History of Phoenicia

by means of rafts

at-Phoenician ves

biremes in the t

vessels and mercha

an war-galleys-

i-Early navigation

ventures-Extent of

of Ezekiel-Wares

land trade-Sea tr

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the Canaries-Trade

an O

races, they began with canoes, roughly hewn out of the trunk of a tree. The torrents which descended from Lebanon would from time to time bring down the stems of fallen trees in their flood-time; and these, floating on the Mediterranean waters, would suggest the idea of navigation. They would, at first, be hollowed out with hatchets and adzes, or else with fire; and, later on, the canoes thus produced would form the models for the earliest efforts in shipbuilding. The great length, however, would s

the tail of a fish, both of them rising high above the water. The oars are curved, like golf or hockey-sticks, and are worked from the gunwale of the bark, though there is no indication of rowlocks. The vessel is without a rudder; but it has a mast, support

, by others as belonging to Cilicia.95 These have a low bow, but an elevated stern; the prow exhibits a beak, while the stern shows signs of a steering apparatus; the number of the oars on each side i

ho fly in them at the moment when their town is captured, and so escape their enemy.96 The ships are of two kinds. Both kinds have a double tier of rowers, and both are guided by two steering oars thrust out from the stern; but while the one is still without mast or sail, and is rounded off in exactly the same way both at stem and stern, the other has a mast, placed about midship, a yard hung across it, and a sail close reefed to the yard, while the bow is armed with a long project

hort mast, crossed by a long spar or yard, which carries a sail, closely reefed along its entire length. The yard and sail are managed by means of four ropes, which are, however, somewhat conventional

mast of moderate height, to which a single sail was attached;910 this was what in modern times is called a "square sail," a form which is only well suited for sailing with when the wind is directly astern. It was apparently attached to the yard, and had to be hoisted together with the yard, along which it could be closely reefed, or from which it could be l

ful when cargoes had to be landed on a shelving shore.911 We have no means of knowing whether these boats were hoisted up on deck

with a sharp metal spike, or beak, which was its chief weapon of offence, vessels of this class seeking commonly to run down their enemy. After a time these vessels were superseded by biremes, which were decked, had masts and sails, and were impelled by rowers sitting at two different elevations, as already explained. Biremes were ere long superseded by triremes, or vess

reached the Hellespont, the great king, anxious to test the quality of his ships and sailors, made proclamation for a grand sailing match, in which all who liked might contend. Each contingent probably-at any rate, all that prided themselves on their nautical skill-selected its best vessel, and entered it for the coming race; the king himself,

rew, and, besides, has all the utensils that a man keeps in his dwelling-house, for each of the messes. In addition, it is laden with a quantity of merchandise which the owner carries with him for his own profit. Now all the things which I have mentioned lay in a space not much bigger than a room which would conveniently hold ten beds. And I remarked that they severally lay in a way that they did not obstruct one another, and did not require anyone to search for them; and yet they were neither placed at random, nor entangled one with another, so as to consume time when they were suddenly wanted for use. Also, I found the captain's assistant, who is called 'the look-out man,' so well acquainted with the position of all the articles, and with

hey were small, apparently, and inconspicuous, being little dwarf figures, regarded as amulets that would preserve the vessel in safety. We do not see them on any representations of Phoenician ships, and it is possible tha

the beach, and so awaiting the dawn. But after a time they grew more bold. The sea became familiar to them, the positions of coasts and islands relatively one to another better known, the character of the seasons, the signs of unsettled or settled weather, the conduct to pursue in an emergency, better apprehended. They soon began to shape the course of their vessels from headland to headland, instead of always creeping along the shore, and it was not perhaps very long before they would venture out of sight of land, if their knowledge of the weather satisfied them that the wind might be trusted to continue steady, and if they were well

the tract watered by the Gambia and Senegal, while northwards they coasted along Spain, braved the heavy seas of the Bay of Biscay, and passing Cape Finisterre, ventured across the mouth of the English Channel to the Cassiterides. Similarly, from the West African shore, they boldly steered for the Fortunate Islands (the Canaries), visible from certain elevated points of the coast, though at 170 miles distance. Whether they proceeded further, in the south to t

s chapter of Ezekiel923 which describes the riches and greatness of Tyre in the sixth century B.C., that almost the whole of Wes

we read) take up a l

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o h

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od, Thou, O Tyre, has

au

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have perfecte

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ars from Lebanon to

ashan have they

de thy bench

ood, from the i

broidered work from

be to thee f

m the isles of Elis

Zidon and of Arva

re, were in thee-t

l, and their wise me

sea, with their mar

ht occupy thy

Phut were in thine

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thine army, were upon

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shields upon thy

ght to perfect

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Meshech, they we

ons of men, and vess

hand

of Togarmah trad

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thy traffickers; many

ha

in exchange horns

hant by reason of

diw

wares with emeralds,

o

linen, and cor

of Israel, they we

thy merchandise

nd honey, and

chant for the multit

multitude of al

of Helbon, a

traded with ya

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ficker in precious

princes of Kedar, th

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eba and Raamah, they

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and Eden, the tra

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traffickers in

and broidered work,

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from their ships, the

a

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ter

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hemselves bald for th

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they shall take up a

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ught to silence in t

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op

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9-and "white wool," the dainty fleeces of the sheep and lambs that fed on the upland pastures of Hermon and Antilibanus. Judah and the land of Israel supply corn of superior quality, called "corn of Minnith"-corn, i.e. produced in the rich Ammonite country930-together with pannag, an unknown substance, and honey, and balm, and oil. Egypt sends fine linen, one of her best known products931-sometimes, no doubt, plain, but often embroidered with bright patterns, and employed as such embroidered fabrics were also in Egypt,932 for the sails of pleasure-boats. Arabia provides her spices, cassia, and calamus (or aromatic reed), and, beyond all doubt, frankincense,933 and perhaps cinnamon and ladanum.934 She also supplies wool and goat's hair, and cloths for chariots, and gold, and wrought

n large bodies, well provisioned and well armed, when they are about to move valuable goods any considerable distance. There have always been robber-tribes in the mountain tracts, and thievish Arabs upon the plains, ready to pounce on the insufficiently protected traveller, and to despoil him of all his belongings. Hence the necessity of the caravan traffic. As early as the time of Joseph-probably about B.C. 1600-we find a company of the Midianites on their way from Gilead, with the

or wheat and barley that they exchanged the commodities which they exported,946 in that of Ezekiel it was primarily for "wheat of Minnith;"947 and a similar trade is noted on the return of the Jews from the captivity,948 and in the first century of our era.949 But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.950 Western Palestine was notoriously a l

ghbourhood of Aleppo.956 The "white wool" may have been furnished by the sheep that cropped the slopes of the Antilibanus, or by those fed on the fine grass which clothes most of the plain at its base. The fleece of these last is, according to Heeren,957 "the finest known, being imp

ems somewhat out of place in the enumeration; but the Syrians may have gathered the murex on their seaboard between Mt. Casius and the Gulf of Issus, and have sold what they collected in the Phoenician market. The precious stones which Ezekiel assigns to them are difficult of identification, but may have been furnished by Casius, Bargylus, or Amanus. These moun

date. According to Ezekiel, the principal commodity which Egypt furnished to Phoenicia was "fine linen"963-especially the linen sails embroidered with gay patterns, which the Egyptian nobles affected for their pleasure-boats. They probably also imported from Egypt natron for their glass-works, papyrus for their doc

were, all of them, the actual produce of the country in ancient times, and Herodotus has been in some degree discredited, but perhaps without sufficient reason. He is supported to a considerable extent by Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, who says:967 "Frankincense, myrrh, and cassia grow in the Arabian districts of Saba and Hadramaut; frankincense and myrrh on the sides or at the foot of mountains, and in the neighbouring islands. The trees which produce them grow sometimes wild, though occasionally they are cultivated; and the frankincense-tree grows sometimes taller than the tree producing the myrrh." Modern authoriti

loyed in the production of coverings for tents.972 Arabia also furnished Phoenicia with gold, with precious stones, with ivory, ebony, and wrought iron.973 The wrought iron was probably from Yemen, which was celebrated for its manufacture of sword blades. The gold may have been native, for there is much reason to believe that anciently the Arabian mountain ranges yielded gold as freely as the Ethiopi

tensils in metal, beads, and other ornaments for the person, and the like. The nomadic Arabs, leading a simple life, required but little beyond what their own country produced; there

ch in a peculiar embroidery, and deemed so precious that they were packed in chests of cedar-wood, which the Phoenician merchants must have brought with them from Lebanon.977 The wares furnished by Assyria were in some cases exported to Greece,978 while no doubt in others they were intended for home consumption. They included cylinders in rock crystal, jasper, hematite, steatite, and other materials, which may sometimes have found purchasers in Ph

nia than because it possessed in itself any special attraction for them. Gall-nuts and manna are almost the only products for which the region is celebrated; and of these Phoenicia herself produced the one, while she proba

ugh the true "Nis?an plain" was in Media. So large was the number of colts bred each year, and so highly were they valued, that, under the Persian monarchy the Great King exacted from the province, as a regular item of its tribute, no fewer than twenty thousand of them annually.985 Armenian mules

prevalence of metal vessels in the portion of the region which he passed through-the country of the Carduchians.988 The traffic in slaves was one in which the Phoenicians engaged from very early times. They were not above kidnapping men, women, and children in one country and selling them into another;989 besides which they seem to have frequented regularly the principal slave marts of the time. They bought such Jews as

sure what is preserved is but a most imperfect record of what was-fragments of wreck recovered from the sea of oblivion. It may have been a Phoenician caravan route which Herodotus describes as traversed on one occasion by the Nasamonians,993 which began in North Africa and terminated with the Niger and the city of Timbuctoo; and another, at which he hints as lying between the coast of the Lotus-eaters and Fezzan.994 Phoenician traders may have accompanied and stimulated the slave hunts of the Garamantians,995 as Arab trad

s for its gold mines; Salamis and Cythera for the purple trade; Sardinia and Spain for their numerous metals; North Africa for its fertility and for the trade with the interior. Phoenicia expected to derive, primarily, from each colony the commodity or commodities which had caused the selection of the site. In return she supplied the colonists with her own manufactured articles; with fabrics in linen, wool, cotton, and perhaps to some extent in silk; with every variety of pottery, from dishes and jugs of the plainest and most simple kind to the most costly and elaborate vases and amphor?; with metal utensils and arms, with gold and silver ornaments, with embos

e products out of the market, and imposed her own instead, much as the manufacturers of Manchester, Birmingham, and the Potteries impose their calicoes, their cutlery, and their earthenware on the savages of Africa and Polynesia. Where culture was more advanced, as in Greece and parts of Italy,998 she looked to introduce, and no doubt succeeded in introducing, the best of her own productions, fabrics of crimson, violet, and purple, painted vases, embossed pater?, necklaces, bracelets, rings-"cunning work" of all manner of kinds999-mirrors, glass vessels, and smelling-bottles. At the same time she also disposed at a profit of many of the wares that she had imported from foreign countries, which were advanced in certain branches of art, as Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, possibly In

all kinds, while tin is the most important, though not the largest, element in bronze. From the time that the Phoenicians discovered the Scilly Islands-the "Tin Islands" (Cassiterides), as they called them-it is probable that the tin of the civilised world was almost wholly derived from this quarter. Eastern Asia, no doubt, had always its own mines, and may have exported tin to some extent, in the remoter times, supplying perhaps the needs of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. But, after the rich stores of the metal which our own islands possess were laid open, and the Phoenicians with their extensive commercial dealings, both in the West and in the East, became interested in diffusin

ry early date;9106 and, though they might no doubt have obtained it by land-carriage across Europe to the head of the Adriatic, yet their enterprise and their commercial spirit were such as would not improbably have led them to seek to open a direct communication with the amber-producing region, so soon as they knew where it was situated. The dangers of the German Ocean are certainly no

er having pitched their tents upon the shore, proceed to unload their cargo, and to convey it in smaller boats to the mainland. The dealers with whom they trade are Ethiopians; and these dealers sell to the Phoenicians skins of deer, lions, panthers, and domestic animals-elephants' skins also, and their teeth. The Ethiopians wear embroidered garments, and use ivory cups as drinking vessels; their women adorn themselves with ivory bracelets; and their horses also are adorne

o graphic an account. "There is a country," he says,9108 "in Libya, and a nation, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which the Carthaginians are wont to visit, where they no sooner arrive than forthwith they unlade their wares, and having disposed them after an orderly fashion along the beach, there leave them, and returning aboard their ships, raise a great smoke. The natives, when they see the sample, come down to the shore, and laying out to view so much gold as they think the wares are worth, withdraw to a distan

ts of the islands attracting them.9109 The large breed of dogs from which the Canaries derived their later name9110 may perhaps have constituted an article of export even in Phoenician times, as we know they did later, when we hear of their being conveyed to King Juba;9111 but there

two arms into which the Red Sea divides towards the north, or a harbour on the Persian Gulf near its north-western extremity. But the latter supposition rests upon grounds which are exceedingly unsafe and uncertain. That the Phoenicians migrated at some remote period from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean may be allowed to be highly probable; but that, after quitting their primitive abodes and moving off nearly a thousand miles to the westward, they still maintained a connection with their early settlements and made them centres for a trade with the Far East, is as improbable a hypothesis as any that has ever received the sanction of men of learning and repute. The Babylonians, throug

Elanitic Gulf, or Gulf of Akaba, the more eastern of the two arms into which the Red Sea divides. David's conquest of Edom had put these ports into the possession of the Israelites, and the friendship between Hiram and Solomon had given the Phoenicians free access to them. It was the ambition of Solomon to make the Israelites a nautical people, and to participate in the advantages which he perceived to have accrued to Phoenicia from her commercial enterprise. Besides sharing with the Phoenicians in the trade of the Mediterranean,9115 he constructed with their help a fleet at Ezion-Geber upon the Red Sea,9116 and the two allies conjointly made voyages to the region, or country, called Ophir, for the purpose of procuring precious