Phoenicia

3718

Phoenixville

 

due to maritime enterprise and trade. The
carrying trade of the ancient world passed
into the hands of the Phoenicians; they had
a monopoly of the precious purple dye, and
their ships not only traversed the Mediter-
ranean and Red Sea, but eventually made
their way into the Atlantic. The Phoenici-
ans called themselves Canaanites. Their
language, 'the language of Canaan,' is prac-
tically the same as Hebrew, and the Tell-el-
Amarna tablets show that it was spoken
throughout Canaan before the Exodus. Sidon
was the oldest of the Phoenician cities. If
Justin is to be trusted, Tyre was founded
by refugees from Sidon after the sack of
the latter city by 'the king of the Ascalon-
ians.' Tyre, however, was itself of consid-
erable antiquity. The temple of Melkarth,
its patron god, was built 2,300 years before
Herodotus, and in the Tell-el-Amarna tab-
lets its riches are already celebrated. The
city was at that time still confined to an
island; and a century later, an Egyptian
papyrus, which describes the adventures of
a tourist in Canaan in the reign of Rameses
H., states that drinking water was brought
to it by boats. The letters from Phoenicia in
the Tell-el-Amarna collection are, like the
letters from other parts of W. Asia, in the
Babylonian language and script. But for
many centuries the Babylonian kings claim-
ed supremacy over Canaan and Syria, 'the
land of the Amorites,' as it was termed; and
the culture of Babylonia, including its lan-
guage and literature, laws and theology,
made its way to the shores of the Mediter-
ranean.
Phoenician religion was characteristically
Semitic. Each locality had its Baal or divine
'lord,* who was supreme over the other
deities of the place. He was absolute master
of the locality and its inhabitants. All good
things were given by the Baalim; pain and
misfortune were the consequences of their
anger. Hence their worshippers sought to
propitiate them by every means in their
power, Parents sacrificed their first-born,
and unmarried ladies prostituted themselves
in the temples. The Baal was represented
in human form, and though he acquired
in time a solar character, his visible symbol
being the sun, he ever remained a sort of
divine king whose subjects were called upon
to offer him all they had. Phoenician art
was a combination of that of Babylonia and
Egypt modified in a special way. It is to
the Phoenicians that we owe the alphabet,

which they received possibly from Arabia
in the nth or 12th century b.c., and after
adapting it to the expression of their lan-
guage, handed it on to the Greeks, along
with the names they had given to the
letters. The manufacture of variegated glass,
which was derived from Egypt, became
one of the principal industries of Tyre;
while Sidon was famous for its fine linen,
the art of making which was probably a
Babylonian invention. But the industry to
which Phoenicia originally owed its wealth
and fortune was that of dyeing with purple,
obtained from the murex, or purple shell-
fish. Factories and their colonies were es-
tablished for the sake of trade wherever
there was a good harbor and the chance of
a market, and Phoenician settlements grew
up not only in the islands and on the coasts
of the E. Mediterranean, but also in Sicily,
Sardinia, and the northern coast of Africa.
Phoenix, a southern constellation, located
between Grus and Eridanus by Bayer in
1603. The principal stars form a curved
line.
Phoenix, in ancient Greek legend, a son of
Amyntor, and king of the Dolopes, who
took part in the Calydonian boar hunt;
afterwards he fell out with his father, went
to Peleus, and became Achilles's tutor.
Phoenix, a mythical bird, of which Hero-
dotus tells us that it appeared at Heliopolis
in Egypt once every 500 years, when it
buried its father in the sanctuary there, en-
closing its body in an egg, made of myrrh.
The bird was like an eagle, with feathers
partly red and partly golden. According
to legends the dying phoenix cast itself into
flames, out of which the new one arose.
Consult Wiedemann's Religion of the An-
cient Egyptians.
Phoenix, city, capital of Arizona, is central-
ly located in the Salt River Valley, where
325,000 acres of fine farming land are under
irrigation, mostly from the Roosevelt Dam.
A large trade is carried on in fruits, olives,
hay and feed crops, vegetables, and dairy
and poultry products. The city was settled
about 187$ ^ai*d incorporated in 1881; p.
65414-
Phoenixville, borough, Pennsylvania, 23
miles northwest of Philadelphia. Valley
Forge is 4 miles distant. Industrial estab-
lishments include large iron mills, blast fur-
naces, important bridge and boiler works,
and manufactures of boxes, matches, silk,
underwear, and hosiery; p. 12,282.