* Marath, now Amrit, possesses some ancient ruins which have been described by Renan. Antarados, which prior to the Graeco-Roman era was a place of no importance, occupies the site of Tortosa. Enhydra is not known, and Karne has been replaced by Karnun to the north of Tortosa. None of the "neighbours of Arados" are mentioned by name in the Assyrian texts; but W. Max Mueller has demonstrated that the Egyptian form Aratut or Aratiut corresponds with a Semitic plural Arvadot, and consequently refers not only to Arad itself, but also to the fortified cities and towns which formed its continental suburbs.

The cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the slope of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: Lebanon, with its wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the east the mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a pass through which ran the road which joined the great military highway not far from Qodshu. The influence of Arvad penetrated by means of this pass into the valley of the Orontes, and is believed to have gradually extended as far as Hamath itself—in other words, over the whole of Zahi. For the most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast between G-abala and the Nahr el-Kebir; Simyra at one time acknowledged its suzerainty, at another became a self-supporting and independent state, strong enough to compel the respect of its neighbours.* Beyond the Orontes, the coast curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a group of wind-swept hills ending in a promontory called Phaniel,** the reputed scene of a divine manifestation, marked the extreme limit of Arabian influence to the north, if, indeed, it ever reached so far.

* Simyra is the modern Surnrah, near the Nahr el-Kebir.

** The name has only come down to us under its Greek form, but its original form, Phaniel or Penuel, is easily arrived at from the analogous name used in Canaan to indicate localities where there had been a theophany. Renan questions whether Phaniel ought not to be taken in the same sense as the Pne-Baal of the Carthaginian inscriptions, and applied to a goddess to whom the promontory had been dedicated; he also suggests that the modern name Cap Madonne may be a kind of echo of the title Rabbath borne by this goddess from the earliest times.

Half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, Arka,* Siani,** Mahallat, Kaiz, Maiza, and Botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland on the bend of some minor stream. Botrys,**** the last of the six, barred the roads which cross the Phaniel headland, and commanded the entrance to the holy ground where Byblos and Berytus celebrated each year the amorous mysteries of Adonis.

* Arka is perhaps referred to in the tablets of Tel el- Amarna under the form Irkata or Irkat; it also appears in the Bible (Gen. x. 17) and in the Assyrian texts. It is the Cassarea of classical geographers, which has now resumed its old Phoenician name of Tell-Arka.

** Sianu or Siani is mentioned in the Assyrian texts and in the Bible; Strabo knew it under the name of Sinna, and a village near Arka was called Sin or Syn as late as the XVth century.

*** According to the Assyrian inscriptions, these were the names of the three towns which formed the Tripolis of Graeco-Roman times.

**** Botrys is the hellenized form of the name Bozruna or Bozrun, which appears on the tablets of Tel el-Amarna; the modern name, Butrun or Batrun, preserves the final letter which the Greeks had dropped.

Gublu, or—as the Greeks named it—Byblos,* prided itself on being the most ancient city in the world. The god El had founded it at the dawning of time, on the flank of a hill which is visible from some distance out at sea. A small bay, now filled up, made it an important shipping centre. The temple stood on the top of the hill, a few fragments of its walls still serving to mark the site; it was, perhaps, identical with that of which we find the plan engraved on certain imperial coins.**

* Gublu or Gubli is the pronunciation indicated for this name in the Tel el-Amarna tablets; the Egyptians transcribed it Kupuna or Kupna by substituting n for l. The Greek name Byblos was obtained from Gublu by substituting a b for the g.

** Renan carried out excavations in the hill of Kassubah which brought to light some remains of a Graeco-Roman temple: he puts forward, subject to correction, the hypothesis which I have adopted above.

Two flights of steps led up to it from the lower quarters of the town, one of which gave access to a chapel in the Greek style, surmounted by a triangular pediment, and dating, at the earliest, from the time of the Seleucides; the other terminated in a long colonnade, belonging to the same period, added as a new facade to an earlier building, apparently in order to bring it abreast of more modern requirements.



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

The sanctuary which stands hidden behind this incongruous veneer is, as represented on the coins, in a very archaic style, and is by no means wanting in originality or dignity. It consists of a vast rectangular court surrounded by cloisters. At the point where lines drawn from the centres of the two doors seem to cross one another stands a conical stone mounted on a cube of masonry, which is the beth-el animated by the spirit of the god: an open-work balustrade surrounds and protects it from the touch of the profane. The building was perhaps not earlier than the Assyrian or Persian era, but in its general plan it evidently reproduced the arrangements of some former edifice.*

* The author of the De Dea Syra classed the temple of Byblos among the Phoenician temples of the old order, which were almost as ancient as the temples of Egypt, and it is probable that from the Egyptian epoch onwards the plan of this temple must have been that shown on the coins; the cloister arcades ought, however, to be represented by pillars or by columns supporting architraves, and the fact of their presence leads me to the conclusion that the temple did not exist in the form known to us at a date earlier than the last Assyrian period.

At an early time El was spoken of as the first king of G-ablu in the same manner as each one of his Egyptian fellow-gods had been in their several nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable prelude to the beginning of human history. Grandson of Eliun who had brought Chaos into order, son of Heaven and Earth, he dispossessed, vanquished, and mutilated his father, and conquered the most distant regions one after another—the countries beyond the Euphrates, Libya, Asia Minor and Greece: one year, when the plague was ravaging his empire, he burnt his own son on the altar as an expiatory victim, and from that time forward the priests took advantage of his example to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of public danger or calamity.



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

He was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. He was the incarnation of time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the fields. An Astarte reigned with him over Byblos—Baalat-Gublu, his own sister; like him, the child of Earth and Heaven. In one of her aspects she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hathor; but in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the Greeks recognised the popular concept of Aphrodite. Tradition tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by the title of Adoni, or "My Lord." We scarce know what to make of the origin of Adonis, and of the legends which treat him as a hero—the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of a certain King Kinyras and his own daughter Myrrha is a comparatively recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar. Baalat-Gublu wept over her lover's body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and Adonis, ransomed by her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less passionate than it had been before the catastrophe. This is nothing else than the Chaldaean legend of Ishtar and Dumuzi presented in a form more fully symbolical of the yearly marriage of Earth and Heaven. Like the Lady of Byblos at her master's approach, Earth is thrilled by the first breath of spring, and abandons herself without shame to the caresses of Heaven: she welcomes him to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. Them comes summer and kills the spring: Earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy numbness of winter have passed away. Each year the cycle of the seasons brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of the world; each year Baalat falls in love with her Adonis and loses him, only to bring him back to life and lose him again in the coming year.

The whole neighbourhood of Byblos, and that part of Mount Lebanon in which it lies, were steeped in memories of this legend from the very earliest times. We know the precise spot where the goddess first caught sight of her lover, where she unveiled herself before him, and where at the last she buried his mutilated body, and chanted her lament for the dead. A river which flows southward not far off was called the Adonis, and the valley watered by it was supposed to have been the scene of this tragic idyll. The Adonis rises near Aphaka,* at the base of a narrow amphitheatre, issuing from the entrance of an irregular grotto, the natural shape of which had, at some remote period, been altered by the hand of man; in three cascades it bounds into a sort of circular basin, where it gathers to itself the waters of the neighbouring springs, then it dashes onwards under the single arch of a Roman bridge, and descends in a series of waterfalls to the level of the valley below.

* Aphaka means "spring" in Syriac. The site of the temple and town of Aphaka, where a temple of Aphrodite and Adonis still stood in the time of the Emperor Julian, had long been identified either with Fakra, or with El-Yamuni. Seetzen was the first to place it at El-Afka, and his proposed identification has been amply confirmed by the researches of Penan.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

The temple rises opposite the source of the stream on an artificial mound, a meteorite fallen from heaven having attracted the attention of the faithful to the spot. The mountain falls abruptly away, its summit presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of summer sun and winter frost. As the slopes approach the valley they become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet sunny Spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing mould. It would be hard to find, even among the most picturesque spots of Europe, a landscape in which wildness and beauty are more happily combined, or where the mildness of the air and sparkling coolness of the streams offer a more perfect setting for the ceremonies attending the worship of Astarte.*

* The temple had been rebuilt during the Roman period, as were nearly all the temples of this region, upon the site of a more ancient structure; this was probably the edifice which the author of De Dea Syra considered to be the temple of Venus, built by Kinyras within a day's journey of Byblos in the Lebanon.

In the basin of the river and of the torrents by which it is fed, there appears a succession of charming and romantic scenes—gaping chasms with precipitous ochre-coloured walls; narrow fields laid out in terraces on the slopes, or stretching in emerald strips along the ruddy river-banks; orchards thick with almond and walnut trees; sacred grottoes, into which the priestesses, seated at the corner of the roads, endeavour to draw the pilgrims as they proceed on their way to make their prayers to the goddess;* sanctuaries and mausolea of Adonis at Yanukh, on the table-land of Mashnaka, and on the heights of Ghineh. According to the common belief, the actual tomb of Adonis was to be found at Byblos itself,** where the people were accustomed to assemble twice a year to keep his festivals, which lasted for several days together.

* Renan points out at Byblos the existence of one of these caverns which gave shelter to the kedeshoth. Many of the caves met with in the valley of the Nahr-Ibrahim have doubtless served for the same purpose, although their walls contain no marks of the cult.

** Melito placed it, however, near Aphaka, and, indeed, there must have been as many different traditions on the subject as there were celebrated sanctuaries.

At the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of Adonis—terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown. These were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away. For several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of despair, and to endless appeals: "Ah, Lord! Ah, Lord! what is become of thy beauty." Once having found the image, they brought it to the feet of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud, placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais, placed it solemnly in the tomb.*

* Theocritus has described in his fifth Idyll the laying out and burial of Adonis as it was practised at Alexandria in Egypt in the IIIrd century before our era.

The close and dreary summer passes away. With the first days of September the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the hollows of the valleys. The Adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it. The wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was brought back from the shades into new life. Shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous delight. Wives and virgins—all the women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair—were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.**

* The same phenomenon occurs in spring. Maundrell saw it on March 17, and Renan in the first days of February.

** A similar usage was found in later times in the countries colonised by or subjected to the influence of the Phoenicians, especially in Cyprus.

Berytus shared with Byblos the glory of having had El for its founder.* The road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky summits: before reaching Palai-Byblos, it passes over a headland by a series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of "ladder" similar to that which is encountered lower down, between Acre and the plains of Tyre.

* The name Berytus was found by Hincks in the Egyptian texts under the form. Birutu, Beirutu; it occurs frequently in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

The river Lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of this steep headland. It forms at the present time a torrent, fed by the melting snows of Mount Sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. It was better circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early years of the Boman conquest, sailors from Arvad (Arados) were accustomed to sail up it as far as one of the passes of the lower Lebanon, leading into Cole-Syria. Berytus was installed at the base of a great headland which stands out boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking promontory to be met with in these regions from Carmel to the vicinity of Arvad. The port is nothing but an open creek with a petty roadstead, but it has the advantage of a good supply of fresh water, which pours down from the numerous springs to which it is indebted for its name.* According to ancient legends, it was given by El to one of his offspring called Poseidon by the Greeks.

* The name Beyrut has been often derived from a Phconician word signifying cypress, and which may have been applied to the pine tree. The Phoenicians themselves derived it from Bir, "wells."

Adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the maritime Baal secured the permanence of his rule by marrying one of his sisters—the Baalat-Beyrut who is represented as a nymph on Graeco-Roman coins.* The rule of the city extended as far as the banks of the Tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at him to prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. The bar formed of shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were regarded as evidences of this conflict.**

* The poet Nonnus has preserved a highly embellished account of this rivalry, where Adonis is called Dionysos.

** The original name appears to have been Tamur, Tamyr, from a word signifying "palm" in the Phoenician language. The myth of the conflict between Poseidon and the god of the river, a Baal-Demarous, has been explained by Renan, who accepts the identification of the river-deity with Baal- Thamar, already mentioned by Movers.

Beyond the southern bank of the river, Sidon sits enthroned as "the firstborn of Canaan." In spite of this ambitious title it was at first nothing but a poor fishing village founded by Bel, the Agenor of the Greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely towards the south-west.* It grew from year to year, spreading out over the plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief cities of the country—a "mother" in Phoenicia.**

* Sidon is called "the firstborn of Canaan" in Genesis: the name means a fishing-place, as the classical authors already knew—"nam piscem Phonices sidon appellant."

** In the coins of classic times it is called "Sidon, the mother—Om—of Kambe, Hippo, Citium, and Tyre."

The port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula, continue parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow passages in these reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island, which is always above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke of rocks, and furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the continental city.* The necropolis on the mainland extends to the east and north, and consists of an irregular series of excavations made in a low line of limestone cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves of the Mediterranean long prior to the beginning of history. These tombs are crowded closely together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and are separated from each other by such thin walls that one expects every moment to see them give way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. Many date back to a very early period, while all of them have been re-worked and re-appropriated over and over again. The latest occupiers were contemporaries of the Macedonian kings or the Roman Caesars. Space was limited and costly in this region of the dead: the Sidonians made the best use they could of the tombs, burying in them again and again, as the Egyptians were accustomed to do in their cemeteries at Thebes and Memphis. The surrounding plain is watered by the "pleasant Bostrenos," and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be the most beautiful in all Syria—at least after those of Damascus: their praises were sung even in ancient days, and they had then earned for the city the epithet of "the flowery Sidon."**

* The only description of the port which we possess is that in the romance of Olitophon and Leucippus by Achilles Tatius.

** The Bostrenos, which is perhaps to be recognised under the form Borinos in the Periplus of Scylax, is the modern Nahr el-Awaly.

Here, also, an Astarte ruled over the destinies of the people, but a chaste and immaculate Astarte, a self-restrained and warlike virgin, sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid morning star.* In addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped a Baal-Sidon, and other divinities of milder character—an Astarte Shem-Baal, wife of the supreme Baal, and Eshmun, a god of medicine—each of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some neighbouring village in the mountain. Baal delighted in travel, and was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of Phoenicia in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. The immodest Astarte, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at Byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately coarse character by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. She possessed in the suburbs her chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides, where she was served by the usual crowd of Ephebae and sacred courtesans. Some half-dozen towns or fortified villages, such as Bitziti,** the Lesser Sidon, and Sarepta, were scattered along the shore, or on the lowest slopes of the Lebanon.

* Astarte is represented in the Bible as the goddess of the Sidonians, and she is in fact the object of the invocations addressed to the mistress Deity in the Sidonian inscriptions, the patroness of the town. Kings and queens were her priests and priestesses respectively.

** Bitziti is not mentioned except in the Assyrian texts, and has been identified with the modern region Ait ez-Zeitun to the south-east of Sidon. It is very probably the Elaia of Philo of Byblos, the Biais of Dionysios Periegetes, which Renan is inclined to identify with Heldua, Khan-Khaldi, by substituting Eldis as a correction.

Sidonian territory reached its limit at the Cape of Sarepta, where the high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins into which Phoenicia is divided. Passing beyond this cape, we come first upon a Tyrian outpost, the Town of Birds;* then upon the village of Nazana** with its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain hemmed in by low hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and gardens in the suburbs of Autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of boats moored at a short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs and islands furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and temples of Tyre, and a protection from its foes.

* The Phoenician name of Ornithonpolis is unknown to us: the town is often mentioned by the geographers of classic times, but with certain differences, some placing it to the north and others to the south of Sarepta. It was near to the site of Adlun, the Adnonum of the Latin itineraries, if it was not actually the same place.

** Nazana was both the name of the place and the river, as Kasimiyeh and Khan Kasimiyeh, near the same locality, are to-day.

*** Autu was identified by Brugsch with Avatha, which is probably El-Awwatin, on the hill facing Tyre. Max Mueller, who reads the word as Authu, Ozu, prefers the Uru or Ushu of the Assyrian texts.

It was already an ancient town at the beginning of the Egyptian conquest. As in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in the world. After the period of the creating gods, there followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of minor deities—heroes of light and flame—who had learned how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated with the giant peaks of Kasios, Lebanon, Hermon, and Brathy;* after which were born two male children—twins: Samem-rum, the lord of the supernal heaven, and Usoos, the hunter. Human beings at this time lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices.

* The identification of the peak of Brathy is uncertain. The name has been associated with Tabor: since it exactly recalls the name of the cypress and of Berytus, it would be more prudent, perhaps, to look for the name in that of one of the peaks of the Lebanon near the latter town.



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

Samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later times the Tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or other reeds: Usoos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their skins. A conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil.

Usoos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. Usoos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, with it.

* The text simply states the material facts, the tempest and the fire: the general movement of the narrative seems to prove that the intervention of these elements is an episode in the quarrel between the two brothers—that in which Usoos is forced to fly from the region civilized by Samemrum.

Landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. He poured out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had inaugurated.



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

The town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called Tyre, the "Rock," and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. It was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. Two peaks looked down upon it—the "Ambrosian Rocks"—between which grew the olive tree of Astarte, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. An eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. Usoos, the Herakles, destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, Tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. Coins of the Roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelae only. From this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island; Astarte herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star—an aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys.



Baal was called the Melkarth. king of the city, and the Greeks after" wards identified him with their Herakles. His worship was of a severe and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his priests, like those of the Egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused permission to married women to approach the altars.*

* The worship of Melkarth at Gados (Cadiz) and the functions of his priests are described by Silius Italicus: as Gades was a Tyrian colony, it has been naturally assumed that the main features of the religion of Tyre were reproduced there, and Silius's account of the Melkarth of Gades thus applies to his namesake of the mother city.

Festivals, similar to those of Adonis at Byblos, were held in his honour twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with great joy. His temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. It served to remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the Phoenicians on the shores of the Mediterranean. The town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of Arvad to provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. The waters of the well of Eas el-Ain had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.**

* The festival commemorating his death by fire was celebrated at Tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the greater number of the Tyrian colonies.

** Abisharri (Abimilki), King of Tyre, confesses to the Pharaoh Amenothes III. that in case of a siege his town would neither have water nor wood. Aqueducts and conduits of water are spoken of by Menander as existing in the time of Shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing their construction to a very remote antiquity.

The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points of its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened siege.

* According to the writers who were contemporary with Alexander, the strait was 4 stadia wide (nearly 1/2 mile), or 500 paces (about 3/8 mile), at the period when the Macedonians undertook the siege of the town; the author followed by Pliny says 700 paces, possibly over—mile wide. From the observations of Poulain de Bossay, Renan thinks the space between the island and the mainland might be nearly a mile in width, but we should perhaps do well to reduce this higher figure and adopt one agreeing better with the statements of Diodorus and Quintus Curtius.

Like the coast region opposite Arvad, the shore which faced Tyre, lying between the mouth of the Litany and ras el-Ain, was an actual suburb of the city itself—with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. Here the inhabitants of the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired for refreshment during the heat of the summer. To the north the little town of Mahalliba, on the southern bank of the Litany, and almost hidden from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the Bekaa, and the high-road to Coele-Syria.* To the south, at Ras el-Ain, Old Tyre (Palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into Galilee by way of the mountains.**

* Mahalliba is the present Khurbet-Mahallib.

** Palrotyrus has often been considered as a Tyre on the mainland of greater antiquity than the town of the same name on the island; it is now generally admitted that it was merely an outpost, which is conjecturally placed by most scholars in the neighbourhood of Ras el-Ain.

Eastwards Autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was built, facing the insular temple of Melkarth, protector of mariners, a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the mainland.* The latter divinity was probably the representative of the legendary Samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while Usoos had founded his on the ocean. He was the Baalsamim of starry tunic, lord of heaven and king of the sun.

* If the name has been preserved, as I believe it to be, in that of El-Awwatin, the town must be that whose ruins we find at the foot of Tell-Mashuk, and which are often mistaken for those of Palastyrus. The temple on the summit of the Tell was probably that of Heracles Astrochiton mentioned by Nonnus.

As was customary, a popular Astarte was associated with these deities of high degree, and tradition asserted that Melkarth purchased her favour by the gift of the first robe of Tyrian purple which was ever dyed. Priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and in several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained the devotees of the goddess. Behind Autu the ground rises abruptly, and along the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood, are the remains of the most important of the Tyrian burying-places, consisting of half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries, where whole families lie together in their last sleep. In some spots the chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger, and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of Upper Egypt. They present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. The entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. At one place only, near the modern village of Hanaweh, a few groups of figures and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the burying-place of some chief of very early times.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Lortet.

These figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild ravine. They vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn, at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the Asiatic garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of a certain skill. Whether they are to be regarded as the product of a primitive Amorite art or of a school of Phoenician craftsmen, we are unable to determine. In the time of their prosperity the Tyrians certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. The wind-swept but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of the Lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable industry—remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns, pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields, interspersed with oil and wine presses. The Phoenicians took naturally to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the Mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later times.*

* Their taste for agriculture, and the comparative perfection of their modes of culture, are proved by the greatness of the remains still to be observed: "The Phoenicians constructed a winepress, a trough, to last for ever." Their colonists at Carthage carried with them the same clever methods, and the Romans borrowed many excellent things in the way of agriculture from Carthaginian books, especially from those of Mago.

Among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. From Arvad to Tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and shady woods. The whole region was independent and self-supporting, the inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant lands. To insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war.

The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria. Along almost the entire eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebir and Litany. Its slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow. Hunters' or shepherds' paths led here and there in tortuous courses from one side of the mountain to the other. Near the middle of the country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the littoral and the plain of the interior. They branched off on either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south of Qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at one time Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the desert.

* Magara is mentioned in the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, and Chabas has identified it with the plain of Macra, which Strabo places in Syria, in the neighbourhood of Eloutheros.

** The name Lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns of Seti I.

The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned lions known to Asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course, crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called Shaua, which is probably the Sannin of our times. While one of these roads, running north along the lake of Yamuneh and through the gorge of Akura, then proceeded along the Adonis* to Byblos, the other took a southern direction, and followed the Nahr el-Kelb to the sea.

* This is the road pointed out by Renan as the easiest but least known of those which cross the Lebanon; the remains of an Assyrian inscription graven on the rocks near Ain el- Asafir show that it was employed from a very early date, and Renan thought that it was used by the armies which came from the upper valley of the Orontes.

Towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory. Commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they offered access into the very heart of Phoenicia. Invaders would encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself readily to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the foot of the Lebanon range, they would find themselves entrapped in a region of slippery defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the rock, and almost inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in places that a handful of resolute men could have held them for a long time against whole battalions. The enemy preferred to make for the two natural breaches at the respective extremities of the line of defence, and for the two insular cities which flanked the approaches to them—Tyre in the case of those coming from Egypt, Arvad and Simyra for assailants from the Euphrates. The Arvadians, bellicose by nature, would offer strong resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves to be conquered without a brave struggle with the enemy, however powerful he might be.* When the disproportion of the forces which they could muster against the enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting an open conflict, their island-home offered them a refuge where they would be safe from any attacks.

* Thutmosis III. was obliged to enter on a campaign against Arvad in the year XXIX., in the year XXX., and probably twice in the following years. Under Amenothes III. and IV. we see that these people took part in all the intrigues directed against Egypt; they were the allies of the Khati against Ramses II. in the campaign of the year V. and later on we find them involved in most of the wars against Assyria.

Sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but such submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest occasion for regaining their liberty. Conquered again and again on account of the smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged by their reverses, and Phoenicia owed all its military history for a long period to their prowess. The Tyrians were of a more accommodating nature, and there is no evidence, at least during the early centuries of their existence, of the display of those obstinate and blind transports of bravery by which the Arvadians were carried away.*

* No campaign against Tyre is mentioned in any of the Egyptian annals: the expedition of Thutmosis III. against Senzauru was directed against a town of Coele-Syria mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets with the orthography Zinzar, the Sizara-Larissa of Graeco-Roman times, the Shaizar of the Arab Chronicles. On the contrary, the Tel el-Amarna tablets contain several passages which manifest the fidelity of Tyre and its governors to the King of Egypt.

Their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question, which they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial interests. As soon as they had learned from a short experience that a certain Pharaoh had at his disposal armies against which they could offer no serious opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and thought only of obtaining the greatest profit from the vassalage to which they were condemned. The obligation to pay tribute did not appear to them so much in the light of a burthen or a sacrifice, as a means of purchasing the right to go to and fro freely in Egypt, or in the countries subject to its influence. The commerce acquired by these privileges recouped them more than a hundredfold for all that their overlord demanded from them. The other cities of the coast—Sidon, Berytus, Byblos—usually followed the example of Tyre, whether from mercenary motives, or from their naturally pacific disposition, or from a sense of their impotence; and the same intelligent resignation with which, as we know, they accepted the supremacy of the great Egyptian empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier centuries in their submission to the Babylonians. Their records show that they did not accept this state of things merely through cowardice or indolence, for they are represented as ready to rebel and shake off the yoke of their foreign master when they found it incompatible with their practical interests. But their resort to war was exceptional; they generally preferred to submit to the powers that be, and to accept from them as if on lease the strip of coast-line at the base of the Lebanon, which served as a site for their warehouses and dockyards. Thus they did not find the yoke of the stranger irksome—the sea opening up to them a realm of freedom and independence which compensated them for the limitations of both territory and liberty imposed upon them at home.

The epoch which was marked by their first venture on the Mediterranean, and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. The gods had taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had taken to the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.* They were not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or inspired thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. They had at home sufficient corn and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and even to administer to a life of luxury. And if they lacked cattle, the abundance of fish within their reach compensated for the absence of flesh-meat.

* According to one of the cosmogonies of Sanchoniathon, Khusor, who has been identified with Hephsestos, was the inventor of the fishing-boat, and was the first among men and gods who taught navigation. According to another legend, Melkarth showed the Tyrians how to make a raft from the branches of a fig tree, while the construction of the first ships is elsewhere ascribed to the Cabiri.

Nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast which induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were badly protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the wind set in from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource against the wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. It was the nature of the country itself which contributed more than anything else to make them mariners. The precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. Commerce endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this highwayman's region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast. The continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases of the limestone cliffs, and the superincumbent masses tumbling down into the sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, from the VIth Egyptian dynasty onwards, when the Pharaohs no longer hesitated to embark troops at the mouth of the Nile for speedy transmission to the provinces of Southern Syria, and it was by this coasting route that the tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of Egypt. The trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those mysterious Kefatiu of whom the name only was known in later times. When the Phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the Lebanon, they had probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow the beaten tracks which they had already made. We have every reason to believe that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in the country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization readily to the exigencies of a maritime career.*

* Connexion between Phoenicia and Greece was fully established at the outbreak of the Egyptian wars, and we may safely assume their existence in the centuries immediately preceding the second millennium before our era.

In their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign element, both of slaves and freemen, but the Egyptians confounded them all under one name, Kefatiu, whether they were Cypriotes, Asiatics, or Europeans, or belonged to the true Tyrian and Sidonian race. The costume of the Kafiti was similar to that worn by the people of the interior—the loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in tiring the hair they adopted certain refinements, specially a series of curls which the men arranged in the form of an aigrette above their foreheads. This motley collection of races was ruled over by an oligarchy of merchants and shipowners, whose functions were hereditary, and who usually paid homage to a single king, the representative of the tutelary god, and absolute master of the city.*

* Under the Egyptian supremacy, the local princes did not assume the royal title in the despatches which they addressed to the kings of Egypt, but styled themselves governors of their cities.

The industries pursued in Phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of other parts of Syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at Tyre and Sidon could not be distinguished from those of Hamath or of Carchemish.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the coloured sketches by Prisse d'Avennes in the Natural Hist. Museum.

All manufactures bore the impress of Babylonian influence, and their implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same as those in use among the Chaldaeans. The products of the country were, however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed from Phoenicia every year bound for all parts of the known world, and additional supplies had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring peoples, who thus became used to pour into Tyre and Sidon the surplus of their manufactures, or of the natural wealth of their country. The Phoenicians were also accustomed to send caravans into regions which they could not reach in their caracks, and to establish trading stations at the fords of rivers, or in the passes over mountain ranges. We know of the existence of such emporia at Laish near the sources of the Jordan, at Thapsacus, and at Nisibis, and they must have served the purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of the world. The settlements of the Phoenicians always assumed the character of colonies, and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the colonists never lost the manners and customs of their native country. They collected together into their okels or storehouses such wares and commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and, transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all parts of the world.

Not only were they acquainted with every part of the Mediterranean, but they had even made voyages beyond its limits. In the absence, however, of any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they followed must be a subject of conjecture. They were accustomed to relate that the gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation, had shown them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their example to make voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. El of Byblos was the first to leave Syria; he conquered Greece and Egypt, Sicily and Libya, civilizing their inhabitants, and laying the foundation of cities everywhere. The Sidonian Astarte, with her head surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the next to begin her wanderings over the inhabited earth. Melkarth completed the task of the gods by discovering and subjugating those countries which had escaped the notice of his predecessors. Hundreds of local traditions, to be found on all the shores of the Mediterranean down to Roman times, bore witness to the pervasive influence of the old Canaanite colonisation. At Cyprus, for instance, wo find traces of the cultus of Kinyras, King of Byblos and father of Adonis; again, at Crete, it is the daughter of a Prince of Sidon, Buropa, who is carried off by Zeus under the form of a bull; it was Kadmos, sent forth to seek Buropa, who visited Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades before building Thebes in Boeotia and dying in the forests of Illyria. In short, wherever the Phoenicians had obtained a footing, their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon the mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing vessels. They made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their vessels up the beach until the morrow. They did not shrink when it was necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their course by the Pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long distances out of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short time voyages previously deemed long and costly.

* The Greeks for this reason called it Phonike, the Phoenician star; ancient writers refer to the use which the Phoenicians made of the Pole-star to guide them in navigation.

It is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as pirates—indeed, they hardly knew themselves—and their peaceful or warlike attitude towards vessels which they encountered on the seas, or towards the people whose countries they frequented, was probably determined by the circumstances of the moment.* If on arrival at a port they felt themselves no match for the natives, the instinct of the merchant prevailed, and that of the pirate was kept in the background. They landed peaceably, gained the good will of the native chief and his nobles by small presents, and spreading out their wares, contented themselves, if they could do no better, with the usual advantage obtained in an exchange of goods.

* The manner in which the Phoenicians plied their trade is strikingly described in the Odyssey, in the part where Eumaios relates how he was carried off by a Sidonian vessel and sold as a slave: cf. the passage which mentions the ravages of the Greeks on the coast of the Delta. Herodotus recalls the rape of Io, daughter of Inachos, by the Phoenicians, who carried her and her companions into Egypt; on the other hand, during one of their Egyptian expeditions they had taken two priestesses from Thebes, and had transported one of them to Dodona, the other into Libya.

They were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer. Their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces, amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs dyed purple or embroidered with gay colours. At times the natives, whose cupidity was excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt to gain possession of them either by craft or by violence. They would kill the men who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during the night. But more often it was the Phoenicians who took advantage of the friendliness or the weakness of their hosts.



They would turn treacherously upon the unarmed crowd when absorbed in the interest of buying and selling; robbing and killing the old men, they would make prisoners of the young and strong, the women and children, carrying them off to sell them in those markets where slaves were known to fetch the highest price. This was a recognised trade, but it exposed the Phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an undying hatred. When on these distant expeditions they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. A mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to obtain help in any of the places they might visit, their prospects were of a desperate character. They soon, therefore, learned the necessity of establishing cities of refuge at various points in the countries with which they traded—stations where they could go to refit and revictual their vessels, to fill up the complement of their crews, to take in new freight, and, if necessary, pass the winter or wait for fair weather before continuing their voyage. For this purpose they chose by preference islands lying within easy distance of the mainland, like their native cities of Tyre and Arvad, but possessing a good harbour or roadstead. If an island were not available, they selected a peninsula with a narrow isthmus, or a rock standing at the extremity of a promontory, which a handful of men could defend against any attack, and which could be seen from a considerable distance by their pilots. Most of their stations thus happily situated became at length important towns. They were frequented by the natives from the interior, who allied themselves with the new-comers, and furnished them not only with objects of trade, but with soldiers, sailors, and recruits for their army; and such was the rapid spread of these colonies, that before long the Mediterranean was surrounded by an almost unbroken chain of Phoenician strongholds and trading stations.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

All the towns of the mother country—Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon—possessed vessels engaged in cruising long before the Egyptian conquest of Syria. We have no direct information from any existing monument to show us what these vessels were like, but we are familiar with the construction of the galleys which formed the fleets of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty. The art of shipbuilding had made considerable progress since the times of the Memphite kings. Prom the period when Egypt aspired to become one of the great powers of the world, she doubtless endeavoured to bring her naval force to the same pitch of perfection as her land forces could boast of, and her fleets probably consisted of the best vessels which the dockyards of that day could turn out. Phoenician vessels of this period may therefore be regarded with reason as constructed on lines similar to those of the Egyptian ships, differing from them merely in the minor details of the shape of the hull and manner of rigging. The hull continued to be built long and narrow, rising at the stem and stern. The bow was terminated by a sort of hook, to which, in time of peace, a bronze ornament was attached, fashioned to represent the head of a divinity, gazelle, or bull, while in time of war this was superseded by a metal cut-water made fast to the hull by several turns of stout rope, the blade rising some couple of yards above the level of the deck.* The poop was ornamented with a projection firmly attached to the body of the vessel, but curved inwards and terminated by an open lotus-flower. An upper deck, surrounded by a wooden rail, was placed at the bow and stern to serve as forecastle and quarterdecks respectively, and in order to protect the vessel from the danger of heavy seas the ship was strengthened by a structure to which we find nothing analogous in the shipbuilding of classical times: an enormous cable attached to the gammonings of the bow rose obliquely to a height of about a couple of yards above the deck, and, passing over four small crutched masts, was made fast again to the gammonings of the stern. The hull measured from the blade of the cut-water to the stern-post some twenty to five and twenty yards, but the lowest part of the hold did not exceed five feet in depth. There was no cabin, and the ballast, arms, provisions, and spare-rigging occupied the open hold.**

* To get a clear idea of the details of this structure, we have only to compare the appearance of ships with and without a cut-water in the scenes at Thebes, representing the celebration of a festival at the return of the fleet.

** M. Glaser thinks that there were cabins for the crew under the deck, and he recognises in the sixteen oblong marks on the sides of the vessels at Deir el-Bahari so many dead-lights; as there could not have been space for so many cabins, I had concluded that these were ports for oars to be used in time of battle, but on further consideration I saw that they represented the ends of the beams supporting the deck.

The bulwarks were raised to a height of some two feet, and the thwarts of the rowers ran up to them on both the port and starboard sides, leaving an open space in the centre for the long-boat, bales of merchandise, soldiers, slaves, and additional passengers.* A double set of steering-oars and a single mast completed the equipment. The latter, which rose to a height of some twenty-six feet, was placed amidships, and was held in an upright position by stays. The masthead was surmounted by two arrangements which answered respectively to the top ["gabie"] and calcet of the masts of a galley.** There were no shrouds on each side from the masthead to the rail, but, in place of them, two stays ran respectively to the bow and stern. The single square-sail was extended between two yards some sixty to seventy feet long, and each made of two pieces spliced together at the centre. The upper yard was straight, while the lower curved upward at the ends. The yard was hoisted and lowered by two halyards, which were made fast aft at the feet of the steersmen. The yard was kept in its place by two lifts which came down from the masthead, and were attached respectively about eight feet from the end of each yard-arm. When the yard was hauled up it was further supported by six auxiliary lifts, three being attached to each yard-arm. The lower yard, made fast to the mast by a figure-of-eight knot, was secured by sixteen lifts, which, like those of the upper yard, worked through the "calcet."

* One of the bas-reliefs exhibits a long-boat in the water at the time the fleet was at anchor at Puanit. As we do not find any vessel towing one after her, we naturally conclude that the boat must have been stowed on board.

** The "gabie" was a species of top where a sailor was placed on the look-out. The "calcet" is, properly speaking, a square block of wood containing the sheaves on which the halyards travelled. The Egyptian apparatus had no sheaves, and answers to the "calcet" on the masts of a galley only in its serving the same purpose.

The crew comprised thirty rowers, fifteen on each side, four top-men, two steersmen, a pilot at the bow, who signalled to the men at the helm the course to steer, a captain and a governor of the slaves, who formed, together with ten soldiers, a total of some fifty men.* In time of battle, as the rowers would be exposed to the missiles of the enemy, the bulwarks were further heightened by a mantlet, behind which the oars could be freely moved, while the bodies of the men were fully protected, their heads alone being visible above it. The soldiers were stationed as follows: two of them took their places on the forecastle, a third was perched on the masthead in a sort of cage improvised on the bars forming the top, while the remainder were posted on the deck and poop, from which positions and while waiting for the order to board they could pour a continuous volley of arrows on the archers and sailors of the enemy.**

* I have made this calculation from an examination of the scenes in which ships are alternatively represented as at anchor and under weigh. I know of vessels of smaller size, and consequently with a smaller crew, but I know of none larger or more fully manned.

** The details are taken from the only representation of a naval battle which we possess up to this moment, viz. that of which I shall have occasion to speak further on in connection with the reign of Ramses III.

The first colony of which the Phoenicians made themselves masters was that island of Cyprus whose low, lurid outline they could see on fine summer evenings in the glow of the western sky. Some hundred and ten miles in length and thirty-six in breadth, it is driven like a wedge into the angle which Asia Minor makes with the Syrian coast: it throws out to the north-east a narrow strip of land, somewhat like an extended finger pointing to where the two coasts meet at the extremity of the gulf of Issos. A limestone cliff, of almost uniform height throughout, bounds, for half its length at least, the northern side of the island, broken occasionally by short deep valleys, which open out into creeks deeply embayed. A scattered population of fishermen exercised their calling in this region, and small towns, of which we possess only the Greek or Grecised names—Karpasia, Aphrodision, Kerynia, Lapethos—led there a slumbering existence. Almost in the centre of the island two volcanic peaks, Troodes and Olympos, face each other, and rise to a height of nearly 7000 feet, the range of mountains to which they belong—that of Aous—forming the framework of the island. The spurs of this range fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out either into stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into great maritime flats fringed with brackish lagoons. The valley which lies on the northern side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an almost unbroken level. A scarcely perceptible watershed divides the valley into two basins similar to those of Syria, the larger of the two lying opposite to the Phoenician coast. The soil consists of black mould, as rich as that of Egypt, and renewed yearly by the overflowing of the Pediaeos and its affluents. Thick forests occupied the interior, promising inexhaustible resources to any naval power. Even under the Koman emperors the Cypriotes boasted that they could build and fit out a ship from the keel to the masthead without looking to resources beyond those of their own island. The ash, pine, cypress, and oak flourished on the sides of the range of Aous, while cedars grew there to a greater height and girth than even on the Lebanon. Wheat, barley, olive trees, vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the altar, medicinal plants such as the poppy and the ladanum, henna for staining with a deep orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and fingertips of the women, all found here a congenial habitat; while a profusion everywhere of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air with their penetrating odours—spring violets, many-coloured anemones, the lily, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose—led the Greeks to bestow upon the island the designation of "the balmy Cyprus." Mines also contributed their share to the riches of which the island could boast. Iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and other precious stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times the neighbourhood of Tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the Romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name "Cyprium," and the word passed from them into all the languages of Europe. It is not easy to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the island belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the Kefatiu, who frequented the Asiatic shores of the Mediterranean from a very remote period. In the time of Egyptian supremacy they called their country Asi, and this name inclines one to connect the people with the AEgeans.* An examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs of the island seems to confirm this opinion. These consist, for the most part, of weapons and implements of stone—knives, hatchets, hammers, and arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design—pitchers with contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail variety, provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles.

* "Asi," "Asii," was at first sought for on the Asiatic continent—at Is on the Euphrates, or in Palestine: the discovery of the Canopic decree allows us to identify it with Cyprus, and this has now been generally done. The reading "Asebi" is still maintained by some.



The pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it consists of incised geometrical designs. Copper and bronze, where we find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making daggers. There is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and yet Cyprus had already at this time entered into relations with the civilized nations of the continent.* According to Chaldaean tradition, it was conquered about the year 3800 B.C. by Sargon of Agade: without insisting upon the reality of this conquest, which in any case must have been ephemeral in its nature, there is reason to believe that the island was subjected from an early period to the influence of the various peoples which lived one after another on the slopes of the Lebanon. Popular legend attributes to King Kinyras and to the Giblites [i.e. the people of Byblos] the establishment of the first Phoenician colonies in the southern region of the island—one of them being at Paphos, where the worship of Adonis and Astarte continued to a very late date. The natives preserved their own language and customs, had their own chiefs, and maintained their national independence, while constrained to submit at the same time to the presence of Phoenician colonists or merchants on the coast, and in the neighbourhood of the mines in the mountains. The trading centres of these settlers—Kition, Amathus, Solius, Golgos, and Tamassos—were soon, however, converted into strongholds, which ensured to Phonicia the monopoly of the immense wealth contained in the island.**

* An examination into the origin of the Cypriotes formed part of the original scheme of this work, together with that of the monuments of the various races scattered along the coast of Asia Minor and the islands of the AEgean; but I have been obliged to curtail it, in order to keep within the limits I had proscribed for myself, and I have merely epitomised, as briefly as possible, the results of the researches undertaken in those regions during the last few years.

** The Phoenician origin of these towns is proved by passages from classical writers. The date of the colonisation is uncertain, but with the knowledge we possess of the efficient vessels belonging to the various Phoenician towns, it would seem difficult not to allow that the coasts at least of Cyprus must have been partially occupied at the time of the Egyptian invasions.

Tyre and Sidon had no important centres of industry on that part of the Canaanite coast which extended to the south of Carmel, and Egypt, even in the time of the shepherd kings, would not have tolerated the existence on her territory of any great emporium not subject to the immediate supervision of her official agents. We know that the Libyan cliffs long presented an obstacle to inroads into Egyptian territory, and baffled any attempts to land to the westwards of the Delta: the Phoenicians consequently turned with all the greater ardour to those northern regions which for centuries had furnished them with most valuable products—bronze, tin, amber, and iron, both native and wrought. A little to the north of the Orontes, where the Syrian border is crossed and Asia Minor begins, the coast turns due west and runs in that direction for a considerable distance. The Phoenicians were accustomed to trade along this region, and we may attribute, perhaps, to them the foundation of those obscure cities—Kibyra, Masura, Euskopus, Sylion, Mygdale, and Sidyma*—all of which preserved their apparently Semitic names down to the time of the Roman epoch. The whole of the important island of Rhodes fell into their power, and its three ports, Ialysos, Lindos*, and Kamiros, afforded them a well-situated base of operations for further colonisation. On leaving Rhodes, the choice of two routes presented itself to them. To the south-west they could see the distant outline of Karpathos, and on the far horizon behind it the summits of the Cretan chain. Crete itself bars on the south the entrance to the AEgean, and is almost a little continent, self-contained and self-sufficing.

* No direct evidence exists to lead us to attribute the foundation of these towns to the Phoenicians, but the Semitic origin of nearly all the names is an uncontested fact.



It is made up of fertile valleys and mountains clothed with forests, and its inhabitants could employ themselves in mines and fisheries. The Phoenicians effected a settlement on the coast at Itanos, at Kairatos, and at Arados, and obtained possession of the peak of Cythera, where, it is said, they raised a sanctuary to Astarte. If, on leaving Rhodes, they had chosen to steer due north, they would soon have come into contact with numerous rocky islets scattered in the sea between the continents of Asia and Europe, which would have furnished them with as many stations, less easy of attack, and more readily defended than posts on the mainland. Of these the Giblites occupied Melos, while the Sidonians chose Oliaros and Thera, and we find traces of them in every island where any natural product, such as metals, sulphur, alum, fuller's earth, emery, medicinal plants, and shells for producing dyes, offered an attraction. The purple used by the Tyrians for dyeing is secreted by several varieties of molluscs common in the Eastern Mediterranean; those most esteemed by the dyers were the Murex trunculus and the Murex Brandaris, and solid masses made up of the detritus of these shells are found in enormous quantities in the neighbourhood of many Phoenician towns. The colouring matter was secreted in the head of the shellfish. To obtain it the shell was broken by a blow from a hammer, and the small quantity of slightly yellowish liquid which issued from the fracture was carefully collected and stirred about in salt water for three days.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

It was then boiled in leaden vessels and reduced by simmering over a slow fire; the remainder was strained through a cloth to free it from the particles of flesh still floating in it, and the material to be dyed was then plunged into the liquid. The usual tint thus imparted was that of fresh blood, in some lights almost approaching to black; but careful manipulation could produce shades of red, dark violet, and amethyst. Phoenician settlements can be traced, therefore, by the heaps of shells upon the shore, the Cyclades and the coasts of Greece being strewn with this refuse. The veins of gold in the Pangaion range in Macedonia attracted them off the Thracian coast* received also frequent visits from them, and they carried their explorations even through the tortuous channel of the Hellespont into the Propontis, drawn thither, no doubt by the silver mines in the Bithynian mountains** which were already being worked by Asiatic miners.

* The fact that they worked the mines of Thasos is attested by Herodotus.

** Pronektos, on the Gulf of Ascania, was supposed to be a Phoenician colony.

Beyond the calm waters of the Propontis, they encountered an obstacle to their progress in another narrow channel, having more the character of a wide river than of a strait; it was with difficulty that they could make their way against the violence of its current, which either tended to drive their vessels on shore, or to dash them against the reefs which hampered the navigation of the channel. When, however, they succeeded in making the passage safely, they found themselves upon a vast and stormy sea, whose wooded shores extended east and west as far as eye could reach.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile in Perrot-Chipiez.

From the tribes who inhabited them, and who acted as intermediaries, the Phoenician traders were able to procure tin, lead, amber, Caucasian gold, bronze, and iron, all products of the extreme north—a region which always seemed,to elude their persevering efforts to discover it. We cannot determine the furthest limits reached by the Phoenician traders, since they were wont to designate the distant countries and nations with which they traded by the vague appellations of "Isles of the Sea" and "Peoples of the Sea," refusing to give more accurate information either from jealousy or from a desire to hide from other nations the sources of their wealth.

The peoples with whom they traded were not mere barbarians, contented with worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants of the iEgean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the East, possessed an independent and growing civilization, traces of which are still coming to light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses, palaces, utensils, ornaments, representations of the gods, and household and funerary furniture,—not only in the Cyclades, but on the mainland of Asia Minor and of Greece. No inferior goods or tinsel wares would have satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities as Troy and Mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of Egypt and Syria—costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate design—such objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the sovereigns and nobles of Memphis or of Babylon. For articles to offer in exchange they were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products of their own country. Their craftsmen, though less successful in general technique than their Oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable artistic intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. Accustomed at first merely to copy the objects sold to them by the Phoenicians, they soon developed a style of their own; the Mycenaean dagger in the illustration on page 299, though several centuries later in date than that of the Pharaoh Ahmosis, appears to be traceable to this ancient source of inspiration, although it gives evidence of new elements in its method of decoration and in its greater freedom of treatment. The inhabitants of the valleys of the Nile and of the Orontes, and probably also those of the Euphrates and Tigris, agreed in the, high value they set upon these artistic objects in gold, silver, and bronze, brought to them from the further shores of the Mediterranean, which, while reproducing their own designs, modified them to a certain extent; for just as we now imitate types of ornamental work in vogue among nations less civilized than ourselves, so the iEgean people set themselves the task through their potters and engravers of reproducing exotic models. The Phoenician traders who exported to Greece large consignments of objects made under various influences in their own workshops, or purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back as a return cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the towns of the West, which eventually found their way into the various markets of Asia and Africa. These energetic merchants were not the first to ply this profitable trade of maritime carriers, for from the time of the Memphite empire the products of northern regions had found their way, through the intermediation of the Hauinibu, as far south as the cities of the Delta and the Thebaid. But this commerce could not be said to be either regular or continuous; the transmission was carried on from one neighbouring tribe to another, and the Syrian sailors were merely the last in a long chain of intermediaries—a tribal war, a migration, the caprice of some chief, being sufficient to break the communication, and even cause the suspension of transit for a considerable period. The Phoenicians desired to provide against such risks by undertaking themselves to fetch the much-coveted objects from their respective sources, or, where this was not possible, from the ports nearest the place of their manufacture. Reappearing with each returning year in the localities where they had established emporia, they accustomed the natives to collect against their arrival such products as they could profitably use in bartering with one or other of their many customers. They thus established, on a fixed line of route, a kind of maritime trading service, which placed all the shores of the Mediterranean in direct communication with each other, and promoted the blending of the youthful West with the ancient East.



CHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY



THUTMOSIS I. AND HIS ARMY—HATSHOPSITU AND THUTMOSIS III.

Thutmosis I.'s campaign in Syria—The organisation of the Egyptian army: the infantry of the line, the archers, the horses, and the charioteers—The classification of the troops according to their arms—Marching and encampment in the enemy's country: battle array—Chariot-charges—The enumeration and distribution of the spoil—The vice-royalty of Rush and the adoption of Egyptian customs by the Ethiopian tribes.

The first successors of Thutmosis I.: Ahmasi and Hatshopsitit, Thutmosis II—The temple of Deir el-Bahari and the buildings of Karnah—The Ladders of Incense—The expedition to Puanit: bartering with the natives, the return of the fleet.

Thutmosis III.: his departure for Asia, the battle of Megiddo and the subjection of Southern Syria—The year 23 to the year 28 of his reign—Conquest of Lotanu and of Mitanni—The campaign of the 33rd year of the king's reign.



CHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY

Thutmosis I. and his army—Hatshopsitu and Thutmosis III.

The account of the first expedition undertaken by Thutmosis in Asia, a region at that time new to the Egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands upon it. We should perhaps find in the midst of official documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some indication of the impression which the country produced upon its conquerors.

With the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from Thebes to Memphis had any other idea of Asia than that which could be gathered from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the preceding age. The actual sight of the country must have been a revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike expedition into Ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the Red Sea. Instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the Nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere in Africa outside their own boundaries. Thutmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign—from Gaza to Megiddo, from Megiddo to Qodshu, from Qodshu to Carchemish—was that which was followed henceforward by the Egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the Euphrates. Of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no information. On arriving at Naharaim, however, we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a single general—perhaps the King of Mitanni himself, or one of the lieutenants of the "Cossaean King of Babylon"—who had collected together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the advance of the intruder. The contest was hotly fought out on both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable prisoners fell into their hands. The veteran Ahmosi, son of Abina, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, Ahmosi Pannekhabit, distinguished themselves according to their wont. The former, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied it, to the Pharaoh, and received once more "the collar of gold;" the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. A stele, erected on the banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thutmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the Egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and travellers. The aspect of the great river of the Naharaim, which could be compared with the Nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. They were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in Egypt to express going up or down the river. This first Syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. It took the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from Zalu towards the north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended—pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. There was no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in the following year should the vanquished break out into revolt.*

* From the account of the campaigns of Amenothes II., I thought we might conclude that this Pharaoh wintered in Syria at least once; but the text does not admit of this interpretation, and we must, therefore, for the present give up the idea that the Pharaohs ever spent more than a few months of the year on hostile territory.

The troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any others hitherto put into the field. The Egyptian army, inured to war by its long struggle with the Shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of Ahmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the Ethiopian or Libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the Syrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as those of the Egyptians. Egyptian military organisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps, distributed respectively between the Sa'id and the Delta. Those companies which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at Thebes or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. The number of natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by "generations," or as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably on ordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen thousand.**