The Phoenician Language

CHAPTER ONE THE PHOENICIAN LANGUAGE Phoenicia (Foinikia), the Greek name of Canaan (KNàN, Hebrew KÿnaÁàan), was the region in antiquity that encompassed southern Syria, Lebanon and Israel (west of the Jordan), extending roughly from Arad in the North to the Negev and Sinai in the South. In the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, the region was home to numerous peoples of common origin, sharing a common culture and possessing a common language, which they called SõPT KNàN (“the language of Canaan” [Isaiah 19:18]), or Canaanite. At an early period, the peoples of Canaan had differentiated into distinct regional subgroups, part of which development was the emergence of regional dialects, some of which in turn became national languages. Phoenician was one such regional Canaanite dialect: in the strictest meaning, Phoenician was the language spoken along the coast of Lebanon roughly from Si- don in the North to Acco in the South. The indigenous name of this subregion of Canaan was Pu„t (PT ), and the name of the Canaanite subgroup inhabiting it, the Po„nnþm (Phoenicians), the gentilic deriv- ing from the place-name. Po„nnþm was also the name of the Canaan- ite dialect of the region. It is this toponym and gentilic that are the origin of Greek Foinike" and Latin Poenus and punicus, the terms by which Greeks and Romans first came to know and call the Phoenicians; and is the term by which they are still called. The main cities of Put were Tyre and Sidon, and so the term Phoenicians (Po„nnþm) came early to be synonymous with Tyrians and Sidonians and Phoenician (Po„nnþm) synonymous with Tyro-Sidonian Canaanite. Accordingly, the Phoenicians came to call themselves freely and interchangeably Phoenicians (Po„nnþm), Canaanites and Tyrians. Thus, in the third century of the Common (Christian) Era, Augustine of Hippo informs us, an African identified himself as a Chanani, Canaanite, while the Phoenician (Punic) inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania tell us that his contemporaries in Libya called themselves Sorim, Tyrians. With the extension of Tyro-Sidonian influence to northern and southern coastal Canaan in the course of the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages, Phoenician took on a broader meaning, coming to de- 1 2 the phoenician language note the Canaanite peoples and languages of all coastal Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, from Arvad in the north to Ascalon and Daph- nae in the south. For this reason, Byblos on the northern coast of Canaan is properly called a Phoenician city, and the language of Byblos properly called Byblian Phoenician although it is quite dif- ferent from the language of Tyre and Sidon. The terms PuÐ„t and Po„nnþm first appear in the written record at the same time, the early ninth century b.c., at the zenith of Tyro-Sidonian power, marked by extensive commercial and colonial activity in the West culminating in the founding of the city of Carthage in Libya in the year 825 (or 814) b.c. The toponym Pu„t is recorded in an archaic inscription from Cyprus (KAI 30=Cyprus Museum Ph. Insc. No. 6), erected as a memorial at the tomb of the leader of the Tyrian military expeditionary force that had invaded and conquered that island: lines 2/3 (“This warrior came up to Alasiya, and this [. ] devastated the island.”). Of the invaders it is said: (line 1) (“They came to the island from Pu„t.”), contextually, Phoenicia, the region of Tyre and Sidon. It is possible that this text alludes to the inva- sion and conquest of Alasiya (Cyprus) recorded in a ostracon-inscription of ca. 1200 b.c. from Qubur al-Wulayda near Ghaza (F.M. Cross, BASOR 238 [1980] 2-3): [Y ]SóM [B]àL áY áLSó (“Baal has devasted the island of Elisha.”). Virgil perhaps refers to this same event, which he places in the time of the Trojan War, in Aeneid I 619-24: (“Belus, my [Dido’s] father [?ancestor], ravaged opulent Cyprus and conquered it.”). Tyrian activity abroad was accompanied in this same period, the ninth century b.c., by political and commercial activity in their own region through the cementing of alliances with powerful neighbor- ing states, Israel in particular. Interdynastic marriage was the means to this end, and it is in this context that the ethnic term Po„nnþm appears in a Hebrew poem (Psalm 45) composed to celebrate the marriage of a “daughter of Tyre” to a king of Israel. Although their names are not given in the work, Jezebel, the daughter of Ittobaal of Tyre (887-856 b.c.) and Ahab of Israel (874-853 b.c.) are likely. In verses 12b-14a (reconstructed), the Tyrian princess is adjured. HSóT\WY LW BT S£R, // KBDH BT MLK PNYMH (“Show him respect, O daughter of Tyre, // Honor him, O daughter of the King of the Phoenicians [Po„nnþma]!”). Here, the title MLK PNYMH melek Po„nnþma, (“King of the Phoenicians”) is synonymous with King of Tyre, and Po„nnþm (“Phoenicians”) with the Tyrians..

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