Race.— The ethnographic relations of the Phoenicians have been the subject of much debate. As in Gen. x., Sidon, the firstborn of Canaan, is classed with the Hamites, many investigators are still of opinion that, in spite of their purely Semitic language, the Phoenicians were a distinct race from the Hebrews. They attach great weight to the peculiarities that mark the course of Phoenician civilization, and, above all, to their political organization and colonizing habits, which find no analogies among the Semites. In favour of the opposite and more probable view, that the Phoenicians, like the Canaanites, are an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, it may be urged (1) that the account in Gen. x. is not framed on strict ethnographic lines, and (2) that the absence from Phoenicia of all trace of an original non-Semitic form of speech cannot be reconciled with the theory of an exchange of language. The close connexion which existed from an early period between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians accounts for many coincidences in the matter of religion. Phoenician civilization, being on the whole of but little originality, may have been that of a Semitic people, who, from their situation on the narrow strip of country at the east end of the Mediterranean, were naturally addicted to trade and colonization.

Language.— Inscriptions, coins, topographical names preserved by classical writers, proper names of persons, and the Punic passages in the Paenulus of Plautus combine to show that the Phoenician language, like Hebrew, belonged to the north Semitic group. Even the Phoenician which survived as a rustic dialect in north Africa till the 5th century of our era was very closely akin to Hebrew. Though it retained certain old forms obsolete in Hebrew, Phoenician, as we know, represents on the whole a later stage of grammatical structure than the language of the Old Testament. Its vocabulary, in like manner, apart from a few archaisms, coincides most nearly with later Hebrew. At a very early period Semitic words were adopted into Greek from Phoenician; and it is also quite certain that the Phoenicians had at least a great share in the development and diffusion of the alphabetic character which forms the foundation of all European alphabets. We possess, however, only a few Phoenician inscriptions and coins of very early date. The longest and most important of the inscriptions—that on King Eshmun'azar’s tomb—is in letters which, while very ancient in certain of their features, present a series of important modifications of the original type of the Semitic alphabet, as it can be fixed by comparison of the oldest documents. Still more divergent from the ancient characters are the forms of the letters on the Phoenician, i.e., Punic, .monuments of north Africa. (a. so.) Religion.— Considering the great part which the Phoenicians played in the movements of ancient civilization, it is singular how fragmentary are our sources of knowledge for all the most essential elements of their history. What we are told of their religion is only in appearance an exception to this rule. Eusebius in the Praeparatio Eυangelica cites at length from the Greek of Philo of Byblus a cosmogony and theogony professedly translated from a Berytian Sanchuniathon, who wrote 1221 b.c. But that this work is a forgery appears from the apocryphal authorities cited, and the affinity displayed with the system of Euhemerus. The forger was Philo himself, for the writer borrows largely from Hesiod and was therefore a Greek; he gives Byblus the greatest prominence in a history professedly Berytian, and was therefore a Byblian; and finally Philo was a fanatical Euhemerist, and the admitted object of the work was to make converts to that system. The materials used by Philo were, however, in all probability mainly genuine, but so cut and clipped to fit his system that they must be used with great caution and constantly controlled by the few scattered data that can be gathered from authentic sources.

The two triads of Hannibal’s oath to Philip of Macedon (Polyb., vii. 9, 2)—Sun, Moon, and Earth, and Rivers, Meadows, and Waters—contain the objects on which all Phoenician worship is based. Rivers were generally sacred to gods, trees to goddesses; mountains, too, were revered as nearer than other places to heaven; and baetylia or meteoric stones were held sacred as divine messengers.

Philo’s second generation of men (Genos and Genea) first worshipped the plants of the earth, till a drought ensued and they stretched out their hands towards the sun as the Lord of Heaven or Beelsamên (Baal-Shamaim), —an indication that the worship of heavenly bodies was regarded as a later development of religion. Baudissin, on the other hand, has lately maintained that all Phoenician deities were astral and only manifested themselves in the terrestrial sphere, that the things holy to them on earth were symbols, not dwelling-places, of the gods. And there seems to be little doubt that this was the theory of later Phoenician theology, as appears in the legend of the fiery star of the queen of heaven that fell into the holy stream at Aphaca (Sozom., ii. 5, 5), in the coincidence of the names of sacred rivers with those of the celestial gods, and in the name Ζευς θαλάσσιος (Hesych.) for a Sidonian sea-god. But surely this theory was devised to remove a contradiction which theologians felt to be involved in the popular religion. In the latter logical consistency is not necessarily to be presumed, and astral and terrestrial worships might well exist side by side. In historical times the astral element had the ascendency; the central point in religion, and the starting-point in all Phoenician mythology, was the worship of the Sun, who has either the Moon or (as the sun-god is also the heaven-god) the Earth for wife. In Byblus, forwhich alone we possess some details of the local cult, El was the founder and lord of the town, and therefore of course had the pre-eminence in religion; and so the Byblian Philo makes El to be the highest god and the other ëlìm or elõhim subordinate to him. In the other towns also the numen patrium was a form of the sun-god, or else his wife, and enjoyed somewhat exclusive honour—a step in the direction of monotheism similar to the Moabite worship of Chemosh (cp. the Mesha stone). El is represented as the first to introduce circumcision and the first who sacrificed an only son or a virgin daughter to the supreme god. He wanders over all the earth, westward towards the setting sun, and leaves Byblus to ∙his spouse Baaltis—this is meant to explain why she had the chief place in the cult of Byblus; her male companion Eliün, Shadid (or μεγιστos θεός), is conceived as her youthful lover, and El is transformed into a hostile god, who slays Shadid with the sword. According to another legend the youthful god is killed by a boar while hunting, and the mourning for him with the finding of him again make up a chief part of Byblian worship, which at an early date was enriched with elements borrowed from Egypt and the myth of Osiris. In other places we find as spouse of the highest god the moongoddess Astarte with the cow’s horns, who in Tyre was worshipped under the symbol of a star as queen of heaven. With her worship as with that of Baaltis were associated wild orgies; and traces of the like are not lacking even at Carthage (Aug., Civ. Pei, ii. 4), where theology had given a more earnest and gloomy character to the goddess. Astarte was viewed as the mother of the Tyrian sungod Melkarth (Eudoxus, in Athen., ix. p. 392 D), or, as his full title runs, “our lord Melkarth the Baal of Tyre” {CH.S., No. 122). On account of his regular daily course the Sun is viewed as the god who works and reveals himself in the world, as son of the god who is above the world, and as protector of civil order. But, again, as the Sun engenders the fruitfulness of the earth, he becomes the object of a sensual nature-worship, one feature of which is that men and women interchange garments. A chief feast to his honour in Tyre was the “awaking of Heracles” in the month Peritius (February∕March; Menander of Eph., in Jos., Ant., viii. 5, 3), a festival of the returning power of the sun in spring, probably alluded to in the sarcasm of Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 27). Peculiar to Berytus is the worship of Poseidon and other sea-gods, who are connected genealogically with Zeus Belus, a son of El, born beyond the Euphrates, and perhaps therefore connected with the Babylonian fish-gods. Berytus was also a chief seat of the worship of the Cabïri, the seven nameless sons of Sydek, with their brother Eshmùn, who is the eighth and greatest of the Cabiri. Philo supplies for them a genealogy which is an attempt to present the growth of man from rude to higher civilization, and presents analogies, long since observed, to the genealogy of the sons of Cain in Genesis. Not only their half-divine ancestors but the Cabïri themselves belong to a comparatively recent stage of religious development. They are the patron deities of manual arts and civil industry, and as such are the great gods of the Phoenician land, specially worshipped in the federal centre Tripolis. On coins of this town they are called Syrian (i.e., perhaps Assyrian) gods, which seems to imply that the Phoenicians themselves regarded as not primitive the many Egyptian elements which were quite early introduced into the religion of the Cabïri, and especially of Eshmùn. On the other hand, a figure allied to Eshmùn, Taaut, the inventor of the alphabet, is certainly borrowed from the Egyptian Tehuti. So, too, Onka (Steph., s.v. “Όγκαΐαι ”) is probably the Anuke of Sais, and it is possible that the whole cycle of gods λvho revealed and interpreted the sacred books is Egyptian; some of the latter have the form of a serpent.

The Phoenicians did not set up anthropomorphic statues of the gods, but symbolic pillars of stone, or, in the case of the queen of heaven, of wood (ashërãh). If an actual image was used, likeness to man was avoided by fantastic details: the god had two heads or wings, or some animal emblem, or was dwarfish or hermaphrodite, and so on. The sacrifices were of oxen and other male domestic animals— as expiatory offerings also stags —and for minor offerings birds. Human sacrifices were exceptionally offered by the state to avert great disasters; the victim was chosen from among the citizens and must be innocent, wherefore children were chosen, and by preference firstborn or only sons. The same idea that the godhead demanded the holiest and most costly gift explains the prostitution. of virgins at certain feasts in the sacred groves of the queen of heaven, and the temporary consecration of maidens or matrons as kìhleshoth fιεpο8οvλοι). For this custom, as for that of human sacrifice, substitutes were by and by introduced in many places; thus at Byblus it was held sufficient that the women cut off their hair at the feast of Adonis {Pe Pea Syr., c. 6).

Origin of the Phoenicians.— The oldest towns were held to have been founded by the gods themselves, who presumably also placed the Phoenicians in them. Imitating the Egyptians, the race claimed an antiquity of 30,000 years (Africanus, in Syncellus, p. 31), yet they retained some memory of having migrated from older seats on an Eastern sea. Herodotus (vii. 89) understood this of the Persian Gulf; the companions of Alexander sought to prove by learned etymologies that they had actually found here the old seats of the Phaenicians. But all this rested on a mere blunder, and the true form of the tradition is preserved by Trogus (Just., xviii. 3, 3), who places the oldest seats of the Phaenicians on the Syrium stagnum or Dead Sea—with which the Greeks before the time of the Diadochi had no acquaintance—and says that, driven thence by an earthquake, they reached the coast, and founded Sidon. This earthquake Bunsen has ingeniously identified with that which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, and with which Genesis itself connects the migrations of Lot. Perhaps it played much such a part in the mythic history of the peoples of Canaan as the breach of the dam of Märib does in the history of the Arabs.

In historical times the Phaenicians called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan (Kena'an, Kcna'; Xvâ in Hecataeus, fr. 254), the latter applying equally to the coast which they tnemselves held and the inland highlands which the Israelites occupied. The Greeks call people and land Φοίνικες, Φοινίκη ; the former is the older word, which in itself disposes of the idea that Phoenicia means the land of the date-palm, which the Greeks called φοινιξ, i.e., Phoenician. In truth, Φοίνικες, with an antique termination used in forming other names of nations {Aιθικες, θpηικες), is derived from φοινός, “blood-red,” probably in allusion to the dark complexion of the race.

When the southern part of the coast of Canaan was occupied by the Philistines the region of Ekron became the boundary of Phoenicia to the south (Josh, xiii. 3); the northern boundary in the time of the Persians was the town of Posidium and the mouth of the Orontes (Herod., iii. 91; Pseudo-Scylax, § 104). Under the Seleucids these limits contracted, the southern boundary being the Chorseus (Ptol., Codd. B.E., Pal. 1), which falls into the sea north of the tower of Straton, and the northern the river Eleutherus, so that Orth6sia was the last town of Phoenicia and the whole region of Aradus was excluded. Under the Roman empire the southern boundary was unchanged, but the northern advanced to a little south of Balanea. A still narrower definition of Canaan is that in Gen. x. 19 and Josh, xiii. 2-6, where Sidon or its territory is the northern limit; but the reference is only to the land destined to be occupied by Israel, for a younger hand has added to Sidon (the firstborn of Canaan) and Heth a list of other nations, sons of Canaan, extending northwards as far as Hamath.

It is a singular fact that alike in the Old Testament and in Homer, in the time of Tyre’s greatest might, we constantly read of Sidonians and not of Tyrians. The explanation that Sidonians is a synonym of Phoenicians in general is defended on 1 Kings v. 1 [15] compared with ver. 6 [20], but is not adequate; the same chapter distinguishes between the Sidonians and the Giblites or men of Byblus (E.V., “stone squarers,” ver. 18 [32]). And in Gen. x. we have besides Sidon the peoples of Arce, Sinna, Aradus, and Simyra enumerated in order from south to north—mostly unimportant towns afterwards absorbed in the land of Aradus—and yet Tyre is lacking, though one fancies that we could better miss even Aradus, which was a colony from Sidon (Strabo, xvi. p. 753), only Aradus was founded by fugitives, and so must, from the first, have been independent. Hence we may conjecture that the list in Genesis is political in principle; and this gives us a solution of the whole difficulty, viz., that, during the flourishing period of Phoenicia, Sidon and Tyre formed a single state whose kings reigned first in Sidon and then in Tyre, but whose inhabitants continued to take their name from the old metropolis. The first unambiguous example of two distinct kings in Tyre and Sidon is in the end of the 8th century b.c., on an inscription of Sennacherib (Schrader, K.A.T., 2d ed., p. 286 s⅛.), and there is every reason to think that the revolt of Sidon from Tyre about 726 spoken of by Menander (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) was a revolt not from Tyrian hegemony but from the Tyrian kingdom. The several Phoenician cities had lists of their kings back to a very early date. Abedbalus reigned at Berytus in the time which Philo had ciphered out as that of the judge Jerubbaal, i.e., about the beginning of the 13th century b.c., and in Sidon there is word of kings at the time to which the Greeks referred the rape of Europa (15th century; see Laetus, in Tatian, Adv. Graecos, 58). The leading Phoenician towns are mentioned in connexion with the Syrian wars of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties (16th-l3th century); thus under Thothmes III. we read of Berytus, Ace, Joppe, and repeatedly of Aradus, which is commonly spoken of along with Haleb (Aleppo) and other eastern districts. The mention of Tyre is less certain, as there were two cities which the Egyptians called T’ar; but there is no mistake as to the city on the sea called “T’aru the haven” in the journey of an Egyptian of the 14th century (Rec. of the Past, ii. 107 sqf,— “water is carried to it in barks, it is richer in fish than in sands”; the noble aqueducts therefore, of which the ruins are still seen, were not yet constructed.

The oldest parts of Tyre were taken to be the town on the mainland, afterwards known as Palaetyrns, and the so-called temple of Hercules built on a rocky islet, which Hiram by and by united with the insular part of the town. According to native historians this temple was more properly one of Olympian Zeus, that is, of Baal-Shamaim, the Lord of Heaven. Herodotus, after inquiries made on the spot, fixes the founding of the city in 2756 b.c. ; but Tyre did not attain great importance till the later island city was built. According to Trogus (Justin, xviii. 3, 5) the Phoenicians (not the people of Sidon, as the passage is...