gap between Lebanon and Bargylus made the Aradian territory accessible
from the Coelesyrian valley; and there is reason to believe that one of
the roads which Egyptian and Assyrian conquest followed in these parts
was that which passed along the coast as far as the Eleutherus and then
turned eastward and north-eastward to Emesa (Hems) and Hamath. It must
have been conquerors marching by this line who set up their effigies at
the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb, and those who pursued it would naturally
make a point of reducing Aradus. Thus this second Phoenician "world" has
not the isolated character of the first, but shows marks of Assyrian,
and still more of early Egyptian, influence. The third Phoenician
"world" is that of Gebal or Byblus. Its limits would seem to be the
Eleutherus on the north, and on the south the Tamyras, which would allow
it a length of a little above eighty miles. This district, it has been
said, preserved to the last days of paganism a character which was
original and well marked. Within its limits the religious sentiment had
more intensity and played a more important part in life than elsewhere
in Phoenicia. Byblus was a sort of Phoenician Jerusalem. By their turn
of mind and by the language which they spoke, the Byblians or Giblites
seem to have been, of all the Phoenicians, those who most resembled the
Hebrews. King Jehavmelek, who probably reigned at Byblus about B.C. 400,
calls himself "a just king," and prays that he may obtain favour in
the sight of God. Later on it was at Byblus, and in the valleys of the
Lebanon depending on it, that the inhabitants celebrated those mysteries
of Astarte, together with that orgiastic worship of Adonis or Tammuz,
which were so popular in Syria during the whole of the Greco-Roman
period.[4105] The fourth Phoenician "world" was that of Tyre and Sidon,
beginning at the Tamyras and ending with the promontory of Carmel. Here
it was that the Phoenician character developed especially those traits
by which it is commonly known to the world at large--a genius for
commerce and industry, a passion for the undertaking of long and