Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/90

72 Phœnician Colonies.—Along the different routes pursued by their ships, and upon the coasts visited by them, the Phœnicians established naval stations and trading-posts. Settlements were founded in Lesbos, Rhodes, and other islands of the Ægean Sea, as well as in Greece itself. The shores of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were fringed with colonies; while the coast of North Africa was dotted with such great cities as Utica, Hippo, and Carthage. Colonies were even planted beyond the Pillars of Hercules, upon the Atlantic seaboard. The Phœnician settlement of Gades, upon the western coast of Spain, is still preserved in the modern Cadiz.

Arts disseminated by the Phœnicians.—We can scarcely overrate the influence of Phœnician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. "Egypt and Assyria," says Lenormant, "were the birthplace of material civilization; the Canaanites [Phœnicians] were its missionaries." Most prominent of the arts which they introduced among all the nations with whom they traded was that of alphabetical writing.

Before or during the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Phœnician settlers in the Delta borrowed from the Egyptians twenty-two hieratic characters, which they passed on to their Asiatic kinsmen. These characters received new names, and became the Phœnician alphabet. Now, wherever the Phœnicians went, they carried this alphabet as "one of their exports." It was through them, probably, that the Greeks received it; the Greeks passed it on to the Romans, and the Romans gave it to the German peoples. In this way did our alphabet come to us from Old Egypt.

The introduction of letters among the different nations, vast as was the benefit which the gift conferred upon peoples just beginning to make advances in civilization, was only one of the many advantages which resulted to the early civilization of Europe from the commercial enterprise of the Phœnicians. It is probable that they first introduced among the semi-civilized tribes of that continent the use of bronze, which marks an epoch in their growing culture. Articles of Phœnician workmanship are found in the