Many things concur to show that neither Egypt nor Phœnicia was the original fountain of much that was thus disseminated to Greece. In some instances, the attendant circumstances, and in others the internal evidence, unmistakably indicate an Israelite origin. Phœnicia was a strip of sea-coast, ten or twelve miles wide, lying between the northern part of the land of Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. Tyre and Sidon, its two chief cities, were the only practicable sea-ports on the coast of Palestine. They were distant, the former, about one hundred and twenty miles, and the latter, one hundred, from Jerusalem. Their supplies were derived largely from the fields, the vineyards, and the olive groves of Israel. (2 Chron. ii, 10; Acts xii, 20.) Except slight provincial differences, the language of the two people was the same; and the intimacy of the relations is seen in the fact that the drift of dialect in the two closely coincided. Hiram king of Tyre, was David’s intimate friend, and Solomon’s faithful and efficient ally, in the erection of the temple and his own palace, in adorning Jerusalem, and in commercial enterprises. His relation with David, and his message of salutation to Solomon (2 Chron. ii, 12) argue him a professed worshiper of the God of Israel. Thus, whilst the Phœnician territory was a mask by which Israel was concealed from the Mediterranean countries, the Phœnicians, themselves, can not but have realized a profound impression from the wonderful system of religious rites and the testimonies of religious truth which were maintained in Israel and centered around that temple on Mount Sion, which was a monument of Phœnician skill in architecture and the mechanic arts. The ideas thus communicated and the impressions thus produced must have been borne abroad by every wind that filled a Phœnician sail, and disseminated to every land that was touched by a Phœnician prow. The art of alphabetic writing is an illustration of this. It did not originate in Phœnicia, but, as internal evidence demonstrates,—with the Arameans, of whom Israel was a branch. The Phœnician characters were the same as the Old Hebrew. Once acquired by that maritime people, the art was diffused to Greece, to Rome, and the world. The Egyptians no less than the Phœnicians were idolaters, having lords many and gods many. When, therefore, the sages of Greece returned from their explorations, prepared to whisper to their confidential disciples the sublime doctrine of the divine unity, and even to erect an altar “_To the Unknown God_,”[38] we are justified in the conviction that at some point in the course of their travels, they had caught an echo of that voice which spake to the twelve tribes in the wilderness,—“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.”—Deut. vi, 4. To the same originals undoubtedly are to be referred many of the ceremonials of their religion. Of this, the rules of uncleanness, and rites of purifying are remarkable illustrations. Footnote 38: