Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...of Eshmunezar, King Tabnith of Sidon. No one, however, rejoiced more over Hamdy Bey's discovery than Renan himself. Free as he always was from all feelings of jealousy, he was one of the first to congratulate the Turkish savant on his good fortune. This sarcophagus of Tabnith is the only one with an inscription, or rather with two inscriptions, one in hieroglyphics, the other in ancient Phenician. From the hieroglyphic inscription it appears that it was occupied originally by an Egyptian general, called Penephtah; while the Phenician inscription states that its last occupant was Tabnith, King of Sidon. The same name occurs on the sarcophagus in the Louvre, where Eshmunezar calls himself the son of Tabnith and Amashtoreth. In close proximity to this sarcophagus was found another which had not been opened and plundered, and which, when opened, contained a golden girdle, a royal circlet, a tress of hair, bones and teeth, and remains of linen bandages. The sarcophagus is made of black marble, indicating the outlines of the human body and therefore called anthropoidal. As Eshmunezar in the inscription of the Louvre calls himself the son of Tabnith and Amashtoreth, it has been reasonably concluded that the remains of the anthropoidal or demi-anthropoidal sarcophagus in the same cave were probably those of Amashtoreth, the wife of Tabnith and the mother of Eshmunezar. The date assigned to these sarcophagi, or rather their latest occupants, is about the end of the fifth century B.C., or, according to Maspero, the fourth century B.C. Hamdy Bey objects to the ground being called a necropolis, and he is right in so far as the Phenicians seem to have buried their dead at random rather than in a sacred precinct destined for the dead. Still the spot...
