The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_aded547c-c591-5006-8272-e7f4df933736.png" alt=""/>) marks the accusative. There is a niphal conjugation, formed by prefixing n. The full personal pronouns are anak () = “I” (compare Heb. (); hu (), “he” (compare Heb. (); hi (), “she” (compare Heb. (); anachnu, “we” (compare Heb. (); and the suffixed pronouns are -i, “me, my;” -ka, “thee, thy;” -h (pronounced as -oh or -o), “him, his” (compare Heb. (); -n “our,” perhaps pronounced nu; and -m, “their, them,” pronounced om or um (compare Heb. (). Vau prefixed means “and;” beth prefixed “in;” kaph prefixed “as;” lamed prefixed “of” or “to;” ’al () is “over;” ki () “because;” im (), “if;” hazah, zath, or za ( or ), “this” (compare Heb. ( and ); and ash (), “who, which” (compare Heb. ( and ). Al () and lo () are the negatives (compare Heb. ( and ). The redundant use of the personal pronoun with the relative is common.

Still, Phoenician is not mere Hebrew; it has its own genius, its idioms, its characteristics. The definite article, so constantly recurring in Hebrew, is in Phoenician, comparatively speaking, rare. The quiescent letters, which in Hebrew ordinarily accompany the long vowels, are in Phoenician for the most part absent. The employment of the participle for the definite tenses of the verb is much more common in Phoenician than in Hebrew, and the Hebrew prefix m is wanting. The ordinary termination of feminine singular nouns is -th, not -h. Peculiar forms occur, as ash for asher, ’amath for ’am (“people”), zan for zah (“this”), &c. Words which in Hebrew are confined to poetry pass among the Phoenicians into ordinary use, as pha’al (), Heb. (), “to make,” which replaces the Hebrew ().1311

“It is strange,” says M. Renan, “that the people to which all antiquity attributes the invention of writing, and which has, beyond all doubted, transmitted it to the entire civilised world, has scarcely left us any literature."1312 Certainly it is difficult to give the name of literature either to the fragments of so-called Phoenician works preserved to us in Greek translations, or to the epigraphic remains of actual Phoenician writing which have come down to our day. The works are two, and two only, viz. the pretended “Phoenician History” of Sanchoniathon, and the “Periplus” of Hanno. Of the former, it is perhaps sufficient to say that we have no evidence of its genuineness. Philo of Byblus, who pretends that he translated it from a Phoenician original, though possibly he had Phoenician blood in his veins, was a Greek in language, in temperament, and in tone of thought, and belonged to the Greece which is characterised by Juvenal as “Græcia mendax.” It is impossible to believe that the Euemerism in which he indulges, and which was evidently the motive of his work, sprang from the brain of Sanchoniathon nine hundred years before Euemerus existed. One is tempted to suspect that Sanchoniathan himself was a myth—an “idol of the cave,” evolved out of the inner consciousness of Philo. Philo had a certain knowledge of the Phoenician language, and of the Phoenician religious system, but not more than he might have gained by personal communication with the priests of Byblus and Aphaca, who maintained the old worship in, and long after, his day. It is not clear that he drew his statements from any ancient authorities, or from books at all. So far as the extant fragments go, a smattering of the language, a very moderate acquaintance with the religion, and a little imagination might readily have produced them.

A few extracts from the remains must be given to justify this judgement:—“The beginning of all things,” Philo says,1313 “was a dark and stormy air, or a dark air and a turbid chaos, resembling Erebus; and these were at first unbounded, and for a long series of ages had no limit. But after a time this wind became enamoured of its own first principles, and an intimate union took place between them, a connection which was called Desire πόθος: and this was the beginning of the creation of all things. But it (i.e. the Desire) had no consciousness of its own creation: however, from its embrace with the wind was generated Môt, which some call watery slime, and others putrescence of watery secretion. And from this sprang all the seed of creation, and the generation of the universe. And first there were certain animals without sensation, from which intelligent animals were produced, and these were called ‘Zopher-Sêmin,’ i.e. ‘beholders of the heavens;’ and they were made in the shape of an egg, and from Môt shone forth the sun, and the moon, and the lesser and the greater stars. And when the air began to send forth light, by the conflagration of land and sea, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great downpours, and effusions of the heavenly waters. And when these were thus separated, and carried, through the heat of the sun, out of their proper places, and all met again in the air, and came into collision, there ensued thunderings and lightnings; and through the rattle of the thunder, the intelligent animals, above mentioned, were woke up, and, startled by the noise, began to move about both in the sea and on the land, alike such as were male and such as were female. All these things were found in the cosmogony of Taaut (Thoth), and in his Commentaries, and were drawn from his conjectures, and from the proofs which his intellect discovered, and which he made clear to us.”

Again, “From the wind, Colpia, and his wife Bahu (Heb. (), which is by interpretation ‘Night,’ were born Æon and Protogonus, mortal men so named; of whom one, viz. Æon, discovered that life might be sustained by the fruits of trees. Their immediate descendants were called Genos and Genea, who lived in Phoenicia, and in time of drought stretched forth their hands to heaven towards the sun; for him they regarded as the sole Lord of Heaven, and called him Baal-samin, which means ‘Lord of Heaven’ in the Phoenician tongue, and is equivalent to Zeus in Greek. And from СКАЧАТЬ