126 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 



tual development, and addicted rather to the mechanical than 

 to the fine arts, with little of the grand and creative genius 

 of the more thoughtful inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile, 

 the Phoenicians, as an adventurous and far ranging com- 

 mercial people, and by the formation of colonies, one of 

 which far surpassed the parent city in political power, 

 did nevertheless, earlier than all the other nations sur- 

 rounding the Mediterranean, influence the course and ex- 

 tension of ideas, and promote richer and more varied 

 views of the physical universe. The Phoenicians had Baby- 

 lonian weights and measures, ( 165 ) and, at least after the 

 Persian dominion, employed for monetary purposes a stamped 

 metallic currency, which, singularly enough, was not pos- 

 sessed by the Egyptians, notwithstanding their advanced 

 political institutions and skill in the arts. But that by which 

 the Phoenicians contributed most to the intellectual advance- 

 ment of the nations with whom they came in contact, was 

 by the communication of alphabetical writing, of which they 

 had themselves long made use. Although the whole legen- 

 dary history of a particular colony, founded in Boeotia by 

 Cadmus, may remain wrapped in mythological obscurity, 

 yet it is not the less certain, that it was through the com- 

 mercial intercourse of the lonians with the Phoenicians that 

 the Greeks received the characters of their alphabetical writ- 

 ing, which were long termed Phoenician signs. ( 166 ) Accord- 

 ing to the views which, since Champollion's great discovery, 

 have prevailed more and more respecting the early condi- 

 tions of the development of alphabetical writing, the 

 Phoenician and all the Semitic written characters, though 

 they may have been originally formed from pictorial writing, 

 are to be regarded as a phonetic alphabet ; i. e. as an 



