The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

isSUPPLEMENTAL ENCYCLOPEDIAcities. The inhabitants themselves called their countryCanaan. The history of its ,people aphoristic, and inmany points utterly insufficient. The Phoenicians have leftno literature and no artistic monuments; a few coins anda few inscriptions. They were principally a commercialand not an industrial people. They transferred goods withoutmanufacturing them; they spread the arts without inventingthem. Nevertheless, Tyre must have been the seatof considerable industrial skill and activity, since KingHiram could supply Solomon with all kinds of workmen.Modern researches confirm the assertions made that thelanguage spoken by the Jews and the Phoenicians wasalmost identical ;a statement interesting to the Masonicstudent as givinganother reason for the bond which existedbetween Solomon and Hiram, and between the Jewishworkmen and their fellow-laborers of Tyre in the constructionof the temple.Praxiteles A Greek sculptor, head of the Attic schoolborn at Athens about 392 B. C. Praxiteles has been calledthe sculptor of the beautiful, as Phidias was of the sublime.Proserpine (Gr., Persephone} The daughter of Jupiterand Ceres, wife of Pluto and queen of the infernal regions.She was worshiped generally in connection with her mother,as the goddess of vegetation. She was carried off by Pluto,the god of Hades, to the lower world, but afterward permittedby him to spend half of the year in the upper world.Queenof Sheba Theland of Sheba of Scripture appearsto be the Saba of Strabo, situated towards the southernpart of Arabia, at a short distance from the coast ofthe Red Sea, the capital of which was Mareb. This region,called also Yemen, was probably settled by Sheba, the sonof Joktan, of the race of Shem. The Queen of Sheba, whovisited Solomon and made him presents of gold, ivory andcostly spices, was probably mistress of this region.Thetradition of this visit of the ueen of Sheba to Solomon