History of Phoenicia | Page 4

not
probable that they will affect seriously the verdict already delivered by
competent judges on those subjects. The time therefore appeared to the
author to have come when, after nearly half a century of silence, the
history of the people might appropriately be rewritten. The subject had
long engaged his thoughts, closely connected as it is with the histories
of Egypt, and of the "Great Oriental Monarchies," which for thirty
years have been to him special objects of study; and a work embodying
the chief results of the recent investigations seemed to him a not
unsuitable termination to the historical efforts which his resignation of
the Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford, and his entrance upon a
new sphere of labour, bring naturally to an end.
The author wishes to express his vast obligations to MM. Perrot and
Chipiez for the invaluable assistance which he has derived from their
great work,[3] and to their publishers, the MM. Hachette, for their
liberality in allowing him the use of so large a number of MM. Perrot
and Chipiez' Illustrations. He is also much beholden to the same
gentlemen for the use of charts and drawings originally published in the
"Géographie Universelle." Other works from which he has drawn either
materials or illustrations, or both, are (besides Movers' and Kenrick's)
M. Ernest Renan's "Mission de Phénicie," General Di Cesnola's
"Cyprus," A. Di Cesnola's "Salaminia," M. Ceccaldi's "Monuments
Antiques de Cypre," M. Daux's "Recherches sur les Emporia
Phéniciens," the "Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum," M. Clermont-
Ganneau's "Imagerie Phénicienne," Mr. Davis's "Carthage and her
Remains," Gesenius's "Scripturæ Linguæque Phœniciæ Monumenta,"
Lortet's "La Syrie d'aujourd'hui," Serra di Falco's "Antichità della
Sicilia," Walpole's "Ansayrii," and Canon Tristram's "Land of Israel."
The difficulty has been to select from these copious stores the most
salient and noteworthy facts, and to marshal them in such a form as
would make them readily intelligible to the ordinary English reader.
How far he has succeeded in doing this he must leave the public to

judge. In making his bow to them as a "Reader" and Writer "of
Histories,"[4] he has to thank them for a degree of favour which has
given a ready sale to all his previous works, and has carried some of
them through several editions.
CANTERBURY: August 1889.

HISTORY OF PHŒNICIA
CHAPTER I
THE LAND
Phœnicia--Origin of the name--Spread of the name southwards--Real
length of Phœnicia along the coast--Breadth and area--General
character of the region--The Plains--Plain of Sharon--Plain of
Acre--Plain of Tyre--Plain of Sidon--Plain of Berytus--Plain of
Marathus--Hilly regions--Mountain ranges--Carmel--Casius--Bargylus
--Lebanon--Beauty of Lebanon--Rivers--The Litany--The Nahr-el-
Berid--The Kadisha--The Adonis--The Lycus--The Tamyras--The
Bostrenus--The Zaherany--The Headlands--Main characteristics,
inaccessibility, picturesqueness, productiveness.
Phœnicé, or Phœnicia, was the name originally given by the
Greeks--and afterwards adopted from them by the Romans--to the coast
region of the Mediterranean, where it faces the west between the
thirty-second and the thirty-sixth parallels. Here, it would seem, in their
early voyagings, the Pre-Homeric Greeks first came upon a land where
the palm-tree was not only indigenous, but formed a leading and
striking characteristic, everywhere along the low sandy shore lifting its
tuft of feathery leaves into the bright blue sky, high above the
undergrowth of fig, and pomegranate, and alive. Hence they called the
tract Phœnicia, or "the Land of Palms;" and the people who inhabited it
the Phœnicians, or "the Palm-tree people."
The term was from the first applied with a good deal of vagueness. It

was probably originally given to the region opposite Cyprus, from
Gabala in the north--now Jebili--to Antaradus (Tortosa) and Marathus
(Amrith) towards the south, where the palm-tree was first seen growing
in rich abundance. The palm is the numismatic emblem of Aradus,[1]
and though not now very frequent in the region which Strabo calls "the
Aradian coast-tract,"[2] must anciently have been among its chief
ornaments. As the Grecian knowledge of the coast extended southward,
and a richer and still richer growth of the palm was continually noticed,
almost every town and every village being embosomed in a circle of
palm groves, the name extended itself until it reached as far south at
any rate as Gaza, or (according to some) as Rhinocolura and the
Torrens Ægypti. Northward the name seems never to have passed
beyond Cape Posideium (Possidi) at the foot of Mount Casius, the tract
between this and the range of Taurus being always known as Syria,
never as Phœnecia or Phœnicé.
The entire length of the coast between the limits of Cape Possidi and
Rhinocolura is, without reckoning the lesser indentations, about 380
miles, or nearly the same as that of Portugal. The indentations of the
coast-line are slight. From Rhinocolura to Mount Carmel, a distance of
150 miles, not a single strong promontory asserts itself, nor is there a
single bay of sufficient depth to attract the attention of geographers.
Carmel itself