Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/66

 famous. We may also gather that it must have been for the extension of Babylonian commerce, from the Persian Gulf to Damascus on the north, that Nebuchadnezzar built Teredon, near the present Bussorah. The mode of packing rich garments, like those described in Ezekiel, is one still in use among the natives of Upper India.

We may add that civilization owes to the Phœnicians the invention of the alphabet; and, probably, that of the well-known weight of ancient Greece, the mna, or mina, which is found on certain lion-weights from Nineveh, bearing bilingual legends in Assyrian and Phœnician, their value being expressed in the latter tongue: they also discovered the Cynosure (called after them, Phœnice), the last star in the Little Bear, which, as nearly identical with the Pole Star, gave superior fixity to their observations; while they are said to have noticed at Gades the connection between the moon and the oceanic tides.

It is not difficult to discern the principal causes of the success and prosperity of these Phœnician traders, which we may be sure did not rest, as some writers have supposed, on an extensive system of piracy. This, and other evils of a similar character, may have existed among them, as elsewhere, for a certain period; but they would not have ruled the maritime