In The Levant 28
unfortunately the tribes who formed the kingdom of Israel were capable
of imitating only the idolatrous worship and the sensuality of their
more polished neighbors. Such an ascendency did Tyre obtain in Jewish
affairs through the princess Jezebel and the reception of the priests
of Baal, that for many years both Samaria and Jerusalem might almost be
called dependencies of the city of the god, "the lord Melkarth, Baal of
Tyre."
The arts of the Phoenicians the Jews were not apt to learn; the
beautiful bronze-work of their temples was executed by Tyrians, and
their curious work in wood also; the secret of the famous purple dye of
the royal stuffs which the Jews coveted was known only to the Tyrians,
who extracted from a sea-mussel this dark red violet; when the Jews
built, Tyrian workmen were necessary; when Solomon undertook his
commercial ventures into the far Orient, it was Tyrians who built his
ships at Ezion-geber, and it was Tyrian sailors who manned them; the
Phoenicians carried the manufacture of glass to a perfection unknown to
the ancient Egyptians, producing that beautiful ware the art of which
was revived by the Venetians in the sixteenth century; the Jews did
not learn from the Phoenicians, but the Greeks did, how to make that
graceful pottery and to paint the vases which are the despair of modern
imitators; the Tyrian mariners, following the Sidonian, supplied the
Mediterranean countries, including Egypt, with tin for the manufacture
of bronze, by adventurous voyages as far as Britain, and no people ever
excelled them in the working of bronze, as none in their time equalled
them in the carving of ivory, the engraving of precious metals, and the
cutting and setting of jewels.
Unfortunately scarcely anything remains of the abundant literature of
the Phoenicians,--for the Canaanites were a literary people before the
invasion of Joshua; their language was Semitic, and almost identical
with the Hebrew, although they were descendants of Ham; not only their
light literature but their historical records have disappeared, and we
have small knowledge of their kings or their great men. The one we are
most familiar with is the shrewd and liberal Hiram (I cannot tell why he
always reminds me of General Grant), who exchanged riddles with Solomon,
and shared with the mountain king the profits of his maritime skill and
experience. Hiram's tomb is still pointed out to the curious, at Tyre;
and the mutations of religions and the freaks of fortune are illustrated
by the chance that has grouped so closely together the graves of Hiram,
of Frederick Barbarossa, and of Origen.
Late in the afternoon we came in sight of Sidon, that ancient city which
the hand-book infers was famous at the time of the appearance of Joshua,
since that skilful captain speaks of it as "Great Zidon." Famous it
doubtless had been long before his arrival, but the epithet "great"
merely distinguished the two cities; for Sidon was divided like Tyre,
"Great Sidon" being on the shore and "Little Sidon" at some distance
inland. Tradition says it was built by Sidon, the great-grandson of
Noah; but however this may be, it is doubtless the oldest Phoenician
city except Gebel, which is on the coast north of Beyrout. It is now for
the antiquarian little more than a necropolis, and a heap of stones,
on which fishermen dry their nets, although some nine to ten thousand
people occupy its squalid houses. What we see of it is the ridge of
rocks forming the shallow harbor, and the picturesque arched bridge
(with which engravings have made us familiar) that connects a ruined
fortress on a detached rock with the rocky peninsula.
Sidon cames us far back into antiquity. When the Canaanitish tribes
migrated from their seat on the Persian Gulf, a part of them continued
their march as far as Egypt. It seems to be settled that the Hittites
(or Khitas) were the invaders who overran the land of the Pharaohs,
sweeping away in their barbarous violence nearly all the monuments of
the civilization of preceding eras, and placing upon the throne of
that old empire the race of Shepherd kings. It was doubtless during
the dynasty of the Shepherds that Abraham visited Egypt, and it was a
Pharaoh of Hittite origin who made Joseph his minister. It was after
the expulsion of the Shepherds and the establishment of a dynasty "which
knew not Joseph" that the Israelites were oppressed.
But the Canaanites did not all pass beyond Syria and Palestine; some
among them, who afterwards were distinctively known as Phoenicians,
established a maritime kingdom, and founded among other cities that of
Sidon. This maritime branch no doubt kept up an intercourse with the
other portions of the Canaanite family in Southern Syria and in Egypt,
before the one was driven out of Egypt by the revolution which restored
the rule of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the other expelled by the
advent of the Philistines. And it seems altogether probable that the
Phoenicians received from Egypt many arts which they afterwards improved
and perfected. It is tolerably certain that they borrowed from Egypt
the hieratic writing, or some of its characters, which taught them to
represent the sounds of their language by the alphabet which they gave
to the world. The Sidonians were subjugated by Thotmes III., with all
Phoenicia, and were for centuries the useful allies of the Egyptians;
but their dominion was over the sea, and they spread their colonies
first to the Grecian isles and then along the African coast; and in the
other direction sent their venturesome barks as far as Colchis on the
Black Sea. They seem to have thrived most under the Egyptian supremacy,
for the Pharaohs had need of their sailors and their ships. In the later
days of the empire, in the reign of Necho, it was Phoenician sailors
who, at his command, circumnavigated Africa, passing down the Red Sea
and returning through the Pillars of Hercules.
The few remains of Sidon which we see to-day are only a few centuries
old,--six or seven; there are no monuments to carry us back to the city
famous in arts and arms, of which Homer sang; and if there were, the
antiquity of this hoary coast would still elude us. Herodotus says that
the temple of Melkarth at Tyre (the "daughter of Sidon") was built about
2300 B.C. Probably he errs by a couple of centuries; for it was only
something like twenty-three centuries before Christ that the Canaanites
came into Palestine, that is to say, late in the thirteenth Egyptian
dynasty,--a dynasty which, according to the list of Manetho and Mariette
Bey, is separated from the reign of the first Egyptian king by
an interval of twenty-seven centuries. When Abraham wandered from
Mesopotamia into Palestine he found the Canaanites in possession. But
they were comparatively new comers; they had found the land already
occupied by a numerous population who were so far advanced in
civilization as to have built many cities. Among the peoples holding the
land before them were the Rephaim, who had sixty strong towns in what is
now the wilderness of Bashan; there were also the Emim, the Zamzummim,
and the Anakim,--perhaps primitive races and perhaps conquerors of a
people farther back in the twilight, remnants of whom still remained in
Palestine when the Jews began, in their turn, to level its cities to the
earth, and who lived in the Jewish traditions as "giants."
X.--BEYROUT.--OVER THE LEBANON.
|ALL the afternoon we had the noble range of Mt. Lebanon in view,
and towards five o'clock we saw the desert-like promontory upon which
Beyrout stands. This bold headland, however, changed its appearance when
we had rounded it and came into the harbor; instead of sloping sand we
had a rocky coast, and rising from the bay a couple of hundred feet,
Beyrout, first the shabby old city, and then the new portion higher,
up, with its villas embowered in trees. To the right, upon the cliffs
overlooking the sea, is the American college, an institution whose
conspicuous position is only a fair indication of its pre-eminent
importance in the East; and it is to be regretted that it does not make
a better architectural show. Behind Beyrout, in a vast circular sweep,
rise the Lebanon mountains, clothed with trees and vineyards, terraced,
and studded with villas and villages. The view is scarcely surpassed
anywhere for luxuriance and variety. It seems to us that if we had an
impulse to go on a mission anywhere it would be to the wicked of this
fertile land.
At Beyrout also passengers must land in small boats. We were at once
boarded by the most ruffianly gang of boatmen we had yet seen, who
poured through the gangways and climbed over the sides of the vessel,
like privileged pirates, treading down people in their way. It was only
after a severe struggle that we reached our boats and landed at the
custom-house, and fell into the hands of the legalized plunderers, who
made an attack upon our baggage and demanded our passports, simply to
obtain backsheesh for themselves.
"Not to show 'em passport," says Abd-el-Atti, who wastes no affection
on the Turks; "tiefs, all of dem; you he six months, not so? in him
dominion, come now from Jaffa; I tell him if the kin' of Constantinople
want us, he find us at the hotel."
The hotel Bellevue, which looks upon the sea and hears always the waves
dashing upon the worn and jagged rocks, was overflowed by one of those
swarms, which are the nuisance of independent travellers, known as a
"Cook's Party," excellent people individually no doubt, but monopolizing
hotels and steamboats, and driving everybody else into obscurity by
reason of their numbers and compact organization. We passed yesterday
one of the places on the coast where Jonah is said to have left the
whale; it is suspected--though without any contemporary authority--that
he was in a Cook's Party of his day, and left it in disgust for this
private conveyance.
Our first care in Beyrout was to secure our passage to Damascus. There
is a carriage-road over the Lebanons, constructed, owned, and managed by
a French company; it is the only road in Syria practicable for wheels,
but it is one of the best in the world; I suppose we shall celebrate our
second centennial before we have one to compare with it in the United
States. The company has the monopoly of all the traffic over it,
forwarding freight in its endless trains of wagons, and despatching a
diligence each way daily, and a night mail. We went to the office to
secure seats in the diligence.
"They are all taken," said the official.
"Then we would like seats for the day after to-morrow."
"They are taken, and for the day after that--for a week."
"Then we must go in a private carriage."
"At present we have none. The two belonging to the company are at
Damascus."
"Then we will hire one in the city."
"That is not permitted; no private carriage is allowed to go over the
road farther than five kilometres outside of Beyrout."
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