two pillars. The most important Phoenician settlement in the south of Sicily was Heracleia Minoa or Rosh Melkarth, i.e., Melkarth's Head (Cape Melkarth). Again, just as the Greeks sometimes called Phoenician wares "Sidonian," so certain articles of Phoenician commerce are called in Old Latin sarranic, a word derived directly from Sur. The fact that the Tyrians represented Phoenicia in western waters does not necessarily imply their supremacy at home. It seems more likely that they had, by right of discovery, a kind of monopoly of the trade with Tarshish and the western Mediterranean-a situation paralleled by the partition of the world between Spain and Portugal when the two sea-routes to the Indies were first discovered. The enormous profits of this trade, however, undoubtedly secured Tyre the leading place in Phoenicia, after the loss of the colonies in the Ægean.

But even in the west, the Phoenicians could not maintain their footing against the Greeks, and on the entrance of the latter into Sicily, soon after the middle of the eighth century, they abandoned most of their possessions in that island. On the opposite coast of Africa, their colonies seem to have been more numerous, and since the rise of Carthage, their influence had spread far into the interior. There they came in contact with tribes wholly incapable of competing with them, and Punic became the common language of the country, just as Arabic did at a later period, though whether the cities there owed their origin to Tyrians, Carthaginians, or natives, we are unable to say. There were other Phoenician colonies beyond the straits, which are said to have been destroyed by native tribes. When they were founded, when destroyed, and how long an interval had elapsed before Hanno of Carthage went forth, in the middle of the fifth century, to establish fresh colonies there, are questions to which we have no answer. Punic mariners seem to have been the first to visit the Canary Islands, and, according to the report that has come down to us, Hanno's expedition reached a point sixteen days' journey south of Cape Verde on the coast of New Guinea.

Our information concerning the voyages of Phoenicians to the north, in search of the tin which the nations of antiquity valued so highly, is vague in the extreme. Ezekiel mentions tin among the metals brought by Tarshish to the Tyrian market, but he may refer to that which was obtained from Lusitania and Galicia. On the other hand, the Gaditanians are said to have brought it by sea from the Cassiterides or Tin Islands (the coast of Britain), and the story goes that a merchant of Cadiz who steered his vessel on the rocks, in order to preserve the secret of the route from the Romans who were tracking him, was compensated for his loss out of the public funds. Again, the hypothesis that the Phoenicians actually got as far as the Baltic shore, to traffic for amber with the inhabitants of Samland, though conceivable, rests on nothing but conjecture. It is possible that they never went as far as Cornwall, and merely pretended that the tin of Spain was the product of the northern isles to evade the risk of competition.

Phoenician enterprise was directed to the west rather than to the east, and chose the way of the sea rather than that of the land. The reason was simple; sea-transport was exposed to fewer risks, and tribes in a low stage of civilisation accorded to settlers and merchants who came among them to barter treasures from the remotest ends of the earth, for the raw produce of the soil, a very different welcome from what they could expect from the rulers of the civilised East. But, few as their settlements were, the Phonicians, nevertheless, drove a thriving trade with oriental nations. The products of Armenia must have come into the Tyrian market before the days of

[1100 B.C.J

Ezekiel; Syria and Palestine supplied Phoenicia with food, with raw material and articles of commerce, and with labour for her wharves. In the time of Herodotus, the spices of Arabia passed through the hands of Phoenician merchants, and he mentions that in Egypt there was a Tyrian quarter of the city [Memphis] and a temple of the "foreign Aphrodite," presumably Astarte. The Phoenicians do not seem to have felt bound to interfere with the Israelite occupation of the land west of Jordan, and, with a few insignificant exceptions, the two nations appear to have lived side by side in peace; a state of things advantageous to both parties.

The migration of the Pursta, by destroying the Hittite empire, gave rise to a number of petty states, whose impotence may be estimated by the fact that in 1110, Tiglathpileser I, King of Assyria, pressed forward to the very shores of the Mediterranean. But more than two hundred years had yet to elapse before the kings of Assyria could seriously contemplate the conquest of Phoenicia. Tyre, strong in her monopoly of the trade with Tarshish, remained mistress of the seas, and mother of remote colonies long after the glory of Phoenicia had waned in the Egean, and entered upon the heritage of Sidon, which had formerly held a similar position. Whether there was any political compact in virtue of which she took the lead in Phoenician affairs, we cannot tell; the foundations of her supremacy were her fleet and commerce, and the gradual extension of her sovereignty to a wider area.

The list of the kings of Tyre supplies useful chronological references for Jewish history, and to this accident we owe it that Josephus has preserved some extracts from Menander's Annals of Tyre. The first monarch mentioned in these extracts is the son and successor of Abibaal, Hiram, who ruled Tyre from 969 [980] to 936 B.c.b

THE sources of information for the reign of Hiram are richer than for any other period of Phoenician history. They no longer offer merely a few scattered notices and chance remarks, or names which have scarcely any historical value, but they furnish data which are important, not only from their contents but relatively also in their extent, and which are all the more valuable because they touch upon the most remarkable period of the history of Western Asia. These sources may be divided into three classes. In the first rank are the priceless remnants of Phoenician historiography which Josephus, for the comparison and verification of the Biblical accounts of King Hiram and his relations with Solomon, has preserved from the historical works of Menander and Dius. Second, and even more important in their way, are the Biblical accounts themselves, which give information concerning the political, commercial, and social relations that were established between Israel and Phoenicia and their rulers. A third source of information in which, to be sure, has been incorporated many a legend from this brilliant period of both countries, consists mainly of later versions of Phoenician and Israelitish history, fragments from the works of Chætus, Theophilus, and Eupolemus, which have been preserved by ecclesiastical writers as a supplement to the above excerpts of Josephus and for a like purpose.

After the death of the little-known King Abibaal, his son Hiram I ascended the throne at the age of twenty. The date of this event has been proven by chronological research to have been 980 B.C., eight years before the death of the great Israelite king David.1

From all that the above-mentioned sources relate or that can be inferred from comparison with the conditions before the reign of Hiram, it is apparent that Phoenicia was already in a condition where her affairs needed only to be more firmly moulded and secured. Hence, in this respect also, the Phoenician and Israelitish states, whose rulers, Hiram and Solomon, were friends and had so much in common in character and tastes, were in very similar

[1 Pietschmann makes the beginning and end of his reign 969 and 936 B.C.]

[ca. 980-936 B.C.] circumstances. For it was but recently that in Tyre, too, a kingdom had been established in place of the government of the suffets, and at the same time the bond of dependence completely severed which had united Tyre as a colony to Sidon. It is probable, indeed, that in the weakness of the mother state this relation had before this time been maintained solely from a feeling of filial duty.

The relations with Israel and the recognised position as hegemonic state which Tyre maintained under Hiram, may have been established in the period immediately preceding, but what the records tell of this renowned king nevertheless makes him appear as the real founder of the Tyrian state. The records of the sources concerning his buildings on the island of Tyre, by which he secured the metropolis of the country against the reverses of a continental war, point to this. This work was carried out on a magnificent plan and made the formerly insignificant island town a protecting bulwark not only for Tyre, but for the whole of Phoenicia. These edifices must belong to the very beginning of his reign, for the accounts of Menander and Dius, which are evidently arranged in chronological order, mention them first, and the buildings which were erected at Jerusalem, at the beginning of his reign and with his co-operation, make it presumable that some occurrence of that kind had already taken place at Tyre.

A glance at the political position of the neighbouring states of the continent throws light upon the next point. The Israelites had very recently subjugated all the peoples of the vicinity with the sole exception of the Phoenicians; the smaller Syrian states, hitherto divided, formed a closer alliance with one another, and under the king of Damascus were beginning, even at that time, to form the second power in Western Asia.

So, threatened by the fresh danger of the combined forces of the hitherto divided Israelitish and Aramæan races, the Phoenicians spared no efforts in increasing the fortifications of the island city. It may well be presumed that in these early days of the new Tyrian royal state, Palætyrus, which in the period immediately subsequent continues to appear as the more important and as the seat of the royal residence, was the site of many new buildings, especially of such royal palaces as Hiram's workmen also erected in Jerusalem. Of these, however, the sources give no information, because they bear upon the island town which was subsequently the more important, and because only a few remains of Paletyrus were in existence when these records were written.

Furthermore, the religious ceremonies took quite a new form under this king. Some of the old sanctuaries already in existence in Tyre he rebuilt, others he replaced with entirely new ones. According to the records the latter was the case with the temples of the two guardian deities, Melkarth and Astarte, while they mention the restoration of the cedar roofs of other temples not named, but in regard to the magnitude of these latter buildings, they relate how Hiram went to Lebanon and had a whole wood of cedar trees cut down for the work. The third great temple, that of Baalsamin, was adorned with golden votive offerings, amongst which was that famous golden pillar, often mentioned in later times and still on view in Tyre until the last centuries of its independence.

As through these enterprises, indicative of the love of splendour and the great wealth of the king, provision was made for the magnificence of the new royal city and of its religious services, so too, another regulation of Hiram's, mentioned by Menander, points to a reorganisation of the cult, or at least of the order of festivals. For Menander relates that Hiram was the first to

[ca. 980-936 B.C.]

have the Awakening of Hercules celebrated in the month of Peritius, when he was starting forth on the war against the Cypriotes.

We learn from the records that the king not only reorganised the internal structure of the Tyrian state, but also took measures to safeguard the foreign acquisitions of his predecessors. The passage from Menander, cited above, tells that Hiram made war against the Cypriotes, who did not pay their tribute and were again subjugated by Hiram. From this it is clear that the Island of Cyprus had already, under Hiram's predecessor, passed from the possession of Sidon, which had colonised it during her hegemony, to Tyre.

As all the records we have had under consideration indicate that Tyre had gained its position as leading state during the previous reign, and in Hiram's time was looking to the organisation and strengthening of what had been won, the same thing may be said of the relations with Israel. The records on this subject are relatively complete, and of the most manifold interest for the history of both these flourishing states. We shall therefore have to treat them somewhat more in detail.

Through David's successful wars the Israelitish state had grown from its former insignificance to a power greater than had for a long time existed in Western Asia. The whole of Syria and Palestine, with the exception of the northern coast, belonged to the kingdom of Israel, so that Phoenicia, on the continent side, was nearly surrounded by Israelitish territory. All the routes of commerce which led from the Euphrates, from Arabia and Egypt, to the emporiums of the Mediterranean, were controlled by the Israelites, and after the conquest of the Edomite district, they also possessed the commercial ports on the Red Sea, where the Phoenicians had long carried on an extremely profitable trade with Arabia and Ethiopia, and perhaps also, even before David's time, with India. Under these circumstances the Phonicians made an effort to enter into closer relations with their powerful neighbours.

Soon after the beginning of his reign, Hiram sent an embassy to David which resulted in his despatching Phoenician workmen to Jerusalem to build the Jewish king a palace. There is no mention of compensation for this service; so it seems, especially from the short account which makes the messengers and the workmen go to David together, that the Phoenician ruler had the building erected simply in order to show himself well-disposed towards the Israelite. However that may be, with the continued friendship of their rulers there could be no lack of important results for the political and commercial relations of the two states; and commercial undertakings and alliances, such as we find in greater extent in the reign of Solomon, may even at that time have been entered into by them.

After the death of David, Hiram sought to maintain the cordial relations between the two countries under Solomon's rule, and therefore took occasion, upon the latter's accession to the throne, to send an embassy to Jerusalem with congratulations, and to request the continuation of the friendship. Solomon was then cherishing the project of building the temple which David had desired to erect after the completion of the palace which Hiram's workmen had built for him in Jerusalem towards the end of his reign. For the pious king considered it unfitting that he should dwell in a "cedar palace," while the dwelling of Jehovah was a tent. But in view of the continuance of internal disturbances and the still incomplete subjugation of the provinces that had been incorporated in the kingdom, he was withheld from his project by the prophet Nathan, who showed him that the execution of it was destined to his successor.