Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/40

6 by Saul among the Moabites and Edomites, who held the southern sections of the caravan track toward Egypt and the Red Sea. Before the close of his reign he made himself master of the entire trade-route from Damascus to Edom, controlled the country at both ends, seized the chief halting-place in the middle, and "cut off every male in Edom" toward the Ked Sea and Egyptian outlets.

It was reserved for Solomon during his long rule of forty years, 1016-976 B.C., to put his father's conquests to their mercantile uses. He strengthened his hold on the northern outlets of the trade by advancing into the desert and occupying the oasis of Palmyra. There he built or enlarged Tadmor in the wilderness, and thus gained command of the caravan track at a central point between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. Tyre depended for her prosperity on obtaining a regular share of the Eastern trade by way of Palmyra and Damascus. The friendly intercourse of its king with David was therefore consolidated into a regular commercial treaty with Solomon; the Phoenician monarch supplying gold and the timber of the Lebanon hills in return for certain towns near the Tyrian frontier, and for stated quantities of the agricultural produce of the Jordan valley. According to the Hebrew record, Solomon's sovereignty or overlordship extended to the Euphrates itself. Generally accepted maps show only the narrow strip between the Lebanon ranges and the Mediterranean as belonging to Tyre, while the Jewish hinterland stretches in a solid