Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/146



The trading routes between Babylon and Tyre, and more especially between Tyre and Gerrha lay, in both cases, through long and uninterrupted deserts; a course, some have thought, chosen as better enabling merchants to preserve the secrecy of their business, and the real character of the wares in which they were trading. Baalath and "Tadmor in the desert" (Baalbek and Palmyra) were, it is supposed, founded by Solomon with the intention of obtaining for himself a share of the commerce which the Phœnicians were at that time carrying on with Babylon and other inland cities.

Here many caravans assembled, and thence diverged to their different destinations. Those destined for the East proceeded by way of Palmyra, and to this day, the commercial road from Damascus to the Euphrates runs close to the ruins of that city. Seven days were occupied in the journey from Baalbek to Palmyra, four of them in passing through the desert which lay between that city and Emesa (Hems), another celebrated city of Syria. From Palmyra, other four days were required to reach Thapsacus, where the caravan had the choice either of following the

Smyrna to Baghdad, is nearly the same as that described by Herodotus, from Sardes to Susa; it turns a little to the N., to avoid the arid deserts about the Upper Euphrates and the Upper Tigris, and passes Sart (Sardes), Allah Shehr (Philadelphia), Kaisariyeh, Malatiyeh, Diarbekr, Mosul, Arbil (Arbela), and Kerkuk (Circesium). If Herodotus went to Babylon, he would have gone by this route as far as the river Gyndes (Diyala), where the route from Babylon to Ecbatana crossed it, as is clear from the account of the march of Cyrus. (Herod. i. 189.)]
 * [Footnote: and fifty miles in eleven days, to Ecbatana. The present route from