and Khdti
populations; obliteration of types-Influence of Babylon on
costumes, customs, and religion--Baalim and Astarte, plant-gods and
stone-gods-Religion, human sacrifices, festivals; sacred stones--Tombs
and the fate of man after death-Phoenician cosmogony._

_Phoenicia--Arad, Marathus, Simyra, Botrys--Byblos, its temple, its
goddess, the myth of Adonis: Aphaka and the valley of the Nahr-Ibrahim,
the festivals of the death and resurrection of Adonis--Berytus and
its god El; Sidon and its suburbs--Tyre: its foundation, its gods, its
necropolis, its domain in the Lebanon._

_Isolation of the Phoenicians with regard to the other nations of Syria;
their love of the sea and the causes which developed it--Legendary
accounts of the beginning of their colonization--Their commercial
proceedings, their banks and factories; their ships--Cyprus, its wealth,
its occupations--The Phoenician colonies in Asia Minor and the AEgean
Sea: purple dye--The nations of the AEgean._

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CHAPTER II--SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

Nineveh and the first Cossaean kings--The peoples of Syria, their towns,
their civilization, their religion--Phoenicia.

The world beyond the Arabian desert presented to the eyes of the
enterprising Pharaohs an active and bustling scene. Babylonian
civilization still maintained its hold there without a rival, but
Babylonian rule had ceased to exercise any longer a direct control,
having probably disappeared with the sovereigns who had introduced it.
When Ammisatana died, about the year 2099, the line of Khammurabi became
extinct, and a family from the Sea-lands came into power.*

* The origin of this second dynasty and the reading of its
name still afford matter for discussion. Amid the many
conflicting opinions, it behoves us to remember that
Gulkishar, the only prince of this dynasty whose title we
possess, calls himself _King of the Country of the Sea_,
that is to say, of the marshy country at the mouth of the
Euphrates: this simple fact directs us to seek the cradle of
the family in those districts of Southern Chaldaea. Sayce
rejects this identification on philological and
chronological grounds, and sees in Gulkishar, "King of the
Sea-lands," a vassal Kalda prince.

This unexpected revolution of affairs did not by any means restore
to the cities of Lower Chaldaea the supreme authority which