192 J. HORNELL ON 



north, and the journey of the 40 vessels which he sent to the Phoenician coast for 

 cedar out of I^ebanon is the earhest known mercantile expedition on the open sea. 

 The first war-fleet soon followed, for a relief belonging to the time of Sankh-ka- 

 Ra {c. 2743-2731 B.C.), discovered at Abusir, shows four of his ships with Phoenician 

 captives among the Egyptian sailors. This is the earliest surviving representation 

 of sea-going warships. More directly interesting to us are the references to the sea 

 trade between Egypt and a certain mysterious land of Punt never yet determined 

 positively, that now begin to appear. The enterprising Sankh-ka-Ra (or Sahure) after 

 his success in the Mediterranean, next despatched another fleet to Punt. Some 

 1,250 years later the autocratic Queen Hatshepsut is recorded as having sent a fleet 

 of five sh ps to the same land (c. 1500 B.C.), and it is certain that numerous 

 others, whereof the records are lost, had gone from time to time to the same destina- 

 tion in quest of the aromatic gums required by the Egyptians in large quantities for 

 embalming. The precise location of Punt has been a fertile source of dispute among 

 Egyptologists, and at first I felt inclined to put in a claim for South India. Punt 

 might well be an Egyptian rendering of Pandya, the dynastic name of the kings of 

 the extreme south from the earliest historic times. The idea is attractive in view of 

 the subject of the present enquiry and of the fact that the Egyptians described the 

 people of Punt as resembling themselves, which neither the Arabs nor the Abyssinians 

 do, whereas many Indian people, particularly on the West Coast, do sufiiciently closely 

 approximate to merit such a remark. 



But the products brought back, gold, ivory, ebony, myrrh, dog-headed apes, 

 leopard skins and incense trees, while in the main Indian as well as African, in the 

 inclusion of dog-headed apes and incense trees, both distinctive of Somaliland and 

 South Arabia, and in the omission of spices, pearls, diamonds, teakwood and pea- 

 cocks, some of which would certainly have been found in return cargoes from India, 

 force one reluctantly to the conclusion that South Arabia or the neighbouring African 

 coast was the utmost limit of this ancient sea- traffic. But if early Egyptian sea- 

 trade did not extend to India down to 1000 B.C., a power which had for centuries been 

 gradually learning sea-craft in the hard school of the rough waters of the Eastern 

 Mediterranean in subordinate competition with the Minoans (who seem to have been 

 the earliest sea-power of consequence in the Mediterranean), on the fall of the latter, 

 expanded with sudden vigour and became at once their greater and more brilliant 

 successors. Thus, good as the Egyptian sea-galleys were, those of the Phoenicians 

 were better and as early as the time of the great Thothmes III (1501-1447 B.C.), 

 nephew of the lady who sent her fleet to Punt, Phoenician galleys such as the Nile 

 had never before seen, delighted the eyes of curious crowds at the docks of Thebes. 



The Jews, Phoenicians and Persians. 



Whether the Phoenicians traded by any sea-route with India prior to the tenth 

 century B.C. is extremely doubtful ; it is most probable that what Indian produce 

 reached Babylon for sale or barter to Phoenician merchants went in the main over- 

 land through Persia so far as the smaller and more precious articles were concerned, 



