inscriptions mention altars of stone and bronze, and from the sacrificial
tariffs which have survived we learn that the chief types of sacrifice
among the Phoenicians were analogous to those which we find in
the Old Testament (ibid. p. 117). The ghastly practice of sacrificing
human victims was resorted to in times of great distress (e.g. at
Carthage, Diod. xx. 14), or to avert national disaster (Porphyry,
de Abstin, ii. 56); Philo gives the legend that Cronus or El sacrificed
his only son when his country was threatened with war (Fr. hist.
gr. iii. 570); it was regarded as a patriotic act when Hamilcar
threw himself upon the pyre after the disastrous battle of Himera
(Herod. vii. 167). The god who demanded these victims, and
especially the burning of children, seems to have been Milk, the
Molech or Moloch of the Old Testament. In this connexion may be
mentioned the custom of burning the chief god of the city in effigy,
or in the person of a human representative, at Tyre and in the Tyrian
colonies, such as Carthage and Gades; the custom lasted down to a
late time (see Frazer, loc. cit. ch. v.). Another horrible sacrifice was
regularly demanded by Phoenician religion: women sacrificed their
virginity at the shrines of Astarte in the belief that they thus propitiated
the goddess and won her favour (Frazer, ibid. ch. iii); licentious
rites were the natural accompaniment of the worship of the
reproductive powers of nature. These temple prostitutes are called
qedeshim qedēshoth, i.e. sacred men, women, in the Old Testament
(Deut. xxiii. 18; 1 Kings xiv. 24, &c.). Other persons attached to a
temple were priests, augurs, sacrificers, barbers, officials in charge
of the curtains, masons, &c. (NSI. No. 20); we hear also of
religious gilds and corporations, perhaps administrative councils,
associated with the sanctuaries (ibid. pp. 4, 121, 130, 144 seq.)
No doubt the Phoenicians had their legends and myths to account for the origin of man and the universe; to some extent these would Mythology and Religious Ideas. have resembled the ideas embodied in the book of Genesis. Two cosmogonies have come down to us which, though they differ in details, are fundamentally in agreement. The one, of Sidonian origin, is reserved by Damascius (de prim. principiis, 125) and received at his hands a Neoplatonic interpretation; this cosmogony was Hobably the writing which Strabo ascribes to a Sidonian philosopher, Mochus, who lived before the Trojan times (xvi. 2, 24). The other and more elaborate work was composed by Philo of Byblus (temp. Hadrian); he professed that he had used as his authority the writings of Sanchuniathon (q.v.), an ancient Phoenician sage, who again derived his information from the mysterious inscribed stones (ἀμμουνεῖς = דםוים, i.e. images or pillars of Ba‘al-ḥammān) in the Phoenician temples. Philo's cosmogony has been preserved, at least in fragments, by Eusebius in Praep. evang. vol. i. (Fr. hist. gr. iii. 563 sqq.). It cannot, however, be taken seriously as an account of genuine Phoenician beliefs. For Sanchuniathon is a mere literary fiction; and Philo's treatment is vitiated by an obvious attempt to explain the whole system of religion on the principles of Euhemerus, an agnostic who taught the traditional mythology as primitive history, and turned all the gods and goddesses into men an women; and further by a patriotic desire to prove that Phoenicia could outdo Greece in the venerable character of its traditions, that in fact Greek mythology was simply a feeble and distorted version of the Phoenician.[1] At the same time Philo did not invent all the nonsense which he has handed down; he drew upon various sources, Greek and Egyptian, some of them ultimately of Babylonian origin, and incidentally he mentions matters of interest which, when tested by other evidence, are fairly well supported. He shows at any rate that some sort of a theology existed in his day; particularly interesting is his description of the symbolic figure of Cronus with eyes before and behind and six wings open and folded (Fr. hist. gr. iii. 569), a figure which is represented on the coins of Gebal-Byblus (2nd century B.C.) as the mythical founder of the city. It is evident that the gods were regarded as being intimately concerned with the lives and fortunes of their worshippers. The vast number of small votive tablets found at Carthage prove this: they were all inscribed by grateful devotees “to the lady Tanith, Face of Ba‘al, and the lord Ba‘al hammān, because he heard their voice.” The care which the Phoenicians bestowed upon the burial of the dead has been alluded to above; pillars (masṣēbōth) were set up to commemorate the dead among the living (e.g. NSI. Nos. 18, 19, 21, 32); if there were no children to fulfil the pious duty, a monument would be set up by a man during his lifetime (ibid. No. 16; cf. 2 Sam. xviii. 18). Any violation of the tomb was regarded with the greatest horror (ibid. Nos. 4, 5). The grave was called a resting-place (ibid. Nos. 4, 5, 16, 21), and the departed lay at rest in the underworld with the Refāsm, the weak ones (the same word and idea in the Old Testament, Isa. xiv. 9, xxvi. 14, 19; Job xxvi. 5; Ps. lxxxviii. 11, &c.). The curious notion prevailed, as it did also among the Greeks and Romans, that it was possible to communicate wit the gods of the underworld by dropping into a grave a small roll of lead (tabella devolionis, NSI. No. 50), inscribed with the message, generally a curse, which it was desired to convey to them.
Bibliography.—The principal works bearing on the subject have been mentioned in the text and notes of this article. The following may be added: Movers, Die Phonizier (1842-1856), to be used with caution; Renan, Mission de Phénicie (1864); Schroder, Die phonizische Sprache (1869); Stade in Morgenländische Forschungen (1875); W. Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte 1876, 1878); Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte 1888); Levy, Siegel und Gemmen (1869); J. L. Myres and Richter, Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum (1899); G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyprus (1904); V. Bérard, Les Phénisciens et l'Odyssée (1902-1903); Lidzbarski, Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik (1902-1906); H. Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen (1893-1906); Freiherr von Landau, “Die Bedeutung der Phonizier im Völkerleben” in Ex oriente lux (Leipzig, 1905), vol. i.; Bruston, Études Phén. (1903); the articles by Thatcher in Hastings's Dict. Bible (1900) and by E. Meyer in the Ency. Bib. (1902). The articles by A. von Gutschmid and Albrecht Socin in the Ency. Brit. (9th ed.) have been to some extent incorporated in the present article. (G. A. C.*)
PHOENIX (Gr. φοῖνιξ), a fabulous sacred bird of the Egyptians. The Greek word is also used for a date-palm, a musical instrument like a guitar, and the colour purple-red or crimson. According to the story told to Herodotus (ii. 73), the bird came from Arabia every 500 years, bearing his father embalmed in a ball of myrrh, and buried him in the temple of the sun. Herodotus, who had never seen the phoenix himself, did not believe this story, but he tells us that the pictures of it represented a bird with golden and red plumage, closely resembling an eagle in size and shape. According to Pliny (Nat. hist. x. 2), there is only one phoenix at a time, and he, at the close of his long life, builds himself a nest with twigs of cassia and frankincense, on which he dies; from his corpse is generated a worm which grows into the young phoenix. Tacitus (Ann. vi. 28) says that the young bird lays his father on the altar in the city of the sun, or burns him there; but the most familiar form of the legend is that in the Physiologus (q.v.), where the phoenix is described as an Indian bird which subsists on air for 506 years, after which, lading his wings with spices, he flies to Heliopolis, enters the temple there, and is burned to ashes on the altar. Next day the young phoenix is already feathered; on the third day his pinions are full grown, he salutes the priest and flies away. The period at which the phoenix reappears is very variously stated, some authors giving as much as 1461 or even 7006 years, but 500 years is the period usually named; and Tacitus tells us that the bird was said to have appeared first under Sesostris (Senwosri), then under Amasis (Ahmosi) II., under Ptolemy III., and once again in A.D. 34, after an interval so short that the genuineness of the last phoenix was suspected. The phoenix that was shown at Rome in the year of the secular games (A.D. 47) was universally admitted to be an imposture.[2]
The form and variations of these stories characterize them as
popular tales rather than official theology; but they evidently
must have had points of attachment in the mystic religion of
Egypt, and indeed both Horapollon and Tacitus speak of the
phoenix as a symbol of the sun. Now we know from the Book of
the Dead, and other Egyptian texts, that a stork, heron or egret
called the benu 
was one of the sacred symbols of the worship
of Heliopolis, and A. Wiedemann (“Die Phönix-Sage im alten
Aegypten” in Zeitschrift für ægyptische Sprache, xvi. 89) has
made it tolerably clear that the benu was a symbol of the rising
sun, whence it is represented as “self-generating” and called
“the soul of Ra (the sun),” “the heart of the renewed Sun.”
All the mystic symbolism of the morning sun, especially in
connexion with the doctrine of the future life, could thus be
transferred to the benu, and the language of the hymns in which
the Egyptians praised the luminary of dawn as he drew near
- ↑ An excellent and critical account of Philo's work is given by Lagrange, Études sur les rel. sém. (2nd ed., 1905), ch. xi.
- ↑ Some other ancient accounts may be here referred to. That ascribed to Hecataeus is, in the judgment of C. G. Gobet (Mnemosyne, 1883), stolen from Herodotus by a late forger. The poem of the Jew Ezechiel quoted by Eusebius (Praep. ev. ix. 29, 30) appears to refer to the phoenix. Here the sweet song is first mentioned—a song which, according to the poem on the phoenix ascribed to Lactantius, accompanies the rising sun. The bird is often spoken of in Latin poetry, and is the subject of an idyll by Claudian. See also Solinus, Collectanea, ch. xxxiii. 11, with Salmasius's Exercitationes; Tertullian, De resur. carnis, c. 13; Clemens Rom. Epp. ad Corinthios, i. 25 and the (? Clementine) Apostolical Constitutions, v. 7.
