Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/78

 remote period of authentic history, and one which there is no reason to suppose was even then new or unusual.

Moreover, a somewhat subsequent statement, "all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn" (Gen. xli. 57), proves that Egypt was already what it remained for many centuries, the granary of adjacent, and even of distant nations; while some of the goods she received from Palestine in exchange were in great demand for the embalmment of the Egyptian dead.

This the first regular trade appears to have been conducted wholly by camels, the "ships of the desert:" an animal marvellously adapted by Providence for the toil it has to undergo in traversing for many continuous days almost waterless deserts.

It is worthy of note, too, that in the earliest notice we have of any trade at all, we find slave-dealing in full operation; and, supposing for a moment the Biblical date 1862 to be correct, it is an interesting though accidental coincidence, that in the year 1862 after Christ, the same inhuman commerce was finally put a stop to in the United States by the direct action of its government.

But the brief words of Genesis imply more than is at first obvious—they imply a trade with Arabia—possibly even with the yet more remote India; for balsam and myrrh are products of the Arabian province, Hadramaut, and the spices may have come either thence or from India. In like manner there is reasonable probability for believing that in the remotest ages there was a trade between Egypt and the borders of the Persian Gulf and Indian Oceans;