Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/56

 32 Outlines of European History .^:.^ this relief (Fig. 14) contains the oldest-known representation of a seagoing ship. Yet the Pharaoh had already been carrying on such over-sea commerce for centuries at this time, and an ancient record tells us that he sent forty ships to Phoenicia to bring back cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the thirtieth century B.C., two centuries before [ /' . .] our earliest picture of such an ancient salt-water vessel. These arc the ships which carried metal J ■ I' i ! ,1 and other products of civilization to the peoples who lived on the Mediterranean / '. 1 shores of Europe in the Late Stone Age (p. 14). The king was also already sending caravans of donkeys far up the Nile into the Sudan to traffic with the blacks of the south, and to bring back ebony, ivory, ostrich feath- FiG. 16. Relief Scene from the Chapel OF A Noble's Tomb (Fig. 15) in the Pyramid Age The tall figure of the noble stands at the right. A piece has fallen out of the wall, imme- diately before his face and figure. He is in- specting three rows of cattle and a row of fowl brought before him. Note the two scribes who head the two middle rows. Each is writing with pen on a sheet of papyrus, and one car- ries two pens behind his ear. Such reliefs after being carved were colored in bright hues by the painter (see p. 33) gums. ers, and fragrant The officials who conducted these caravans were the earliest explorers of inner Africa, and in their tombs at the First Cataract they have left interesting records of their exciting ad- ventures among the wild tribes of the south — adventures in which some of them lost their lives. ^ Expeditions to the south 1 The teacher will find it of interest to read these records to the class. See Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, pp. 325-336, 350-374.