A history of ancient geography / by H.F. Tozer.

  • Henry Fanshawe Tozer
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of ancient geography / by H.F. Tozer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    its western end. In the first of these seas we note their progress by way of Cyprus and Rhodes to Crete, which island, from its position at the southern limit of the Aegean, and between the extremities of the continents of Greece and Asia Minor, was suited to be a starting-point for future advances. In the Aegean itself we find numerous evidences ^the Aegean of their presence. Thus the name Samos, which, whether it occurs in the island of that name or in Samothrace, was recognised by the Greeks as meaning ‘a height1,’ is derived from the Semitic shamah ‘ to be high.’ Lampsacus, as the city at the entrance of the Hellespont from the Propontis was called, signified in that language the town “at the ford.” Atabyrium, the highest summit in Rhodes, is the same as Tabor; in fact the Greeks thus designated the well-known mountain in Palestine. Iardanos also, the stream in Crete, has the same name as the Jordan, yarden being the Phoenician word for ‘river’; and Adramyttium in Mysia corresponds to Hadrumetum in Africa. Elsewhere we find traces of the Phoenician religion. In Thasos there was a temple of the Tyrian Heracles2, i.e. Melcarth; and in several places where the local name Macaria is found associated with traditions of Heracles, it would seem to be a corruption of the title of the same god. The cult of Aphrodite Urania which existed in Cythera, a Phoenician station, was in reality that of Astarte, and in several places called Astyra we find the traces of her name. Again, the ‘Great Gods’ that were worshipped in Samothrace, though in all probability they were not originally Semitic divinities, yet seem at one time to have passed under the influence of the Phoenicians from their name Cabeiri, which is derived from kabir ‘great,’ a title applied by that people to their leading deities. In connexion with the purple fisheries, by which they obtained the Tyrian dye, we find the Phoenicians in the Laconian gulf and at Hermione in the Argolic Acte, both of which places were famed for their purple; and in the same connexion we discover their traces at Corinth, on the coins of which city the purple-mussel appears, and where Sisyphus is said to have been father of Porphyrion, that is the purple-trade, and 1 Strabo, 8. 3. 19, crcfiious {k6.\ovv Oi/'tj. 2 Herod. 2. 44.
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