EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 13 



PHOENICIA. Two other civilizations of importance, the 

 Phoenician and the Hebrew, existed in antiquity between the 

 Mediterranean Sea and the great Arabian desert, in what are 

 to-day called Syria and Palestine. 



By the side of the Hebrew nation, which owed its grandeur to 

 its moral and religious development, dwelt the Phoenicians, a people 

 who owed their fame to their maritime and commercial enterprise. 

 They occupied a narrow strip of land between Lebanon and the 

 Mediterranean, Phoenicia proper being but 28 miles long by one to 

 five miles broad, and the territory of the Phoenicians being, at the 

 utmost, no more than 120 miles long by 20 wide. . . . The forests 

 which clothed the chain of Lebanon supplied the Phoenicians with 

 timber for their ships, and they soon made the Mediterranean a high 

 road for their navy. Enclosed by mountains in a country that 

 prevented their acquiring any inland empire, they became a maritime 

 power, the first in the ancient world in order of importance as in 

 order of time. Egyptian documents mention the Phoenician towns 

 of Gebal, Beryta, Sidon, Sarepta, etc., as early as sixteen or seven- 

 teen centuries before the Christian era. The Phoenicians served as 

 middlemen to the great civilizations of the Nile and the Euphrates, 

 their vessels easily coasting along to the mouth of the Nile, and their 

 caravans having but a short journey to reach the point where the mid- 

 dle Euphrates almost touches Upper Syria, whence the current would 

 carry them down to the quays of Babylon. . . . To the westward 

 the Phoenicians sailed beyond the Mediterranean and ventured upon 

 the Atlantic Ocean. They coasted the western side of Africa, and 

 early accounts record their discoveries of wonderful islands of mar- 

 vellous fertility and charming climate, the 'Fortunate Isles,' 

 probably Madeira and the Canaries. They also sailed along the 

 coasts of Spain and Western France and reached Northern Europe. 

 Gades (Cadiz) was the starting point for these long and dangerous 

 voyages, which extended as far as Great Britain, where a considerable 

 trade in tin was carried on. ... The Phoenicians were the great 

 mining people of the ancient world. Gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, cop- 

 per, and cinnabar were obtained from Spain, still the chief metallif- 

 erous country of Southern Europe. The details given by Diodorus 

 concerning the Spanish mines are very circumstantial. 'The cop- 

 per, gold, and silver mines are wonderfully productive,' and 'those 



