render it possible to speak of them as a nation. In their home, between the open sea and the almost impassable mountains, they became navigators and merchants, rather than an agricultural or pastoral people. Thus, on the one hand, their coherence with the Canaanites became ever more loose; and, on the other hand, their commercial interests developed a fresh bond of union. In Syria they never unfolded a strict nationality, for there was always a number of central points, consisting of the larger cities. The Phenicians accordingly called themselves Sidonians, Giblites, Carthaginians, and the like. To foreigners, however, they all seemed to be of one type, bold seamen, cunning and conscienceless traders. Through their enterprise and good fortune they brought the treasures of Babylonia and Egypt to the west, and thus essentially furthered the subsequent civilization of the Mediterranean lands.
HL Religion: The sources for a knowledge of Phenician religion and cult are scanty. The inscriptions contain little but names of gods whose pronunciation is often uncertain, and many formulas the meaning of which is obscure. The euhemeristic treatise on the cosmogony and theogony of the Phenicians, the " Phenician history " of Sanchuniathon (q.v.), can be used only with caution, if at all, for the older period. It is remarkable that in so maritime a people the cult of seagods was so slightly emphasized. Hesychius mentions a " Zeus of the sea," and at Beirut the eight Kabirs (" great ones, mighty ones ") were held to be the discoverers and patrons of navigation. The fact that in the names of the gods thus far known no allusions to trade or navigation appear seems to imply that the Phenicians developed their religion not on the coast or as seafarers, but in another region where their life was not unlike that of the other Canaanites to whom they were akin.
The Phenician divinities were primarily local
gods. Besides the gods of the cities, there were
gods of the mountains. As possessors
I. Deities, they were called ba'al; as lords, adon; as rulers, melekh (see Moloch, Molech). Their worshipers were gerim, " proteges," or 'abhadhim, " servants." Sexual antitheses were prominent in their religious system. The divinities were usually named after the place where they were honored: Ba'al Zor, the god of Tyre; Ba'al Zidon, the god of Sidon; Ba'alath Gebal, the goddess of Byblus. When the Phenicians founded a new colony, they established there a new seat for the cult of their native gods, whose authority did not transcend the limits of the new settlement. In common parlance the Phenicians spoke of a ba'al or ba'alath without any qualifying phrase (cf. I Kings xviii. 19 sqq.), but there was no divinity so named. The feminine form ba'alath wan relatively rare, its place being taken by 'ashtart, so that Astarte, or Ashtoreth, appears in the Old Testament at the god-
dess -par excellence of the Sidonians (i.e., Phenicians; cf. I Kings xi. 5, 33, xxiii. 13; see Astahtb; Ashera; Baal). Few Phenician gods are known by specific names. The one most frequently mentioned was Melkarth (Hercules), the " King of the City (of Tyre)." Eshmun, greatly honored in Sidon, and compared with iEsculapius, seems to have been a god of health and healing. Proper names often contain the divine names Zd (" Hunter, Fisher "[?]; possibly connected with the name Sidon), Skn, Pmy, and P'm, as well as a goddess Tnt (usually pronounced Tanith). Among the foreign gods were the Egyptian Isis, Osiris, Horus, Bast, and Thoth; the Syrian Resheph and 'Anat; and the Babylonian Tammuz, Hadad, and Dagon. The Phenicians, like the Canaanites, were accustomed to place by the altars sacred stones as the abode of the deity, pillars being substituted later for natural stones. Such pillars were called mazzeba, nazib, or hammanim (see Memorials and Sacred Stones), and were regarded as animate. In the cult of female divinities, the eacred stone was replaced by the sacred post (representing the sacred tree), called Asherah (q.v.). The two pillars in the temple of Melkarth at Tyre (Herodotus, ii. 44; Josephus, Apion, i. 18) doubtless cbnnoted the dualism found in nature. Still other sacred sites had groups of three pillars, apparently typifying a threefold phenomenon of nature.
The narrow local cults were later transcended by the widely worshiped Ba'al Shamem, or " Lord of Heaven," with his " goddess of the heaven of Baal "
(cf. Herodotus, i. 105), who may be 2. Cult. compared with the " queen of heaven "
of Jer. vii. 18, and with the Carthaginian Cffilestis. The signification of the divinity El is uncertain. He seems to have been first honored in Byblus, and was equated with Kronos by the Greeks, who said that he was worshiped with sacrifices of children in Phenicia, Carthage, and Sardinia (see Moloch, Molech). An important list of Carthaginian divinities is given in the deities invoked by Hannibal to witness his treaty with Philip of Macedon (Polybius, vii. 9). In Phenician cult there was nothing to distinguish them from other Canaanites. Sacred enclosures with altars, stones, and trees (posts), a cell or larger house for the image of the divinity (the architecture strongly 'influenced by Egypt), the firstlings of all production! for the deity, animal sacrifices, sacred dances, " votaries," priests, ablutions, and circumcision — all were present. The cosmogony presupposed a tripartite division into heaven, earth, and sea.
IV. History: The earliest mention of the Phenician coast thus far known refers to its conquest by Sargon, king of Agade, in the middle of the third
millennium b.c. Whether, however,
i. Till the this means the Phenicians proper is a
Assyrian problem, and Winckler holds that the
Period, campaign was waged against the pre-
Phenician inhabitants, whose commercial activity and culture were later adopted by the Phenicians from the Arabian desert. About 1400 b.c. the Egyptian power, to which Thothmes III. had subjected the Phenicians a century previous, was waning, the Hittites were entering the