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 is said to have been founded by colonists from Tyre a few years anterior to the foundation of Utica by the same people.5173 Utica, as we have seen, dated from the twelfth century before Christ. The site of Gades combined all the advantages that the Phoenicians desired for their colonies. Near the mouth of the Guadalete there detaches itself from the coast of Spain an island eleven miles in length, known now as the “Isla de Leon,” which is separated from the mainland for half its length by a narrow but navigable channel, while to this there succeeds on the north an ample bay, divided into two portions, a northern and a southern.5174 The southern, or interior recess, is completely sheltered from all winds; the northern lies open to the west, but is so full of creeks, coves, and estuaries as to offer a succession of fairly good ports, one or other of which would always be accessible. The southern half of the island is from one to four miles broad; but the northern consists of a long spit of land running out to the north-west, in places not more than a furlong in width, but expanding at its northern extremity to a breadth of nearly two miles. The long isthmus, and the peninsula in which it ends, have been compared to the stalk and blossom of a flower.5175 The flower was the ancient Gades, the modern Cadiz. The Phoenician occupation of the site is witnessed to by Strabo, Diodorus, Scymnus Chius, Mela, Pliny, Velleius Paterculus, Ælian and Arrian,5176 and is further evidenced by the numerous coins which bear the legend of “Agadir” in Phoenician characters.5177 But the place itself retains no traces of the Phoenician occupation. The famous temple of Melkarth, with its two bronze pillars in front bearing inscriptions, has wholly perished, as have all other vestiges of the ancient buildings. This is the result of the continuous occupation of the site, which has been built on successively by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Moors, and Spaniards. The space is somewhat confined, and the houses in ancient times were, we are told, closely crowded together,5178 as they were at Aradus and Tyre. But the advantages of the harbour and the productiveness of the vicinity more than made up for this inconvenience. Gades may have been, as Cadiz is now said to be, “a mere silver plate set down upon the edge of the sea,"5179 but it was the natural centre of an enormous traffic. It had easy access by the valley of a large stream to the interior with its rich mineral and vegetable products; it had the command of two seas, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; it trained its sailors to affront greater perils than any which the Mediterranean offers; and it enjoyed naturally by its position an almost exclusive commerce with the Northern Atlantic, with the western coasts of Spain and Gaul, with Britain, North Germany, and the Baltic.

Compared with Gades and Tartessus, Belon was an insignificant settlement. Its name5180 and coins5181 mark it as Phoenician, but it was not possessed of any special advantages of situation. The modern Bolonia, a little south of Cadiz, is thought to mark the site.5182

We have reached now the limits of Phoenician colonisation towards the West. While their trade was carried, especially from Gades, into Luisitania and Gallæcia on the one hand, and into North-western Africa on the other, reaching onward past these districts to Gaul and Britain, to the Senegal and Gambia, possibly to the Baltic and the Fortunate Islands, the range of their settlements was more circumscribed. As, towards the north-east, though their trade embraced the regions of Colchis and Thrace, of the Tauric Chersonese, and Southern Scythia, their settlements were limited to the Ægean and perhaps the Propontis, so westward they seem to have contented themselves with occupying a few points of vantage on the Spanish and West African coasts, at no great distance from the Straits, and from these stations to have sent out their commercial navies to sweep the seas and gather in the products of the lands which lay at a greater distance. The actual extent of their trade will be considered in a later chapter. We have been here concerned only with their permanent settlements or colonies. These, it has been seen, extended from the Syrian coast to Cyprus, Cilicia, Rhodes, Crete, the islands and shores of the Ægean and Propontis, the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Southern Spain, and North-western Africa as far south as Cape Non. The colonisation was not so continuous as the Greek, nor was it so extensive in one direction,5183 but on the whole it was wider, and it was far bolder and more adventurous. The Greeks, as a general rule, made their advances by slow degrees, stealing on from point to point, and having always friendly cities near at hand, like an army that rests on its supports. The Phoenicians left long intervals of space between one settlement and another, boldly planted them on barbarous shores, where they had nothing to rely on but themselves, and carried them into regions where the natives were in a state of almost savagery. The commercial motive was predominant with them, and gave them the courage to plunge into wild seas and venture themselves among even wilder men. With the Greeks the motive was generally political, and a safe home was sought, where social and civil life might have free scope for quiet development.

Chapter VI—Architecture

       Table of Contents

      Origin of the architecture in rock dwellings—Second style, a combination of the native rock with the ordinary wall— Later on, the use of the native rock, discarded—Employment of huge blocks of stone in the early walls—Absence of cement—Bevelling—Occurrence of Cyclopian walls—Several architectural members comprised in one block—Phoenician shrines—The Maabed and other shrines at Amrith—Phoenician temples—Temple of Paphos—Adjuncts to temples—Museum of Golgi—Treasure chambers of Curium—Walls of Phoenician towns—Phoenician tombs—Excavated chambers—Chambers built of masonry—Groups of chambers—Colonnaded tomb—Sepulchral monuments—The Burdj-el-Bezzâk—The Kabr Hiram—The two Méghâzil—Tomb with protected entrance—Phoenician ornamentation—Pillars and their capitals—Cornices and mouldings—Pavements in mosaic and alabaster—False arches— Summary.

The architecture of the Phoenicians began with the fashioning of the native rock—so abundant in all parts of the country where they had settled themselves—into dwellings, temples, and tombs. The calcareous limestone, which is the chief geological formation along the Syrian coast, is worked with great ease; and it contains numerous fissures and caverns,61 which a very moderate amount of labour and skill is capable of converting into fairly comfortable dwelling-places. It is probable that the first settlers found a refuge for a time in these natural grottos, which after a while they proceeded to improve and enlarge, thus obtaining a practical power of dealing with the material, and an experimental knowledge of its advantages and defects. But it was not long before these simple dwellings ceased to content them, and they were seized with an ambition to construct more elaborate edifices—edifices such as they must have seen in the lands through which they had passed on their way from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the seaboard of the Mediterranean. They could not at once, however, divest themselves of their acquired habits, and consequently, their earliest buildings continued to have, in part, the character of rock dwellings, while in part they were constructions of the more ordinary and regular type. The remains of a dwelling-house at Amrith,62 the ancient Marathus, offer a remarkable example of this intermixture of styles. The rock has been cut away so as to leave standing two parallel walls 33 yards long, 19 feet high, and 2 1/2 feet thick, which are united by transverse party-walls formed in the same way.63 Windows and doorways are cut in the walls, some square at top, some СКАЧАТЬ