S2 INTRODUCTION. 



word which in the Hebrew tongue signifies ?nerchanis i nnd are the 

 same nation afterwards known to the Greeks by the name of Phoeni- 

 cians. Inhabiting a barren and ungrateful soil, they applied them- 

 selves to improve their situation by cultivating the arts. Com- 

 merce was their principal pursuit : and with all the writers of 

 pagan antiquity, they pass for the inventors of whatever tended to 

 its advancement. At the time of Abraham they were regarded as 

 a powerful nation : their maritime commerce is. mentioned by Jacob 

 in his last words to his children ; and according to Herodotus, the 

 Phoenicians had by this time navigated the coasts of Greece, and 

 carried off the daughter of Inachus. 



The arts of agriculture, commerce, and navigation, suppose the 

 knowledge of several others : astronomy, for instance, or a know- 

 ledge of the situation and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, is neces- 

 sary both to agriculture and navigation ; that of working metals, to 

 commerce ; and so of other arts. In fact we find, that before the 

 death of Jacob, several nations were so well acquainted with the 

 revolutions of the moon, as to measure by them the duration of their 

 year. It had been a custom among all the nations of antiquity, as 

 well as the Jews, to divide time into portions of a week, or seven 

 days : this undoubtedly arose from the tradition with regard to the 

 origin of the world. It was natural for those nations who led a 

 pastoral life, or who lived under a serene sky, to observe that the 

 various appearances of the moon were completed nearly in four 

 weeks : hence the division of a month. Those people, again, who 

 lived by agriculture, and were become acquainted with the division 

 of the month, would naturally remark that twelve of these brought 

 back the same temperature of the air, or the same seasons : hence 

 the origin of what is called the lunar year, which has every where 

 taken place in the infancy of science. This, together with the 

 observation of the fixed stars, which, as we learn from the book of 

 Job, must have been very ancient, naturally prepared the way for 

 the discovery of the solar year, which at that time would be thought 

 an immense improvement in astronomy. But, with regard to those 

 branches of knowledge which we have mentioned, it is to be remem- 

 bered that they were peculiar to the Egyptians, and a few nations 

 of Asia. Europe offers a gloomy spectacle during this period. 

 Even the inhabitants of Greece, who in later ages became the pat- 

 terns of politeness and of every elegant art, where then a savage 

 race of men, traversing the woods and wilds, inhabiting the rocks 

 and caverns, a wretched prey to wild animals, and sometimes to 

 each other. Those descendants of Noah who had removed to a 

 great distance from the plains of Shinar, lost all connexion with the 

 civilized part of mankind. Their posterity became still more igno- 

 rant ; and the human mind was at length sunk into an abyss of misery 

 and wretchedness. 



We might naturally expect, that, from the death of Jacob, and as 

 we advance forward in time, the history of the great empires of 

 Egypt and Assyria would emerge from their obscurity. This, how- 

 -n p ever, is far from being the case ; we only obtain a glimpse of 



' 'them, and they disappear entirely for many ages. After the 



a ' reign of Ninyas, who succeeded Semiramis and Ninus on the 



Assyrian throne, we find an astonishing blank in the history of that 



empire for no less than eig;ht hundred years. The silence of 



ancient history on this - subject is commonly attributed to the soft- 



