Читать книгу Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia. An account of two years' examination work in 1902-4 on behalf of the government of Rhodesia онлайн

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It is to be noticed, in the first place, that although the Phœnicians are believed to have migrated from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean about three millenniums before the New Era, no Phœnician inscriptions have yet been anywhere discovered in the Mediterranean lands older than about the seventh or the eighth century b.c. Before that time the Phœnicians, like the kindred Canaanites and Israelites, were rude, uncultured peoples, with no knowledge of letters, except, perhaps, of the hieroglyphs, cuneiforms, and other scripts of their Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian, Hittite, and Cretan neighbours. Even the Moabite Stone, if it be genuine, is post-Solomonic, since its reputed “author” was the Moabite king, Mesha, contemporary of Jehoram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah. How, then, could the unlettered Jews and Phœnicians of the time of David, Solomon, and Hiram leave any written records of themselves in Rhodesia? After that epoch the intercourse with South Africa was interrupted, because “Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold; but they went not; for the ships were broken at Ezion-geber” (1 Kings xxii. 48). And then the star of Jacob waned, and the scattering of the Ten Tribes of Israel was presently followed by the dire calamities that fell upon Judah, and put an end for ever to all further quest of treasure in the Austral seas.