Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian or Babylonian.  At first we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial Nu or Apsu; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the Nile under the hand? of Khnumu; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the Lakhmu, the Anshar, and the Illinu of Chaldaean speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings.

[Illustration:  246.jpg]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the Cabinet
     des Medailles.

The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless:  they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm.  No sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order.  It was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds.

In Phoenicia the sea is everything:  of land there is but just enough to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of gardens.  Mount Lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost entirely from Coele-Syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of the sea.  At frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front:  these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history.  To the north were the Zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might.  Arvad,* which was used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an island some two miles from the coast:  it was only about a thousand yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories.  An Astarte reigned there, as also a sea-Baal, half man, half fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.**