A note on the narration

A note on the narration

By Gad Yaton

The voice within this book — the “I” who addresses the reader, who comments on the ancient text, who corrects the errors of the Greeks and the Hebrews, who narrates the deeds of the kings and the voyages of the ships — is Gad Yaton. The name means “Fortune gives.” It was taken in honour of Sanchuniathon of Berytus, whose own name means “Sakkun gives.” It is a Phœnician name, formed according to the ancient pattern, and it is intended to represent the voice of a Phœnician speaking to his own people and to the world.

When the text says, “I have examined the inscription of Ahiram,” or “I find the Greek account contemptible,” the “I” is Gad Yaton. Claims of archaeology are weighed against the stones and the published record.

The adoption of a theophoric moniker is itself a Phœnician practice. The ancient scribes signed their work with names that honoured their gods: Sakkun Yaton, Abd-Ashtart, Ger-Baal. To speak under such a name is to place oneself in that lineage — not divine authority, but ancestral continuity. The god Sakkun gave to Sanchuniathon the records of the temples. Fortune — if Fortune exists — gives the words by which those records may be restored.

I speak in the manner of the ancients: directly, without the evasions of modern academic prose, and with open contempt for those who have falsified the Phœnician record. This is deliberate. Sanchuniathon did not write as a dispassionate scholar. He wrote as a man in love with truth, stripping away the allegories and absurdities that later priests and poets had imposed upon the real history of his people. I follow his example.

If I am sometimes harsh with the Greeks, it is because they borrowed everything and acknowledged nothing. If I am severe with the Hebrews, it is because they denounced our ancestors while adopting their language, their temple design, and their names for God. If I am dismissive of the Romans, it is because they destroyed Carthage and then rewrote history to justify the crime. In all this I am doing what Sanchuniathon did: telling the truth as the Phœnician records disclose it, and letting the foreign myths fall where they may.

The first book — the Cosmology and the Generations — is the genuine fragment of Sanchuniathon, preserved by Eusebius and translated by Philo of Byblos. It is presented without alteration of the ancient text, with editorial notes, clearly marked, to connect its claims to the archaeological and historical record.

The second book — the History of the Phœnician Cities and Colonies — is a restoration. It is not a translation of a lost manuscript. No such manuscript exists, and to pretend otherwise would be a fraud. It is a reconstruction of what a second book of Sanchuniathon’s history might have contained, based on:

The king-lists preserved by Menander of Ephesus and quoted by Josephus in Against Apion and the Antiquities of the Jews.

The royal inscriptions of Byblus, Sidon, and Tyre.

The annals of the Assyrian kings — Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal.

The Amarna correspondence of the fourteenth century before the common era.

Egyptian administrative documents and travel accounts.

Classical Greek and Roman historians — Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch — whose testimony is weighed critically and, where it contradicts the Phœnician record, corrected.

The Hebrew scriptures, which, though hostile to the Phœnicians, inadvertently preserve substantial information about Phœnician religion, trade, and political power.

The archaeological excavations at Byblus, Tyre, Sidon, Berytus, Sarepta, Carthage, Motya, Gadir, Kition, and other Phœnician and Punic sites.

In every case the Phœnician inscriptions are privileged over the foreign accounts. Where the Greek or Hebrew tradition contradicts the stones, the stones win. This is the method of Sanchuniathon, and it is the method of this book.

The reader is asked to approach this work not as a novel, but as a serious historical reconstruction. It is euhemeristic — it treats the gods as deified human ancestors. It is told from the Phœnician point of view, without apology. It is polemical, because the truth, after centuries of suppression, requires sharp correction.

It is, above all, an act of restoration. The Phœnicians gave the world its alphabet. They deserve to be read, at last, in their own words.

Gad Yaton