EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 15 



that town, but afterwards they were manufactured all over Phoenicia, 

 and particularly at Tyre. Among the products of Phoenician in- 

 dustry we must also mention the numerous ornaments and the articles 

 whose value depends largely on their workmanship. The trade of 

 barter which they had so long maintained with barbaric races, amongst 

 whom these objects always find an appreciative market, had incited 

 the Phoenicians to apply themselves to these industries. Chains of 

 artistically worked gold were worn by Phoenician navigators in Homer's 

 time, and Ezekiel mentions their curious work in ivory, which they 

 procured through Assyria from India, and from Ethiopia. Accident 

 has preserved the names of only a small number of the articles pro- 

 duced by the Phoenicians, but the existence of these among a rich 

 and luxurious people implies the existence of others. 



The Phoenician religion was a worship of personified forces of 

 nature, especially of the male and female principles of reproduction. 

 It was in a popular and simple form a worship of the sun, the moon, 

 and the five planets, regarded as intelligent powers actively affecting 

 human life. . . . And the Phoenician religion not only consecrated 

 licentiousness, it also sanctioned cruelty. Living children were 

 offered as burnt sacrifices to Baal as well as to Moloch. One can 

 scarcely understand how human sacrifices could have been endured 

 by an intelligent people; but this abominable ritual was in force in 

 all the colonies, and especially at Carthage, where during the siege of 

 the city by Agathocles, about 307 B.C., two hundred boys of the best 

 families were offered as burnt sacrifices to the planet Saturn. 



Though we have but few fragments of Phoenician antiquities and 

 literature, we at least know their system of writing. It is now proved 

 that the Phoenicians did not invent writing ; they merely communi- 

 cated letters to the Greeks. . . . The Greeks adopted the Phoenician 

 characters with only a few modifications ; the Latin races used the 

 same letters designed more simply ; they had received them at a 

 very remote date, for the Latin tongue was a sister not a daughter of 

 the Greek. The French, Spanish, and Italian languages are all 

 derived from the Latin and use the same characters, while even the 

 Teutonic languages, like English and German, have adopted this 

 alphabet. The Phoenicians must, on this ground alone, take high 

 rank in the history of civilization. . . . 



The Phoenicians were not only the pioneers of industry, but by 

 their commerce they brought together the peoples of the three con- 



