40 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



more numerous teeth of the dolphin were likewise in great demand 

 for a number of ornamental purposes. 



The oil was also a valuable commodity and there are several refer- 

 ences in Phoenician texts to the export of this to countries as far 

 away as Egypt. This whaling industry persisted on the coast of 

 Palestine for many centuries and was apparently as much of a sur- 

 prise to the Romans as it was to the Assyrians. Unfortunately, we 

 know nothing of how it was organized, how the whales were taken, 

 the oil, teeth, and other desired products extracted, nor anything of 

 the exact kind of ships that were used. One point that we would 

 specially like cleared up is whether the whales were cut up at sea 

 or towed to shore for processing. Whichever procedure was fol- 

 lowed must have presented extraordinary difficulties, for the sperm 

 whales have to be held afloat after death. They v/ere probably killed 

 from small boats launched from large merchantmen, but what kind 

 of harpoons or other weapons were used we do not know and can 

 only guess. The Phoenicians had most efficient winches and may 

 have hauled the carcasses ashore, for it seems from vague references 

 made to this industry by classical writers that the skeletons of these 

 creatures were always to be found around their ports in great 

 numbers. 



It was probably from this local whaling tradition that the Bibli- 

 cal story of Jonah and the whale derived. This is a very curious 

 tale, fraught with contradictions and impossibilities, and appears to 

 have a foreign origin, for the Jews were never a seafaring people. 

 First we may inquire why Jonah, when ordered to go east, went 

 west. His objective was Nineveh, which lay far inland to the east, 

 and yet we find him setting out on a ship into the western sea at 

 Joppa, which was a seafaring place and one of the centers of the 

 whaling industry. What is still more suspect is that the story of his 

 vicissitudes is distinctly reminiscent of a very much older Assyrian 

 fable that later gave rise to various sea-monster stories in the Arabian 

 Nights, and it has therefore even been suggested that it was given 

 as an excuse by Jonah for his long and otherwise unaccountable ab- 

 sence. Others believe that the whale merely indicates the name of a 

 Phoenician ship, or even of a tavern, upon which, or at which, the 

 worthy Jonah sojourned a long while. The original text does not 

 mention a whale but uses a word meaning actually "the great fish." 



