Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/480

452 played, as we might have expected from their position and commerce, a most important part in the ancient Mediterranean world,—a part not unlike that played by their kinsmen, the Jews, in the Europe of the Middle Ages and of to-day. In the eyes of the early Greeks, the term Phœnician was almost the equivalent of trader. They were famous merchants before the seventeenth century B.C., since they are mentioned in the Egyptian records as importing vases, rings, rhytons, necklaces, perfumes, precious stones, and ivory, as presents to Thothmes III. They not only traded with Egypt, but they built ships for the Egyptians. Their glass, amber, and metal work were famous among the Greeks, and their trade is proved to have extended through Palestine, eastward, as far as the Euphrates and the Tigris, by the metallic bowls with Phœnician inscriptions found in Babylonia and now in the British Museum. Their colonies were scattered far and wide over the Mediterranean, wherever there was a good anchorage for their ships and facilities for developing a traffic with the natives. One of their most important colonies, Gades, Gadeira, or Cadiz, was founded at the mouth of a navigable river, the Guadalquivir, and at a place equally convenient for carrying on a coasting trade along the western shores of Spain and the north-western coast of Africa. It is said to have been founded not later than B.C. 1100.

The greatness of their chief cities. Tyre and Sidon, is most vividly brought before us on the bronze gates set up by Shalmanezar to commemorate his triumphs, and