TRANSFER OF THE CHAP. III. 



sand measures of wheat and twenty measures of 

 pure oil for food for the household of the king ;" 

 and that the king, on one occasion, sent him 

 " six score talents of gold 1 ," or about six hun- 

 dred thousand pound* 



This view of the intercourse between Phoe- 

 nicia and Judea may enable us to account for a 

 circumstance otherwise so strange, as that Solo- 

 mon, the monarch of a country which afforded 

 no articles for distant foreign trade, who had 

 neither ships nor sailors in his dominions, and 

 only the port of Ezion-geber, on the eastern 

 branch of the northern part of the Red Sea, 

 which had been conquered by his father, and the 

 inhabitants destroyed, should have undertaken 

 distant commercial expeditions. As the ships 

 he sent on such expeditions were manned with 

 Phoenician sailors, so it is probable they were 

 loaded with the goods which he had received 

 from those people in exchange for the cattle, 

 the corn, the wine, the oil, and the other pro- 

 ductions of the soil which he furnished to them. 



We are informed of the amount of the pre- 

 cious metals which the fleets brought back to 

 Solomon at the termination of a voyage of three 

 years' duration, but whether it far exceeded the 

 value of what they carried with them appears at 

 least doubtful; and if we may judge from the 



1 1 Kings, cap. x. v. 14. 



