The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

By the sixteenth century B.C., and before that date, though how much earlier it is impossible to say, the Phœnicians were familiar with the whole of the Ægean Sea, which they had probably reached in the first instance by way of the south coast of Asia Minor and the island of Rhodes. From the harbours of Rhodes it was a simple matter to sail to the smaller isles of the archipelago, and so, by easy stages, to the Ægean coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that, in pursuit of their commercial enterprises, they visited every nook and corner of this part of the Mediterranean, establishing factories where the conditions were favourable, and trading-stations on islands near the shore, or at such points on the mainland as seemed least liable to attack, instructing the natives in the art of mining where minerals were to be had, or taking the work in hand themselves.

VOYAGES AND TRADING-STATIONS

The records of their presence which have come down to us are scanty, and in some cases of doubtful authenticity. The statements of Greek authors to the effect that certain cities, buildings, or forms of worship, were erected or instituted by the Phœnicians, often mean no more than that their real origin was unknown. The names of Cyclopean, Pelasgian, and Phœnician were indiscriminately bestowed on all relics of venerable antiquity, and even when the Homeric poems were composed, the Phœnician occupation of the Greek archipelago lay far back in the remote past. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Phœnicians appear only as dwellers in Phœnicia, or the land of Sidon, mariners and traders, whose business leads them to and fro in great waters, far from their homes, and who now and again cast anchor in one spot for a twelvemonth or so, as occasion offers. We hear much of their doings, of the splendour of their goblets of wrought silver, and their embroidered stuffs, the product of Sidonian looms; of the jewels of gold and amber they offer for sale; of their dishonest and knavish tricks, of how they cheat simple folk of their property, and then sell them into slavery, induce maidservants to come on board their galleys with stolen goods and their masters’ children, and then, quickly hoisting sail, carry off the sons of noble houses to be sold as slaves at the next port they reach. But this is no true description even of the period when the Greek epics came into being, except in so far as it makes Sidon the chief depot of the unmatchable products of the art and industry of northern Syria. The episodes in the Odyssey which treat of Phœnician knavery are later interpolations. Nor are the deductions as to Phœnician expansion drawn by certain scholars from certain proper names in Greece very convincing, as, for all their ingenuity, they rest on internal evidence alone.

The Phœnicians colonised Rhodes, as they had colonised Cyprus, though not to the same extent. The centre of their settlements was Jalysus, opposite the coast of Asia Minor, at the northern end of the island; Cameiros, on the east, is also said to have been a Phœnician city. They established settlements in several of the Sporades and Cyclades, in Thera, Melos (where they found sulphur and alum), and Oliaros (Antiparos). The island of Cythera supplied them with a station for the purple murex fishery, and a starting-point for voyages to the west and to the Peloponnesian coast. Whether they had any settlements in Crete is uncertain, but they certainly had some close to the coast of Thrace, for Herodotus speaks with wonder and admiration of their gold mines in the island of Thasos. They are said, but on insufficient evidence, to have colonised Samothrace. Nor is it impossible that some venturesome mariners may have sailed through the Hellespont and Bosphorus to the Pontus Euxinus, and established Phœnician factories on the north coast of Asia Minor.

Schliemann’s excavations at Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Orchomenos, and other discoveries of the relics of pre-Homeric civilisation, have brought to light a number of objects unmistakably Phœnician, or copied from Phœnician models, which prove that, in externals at least, the civilisation of the islands and coasts of the Ægean had far more affinity with that of northern Syria than with that which was destined to arise in Hellas. To take but a single example, the walls of Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mycenæ, when complete, must have borne a strong resemblance to those of the strongholds of Palestine and northern Syria, as represented in Egyptian works of art. We do indeed find some attempts at originality among the relics of this period, as, for instance, in the shapes and decorations of the earthen vessels of Argolis, but, generally speaking, the foreign element preponderates; though it must remain an open question whether everything that indicates the ascendency of Asia Minor in this early stage of civilisation came by way of the sea, or whether some of it may not have been due to the gradual spread of Asiatic influences. Of Egyptian influence, direct or indirect, there is hardly a trace.

Phœnician Bottle with Triple Body

We must not, however, exaggerate the range of Phœnician influence. The great cities in which it was dominant perished early, and little or nothing of it penetrated to the interior of the mainland. Nor do the Phœnicians seem ever to have been undisputed masters of the Ægean; their stations were early abandoned, in Rhodes they had to maintain their ground against the Carians and were finally ousted by the Dorians. The north of Cyprus was early peopled by Greeks. In details and externals, there are many links between this early pre-Homeric civilisation and that which we find reflected in the Greek epics, but such remains of the former as survived were confined to a few island and seaboard tribes, and even among them, were undergoing a process of transformation. Its most important legacy was an acquaintance with the practical arts. The Phœnician vessels, sorry craft as they were, served as models to the Greeks, Phœnician gains by sea spurred them to imitation, and we are probably right in supposing that they learnt from the Phœnicians how to steer by the pole-star at night. A few details of the architecture of Tiryns, Mycenæ, and Hissarlik were adopted by the later architecture of Greece, though the difference of material had deprived them of their significance. Technical art in certain places and industries long remained faithful to patterns of Asiatic origin, as is manifest in the pottery of Melos and Rhodes, some bronzes lately discovered in Crete, and above all, as we should expect, in the manufactures of Cyprus.