SANCHUNIA'THON (SAxcIIONlATnoN, SOUNIAITHOX), the supposed author of a Phenician history of Plienicia and Egypt, called Phoinikika. He is supposed to have been a native of Berytus; and the accounts which speak of him as born at Sidon or Tyre probably take these cities in their wider sense for Phenicia itself. Our principal information about him is derived from Philo of Byblus, a Greek writer of the beginning of the 2d c. A.D., who translated Sanchuniathon's history into his own tongue; but both the original and the translation are lost save a few small portions of the latter, preserved by Eusebius, who uses them as arguments in a theologic4 dispute against Porphyry. According to Philo, Sanchuniathou lived during the reign of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and dedicated his book. to Abibalus, king of Berytus. Athenteus, Porphyry, and Suidas, on the other band, speak of him as of an ancient Phenician, who lived ,' before the Trojan war." There is also a discrepancy between the various ancient writers respecting the number of books contained in the Phoinikika. Orelli (1826), and after him C. Milller (1849), published the remaining fragments of Sanchunia thon. a>Sd the hot discussion raised on their genuineness and value is far from being settled yet. Several critics went so far as to deny the fact of the existence of a Sanchuniathon point blank. According to some (Lobeck, etc.), it was Eusebius; accord iag to others (Movers, etc.), Philo, who fathered his own speculations upon an ancient authority. The latter was actuated, Movers thinks, partly by the desire of proving that the whole Hellenistic worship and religion was simply a faint imitation of the Phenician; partly by the desire of lowering the value of the Old Testament, by showing the higher authority of the Phenician writer; and partly, as was the fashion among the unbeliev ing philosophers of his age, to bring the popular creed into a bad reputation, by pro claiming his own views under the guise of an ancient sage. Yet even those who deny the Authenticity of Sanchuniathon agree in allowing the fragments current under his name a certain intrinsic value, they being founded on real ancient myths. This, in fact, is now, with more or less modification on the part of the different investigators, Ewald, Bunsen, Renan, etc., the prevalent opinion. Ewald contends for the real existence of a Sanchuniathon, in which lie is supported by Henan. Even if there never was a Sanchuniathon, it was not Philo who forged him. There seems no doubt that we have but a very dim and confused reproduction of what., after many modifications, misunder
standings, and corruptions, finally passed the hands of Philo and Eusebius, and was by the church father, as we said, quoted in a theological disputation. Yet, even assuming the person of a Sanchuniathon, his age—and he insists on a very remote one indeed— must be placed much lower, into the last centuries before Christ, at the earliest. He would then, it seems, have endeavored. to stein the tide of Greek superiority in all Things, by collecting, grouping, and remodeling the ancient and important traditions of his own country, and thus proving to both his countrymen and to the Greeks their high impor tance, in comparison with the Greek productions, on the field of religion and philosophy.
The Phainikau was not only a cosmogony, it would appear, but a history of his and the surronndin7 nations; and like similar ancient histories, it probaNy began with the creation of the world, and contained an account of the Jews. All the historical parts, however, are lost, and nothing remains but a fragmentary cosmogony, or rather two or three different systems of cosmogony, or, according to Movers, merely RR Egyptian and Pheniean patchwork, for a brief account of which we refer the reader to the article PlIENICIA. One of the chief difficulties for us consists in the Phenician words* of Sanchuniathon, which Philo either translated too freely, or merely transcribed so faultily in Greek characters as to render them an Eusehius further contains a fragment of a treatise by S'Tichuniathon, Peri JudaiO'n, but it is doubtful whether this is the work of Pluto of Babylus or of Sanchnniathon; and\ if it tie that of the latter, whether it is a separate work, or merely a separate chapter out of his larger work. A forgery-, said to contain the whole nine books of Sinichuniathon, and to have been found by a Portuguese, col. Pereira, at the convent of St. Maria de Merinlifio, and to have been by hint intrusted to a German corporal in Portuguese ser vice, named Cliristoph Meyer, was published by Wagenfield (Bremen, 1837), and trans lated into German (LiMeek, 1837), but was very soon consigned to disgrace and oblivion by Movers, K. 0. Mulier, and Grotefend, the last of whom had at first not only believed in its genuineness, but even written a preface to the editio prineeps. There never was such a convent or such a col.; but the fac-shnile taken by "Pereira" in the convent in Portugal was found to have been written on paper showing the water-marks of an Osnabruck paper-mill.