Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

The Canaanite languages are very much typical Semitic languages. One distinctive property they all have in common is a tendency to round their long A sound: hence Hebrew š’lōm for Arabic salām , ‘peace’. In Phoenician (and Punic) this tendency goes farther, with even short A rounded to ō , and long A even more rounded to ū : so the Phoenician for eternity is ’ūlōm (versus Hebrew ’ōlām , Aramaic ’āl’m ), and their chief magistrates hold the title sūfet , equivalent to Hebrew šōpet , the word for ‘judge’ in the Old Testament. The evidence for Phoenician vowels is necessarily indirect, since their writing system marked consonants only.

Beyond its homeland in Lebanon, Phoenician inscriptions are found in Egypt, in southern Anatolia, in Cyprus, North Africa, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and the south of Spain. These far-flung inscriptions tend to be in the dialect of Phoenician associated with the neighbouring cities of Tyre and Sidon, and Tyre is usually quoted as the mother city of Phoenician settlements abroad. In particular, it is the legendary original home of Elissa, or Dido, the Phoenician princess who is said to have founded Carthage (Phoenician qart hadašt , ‘new city’). Many of the inscriptions are bilingual, showing active relations with Luwians, Greeks, Cypriots and ultimately Romans.

We also read of major Phoenician archives, the earliest being in an Egyptian tale of the eleventh century BC, where an Egyptian agent, Wen-Amun, goes to Byblos to order timber, and has to bargain aggressively with King Zakar-baal, who reads out the precedents from deals in earlier generations, written on rolls of papyrus. The city of Tyre also kept records, since Josephus records that the Greek historian Menander of Ephesus had compiled his history of Tyre from them.

As it happens, the earliest inscription in Phoenician is the epitaph of Ahiram, king of Byblos. It is dated (by its language) to the eleventh century BC.

Coffin which Ittobaal, son of Ahiram, king of Byblos, made for Ahiram his father, when he placed him in the house of eternity.

Now if a king among kings or a governor among governors or a commander of an army should come up against Byblos and uncover this coffin, may the sceptre of his rule be torn away, may the throne of his kingdom be overturned, and may peace flee from Byblos! And as for him, may his inscription be effaced …

For all its thousand years of recorded history, there is no surviving artistic literature in Phoenician. However, a discovery in 1929 revealed an ancient literature in the neighbouring city directly to the north, Ugarit, dated to the fourteenth or thirteenth century BC [28] El is simply the Semitic root for ‘god’, seen also in Hebrew elohīm , one of the two words for God in Genesis, and Arabic Al-lah , literally “The God’. The central characters in the myths and epics recorded here are gods known to have loomed large in the cults in Phoenician cities, especially Hadad or Baal (which means simply ‘the Lord’), his father Dagon, a beautiful consort goddess who has various names, including Ashtoreth and Asherah, El, the benign high god, and Kothar, the divine craftsman and smith. Thirteen hundred years later, after Phoenician had largely died out as a language, one Philo of Byblos wrote in Greek a Phoenician History , claiming that it was derived from the work of Sanchuniathon of Beirut, who had himself read it on ammouneis , the pillars of Baal Ammon that stood in Phoenician temples. Since Philo, in typical ancient fashion, identifies many of the Phoenician gods by Greek names (of those of whom similar tales were told), his unsupported account of Phoenician mythology was received (for almost two thousand years) with some scepticism. But Philo does in fact mention El as the name of Kronos, [29] The poem continues with listings of characteristic products for all the major client nations: Tarshish (metals); Greece, Tubal, Meshech (slaves, bronze working); Beth Togarmah (equines); Rhodes (ivory and ebony); Aram (turquoise, fine cloth, coral and rubies); Judah and Israel (wheat, honey, oil and balm); Damascus (wine, wool); Danites, Greeks of Uzal (wrought iron, cassia, calamus); Dedan (saddle blankets); Arabia, Kedah (sheep and goats); Sheba, Raamah (spices, gems, gold); Haran, Canneh, Eden, Asshur, Kilmad (clothes, fabric, knotted rugs). and makes Dagon his son. Dagon later fathers an unknown Dēmarūs , and after much action Demarus, Astartē (aka Asteria ) and Adōdos end up as governors of the world, under El’s direction. Khusor is the craftsman god, important in the creation of the world and the origin of inventions. Since Astarte and Asteria are plausible Greek transliterations of Ashtoreth and Asherah, and Adōdos without its Greek ending -os would (with its long O) be a natural Phoenician pronunciation of Hadad, the basic cast of Phoenician gods is in place.

The Ugaritic texts also give us a hint of how close Hebrew literature comes to the missing Phoenician works. Remember that Hebrew is a close relative of Ugaritic, but not as close as Phoenician. Now consider how the goddess Anath of Ugarit decks herself out to meet the emissaries of Baal:

She draws some water and bathes;

Sky-dew of the fatness of earth,

Spray of the Rider of the Clouds;

Dew that the heavens do shed

Spray that is shed by the stars. [275] ibid.: 136: Poems about Baal and Anath, f.C (trans. H. L. Ginsberg).

The words for ‘Sky-dew of the fatness of earth’ are ṯl šmm šmn ’rṣ. This is precisely what Isaac promises to Jacob (and denies to Esau) in the blessing scene in Genesis:

May God give you of dew of heaven and of fatness of earth [276] Genesis xxvii.28 and 39. See also Gordon (1971: 122).

(Traditionally, of course, Hebrew spelling too marked only consonants, as well as some long vowels.)

Hebrew and Ugaritic were close enough, then, to share some fixed phrases. Combining the dramatis personae of the Ugaritic epics with the phraseology of the Old Testament, and the narratives of Philo’s Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, we may be able to reconstruct something of the verbal culture of Byblos, Tyre and their sister cities.

There is a clear echo of what Tyrian poetry may have been like in a famous passage of Ezekiel. In the course of a series of prophecies of the downfall of Judah’s various neighbours, the prophet digresses on the past glories of one city for which he foresees destruction: You say, O Tyre, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’

Your domain was on the high seas;

your builders brought your beauty to perfection.

They made all your timbers of pine trees from Senir;

they took a cedar from Lebanon and made a mast for you.

Of oaks from Bashan they made your oars;

of cypress wood from the coasts of Cyprus

they made your deck, inlaid with ivory.

Fine embroidered linen from Egypt was your sail

and served as your banner;

your awnings were of blue and purple

with the coasts of Elishah.

Men of Sidon and Arwad were your oarsmen;

your skilled men, O Tyre, were aboard as your seamen.

Veteran craftsmen of Byblos were on board

as shipwrights to caulk your seams.

All the ships of the sea and their sailors

came alongside to trade for your wares.

Men of Persia, Lydia, and Put

served as soldiers in your army.

They hung their shields and helmets on your walls,

bringing you splendour.