Phoenician Myths by Zeljko Prodanovic (great reads .txt) 📕

Prologue

The Secret of the Crane’s Tear

It all began a long time ago.
When the Phoenicians built Byblos, the first town ever to be built, Baal’s gentle heart swelled and he decided to give them an extraordinary gift. ‘The first child to be born in this town,’ he said, ‘shall always be reborn!’ It happened and that child was I. I do not remember exactly when it was, but if I replaced centuries with years, which seems quite natural to me, I would now be sixty years old.
The Phoenicians considered my continuous rebirth as a natural thing. It was a gift from their god and therefore they didn’t envy me nor did they feel sorry for me. They named me Phoenix, which meant ‘the one who is always reborn’, and some said that it could also mean ‘the travelling soul’ or ‘the crying soul’.
I spent my first life in Byblos and when I realized that my time was running out I went to Baalbek, where, in the temple of god’s tear, was my grave. From cedar’s branches, incense and myrrh I made a pyre, and soon my body vanished in the fire and my soul turned into a flock of cranes.
The priestess from the temple of god’s tear gathered the remains of my body and buried them beside the altar, and the cranes dropped a tear over Byblos, thus giving my soul away to a newborn boy.
But when I was reborn I didn’t know that I was Phoenix. I wandered the world and thought that I was looking for happiness and some space under the sun, just like everyone else. It was only when I came back to Baalbek that I realized who I was and what my role in the universe was. I realized that I was Phoenix, the one who is always reborn.
And so it was in every life – I wandered the world, searching for something, only to realize in the end that in all those years I was searching for my grave. But that is my fate and I follow it bravely.
As the Phoenicians were the greatest sailors of the time they called themselves Canaanites, which meant ‘the ones who sail’. However, during the course of time it happened that the bedouins, as we called other peoples, began to call these passionate sailors after me – Phoenicians, ‘the ones whose souls travel’ or ‘the ones whose souls cry’.
The Phoenicians were the most gifted people of the ancient world. They invented the imagination, the wheel and the alphabet. They were the best builders and the greatest sailors of their time. They were the first to realize that the earth is round and the first to sail around it. And they never made war.
Unfortunately, they lived surrounded by the bedouins who didn’t understand the greatness of their exploits. They were alone in the cruel world and one could say they lived in a wrong time; or more precisely, they lived out of time.
One day, when the Phoenicians’ role in the universe came to an end and they silently sank into time, I suddenly realized that I was left alone. But what could I have done? I could not, of course, sink along with them, nor could I become a bedouin.
However, I was lucky enough to discover the mysterious fate of the soul. One day, a flock of cranes flew down onto the roof of the temple of god’s tear in Baalbek and one of them came to me and dropped a tear. I was stunned with surprise. ‘Why did the cranes come to the temple of god’s tear?’ I asked myself. ‘Why did the crane drop a tear and what is this tear supposed to mean?’
And then, in one shining moment, I discovered the secret of the crane’s tear – it was somebody’s soul! I was delighted. I realized that the great shining eye that sees everything had chosen Baalbek as the home of the most beautiful souls. I realized that I was not alone and that the beautiful and exciting story of the Phoenicians was to continue.
What I have just begun is an exceptional undertaking – I want to write Phoenician Myths. When Baal gave Phoeni- cians the alphabet and told them to write the story of themselves, they didn’t understand him and sold the alphabet to the Greeks. That is why they never wrote anything and remained an accidental and vague flash in the universe, like a remote flash of lightning.
So, I want to do what should have been done so many centuries ago – I want to outwit death and stop time. But to do so I have to alter the whole of history, which, of course, is not possible. History was written by the victors, the ones who so proudly used to say, ‘We came, we saw and we conquered!’ But if I should succeed…
If I should succeed in doing that, it will be a just reward for all Phoenicians, the most gifted and brave among people, the ones who by the flash of the mind – and not of the sword – opened up new ways along which men had never gone before. It will also be a reward for myself, brave and crazy in the infinite circle of time, a reward for all those years of quest and longing, and for the torments in which I burnt.

The Rhapsody’s First Part

The Princess with the Purple Voice

The Phoenicians believed that the source of everything was in the tear. One day, the Great Architect of the Universe – for reasons known only to him – dropped a tear and out of her the universe was created. Ever since then, in the glowing centre of the universe, glitters the great shining eye that sees everything.
One day, when it cast a glance at the earth, cruelly lost in the universe, the great shining eye dropped a tear. Out of this tear everything on earth was created: seas, rivers, mountains, birds and monkeys. When the great eye saw rivers and monkeys roaming the earth without aim, it felt sorry for them and dropped another tear. Out of her was created Baal, the oldest of all gods.
The generous and wise Baal did many good deeds: he showed rivers the way to the sea, taught birds how to sing and persuaded monkeys to become humans.
Afterwards, Baal wandered the world for a long time, looking for the most suitable place to settle down. One day he came to the cedar forests of Lebanon and, surrounded by the scent of the cedars and the sea, he realized it was the most beautiful place on earth and decided to settle down there.
Many centuries later the Phoenicians arrived on the fertile shores at the foot of Lebanon. When Baal saw how diligently they worked, how wisely they traded and how bravely they sailed the seas, his gentle heart swelled and a tear dropped out of his eye. From this tear, on a rock above the sea and at the foot of the cedar forests, arose Byblos, the first town ever to be built.
The Phoenicians from Byblos believed that Baal had given them the most beautiful thing in the universe – the sun. Saddened because he couldn’t give them eternity, Baal would drop a tear every morning and behind the gentle cedar forests the sun would arise out of her, in the most beautiful of all colours – purple. That is why the Phoeni- cians on the other side of Lebanon, where the sun arose, built a temple and gave it the name Baalbek, ‘the temple of god’s tear’.
Once a year, all the people from Byblos went to Baalbek to celebrate the biggest Phoenician holiday, ‘the week of debauchery’. It was a festival of beauty, love and birth. On the last day of the festival, they would choose the strongest young man and the most beautiful girl and proclaim them ‘king and queen of debauchery’. The young man also had to be the best flute player and the girl had to know how to sing beautifully.
The Phoenicians returned to Byblos the next day and continued to work, build and sail, but the king and the queen of debauchery would stay in Baalbek for another year, to wake Baal with songs and the sounds of flutes playing.
Delighted by the beauty of the singing Baal would shed a tear, which would drop into the girl’s bosom and then turn into the sun. The young man would take it up onto his shoulders and carry it to the top of Lebanon, and on the other side of the mountain, in Byblos, a new day would begin.
The Phoenicians called the young man Alleluia (Baal-el-luia), which meant ‘the one who carries the sun’ or ‘the one who brings the light’, and the girl was called Astarta, ‘the beauty with a tear in her bosom’.
One summer, a young man from Byblos was chosen as the king of debauchery and spent a year in Baalbek. When the year was up, he sailed with his mistress to the Peloponnesos, where he built a town and gave it the name Corinth.
The young man taught the Greeks crafts, trade and sailing, and like all Phoenicians, he was a very gifted story-teller. Most often he talked about his stay in Baalbek and how he used to carry the sun to the top of Lebanon every morning. In those days the Greeks were very ignorant and didn’t know what imagination was, so they didn’t understand him at all. They called him Sisyphus, ‘the biggest of all liars’.
Sisyphus lived a long and beautiful life. He was a wise and just king of Corinth, and when his time under the sun ran out, he gave his soul over to the cranes. The Greeks, however, later invented a strange story about Sisyphus, ‘the most cunning mortal’, who allegedly competed with gods and defied them. Therefore, the gods condemned him to eternal pains: he had to push a giant stone up to the top of a hill and when he finally reached the top, the stone would roll down again, so that his efforts were fruitless.
As I said, the Greeks didn’t understand Phoenicians at all. To the Phoenicians life was a joy and every new day was a gift, deserved by nothing. The Greeks, on the other hand, thought that life was not only hard but absurd as well.
And so, from the beautiful Phoenician story of Alleluia, ‘the one who carries the sun’, they made up a myth about Sisyphus, ‘the biggest of all liars’, and about the absurdity of pushing the stone up the hill. And fate, unfortunately, had played with my life in a similar way.
One summer, I was lucky enough to be chosen as the king of debauchery and was named Alleluia, ‘the one who brings the light’. My mistress was a girl of exceptional beauty with a wonderful voice. The Phoenicians gave her the name Europa,