A General History for Colleges and High Schools (Myers)/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE PHŒNICIANS.
The Land and the People.—Ancient Phœnicia embraced a little strip of broken sea-coast lying between the Mediterranean and the ranges of Mount Lebanon. One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir-timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedar of Lebanon" holds a prominent place both in the history and the poetry of the East.
Another celebrated product of the country was the Tyrian purple, which was obtained from several varieties of the murex, a species of shell-fish, secured at first along the Phœnician coast, but later sought in distant waters, especially in the Grecian seas. The Phœnicians were of Semitic race, and of close kin to most of the so-called Canaanitish tribes. They were a maritime and trading people.
Tyre and Sidon.—The various Phœnician cities never coalesced to form a true nation. They simply constituted a sort of league, or confederacy, the petty states of which generally acknowledged the leadership of Tyre or of Sidon, the two chief cities. The place of supremacy in the confederation was at first held by Sidon, but later by Tyre.
From the 11th to the 4th century B.C., Tyre controlled, almost without dispute on the part of Sidon, the affairs of Phœnicia. During this time the maritime enterprise and energy of her merchants spread the fame of the little island-capital throughout the world. She was queen and mistress of the Mediterranean. During all the last centuries of her existence, Phœnicia was, for the most part, tributary to one or another of the great monarchies about her. She acknowledged in turn the suzerainty of the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, and the Macedonian kings. Alexander the Great, after a most memorable siege, captured the city of Tyre—which alone of all the Phœnician cities closed her gates against the conqueror—and reduced it to ruins (332 B.C.). The city never recovered from this blow. The site of the once brilliant maritime capital is now "bare as the top of a rock," a place where the few fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.
Phœnician Commerce.—When we catch our first glimpse of the Mediterranean, about 1500 B.C., it is dotted with the sails of Phœnician navigators. It was natural that the people of the Phœnician coast should have been led to a seafaring life. The lofty mountains that back the little strip of shore seemed to shut them out from a career of conquest and to prohibit an extension of their land domains. At the same time, the Mediterranean in front invited them to maritime enterprise; while the forests of Lebanon in the rear offered timber in abundance for their ships. The Phœnicians, indeed, were the first navigators who pushed out boldly from the shore and made real sea voyages.
The longest voyages were made to procure tin, which was in great demand for the manufacture of articles in bronze. The nearest region where this metal was found was the Caucasus, on the eastern shore of the Euxine. The Phœnician sailors boldly threaded the Ægean Archipelago, passed through the Hellespont, braved the unknown terrors of the Black Sea, and from the land of Colchis brought back to the manufacturers of Asia the coveted article.
Towards the close of the 11th century B.C., the jealousy of the Pelasgic states of Greece and of the Archipelago, that were now growing into maritime power, closed the Ægean Sea against the Phœnician navigators. They then pushed out into the Western Mediterranean, and opened the tin-mines of the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula. When these began to fail, these bold sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, faced the dangers of the Atlantic, and brought back from those distant seas the tin gathered in the mines of Britain.
Phœnician Colonies.—Along the different routes pursued by their ships, and upon the coasts visited by them, the Phœnicians established naval stations and trading-posts. Settlements were founded in Lesbos, Rhodes, and other islands of the Ægean Sea, as well as in Greece itself. The shores of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were fringed with colonies; while the coast of North Africa was dotted with such great cities as Utica, Hippo, and Carthage. Colonies were even planted beyond the Pillars of Hercules, upon the Atlantic seaboard. The Phœnician settlement of Gades, upon the western coast of Spain, is still preserved in the modern Cadiz.
Arts disseminated by the Phœnicians.—We can scarcely overrate the influence of Phœnician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. "Egypt and Assyria," says Lenormant, "were the birthplace of material civilization; the Canaanites [Phœnicians] were its missionaries." Most prominent of the arts which they introduced among all the nations with whom they traded was that of alphabetical writing.
Before or during the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Phœnician settlers in the Delta borrowed from the Egyptians twenty-two hieratic characters, which they passed on to their Asiatic kinsmen. These characters received new names, and became the Phœnician alphabet. Now, wherever the Phœnicians went, they carried this alphabet as "one of their exports." It was through them, probably, that the Greeks received it; the Greeks passed it on to the Romans, and the Romans gave it to the German peoples. In this way did our alphabet come to us from Old Egypt.
The introduction of letters among the different nations, vast as was the benefit which the gift conferred upon peoples just beginning to make advances in civilization, was only one of the many advantages which resulted to the early civilization of Europe from the commercial enterprise of the Phœnicians. It is probable that they first introduced among the semi-civilized tribes of that continent the use of bronze, which marks an epoch in their growing culture. Articles of Phœnician workmanship are found in the earliest tombs of the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans; and in very many of the manufactures of these peoples may be traced the influence of Phœnician art.
Great Enterprises aided by the Phœnicians.—While scattering the germs of civilization and culture broadcast over the entire Mediterranean area, the enterprising Phœnicians were also lending aid to almost every great undertaking of antiquity.
King Hiram of Tyre furnished Solomon with artisans and skilled workmen, and with great rafts of timber from Lebanon, for building the splendid temple at Jerusalem. The Phœnicians also provided timber from their fine forests for the construction of the great palaces and temples of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. They built for the Persian king Xerxes the Hellespontine bridges over which he marched his immense army into Greece (see p. 81). They furnished contingents of ships to the kings of Nineveh and Babylon for naval operations both upon the Mediterranean and the Persian and Arabian gulfs. Their fleets served as transports and convoys to the expeditions of the Persian monarchs aiming at conquest in Asia Minor or in Europe. They formed, too, the naval branch of the armaments of the Pharaohs; for the Egyptians hated the sea, and never had a native fleet. And it was Phœnician sailors that, under the orders of Pharaoh-Necho, circumnavigated Africa (see p. 26)—an undertaking which, although attended perhaps with less advantage to the world, still is reckoned quite as remarkable, considering the remote age in which it was accomplished, as the circumnavigation of the globe by the Portuguese navigator Magellan, more than two thousand years later.