it was even believed, about the time of Alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the Bahrein Islands, the largest of which, Tylos and Arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of Tyre and Arvad.  We are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they reached the Mediterranean.  The occurrence of violent earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the Lake of Syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded Sidon.  The question arises as to the position of the Lake of Syria on whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the Bahr-i-Nedjif and the environs of Babylon; others, the Lake of Bambykes near the Euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier.  Another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of Merom, the Lake of Galilee, or the Dead Sea; in this case the horde must have crossed the neck of the Arabian peninsula, from the Euphrates to the Jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.* Several writers assure us that the Phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by Herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered on reaching Tyre was not the Persian Gulf, but the Dead Sea.  If this had been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other documents.  The Bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of Kudur-lagamar, the anger of God being kindled by the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, He resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the valley of Siddim.  A cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as “of a furnace,” had passed away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** Previous to their destruction, the lake into which the Jordan empties itself had had but a restricted area:  the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged it to its present dimensions.  The earthquake which caused the Phoenicians to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm, and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our Dead Sea.

* They would thus have arrived at the shores of Lake Merom, or at the shores either of the Dead Sea or of the Lake of Gennesareth; the Arab traditions speak of an itinerary which would have led the emigrants across the desert, but they possess no historic value is so far as these early epochs are concerned.

     ** Gen. xix. 24-29; the whole of this episode belongs to
     the Jehovistic narrative.