Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/147

 Syrian port for the arrival and departure of the fleets sent on these voyages. Their cargoes were carried by caravans to Petra and distributed some to Egypt and others to Rhinocolura, a port of the Mediterranean, for transhipment to Europe. The Phoenicians also took an active part in this trade, with Tyre as their headquarters. After the conquest of Tyre by Alexander the Great, and the foundation of Alexandria, the Egyptians came into the field, and after the successive decline of the Jewish, Phoenician, and Persian powers in Western Asia, they retained with the Arabians a monopoly of this commerce for about 900 years between Alexander's death and the conquest of Egypt by the Musalmans in the year 640 A.D.

We have now dealt with the foreign trade of India in the age of the Bible, and proceed to consider the notices left by the Greek writers of this period of the international intercourse of India. The earliest, probably, is that of Herodotus (450 B.C.), the father of history, whose reference to the Indian contingent of Xerxes' army, clad in cotton garments and armed with cane bows and iron-tipped cane arrows, is well known. Herodotus also speaks