"If I shut up the heavens and there is no rain; if I command the locusts to ravage the land; or if I let loose pestilence against My people, when My people, who bear My name, humble themselves, pray, and seek My favor and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear in My heavenly abode and forgive their sins and heal their land." II Chronicles 7:13-14

Chapter 3

Phoenicia

by Walter Baucum

Background Information

The subject of who the Phoenicians were is interesting. They have been dubbed the sea lords of antiquity. Capt has quite a bit to say about them.

Capt and other sources say the name "Phoenician" was used by the Achaeans and other Hellenes to denote the sun-tanned seamen of the Aegean. It especially appears to have been applied to the Cretan Cadmus [son of Phoenix or Agenor, king of Phoenicia]. He was traditionally spoken of as a Phoenician, yet he was a cousin of Minos, semi-legendary king of Crete. Cadmus brought the Cretan linear syllabary to Boetia, a district of central Greece. In the period following the Trojan War, the name gradually became attached to the merchants from Tyre and Sidon and other ports on the Syrian coast, and these are the people known by that name in historic times. There was a symbiotic nautical relationship between Dan and Esau as early as, or earlier than, 1300 BCE (Judges 5:10), and these can be traced to that same area.

Capt believed the Phoenicians were the inventors of the alphabet sometime around 1200 BCE. Prior to that date, all Syria and Palestine used the cumbersome Babylonian cuneiform script. As early as the 10th century BCE, we find the Phoenician alphabet in use throughout Syria as well as Greece and southern Arabia. Collins [The "Lost" Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!] believes this alphabet to be almost, if not entirely, an Israelite invention. His opinion is that King Solomon [ruled approx. 960 — 920] perfected it and popularized it among most of the major nations of the world.

Simultaneous with the spread of the alphabet, or earlier, the name "Hebrew" came into existence. The name "Hebrew" designated several groups of people, out of whom grew the kindred nations of Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Israelites. Both the Ammonites and Moabites were children of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Edomites are mostly Turkey [Esau], although Davidy believes some are Germans. These three, then, "were of the Israelites’ own family and genetically possibly identical."²

By 1300 BCE, Danite Israelites had gone to sea with, and were part of, the "Phoenicians." Capt says Dan was in ships as early as 1296 BCE.

Interpretations and conclusions by sources other than Capt’s show some differences, although they are minor. Trento says it wasn’t until the first millennium BCE, when the Mycenean and Hittite empires of the eastern Mediterranean fell apart, that the Phoenicians distinguished themselves as powerful and daring sea merchants. Their far-flung voyages and strong-arm naval tactics allowed them to corner the ancient market for commercial goods, like Canary Island purple dye, African gold, and British tin. He says that Pomponius Mela, a Spanish contemporary of Plutarch, said the Phoenicians were a clever race who prospered in war and peace and who excelled in writing and literature, in other arts, in seamanship, in naval warfare, and in ruling an empire.

Returning to Cadmos and the Phoenicians, Davidy said, "Nahum Slouschz wrote a book (Les Hebreo-Pheniciens, i.e., The Hebrew-Phoenicians, Paris, 1909), in which he analyzed the interconnections between the Phoenicians and the ancient Israelites. According to Slouschz, the Phoenicians in Classical mythology were represented by the figures of Cadmos and Hercules. Cadmos was based on an earlier tradition regarding the Phoenician forerunners, whereas Hercules (called Melquart by the Phoenicians) represented them within Historical Classical times."³

Davidy points out that Hercules was probably Samson because of similar (or identical) exploits based on both characters. Gawler [later in this chapter] makes the same association.

Continuing to quote Slouschz, Davidy goes into the legend of Cadmos’ birth-heritage, among which Cadmos went west, founding Thebes in Greece, maybe Carthage in North Africa, and places in southern Europe. Another quote, by Lempriere, under "Cadmos," says that Cadmos is believed to have settled ultimately in Illyricum [modern Yugoslavia].

"Agenor (father of Cadmos) represents Phoenicia. He was the son of ‘Poseidon.’ Another son of ‘Poseidon’ (‘Neptune’) was Albion who, according to Greek tradition, founded a kingdom in Britain. The hinterland of Phoenicia is known as Lebanon. ‘Albion’ (i.e., Britain in Classical terms) is synonymous in meaning with ‘Lebanon.’ Both words indicate ‘whiteness’ and both derive from the same root."⁴

"‘Neptune’ was associated with the Israelite Tribe of Nephtali and ‘Poseidon’ with the ‘Sons of Dan.’"⁵ Other historical evidence confirms that some of the Israelites inhabiting Lebanon were the same as those in Britain.

Davidy continues.

This same connection is made again in Deuteronomy 33:18-19. "Rejoice Zebulon in your going out; and Issachar in your tents. They shall call the people unto the mountain; they shall suck of the abundance of the sea, and of treasures hid in the sand…."

Davidy adds that, "The Talmud (Megilla, 6a) understood the blessing of Zebulon to entail success in sea fishing, the production of purple dye from a sea mollusc, and the manufacture of glass from certain sands in the Tyre and Sidon area. Zebulon was also considered a sea merchant. All the activities of Zebulon are those otherwise associated with the Phoenicians [italics added].

"The Israelite Tribe of Dan too had interests and colonies in Phoenician areas. Hiram, king of Tyre sent to Solomon, ‘a cunning man, endued with understanding…the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre…’ (2 Chronicles 2:12,13)."⁷

1 Kings 7:13,14 adds this: "And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre: He was a widow’s son of the Tribe of Nephtali and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass [probably means bronze]."

The difference here of Dan and Naphtali is insignificant, since by the time of Solomon, Phoenician Tyre was almost exclusively an Israelite power, composed of the northern Tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Zebulon, Issachar, and Asher.

What is important is that Israelites from Dan and Naphtali were interconnected with Tyre and with crafts for which Tyre had a reputation. There is something else of interest.

Another source claims this dye to have been made from a certain sea mollusk.

We now will take a closer look at the Phoenicians and some of their accomplishments. First of all, they were great seafarers.

Davidy says that at one stage Carthaginians (Phoenicians) are recorded to have transported 30,000 men and women in 60 ships on a colonizing venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules [now Gibraltar], apparently to West Africa, [although it could very well have been across the Atlantic to America, maybe to the American Southwest to become the Anasazi, or perhaps to Bolivia, where a huge ancient empire recently has been found]. This was in 500-480 BCE and shows that at that time, large-scale migration and colonization by sea were practiced. Previously, in the era 1100-800 BCE, the Phoenicians had had, in a practical sense, a trade monopoly over the sea trade routes in the Mediterranean area and beyond it. The Phoenicians established settlements in North Africa, in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, and also had trading emporiums in Spain and Britain.

Diodorus of Sicily (16:20) states that, "The Phoenicians planted many colonies throughout Libya (i.e., Africa) and not a few as well in western parts of Europe." Avienus himself implied that these Phoenicians had established colonies in Britain. Their monopoly on the British tin made them rich and powerful; tin and copper are essential in the production of bronze, which was the basic metal employed by most ancients. Many bronze daggers, axes, and other figurines and implements have been found in the mounds in the East and Midwest of the United States. Even Joseph Smith and the people of his day, believing the mound builders to be red "Israelite" Americans, would dig into these mounds seeking evidence for their belief. They found many bronze and copper tools in them. The American Indians did not make bronze.

Some say that "Phoenician" was interchangeable with "Canaanite." Was "the Canaanite...then in the land [found in Genesis 12:6 and 13:7] a true descendant of the Canaan who was one of the four sons of Ham? Were they the same in Genesis 9:25, where old father Noah said, ‘Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants of Creator ("slave of slaves" or "lowest of slaves" in Hebrew) shall he be unto his brethren’?"

If they were the same, it is incongruous with other verses in Scripture, with archaeology, and with history. The "so-called" Canaanites of the Levant [the Phoenicians] were heirs to a colonial empire such as is only befitting the seven 12-tribed nations of Genesis. Does this sound like "lowly slaves"? Archaeology has revealed that most of these Canaanites were virtually identical to the Israelites, both linguistically and culturally. There is no contradiction in the Hebrew Scriptures. Although Genesis specifies that Nahor spoke Aramaic, the Semitic dialect of Padan-Aram, there is no mention of any peculiarity in the speech of the Canaanites or that the patriarchs had any trouble in communicating with them. Both Jacob and Laban spoke like the people of their respective homelands, with no difficulty in understanding. The Phoenician language was identical with the Hebrew (Gawler, "Dan, the Pioneer of Israel," p. 31).

Although certain Canaanites were dispossessed by Israel, other Canaanites themselves were great supplanters. All of these Canaanites were called Phoenicians by the Greeks, a word meaning "blood red," which probably was a reference to the purple cloth the Phoenicians exported to other nations. It might even have referred to the color of their skin, or even their hair, as Capt related, or their land, as Collins writes.

The Phoenicians were a technologically advanced people. In fact, ETERNAL tells one of their princes:

The Phoenicians were the greatest seafaring merchants of the ancient world. Solomon employed their ships and seamen in his navy and used their technical expertise in building the Temple. They had circumnavigated Africa, had sailed [on open seas] to Britain and Scandinavia, and had sailed to America.

They colonized the Mediterranean, including Carthage, and even challenged Rome for world supremacy. They also introduced the alphabet to Europe.

Classical authors believed the Phoenicians were immigrants in the Levant. Herodotus reported their having come from the Erythraean Sea, a broad term including the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. The Roman historian Justin said they had abandoned their original country because of a great earthquake, settling first near the Sea of Galilee and afterwards on the Mediterranean coast. Some modern historians believe they were made up largely of Semitic emigrants from the Sinai and regions about ancient Edom. Phoenicia and Edom have the same meaning. Both mean "red."

The Hebrew Scriptures single out two peoples as being proverbial for their wisdom: the Phoenicians of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:3,12 and Isaiah 23:8; the Temanite Edomites in Jeremiah 49:7, Job 2:11, 22:1, and Obadiah 9.

"Melkart," the god of Tyre, was a great hunter, just as Esau had been. Mainland Tyre even bore the name "Ushu," a name linked to Esau. Eusebius preserved a Phoenician myth of the origin of Tyre. Mentioned earlier, it is the legend of two brothers, Samemroumos, whose name means "exalted by heaven" [see Genesis 28:13,14], and "Ousoos," who some believe to personify mainland Tyre [called "Ushu"]. Ousoos was a successful hunter. He quarreled with his brother and was thereby forced to seek his fortunes at sea, thus accounting for the Phoenicians’ mastery of the ocean.

When Jacob stole Esau’s birthright, both were blessed by old blind Isaac, although some modern scholars tell us that Esau received no blessing but rather a curse. They interpret Genesis 27:39 as saying, "...away from the fatness of the earth...and away from the dew of heaven on high." Neither the KJV nor the Tanakh says this. Nor do any of the ancient writings ever translate Esau’s blessing as only a curse. Jewish tradition, too, has it as a blessing. The KJV doesn’t say "away from" but rather "shall be," i.e., a blessing.

We find in Genesis 36:6-8 that although Esau had come into great wealth, he voluntarily decided to migrate, "…and went to another land because of his brother Jacob. For their possessions were too many for them to dwell together, and the land where they sojourned could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir–Esau being Edom."

In Deuteronomy 2:4, Eternal tells Israel, "I have given the hill country of Seir as a possession to Esau." Numbers 20:17 points out that Mount Seir was blessed with "fields," "vineyards," and "wells." Jewish tradition anciently ascribed the supremacy of Greece and Rome to the blessing of Esau.⁹

With all the above, it appears that the "Canaanites" that colonized the Mediterranean, not the son of Noah, were the ones to fulfill the promise to Edom. Many of these Esau-ites did come to swell the population of certain regions of the Greco-Roman world, and they, with Dan, colonized parts of America, as we shall see below. Some of Esau evidently did go to sea to become a great nautical power. In the same tenor, the things said about Dan, some even questioning whether he were a true Israelite Tribe, or just a strange people adopted into the sonship of Israel, could have some meaning derived from the fact that he went to sea with these "Canaanites," thereby forfeiting his proper kinship with his brothers.

Phoenician relics and writings have been found around the world. What evidence, if any, do we find that these Phoenicians sailed to America?

At Los Lunas, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a version of the Ten Commandments engraved on a rock, and another similar inscription has been found on a stone tablet in a burial mound at Newark, Ohio. These are ancient inscriptions using a north Canaanite script and old Hebrew language. These petroglyphs date to 900-800 BCE and are in the Old Hebrew language and using a Phoenician alphabet.¹⁰

Note the date. This was in the time of King Solomon and the Phoenician King Hiram. The authors believe this region in New Mexico to have been the destination of the "Ships of Tarshish" in 1 Kings 10:22. The Old Hebrew language was not used by the Jews after the Babylonian exile. Aramaic replaced it. The old script was replaced in the last century BCE by the quadratic script, which is still in use today. Rabbis, though, still understand the Old Hebrew, in which the first five books of Moses are written.

The Phoenician language and script, which had spread through the Mediterranean area by the turn of the first millennium BCE, was the basis of the Hebrew, Greek, and other alphabets, it had been supplanted in the old Phoenician territory around Tyre and Sidon by the time of Alexander, but it had remained dominant in Carthage [called Punic language] until the city’s destruction by Rome in 146 BCE. In other North African and American colonies of the Phoenician-Danites, the language remained in use until the 4th century CE. Then it, along with Cuneiform writings and Egyptian hieroglyphs, vanished into oblivion. About 200 years ago the Phoenician script was deciphered.

Nollau and Utriusque wondered if the inscriptions were made by Jews [meaning Israelites] who, together with Phoenicians [Esau-ites and Danites at first, but later including members of Asher, Zebulon, Naphtali, and Issachar], made long voyages for King Solomon. After an absence of three years, they delivered 420 talents of gold (1 Kings 9:28 and 10:22). The 420 talents would be about 11,000 kg today with a value of about 100 million dollars. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures is there a clue to where "Ophir" is. The Phoenicians, we have learned, kept their trade routes a strict secret.¹¹

The authors ¹¹ decided to investigate further, specifically to check out the assertions by skeptics that they were a Mormon fake. At the Mormon Pioneer Museum in Salt Lake City, they found no evidence of Mormons having been in the Los Lunas area, except for one instance. The "Mormon Battalion," which was part of the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, marched from Santa Fe down the Rio Grande Valley. They read diaries of the soldiers, reading that the officers commanding the battalion maintained strict discipline, allowing none of their soldiers to leave the column. Also, a Professor Charles S. Peterson, Mormon history specialist, told them that in the 19th century, no Mormon would have been able to write such an inscription. Joseph Smith had studied Hebrew but had been murdered before the Mormons’ trek to the West.

Another possibility might have been when the Romans destroyed Carthage. Punic sailors and other Israelites living there might have fled across the ocean to avoid the burning of their ships, which has been reported by Livius in his History of the Punic Wars.¹²

Concerning the Land of Ophir that Kings David and Solomon sent ships to, some evidence exists that it was in South Africa. However, it very well could have been in North America or South America, specifically Peru. The main point is made in 1 Kings 9 that the ships left from the Red Sea [Indian Ocean side] of Israel and returned from the Atlantic Ocean side, which would strongly suggest their crossing the Atlantic to reach North or South America. 2 Chronicles 9:21 tells us that Solomon’s fleet of ships made these voyages every three years, the exact time it took Magellan many centuries later to traverse the globe. To sail down the coastline to southern Africa and back again would not have taken so long, nor would it have entailed entering the Atlantic.

As stated earlier, the Danite-Esau-ite confederation known as "Phoenician" became almost entirely Israelite, with many of the northern-placed Tribes of Dan, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, and Naphtali gradually replacing the Esau-ites by the time of the founding of Carthage. Even King Hiram was half Israelite, as seen in 2 Chronicles 2 and 1 Kings 7. Fell and some few others, however, do not see this distinction.

We conclude then that [some of] the Tribes of Esau and [some of] Dan intermingled to become the Phoenicians. Their most famous ancient cities were Sidon and Tyre. Fell said that around 800 BCE they established strong trading posts on the North African coast, west of Egypt and as far afield as Morocco and southern Spain. One of their posts grew into the powerful Kharkhedona [called by the Greeks and Romans "Carthage"], located in a bay at the northern tip of Tunisia. They traded in purple dye and cloth and were called "Phoinikoi" [the Purple People] by the Greeks [and from which word we get our name, Phoenician] and Punici by the Romans, which means the same. We usually restrict the use of the word "Punic" to serve as a synonym for Carthaginians and speak of them as using the "Punic" language.

They were famed mariners and established a complete monopoly on the tin trade, getting it from England and areas near the British Isles. They jealously protected their monopoly on it by blockading the Straits of Gibraltar so that no foreign vessel could leave or enter the Atlantic without their knowledge and permission.¹³

Tin was used with copper to make bronze, which was in high demand by most of the Mediterranean world of that day. Tin was mined and smelted continuously in Cornwall from Bronze Age times onward, right through the Roman occupation and on through the Dark Ages and Medieval times until the modern era. Most of the copper for this bronze likely came from the Great Lakes area in America. The Phoenicians, the Israelites under Kings David and Solomon, and the Carthaginians controlled the Bronze Age. All of these were predominantly, or entirely, Israelites.

Some of the Carthaginians crossed over Gibraltar into Spain and Portugal, mixed with Israelite Celts, and became known [their language] as Celtiberian.

Fell says, "The first find of an engraved Phoenician tablet in America was that of a Tartessian inscription found in 1838, excavated from a burial chamber found at the base of Mammoth Mound, in Moundsville, West Virginia."

At the "Mystery Hill" site in New Hampshire, Fell said, "…carbon analyses point to periods of occupation of the site extending back to the second millennium BCE." One of the chambers there "…was dedicated to the Phoenician god ‘Baal.’" Ancient inscriptions at the site indicate that it was inhabited or frequented by ancient Celts, Iberians, and Phoenicians from the Old World over many centuries. A colleague of Fell found there a dedication tablet, reading, "To ‘Baal’ of the Canaanites (Phoenicians), this in dedication." Subsequently, an Ogam dedication was found by Robert Stone, "…showing that ‘Bel’ (the sun god of the Celts) was identified with ‘Baal’ of the Semitic peoples.

"It became clear that ancient Celts had built the New England megalithic chambers and that Phoenician mariners were welcome visitors, permitted to worship at the Celtic sanctuaries and allowed to make dedications in their own language."¹⁴

The Pontotoc stele, found in Oklahoma by Gloria Farley and Weldon W. Stout, is the work of an early Iberian colonist in America–script is known only from the Cachao-da-Rapa region in northern Portugal. The Iberian Punic letters are an abstract from "Hymn to the ‘Aton,’" by Pharaoh Akhnaton, and says, "When ‘Baal-Ra’ rises in the east, the beasts are content, and (when he hides his face?), they are displeased." Although dated from the thirteenth century BCE, the American version can scarcely be older than about 800 BCE.¹⁵

Some, including James Whittall, a colleague of Fell, think that the American Celts were deliberately brought here by Phoenicians, who wanted mining communities to exploit American natural resources, and with whom they could then trade.

Inscriptions, for example, have been found in West Virginia and Ohio, where their association with large burial tumuli resembling those of the Iberian Bronze Age points to important American colonies of these Phoenician navigators and merchant princes. Merchants rather than mere explorers, they traded with the New England Celts, who by 700 to 600 BCE would have been well-established fur trappers already and very likely were mining precious metals on many sites where ancient workings have been discovered (Fell, Whittall, et al.).

"The periodic arrival of Phoenician ships on the New England coast is attested by the Ogam inscription on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. It is obvious that the flat-topped rocky islet would not have been set aside for the loading and unloading of Phoenician ships were they not regular visitors to America, with a predictable timetable of ports of arrival and departure at expected dates" [italics added].¹⁶

"These Monhegan inscriptions are given in old Goedelic and were intended as a notification for native American Celts and Amerindians too, probably, who had goods for sale or exchange, to inform them where to bring their merchandise. They suggest that organized international maritime commerce was well established in the late Bronze Age, that North American ports were listed on the sailing timetables of the overseas vessels of the principal Phoenician shipping companies, and that the same information was circulated to customers in America [italics added].

"Across a tiny harbor on the southwestern end of Monhegan Island is Manana Island. In 1975, Barry Fell translated a carved inscription along the face of a weathered rock outcropping near a high hilltop that said, "Long-ships from Phoenicia: Cargo-lots (and) landing-quay." Fell called the language Hinge-Ogam, which at that time was an unrecognized Celtic script. This language since became known as Celtiberian and is found not only in America but also in Portugal and Spain [the Iberian Peninsula].

"Back on Monhegan Island, a tiny arrowhead was found in a trash pile, Carbon-14 dated to approximately 1800 BCE, that later was found to be composed of tin and copper. There are no tin deposits in either the eastern or middle states of America. The closest mines are in Bolivia, which mines were not worked in 1800 BCE. As mentioned, the Phoenicians are credited with spreading the Bronze Age culture throughout the Mediterranean due to their tin trade. Phoenician ships, as early as 1300 BCE, regularly sailed from their Cornish and Spanish tin mines to all parts of the known world and undoubtedly to America.

"Near Binghamton, New York, on the Susquehanna River, a small metal urn was accidentally unearthed in 1973. It appears to be a metal representation of an ancient Mediterranean pottery type known as terra sigillata. On its upper panel is depicted in bas-relief a typical south Iberian head of the Carthaginian goddess ‘Tanit.’ ‘Tanit,’ in Phoenician-Carthaginian cosmology, was the wife of ‘Baal,’ the Semitic sun god. On the neck and base of the urn is the palmate design, a characteristically Phoenician feature."¹⁷

"The sum total of evidence from burial sites, from the chance discovery of burial marker stones and boundary stones, from other sources, all adds up to a consistent and simple explanation of all the baffling facts; it is simply this–European colonists and traders have been visiting or settling in the Americas for thousands of years, have introduced their scripts and artifacts and skills, and have exported abroad American products such as copper."¹⁸

[ The History and Future of Israelite America index ]

[ Chapter 3 Part 2: Phonecia ]

[ The Hope of Israel Main Page ]

Endnotes

1 Capt, E. Raymond, Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets, pp. 43, 45.

2 Davidy, Yair, Lost Israelite Identity, p. 135.

3 Ibid, p. 159.

4 Ibid, p. 160.

5 Ibid, p. 268.

6 Ibid, pp. 160-161.

7 Ibid, p. 161.

8 Ibid, pp. 161-163.

9 Rude, Noel. Much of this regarding the blessings of Esau and Jacob is from a study paper entitled, "The Ancient Near East." Rude is a linguist-scholar presently employed by the University of Mexico in Mexico City.

10 Nollau, Guenther & Utriusque, Iuris, "Ten Commandments in the New Mexico Desert," ESOP (Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers), p. 142.

11 Ibid, p. 143.

12 Ibid, p. 143.

13 Fell, Saga America, p. 159.

14 Fell, America B.C., pp. 157, 81-92.

15 Ibid, p. 159.

16 Ibid, pp. 100-101.

17 Trento, Salvatore Michael, The Search for Lost America, p. 72.

18 Fell, Saga America, p. 260.

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