A choice of several routes into Asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of Zalu. The old entrenchments running from the Ked Sea to the marshes of the Pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed. This was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into Syria or Egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.*

* The notes of an official living at Zalu in the time of Mineptah are preserved on the back of pls. v., vi. of the Anastasi Papyrus III,; his business was to keep a register of the movements of the comers and goers between Egypt and Syria during a few days of the month Pakhons, in the year III.

It was from Zalu that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to Kharu by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalu they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. The road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the Mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the Greek period called the Lake of Sirbonis.*

* The Sirbonian Lake is sometimes half full of water, sometimes almost entirely dry; at the present time it bears the name of Sebkhat Berdawil, from King Baldwin I. of Jerusalem, who on his return from his Egyptian campaign died on its shores, in 1148, before he could reach El-Artsh.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

This stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the Sirbonian Lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were constantly shifting. When the canals which connected it with the open sea happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud, often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert. Travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the Greek historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it. About halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of Mount Casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and disagreeable to drink.



Beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. The bed of the torrent often served as the boundary between Africa and Asia, and the town was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals, condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the Greeks assure us that it owed its name of Rhinocolura to the number of noseless convicts who were to be seen there.*

* The ruins of the ancient town, which were of considerable extent, are half buried under the sand, out of which an Egyptian naos of the Ptolemaic period has been dug, and placed near the well which supplies the fort, where it serves as a drinking trough for the horses. Brugsch believed he could identify its site with that of the Syrian town Hurnikheri, which he erroneously reads Harinkola; the ancient form of the name is unknown, the Greek form varies between Rhinocorura and Rhinocolura. The story of the mutilated convicts is to be found in Diodorus Siculus, as well as in Strabo; it rests on a historical fact. Under the XVIIIth dynasty Zalu was used as a place of confinement for dishonest officials. For this purpose it was probably replaced by Rhinocolura, when the Egyptian frontier was removed from the neighbourhood of Selle to that of El-Arish.

At this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their way, obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. Here and there, under the shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller would have found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the confines of Syria he arrived at the fortified village of Raphia, standing like a sentinel to guard the approach to Egypt. Beyond Raphia vegetation becomes more abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and clusters of date-palms appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with fields and orchards are seen on all sides, while the bed of a river, blocked with gravel and fallen rocks, winds its way between the last fringes of the desert and the fruitful Shephelah;* on the further bank of the river lay the suburbs of Gaza, and, but a few hundred yards beyond, Gaza itself came into view among the trees standing on its wall-crowned hill.**

* The term Shephelah signifies the plain; it is applied by the Biblical writers to the plain bordering the coast, from the heights of Gaza to those of Joppa, which were inhabited at a later period by the Philistines (Josh. xi. 16; Jer. xxxii. 44 and xxxiii. 13).

** Guerin describes at length the road from Gaza to Raphia. The only town of importance between them in the Greek period was Ienysos, the ruins of which are to be found near Khan Yunes, but the Egyptian name for this locality is unknown: Aunaugasa, the name of which Brugsch thought he could identify with it, should be placed much farther away, in Northern or in Coele-Syria.

The Egyptians, on their march from the Nile valley, were wont to stop at this spot to recover from their fatigues; it was their first halting-place beyond the frontier, and the news which would reach them here prepared them in some measure for what awaited them further on. The army itself, the "troop of Ra," was drawn from four great races, the most distinguished of which came, of course, from the banks of the Nile: the Amu, born of Sokhit, the lioness-headed goddess, were classed in the second rank; the Nahsi, or negroes of Ethiopia, were placed in the third; while the Timihu, or Libyans, with the white tribes of the north, brought up the rear. The Syrians belonged to the second of these families, that next in order to the Egyptians, and the name of Amu, which for centuries had been given them, met so satisfactorily all political, literary, or commercial requirements, that the administrators of the Pharaohs never troubled themselves to discover the various elements concealed beneath the term. We are, however, able at the present time to distinguish among them several groups of peoples and languages, all belonging to the same family, but possessing distinctive characteristics. The kinsfolk of the Hebrews, the children of Ishmael and Edom, the Moabites and Ammonites, who were all qualified as Shausu, had spread over the region to the south and east of the Dead Sea, partly in the desert, and partly on the confines of the cultivated land. The Canaanites were not only in possession of the coast from Gaza to a point beyond the Nahr el-Kebir, but they also occupied almost the whole valley of the Jordan, besides that of the Litany, and perhaps that of the Upper Orontes.* There were Aramaean settlements at Damascus, in the plains of the Lower Orontes, and in Naharaim.**

* I use the term Canaanite with the meaning most frequently attached to it, according to the Hebrew use (Gen. x. 15- 19). This word is found several times in the Egyptian texts under the forms Kinakhna, Kinakhkhi, and probably Kunakhaiu, in the cuneiform texts of Tel el-Amarna.

** As far as I know, the term Aramaean is not to be found in any Egyptian text of the time of the Pharaohs: the only known example of it is a writer's error corrected by Chabas. W. Max Mueller very justly observes that the mistake is itself a proof of the existence of the name and of the acquaintance of the Egyptians with it.

The country beyond the Aramaean territory, including the slopes of the Amanos and the deep valleys of the Taurus, was inhabited by peoples of various origin; the most powerful of these, the Khati, were at this time slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the country between the Afrin and the Euphrates.*

The Canaanites were the most numerous of all these groups, and had they been able to amalgamate under a single king, or even to organize a lasting confederacy, it would have been impossible for the Egyptian armies to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of Asia; but, unfortunately, so far from showing the slightest tendency towards unity or concentration, the Canaanites were more hopelessly divided than any of the surrounding nations. Their mountains contained nearly as many states as there were valleys, while in the plains each town represented a separate government, and was built on a spot carefully selected for purposes of defence. The land, indeed, was chequered with these petty states, and so closely were they crowded together, that a horseman, travelling at leisure, could easily pass through two or three of them in a day's journey.**

* Thutmosis III. shows that, at any rate, they were established in these regions about the XVIth century B.C. The Egyptian pronunciation of their name is Khiti, with the feminine Khitait, Khitit; but the Tel el-Amarna texts employ the vocalisation Khati, Khate, which must be more correct than that of the Egyptians, The form Khiti seems to me to be explicable by an error of popular etymology. Egyptian ethnical appellations in iti formed their plural by -atiu, -atee, -ati, -ate, so that if Khate, Khati, were taken for a plural, it would naturally have suggested to the scribes the form Khiti for the singular.

** Thutmosis III., speaking to his soldiers, tells them that all the chiefs the projecting spur of some mountain, or on a solitary and more or less irregularly shaped eminence in the midst of a plain, and the means of defence in the country are shut up in Megiddo, so that "to take it is to take a thousand cities:" this is evidently a hyperbole in the mouth of the conqueror, but the exaggeration itself shows how numerous were the chiefs and consequently the small states in Central and Southern Syria.

Not only were the royal cities fenced with walls, but many of the surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or migdols* built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and the aptitude for self-defence shown by the inhabitants.

* This Canaanite word was borrowed by the Egyptians from the Syrians at the beginning of their Asiatic wars; they employed it in forming the names of the military posts which they established on the eastern frontier of the Delta: it appears for the first time among Syrian places in the list of cities conquered by Thutmosis III.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The aspect of these migdols, or forts, must have appeared strange to the first Egyptians who beheld them. These strongholds bore no resemblance to the large square or oblong enclosures to which they were accustomed, and which in their eyes represented the highest skill of the engineer. In Syria, however, the positions suitable for the construction of fortresses hardly ever lent themselves to a symmetrical plan. The usual sites had to be adapted in each case to suit the particular configuration of the ground.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken at Karnak by Beato.

It was usually a mere wall of stone or dried brick, with towers at intervals; the wall measuring from nine to twelve feet thick at the base, and from thirty to thirty-six feet high, thus rendering an assault by means of portable ladders, nearly impracticable.*

* This is, at least, the result of investigations made by modern engineers who have studied these questions of military archaeology.

The gateway had the appearance of a fortress in itself. It was composed of three large blocks of masonry, forming a re-entering face, considerably higher than the adjacent curtains, and pierced near the top with square openings furnished with mantlets, so as to give both a front and flank view of the assailants. The wooden doors in the receded face were covered with metal and raw hides, thus affording a protection against axe or fire.*

* Most of the Canaanite towns, taken by Ramses II. in the campaign of his VIIIth year were fortified in this manner. It must have been the usual method of fortification, as it seems to have served as a type for conventional representation, and was sometimes used to denote cities which had fortifications of another kind. For instance, Dapur-Tabor is represented in this way, while a picture on another monument, which is reproduced in the illustration on page 185, represents what seems to have been the particular form of its encompassing walls.

The building was strong enough not only to defy the bands of adventurers who roamed the country, but was able to resist for an indefinite time the operations of a regular siege. Sometimes, however, the inhabitants when constructing their defences did not confine themselves to this rudimentary plan, but threw up earthworks round the selected site. On the most exposed side they raised an advance wall, not exceeding twelve or fifteen feet in height, at the left extremity of which the entrance was so placed that the assailants, in endeavouring to force their way through, were obliged to expose an unprotected flank to the defenders. By this arrangement it was necessary to break through two lines of fortification before the place could be entered. Supposing the enemy to have overcome these first obstacles, they would find themselves at their next point of attack confronted with a citadel which contained, in addition to the sanctuary of the principal god, the palace of the sovereign himself. This also had a double enclosing wall and massively built gates, which could be forced only at the expense of fresh losses, unless the cowardice or treason of the garrison made the assault an easy one.*

* The type of town described in the text is based on a representation on the walls of Karnak, where the siege of Dapur-Tabor by Ramses II. is depicted. Another type is given in the case of Ascalon.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Deveria in 1865.

Of these bulwarks of Canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen to-day. They may have been razed to the ground during one of those destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty centuries of change have raised over them.*

* The only remains of a Canaanite fortification which can be assigned to the Egyptian period are those which Professor F. I. Petrie brought to light in the ruins of Tell el-Hesy, and in which he rightly recognised the remains of Lachish.

The records of victories graven on the walls of the Theban temples furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very confused character had not one of the last of the conquering Pharaohs, Ramses III., taken it into his head to have one built at Thebes itself, to contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship. In the Greek and Roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate, which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support. Having passed through these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a migdol of cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the point of approach by a series of abutments. A careful examination of the place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited knowledge of the Egyptians would hardly permit us to expect. We discover, for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet.

This served two purposes: it increased, in the first place, the strength of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface, thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance. The whole structure has an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects charged with carrying out their sovereign's idea brought to their task an attention to detail for which the people from whom the plan was borrowed had no capacity, and at the same time preserved the arrangements of their model so faithfully that we can readily realise what it must have been. Transport this migdol of Ramses III. into Asia, plant it upon one of those hills which the Canaanites were accustomed to select as a site for their fortifications, spread out at its base some score of low and miserable hovels, and we have before us an improvised pattern of a village which recalls in a striking manner Zerin or Beitin, or any other small modern town which gathers the dwellings of its fellahin round some central stone building—whether it be a hostelry for benighted travellers, or an ancient castle of the Crusading age.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

There were on the littoral, to the north of Gaza, two large walled towns, Ascalon and Joppa, in whose roadsteads merchant vessels were accustomed to take hasty refuge in tempestuous weather.* There were to be found on the plains also, and on the lower slopes of the mountains, a number of similar fortresses and villages, such as Iurza, Migdol, Lachish, Ajalon, Shocho, Adora, Aphukin, Keilah, Gezer, and Ono; and, in the neighbourhood of the roads which led to the fords of the Jordan, Gibeah, Beth-Anoth, and finally Urusalim, our Jerusalem.** A tolerably dense population of active and industrious husbandmen maintained themselves upon the soil.

* Ascalon was not actually on the sea. Its port, "Maiumas Ascalonis," was probably merely a narrow bay or creek, now, for a long period, filled up by the sand. Neither the site nor the remains of the port have been discovered. The name of the town is always spelled in Egyptian with an "s "— Askaluna, which gives us the pronunciation of the time. The name of Joppa is written Yapu, Yaphu, and the gardens which then surrounded the town are mentioned in the Anastasi Papyrus I.

** Urusalim is mentioned only in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, alongside of Kilti or Keilah, Ajalon, and Lachish. The remaining towns are noticed in the great lists of Thutmosis III.



The plough which they employed was like that used by the Egyptians and Babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were harnessed.* The scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. Almost the only remains of these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.**

* This is the form of plough still employed by the Syrians in some places.

** Monuments of this kind are encountered at every step in Judaea, but it is very difficult to date them. The aqueduct of Siloam, which goes back perhaps to the time of Hezekiah.

Fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by side.



Drawn by Boudier, from a plate in Chesney.

Jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of Solomon, are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned. But these are long posterior to the XVIIIth dynasty. Good judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of the wells of Beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the Caesars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the Roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from the Bible.

If the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the other. Here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. It was, indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the Egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called Aubila, "the meadow;" while others bear such names as Ganutu, "the gardens;" Magraphut, "the mounds;" and Karman, "the vineyard." The further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts—which preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to Carmel across the plain—the records of the conquerors only casually mention a few of them, such as Bitshailu, Birkana, and Dutina.**

* Shechem is not mentioned in the Egyptian geographical lists, but Max Mueller thinks he has discovered it in the name of the mountain of Sikima which figures in the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1.

** Bitshailu, identified by Chabas with Bethshan, and with Shiloh by Mariette and Maspero, is more probably Bethel, written Bit-sha-ilu, either with sh, the old relative pronoun of the Phoenician, or with the Assyrian sha; on the latter supposition one must suppose, as Sayce does, that the compiler of the Egyptian lists had before him sources of information in the cuneiform character. Birkana appears to be the modern Brukin, and Dutina is certainly Dothain, now Tell-Dothan.

Beyond Ono reddish-coloured sandy clay took the place of the dark and compact loam: oaks began to appear, sparsely at first, but afterwards forming vast forests, which the peasants of our own days have thinned and reduced to a considerable extent. The stunted trunks of these trees are knotted and twisted, and the tallest of them do not exceed some thirty feet in height, while many of them may be regarded as nothing more imposing than large bushes.* Muddy rivers, infested with crocodiles, flowed slowly through the shady woods, spreading out their waters here and there in pestilential swamps. On reaching the seaboard, their exit was impeded by the sands which they brought down with them, and the banks which were thus formed caused the waters to accumulate in lagoons extending behind the dunes. For miles the road led through thickets, interrupted here and there by marshy places and clumps of thorny shrubs. Bands of Shausu were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. Towards Aluna the way began to ascend Mount Carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in the rocky side of the precipice.**

* The forest was well known to the geographers of the Graeco- Roman period, and was still in existence at the time of the Crusades.

** This defile is described at length in the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, and the terms used by the writer are in themselves sufficient evidence of the terror with which the place inspired the Egyptians. The annals of Thutmosis III. are equally explicit as to the difficulties which an army had to encounter here. I have placed this defile near the point which is now called Umm-el-Fahm, and this site seems to me to agree better with the account of the expedition of Thutmosis III. than that of Arraneh proposed by Conder.

Beyond the Mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with corn and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a series of undulations, to the foot of Tabor, where it came to an end. Two side ranges running almost parallel—little Hermon and Glilboa—disposed in a line from east to west, and united by an almost imperceptibly rising ground, serve rather to connect the plain of Megiddo with the valley of the Jordan than to separate them. A single river, the Kishon, cuts the route diagonally—or, to speak more correctly, a single river-bed, which is almost waterless for nine months of the year, and becomes swollen only during the winter rains with the numerous torrents bursting from the hillsides. As the flood approaches the sea it becomes of more manageable proportions, and finally distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons formed behind the sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over by the sacred summit of Carmel.*

* In the lists of Thutmosis III. we find under No. 48 the town of Rosh-Qodshu, the "Sacred Cape," which was evidently situated at the end of the mountain range, or probably on the site of Haifah; the name itself suggests the veneration with which Carmel was invested from the earliest times.

No corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary engagements, or has witnessed century after century so many armies crossing its borders and coming into conflict with one another. Every military leader who, after leaving Africa, was able to seize Gaza and Ascalon, became at once master of Southern Syria. He might, it is true, experience some local resistance, and come into conflict with bands or isolated outposts of the enemy, but as a rule he had no need to anticipate a battle before he reached the banks of the Kishon.



Drawn by Boudier, from a pencil sketch by Lortet.

Here, behind a screen of woods and mountain, the enemy would concentrate his forces and prepare resolutely to meet the attack. If the invader succeeded in overcoming resistance at this point, the country lay open to him as far as the Orontes; nay, often even to the Euphrates. The position was too important for its defence to have been neglected. A range of forts, Ibleam, Taanach, and Megiddo,* drawn like a barrier across the line of advance, protected its southern face, and beyond these a series of strongholds and villages followed one another at intervals in the bends of the valleys or on the heights, such as Shunem, Kasuna, Anaharath, the two Aphuls, Cana, and other places which we find mentioned on the triumphal lists, but of which, up to the present, the sites have not been fixed.

* Megiddo, the "Legio" of the Roman period, has been identified since Robinson's time with Khurbet-Lejun, and more especially with the little mound known by the name of Tell-el-Mutesallim. Conder proposed to place its site more to the east, in the valley of the Jordan, at Khurbet-el- Mujeddah.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Lortet.

From this point the conqueror had a choice of three routes. One ran in an oblique direction to the west, and struck the Mediterranean near Acre, leaving on the left the promontory of Carmel, with the sacred town, Rosh-Qodshu, planted on its slope.



Acre was the first port where a fleet could find safe anchorage after leaving the mouths of the Nile, and whoever was able to make himself master of it had in his hands the key of Syria, for it stood in the same commanding position with regard to the coast as that held by Megiddo in respect of the interior. Its houses were built closely together on a spit of rock which projected boldly into the sea, while fringes of reefs formed for it a kind of natural breakwater, behind which ships could find a safe harbourage from the attacks of pirates or the perils of bad weather. From this point the hills come so near the shore that one is sometimes obliged to wade along the beach to avoid a projecting spur, and sometimes to climb a zig-zag path in order to cross a headland. In more than one place the rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the appearance of a vast ladder.* Below this precipitous path the waves dash with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. The majority of the towns, such as Aksapu (Ecdippa), Mashal, Lubina, Ushu-Shakhan, lay back from the sea on the mountain ridges, out of the reach of pirates; several, however, were built on the shore, under the shelter of some promontory, and the inhabitants of these derived a miserable subsistence from fishing and the chase. Beyond the Tyrian Ladder Phoenician territory began. The country was served throughout its entire length, from town to town, by the coast road, which turning at length to the right, and passing through the defile formed by the Nahr-el-Kebir, entered the region of the middle Orontes.

* Hence the name Tyrian Ladder, which is applied to one of these passes, either Ras-en-Nakurah or Ras-el-Abiad.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The second of the roads leading from Megiddo described an almost symmetrical curve eastwards, crossing the Jordan at Beth-shan, then the Jab-bok, and finally reaching Damascus after having skirted at some distance the last of the basaltic ramparts of the Hauran. Here extended a vast but badly watered pasture-land, which attracted the Bedouin from every side, and scattered over it were a number of walled towns, such as Hamath, Magato, Ashtaroth, and Ono-Eepha.*

* Proof that the Egyptians knew this route, followed even to this day in certain circumstances, is furnished by the lists of Thutmosis III., in which the principal stations which it comprises are enumerated among the towns given up after the victory of Megiddo. Dimasqu was identified with Damascus by E. de Rouge, and Astarotu with Ashtaroth-Qarnaim. Hamatu is probably Hamath of the Gadarenes; Magato, the Maged of the Maccabees, is possibly the present Mukatta; and Ono-Repha, Raphon, Raphana, Arpha of Decapolis, is the modern Er-Rafeh.

Probably Damascus was already at this period the dominant authority over the region watered by these two rivers, as well as over the villages nestling in the gorges of Hermon,—Abila, Helbon of the vineyards, and Tabrud,—but it had not yet acquired its renown for riches and power. Protected by the Anti-Lebanon range from its turbulent neighbours, it led a sort of vegetative existence apart from invading hosts, forgotten and hushed to sleep, as it were, in the shade of its gardens.

The third road from Megiddo took the shortest way possible. After crossing the Kishon almost at right angles to its course, it ascended by a series of steep inclines to arid plains, fringed or intersected by green and flourishing valleys, which afforded sites for numerous towns,—Pahira, Merom near Lake Huleh, Qart-Nizanu, Beerotu, and Lauisa, situated in the marshy district at the head-waters of the Jordan.* From this point forward the land begins to fall, and taking a hollow shape, is known as Coele-Syria, with its luxuriant vegetation spread between the two ranges of the Lebanon. It was inhabited then, as at the time of the Babylonian conquest, by the Amorites, who probably included Damascus also in their domain.**

* Pahira is probably Safed; Qart-Nizanu, the "flowery city," the Kartha of Zabulon; and Bcerot, the Berotha of Josephus, near Merom. Maroma and Lauisa, Laisa, have been identified with Merom and Laish.

** The identification of the country of Amauru with that of the Amorites was admitted from the first. The only doubt was as to the locality occupied by these Amorites: the mention of Qodshu on the Orontes, in the country of the Amurru, showed that Coele-Syria was the region in question. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets the name Amurru is applied also to the country east of the Phoenician coast, and we have seen that there is reason to believe that it was used by the Babylonians to denote all Syria. If the name given by the cuneiform inscriptions to Damascus and its neighbourhood, "Gar-Imirishu," "Imirishu," "Imirish," really means "the Fortress of the Amorites," we should have in this fact a proof that this people were in actual possession of the Damascene Syria. This must have been taken from them by the Hittites towards the XXth century before our era, according to Hommel; about the end of the XVIIIth dynasty, according to Lenormant. If, on the other hand, the Assyrians read the name "Sha-imiri-shu," with the signification, "the town of its asses," it is simply a play upon words, and has no bearing upon the primitive meaning of the name.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

Their capital, the sacred Qodshu, was situated on the left bank of the Orontes, about five miles from the lake which for a long time bore its name, Bahr-el-Kades.* It crowned one of those barren oblong eminences which are so frequently met with in Syria. A muddy stream, the Tannur, flowed, at some distance away, around its base, and, emptying itself into the Orontes at a point a little to the north, formed a natural defence for the town on the west. Its encompassing walls, slightly elliptic in form, were strengthened by towers, and surrounded by two concentric ditches which kept the sapper at a distance.

* The name Qodshu-Kadesh was for a long time read Uatesh, Badesh, Atesh, and, owing to a confusion with Qodi, Ati, or Atet. The town was identified by Champollion with Bactria, then transferred to Mesopotamia by Bosollini, in the land of Omira, which, according to Pliny, was close to the Taurus, not far from the Khabur or from the province of Aleppo: Osburn tried to connect it with Hadashah (Josh. xv. 21), an Amorite town in the southern part of the tribe of Judah; while Hincks placed it in Edessa. The reading Kedesh, Kadesh, Qodshu, the result of the observations of Lepsius, has finally prevailed. Brugsch connected this name with that of Bahr el-Kades, a designation attached in the Middle Ages to the lake through which the Orontes flows, and placed the town on its shores or on a small island on the lake. Thomson pointed out Tell Neby-Mendeh, the ancient Laodicea of the Lebanon, as satisfying the requirements of the site. Conder developed this idea, and showed that all the conditions prescribed by the Egyptian texts in regard to Qodshu find here, and here alone, their application. The description given in the text is based on Conder's observations.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

A dyke running across the Orontes above the town caused the waters to rise and to overflow in a northern direction, so as to form a shallow lake, which acted as an additional protection from the enemy. Qodshu was thus a kind of artificial island, connected with the surrounding country by two flying bridges, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. Once the bridges were raised and the gates closed, the boldest enemy had no resource left but to arm himself with patience and settle down to a lengthened siege. The invader, fresh from a victory at Megiddo, and following up his good fortune in a forward movement, had to reckon upon further and serious resistance at this point, and to prepare himself for a second conflict. The Amorite chiefs and their allies had the advantage of a level and firm ground for the evolutions of their chariots during the attack, while, if they were beaten, the citadel afforded them a secure rallying-place, whence, having gathered their shattered troops, they could regain their respective countries, or enter, with the help of a few devoted men, upon a species of guerilla warfare in which they excelled.

The road from Damascus led to a point south of Quodshu, while that from Phonicia came right up to the town itself or to its immediate neighbourhood. The dyke of Bahr el-Kades served to keep the plain in a dry condition, and thus secured for numerous towns, among which Hamath stood out pre-eminently, a prosperous existence. Beyond Hamath, and to the left, between the Orontes and the sea, lay the commercial kingdom of Alasia, protected from the invader by bleak mountains.*

* The site of Alasia, Alashia, was determined from the Tel el-Amarna tablets by Maspero. Niebuhr had placed it to the west of Cilicia, opposite the island of Eleousa mentioned by Strabo. Conder connected it with the scriptural Elishah, and W. Max Millier confounds it with Asi or Cyprus.

On the right, between the Orontes and the Balikh, extended the land of rivers, Naharaim. Towns had grown up here thickly,—on the sides of the torrents from the Amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or wells—wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture possible. The fragments of the Egyptian chronicles which have come down to us number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the records have perished with the crumbling Theban walls upon which the Pharaohs had their names incised! Khalabu was the Aleppo of our own day,** and grouped around it lay Turmanuna, Tunipa, Zarabu, Nii, Durbaniti, Nirabu, Sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon it, or upon one of its rivals. The boundaries of this portion of the Lower Lotanu have come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and they must also, moreover, have been subject to continual modifications from the results of tribal conflicts.

* Two hundred and thirty names belonging to Naharaim are still legible on the lists of Thutmosis III., and a hundred others have been effaced from the monument.

** Khalabu was identified by Chabas with Khalybon, the modern Aleppo, and his opinion has been adopted by most Egyptologists.

*** Tunipa has been found in Tennib, Tinnab, by Noldoke; Zarabu in Zarbi, and Sarmata in Sarmeda, by Tomkins; Durbaniti in Deir el-Banat, the Castrum Puellarum of the chroniclers of the Crusades; Nirabu in Nirab, and Tirabu in Tereb, now el-Athrib. Nirab is mentioned by Nicholas of Damascus. Nii, long confounded with Nineveh, was identified by Lenormant with Ninus Vetus, Membidj, and by Max Millier with Balis on the Euphrates: I am inclined to make it Kefer- Naya, between Aleppo and Turmanin.



We are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that Lord of Naharaim of whom the Egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.*

* In the "Story of the Predestined Prince" the heroine is daughter of the Prince of Naharaim, who seems to exercise authority over all the chiefs of the country; as the manuscript does not date back further than the XXth dynasty, we are justified in supposing that the Egyptian writer had a knowledge of the Hittite domination, during which the King of the Khati was actually the ruler of all Naharaim.

Carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by Megiddo in relation to Kharu, and by Qodshu among the Amorites; that is to say, it was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country. Whoever could make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet.



It lay upon the Euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across the intervening region. Like Qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper. The encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of peace an abode for the surplus population. The wall still rises some five and twenty to thirty feet above the plain. Two mounds divided by a ravine command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins of two fine buildings—a temple and a palace.* Carchemish was the last stage in a conqueror's march coming from the south.

* Karkamisha, Gargamish, was from the beginning associated with the Carchemish of the Bible; but as the latter was wrongly identified with Circesium, it was naturally located at the confluence of the Khabur with the Euphrates. Hincks fixed the site at Rum-Kaleh. G. Rawlinson referred it cursorily to Hierapolis-Mabog, which position Maspero endeavoured to confirm. Finzi, and after him G. Smith, thought to find the site at Jerabis, the ancient Europos, and excavations carried on there by the English have brought to light in this place Hittite monuments which go back in part to the Assyrian epoch. This identification is now generally accepted, although there is still no direct proof attainable, and competent judges continue to prefer the site of Membij. I fall in with the current view, but with all reserve.



Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from a cut in the Graphic.

For an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first station. He had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for crossing the Euphrates. That of Thapsacus, at the bend of the river where it turns eastward to the Arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst.



Drawn by faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

For an invader proceeding from Asia Minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the Taurus, Samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had Naharaim or the kingdoms of Chaldaea in view, to make a long detour, and although the Assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the Halys, the Egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road. Carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about equally distant from Thapsacus and Samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. Hither pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was perpetuated for centuries. On the left bank of the river, and almost opposite Carchemish, lay the region of Mitanni,* which was already occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes of the Upper Tigris and Upper Euphrates.** Harran bordered on Mitanni, and beyond Harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined Singar, Assur, Arrapkha, and Babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the ancient Chaldaean Empire.***

* Mitanni is mentioned on several Egyptian monuments; but its importance was not recognised until after the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and of its situation. The fact that a letter from the Prince of Mitanni is stated in a Hieratic docket to have come from Naharaim has been used as a proof that the countries were identical; I have shown that the docket proves only that Mitanni formed a part of Naharaim. It extended over the province of Edessa and Harran, stretching out towards the sources of the Tigris. Niebuhr places it on the southern slope of the Masios, in Mygdonia; Th. Reinach connects it with the Mationi, and asks whether this was not the region occupied by this people before their emigration towards the Caspian.

** Several of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are couched in this language.

*** These names were recognised from the first in the inscriptions of Thutmosis III. and in those of other Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties.

The Carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. It was a far cry from Memphis to Carchemish, and for the Egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.*

* A certain number of towns mentioned in the lists of Thutmosis III. were situated beyond the Euphrates, and they belonged some to Mitanni and some to the regions further away.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

It would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Aramaeans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-Semitic stock. Frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of Syria. They are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. Four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

It would appear that the breaking up of these populations had not been carried so far in ancient as in modern times, but the confusion must already have been great if we are to judge from the number of different sites where we encounter evidences of people of the same language and blood. The bulk of the Khati had not yet departed from the Taurus region, but some stray bands of them, carried away by the movement which led to the invasion of the Hyksos, had settled around Hebron, where the rugged nature of the country served to protect them from their neighbours.*

* In very early times they are described as dwelling near Hebron or in the mountains of Judah. Since we have learned from the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments that the Khati dwelt in Northern Syria, the majority of commentators have been indisposed to admit the existence of southern Hittites; this name, it is alleged, having been introduced into the Biblical around text through a misconception of the original documents, where the term Hittite was the equivalent of Canaanite.

The Amorites* had their head-quarters Qodshul in Coele-Syria, but one section of them had taken up a position on the shores of the Lake of Tiberias in Galilee, others had established themselves within a short distance of Jaffa** on the Mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighbourhood of the southern Hittites in such numbers that their name in the Hebrew Scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the Dead Sea and the valley of the Jordan. Their presence was also indicated on the table-lands bordering the desert of Damascus, in the districts frequented by Bedouin of the tribe of Terah, Ammon and Moab, on the rivers Yarmuk and Jabbok, and at Edrei and Heshbon.***

* Ed. Meyer has established the fact that the term Amorite, as well as the parallel word Canaanite, was the designation of the inhabitants of Palestine before the arrival of the Hebrews: the former belonged to the prevailing tradition in the kingdom of Israel, the latter to that which was current in Judah. This view confirms the conclusion which may be drawn from the Egyptian monuments as to the power of expansion and the diffusion of the people.

** These were the Amorites which the tribe of Dan at a later period could not dislodge from the lands which had been allotted to them.

*** This was afterwards the domain of Sihon, King of the Amorites, and that of Og.

The fuller, indeed, our knowledge is of the condition of Syria at the time of the Egyptian conquest, the more we are forced to recognise the mixture of races therein, and their almost infinite subdivisions. The mutual jealousies, however, of these elements of various origin were not so inveterate as to put an obstacle in the way, I will not say of political alliances, but of daily intercourse and frequent contracts. Owing to intermarriages between the tribes, and the continual crossing of the results of such unions, peculiar characteristics were at length eliminated, and a uniform type of face was the result. From north to south one special form of countenance, that which we usually call Semitic, prevailed among them.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The Syrian and Egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in old age. Their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the Lebanon. Their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. The lower part of the face is square and somewhat heavy, but it is often concealed by a thick and curly beard. The forehead is rather low and retreating, while the nose has a distinctly aquiline curve. The type is not on the whole so fine as the Egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the Chaldaeans in the time of Gudea. The Theban artists have represented it in their battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or Asiatic prisoner with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of a common parentage.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original wooden object.

One feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one common family. They associated with their efforts after true and exact representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their adversaries. On the walls of the Pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the Pharaoh on his return from his Syrian campaigns.*

* An illustration of this will be found in the line of prisoners, brought by Seti I. from his great Asiatic campaign, which is depicted on the outer face of the north wall of the hypostyle at Karnak.

Where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to caricature. It is an Amorite or Canaanite—that thick-lipped, flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull—who serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the Louvre. The stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated. The model which served for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in order to excite the laughter of Pharaoh's subjects.*

* Dr. Regnault thinks that the head was artificially deformed in infancy: the bandage necessary to effect it must have been applied very low on the forehead in front, and to the whole occiput behind. If this is the case, the instance is not an isolated one, for a deformation of a similar character is found in the case of the numerous Semites represented on the tomb of Rakhmiri: a similar practice still obtains in certain parts of modern Syria.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

The idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study their costumes. Men and women—we may say all Syrians according to their condition of life—had a choice between only two or three modes of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed never to change. On closer examination slight shades of difference in cut and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that fashion ran even in ancient Syria through as many capricious evolutions as with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to classify the people, or to fix their date. The peasants and the lower class of citizens required no other clothing than a loin-cloth similar to that of the Egyptians,* or a shirt of a yellow or white colour, extending below the knees, and furnished with short sleeves. The opening for the neck was cruciform, and the hem was usually ornamented with coloured needlework or embroidery. The burghers and nobles wore over this a long strip of cloth, which, after passing closely round the hips and chest, was brought up and spread over the shoulders as a sort of cloak. This was not made of the light material used in Egypt, which offered no protection from cold or rain, but was composed of a thick, rough wool, like that employed in Chaldaea, and was commonly adorned with stripes or bands of colour, in addition to spots and other conspicuous designs.

* The Asiatic loin-cloth differs from the Egyptian in having pendent cords; the Syrian fellahin still wear it when at work.

Rich and fashionable folk substituted for this cloth two large shawls—one red and the other blue—in which they dexterously arrayed themselves so as to alternate the colours: a belt of soft leather gathered the folds around the figure. Red morocco buskins, a soft cap, a handkerchief, a kejfiyeh confined by a fillet, and sometimes a wig after the Egyptian fashion, completed the dress.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a figure on the tomb of Ramses III.

Beards were almost universal among the men, but the moustache was of rare occurrence. In many of the figures represented on the monuments we find that the head was carefully shaved, while in others the hair was allowed to grow, arranged in curls, frizzed and shining with oil or sweet-smelling pomade, sometimes thrown back behind the ears and falling on the neck in bunches or curly masses, sometimes drawn out in stiff spikes so as to serve as a projecting cover over the face.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.

The women usually tired their hair in three great masses, of which the thickest was allowed to fall freely down the back; while the other two formed a kind of framework for the face, the ends descending on each side as far as the breast. Some of the women arranged their hair after the Egyptian manner, in a series of numerous small tresses, brought together at the ends so as to form a kind of plat, and terminating in a flower made of metal or enamelled terracotta. A network of glass ornaments, arranged on a semicircle of beads, or on a background of embroidered stuff, was frequently used as a covering for the top of the head.*

* Examples of Syrian feminine costume are somewhat rare on the Egyptian monuments. In the scenes of the capturing of towns we see a few. Here the women are represented on the walls imploring the mercy of the besieger. Other figures are those of prisoners being led captive into Egypt.



The shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it left half of the arm exposed. Children of tender years had their heads shaved, as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the little ones among the Egyptians. With the exception of bracelets, anklets, rings on the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings, the Syrians, both men and women, wore little jewellery. The Chaldaea women furnished them with models of fashion to which they accommodated themselves in the choice of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or petticoats, arrangement of the hair, and the use of cosmetics for the eyes and cheeks. In spite of distance, the modes of Babylon reigned supreme. The Syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the Lower Euphrates to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region, and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to restrain the free motion of the body. Among the upper classes, at least, domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the palaces of the nobles of Car-chemish or Assur: the same articles of toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.*

* An example of the fashion of leaving the shoulder bare is found even in the XXth dynasty. The Tel el-Amarna tablets prove that, as far as the scribes were concerned, the customs and training of Syria and Chaldaea were identical. The Syrian princes are there represented as employing the cuneiform character in their correspondence, being accompanied by scribes brought up after the Chaldaean manner. We shall see later on that the king of the Khati, who represented in the time of Ramses II. the type of an accomplished Syrian, had attendants similar to those of the Chaldaean kings.

From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions.

The religion of the Syrians was subject to the same influences as their customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture of their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same names and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of Chaldaea. The myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least to our modern ideas: the general characteristics of the principal divinities alone stand out, and seem fairly well defined. As with the other Semitic races, the deity in a general sense, the primordial type of the godhead, was called El or Ilu, and his feminine counterpart Ilat, but we find comparatively few cities in which these nearly abstract beings enjoyed the veneration of the faithful.* The gods of Syria, like those of Egypt and of the countries watered by the Euphrates, were feudal princes distributed over the surface of the earth, their number corresponding with that of the independent states. Each nation, each tribe, each city, worshipped its own lord—Adoni** —or its master—Baal*** —and each of these was designated by a special title to distinguish him from neighbouring Baalim, or masters.

* The frequent occurrence of the term Ilu or El in names of towns in Southern Syria seems to indicate pretty conclusively that the inhabitants of these countries used this term by preference to designate their supreme god. Similarly we meet with it in Aramaic names, and later on among the Nabathseans; it predominates at Byblos and Berytus in Phoenicia and among the Aramaic peoples of North Syria; in the Samalla country, for instance, during the VIIIth century B.C.

** The extension of this term to Syrian countries is proved in the Israelitish epoch by Canaanitish names, such as Adonizedek and Adonibezek, or Jewish names such as Adonijah, Adonikam, Adoniram-Adoram.

*** Movers tried to prove that there was one particular god named Baal, and his ideas, popularised in Prance by M. de Vogiie, prevailed for some time: since then scholars have gone back to the view of Muenter and of the writers at the beginning of this century, who regarded the term Baal as a common epithet applicable to all gods.

The Baal who ruled at Zebub was styled "Master of Zebub," or Baal-Zebub;* and the Baal of Hermon, who was an ally of Gad, goddess of fortune, was sometimes called Baal-Hermon, or "Master of Hermon," sometimes Baal-G-ad, or "Master of Gad;"** the Baal of Shechem, at the time of the Israelite invasion, was "Master of the Covenant"—Baal-Berith—doubtless in memory of some agreement which he had concluded with his worshippers in regard to the conditions of their allegiance.***

* Baal-Zebub was worshipped at Ekxon during the Philistine supremacy.

** The mountain of Baal-Hermon is the mountain of Banias, where the Jordan has one of its sources, and the town of Baal-Hermon is Banias itself. The variant Baal-Gad occurs several times in the Biblical books.

*** Baal-Berith, like Baal-Zebub, only occurs, so far as we know at present, in the Hebrew Scriptures, where, by the way, the first element, Baal, is changed to El, El-Berith.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from coloured sketches by Prisse d'Avennes.

The prevalent conception of the essence and attributes of these deities was not the same in all their sanctuaries, but the more exalted among them were regarded as personifying the sky in the daytime or at night, the atmosphere, the light,* or the sun, Shamash, as creator and prime mover of the universe; and each declared himself to be king—melek—over the other gods.** Bashuf represented the lightning and the thunderbolt;*** Shalman, Hadad, and his double Bimmon held sway over the air like the Babylonian.

* This appears under the name Or or Ur in the Samalla inscriptions of the VIIIth century B.C.; it is, so far, a unique instance among the Semites.

** We find the term applied in the Bible to the national god of the Ammonites, under the forms Moloch, Molech, Mikom, Milkam, and especially with the article, Ham-molek; the real name hidden beneath this epithet was probably Amnon or Amman, and, strictly speaking, the God Moloch only exists in the imagination of scholars. The epithet was used among the Oanaanites in the name Melchizedek, a similar form to Adonizedek, Abimelech, Ahimelech; it was in current use among the Phoenicians, in reference to the god of Tyre, Melek-Karta or Melkarth, and in many proper names, such as Melekiathon, Baalmelek, Bodmalek, etc., not to mention the god Milichus worshipped in Spain, who was really none other than Melkarth.

*** Resheph has been vocalised Rashuf in deference to the Egyptian orthography Rashupu. It was a name common to a whole family of lightning and storm-gods, and M. de Rouge pointed out long ago the passage in the Great Inscription of Ramses III. at Medinet-Habu, in which the soldiers who man the chariots are compared to the Rashupu; the Rabbinic Hebrew still employs this plural form in the sense of "demons." The Phoenician inscriptions contain references to several local Rashufs; the way in which this god is coupled with the goddess Qodshu on the Egyptian stelae leads me to think that, at the epoch now under consideration, he was specially worshipped by the Amorites, just as his equivalent Hadad was by the inhabitants of Damascus, neighbours of the Amorites, and perhaps themselves Amorites.

Rammanu;* Dagon, patron god of fishermen and husbandmen, seems to have watched over the fruitfulness of the sea and the land.** We are beginning to learn the names of the races whom they specially protected: Rashuf the Amorites, Hadad and Rimmon the Aramaeans of Damascus, Dagon the peoples of the coast between Ashkelon and the forest of Carmel. Rashuf is the only one whose appearance is known to us. He possessed the restless temperament usually attributed to the thunder-gods, and was, accordingly, pictured as a soldier armed with javelin and mace, bow and buckler; a gazelle's head with pointed horns surmounts his helmet, and sometimes, it may be, serves him as a cap.

* Hadad and Rimmon are represented in Assyrio-Chaldaean by one and the same ideogram, which may be read either Dadda- Hadad or Eammanu. The identity of the expressions employed shows how close the connection between the two divinities must have been, even if they were not similar in all respects; from the Hebrew writings we know of the temple of Rimmon at Damascus (2 Kings v. 18) and that one of the kings of that city was called Tabrimmon = "llimmon is good" (1 Kings xv. 18), while Hadad gave his name to no less than ten kings of the same city. Even as late as the Graeco- Roman epoch, kingship over the other gods was still attributed both to Rimmon and to Hadad, but this latter was identified with the sun.

** The documents which we possess in regard to Dagon date from the Hebrew epoch, and represent him as worshipped by the Philistines. We know, however, from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, of a Dagantakala, a name which proves the presence of the god among the Canaanites long before the Philistine invasion, and we find two Beth-Dagons—one in the plain of Judah, the other in the tribe of Asher; Philo of Byblos makes Dagon a Phoenician deity, and declares him to be the genius of fecundity, master of grain and of labour. The representation of his statue which appears on the Graeco- Roman coins of Abydos, reminds us of the fish-god of Chaldaea.

Each god had for his complement a goddess, who was proclaimed "mistress" of the city, Baalat, or "queen," Milkat, of heaven, just as the god himself was recognised as "master" or "king."* As a rule, the goddess was contented with the generic name of Astarte; but to this was often added some epithet, which lent her a distinct personality, and prevented her from being confounded with the Astartes of neighbouring cities, her companions or rivals.**

* Among goddesses to whom the title "Baalat "was referred, we have the goddess of Byblos, Baalat-Gebal, also the goddess of Berytus, Baalat-Berith, or Beyrut. The epithet "queen of heaven "is applied to the Phoenician Astarte by Hebrew (Jer. vii. 18, xliv. 18-29) and classic writers. The Egyptians, when they adopted these Oanaanitish goddesses, preserved the title, and called each of them nibit pit, "lady of heaven." In the Phoenician inscriptions their names are frequently preceded by the word Rabbat: rabbat Baalat-Gebal, "(my) lady Baalat-Gebal."

** The Hebrew writers frequently refer to the Canaanite goddesses by the general title "the Ashtaroth" or "Astartes," and a town in Northern Syria bore the significant name of Istarati = "the Ishtars, the Ashtaroth," a name which finds a parallel in Anathoth = "the Anats," a title assumed by a town of the tribe of Benjamin; similarly, the Assyrio- Chaldaeans called their goddesses by the plural of Ishtar. The inscription on an Egyptian amulet in the Louvre tells us of a personage of the XXth dynasty, who, from his name, Rabrabina, must have been of Syrian origin, and who styled himself "Prophet of the Astartes," Honnutir Astiratu.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a copy of an original in chased gold.

Thus she would be styled the "good" Astarte, Ashtoreth Naamah, or the "horned" Astarte, Ashtoreth Qarnaim, because of the lunar crescent which appears on her forehead, as a sort of head-dress.* She was the goddess of good luck, and was called Gad;** she was Anat,*** or Asiti,**** the chaste and the warlike.

* The two-horned Astarte gave her name to a city beyond the Jordan, of which she was, probably, the eponymous goddess: (Gen xiv. 5) she would seem to be represented on the curious monument called by the Arabs "the stone of Job," which was discovered by M. Schumacher in the centre of the Hauran. It was an analogous goddess whom the Egyptians sometimes identified with their Hathor, and whom they represented as crowned with a crescent.

** Gad, the goddess of fortune, is mainly known to us in connection with the Aramaeans; we find mention made of her by the Hebrew writers, and geographical names, such as Baal-Gad and Migdol-Gad, prove that she must have been worshipped at a very early date in the Canaanite countries.

*** Anat, or Anaiti, or Aniti, has been found in a Phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the history of the goddess. Her worship was largely practised among the Canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the Hebrew epoch of several towns, such as Beth-Anath, Beth- Anoth, Anathoth; at least one of which, Bit-Aniti, is mentioned in the Egyptian geographical lists. The appearance of Anat-Aniti is known to us, as she is represented in Egyptian dress on several stelae of the XIXth and XXth dynasties. Her name, like that of Astarte, had become a generic term, in the plural form Anathoth, for a whole group of goddesses.

**** Asiti is represented at Radesieh, on a stele of the time of Seti I.; she enters into the composition of a compound name, Asitiiakhuru (perhaps "the goddess of Asiti is enflamed with anger "), which we find on a monument in the Vienna Museum. W. Max Mueller makes her out to have been a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture representing her was found would seem to justify this hypothesis; the Egyptians connected her, as well as the other Astartes, with Sit-Typhon, owing to her cruel and warlike character.



The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman's head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses—a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the Qedeshot. She was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled Qaddishat the Holy, like the hetairae of her family; Qodshu, the Amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with Rashuf, the thunder-god.*

* Qaddishat is know to us from the Egyptian monuments referred to above. The name was sometimes written Qodshu, like that of the town: E. de Bouge argued from this that Qaddishat must have been the eponymous divinity of Qodshu, and that her real name was Kashit or Kesh; he recalls, however, the role played by the Qedeshoth, and admits that "the Holy here means the prostitute."

But she often comes before us as a warlike Amazon, brandishing a club, lance, or shield, mounted on horseback like a soldier, and wandering through the desert in quest of her prey.* This dual temperament rendered her a goddess of uncertain attributes and of violent contrasts; at times reserved and chaste, at other times shameless and dissolute, but always cruel, always barren, for the countless multitude of her excesses for ever shut her out from motherhood: she conceives without ceasing, but never brings forth children.** The Baalim and Astartes frequented by choice the tops of mountains, such as Lebanon, Carmel, Hermon, or Kasios:*** they dwelt near springs, or hid themselves in the depths of forests.**** They revealed themselves to mortals through the heavenly bodies, and in all the phenomena of nature: the sun was a Baal, the moon was Astarte, and the whole host of heaven was composed of more or less powerful genii, as we find in Chaldaea.

* A fragment of a popular tale preserved in the British Museum, and mentioned by Birch, seems to show us Astarte in her character of war-goddess, and the sword of Astarte is mentioned by Chabas. A bas-relief at Edfu represents her standing upright in her chariot, drawn by horses, and trampling her enemies underfoot: she is there identified with Sokhit the warlike, destroyer of men.

** This conception of the Syrian goddesses had already become firmly established at the period with which we are dealing, for an Egyptian magical formula defines Aniti and Astarte as "the great goddesses who conceiving do not bring forth young, for the Horuses have sealed them and Sit hath established them."

*** The Baal of Lebanon is mentioned in an archaic Phoenician inscription, and the name "Holy Cape" (Rosh- Qodshu), borne in the time of Thutmosis III. either by Haifa or by a neighbouring town, proves that Carmel was held sacred as far back as the Egyptian epoch. Baal-Hermon has already been mentioned.

**** The source of the Jordan, near Banias, was the seat of a Baal whom the Greeks identified with Pan. This was probably the Baal-Gad who often lent his name to the neighbouring town of Baal-Hermon: many of the rivers of Phoenicia were called after the divinities worshipped in the nearest city, e.g. the Adonis, the Belos, the Asclepios, the Damuras.

They required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them at the high places,* but they were also pleased—and especially the goddesses—to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes bare and branchless (asherah), long continued to be living emblems of the local Astartes among the peoples of Southern Syria. Side by side with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his intelligence and vital force.

* These are the "high places" (bamoth) so frequently referred to by the Hebrew prophets, and which we find in the country of Moab, according to the Mesha inscription, and in the place-name Bamoth-Baal; many of them seem to have served for Canaanitish places of worship before they were resorted to by the children of Israel.

The worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. The Baalim thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common blood such as generally contented their brethren in Chaldaea or Egypt: they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. Among several of the Syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted, either by a money payment or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.**

* This fact is proved, in so far as the Hebrew people is concerned, by the texts of the Pentateuch and of the prophets; amongst the Moabites also it was his eldest son whom King Mosha took to offer to his god. We find the same custom among other Syrian races: Philo of Byblos tells us, in fact, that El-Kronos, god of Byblos, sacrificed his firstborn son and set the example of this kind of offering.

** Redemption by a payment in money was the case among the Hebrews, as also the substitution of an animal in the place of a child; as to redemption by circumcision, cf. the story of Moses and Zipporah, where the mother saves her son from Jahveh by circumcising him. Circumcision was practised among the Syrians of Palestine in the time of Herodotus.

At important junctures, however, this pretence of bloodshed would fail to appease them, and the death of the child alone availed. Indeed, in times of national danger, the king and nobles would furnish, not merely a single victim, but as many as the priests chose to demand.* While they were being burnt alive on the knees of the statue, or before the sacred emblem, their cries of pain were drowned by the piping of flutes or the blare of trumpets, the parents standing near the altar, without a sign of pity, and dressed as for a festival: the ruler of the world could refuse nothing to prayers backed by so precious an offering, and by a purpose so determined to move him. Such sacrifices were, however, the exception, and the shedding of their own blood by his priests sufficed, as a rule, for the daily wants of the god. Seizing their knives, they would slash their arms and breasts with the view of compelling, by this offering of their own persons, the good will of the Baalim.**

* If we may credit Tertullian, the custom of offering up children as sacrifices lasted down to the proconsulate of Tiberius.

** Cf., for the Hebraic epoch, the scene where the priests of Baal, in a trial of power with Elijah before Ahab, offered up sacrifices on the highest point of Carmel, and finding that their offerings did not meet with the usual success, "cut themselves... with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them."

The Astartes of all degrees and kinds were hardly less cruel; they imposed frequent flagellations, self-mutilation, and sometimes even emasculation, on their devotees. Around the majority of these goddesses was gathered an infamous troop of profligates (kedeshim), "dogs of love" (kelabim), and courtesans (kedeshot). The temples bore little resemblance to those of the regions of the Lower Euphrates: nowhere do we find traces of those ziggurat which serve to produce the peculiar jagged outline characteristic of Chaldaean cities. The Syrian edifices were stone buildings, which included, in addition to the halls and courts reserved for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood, and storehouses for provisions: though not to be compared in size with the sanctuaries of Thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds in time of need, and were capable of resisting the attacks of a victorious foe.* A numerous staff, consisting of priests, male and female singers, porters, butchers, slaves, and artisans, was assigned to each of these temples: here the god was accustomed to give forth his oracles, either by the voice of his prophets, or by the movement of his statues.** The greater number of the festivals celebrated in them were closely connected with the pastoral and agricultural life of the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close, the principal operations of the year—the sowing of seed, the harvest, the vintage, the shearing of the sheep. At Shechem, when the grapes were ripe, the people flocked out of the town into the vineyards, returning to the temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when the fruit had been trodden in the winepress.***

* The story of Abimelech gives us some idea of what the Canaanite temple of Baal-Berith at Shechem was like.

** As to the regular organisation of Baal-worship, we possess only documents of a comparatively late period.

*** It is probable that the vintage festival, celebrated at Shiloh in the time of the Judges, dated back to a period of Canaanite history prior to the Hebrew invasion, i.e. to the time of the Egyptian supremacy.

In times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.*

*Cf., in the Hebraic period, the scene where the priests of Baal go up to the top of Mount Carmel with the prophet Elijah.

Almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the Jordan, were monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious reverence. Such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call them, "menhirs," reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of a tableland; dolmens, formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two roughly hewn supports, cromlechs, or, that is to say, stone circles, in the centre of which might be found a beth-el. We know not by whom were set up these monuments there, nor at what time: the fact that they are in no way different from those which are to be met with in Western Europe and the north of Africa has given rise to the theory that they were the work of some one primeval race which wandered ceaselessly over the ancient world. A few of them may have marked the tombs of some forgotten personages, the discovery of human bones beneath them confirming such a conjecture; while others seem to have been holy places and altars from the beginning. The nations of Syria did not in all cases recognise the original purpose of these monuments, but regarded them as marking the seat of an ancient divinity, or the precise spot on which he had at some time manifested himself. When the children of Israel caught sight of them again on their return from Egypt, they at once recognised in them the work of their patriarchs. The dolmen at Shechem was the altar which Abraham had built to the Eternal after his arrival in the country of Canaan. Isaac had raised that at Beersheba, on the very spot where Jehovah had appeared in order to renew with him the covenant that He had made with Abraham. One might almost reconstruct a map of the wanderings of Jacob from the altars which he built at each of his principal resting-places—at Gilead [Galeed], at Ephrata, at Bethel, and at Shechem.* Each of such still existing objects probably had a history of its own, connecting it inseparably with some far-off event in the local annals.

* The heap of stones at Galeed, in Aramaic Jegar- Sahadutha, "the heap of witness," marked the spot where Laban and Jacob were reconciled; the stele on the way to Ephrata was the tomb of Rachel; the altar and stele at Bethel marked the spot where God appeared unto Jacob.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

Most of them were objects of worship: they were anointed with oil, and victims were slaughtered in their honour; the faithful even came at times to spend the night and sleep near them, in order to obtain in their dreams glimpses of the future.*

* The menhir of Bethel was the identical one whereon Jacob rested his head on the night in which Jehovah appeared to him in a dream. In Phoenicia there was a legend which told how Usoos set up two stellae to the elements of wind and fire, and how he offered the blood of the animals he had killed in the chase as a libation.

Men and beasts were supposed to be animated, during their lifetime, by a breath or soul which ran in their veins along with their blood, and served to move their limbs; the man, therefore, who drank blood or ate bleeding flesh assimilated thereby the soul which inhered in it. After death the fate of this soul was similar to that ascribed to the spirits of the departed in Egypt and Chaldaea. The inhabitants of the ancient world were always accustomed to regard the surviving element in man as something restless and unhappy—a weak and pitiable double, doomed to hopeless destruction if deprived of the succour of the living. They imagined it as taking up its abode near the body wrapped in a half-conscious lethargy; or else as dwelling with the other rephaim (departed spirits) in some dismal and gloomy kingdom, hidden in the bowels of the earth, like the region ruled by the Chaldaean Allat, its doors gaping wide to engulf new arrivals, but allowing none to escape who had once passed the threshold.*

* The expression rephaim means "the feeble"; it was the epithet applied by the Hebrews to a part of the primitive races of Palestine.

There it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the Phoenician idea, was Mout (Death),* the grandson of El; there the slave became the equal of his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything which could raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted on their entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night before them.

*Among the Hebrews his name was Maweth, who feeds the departed like sheep, and himself feeds on them in hell. Some writers have sought to identify this or some analogous god with the lion represented on a stele of Piraeus which threatens to devour the body of a dead man.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph in Lortet.

The corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition, was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets, jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household utensils, together with meat and drink. The entrance was then closed, and on the spot a cippus was erected—in popular estimation sometimes held to represent the soul—or a monument was set up on a scale proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had belonged.* On certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger and thirst of the dead man.** The chapels and stellae which marked the exterior of these "eternal"*** houses have disappeared in the course of the various wars by which Syria suffered so heavily: in almost all cases, therefore, we are ignorant as to the sites of the various cities of the dead in which the nobles and common people of the Canaanite and Amorite towns were laid to rest.****

* The pillar or stele was used among both Hebrews and Phoenicians to mark the graves of distinguished persons. Among the Semites speaking Aramaic it was called nephesh, especially when it took the form of a pyramid; the word means "breath," "soul," and clearly shows the ideas associated with the object.

** An altar was sometimes placed in front of the sarcophagus to receive these offerings.

*** This expression, which is identical with that used by the Egyptians of the same period, is found in one of the Phoenician inscriptions at Malta.

**** The excavations carried out by M. Gautier in 1893-94, on the little island of Bahr-el-Kadis, at one time believed to have been the site of the town of Qodshu, have revealed the existence of a number of tombs in the enclosure which forms the central part of the tumulus: some of these may possibly date from the Amorite epoch, but they are very poor in remains, and contain no object which permits us to fix the date with accuracy.

In Phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something of their original arrangement. Sometimes the site chosen was on level ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled up. They were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed with a slab of stone. Elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.*

* Such was the necropolis at Adlun, the last rearrangement of which took place during the Graeco-Roman period, but which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an Egyptian necropolis of the XVIIIth or XIXth dynasty, that we may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin back to the time of the Pharaonic conquest.

In this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of facade similar to that of the Egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at external ornament. The vaults were on the ground-level, but were not used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes of burial. Except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom "the mouth of the pit had devoured" dreaded the visits of the living, and resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves from them. Their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. These imprecations have not, however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and the close of the Roman supremacy. When the modern explorer chances to discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker, it is hardly ever the case that the bodies whose remains are unearthed prove to be those of the original proprietors.



The gods and legends of Chaldaea had penetrated to the countries of Amauru and Canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and their system of writing: the stories of Adapa's struggles against the south-west wind, or of the incidents which forced Irishkigal, queen of the dead, to wed Nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts of Syrian princes. Chaldaean theology, therefore, must have exercised influence on individual Syrians and on their belief; but although we are forced to allow the existence of such influence, we cannot define precisely the effects produced by it. Only on the coast and in the Phoenician cities do the local religions seem to have become formulated at a fairly early date, and crystallised under pressure of this influence into cosmogonie theories. The Baalim and Astartes reigned there as on the banks of the Jordan or Orontes, and in each town Baal was "the most high," master of heaven and eternity, creator of everything which exists, though the character of his creating acts was variously defined according to time and place. Some regarded him as the personification of Justice, Sydyk, who established the universe with the help of eight indefatigable Cabiri. Others held the whole world to be the work of a divine family, whose successive generations gave birth to the various elements. The storm-wind, Colpias, wedded to Chaos, had begotten two mortals, Ulom (Time) and Kadmon (the First-Born), and these in their turn engendered Qen and Qenath, who dwelt in Phoenicia: then came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the Sun, imploring him, as Lord of the Heavens (Baalsamin), to put an end to their woes. At Tyre it was thought that Chaos existed at the beginning, but chaos of a dark and troubled nature, over which a Breath (ruakh) floated without affecting it; "and this Chaos had no ending, and it was thus for centuries and centuries.—Then the Breath became enamoured of its own principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this change was called Desire:—now Desire was the principle which created all things, and the Breath knew not its own creation.—The Breath and Chaos, therefore, became united, and Mot the Clay was born, and from this clay sprang all the seed of creation, and Mot was the father of all things; now Mot was like an egg in shape.—And the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the great planets, shone forth.* There were living beings devoid of intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings, who were called Zophesamin, or 'watchers of the heavens.'Now the thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea."

* Mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water, is probably a Phoenician form of a word which means water in the Semitic languages. Cf. the Egyptian theory, according to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by Khnumu into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced the heavens and the earth.

A scholar of the Roman epoch, Philo of Byblos, using as a basis some old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been classified by Sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the world was brought out of Chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of civilization in Phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. No doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved their substance more or less faithfully. Beneath the veneer of abstraction with which the Greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met with in most Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian or Babylonian. At first we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial Nu or Apsu; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the Nile under the hand? of Khnumu; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the Lakhmu, the Anshar, and the Illinu of Chaldaean speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the Cabinet des Medailles.

The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. No sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. It was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds.

In Phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of gardens. Mount Lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost entirely from Coele-Syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of the sea. At frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front: these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history. To the north were the Zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might. Arvad,* which was used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories. An Astarte reigned there, as also a sea-Baal, half man, half fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.**

* The name Arvad was identified in the Egyptian inscriptions by Birch, who, with Hincks, at first saw in the name a reference to the peoples of Ararat; Birch's identification, is now accepted by all Egyptologists. The name is written Aruada or Arada in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

** The Arvad Astarte had been identified by the Egyptians with their goddess Bastit. The sea-Baal, who has been connected by some with Dagon of Askalon, is represented on the earliest Arvadian coins. He has a fish-like tail, the body and bearded head of a man, with an Assyrian headdress; on his breast we sometimes find a circular opening which seems to show the entrails.

The whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. The courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of any kind. This bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset of hostile fleets and the surges of the Mediterranean.*

* The antiquity of the wall of Arvad, recognised by travellers of the last century, is now universally admitted by all archaeologists.



There was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored in cisterns—still in use among their descendants. In the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt water.*

* Renan tells us that "M. Gaillardot, when crossing from the island to the mainland, noticed a spring of sweet water bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.... Thomson and Walpole noticed the same spring or similar springs a little to the north of Tortosa."



The harbour opened to the east, facing the mainland: it was divided into two basins by a stone jetty, and was doubtless insufficient for the sea-traffic, but this was the less felt inasmuch as there was a safe anchorage outside it—the best, perhaps, to be found in these waters. Opposite to Arvad, on an almost continuous line of coast some ten or twelve miles in length, towns and villages occurred at short intervals, such as Marath, Antarados, Enhydra, and Karne, into which the surplus population of the island overflowed. Karne possessed a harbour, and would have been a dangerous neighbour to the Arvadians had they themselves not occupied and carefully fortified it.*