PHCENICIA 



133 



Magoras ; and the Damour or Tamyras. Finally, 

 towards the south are the Nahr-el-Auly or Bostre- 

 nus ; the river of Sidon ; the Litany or river of 

 Tyre ; the Zaherany or river of Sarepta ; and the 

 Belus or river of Acre (Akko). These rivers, 

 except the Litany, rise from the western flank of 

 the mountain-chains near their crest, and run in 

 deep-wooded valleys, at right angles to the axis of 

 the chains, which is from north to south, having 

 short courses, but conveying generally a good body 

 of water. The Litany alone has its source on the 

 eastern flank of the mountains, and, running down 

 the Coele-Syrian valley between Lebanon and Anti- 

 Libanus for a distance of 60 miles, turns suddenly 

 to the west, and passes by a deep gorge through 

 the roots of Lebanon to the sea. The Phoenician 

 seacoast is but slightly indented, and jwssesses 

 but few prominent neadtands. The most import- 

 ant are Carinel, if that may be reckoned to 

 Phoenicia ; the Ras-el-Abiad, 10 miles south of 

 Tyre ; the Ras-el-Jajunieh, a little north of Sidon ; 

 the Beyrout promonotory ; and in the north Cape 

 Possidi. Natural harbours were wanting, except 

 where littoral islands offered a protection from the 

 prevalent winds, as at Tyre and Aradus ; elsewhere 

 nature provided nothing l>etter than open road- 

 steads ; and the famous harbours of the Pnwnicians 

 were all of them the work of art. 



The geology of Plujenicia is tolerably simple. 

 Both Bargylus and Lebanon are longitudinal 

 ranges of the early cretaceous limestone, a lime- 

 stone that is soft and pliable, very easily worked, 

 but wanting the qualities needed for the imitative 

 arts. This simple formation is, however, intruded 

 upon by disturbances of igneous origin, especially 

 in the lower ridges. ' Down many of the valleys 

 run long streams of trap or basalt ; occasionally 

 there are dykes of porphyry and greenstone, and 

 then patches of sandstone, before the limestone 

 and flint recur ' ( Tristram, Land of Israel, p. 634). 

 Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sand- 

 stone ; many patches are of a hard metallic- 

 sounding trap or porphyry ; but the predominant 

 formation is a greasy or powdery limestone, and 

 this is the sole material of the higher ranges. The 

 softness of the general material facilitates the for- 

 mation of a rapid vegetation and the accumulation 

 of vegetable soil, which, washed down by the 

 rivers, covers the more o|>en valleys and the plains 

 which fringe the coast with an alluvium of the 

 most productive character. Its mountain-regions 

 must always have furnished Phoenicia with an in- 

 exhaustible supply of excellent timber fir, pine, 

 and cedar ; the lower slopes of its hills were admir- 

 ably adapted for the cultivation of the olive and 

 the vine, while its maritime plains were equally 

 fitted for tin- growth of corn anil of almost every 

 kind of fruit and vegetable. In mineral products 

 it may have been deficient ; but the sandstone of 

 the Lebanon Is often largely impregnated with 

 iron, and some strata towards the southern end of 

 the mountain are said to produce as much as 

 90 per cent, of pure iron ore. An ochreous earth 

 is also found in the hills above Beyrout, which 

 gives from 50 to 60 per cent, of metal. Coal, 

 too, has been found in the same locality. Finally, 

 the geologist Fraas has recently discovered innum- 

 erable! traces of amber digging on the Phoenician 

 coast ; whence it may be gathered that rare sub- 

 stances were also in the early times among Phoeni- 

 rian products. 



Race anil Language. The Phoenicians have been 

 regarded by some as a nation of Hamitic origin, 

 akin to the Egyptians, chiefly on the ground that 

 Sidon is made a descendant of Ham in the tenth 

 chapter of (Icm-xM (verses fi and 15). But the 

 evidence of language, of physical type, and of 

 mental characteristics far outweighs this argu- 



ment, which assumes that Genesis x. is framed on 

 strict ethnographic lines, which is disputable. 

 Hence there is a very general, if not a universal, 

 agreement among the more recent ethnologists 

 that the Phoenicians belonged to the Semitic group 

 (Dentsch, Renan, Socin, Levy, Schroder, &c.). 

 Unless historical grounds can be shown for the 

 belief that a nation at some period of its existence 

 changed its language, the form and type of its 

 speech must be regarded as determining, almost 

 beyond a doubt, its ethnography. Now the 

 Semitic character of the Phoenician language is 

 indisputable. It is so closely akin to Hebrew 

 that a moderate Hebrew scholar can understand it 

 without difficulty. Gesenius first, and since his 

 time Schroder and Renan, having subjected the 

 extant remains to the most searching analysis, 

 have satisfactorily shown that Phoenician is pre- 

 dominantly and essentially Semitic, without traces 

 of any non-Semitic form of speech. Next to Hebrew, 

 its relations are most close with the Assyro- Baby- 

 lonian form of the Semitic. See SEMITES (Vol. 

 ix. p. 310) and HEBREW LANGUAGE. 



Religion. The Phoenicians were a people in whose 

 minds religion and religious ideas occupied a very 

 prominent place. In all their cities the temple 

 was the centre of attraction, and the piety of the 

 citizens adorned every temple with abundant and 

 costly offerings. The monarchs who were at the 

 head of the various states showed the greatest zeal 

 in continually maintaining the honour of the gods, 

 repaired and beautified the sacred buildings, and 

 occasionally added to their kingly dignity the 

 highly esteemed office of high-priest (Menand. 

 Ephes. Fr. 1 ). The coinage of the country bore 

 religious emblems, and proclaimed the fact that the 

 cities regarded themselves as under the protection 

 of this or that deity. Both the kings and their sub- 

 jects commonly bore religious names names which 

 designated them as the worshippers, or placed 

 them under the tutelage, of some god or goddess. 

 Abd-alonim.Abd-astartus, Abd-osiris,Abdi-milkut, 

 Abd-esmun are names of the former kind ; Abi- 

 baal ('Baal is my father'), Itho-bal (' With him 

 is Baal ' ), Baleazar ( ' Baal protects ' ), names of the 

 latter. The Phoenician ships carried images of the 

 gods in the place of figureheads (Herod, iii. 37). 

 Wherever the Phoenicians went they bore with 

 them their religion and their worship ; in each 

 colony they planted a temple or temples, and 

 everywhere throughout their wide dominion the 

 same gods were worshipped with the same rites 

 and with the same observances. But, while we 

 have ample evidence of the religiousness of the 

 Phoenicians, the distinctive character of their 

 religion still remains a matter of controversy. 

 This arises, on the one hand, from the scantiness, 

 jejuneness, and almost stereotyped character of the 

 native notices, and, on the other, from the distorted 

 and misleading account of the religion which has 

 come down to us from a Hellenised Phoenician of 

 the first or second century after our era, Philo of 

 Byblns. A tendency has recently shown itself to 

 ' rehabilitate ' this writer, from whose work, dis- 

 figured as it is by his euhemerism, much more, we 

 are told, may be gathered than some have sup- 

 posed, if we only read it rightly. But it is exactly 

 this necessity of reading into Philo what is not 

 there that makes reliance on him as an authority 

 unsafe. It is only when corroborated by other 

 writers, or by the native remains, that Philo's 

 statements have any value. The native remains 

 show us that in the later historical times, for which 

 alone they exist in any abundance, the Phoenician 

 religion was a polytheistic nature-worship of a 

 somewhat narrow character. There is reason to 

 believe that, like so many other polytheisms, it 

 had an earlier monotheistic stage. Of this stage 



