24 On the Affinity of the Phenician and Celtic Languages. 
remains an investigation, as obscure as it is important, concerning some islands si- 
tuated near this coast, which, as they are said to have been eminent trading places, 
must not be passed over in silence. Jn the Greek geographers, for instance, we read 
of two islands named Tyrus, or Tylos, and Aradus, which boasted that they were the 
mother country of the Phenicians, and exhibited relics of Phenician temples.” 
Pliny and Strabo are the principal authorities, yet they are both indebted to more 
ancient authors. ‘On sailing farther south from Gerrha, (says Strabo) we came to 
two islands, where there are to be seen Phenician temples; and the inhabitants assure 
us that the cities of Phenicia are colonies from them.’ 
It appears very extraordinary, that with this testimony before him, Heeren should 
still speak of the Phenicians as a Syrian tribe, and of their commerce, as originating 
from the Syrian cities, and that we should meet with such passages as the following : 
** Having thus shown the direction and extent of the trade and navigation of the 
Phenicians, towards the west, let us now bend our course eastwards, and trace their 
progress on the two great south-western gulphs of Asia, the Arabian and Persian. In 
these, it has already been stated, they had partially settled ; and thus gained secure 
harbours, from which to set forth on their still more distant enterprises. 
*«It must, however, be at once perceived, that their navigation could not have a 
like undisturbed continuance with that of the Mediterranean : as the proper domi- 
nions of the Phenicians never stretched so far as either of these gulphs. It depended 
upon their political relations, how far they could make use of the harbours they pos- 
sessed there. For even though the way might be open to caravans, the dominant 
nations of inner Asia might not be always willing to allow foreign colonies on their 
coasts. 
Their navigation upon the Arabian gulph, arose out of their connexion with the 
Jews, and the extension of dominions of the latter under David.” So far Heeren. 
Had the learned Professor allowed due weight to the evidence of Herodotus, Strabo, 
and Pliny, one would conceive it impossible he could not have observed, that the 
operations in the east must have been carried on by a people possessing territory, ci- 
ties, and harbours, on those seas. The whole tenor of the evidence is so strong, that 
it appears really astonishing, so acute and able a reasoner as Heeren, should not have 
seen that the Syrian cities were, and must have been, but colonies of the Homerite 
or Asiatic Phenicians, as they are stated to be by Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny. 
We must, therefore, look to a much more remote period for the origin and history 
of the Phenicians, to a time when the sites of their Syrian cities of Tyre, Sidon, and 
Aradus, were to be marked out. Herodotus says, Tyre was 2400 years before his 
time ; and the prophet Ezekicl speaks of it about the same time, as being of the 
“antiquity of ancient days.” 
Arabia Felix, or the kingdom of Yemen, may safely be considered as the previous 
country of the Phenicians, where, under the names. of Homeriti, and Sabeans, they 
