The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

HIS THLE “CiLiClaAn’ 41

with the Stones of the Field,”’ which is perhaps a reference to the sacred stones of natural boulders, such as were used in the Bel Fire cult ; so that this local name of “ Bleezes,”’ under Bennachie and in sight of our monument, may preserve the tradition of an ancient Pheenician altar blazing with perpetual Fire-offering to Bel.

His title of “ Cilician’’ occurs in two forms of spelling. In the Phcenician script it is spelt ‘‘ Sssi/okoy,’ and in the Ogam, which possesses fewer alphabetic letters, it is written “ Stollagga.”’ This clearly designates the “ Cilicia” of the Romans, the “ Kilikia’’ of the Greeks and the ‘‘ Nilakku”’ or “ Nilakki’’ of the Babylonians,? the maritime province of eastern Asia Minor bordering the north-east corner of the Mediterranean (see map). Situated on the land-bridge connecting Asia Minor and the west with Syria-Phcenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the east, and of great strategical importance, it was early occupied by the Phcenicians, and contained one of their early seaports, namely Tarsus, the “ Tarshish’? of the Hebrew Old Testament, famous for its ships. That city-port was also significantly named ‘‘ Parthenia ’’* or ““ Land of the Parths,’ that is, as now seen, a dialectic variant of the Phcenician eponym “ Barat ,’” in series with the ‘“‘ Prat ’’ on our Newton monument.’ Significantly also it was an especial centre of Bel worship, and was under the special protection of the marine tutelary goddess Barati who was, as we shall see, the Phoenician prototype of our modern British tutelary ‘‘ Britannia.”

So intimately, indeed, were the Phcenicians identified with Cilicia, that later classic Greek writers, when the exact relationship of Cilicia to the Phcenicians had become forgotten, still make the Cilicians to be ‘‘ the brothers” of the Pheenicians. Phenix and King Cadmus-the-Phcenician

1Th., 48.

* See M._D., 314.

*Tarshish is generally arbitrarily identified with Tartessus in Spain, which was also a Phoenician colony. But Rawlinson (R.H.P., 98) inclines to identify it with Tarsus in Cilicia, and rightly so, as my new evidence shows later.

OR CR iss:

* Cilicia was occupied later by the Parthians (S., 669), who, we shall find, were a branch of the Barats.