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Home , Phoenicia, Sidon

CHAPTER ONE

THE

Phoenicia (Foinikia), the Greek name of (KNàN, Hebrew KÿnaÁàan), was the in antiquity that encompassed southern , and (west of the ), extending roughly from Arad in the North to the Negev and Sinai in the South. In the Late and Iron Ages, the region was home to numerous peoples of com- mon 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 , 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 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 Poenus and , 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 of Put were Tyre and , 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, informs us, an African identified himself as a Chanani, Canaanite, while the Phoenician (Punic) inscriptions of Roman us that his contemporaries in 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, and Egypt, from Arvad in the north to Ascalon and Daph- nae in the south. For this reason, on the northern coast of Canaan is properly called a Phoenician , and the language of Byblos properly called Byblian Phoenician although it is quite dif- ferent from the language of Tyre and Sidon. The terms PuЄt 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 in Libya in the year 825 (or 814) b.c. The toponym Pu„t is recorded in an archaic inscription from (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, , 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-inscrip- tion 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 (“ has devasted the island of Elisha.”). perhaps refers to this same event, which he places in the time of the , in I 619-24: (“, my [’s] father [?ancestor], ravaged opulent Cyprus and con- quered 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, , the daughter of Ittobaal of Tyre (887-856 b.c.) and 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 , and Po„nnþm (“Phoenicians”) with the Tyrians.