The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6). Duncker Max

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СКАЧАТЬ to the development of civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of Adramyttion on the Trojan coast repeats the name of a Phenician foundation on the coast of North Africa (Adrames, Hadrumetum), and even Strabo ascribes the worship of the Cabiri to some places on the Trojan coast.133 Far more definite traces of the Phenician style and skill are in existence on the shore of the bay of Argos. The ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at Mycenæ are hewn in the rocks after the manner of the Phenicians. As in the ancient burying-places of the Phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most ancient custom in Phœnicia. The masks of beaten gold-leaf which were found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are evidence of a custom which the Phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces of Egyptian coffins.134 The corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. There is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. The ornaments remind us of Babylonian and Assyrian patterns; the idols in burnt clay are in the Phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms, antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the East; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached the bay of Argos in Phenician ships. Still there are grave reasons for refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of the Phenicians. The numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional custom either with regard to the Phenicians or the Hellenes, but which Thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the Carians.135 We learn, moreover, even from the Homeric poems, that the Carians loved gold ornaments, and further, that the Greeks improved their armour after the pattern of the Carians (I. 572). As we also find the double axe of the Carian god, the "Zeus Stratius" as the Greeks called him, the "axe-god," the Chars-El in the Carian language (I. 573), on some ornaments of the tombs of Mycenæ, the supposition forces itself upon us that Carians from the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of Argos. In any case, the tombs of Mycenæ, both from their position and their contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the Phenicians.

      Can we fix the time at which the Phenicians first set foot on the islands of Hellas? Herodotus tells us that Troy was taken in the third generation after the death of Minos.136 If we put three full generations, according to the calculation of Herodotus, between the death of Minos and the conquest of Ilium, the first event took place 100 years before the second. Since, according to the data of Herodotus, the capture of Ilium falls in the year 1280 or 1260 B.C., Minos would have died in the year 1380 or 1360 B.C. The landing of the Phenicians on Thasos and the expedition of Cadmus from Phœnicia beyond the islands to Bœotia are placed by Herodotus five generations before Heracles, and Heracles is placed 900 years before his own time. If we reckon upwards from the year 450 or 430 B.C., Heracles lived about the year 1350 or 1330 B.C., and Cadmus five generations, i. e. 166⅔ years, before this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 B.C.137 On the island of Thera, Herodotus further remarks, the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, i. e. 266⅔ years, before the Dorians came to the island.138 Melos was also occupied by Dorians, who asserted in 416 B.C. that their community had been in existence 700 years,139 according to which statement the Dorians came to Melos in the year 1116 B.C. With this event the Phenician rule over the island came to an end. If we assume that Thera, which is close by Melos, was taken from the Phenicians by the Dorians at the same time as the latter island, the eight generations given by Herodotus for the settlements of the Phenicians on Thera would carry us back to the year 1382 B.C. (1116 + 266⅔), a date which is certainly in agreement with his statement about the death of Minos, but contradicts the date given for Cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of Herodotus, left behind the settlers on Thera and Thasos when he first sailed to Bœotia. Herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of legend. The five generations which separated Cadmus from Heracles were for him, no doubt, Polydorus, Labdacus, Laius, Œdipus and Polynices; for the three generations between the death of Minos and the capture of Troy we find in Homer only two, Deucalion and Idomeneus.140 But we can still find from Herodotus' calculations how far back the Greeks placed the beginning and the end of the empire of the Phenicians over their islands and coasts. Beyond this the chronographers do not give us any help. Eusebius and Hieronymus (Jerome) place the rape of Europa in the year 1429 or 1426 B.C.; the rule of Cadmus at Thebes in the year 1427 B.C. or 1319 (1316) B.C.; the settlement of the Phenicians on Thera, Melos, and Thasos in the year 1415 B.C.; the beginning of the rule of Minos in the year 1410 B.C., or, according to another computation, in the year 1251 B.C.141

      We can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the Phenicians in the Ægean sea. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on the coast of Troas, clay lentils have been found with Cyprian letters upon them.142 Since the Greeks declared that they learnt their alphabet from the Phenicians and Cadmus, and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the Phenicians which lies at the root of the Greek, the Cyprian letters can only have been brought thither by Phenician ships from Cyprus before the discovery of the Phenician letters, or from the islands off the Trojan coast occupied by the Phenicians, from Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace; otherwise they must have come to the Troad at a later time by Cyprian ships or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. Among the sons of Japheth, the representative of the northern nations, Genesis mentions Javan, i. e. the Ionian, the Greek; and enumerates the sons of Javan: Elisha, Tarshish, Chittim, and Dodanim or Rodanim – the reading is uncertain.143 It is a question whether the genealogical table in Genesis belongs to the first or second text of the Pentateuch, i. e. whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the tenth century B.C. In any case it follows that in the beginning of the eleventh or tenth century B.C. the name and nation of the Ionians was known not only in the harbour-cities of Phœnicia, but in the interior of Syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these Ionians. Chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of Cyprus; the Rodanim are the inhabitants of Rhodes (Dodanim would have to be referred to Dodona); Elisha is Elis in the Peloponnese, or the island of Sicily, if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and islands;144 Tarshish is Tartessus, i. e. the region at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. If Ezekiel mentions the purple which the Phenicians bring from "the isles of Elishah,"145 the islands and coasts of the Ægean sea are plainly meant, on which the Phenicians collected the fish for their purple dye. This much is clear, that at least about the year 1000 B.C. not only the islands and coasts of the Ægean were known in Syria, but even then the name of the distant land of Tarshish was current in Syria. We shall further see that as early as 1100 B.C. Phenician ships had passed the straits of Gibraltar. Hence we may conclude that the Phenicians must have set foot on Cyprus about the year 1250 B.C., and on the islands and coasts of Hellas about the year 1200 B.C.

      Thucydides observes that in ancient times the Phenicians had occupied the promontories of Sicily and the small islands lying around Sicily, in order to carry on trade with the Sicels.146 Diodorus Siculus tells us that when the Phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of Melite (Malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their ships. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.147 On the south-eastern promontory СКАЧАТЬ