THE OPAL SEA 



Hehreirs, 

 Tynans 

 and 

 Sidoniana. 



keeps the record that : " King Solomon made a 

 navy of ships at Ezion-geber which is beside 

 Eloth, on the shore of the Ked Sea in the land 

 of Edom. And Hiram (of Tyre) sent in the 

 navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge 

 of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And 

 they came to Ophir and fetched from thence 

 gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and 

 brought it to King Solomon." But Ezion- 

 geber, where the ships of Jehoshaphat were 

 broken, was not on the Mediterranean; and 

 Ophir is variously supposed to be on the coast 

 of Arabia near the Gulf of Oman or in Farther 

 India or possibly in Eastern Africa. In other 

 words, the voyages were along the coast, not 

 on the open ocean plains. In this respect they 

 were quite different from those of Hiram and 

 his predecessors. 



What first started the early Phoenicians to 

 the West may only be conjectured. From the 

 hills of southern Lebanon at sunset one can 

 see the black peak of Troodos on the island 

 of Cyprus, resting hazily against the evening 

 sky; and perhaps this distant mountain sug- 

 gested the first flight of the voyagers. Once 

 at Cyprus it was easy enough to move on to 

 Rhodes and Crete and from thence to the is- 

 lands of the Greek Archipelago, or by the 



Phcenidan 

 voyagers. 



