Ancient Mariners 55 



maritime activity was not confined to the Red Sea, but also 

 played a part in the Mediterranean. 



But there were other nations who for several centuries had 

 been engaged in sea-traffic there. Foremost among them was 

 Crete, which had established a powerful thalassocrasy controlling 

 the seas of the ^gean, and in fact the northern waters of the 

 Mediterranean from Syria to Italy, and possibly even further west. 



When the Minoan power of Crete began to weaken, the 

 control of the Middle Sea fell into the hands of the Phoenicians, 

 These enterprising traffickers worked in intimate co-operation 

 with the Egyptians, from whom they acquired most of their 

 knowledge of ship-building and seamanship ; l)ut they were also 

 able to avail themselves of all the knowledge and experience 

 acquired by the Cretans, and to put to practical use the information 

 concerning the stars which the peoples of Mesopotamia had 

 collected for religious and magical purposes. 



Hence these enterprising merchants, whose primary aim was 

 to secure wealth by trading with the older and more conservative 

 peoples, were able to command the results of all the experience 

 of ship-building and navigation which these same peoples had 

 laboriously accumulated. 



They soon began to exploit, by land and sea, all the known 

 sources of gold, silver, copper and tin, of precious stones, of 

 incense and spices, of pearls and coral. By the twelfth century B.C. 

 they had made their way to the western extremity of the Medi- 

 terranean, and passed between the Pillars of Hercules to the 

 Atlantic coasts of Iberia and Mauretania. During the next three 

 centuries they pushed further afield, to Britain and Ireland, to 

 Denmark and Scandinavia, and eventually reached the amlier 

 coasts of the Baltic. 



The literary and archaeological evidence goes to show that, 

 after the Phoenician mining colonies were established in the 

 Iberian peninsula, maritime intercourse was established between 

 the ports on the Atlantic coast, such as Cades, and the countries 

 rich in gold and tin, such as Brittany, Cornwall and Southern 



