INTRODUCTORY ii

also colonised Spain and spread up the coast of Western

Europe, navigating as far as the Baltic and the English Channel. They were never permitted to have a colony on the Egyptian coast, because it was a fundamental maxim of the early Egyptians to suffer no vessel to enter the mouths of the Nile ; but the Phoenicians had a large settlement in the very heart of Egypt itself — an entire quarter of Memphis being devoted to them. Tyre and

Sidon on the Syrian coast were among the most famous of their early cities. The overthrow of Sidon by Joshua,

it will be remembered, took place about 1400 years before Christ. Carthage, of later growth, is believed to have been founded about 853 B.C. Other Phoenician cities on the coast of Africa were of far greater antiquity than

Carthage, and Phoenician trade in the Gulf of Sallee on the west coast of Morocco was famous for many centuries before the Romans gave to that part of the coast the name

of Sinus Emporicus, or Merchants' Bay. An even more interesting maritime trade than that of the Phoenicians with the West seems to be clearly established as having existed from a very early period between the coasts of the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, the east coast of Africa as far south as Delagoa Bay, and possibly to the southern coast of the African continent, the western coast of India as far south as Ceylon — the Taprobane of the ancients — and beyond Ceylon to China. By means of this commerce intercourse between India and Africa was regularly carried on during the earliest

Egyptian era. The Ethiopian ports for the Indian trade were Azab and Adule within the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb on the Red Sea ; and the Phoenicians, after their land trade had penetrated to India, had colonies upon the

Persian and Arabian Gulfs. They also fitted out ships at Suez for the navigation of the Southern seas. The three well-known names of Thule, Tarshlsh, and Ophir, would appear to have been used generically to indicate these three fields of maritime activity — Thule covering the Atlantic ports, Tarshlsh the Mediterranean, and Ophir