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National Geographic : 1974 Aug
Contents
Gateway to the unknown, the Rock of Gibraltar-one of the Pil lars of Heracles-once stood at the edge of the world. Greek myth ology credits Heracles, a deity the Phoenicians called Melqart, with setting up the great headlands at the Mediterranean's mouth. Car thaginian mariners regularly ven tured beyond. Phoenicians still sail on in bronze (left), as oarsmen of Tyre ferry tribute to Assyria's King Shal maneser III. The scene unfolds on an ornamented band from the gates of Balawat, near Nimrud. They adventured... where none had ever gone be fore. ... Active, energetic, persevering, ingenious, inventive, dexterous, not much troubled with scru ples, they had all the qualities which ensure a nation, in the long run, commercial prosperity and the wealth which flows from it...." In the end, they had to submit: Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia took their tribute and leveled their cities time and again; Alexander in the east, and the Ro mans in the west, finally submerged them as an inde pendent nation, though Hannibal of Carthage came within a single victory of conquering Rome itself. But as a people the Phoenicians have never dis appeared, never been totally submerged. They added other contributions to civilization: Zeno, a Phoenician from Kition on Cyprus, founded the school of Stoicism in Athens. Beirut, in Roman times, held one of the world's most renowned schools of law. PHOENICIAN-today we call them Lebanese merchant traders have flourished through most of the centuries since then, and flourish still in such far-distant cities as Paris, London, New York, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Sydney. In today's oft violent confrontations between Arab and Israeli, capitalism and socialism, East and West, Lebanon modern Phoenicia-still stands as a buffer, a middle ground, a meeting place, a bridge. I talked of these things one quiet spring evening in the hills above Beirut, sitting on a terrace with Dr. Charles Malik, a distinguished Lebanese diplomat who helped write the United Nations Charter, served as President of the General Assembly, and now teach es philosophy at the American University of Beirut. "The Phoenicians have always been consummate diplomats," he said. "They were forced by history to develop finesse and patience and persuasion-and the ability above all of making a deal mutually advan tageous to both sides-qualities that are the essence of diplomacy. "Look down there," he gestured to the sunlit rim of the sea that curved from Beirut in the south to Byblos in the north. "That may be the most significant stretch of coast, the most historic road, in the world! "Consider what has happened right there: The greatest empires of the past, the Egyptians, the Meso potamians, the Romans, all sent their armies march ing along that road. Trade has flowed in and out of St. Georges Bay since the dawn of history. "Those old empires, the civilizations founded on force, all fell and disappeared. Egypt, Assyria, Baby lon, Rome, Byzantium, are gone. But the Phoenicians, who stood between them, are still there, trading be side the same road, sending their ships abroad over the same sea. They have retained their identity. "They have survived." 1 The Phoenicians,Sea Lords of Antiquity 189
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