History of Phoenicia eBook

George Rawlinson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about History of Phoenicia.

History of Phoenicia eBook

George Rawlinson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about History of Phoenicia.

Ammochosta was situated within a few miles of Salamis, towards the south.[529] Its first appearance in history belongs to the reign of Esarhaddon (B.C. 680), when we find it in a list of ten Cyprian cities, each having its own king, who acknowledged for their suzerain the great monarch of Assyria.[530] Soon afterwards it again occurs among the cities tributary to Asshur-bani-pal.[531] Otherwise we have no mention of it in Phoenician times.  As Famagosta it was famous in the wars between the Venetians and the Turks.

Tamasus, or Tamassus, was an inland city, and the chief seat of the mining operations which the Phoenicians carried on in the island in search of copper.[532] It lay a few miles to the west of Idalium (Dali), on the northern flank of the southern mountain chain.  The river Pediaeus flowed at its feet.  Like Ammochosta, it appears among the Cyprian towns which in the seventh century B.C. were tributary to the Assyrians.[533] The site is still insufficiently explored.

Soli lay upon the coast, in the recess of the gulf of Morfou.[534] The fiction of its foundation by Philocyprus at the suggestion of Solon[535] is entirely disproved by the occurrence of the name in the Assyrian lists of Cyprian towns a century before Solon’s time.  Its sympathies were with the Phoenician, and not with the Hellenic, population of the island, as was markedly shown when it joined with Amathus and Citium in calling to Artaxerxes for help against Evagoras.[536] The city stood on the left bank of the river Clarius, and covered the northern slope of a low hill detached from the main range, extending also over the low ground at the foot of the hill to within a short distance of the shore, where are to be seen the remains of the ancient harbour.  The soil in the neighbourhood is very rich, and adapted for almost any kind of cultivation.[537] In the mountains towards the south were prolific veins of copper.

The northern coast of the island between Capes Cormaciti and S. Andreas does not seem to have attracted the Phoenicians, though there are some who regard Lapethus and Cerynia as Phoenician settlements.[538] It is a rock-bound shore of no very tempting aspect, behind which the mountain range rises up steeply.  Such Phoenician emigrants as held their way along the Salaminian plain and, rounding Cape S. Andreas, passed into the channel that separates Cyprus from the mainland, found the coast upon their right attract them far more than that upon their left, and formed settlements in Cilicia which ultimately became of considerable importance.  The chief of these was Tars or Tarsus, probably the Tarshish of Genesis,[539] though not that of the later Books, a Phoenician city, which has Phoenician characters upon its coins, and worshipped the supreme Phoenician deity under the title of “Baal Tars,” “the Lord of Tarsus."[540] Tarsus commanded the rich Cilician plain up to the very roots of Taurus, was watered by the copious stream of the Cydnus, and had at its mouth a commodious harbour.  Excellent timber for shipbuilding grew on the slopes of the hills bounding the plain, and the river afforded a ready means of floating such timber down to the sea.  Cleopatra’s ships are said to have been derived from the Cilician forests, which Antony made over to her for the purpose.[541] Other Phoenician settlements upon the Cilician coast were, it is probable, Soli, Celenderis, and Nagidus.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
History of Phoenicia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.