character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of
intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong
primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith and knowledge in a certain
sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first
reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician
religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can
see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.
The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth,
and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to
restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in times
of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their
religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician
architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy,
to say nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient
seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical
purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It
was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it
was there that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the
sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time
and space and on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces
of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and
measures, point to that region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed
themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of
Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for
their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of
measures for their commerce, and distributed many an important germ
of civilization along with their wares; but it cannot be demonstrated
that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the
human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and
scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes