History of Phoenicia (page 3)

impressed; the more delicate markings and the more lifelike touches that it once received, it loses easily through friction or exposure to rough weather. A certain number of the sculptured figures found by M. Di Cesnola at Athiénau were discovered under conditions that were quite peculiar, having passed from the shelter of a covered chamber to that of a protecting bed of dust, which had hardened and adhered to their surfaces; and these figures had preserved an unusual freshness, and seem as if just chiselled; but, saving these exceptions, the Cypriot figures have their angles rounded, and their projections softened down. It is like a page of writing, where the ink, before it had time to dry, preserving its sharpness of tone, has been absorbed by the blotting paper and has left only pale and feeble traces.”[3]

Another striking defect in the Phœnician, or at any rate in the Cyprio-Phœnician, sculpture, and one that cannot be excused on account of any inherent weakness in the material, is the thinness and flatness of the greater part of the figures. The sculptor seems to have been furnished by the stonecutter, not so much with solid blocks of stone, as with tolerably thick slabs.[4] These he fashioned carefully in front, and produced statues, which, viewed in front, are lifelike and fairly satisfactory. But to the sides and back of the slab he paid little attention, not intending that his work should be looked at from all quarters, but that the spectator should directly face it. The statues were made to stand against walls,[5] or in niches, or back to back, the heels and backs touching;[6] they were not, properly speaking, works /in the round/, but rather /alti relievi/ a little exaggerated, not actually part of the wall, but laid closely against it. A striking example of this kind of work may be seen in a figure now at New York, which appears to represent a priest, whereof a front view is given by Di Cesnola in his “Cyprus,” and a side view by Perrot and Chipiez in their “History of Ancient Art.” The head and neck are in good proportion, but the rest of the figure is altogether unduly thin, while for some space above the feet it is almost literally a slab, scarcely fashioned at all.

This fault is less pronounced in some statues than in others, and from a certain number of the statuettes is wholly absent. This is notably the case in a figure found at Golgi, which represents a female arrayed in a long robe, the ample folds of which she holds back with one hand, while the other hand is advanced, and seems to have held a lotus flower. Three graceful tresses fall on either side of the neck, round which is a string of beads or pearls, with an amulet as pendant; while a long veil, surmounted by a diadem, hangs from the back of the head. This statue is in no respect narrow or flat, as may be seen especially from the side view given by Di Cesnola;[7] but it is short and inelegant, though not wanting in dignity; and it is disfigured by sandalled feet of a very disproportionate size, which stand out offensively in front. The figure has been viewed as a representation of the goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth;[8] but the identification can scarcely be regarded as more than a reasonable conjecture.

The general defects of Phœnician statuary, besides want of finish and flatness, are a stiff and conventional treatment, recalling the art of Egypt and Assyria, a want of variety, and a want of life. Most of the figures stand evenly on the two feet, and have the arms pendant at the two sides, with the head set evenly, neither looking to the right nor to the left, while even the arrangement of the drapery is one of great uniformity. In the points where there is any variety, the variety is confined within very narrow limits. One foot may be a little advanced;[9] one arm may be placed across the breast, either as confined by the robe,[10] or as holding something, e.g. a bird or a flower.[11] In female figures both arms may be laid along the thighs,[12] or both be bent across the bosom, with the hands clasping the breasts,[13] or one hand may be so placed, and the other depend in front.[14] The hair and beard are mostly arranged with the utmost regularity in crisp curls, resembling the Assyrian; where tresses are worn, they are made to hang, whatever their number, with exact uniformity on either side.[15] Armlets and bracelets appear always in pairs, and are exactly similar; the two sides of a costume correspond perfectly; and in the groups the figures have, as nearly as possible, the same attitude.

Repose is no doubt the condition of human existence which statuary most easily and most naturally expresses; and few things are more obnoxious to a refined taste than that sculpture which, like that of Roubiliac, affects movement, fidget, flutter, and unquiet. But in the Phœnician sculpture the repose is overdone; except in the expression of faces, there is scarcely any life at all. The figures do nothing; they simply stand to be looked at. And they stand stiffly, sometimes even awkwardly, rarely with anything like elegance or grace. The heads, indeed, have life and vigour, especially after the artists have become acquainted with Greek models;[16] but they are frequently too large for the bodies whereto they are attached, and the face is apt to wear a smirk that is exceedingly disagreeable. This is most noticeable in the Cypriot series, as will appear by the accompanying representations; but it is not confined to them, since it reappears in the bronzes found in Phœnicia Proper.

Phœnician statues are almost always more or less draped. Sometimes nothing is worn besides the short tunic, or /shenti/, of the Egyptians, which begins below the navel and terminates at the knee.[17] Sometimes there is added to this a close-fitting shirt, like a modern “jersey,” which has short sleeves and clings to the figure, so that it requires careful observation to distinguish between a statue thus draped and one which has the /shenti/ only.[18] But there are also a number of examples where the entire figure is clothed from the head to the ankles, and nothing is left bare but the face, the hands, and the feet. A cap, something like a Phrygian bonnet, covers the head; a long-sleeved robe reaches from the neck to the ankles, or sometimes rests upon the feet; and above this is a mantle or scarf thrown over the left shoulder, and hanging down nearly to the knees. Ultimately a drapery greatly resembling that of the Greeks seems to have been introduced; a long cloak, or /chlamys/, is worn, which falls into numerous folds, and is disposed about the person according to the taste and fancy of the wearer, but so as to leave the right arm free.[19] Statues of this class are scarcely distinguishable from Greek statues of a moderately good type.

Phœnician sculptors /in the round/ did not very often indulge in the representation of animal forms. The lion, however, was sometimes chiselled in stone, either partially, as in a block of stone found by M. Renan at Um-el-Awamid, or completely, as in a statuette brought by General Di Cesnola from Cyprus. The representations hitherto discovered have not very much merit. We may gather from them that the sculptors were unacquainted with the animal itself, had never seen the king of beasts sleeping in the shade or stretching himself and yawning as he awoke, or walking along with a haughty and majestic slowness, or springing with one bound upon his prey, but had simply studied without much attention or interest the types furnished them by Egyptian or Assyrian artists, who were familiar with the beast himself. The representations are consequently in every case feeble and conventional; in some they verge on the ridiculous. What, for instance, can be weaker than the figure above given from the great work of Perrot and Chipiez, with its good-humoured face, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, its tottering forelegs, and its general air of imbecility? The lioness’ head represented in the same work is better, but still leaves much to be desired, falling, as it does, very far behind the best Assyrian models. Nor were the sculptors much more successful in their mode of expressing animals with whose forms they were perfectly well acquainted. The sheep carried on the back of a shepherd, brought from Cyprus and now in the museum of New York, is a very ill-shaped sheep, and the doves so often represented are very poor doves.[20] They are just recognisable, and that is the most that can be said for them. A dog in stone,[21] found at Athiénau, is somewhat better, equally the dogs of the Egyptians and Assyrians. On the other hand, the only fully modelled horses that have been found are utterly childish and absurd.[22]

The reliefs of the Phœnicians are very superior to their statues. They vary in their character from almost the lowest kind of relief to the highest. On dresses, on shields, on slabs, and on some sarcophagi it is much higher than is usual even in Greece. A bas-relief of peculiar interest was discovered at Athiénau by General Di Cesnola, and has been represented both by him and by the Italian traveller Ceccaldi.[23] It represents Hercules capturing the cattle of Geryon from the herdsman Eurytion, and gives us reason to believe that that myth was a native Phœnician legend adopted by the Greeks, and not a Hellenic one imported into Phœnicia. The general character of the sculpture is archaic and Assyrian; nor is there a trace of Greek influence about it. Hercules, standing on an elevated block of stone at the extreme left, threatens the herdsman, who responds by turning towards him, and making a menacing gesture with his right hand, while in his left, instead of a club, he carries an entire tree. His hair and beard are curled in the Assyrian fashion, while his figure, though short, is strong and muscular. In front of him are his cattle, mixed up in a confused and tangled mass, some young, but most of them full grown, and amounting to the number of seventeen. They are in various attitudes, and are drawn with much spirit, recalling groups of cattle in the sculptures of Assyria and Egypt, but surpassing any such group in the vigour of their life and movement. Above, in an upper field or plain, divided from the under one by a horizontal line, is the triple- headed dog, Orthros, running full speed towards Hercules, and scarcely checked by the arrow which has met him in mid career, and entered his neck at the point of junction between the second and the third head.[24] The bas-relief is three feet two inches in length, and just a little short of two feet in height. It served to ornament a huge block of stone which formed the pedestal of a colossal statue of Hercules, eight feet nine inches high.[25]

A sarcophagus, on which the relief is low, has been described and figured by Di Cesnola,[26] who discovered it in the same locality as the sculpture which has just engaged our attention. The sarcophagus, which had a lid guarded by lions at the four corners, was ornamented at both ends and along both sides by reliefs. The four scenes depicted appear to be distinct and separate. At one end Perseus, having cut off Medusa’s head and placed it in his wallet, which he carries behind him by means of a stick passed over his shoulder, departs homewards followed by his dog. Medusa’s body, though sunk upon one knee, is still upright, and from the bleeding neck there spring the forms of Chrysaor and Pegasus. At the opposite end of the tomb is a biga drawn by two horses, and containing two persons, the charioteer and the owner, who is represented as bearded, and rests his hand upon the chariot-rim. The horse on the right hand, which can alone be distinctly seen, is well proportioned and spirited. He is impatient and is held in by the driver, and prevented from proceeding at more than a foot’s pace. On the longer sides are a hunting scene, and a banqueting scene. In a wooded country, indicated by three tall trees, a party, consisting of five individuals, engages in the pleasures of the chase. Four of the five are accoutred like Greek soldiers; they wear crested helmets, cuirasses, belts, and a short tunic ending in a fringe: the arms which they carry are a spear and a round buckler or shield. The fifth person is an archer, and has a lighter equipment; he wears a cloth about his loins, a short tunic, and a round cap on his head. The design forms itself into two groups. On the right two of the spearmen are engaged with a wild boar, which they are wounding with their lances; on the left the two other spearmen and the archer are attacking a wild bull. In the middle a cock separates the two groups, while at the two extremities two animal forms, a horse grazing and a dog trying to make out a scent, balance each other. The fourth side of the sarcophagus presents us with a banqueting scene. On four couches, much like the Assyrian,[27] are arranged the banqueters. At the extreme right the couch is occupied by a single person, who has a long beard and extends a wine-cup towards an attendant, a naked youth, who is advancing towards him with a wine-jug in one hand, and a ladle or strainer in the other. The three other couches are occupied respectively by three couples, each comprising a male and a female. The male figure reclines in the usual attitude, half sitting and half lying, with the left arm supported on two pillows;[28] the female sits on the edge of the couch, with her feet upon a footstool. The males hold wine-cups; of the females, one plays upon the lyre, while the two others fondle with one hand their lover or husband. A fourth female figure, erect in the middle between the second and third couches, plays the double flute for the delectation of the entire party. All the figures, except the boy attendant, are decently draped, in robes with many folds, resembling the Greek. At the side of each couch is a table, on which are spread refreshments, while at the extreme left is a large bowl or amphora, from which the wine-cups may be replenished. This is placed under the shade of a tree, which tells us that the festivity takes place in a garden.[29]

No one can fail to see, in this entire series of sculptures, the dominant influence of Greece. While the form of the tomb, and the lions that ornament the covering, are unmistakably Cyprio-Phœnician, the reliefs contain scarcely a feature which is even Oriental; all has markedly the colouring and the physiognomy of Hellenism. Yet Cyprian artists probably executed the work. There are little departures from Greek models, which indicate the “barbarian” workman, as the introduction of trees in the backgrounds, the shape of the furniture, the recurved wings of the Gorgon, and the idea of hunting the wild bull. But the figures, the proportions, the draperies, the attitudes, the chariot, the horse, are almost pure Greek. There is a grace and ease in the modelling, an elegance, a variety, to which Asiatic art, left to itself, never attained. The style, however, is not that of Greece at its best, but of archaic Greece. There is something too much of exact symmetry, both in the disposition of the groups and in the arrangement of the accessories; nay, even the very folds of the garments are over-stiff and regular. All is drawn in exact profile; and in the composition there is too much of balance and correspondence. Still, a new life shows itself through the scenes. There is variety in the movements; there is grace and suppleness in the forms; there is lightness in the outline, vigour in the attitudes, and beauty spread over the whole work. It cannot be assigned an earlier date than the fifth century B.C., and is most probably later,[30] since it took time for improved style to travel from the head-centres of Greek art to the remoter provinces, and still more time for it to percolate through the different layers of Greek society until it reached the stratum of native Cyprian artistic culture.

We may contrast with the refined work of the Athiénau sarcophagus the far ruder, but more genuinely native, designs of a tomb of the same kind found on the site of Amathus.[31] On this sarcophagus, the edges of which are most richly adorned with patterning, there are, as upon the other, four reliefs, two of them occupying the sides and two the ends. Those at the ends are curious, but have little artistic merit. They consist, in each case, of a caryatid figure four times repeated, representations, respectively, of Astarté and of a pygmy god, who, according to some, is Bes, and, according to others, Melkarth or Esmun.[32] The figures of Astarté are rude, as are generally her statues.[33] They have the hair arranged in three rows of crisp curls, the arms bent, and the hands supporting the breasts. The only ornament worn by them is a double necklace of pearls or round beads. The representations of the pygmy god have more interest. They remind us of what Herodotus affirms concerning the Phœnician /pataikoi/, which were used for the figure-heads of ships,[34] and which he compares to the Egyptian images of Phthah, or Ptah, the god of creation. They are ugly dwarf figures, with a large misshapen head, a bushy beard, short arms, fat bodies, a short striped tunic, and thick clumsy legs. Only one of the four figures is at present complete, the sarcophagus having been entered by breaking a hole into it at this end.

The work at the sides is much superior to that at the ends. The two panels represent, apparently, a single scene. The scene is a procession, but whether funeral or military it is hard to decide.[35] First come two riders on horseback, wearing conical caps and close- fitting jerkins; they are seated on a species of saddle, which is kept in place by a board girth passing round the horse’s belly, and by straps attached in front. The two cavaliers are followed by four /bigæ/. The first contains the principal personages of the composition, who sits back in his car, and shades himself with a parasol, the mark of high rank in the East, while his charioteer sits in front of him and holds the reins. The second car has three occupants; the third two; and the fourth also two, one of whom leans back and converses with the footmen, who close the procession. These form a group of three, and seem to be soldiers, since they bear shield and spear; but their costume, a loose robe wrapped round the form, is rather that of civilians. The horses are lightly caparisoned, with little more than a head-stall and a collar; but they carry on their heads a conspicuous fan-like crest.[36] MM. Perrot and Chipiez thus sum up their description of this monument:–“Both in the ornamentation and in the sculpture properly so-called there is a mixture of two traditions and two inspirations, diverse one from the other. The persons who chiselled the figures in the procession which fills the two principal sides of the sarcophagus were the pupils of Grecian statuaries; they understood how to introduce variety into the attitudes of those whom they represented, and even into the movements of the horses. Note, in this connection, the steeds of the two cavaliers in front; one of them holds up his head, the other bends it towards the ground. The draperies are also cleverly treated, especially those of the foot soldiers who bring up the rear, and resemble in many respects the costume of the Greeks. On the other hand, the types of divinity, repeated four times at the two ends of the monument, have nothing that is Hellenic about them, but are borrowed from the Pantheon of Phœnicia. Even in the procession itself –the train of horsemen, footmen, and chariots, which is certainly the sculptor’s true subject–there are features which recall the local customs and usages of the East. The conical caps of the two cavaliers closely resemble those which we see on the heads of many of the Cyprian statues; the parasol which shades the head of the great person in the first /biga/ is the symbol of Asiatic royalty; lastly, the fan- shaped plume which rises above the heads of all the chariot horses is an ornament that one sees in the same position in Assyria and in Lycia, whensoever the sculptor desires to represent horses magnificently caparisoned.”[37]

Sarcophagi recently exhumed in the vicinity of Sidon are said to be adorned with reliefs superior to any previously known specimens of Phœnician art. As, however, no drawings or photographs of these sculptures have as yet reached Western Europe, it will perhaps be sufficient in this place to direct attention to the descriptions of them which an eye-witness has published in the “Journal de Beyrout.”[38] No trustworthy critical estimate can be formed from mere descriptions, and it will therefore be necessary to reserve our judgment until the sculptures themselves, or correct representations of them, are accessible.

The metal castings of the Phœnicians, according to the accounts which historians give of them, were of a very magnificent and extraordinary character. The Hiram employed by Solomon in the ornamentation of the Temple at Jerusalem, who was a native of Tyre,[39] designed and executed by his master’s orders a number of works in metal, which seem to have been veritable masterpieces. The strangest of all were the two pillars of bronze, which bore the names of “Jachin” and “Boaz,”[40] and stood in front of the Temple porch, or possibly under it.[41] These pillars, with their capitals, were between thirty-four and thirty-five feet high, and had a diameter of six feet.[42] They were cast hollow, the bronze whereof they were composed having a uniform thickness of three inches,[43] or thereabouts. Their ornamentation was elaborate. A sort of chain-work covered the “belly” or lower part of the capitals,[44] while above and below were representations of pomegranates in two rows, probably at the top and bottom of the “belly,” the number of the pomegranates upon each pillar being two hundred.[45] At the summit of the whole was a sort of “lily-work”[46] or imitation of the lotus blossom, a “motive” adopted from Egypt. Various representations of the pillars have been attempted in works upon Phœnician art, the most remarkable being those designed by M. Chipiez, and published in the “Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquité.”[47] Perhaps, however, there is more to be said in favour of M. de Vogüé’s view, as enunciated in his work on the Jewish Temple.

The third great work of metallurgy which Hiram constructed for Solomon was “the molten sea.”[48] This was an enormous bronze basin, fifteen feet in diameter, supported on the backs of twelve oxen, grouped in sets of three.[49] The basin stood fourteen or fifteen feet above the level of the Temple Court,[50] and was a vast reservoir, always kept full of water, for the ablutions of the priests. There was an ornamentation of “knops” or “gourds,” in two rows, about the “brim” of the reservoir; and it must have been supplied in its lower part with a set of stopcocks, by means of which the water could be drawn off when needed. Representations of the “molten sea” have been given by Mangeant, De Vogüé, Thenius, and others; but all of them are, necessarily, conjectural. The design of Mangeant is reproduced in the preceding representation. It is concluded that the oxen must have been of colossal size in order to bear a proper proportion to the basin, and not present the appearance of being crushed under an enormous weight.[51]

Next in importance to these three great works were ten minor ones, made for the Jewish Temple by the same artist. These were lavers mounted on wheels,[52] which could be drawn or pushed to any part of the Temple Court where water might be required. The lavers were of comparatively small size, capable of containing only one-fiftieth part[53] of the contents of the “molten sea,” but they were remarkable for their ornamentation. Each was supported upon a “base;” and the bases, which seem to have been panelled, contained, in the different compartments, figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim,[54] either single or in groups. On the top of the base, which seems to have been square, was a circular stand or socket, a foot and a half in height, into which the laver or basin fitted.[55] This, too, was panelled, and ornamented with embossed work, representing lions, cherubim, and palm- trees.[56] Each base was emplaced upon four wheels, which are said to have resembled chariot wheels, but which were molten in one piece, naves, spokes, and felloes together.[57] A restoration by M. Mangeant, given by Perrot and Chipiez in the fourth volume of their “History of Ancient Art,” is striking, and leaves little to be desired.

Hiram is also said to have made for Solomon a number of pots, shovels, basins, flesh-hooks, and other instruments,[58] which were all used in the Temple service; but as no description is given of any of these works, even their general character can only be conjectured. We may, however, reasonably suppose them not to have differed greatly from the objects of a similar description found in Cyprus by General Di Cesnola.[59]

From the conjectural, which may amuse, but can scarcely satisfy, the earnest student, it is fitting that we should now pass to the known and actual. Phœnician metal-work of various descriptions has been found recently in Phœnicia Proper, in Cyprus, and in Sardinia; and, though much of it consists of works of utility or of mere personal adornment, which belong to another branch of the present enquiry, there is a considerable portion which is more or less artistic and which rightly finds its place in the present chapter. The Phœnicians, though they did not, so far as we know, attempt with any frequency the production, in bronze or other metal, of the full-sized human form,[60] were fond of fabricating, especially in bronze, the smaller kinds of figures which are known as “figurines” or “statuettes.” They also had a special talent for producing embossed metal-work of a highly artistic character in the shape of cups, bowls, and dishes or /pateræ/, whereon scenes of various kinds were represented with a vigour and precision that are quite admirable. Some account of these two classes of works must here be given.

The statuettes commence with work of the rudest kind. The Phœnician sites in Sardinia have yielded in abundance grotesque figures of gods and men,[61] from three or four to six or eight inches high, which must be viewed as Phœnician productions, though perhaps they were not the best works which Phœnician artists could produce, but such as were best suited to the demands of the Sardinian market. The savage Sards would not have appreciated beauty or grace; but to the savage mind there is something congenial in grotesqueness. Hence gods with four arms and four eyes,[62] warriors with huge horns projecting from their helmets,[63] tall forms of extraordinary leanness,[64] figures with abnormally large heads and hands,[65] huge noses, projecting eyes, and various other deformities. For the home consumption statuettes of a similar character were made; but they were neither so rude nor so devoid of artistic merit. There is one in the Louvre, which was found at Tortosa, in Northern Phœnicia, approaching nearly to the Sardinian type, while others have less exaggeration, and seem intended seriously. In Cyprus bronzes of a higher order have been discovered.[66] One is a figure of a youth, perhaps Æsculapius, embracing a serpent; another is a female form of much elegance, which may have been the handle of a vase or jug; it springs from a grotesque bracket, and terminates in a bar ornamented at either end with heads of animals. The complete bronze figure found near Curium, which is supposed to represent Apollo and is figured by Di Cesnola,[67] is probably not the production of a Phœnician artists, but a sculpture imported from Greece.

The embossed work upon cups and /pateræ/ is sometimes of great simplicity, sometimes exceedingly elaborate. A patera of the simplest kind was found by General Di Cesnola in the treasury of Curium and is figured in his work.[68] At the bottom of the dish, in the middle, is a rosette with twenty-two petals springing from a central disk; this is surrounded by a ring whereon are two wavy lines of ribbon intertwined. Four deer, with strongly recurved horns, spaced at equal intervals, stand on the outer edge of the ring in a walking attitude. Behind them and between them are a continuous row of tall stiff reeds terminating in blossoms, which are supposed to represent the papyrus plant. The reeds are thirty-two in number. We may compare with this the medallion at the bottom of a cup found at Cære in Italy, which has been published by Grifi.[69] Here, on a chequered ground, stands a cow with two calves, one engaged in providing itself with its natural sustenance, the other disporting itself in front of its dam. In the background are a row of alternate papyrus blossoms and papyrus buds bending gracefully to the right and to the left, so as to form a sort of framework to the main design. Above the cow and in front of the papyrus plants two birds wing their flight from left to right across the scene.

A bronze bowl, discovered at Idalium (Dali) in Cyprus,[70] is, like these specimens, Egyptian in its motive, but is more ambitious in that it introduces the human form. On a throne of state sits a goddess, draped in a long striped robe which reaches to the feet, and holding a lotus flower in her right hand and a ball or apple in her left. Bracelets adorn her wrists and anklets her feet. Behind her stands a band of three instrumental performers, all of them women, and somewhat variously costumed: the first plays the double pipe, the second performs on a lyre or harp, the third beats the tambourine. In front of the goddess is a table or altar, to which a votary approaches bringing offerings. Then follows another table whereon two vases are set; finally comes a procession of six females, holding hands, who are perhaps performing a solemn dance. Behind them are a row of lotus pillars, the supports probably of a temple, wherein the scene takes place. The human forms in this design are ill-proportioned, and very rudely traced. The heads and hands are too large, the faces are grotesque, and the figures wholly devoid of grace. Mimetic art is seen clearly in its first stage, and the Phœnician artist who has designed the bowl has probably fallen short of his Egyptian models.

Animal and human forms intermixed occur on a silver /patera/ found at Athiénau, which is more complicated and elaborate than the objects hitherto described, but which is, like them, strikingly Egyptian.[71] A small rosette occupies the centre; round it is, apparently, a pond or lake, in which fish are disporting themselves; but the fish are intermixed with animal and human forms–a naked female stretches out her arms after a cow; a man clothed in a /shenti/ endeavours to seize a horse. The pond is edged by papyrus plants, which are alternately in blossom and in bud. A zigzag barrier separates this central ornamentation from that of the outer part of the dish. Here a marsh is represented in which are growing papyrus and other water-plants. Aquatic birds swim on the surface or fly through the tall reeds. Four boats form the chief objects in this part of the field. In one, which is fashioned like a bird, there sits under a canopy a grandee, with an attendant in front and a rower or steersman at the stern. Behind him, in a second boat, is a band consisting of three undraped females, one of whom plays a harp and another a tambourine, while the third keeps time with her hands. A man with a punt-pole directs the vessel from the stern. In the third boat, which has a freight of wine-jars, a cook is preparing a bird for the grandee’s supper. The fourth boat contains three rowers, who possibly have the vessel of the grandee in tow. The first and second boats are separated by two prancing steeds, the second and third by two cows, the third and fourth by a chariot and pair. It is difficult to explain the mixture of the aquatic with the terrestrial in this piece; but perhaps the grandee is intended to be enjoying himself in a marshy part of his domain, where he might ride, drive, or boat, according to his pleasure. The whole scene is rather Egyptian than Phœnician or Cypriot, and one cannot help suspecting that the /patera/ was made for an Egyptian customer.

There is a /patera/ at Athens,[72] almost certainly Phœnician, which may well be selected to introduce the more elaborate and complicated of the Phœnician works of art in this class. It has been figured,[73] and carefully described by MM. Perrot and Chipiez in these terms:– “The medallion in the centre is occupied by a rosette with eight points. The zone outside this, in which are distributed the personages represented, is divided into four compartments by four figures, which correspond to each other in pairs. They lift themselves out of a trellis-work, bounded on either side by a light pillar without a base. The capitals which crown the pillars recall those of the Ionic order, but the abacus is much more developed. A winged globe, stretching from pillar to pillar, roofs in this sort of little chapel; each is the shrine of a divinity. One of the divinities is that nude goddess, clasping her breasts with her hands, whom we have already met with in the Phœnician world more than once; the other is a bearded personage, whose face is framed in by his abundant hair; he appears to be dressed in a close-fitting garment, made of a material folded in narrow plaits. We do not know what name to give the personage. Each of the figures is repeated twice. The rest of the field is occupied by four distinct subjects, two of them being scenes of adoration. In one may be recognised the figure of Isis-Athor, seated on a sort of camp- stool, and giving suck to the young Horus;[74] on an altar in front of the goddess is placed the disk of the moon, enveloped (as we have seen it elsewhere) by a crescent which recalls the moon’s phases. Behind the altar stands a personage whose sex is not defined; the right hand, which is raised, holds a /patera/, while the left, which falls along the hip, has the /ankh/ or /crux ansata/. Another of the scenes corresponds to this, and offers many striking analogies. The altar indeed is of a different form, but it supports exactly the same symbols. The goddess sits upon a throne with her feet on a footstool; she has no child; in one hand she holds out a cup, in the other a lotus blossom. The personage who confronts her wears a conical cap, and is clothed, like the worshipper of the corresponding representation, in a long robe pressed close to the body by a girdle /à cordelière/; he has also the /crux ansata/, and holds in the right hand an object the character and use of which I am unable to conjecture. We may associate with these two scenes of homage and worship another representation in which there figure three musicians. The instruments are the same as usual–the lyre, the tambourine, and the double pipe; two of the performers march at a steady pace; the third, the one who beats the metal(?) disk, dances, as he plays, with much vigour and spirit. In the last compartment we come again upon a group that we have already met with in one of the cups from Idalium.[75] . . . A beardless individual, clothed in the /shenti/, has put his foot upon the body of a griffin, which, in struggling against the pressure, flings its hind quarters into the air in a sort of wild caper; the conqueror, however, holds it fast by the plume of feathers which rises from its head, and plunges his sword into its half-open beak. It is this group, drawn in relief, and on a larger scale, that we meet with for a second time on the Athenian /patera/; but in this case the group is augmented by a second personage, who takes part in the struggle. This is an old man with a beard who is armed with a formidable pike. Both the combatants wear conical caps upon their heads, similar to those which we have noticed as worn by a number of the statues from Cyprus; but the cap of the right-hand personage terminates in a button, whereto is attached a long appendage, which looks like the tail of an ox.” The Egyptian character of much of this design is incontestable. The /ankh/, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely Egyptian forms; the Isis Athor with Horus in her lap speaks for itself; and the worshipper in front of Isis has an unmistakably Egyptian head dress. But the contest with the winged griffin is more Assyrian than Egyptian; the seat whereon Isis sits recalls a well-known Assyrian type;[76] one of the altars has a distinctly Assyrian character, while the band of musicians, the Astarté figures standing in their shrines, and the pillars which support, and frame in, the shrines are genuine Phœnician contributions. Artistically this /patera/ is much upon a par with those from Dali and Athiénau, which have been already described.

Our space will not admit of our pursuing this subject much further. We cannot give descriptions of all the twenty /pateræ/,[77] pronounced by the best critics to be Phœnician, which are contained in the museums of Europe and America. Excellent representations of most of these works of art will be found in Longpérier’s “Musée Napoléon III.,” in M. Clermont-Ganneau’s “Imagerie Phénicienne,” and in the “Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquité” of MM. Perrot et Chipiez. The bowls brought from Larnaca, from Curium, and from Amathus are especially interesting.[78] We must, however, conclude our survey with a single specimen of the most elaborate kind of /patera/; and, this being the case, we cannot hesitate to give the preference to the famous “Cup of Præneste,” which has been carefully figured and described in two of the three works above cited.[79]

The cup in question consists of a thin plate of silver covered over with a layer of gold; its greatest diameter is seven inches and three- fifths. The under or outside is without ornament; the interior is engraved with a number of small objects in low relief. In the centre, and surrounded by a circle of beads, there is a subject to which we shall presently have to return. The zone immediately outside this medallion, which is not quite an inch in width, is filled with a string of eight horses, all of them proceeding at a trot, and following each other to the right. Over each horse two birds fly in the same direction. The horses’ tails are extraordinarily conventional, consisting of a stem with branches, and resembling a conventional palm branch. Outside this zone there is an exterior and a wider one, which is bounded on its outer edge by a huge snake, whose scaly length describes an almost exact circle, excepting towards the tail, where there are some slight sinuosities. This serpent, whose head reaches and a little passes the thin extremity of the tail, is “drawn,” says M. Clermont-Ganneau, “with the hand of a master.”[80] It has been compared[81] with the well-known Egyptian and Phœnician symbol for the {kosmos} or universe, which was a serpent with its tail in its mouth. “Naturally,” he continues,[82] “the outer zone by its very position offers the greatest room for development. The artist is here at his ease, and having before him a field relatively so vast, has represented on it a series of scenes, remarkably alike for the style of their execution, the diversity of their subject-matter, the number of the persons introduced, and the nature of the acts which they accomplish. . . . The scenes, however, are not, as some have imagined, a series of detached fantastic subjects, arbitrarily chosen and capriciously grouped, a mere confused /mêlée/ of men, animals, chariots, and other objects; on the contrary, they form a little history, a plastic idyll, a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a narrative divided into nine scenes.” (1) An armed hero, mounted in a car driven by a charioteer, quits in the morning a castle or fortified town. He is going to hunt, and carries his bow in his left hand. Over his head is an umbrella, the badge of his high rank, and his defence against the mid-day sun. A quiver hangs at the side of his chariot. He wears a conical cap, while the driver has his head bare, and leans forwards over the front of the car, seeming to shake the reins, and encourage the horses to mend their pace. (2) After the car has proceeded a certain distance, the hunter espies a stag upon a rocky hill. He stops his chariot, gets down, and leaving the driver in charge of the vehicle, ensconces himself behind a tree, and thus screened lets fly an arrow against the quarry, which strikes it midway in the chest. (3) Weak and bleeding copiously, the stag attempts to escape; but the hunter pursues and takes possession of him without having to shoot a second time. (4) The hour is come now for a rest. The sportsman has reached a wood, in which date-bearing palms are intermingled with trees of a different kind. He fastens his game to one of them, and proceeds to the skinning and the disembowelling. Meanwhile, his attendant detaches the horses from the car, relieves them of their harness, and proceeds to feed them from a portable manger. The car, left to itself, is tilted back, and stands with its pole in the air. (5) Food and drink having been prepared and placed on two tables, or altars, the hunter, seated on a throne under the shadow of his umbrella, pours a libation to the gods. They, on their part, scent the feast and draw near, represented by the sun and moon–a winged disk, and a crescent embracing a full orb. The feast is also witnessed by a spirit of evil, in the shape of a huge baboon or cynocephalous ape, who from a cavern at the foot of a wooded mountain, whereon a stag and a hare are feeding, furtively surveys the ceremony. (6) Remounting his chariot the hunter sets out on his return home, when the baboon quits his concealment, and rushes after him, threatening him with a huge stone. Hereupon a winged deity descends from heaven, and lifting into the air chariot, horses, charioteer, and hunter, enfolds them in an embrace and saves them. (7) The ape, baffled, pursues his way; the chariot is replaced on the earth. The hunter prepares his bow, places an arrow on the string, and hastily pursues his enemy, who is speedily overtaken and thrown to the ground by the horses. (8) The hunter dismounts, puts his foot upon the prostrate ape, and gives him the /coup de grâce/ with a heavy axe or mace. A bird of prey hovers near, ready to descend upon the carcase. (9) The hero remounts his chariot, and returns to the castle or city which he left in the morning.[83]

We have now to return to the medallion which forms the centre of the cup. Within a circle of pearls or beads, similar to that separating the two zones, is a round space about two inches in diameter, divided into two compartments by a horizontal line. In the upper part are contained three human figures, and the figure of a dog. At the extreme left is a prisoner with a beard and long hair that falls upon his shoulders. His entire body is naked. Behind him his two arms are brought together, tied by a cord, and then firmly attached to a post. His knees are bent, but do not reach the ground, and his feet are placed with their soles uppermost against the post at its base. The attitude is one which implies extreme suffering.[84] In front of the prisoner, occupying the centre of the medallion, is the main figure of the upper compartment, a warrior, armed with a spear, who pursues the third figure, a fugitive, and seems to be thrusting his spear into the man’s back. Both have long hair, but are beardless; and wear the /shenti/ for their sole garment. Between the legs of the main figure is a dog of the jackal kind, which has his teeth fixed in the heels of the fugitive, and arrests his flight. Below, in the second compartment, are two figures only, a man and a dog. The man is prostrate, and seems to be crawling along the ground, the dog stands partly on him, and appears to be biting his left heel. The interpretation which M. Clermont-Ganneau gives to this entire scene lacks the probability which attaches to his explanation of the outer scene. He suggests that the prisoner is the hunter of the other scene, plundered and bound by his charioteer, who is hastening away, when he is seized by his master’s dog and arrested in his flight. The dog gnaws off his right foot and then attacks the left, while the fugitive, in order to escape his tormentor, has to crawl along the ground. But M. Clermont-Ganneau himself distrusts his interpretation,[85] while he has convinced no other scholar of its soundness. Judicious critics will be content to wait the further researches which he promises, whereby additional light may perhaps be thrown on this obscure matter.

In its artistic character the “cup of Præneste” claims a high place among the works of art probably or certainly assignable to the Phœnicians. The relief is high; the forms, especially the animal ones, are spirited and well-proportioned. The horses are especially good. As M. Clermont-Ganneau says, “their forms and their movements are indicated with a great deal of precision and truth.”[86] They show also a fair amount of variety; they stand, they walk, they trot, they gallop at full speed, always truthfully and naturally. The stag, the hare, and the dog are likewise well portrayed; the ape has less merit; he is too human, too like a mere unkempt savage. The human forms are about upon a par with those of the Assyrians and Egyptians, which have evidently served for their models, the Assyrian for the outer zone, the Egyptian for the medallion. The encircling snake, as already observed, is a masterpiece. There is no better drawing in any of the other /pateræ/. At best they equal, they certainly do not surpass, the Prænestine specimen.

The intaglios of the Phœnicians are either on cylinders or on gems, and can rarely be distinguished, unless they are accompanied by an inscription, from the similar objects obtained in such abundance from Babylonia and Assyria. They reproduce, with scarcely any variation, the mythological figures and emblems native to those countries–the forms of gods and priests, of spirits of good and evil, of kings contending with lions, of sacred trees, winged circles, and the like– scarcely ever introducing any novelty. The greater number of the cylinders are very rudely cut. They have been worked simply by means of a splinter of obsidian,[87] and are barbarous in execution, though interesting to the student of archaic art. The subjoined are specimens. No. 1 represents a four-winged genius of the Assyrian type, bearded, and clad in a short tunic and a long robe, seizing with either hand a winged griffin, or spirit of evil, and reducing them to subjection. In the field, towards the two upper corners, are the same four Phœnician characters, twice repeated; they designate, no doubt, the owner of the cylinder, which he probably used as a seal, and are read as /Harkhu/.[88] No. 2, which is better cut than No. 1, represents a king of the Persian (Achæmenian) type,[89] who stands between two rampant lions, and seizes each by the forelock. Behind the second lion is a sacred tree of a type that is not uncommon; and behind the tree is an inscription, which has been read as /l’Baletân/ –i.e. “(the seal) of Baletan.”[90] This cylinder was found recently in the Lebanon.[91] Nos. 3 and 4 come from Salamis in Cyprus, where they were found by M. Alexandre Di Cesnola,[92] the brother of the General. No. 3 represents a robed figure holding two nondescript animals by the hind legs; the creatures writhe in his grasp, and turn their heads towards him, as though wishing to bite. The remainder of the field is filed with detached objects, scattered at random–two human forms, a griffin, two heads of oxen, a bird, two balls, three crosses, a sceptre, &c. The forms are, all of them, very rudely traced. No. 4 resembles in general character No. 3, but is even ruder. Three similar robed figures hold each other’s hands and perhaps execute a dance around some religious object. Two heads of oxen or cows, with a disk between their horns, occupy the spaces intervening between the upper parts of the figures. In the lower portion of the field, the sun and moon fill the middle space, the sun, moon, and five planets the spaces to the right and to the left. Another cylinder from the same place (No. 5)[93] is tolerably well designed and engraved. It shows us two persons, a man and a woman, in the act of presenting a dove to a female, who is probably the goddess Astarté, and who willingly receives it at their hands. Behind Astarté a seated lion echoes the approval of the goddess by raising one of his fore paws, while a griffin, who wholly disapproves of the offering, turns his back in disgust.

On another cylinder, which is certainly Phœnician, a rude representation of a sacred tree occupies the central position. To the left stands a worshipper with the right hand upraised, clad in a very common Assyrian dress. Over the sacred tree is a coarse specimen of the winged circle or disk, with head and tail, and fluttering ends of ribbon.[94] On either side stand two winged genii, dressed in long robes, and tall stiff caps, such as are often seen on the heads of Persians in the Persepolitan sculptures, and on the darics.[95] In the field is a Phœnician inscription, which is read as {…} or /Irphael ben Hor’adad/, “Irphael, the son of Horadad.”[96]

Phœnician cylinders are in glass, green serpentine, cornaline, black hæmatite, steatite, and green jasper.[97] They are scratched rather than deeply cut, and cannot be said ever to attain to any considerable artistic beauty. Those which have been here given are among the best; and they certainly fall short, both in design and workmanship, of many Assyrian, Babylonian, and even Persian specimens.

The gems, on the other hand, are in many cases quite equal to the Assyrian. There is one of special merit, which has been pronounced “an exquisite specimen of Phœnician lapidary art,”[98] figured by General Di Cesnola in his “Cyprus.”[99] Two men in regular Assyrian costume, standing on either side of a “Sacred Tree,” grasp, each of them, a branch of it. Above is a winged circle, with the wings curved so as to suit the shape of the gem. Below is an ornament, which is six times repeated, like the blossom of a flower; and below this is a trelliswork. The whole is cut deeply and sharply. Its Phœnician authorship is assured by its being an almost exact repetition of a group upon the silver patera found at Amathus.[100]

Of other gems equally well engraved the following are specimens. No. 1 is a scarab of cornaline found by M. de Vogüé in Phœnicia Proper.[101] Two male figures in Assyrian costume face each other, their advanced feet crossing. Both hold in one hand the /ankh/ or symbol of life. One has in the left hand what is thought to be a lotus blossom. The other has the right hand raised in the usual attitude of adoration. Between the figures, wherever there was space for them, are Phœnician characters, which are read as {…}, or /l’Beka/–i.e. “(the seal) of Beka.”[102] No. 2, which has been set in a ring, is one of the many scarabs brought by General Di Cesnola from Cyprus.[103] It contains the figure of a hind, suckling her fawn, and is very delicately carved. The hind, however, is in an impossible attitude, the forelegs being thrown forwards, probably in order to prevent them from interfering with the figure of the fawn. Above the hind is an inscription, which appears to be in the Cyprian character, and which gives (probably) the name of the owner. No. 3 introduces us to domestic life. A grand lady, of Tyre perhaps or Sidon,[104] by name Akhot-melek, seated upon an elegant throne, with her feet upon a footstool, and dressed in a long robe which envelops the whole of her figure, receives at the hands of a female attendant a bowl or wine- cup, which the latter has just filled from an /œnochoë/ of elegant shape, still held in her left hand. The attendant wears a striped robe reaching to the feet, and over it a tunic fastened round the waist with a belt. Her hair flows down on her shoulders, while that of her mistress is confined by a band, from which depends an ample veil, enveloping the cheeks, the back of the head, and the chin. We are told that such veils are still worn in the Phœnician country.[105] An inscription, in a late form of the Phœnician character, surrounds the two figures, and is read as {…} or /l’Akhot-melek ishat Joshua(?)/– i.e. “(the seal) of Akhot-melek, wife of Joshua.”[106] No. 4 contains the figure of a lion, cut with much spirit. MM. Perrot et Chipiez say of it–“Among the numerous representations of lions that have been discovered in Phœnicia, there is none which can be placed on a par with that on the scarab bearing the name of ‘Ashenel: small as it is, this lion has something of the physiognomy of those magnificent ones which we have borrowed from the bas-reliefs of the Assyrians. Still, the intaglio is in other respects decidedly Phœnician and not Assyrian. Observe, for instance, the beetle with the wings expanded, which fills up the lower part of the field; this is a /motive/ borrowed from Egypt, which a Ninevite lapidary would certainly not have put in such a place.”[107] The Phœnician inscription takes away all doubt as to the nationality. It reads as {…}, or /’Ashenêl/, and no doubt designates the owner. No. 5 is beautifully engraved on a chalcedony. It represents a stag attacked by a griffin, which has jumped suddenly on its back. The drawing is excellent, both of the real and of the imaginary animal, and leaves nothing to be desired. The inscription, which occupies the upper part of the field to the right, is in Cyprian characters, and shows that the gem was the signet of a certain Akestodaros.[108]

There are some Phœnician gems which are interesting from their subject matter without being especially good as works of art. One of these contains a representation of two men fighting.[109] Both are armed with two spears, and both carry round shields or bucklers. The warrior to the right wears a conical helmet, and is thought to be a native Cyprian;[110] he carries a shield without an /umbo/ or boss. His adversary on the left wears a loose cap, or hood, the {pilos apages} of Herodotus,[111] and has a prominent /umbo/ in the middle of his shield. He probably represents a Persian, and appears to have received a wound from his antagonist, which is causing him to sink to the ground. This gem was found at Curium in Cyprus by General Di Cesnola.

Another, found at the same place, exhibits a warrior, or a hunter, going forth to battle or to the chase in his chariot.[112] A large quiver full of arrows is slung at each side of his car. The warrior and his horse (one only is seen) are rudely drawn, but the chariot is very distinctly made out, and has a wheel of an Assyrian type. The Salaminians of Cyprus were famous for their war chariots,[113] of which this may be a representation.

The island of Sardinia has furnished a prodigious number of Phœnician seals. A single private collection contains as many as six hundred.[114] They are mostly scarabs, and the type of them is mostly Egyptian. Sometimes they bear the forms of Egyptian gods, as Horus, or Thoth, or Anubis;[115] sometimes cartouches with the names of kings as Menkara, Thothmes III., Amenophis III., Seti I., &c.;[116] sometimes mere sacred emblems, as the winged uræus, the disk between two uræi,[117] and the like. Occasionally there is the representation of a scene with which the Egyptian bas-reliefs have made us familiar:[118] a warrior has caught hold of his vanquished and kneeling enemy by a lock of his hair, and threatens him with an axe or mace, which he brandishes above his head. Or a lion takes the place of the captive man, and is menaced in the same way. Human figures struggling with lions, and lions killing wild bulls, are also common;[119] but the type in these cases is less Egyptian than Oriental.

Phœnician painting was not, like Egyptian, displayed upon the walls of temples, nor was it, like Greek, the production of actual pictures for the decoration of houses. It was employed to a certain extent on statues, not so as to cover the entire figure, but with delicacy and discretion, for the marking out of certain details, and the emphasising of certain parts of the design.[120] The hair and beard were often painted a brownish red; the pupil of the eye was marked by means of colour; and robes had often a border of red or blue. Statuettes were tinted more generally, whole vestments being sometimes coloured red or green,[121] and a gay effect being produced, which is said to be agreeable and harmonious.[122] But the nearest approach to painting proper which was made by the Phœnicians was upon their vessels in clay, in terra-cotta, and in alabaster. Here, though, the ornamentation was sometimes merely by patterns or bands,[123] there were occasionally real attempts to depict animal and human forms, which, if not very successful, still possess considerable interest. The noble amphora from Curium, figured by Di Cesnola,[124] contains above forty representations of horses, and nearly as many of birds. The shape of the horse is exceedingly conventional, the whole form being attenuated in the highest degree; but the animal is drawn with spirit, and the departure from nature is clearly intentional. In the animals that are pasturing, the general attitude is well seized; the movement is exactly that of the horse when he stretches his neck to reach and crop the grass.[125] In the birds there is equal spirit and greater truth to nature: they are in various attitudes, preening their feathers, pecking the ground, standing with head erect in the usual way. Other vases contain figures of cows, goats, stags, fish and birds of various kinds, while one has an attempt at a hippopotamus. The attempts to represent the human form are certainly not happy; they remind us of the more ambitious efforts of Chinese and Japanese art.

CHAPTER VIII

INDUSTRIAL ART AND MANUFACTURES

Phœnician textile fabrics, embroidered or dyed–Account of the chief Phœnician dye–Mollusks from which the purple was obtained– Mode of obtaining them–Mode of procuring the dye from them– Process of dyeing–Variety of the tints–Manufacture of glass– Story of its invention–Three kinds of Phœnician glass– 1. Transparent colourless glass–2. Semi-transparent coloured glass–3. Opaque glass, much like porcelain–Description of objects in glass–Methods pursued in the manufacture–Phœnician ceramic art–Earliest specimens–Vases with geometrical designs– Incised patterning–Later efforts–Use of enamel–Great amphora of Curium–Phœnician ceramic art disappointing–Ordinary metallurgy– Implements–Weapons–Toilet articles–Lamp-stands and tripods– Works in iron and lead.

Phœnicia was celebrated from a remote antiquity for the manufacture of textile fabrics. The materials which she employed for them were wool, linen yarn, perhaps cotton, and, in the later period of her commercial prosperity, silk. The “white wool” of Syria was supplied to her in abundance by the merchants of Damascus,[1] and wool of lambs, rams, and goats seems also to have been furnished by the more distant parts of Arabia.[2] Linen yarn may have been imported from Egypt, where it was largely manufactured, and was of excellent quality;[3] while raw silk is said to have been “brought to Tyre and Berytus by the Persian merchants, and there both dyed and woven into cloaks.”[4] The price of silk was very high, and it was customary in Phœnicia to intermix the precious material either with linen or with cotton;[5] as is still done to a certain extent in modern times. It is perhaps doubtful whether, so far as the mere fabric of stuffs was concerned, the products of the Phœnician looms were at all superior to those which Egypt and Babylonia furnished, much less to those which came from India, and passed under the name of /Sindones/. Two things gave to the Phœnician stuffs that high reputation which caused them to be more sought for than any others; and these were, first, the brilliancy and beauty of their colours, and, secondly, the delicacy with which they were in many instances embroidered. We have not much trace of Phœnician embroidery on the representations of dresses that have come down to us; but the testimony of the ancients is unimpeachable,[6] and we may regard it as certain that the art of embroidery, known at a very early date to the Hebrews,[7] was cultivated with great success by their Phœnician neighbours, and under their auspices reached a high point of perfection. The character of the decoration is to be gathered from the extant statues and bas-reliefs, from the representations on pateræ, on cups, dishes, and gems. There was a tendency to divide the surface to be ornamented into parallel stripes or bands, and to repeat along the line a single object, or two alternately. Rosettes, monsters of various kinds, winged globes with uræi, scarabs, sacred trees, and garlands or blossoms of the lotus were the ordinary “motives.”[8] Occasionally human figures might be introduced, and animal forms even more frequently; but a stiff conventionalism prevailed, the same figures were constantly repeated, and the figures themselves had in few cases much beauty.

The brilliancy and beauty of the Phœnician coloured stuffs resulted from the excellency of their dyes. Here we touch a second branch of their industrial skill, for the principal dyes used were originally invented and continuously fabricated by the Phœnicians themselves, not imported from any foreign country. Nature had placed along the Phœnician coast, or at any rate along a great portion of it, an inexhaustible supply of certain shell-fish, or molluscs, which contained as a part of their internal economy a colouring fluid possessing remarkable, and indeed unique, qualities. Some account has been already given of the species which are thought to have been anciently most esteemed. They belong, mainly, to the two allied families of the /Murex/ and the /Buccinum/ or /Purpura/. Eight species of the former, and six of the latter, having their habitat in the Mediterranean, have been distinguished by some naturalists;[9] but two of the former only, and one of the latter, appear to have attracted the attention of the Phœnicians. The /Murex brandaris/ is now thought to have borne away the palm from all the others; it is extremely common upon the coast; and enormous heaps of the shells are found, especially in the vicinity of Tyre, crushed and broken–the débris, as it would seem, cast away by the manufacturers of old.[10] The /Murex trunculus/, according to some, is just as abundant, in a crushed state, in the vicinity of Sidon, great banks of it existing, which are a hundred yards long and several yards thick.[11] It is a more spinous shell than the /M. brandaris/, having numerous projecting points, and a generally rough and rugged appearance. The /Purpura/ employed seems to have been the /P. lapillus/, a mollusc not confined to the Mediterranean, but one which frequents also our own shores, and was once turned to some account in Ireland.[12] The varieties of the /P. lapillus/ differ considerably. Some are nearly white, some greyish, others buff striped with brown. Some, again, are smooth, others nearly as rough as the /Murex trunculus/. The /Helix ianthina/, which is included by certain writers among the molluscs employed for dyeing purposes by the Phœnicians,[13] is a shell of a completely different character, smooth and delicate, much resembling that of an ordinary land snail, and small compared to the others. It is not certain, however, that the /helix/, though abounding in the Eastern Mediterranean,[14] ever attracted the notice of the Phœnicians.

The molluscs needed by the Phœnician dyers were not obtained without some difficulty. As the Mediterranean has no tides, it does not uncover its shores at low water like the ocean, or invite man to rifle them. The coveted shell-fish, in most instances, preferred tolerably deep water; and to procure them in any quantity it was necessary that they should be fished up from a depth of some fathoms. The mode in which they were captured was the following. A long rope was let down into the sea, with baskets of reeds or rushes attached to it at intervals, constructed like our lobster-traps or eel-baskets, with an opening that yielded easily to pressure from the outside, but resisted pressure from the inside, and made escape, when once the trap was entered, impossible. The baskets were baited with mussels or frogs, both of which had great attractions for the /Purpuræ/, and were seized and devoured with avidity. At the upper end of the rope was attached to a large piece of cork, which, even when the baskets were full, could not be drawn under water. It was usual to set the traps in the evening, and after waiting a night, or sometimes a night and a day, to draw them up to the surface, when they were generally found to be full of the coveted shell-fish.[15]

There were two ways in which the dye was obtained from the molluscs. Sometimes a hole was broken in the side of the shell, and the fish taken out entire.[16] The /sac/ containing the colouring matter, which is a sort of vein, beginning at the head of the animal, and following the tortuous line of the body as it twists through the spiral shell,[17] was then carefully extracted, either while the mollusc was still alive, or as soon as possible after death, as otherwise the quality of the dye was impaired. This plan was pursued more especially with the larger species of /Purpuræ/, where the /sac/ attained a certain size; while with a smaller kinds a different method was followed. In their case no attempt was made to extract the /sac/, but the entire fish was crushed, together with its shell, and after salt had been added in the proportion of twenty ounces to a hundred pounds of the pulp, three days were allowed for maceration; heat was then applied, and when, by repeated skimming, the coarse particles had been removed, the dye was left in a liquid state at the bottom. It was necessary that the vessel in which this final process took place should be of lead, and not of bronze or iron, since those metals gave the dye a disagreeable tinge.[18]

The colouring matter contained in the /sac/ of the /Purpuræ/ is a liquid of a creamy consistency, and of a yellowish-white hue. On extraction, it is at first decidedly yellow; then after a little time it becomes green; and, finally, it settles into some shade of violet or purple. Chemical analysis has shown that in the case of the /Murex trunculus/ the liquid is composed of two elementary substances, one being cyanic acid, which is of a blue or azure colour, and the other being purpuric oxide, which is a bright red.[19] In the case of the /Murex brandaris/ one element only has been found: it is an oxide, which has received the name of /oxyde tyrien/.[20] No naturalist has as yet discovered what purpose the liquid serves in the economy, or in the preservation, of the animal; it is certainly not exuded, as sepia is by the cuttle-fish, to cloud the water in the neighbourhood, and enable the creature to conceal itself.

Concerning the Phœnician process of dyeing, the accounts which have come down to us are at once confused and incomplete. Nothing is said with respect to their employment of mordants, either acid or alkali, and yet it is almost certain that they must have used one or the other, or both, to fix the colours, and render them permanent. The /gamins/ of Tyre employ to this day mordants of each sort;[21] and an alkali derived from seaweed is mentioned by Pliny as made use of for fixing some dyes,[22] though he does not distinctly tell us that it was known to the Phœnicians or employed in fixing the purple. What we chiefly learn from this writer as to the dyeing process is[23]–first, that sometimes the liquid derived from the /murex/ only, sometimes that of the /purpura/ or /buccinum/ only, was applied to the material which it was wished to colour, while the most approved hue was produced by an application of both dyes separately. Secondly, we are told that the material, whatever it might be, was steeped in the dye for a certain number of hours, then withdrawn for a while, and afterwards returned to the vat and steeped a second time. The best Tyrian cloths were called /Dibapha/, i.e. “twice dipped;” and for the production of the true “Tyrian purple” it was necessary that the dye obtained from the /Buccinum/ should be used after that from the /Murex/ had been applied. The /Murex/ alone gave a dye that was firm, and reckoned moderately good; but the /Buccinum/ alone was weak, and easily washed out.

The actual tints produced from the shell-fish appear to have ranged from blue, through violet and purple, to crimson and rose.[24] Scarlet could not be obtained, but was yielded by the cochineal insect. Even for the brighter sorts of crimson some admixture of the cochineal dye was necessary.[25] The violet tint was not generally greatly prized, though there was a period in the reign of Augustus when it was the fashion;[26] redder hues were commonly preferred; and the choicest of all is described as “a rich, dark purple, the colour of coagulated blood.”[27] A deep crimson was also in request, and seems frequently to be intended when the term purple ({porphureos}, /purpureus/) is used.

A third industry greatly affected by the Phœnicians was the manufacture of glass. According to Pliny,[28] the first discovery of the substance was made upon the Phœnician coast by a body of sailors whom he no doubt regarded as Phœnicians. These persons had brought a cargo of natrum, which is the subcarbonate of soda, to the Syrian coast in the vicinity of Acre, and had gone ashore at the mouth of the river Belus to cook their dinner. Having lighted a fire upon the sand, they looked about for some stones to prop up their cooking utensils, but finding none, or none convenient for the purpose, they bethought themselves of utilising for the occasion some of the blocks of natrum with which their ship was laden. These were placed close to the fire, and the heat was sufficient to melt a portion of one of them, which, mixing with the siliceous sand at its base, produced a stream of glass. There is nothing impossible or even very improbable in this story; but we may question whether the scene of it is rightly placed. Glass was manufactured in Egypt many centuries before the probable date of the Phœnician occupation of the Mediterranean coast; and, if the honour of the invention is to be assigned to a particular people, the Egyptians would seem to have the best claim to it. The process of glass-blowing is represented in tombs at Beni Hassan of very great antiquity,[29] and a specimen of Egyptian glass is in existence bearing the name of a Usurtasen, a king of the twelfth dynasty.[30] Natrum, moreover, was an Egyptian product, well known from a remote date, being the chief ingredient used in the various processes of embalming.[31] Phœnicia has no natrum, and not even any vegetable alkali readily procurable in considerable quantity. There /may have been/ an accidental discovery of glass in Phœnicia, but priority of discovery belonged almost certainly to Egypt; and it is, upon the whole, most probable that Phœnicia derived from Egypt her knowledge both of the substance itself and of the method of making it.

Still, there can be no doubt that the manufacture was one on which the Phœnicians eagerly seized, and which they carried out on a large scale and very successfully. Sidon, according to the ancients,[32] was the chief seat of the industry; but the best sand is found near Tyre, and both Tyre and Sarepta also seem to have been among the places where glassworks were early established. At Sarepta extensive banks of /débris/ have been found, consisting of broken glass of many colours, the waste beyond all doubt of a great glass manufactory;[33] at Tyre, the traces of the industry are less extensive,[34] but on the other hand we have historical evidence that it continued to be practised there into the middle ages.[35]

The glass produced by the Phœnicians was of three kinds: first, transparent colourless glass, which the eye could see through; secondly, translucent coloured glass, through which light could pass, though the eye could not penetrate it so as to distinguish objects; and, thirdly, opaque glass, scarcely distinguishable from porcelain. Transparent glass was employed for mirrors, round plates being cast, which made very tolerable looking-glasses,[36] when covered at the back by thin sheets of metal, and also for common objects, such as vases, urns, bottles, and jugs, which have been yielded in abundance by tombs of a somewhat late date in Cyprus.[37] No great store, however, seems to have been set upon transparency, in which the Oriental eye saw no beauty; and the objects which modern research has recovered under this head at Tyre, in Cyprus, and elsewhere, seem the work of comparatively rude artists, and have little æsthetic merit. The shapes, however, are not inelegant.

The most beautiful of the objects in glass produced by the Phœnicians are the translucent or semi-transparent vessels of different kinds, most of them variously coloured, which have been found in Cyprus, at Camirus in Rhodes, and on the Syrian coast, near Beyrout and elsewhere.[38] These comprise small flasks or bottles, from three to six inches long, probably intended to contain perfumes; small jugs (œnochoæ) from three inches in height to five inches; vases of about the same size; amphoræ pointed at the lower extremity; and other varieties. They are coloured, generally, either in longitudinal or in horizontal stripes and bands; but the bands often deviate from the straight line into zig-zags, which are always more or less irregular, like the zig-zags of the Norman builders, while sometimes they are deflected into crescents, or other curves, as particularly one resembling a willow-leaf. The colours are not very vivid, but are pleasing and well-contrasted; they are chiefly five–white, blue, yellow, green, and a purplish brown. Red scarcely appears, except in a very pale, pinkish form; and even in this form it is uncommon. Blue, on the other hand, is greatly affected, being sometimes used in the patterns, often taken for the ground, and occasionally, in two tints, forming both groundwork and ornamentation.[39] It is not often that more than three hues are found on the same vessel, and sometimes the hues employed are only two. There are instances, however, and very admirable instances, of the employment, on a single vessel, of four hues.[40]

The colours were obtained, commonly, at any rate, from metallic oxides. The ordinary blue employed is cobalt, though it is suspected that there was an occasional use of copper. Copper certainly furnished the greens, while manganese gave the brown, which shades off into purple and into black. The beautiful milky white which forms the ground tint of some vases is believed to have been derived from the oxide of tin, or else from phosphate of chalk. It is said that the colouring matter of the patterns does not extend through the entire thickness of the glass, but lies only on the outer surface, being a later addition to the vessels as first made.

Translucent coloured glass was also largely produced by the Phœnicians for beads and other ornaments, and also for the imitation of gems. The huge emerald of which Herodotus speaks,[41] as “shining with great brilliancy at night” in the temple of Melkarth at Tyre, was probably a glass cylinder, into which a lamb was introduced by the priests. In Phœnician times the pretended stone is quite as often a glass paste as a real gem, and the case is the same with the scarabs so largely used as seals. In Phœnician necklaces, glass beads alternate frequently with real agates, onyxes, and crystals; while sometimes glass in various shapes is the only material employed. A necklace found at Tharros in Sardinia, and now in the collection of the Louvre, which is believed to be of Phœnician manufacture, is composed of above forty beads, two cylinders, four pendants representing heads of bulls, and one representing the face of a man, all of glass.[42] Another, found by M. Renan in Phœnicia itself, is made up of glass beads imitating pearls, intermixed with beads of cornaline and agate.[43]

Another class of glass ornaments consists of small flat /plaques/ or plates, pierced with a number of fine holes, which appear to have been sewn upon garments. These are usually patterned, sometimes with spirals, sometimes with rosettes, occasionally, though rarely, with figures. Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez represent one in their great work upon ancient art,[44] where almost the entire field is occupied by a winged griffin, standing upright on its two hind legs, and crowned with a striped cap, or turban.

Phœnician opaque glass is comparatively rare, and possesses but little beauty. It was rendered opaque in various ways. Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez found that in a statue of Serapis, which they analysed, the glass was mixed with bronze in the proportions of ten to three. An opaque material of a handsome red colour was thus produced, which was heavy and exceedingly hard.[45]

The methods pursued by the Phœnician glass-manufacturers were probably much the same as those which are still employed for the production of similar objects, and involved the use of similar implements, as the blowpipe, the lathe, and the graver. The materials having been procured, they were fused together in a crucible or melting-pot by the heat of a powerful furnace. A blowpipe was then introduced into the viscous mass, a portion of which readily attached itself to the implement, and so much glass was withdrawn as was deemed sufficient for the object which it was designed to manufacture. The blower then set to work, and blew hard into the pipe until the glass at its lower extremity began to expand and gradually took a pear-shaped form, the material partially coolling and hardening, but still retaining a good deal of softness and pliability. While in this condition, it was detached from the pipe, and modelled with pincers or with the hand into the shape required, after which it was polished, and perhaps sometimes cut by means of the turning-lathe. Sand and emery were the chief polishers, and by their help a surface was produced, with which little fault could be found, being smooth, uniform, and brilliant. Thus the vessel was formed, and if no further ornament was required, the manufacture was complete–a jug, vase, alabastron, amphora, was produced, either transparent or of a single uniform tint, which might be white, blue, brown, green, &c., according to the particular oxide which had been thrown, with the silica and alkali, into the crucible. Generally, however, the manufacturer was not content with so simple a product: he aimed not merely at utility, but at beauty, and proceeded to adorn the work of his hands–whatever it was–with patterns which were for the most part in good taste and highly pleasing. These patterns he first scratched on the outer surface of the vessel with a graving tool; then, when he had made his depressions deep enough, he took threads of coloured glass, and having filled up with the threads the depressions which he had made, he subjected the vessel once more to such a heat that the threads were fused, and attached themselves to the ground on which they had been laid. In melting they would generally more than fill the cavities, overflowing them, and protruding from them, whence it was for the most part necessary to repeat the polishing process, and to bring by means of abrasion the entire surface once more into uniformity. There are cases where this has been incompletely done and where the patterns project; there are others where the threads have never thoroughly melted into the ground, and where in the course of time they have partially detached themselves from it; but in general the fusion and subsequent polishing have been all that could be wished, and the patterns are perfectly level with the ground and seem one with it.[46]

The running of liquid glass into moulds, so common nowadays, does not seem to have been practised by the Phœnicians, perhaps because their furnaces were not sufficiently hot to produce complete liquefaction. But–if this was so–the pressure of the viscous material into moulds cannot have been unknown, since we have evidence of the existence of moulds,[47] and there are cases where several specimens of an object have evidently issued from a single matrix.[48] Beads, cylinders, pendants, scarabs, amulets, were probably, all of them, made in this way, sometimes in translucent, sometimes in semi-opaque glass, as perhaps were also the /plaques/ which have been already described.

The ceramic art of the Phœnicians is not very remarkable. Phœnicia Proper is deficient in clay of a superior character, and it was probably a very ordinary and coarse kind of pottery that the Phœnician merchants of early times exported regularly in their trading voyages, both inside and outside the Mediterranean. We hear of their carrying this cheap earthenware northwards to the Cassiterides or Scilly Islands,[49] and southwards to the isle of Cerné, which is probably Arguin, on the West African coast;[50] nor can we doubt that they supplied it also to the uncivilised races of the Mediterranean–the Illyrians, Ligurians, Sicels, Sards, Corsicans, Spaniards, Libyans. But the fragile nature of the material, and its slight value, have caused its entire disappearance in the course of centuries, unless in the shape of small fragments; nor are these fragments readily distinguishable from those whose origin is different. Phœnicia Proper has furnished no earthen vessels, either whole or in pieces, that can be assigned to a time earlier than the Greco-Roman period,[51] nor have any such vessels been found hitherto on Phœnician sites either in Sardinia, or in Corsica, or in Spain, or Africa, or Sicily, or Malta, or Gozzo. The only places that have hitherto furnished earthen vases or other vessels presumably Phœnician are Jerusalem, Camirus in Rhodes, and Cyprus; and it is from the specimens found at these sites that we must form our estimate of the Phœnician pottery.

The earliest specimens are of a moderately good clay, unglazed. They are regular in shape, being made by the help of a wheel, and for the most part not inelegant, though they cannot be said to possess any remarkable beauty. Many are without ornament of any kind, being apparently mere jars, used for the storing away of oil or wine; they have sometimes painted or scratched upon them, in Phœnician characters, the name of the maker or owner. A few rise somewhat above the ordinary level, having handles of some elegance, and being painted with designs and patterns, generally of a geometrical character. A vase about six inches high, found at Jerusalem, has, between horizontal bands, a series of geometric patterns, squares, octagons, lozenges, triangles, pleasingly arranged, and painted in brown upon a ground which is of a dull grey. At the top are two rude handles, between which runs a line of zig-zag, while at the bottom is a sort of stand or base. The shape is heavy and inelegant.[52]

Another vase of a similar character to this, but superior in many respects, was found by General Di Cesnola at Dali (Idalium), and is figured in his “Cyprus.”[53] This vase has the shape of an urn, and is ornamented with horizontal bands, except towards the middle, where it has its greatest diameter, and exhibits a series of geometric designs. In the centre is a lozenge, divided into four smaller lozenges by a St. Andrew’s cross; other compartments are triangular, and are filled with a chequer of black and white, resembling the squares of a chessboard. Beyond, on either side, are vertical bands, diversified with a lozenge ornament. Two hands succeed, of a shape that is thought to have “a certain elegance.”[54] There is a rim, which might receive a cover, at top, and at bottom a short pedestal. The height of the vase is about thirteen inches.

In many of the Cyprian vases having a geometric decoration, the figures are not painted on the surface but impressed or incised. Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez regard this form of ornamentation as the earliest; but the beauty and finish of several vases on which it occurs is against the supposition. There is scarcely to be found, even in the range of Greek art, a more elegant form than that of the jug in black clay brought by General Di Cesnola from Alambra and figured both in his “Cyprus”[55] and in the “Histoire de l’Art.”[56] Yet its ornamentation is incised. If, then, incised patterning preceded painted in Phœnicia, at any rate it held its ground after painting was introduced, and continued in vogue even to the time when Greek taste had largely influenced Phœnician art of every description.

The finest Phœnician efforts in ceramic art resemble either the best Egyptian or the best Greek. As the art advanced, the advantage of a rich glaze was appreciated, and specimens which seem to be Phœnician have all the delicacy and beauty of the best Egyptian faïence. A cup found at Idalium, plain on the outside, is covered internally with a green enamel, on which are patterns and designs in black.[57] In a medallion at the bottom of the cup is the representation of a marshy tract overgrown with the papyrus plant, whereof we see both the leaves and blossoms, while among them, rushing at full speed, is the form of a wild boar. The rest of the ornamentation consists chiefly of concentric circles; but between two of the circles is left a tolerably broad ring, which has a pattern consisting of a series of broadish leaves pointing towards the cup’s centre. Nothing can be more delicate, or in better taste, than the entire design.

The most splendid of all the Cyprian vases was found at Curium, and has been already represented in this volume. It is an amphora of large dimensions, ornamented in part with geometrical designs, in part with compartments, in which are represented horses and birds. The form, the designs, and the general physiognomy of the amphora are considered to be in close accordance with Athenian vases of the most antique school. The resemblance is so great that some have supposed the vase to have been an importation from Attica into Cyprus;[58] but such conjectures are always hazardous; and the principal motives of the design are so frequent on the Cyprian vases, that the native origin of the vessel is at least possible, and the judgment of some of the best critics seems to incline in this direction.

Still, on the whole, the Cyprian ceramic art is somewhat disappointing. What is original in it is either grotesque, as the vases in the shape of animals,[59] or those crowned by human heads,[60] or those again which have for spout a female figure pouring liquid out of a jug.[61] What is superior has the appearance of having been borrowed. Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek art, each in turn, furnished shapes, designs, and patterns to the Phœnician potters, who readily adopted from any and every quarter the forms and decorations which hit their fancy. Their fancy was, predominantly, for the /bizarre/ and the extravagant. Vases in the shape of helmets, in the shape of barrels, in the shape of human heads,[62] have little fitness, and in the Cyprian specimens have little beauty; the mixture of Assyrian with Egyptian forms is incongruous; the birds and beasts represented are drawn with studied quaintness, a quaintness recalling the art of China and Japan. If there is elegance in some of the forms, it is seldom a very pronounced elegance; and, where the taste is best, the suspicion continually arises that a foreign model has been imitated. Moreover, from first to last the art makes little progress. There seems to have been an arrest of development.[63] The early steps are taken, but at a certain point stagnation sets in; there is no further attempt to improve or advance; the artists are content to repeat themselves, and reproduce the patterns of the past. Perhaps there was no demand for ceramic art of a higher order. At any rate, progress ceases, and while Greece was rising to her grandest efforts, Cyprus, and Phœnicia generally, were content to remain stationary.

Besides their ornamental metallurgy, which has been treated of in a former chapter, the Phœnicians largely employed several metals, especially bronze and copper, in the fabrication of vessels for ordinary use, of implements, arms, toilet articles, furniture, &c. The vessels include pateræ, bowls, jugs, amphoræ, and cups;[64] the implements, hatchets, adzes, knives, and sickles;[65] the arms, spearheads, arrowheads, daggers, battle-axes, helmets, and shields;[66] the toilet articles, mirrors, hand-bells, buckles, candlesticks, &c.;[67] the furniture, tall candelabra, tripods, and thrones.[68] The bronze is of an excellent quality, having generally about nine parts of copper to one of tin; and there is reason to believe that by the skilful tempering of the Phœnician metallurgists, it attained a hardness which was not often given it by others. The Cyprian shields were remarkable. They were of a round shape, slightly convex, and instead of the ordinary boss, had a long projecting cone in the centre. An actual shield, with the cone perfect, was found by General Di Cesnola at Amathus,[69] and a projection of the same kind is seen in several of the Sardinian bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.[70] Shields were sometimes elaborately embossed, in part with patterning, in part with animal and vegetable forms.[71] Helmets were also embossed with care, and sometimes inscribed with the name of the maker or the owner.[72]

Some remains of swords, probably Phœnician, have been found in Sardinia. They vary from two feet seven inches to four feet two inches in length.[73] The blade is commonly straight, and very thick in the centre, but tapers off on both sides to a sharp edge. The point is blunt, so that the intention cannot have been to use the weapon both for cutting and thrusting, but only for the former. It would scarcely make such a clean cut as a modern broadsword, but would no doubt be equally effectual for killing or disabling. Another weapon, found in Sardinia, and sometimes called a sword, is more properly a knife or dagger. In length it does not exceed seven or eight inches, and of this length more than a third is occupied by the handle.[74] Below the handle the blade broadens for about an inch or an inch and a half; after this it contracts, and tapers gently to a sharp point. Such a weapon appears sometimes in the hand of a statuette.[75]

The bronze articles of the toilet recovered by recent researches in Cyprus and elsewhere are remarkable. The handle of a mirror found in Cyprus, and now in the Museum of New York, possesses considerable merit. It consists mainly of a female figure, naked, and standing upon a frog.[76] In her hands she holds a pair of cymbals, which she is in the act of striking together. A ribbon, passed over her left shoulder, is carried through a ring, from which hangs a seal. On her arms and shoulders appear to have stood two lions, which formed side supports to the mirror that was attached to the figure’s head. If the face of the cymbal-player cannot boast of much beauty, and her figure is thought to “lack distinction,” still it is granted that the /tout ensemble/ of the work was not without originality, and may have possessed a certain amount of elegance.[77] The frog is particularly well modelled.

Some candlesticks found in the Treasury of Curium,[78] and a tripod from the same place, seem to deserve a short notice. The candlesticks stand upon a sort of short pillar as a base, above which is the blossom of a flower inverted, a favourite Phœnician ornament.[79] From this rises the lamp-stand, composed of three leaves, which curl outwards, and support between them a ring into which the bottom of the lamp fitted. The tripod[80] is more elaborate. The legs, which are fluted, bulge considerably at the top, after which they bend inwards, and form a curve like one half of a Cupid’s bow. To retain them in place, they are joined together by a sort of cross-bar, about half-way in their length; while, to keep them steady, they are made to rest on large flat feet. The circular hoop which they support is of some width, and is ornamented along its entire course with a zig-zag. From the hoop depend, half-way in the spaces between the legs, three rings, from each of which there hangs a curious pendant.

Besides copper and bronze, the Phœnicians seem to have worked in lead and iron, but only to a small extent. Iron ore might have been obtained in some parts of their own country, but appears to have been principally derived from abroad, especially from Spain.[81] It was worked up chiefly, so far as we know, into arms offensive and defensive. The sword of Alexander, which he received as a gift from the king of Citium,[82] was doubtless in this metal, which is the material of a sword found at Amathus, and of numerous arrowheads.[83] We are also told that Cyprus furnished the iron breast-plates worn by Demetrius Poliorcetes;[84] and in pre-Homeric times it was a Phœnician–Cinyras–who gave to Agamemnon his breast-plate of steel, gold, and tin.[85] That more remains of iron arms and implements have not been found on Phœnician sites is probably owing to the rapid oxydisation of the metal, which consequently decays and disappears. The Hiram who was sent to assist Solomon in building and furnishing the Temple of Jerusalem was, we must remember, “skilful to work,” not only “in gold, and silver, and bronze,” but also “in iron.”[86]

Lead was largely furnished to the Phœnicians by the Scilly Islands,[87] and by Spain.[88] It has not been found in any great quantity on Phœnician sites, but still appears occasionally. Sometimes it is a solder uniting stone with bronze;[89] sometimes it exists in thin sheets, which may have been worn as ornaments.[90] In Phœnicia Proper it has been chiefly met with in the shape of coffins,[91] which are apparently of a somewhat late date. They are formed of several sheets placed one over the other and then soldered together. There is generally on the lid and sides of the coffin an external ornamentation in a low relief, wherein the myth of Psyché is said commonly to play a part; but the execution is mediocre, and the designs themselves have little merit.

CHAPTER IX

SHIPS, NAVIGATION, AND COMMERCE

Earliest navigation by means of rafts and canoes–Model of a very primitive boat–Phœnician vessel of the time of Sargon–Phœnician biremes in the time of Sennacherib–Phœnician pleasure vessels and merchant ships–Superiority of the Phœnician war-galleys– Excellence of the arrangements–Patæci–Early navigation cautious –Increasing boldness–Furthest ventures–Extent of the Phœnician land commerce–Witness of Ezekiel–Wares imported–Caravans– Description of the land trade–Sea trade of Phœnicia–1. With her own colonies–2. With foreigners–Mediterranean and Black Sea trade–North Atlantic trade–Trade with the West Coast of Africa and the Canaries–Trade in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

The first attempts of the Phœnicians to navigate the sea which washed their coast were probably as clumsy and rude as those of other primitive nations. They are said to have voyaged from island to island, in their original abodes within the Persian Gulf, by means of rafts.[1] When they reached the shores of the Mediterranean, it can scarcely have been long ere they constructed boats for fishing and coasting purposes, though no doubt such boats were of a very rude construction. Probably, like other races, they began with canoes, roughly hewn out of the trunk of a tree. The torrents which descended from Lebanon would from time to time bring down the stems of fallen trees in their flood-time; and these, floating on the Mediterranean waters, would suggest the idea of navigation. They would, at first, be hollowed out with hatchets and adzes, or else with fire; and, later on, the canoes thus produced would form the models for the earliest efforts in shipbuilding. The great length, however, would soon be found unnecessary, and the canoe would give place to the boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. There are models of boats among the Phœnician remains which have a very archaic character,[2] and may give us some idea of the vessels in which the Phœnicians of the remoter times braved the perils of the deep. They have a keel, not ill shaped, a rounded hull, bulwarks, a beak, and a high seat for the steersman. The oars, apparently, must have been passed through interstices in the bulwark.

From this rude shape the transition was not very difficult to the bark represented in the sculptures of Sargon,[3] which is probably a Phœnician one. Here four rowers, standing to their oars, impel a vessel having for prow the head of a horse and for stern the tail of a fish, both of them rising high above the water. The oars are curved, like golf or hockey-sticks, and are worked from the gunwale of the bark, though there is no indication of rowlocks. The vessel is without a rudder; but it has a mast, supported by two ropes which are fastened to the head and stern. The mast has neither sail nor yard attached to it, but is crowned by what is called a “crow’s nest”–a bell-shaped receptacle, from which a slinger or archer might discharge missiles against an enemy.[4]

A vessel of considerably greater size than this, but of the same class –impelled, that is, by one bank of oars only–is indicated by certain coins, which have been regarded by some critics as Phœnician, by others as belonging to Cilicia.[5] These have a low bow, but an elevated stern; the prow exhibits a beak, while the stern shows signs of a steering apparatus; the number of the oars on each side is fifteen or twenty. The Greeks called these vessels triaconters or penteconters. They are represented without any mast on the coins, and thus seem to have been merely row-boats of a superior character.

About the time of Sennacherib (B.C. 700), or a little earlier, some great advances seem to have been made by the Phœnician shipbuilders. In the first place, they introduced the practice of placing the rowers on two different levels, one above the other; and thus, for a vessel of the same length, doubling the number of the rowers. Ships of this kind, which the Greeks called “biremes,” are represented in Sennacherib’s sculptures as employed by the inhabitants of a Phœnician city, who fly in them at the moment when their town is captured, and so escape their enemy.[6] The ships are of two kinds. Both kinds have a double tier of rowers, and both are guided by two steering oars thrust out from the stern; but while the one is still without mast or sail, and is rounded off in exactly the same way both at stem and stern, the other has a mast, placed about midship, a yard hung across it, and a sail close reefed to the yard, while the bow is armed with a long projecting beak, like a ploughshare, which must have been capable of doing terrible damage to a hostile vessel. The rowers, in both classes of ships, are represented as only eight or ten upon a side; but this may have arisen from artistic necessity, since a greater number of figures could not have been introduced without confusion. It is thought that in the beaked vessel we have a representation of the Phœnician war-galley; in the vessel without a beak, one of the Phœnician transport.[7]

A painting on a vase found in Cyprus exhibits what would seem to have been a pleasure-vessel.[8] It is unbeaked, and without any sign of oars, except two paddles for steering with. About midship is a short mast, crossed by a long spar or yard, which carries a sail, closely reefed along its entire length. The yard and sail are managed by means of four ropes, which are, however, somewhat conventionally depicted. Both the head and stern of the vessel rise to a considerable height above the water, and the stern is curved, very much as in the war- galleys. It perhaps terminated in the head of a bird.

According to the Greek writers, Phœnician vessels were mainly of two kinds, merchant ships and war-vessels.[9] The merchant ships were of a broad, round make, what our sailors would call “tubs,” resembling probably the Dutch fishing-boats of a century ago. They were impelled both by oars and sails, but depended mainly on the latter. Each of them had a single mast of moderate height, to which a single sail was attached;[10] this was what in modern times is called a “square sail,” a form which is only well suited for sailing with when the wind is directly astern. It was apparently attached to the yard, and had to be hoisted together with the yard, along which it could be closely reefed, or from which it could be loosely shaken out. It was managed, no doubt, by ropes attached to the two lower corners, which must have been held in the hands of sailors, as it would have been most dangerous to belay them. As long as the wind served, the merchant captain used his sail; when it died away, or became adverse, he dropped yard and sail on to his deck, and made use of his oars.

Merchant ships had, commonly, small boats attached to them, which afforded a chance of safety if the ship foundered, and were useful when cargoes had to be landed on a shelving shore.[11] We have no means of knowing whether these boats were hoisted up on deck until they were wanted, or attached to the ships by ropes and towed after them; but the latter arrangement is the more probable.

The war-galleys of the Phœnicians in the early times were probably of the class which the Greeks called triaconters or penteconters, and which are represented upon the coins. They were long open rowboats, in which the rowers sat, all of them, upon a level, the number of rowers on either side being generally either fifteen or twenty-five. Each galley was armed at its head with a sharp metal spike, or beak, which was its chief weapon of offence, vessels of this class seeking commonly to run down their enemy. After a time these vessels were superseded by biremes, which were decked, had masts and sails, and were impelled by rowers sitting at two different elevations, as already explained. Biremes were ere long superseded by triremes, or vessels with three banks of oars, which are said to have been invented at Corinth,[12] but which came into use among the Phœnicians before the end of the sixth century B.C.[13] In the third century B.C. the Carthaginians employed in war quadriremes, and even quinqueremes; but there is no evidence of the employment of either class of vessel by the Phœnicians of Phœnicia Proper.

The superiority of the Phœnician ships to others is generally allowed, and was clearly shown when Xerxes collected his fleet of twelve hundred and seven triremes against Greece. The fleet included contingents from Phœnicia, Cyprus, Egypt, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Caria, Ionia, Æolis, and the Greek settlements about the Propontis.[14] When it reached the Hellespont, the great king, anxious to test the quality of his ships and sailors, made proclamation for a grand sailing match, in which all who liked might contend. Each contingent probably–at any rate, all that prided themselves on their nautical skill–selected its best vessel, and entered it for the coming race; the king himself, and his grandees and officers, and all the army, stood or sat along the shore to see: the race took place, and was won by the Phœnicians of Sidon.[15] Having thus tested the nautical skill of the various nations under his sway, the great king, when he ventured his person upon the dangerous element, was careful to embark in a Sidonian galley.[16]

A remarkable testimony to the excellence of the Phœnician ships with respect to internal arrangements is borne by Xenophon, who puts the following words into the mouth of Ischomachus, a Greek:[17] “I think that the best and most perfect arrangement of things that I ever saw was when I went to look at the great Phœnician sailing-vessel; for I saw the largest amount of naval tackling separately disposed in the smallest stowage possible. For a ship, as you well know, is brought to anchor, and again got under way, by a vast number of wooden implements and of ropes and sails the sea by means of a quantity of rigging, and is armed with a number of contrivances against hostile vessels, and carries about with it a large supply of weapons for the crew, and, besides, has all the utensils that a man keeps in his dwelling-house, for each of the messes. In addition, it is laden with a quantity of merchandise which the owner carries with him for his own profit. Now all the things which I have mentioned lay in a space not much bigger than a room which would conveniently hold ten beds. And I remarked that they severally lay in a way that they did not obstruct one another, and did not require anyone to search for them; and yet they were neither placed at random, nor entangled one with another, so as to consume time when they were suddenly wanted for use. Also, I found the captain’s assistant, who is called ‘the look-out man,’ so well acquainted with the position of all the articles, and with the number of them, that even when at a distance he could tell where everything lay, and how many there were of each sort, just as anyone who has learnt to read can tell the number of letters in the name of Socrates and the proper place for each of them. Moreover, I saw this man, in his leisure moments, examining and testing everything that a vessel needs when at sea; so, as I was surprised, I asked him what he was about, whereupon he replied–‘Stranger, I am looking to see, in case anything should happen, how everything is arranged in the ship, and whether anything is wanting, or is inconveniently situated; for when a storm arises at sea, it is not possible either to look for what is wanting, or to put to right what is arranged awkwardly.'”

Phœnician ships seem to have been placed under the protection of the Cabeiri, and to have had images of them at their stem or stern or both.[18] These images were not exactly “figure-heads,” as they are sometimes called. They were small, apparently, and inconspicuous, being little dwarf figures, regarded as amulets that would preserve the vessel in safety. We do not see them on any representations of Phœnician ships, and it is possible that they may have been no larger than the bronze or glazed earthenware images of Phthah that are so common in Egypt. The Phœnicians called them /pittuchim/, “sculptures,”[19] whence the Greek {pataikoi} and the French /fétiche/.

The navigation of the Phœnicians, in early times, was no doubt cautious and timid. So far from venturing out of sight of land, they usually hugged the coast, ready at any moment, if the sea or sky threatened, to change their course and steer directly for the shore. On a shelving coast they were not at all afraid to run their ships aground, since, like the Greek vessels, they could be easily pulled up out of reach of the waves, and again pulled down and launched, when the storm was over and the sea calm once more. At first they sailed, we may be sure, only in the daytime, casting anchor at nightfall, or else dragging their ships up upon the beach, and so awaiting the dawn. But after a time they grew more bold. The sea became familiar to them, the positions of coasts and islands relatively one to another better known, the character of the seasons, the signs of unsettled or settled weather, the conduct to pursue in an emergency, better apprehended. They soon began to shape the course of their vessels from headland to headland, instead of always creeping along the shore, and it was not perhaps very long before they would venture out of sight of land, if their knowledge of the weather satisfied them that the wind might be trusted to continue steady, and if they were well assured of the direction of the land that they wished to make. They took courage, moreover, to sail in the night, no less than in the daytime, when the weather was clear, guiding themselves by the stars, and particularly by the Polar star,[20] which they discovered to be the star most nearly marking the true north. A passage of Strabo[21] seems to show that–in the later times at any rate–they had a method of calculating the rate of a ship’s sailing, though what the method was is wholly unknown to us. It is probable that they early constructed charts and maps, which however they would keep secret through jealousy of their commercial rivals.

The Phœnicians for some centuries confined their navigation within the limits of the Mediterranean, the Propontis, and the Euxine, land- locked seas, which are tideless and far less rough than the open ocean. But before the time of Solomon they had passed the Pillars of Hercules, and affronted the dangers of the Atlantic.[22] Their frail and small vessels, scarcely bigger than modern fishing-smacks, proceeded southwards along the West African coast, as far as the tract watered by the Gambia and Senegal, while northwards they coasted along Spain, braved the heavy seas of the Bay of Biscay, and passing Cape Finisterre, ventured across the mouth of the English Channel to the Cassiterides. Similarly, from the West African shore, they boldly steered for the Fortunate Islands (the Canaries), visible from certain elevated points of the coast, though at 170 miles distance. Whether they proceeded further, in the south to the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape de Verde Islands, in the north to the coast of Holland, and across the German Ocean to the Baltic, we regard as uncertain. It is possible that from time to time some of the more adventurous of their traders may have reached thus far; but their regular, settled, and established navigation did not, we believe, extend beyond the Scilly Islands and coast of Cornwall to the north-west, and to the south-west Cape Non and the Canaries.

The commerce of the Phœnicians was carried on, to a large extent, by land, though principally by sea. It appears from the famous chapter of Ezekiel[23] which describes the riches and greatness of Tyre in the sixth century B.C., that almost the whole of Western Asia was penetrated by the Phœnician caravans, and laid under contribution to increase the wealth of the Phœnician traders.

“Thou, son of man, (we read) take up a lamentation for Tyre, and say unto her,
O thou that dwellest at the entry of the sea, Which art the merchant of the peoples unto many isles, Thus saith the Lord God, Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am perfect in beauty.
Thy borders are in the heart of the sea; Thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy planks of fir-trees from Senir; They have taken cedars from Lebanon to make a mast for thee Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; They have made thy benches of ivory,
Inlaid in box-wood, from the isles of Kittim. Of fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was thy sail, That it might be to thee for an ensign; Blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was thy awning. The inhabitants of Zidon and of Arvad were thy rowers; Thy wise men, O Tyre, were in thee–they were thy pilots. The ancients of Gebal, and their wise men, were thy calkers; All the ships of the sea, with their mariners, were in thee, That they might occupy thy merchandise. Persia, and Lud, and Phut were in thine army, thy men of war; They hanged the shield and helmet in thee; They set forth thy comeliness.
The men of Arvad, with thine army, were upon thy walls round about; And the Gammadim were in thy towers;
They hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; They have brought to perfection thy beauty. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches;
With silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded for thy wares. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy traffickers; They traded the persons of men, and vessels of brass, for thy merchandise.
They of the house of Togarmah traded for thy wares, With horses, and with chargers, and with mules. The men of Dedan were thy traffickers; many isles were the mart of thy hands;
They brought thee in exchange horns of ivory, and ebony. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of thy handiworks; They traded for thy wares with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, And with fine linen, and coral, and rubies. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy traffickers; They traded for thy merchandise wheat of Minnith, And Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm. Damascus was thy merchant for the multitude of thy handiworks; By reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; With the wine of Helbon, and white wool. Dedan and Javan traded with yarn for thy wares; Bright iron, and cassia, and calamus were among thy merchandise. Dedan was thy trafficker in precious cloths for riding; Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they were the merchants of thy hand,
In lambs, and rams, and goats, in these were they thy merchants. The traffickers of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy traffickers; They traded for thy wares with chief of all spices, And with all manner of precious stones, and gold. Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the traffickers of Sheba, Asshur and Chilmad, were thy traffickers: They were thy traffickers in choice wares, In wrappings of blue and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel,
Bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise. The ships of Tarshish were thy caravans for they merchandise; And thou wast replenished, and made very glorious, in the heart of the sea.
Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; The east wind hath broken thee in the heart of the sea. Thy reaches, and thy wares, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots,
Thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, With all the men of war, that are in thee, Shall fall into the heart of the seas in the day of thy ruin. At the sound of thy pilot’s cry the suburb’s shall shake; And all that handle the oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of the sea,
They shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the land,
And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly,
And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth,
And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning.
And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea? When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many peoples;
Thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with thy merchandise and thy riches.
In the time that thou was broken by the seas in the depths of the waters,
Thy merchandise, and all thy company, did fall in the midst of thee, And the inhabitants of the isles are astonished at thee, And their kings are sore afraid, they are troubled in their countenance,
The merchants that are among the peoples, hiss at thee; Thou art become a terror; and thou shalt never be any more.”

Translating this glorious burst of poetry into prose, we find the following countries mentioned as carrying on an active trade with the Phœnician metropolis:–Northern Syria, Syria of Damascus, Judah and the land of Israel, Egypt, Arabia, Babylonia, Assyria, Upper Mesopotamia,[24] Armenia,[25] Central Asia Minor, Ionia, Cyprus, Hellas or Greece,[26] and Spain.[27] Northern Syria furnishes the Phœnician merchants with /butz/, which is translated “fine linen,” but is perhaps rather cotton,[28] the “tree-wool” of Herodotus; it also supplies embroidery, and certain precious stones, which our translators have considered to be coral, emeralds, and rubies. Syria of Damascus gives the “wine of Helbon”–that exquisite liquor which was the only sort that the Persian kings would condescend to drink[29] –and “white wool,” the dainty fleeces of the sheep and lambs that fed on the upland pastures of Hermon and Antilibanus. Judah and the land of Israel supply corn of superior quality, called “corn of Minnith”– corn, i.e. produced in the rich Ammonite country[30]–together with /pannag/, an unknown substance, and honey, and balm, and oil. Egypt sends fine linen, one of her best known products[31]–sometimes, no doubt, plain, but often embroidered with bright patterns, and employed as such embroidered fabrics were also in Egypt,[32] for the sails of pleasure-boats. Arabia provides her spices, cassia, and calamus (or aromatic reed), and, beyond all doubt, frankincense,[33] and perhaps cinnamon and ladanum.[34] She also supplies wool and goat’s hair, and cloths for chariots, and gold, and wrought iron, and precious stones, and ivory, and ebony, of which the last two cannot have been productions of her own, but must have been imported from India or Abyssinia.[35] Babylonia and Assyria furnish “wrappings of blue, embroidered work, and chests of rich apparel.”[36] Upper Mesopotamia partakes in this traffic.[37] Armenia gives horses and mules. Central Asia Minor (Tubal and Meshech) supplies slaves and vessels of brass, and the Greeks of Ionia do the like. Cyprus furnishes ivory, which she must first have imported from abroad.[38] Greece Proper sends her shell-fish, to enable the Phœnician cities to increase their manufacture of the purple dye.[39] Finally, Spain yields silver, iron, tin, and lead–the most useful of the metals–all of which she is known to have produced in abundance.[40]

With the exception of Egypt, Ionia, Cyprus, Hellas, and Spain, the Phœnician intercourse with these places must have been carried on wholly by land. Even with Egypt, wherewith the communication by sea was so facile, there seems to have been also from a very early date a land commerce. The land commerce was in every case carried on by caravans. Western Asia has never yet been in so peaceful and orderly condition as to dispense prudent traders from the necessity of joining together in large bodies, well provisioned and well armed, when they are about to move valuable goods any considerable distance. There have always been robber-tribes in the mountain tracts, and thievish Arabs upon the plains, ready to pounce on the insufficiently protected traveller, and to despoil him of all his belongings. Hence the necessity of the caravan traffic. As early as the time of Joseph– probably about B.C. 1600–we find a /company/ of the Midianites on their way from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.[41] Elsewhere we hear of the “travelling /companies/ of the Dedanim,”[42] of the men of Sheba bringing their gold and frankincense;[43] of a multitude of camels coming up to Palestine with wood from Kedar and Nebaioth.[44] Heeren is entirely justified in his conclusion that the land trade of the Phœnicians was conducted by “large companies or caravans, since it could only have been carried on in this way.”[45]

The nearest neighbours of the Phœnicians on the land side were the Jews and Israelites, the Syrians of Damascus, and the people of Northern Syria, or the Orontes valley and the tract east of it. From the Jews and Israelites the Phœnicians seem to have derived at all times almost the whole of the grain which they were forced to import for their sustenance. In the time of David and Solomon it was chiefly for wheat and barley that they exchanged the commodities which they exported,[46] in that of Ezekiel it was primarily for “wheat of Minnith;”[47] and a similar trade is noted on the return of the Jews from the captivity,[48] and in the first century of our era.[49] But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.[50] Western Palestine was notoriously a land not only of corn, but also of wine, of olive oil, and of honey, and could readily impart of its superfluity to its neighbour in time of need. The oaks of Bashan are very abundant, and seem to have been preferred by the Phœnicians to their own oaks as the material of oars.[51] Balm, or basalm, was a product of the land of Gilead,[52] and also of the lower Jordan valley, where it was of superior quality.[53]

From the Damascene Syrians we are told that Phœnicia imported “wine of Helbon” and “white wool.”[54] The “wine of Helbon” is reasonably identified with that {oinos Khalubonios} which is said to have been the favourite beverage of the Persian kings.[55] It was perhaps grown in the neighbourhood of Aleppo.[56] The “white wool” may have been furnished by the sheep that cropped the slopes of the Antilibanus, or by those fed on the fine grass which clothes most of the plain at its base. The fleece of these last is, according to Heeren,[57] “the finest known, being improved by the heat of the climate, the continual exposure to the open air, and the care commonly bestowed upon the flocks.” From the Syrian wool, mixed perhaps with some other material, seems to have been woven the fabric known, from the city where it was commonly made,[58] as “damask.”

According to the existing text of Ezekiel,[59] Syria Proper “occupied in the fairs” of Phœnicia with cotton, with embroidered robes, with purple, and with precious stones. The valley of the Orontes is suitable for the cultivation of cotton; and embroidered robes would naturally be produced in the seat of an old civilisation, which Syria certainly was. Purple seems somewhat out of place in the enumeration; but the Syrians may have gathered the /murex/ on their seaboard between Mt. Casius and the Gulf of Issus, and have sold what they collected in the Phœnician market. The precious stones which Ezekiel assigns to them are difficult of identification, but may have been furnished by Casius, Bargylus, or Amanus. These mountains, or at any rate Casius and Amanus, are of igneous origin, and, if carefully explored, would certainly yield gems to the investigator. At the same time it must be acknowledged that Syria had not, in antiquity, the name of a gem-producing country; and, so far, the reading of “Edom” for “Aram,” which is preferred by many,[60] may seem to be the more probable.

The commerce of the Phœnicians with Egypt was ancient, and very extensive. “The wares of Egypt” are mentioned by Herodotus as a portion of the merchandise which they brought to Greece before the time of the Trojan War.[61] The Tyrians had a quarter in the city of Memphis assigned to them,[62] probably from an early date. According to Ezekiel, the principal commodity which Egypt furnished to Phœnicia was “fine linen”[63]–especially the linen sails embroidered with gay patterns, which the Egyptian nobles affected for their pleasure-boats. They probably also imported from Egypt natron for their glass-works, papyrus for their documents, earthenware of various kinds for exportation, scarabs and other seals, statuettes and figures of gods, amulets, and in the later times sarcophagi.[64] Their exports to Egypt consisted of wine on a large scale,[65] tin almost certainly, and probably their peculiar purple fabrics, and other manufactured articles.

The Phœnician trade with Arabia was of especial importance, since not only did the great peninsula itself produce many of the most valuable articles of commerce, but it was also mainly, if not solely, through Arabia that the Indian market was thrown open to the Phœnician traders, and the precious commodities obtained for which Hindustan has always been famous. Arabia is /par excellence/ the land of spices, and was the main source from which the ancient world in general, and Phœnicia in particular, obtained frankincense, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh, calamus or sweet-cane, and ladanum.[66] It has been doubted whether these commodities were, all of them, the actual produce of the country in ancient times, and Herodotus has been in some degree