the Erythræan Sea (Persian Gulf), and that they had migrated from that
quarter at a remote period, and transferred their abode to the shores
of the Mediterranean.[39] Strabo adds that the inhabitants of certain
islands in the Persian Gulf had a similar tradition, and showed temples
in their cities which were Phoenician in character.[310] Justin, or
rather Trogus Pompeius, whom he abbreviated, writes as follows:--"The
Syrian nation was founded by the Phoenicians, who, being disturbed by
an earthquake, left their native land, and settled first of all in the
neighbourhood of the Assyrian Lake, and subsequently on the shore of
the Mediterranean, where they built a city which they called Sidon on
account of the abundance of the fish; for the Phoenicians call a fish
_sidon_."[311] The "Assyrian lake" of this passage is probably the Bahr
Nedjif, or "Sea of Nedjif," in the neighbourhood of the ancient Babylon,
a permanent sheet of water, varying in its dimensions at different
seasons, but generally about forty miles long, and from ten to twenty
broad.[312] Attempts have been made to discredit this entire story,
but the highest living authority on the subject of Phoenicia and the
Phoenicians adopts it as almost certainly true, and observes:--"The
tradition relative to the sojourn of the Phoenicians on the borders
of the Erythræan Sea, before their establishment on the coast of the
Mediterranean, has thus a new light thrown upon it. It appears from the
labours of M. Movers, and from the recent discoveries made at Nineveh
and Babylon, that the civilisation and religion of Phoenicia and Assyria
were very similar. Independently of this, the majority of modern critics
admit it as demonstrated that the primitive abode of the Phoenicians
ought to be placed upon the Lower Euphrates, in the midst of the great
commercial and maritime establishments of the Persian Gulf, agreeable to
the unanimous witness of all antiquity."[313]

If we pass from the probable origin of the Phoenician people, and their