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

CHAPTER VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION

Egypt and Babylonia were doubtless the greatest nations of remote antiquity, but Phœnicia was in some respects more wonderful than either. Here was a people occupying a tiny strip on the coast of the Mediterranean, its total population aggregated in a few scattered cities, yet, actuated by a common impulse, reaching out east and west, north and south, to the very limits of the known world, and weaving with its trading ships and caravans a web of unity between all the civilised nations of the eastern hemisphere.

Phœnicia itself was at most something like one hundred and fifty miles in length, and in width it varied from literally a few yards to at most thirty-five miles. But the territories that paid tribute through the merchants and explorers whose home was in this tiny centre, were as widely separated as India on the one hand, and the Atlantic islands off the west coast of Africa on the other.

The Phœnician explorers sailed far out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which for every other nation of antiquity represented the westernmost limits of the known world. Northward the Phœnician commerce stopped only with the confines of civilisation, and southward, on at least one occasion, the adventurous explorers went far beyond it, actually circumnavigating Africa—a feat which was not repeated by their successors for two thousand years.

This circumnavigation of Africa has been questioned, and, indeed, it must be admitted that it rests on rather scant evidence, as we have nothing for it but the authority of Herodotus. But it chanced that in the tale which Herodotus tells he unconsciously bears witness to the truth of the narrative, when he relates that the explorers claimed to have sailed into a region where they had the sun on their right; that is to say, to the north. Herodotus himself does not of course at all comprehend the meaning of this alleged phenomenon; he even asserts that he doubts the accuracy of this statement. Yet, as moderns view the matter, it is clear that this statement in itself is practically a demonstration that the explorers at least did go beyond the equator, and this being the fact, it seems not unreasonable to credit their claim to have made an entire circuit of the continent.

The Phœnicians were not conquerors except in a commercial sense; but, as the traders of the ancient world, they were the means of spreading civilisation to a degree unequalled by any other nation. In particular they colonised the Mediterranean; and they were credited, no doubt justly, by the Greeks with having introduced at least the elements of Egyptian and Babylonian culture to that nation. Their most famous feat in this direction was of course the introduction of the alphabet, which, as the traditions of the time relate, and as modern scholars are quite ready to believe, the Phœnician traders brought with them from the Orient.

THE PHŒNICIANS AND THE ALPHABET

As to the exact origin of this alphabet, modern scholars are still somewhat in doubt. The Greeks themselves ascribed its origin to the Egyptians, believing that the Phœnicians had adopted a modified alphabet from the hieroglyphics. There were others, however, among the ancients who ascribed the origin of the Phœnician alphabet not to Egypt, but to Babylonia, and curiously enough this discrepancy amongst ancient authorities is exactly matched by the discordant opinions of the scholarship of our own day. It is admitted on all hands that the Phœnicians did not themselves invent their alphabet. But whether the foundation upon which they built it was the hieroglyphic or hieratic script of the Egyptians, or the elaborate cuneiform syllabary of Mesopotamia, is not even now clearly established.

The theory of Egyptian origin found about the middle of the 19th century an able and strenuous advocate in the person of Viscount de Rougé, who elaborated the theory which specifically accounted, or attempted to account, for the different letters of the Phœnician alphabet as of Egyptian origin. He based his comparisons not upon the hieroglyphics, but on the modified forms of the hieratic script, believing with good reason that the Phœnicians obtained their alphabet at a very early date—perhaps something like 2000 B.C. He logically confined his analysis to an observation of the oldest specimens of the hieratic writings that were accessible, in particular using the Prisse Papyrus, which, as good fortune would have it, chanced to be written in a very clear, bold hand. This hieratic script, as is well known, follows the hieroglyphics themselves in using at once an alphabet, a syllabary, and a modified form of ideographs. It is one of the most curious facts in the history of human evolution that the Egyptians having advanced through the various stages of mental growth necessary to the evolution of an alphabet, should have retained the antique forms of picture writing and of syllabic representations of sounds after they had made the final analysis which gave them the actual alphabet, and that to the very last they should have used a jumble of the various forms of representation in all their writings. The feat of the Phœnicians, according to the theory of De Rougé, was to select from the Egyptian characters those that were purely, or almost purely, alphabetic in character, and recognising that these alone were sufficient, to reject all the rest. Simple as such a selection seems when viewed from the standpoint of later knowledge, it really must have required the imagination of the most brilliant genius to effect it.

The theory of De Rougé was so ably supported through comparison of the most ancient known inscriptions of the Phœnicians with the hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians that it was almost at once accepted by a large number of scholars, and for many years was pretty generally regarded as having solved the old-time puzzle of the origin of the Phœnician alphabet. More recently, however, the theory of De Rougé has been called in question and the old theory of Pliny, which ascribed the origin of the alphabet to the Babylonian script rather than the Egyptian, has been revived by modern archæologists. Professor Deecke attempted to derive the Phœnician alphabet from the later Assyrian. This attempt, however, has been characterised as refuting itself in the very expression, for it can hardly be in question that the Phœnician alphabet was in use long before the later Assyrian came into existence. A more logical attempt, however, has been made to draw a comparison between the Phœnician and the ancient Accadian, which was the classical speech of Mesopotamia and the model on which the later Assyrian itself was based. This theory, first suggested perhaps by Professor Wuttke, found an able advocate in Dr. J. P. Peters, and more recently has been sanctioned by the high authority of Professor Hommel. Their opinions on the other hand have been ardently combated by the advocates of the theory of De Rougé, and the subject is as yet too obscure and the data are too few for a final decision.