DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0167
THE RED MEN OF THE ^EGEAN 141
to a connection of language, and probably of race. The
Minoans of Crete were, in all probability, very much the
same kind of people as the contemporary inhabitants of
Lycia and Caria. In a slightly different way we may trace
a connection between Crete and the north coast of Syria.
Philistia may have been a Minoan colony, and the Semites
of Tyre and Sidon may, as Mr. Evans has suggested,1
have developed their curiously unsemitic love of the sea
under the influence of their Cretan neighbours. It is
possible, indeed, that the name Phoinikes, or " Red Men,"
was first applied by the invading Greeks to all the brown-
complexioned people among whom they came, and that it
was only later restricted to the Semites of Canaan. This
view of Fick's 1 is not without its difficulties, and we have
to explain why the Greeks gave up the name for the Red
Men of the ^Egean among whom they settled, and applied
it only to a people who still remained foreigners to them.
We must imagine that the colour-word was applied in the
first days of invasion, when the darker tint was unfamiliar
to the Northern blonds, and that its meaning was soon
forgotten. It was thus restricted to the one sea-going
people of the south-east who in the succeeding centuries
came into close contact with the Greeks as a racial unit.
The theory would throw much needed light on certain
traces of " Phoenicians" on the Greek mainland which
it is difficult to associate with the Semites. Cadmus,
for instance, and the " Phoenician writing " of Boeotian
1 hebes ' may only be one of the earliest Greek traditions
of men who used the script of Knossos. They may point
to the same kinship between the /Egean and Asia Minor
as the Pictographs in which Proetus wrote down the
1 J-U.S. xxi. p. iji. See also ibid. xiv. pp. 368-72.
2 v.o. p. I23.
3 The inscriptions Herodotus saw in Thebes (v. 58-61) were
only Archaic Greek, but, as his language shows, they were not
the origin for him of the tradition he knew, but an inference from
>t; in point of fact a mistaken one.
to a connection of language, and probably of race. The
Minoans of Crete were, in all probability, very much the
same kind of people as the contemporary inhabitants of
Lycia and Caria. In a slightly different way we may trace
a connection between Crete and the north coast of Syria.
Philistia may have been a Minoan colony, and the Semites
of Tyre and Sidon may, as Mr. Evans has suggested,1
have developed their curiously unsemitic love of the sea
under the influence of their Cretan neighbours. It is
possible, indeed, that the name Phoinikes, or " Red Men,"
was first applied by the invading Greeks to all the brown-
complexioned people among whom they came, and that it
was only later restricted to the Semites of Canaan. This
view of Fick's 1 is not without its difficulties, and we have
to explain why the Greeks gave up the name for the Red
Men of the ^Egean among whom they settled, and applied
it only to a people who still remained foreigners to them.
We must imagine that the colour-word was applied in the
first days of invasion, when the darker tint was unfamiliar
to the Northern blonds, and that its meaning was soon
forgotten. It was thus restricted to the one sea-going
people of the south-east who in the succeeding centuries
came into close contact with the Greeks as a racial unit.
The theory would throw much needed light on certain
traces of " Phoenicians" on the Greek mainland which
it is difficult to associate with the Semites. Cadmus,
for instance, and the " Phoenician writing " of Boeotian
1 hebes ' may only be one of the earliest Greek traditions
of men who used the script of Knossos. They may point
to the same kinship between the /Egean and Asia Minor
as the Pictographs in which Proetus wrote down the
1 J-U.S. xxi. p. iji. See also ibid. xiv. pp. 368-72.
2 v.o. p. I23.
3 The inscriptions Herodotus saw in Thebes (v. 58-61) were
only Archaic Greek, but, as his language shows, they were not
the origin for him of the tradition he knew, but an inference from
>t; in point of fact a mistaken one.