6 NAVAL SCIENCES. 



were manned with from 12 to 24 sailors, and a suitable number of rowers. 

 The sails were not used to the best advantage, for the art of trimming them 

 to a side wind was not yet known. The voyages were accordingly very 

 tedious when they did not fall in the time of the trade winds. In the days 

 of King Solomon the Phoenicians were known as the most important sea- 

 faring people, and no great maritime enterprise was undertaken without 

 their aid. The rowers were seated in a large inclosure on the sides of the 

 ship, from 15 to 20 on each side. This had the appearance of floating on 

 the water. The masts were made to lift out ; the sails were strengthened 

 with rushes and the bark of trees ; but the rigging was in the highest degree 

 imperfect. 



With the founding of Carthage (890 B. C.) the decline of Tyre com- 

 menced. This had been the principal state of the Phoenicians. The Car- 

 thaginians paid great attention to the improvement of navigation, and their 

 fleet for the invasion of Sicily consisted of two hundred men-of-war and one 

 thousand transports. 



b. The Egyptians. Egypt, although the cradle of the arts and sciences, 

 was at first far behind the Phoenicians in respect to navigation. This was, 

 in part, owing to the religious ideas of the inhabitants. They had such a 

 hatred of the sea, that the priests did not eat either salt or fish ; and as a 

 portion of the people were engaged in navigation, they were considered as 

 a degraded caste. Another cause of the neglect of navigation was the want 

 of ship-timber. The first navigation of the Egyptians was accordingly con- 

 fined to rivers. They used only vessels made of the wood of the acanthus 

 and tamarisk. Herodotus gives us the first account of Egyptian boats. 

 They had a rudder at the stern, a mast of acanthus wood, and sails of papy- 

 rus (pi. 2, Jig. 1). These Nile boats were in use in the time of the Romans. 

 Some were made of wicker-work, covered with skins, and abound with 

 painting and other embellishments. The importance of the river navigation 

 may be inferred from the fact that the granite block which covered the 

 altar in the temple of Latona, at Butus, measuring 240 cubic feet, was 

 transported by water. The antipathy of the people to the sea was first 

 overcome by Sesostris. He constructed a fleet of four hundred sail for the 

 purpose of conquest ; from that time the art of navigation made great pro- 

 gress in Egypt. Although the Egyptians in 1856 b. c. led a colony to Greece 

 under Inachus in Phoenician vessels, in 1582 b. c. Cecrops sailed to Greece 

 in Egyptian vessels, and there established the fortress Cecropia, afterwards 

 Athens. The largest Egyptian ship of that day was built by the Phoenicians ; 

 this was a transport of fifty oars, which, 1475 b. c, brought Danaus to the 

 coasts of Argolis, where he founded a colony. During the reign of Ptolemy, 

 after the death of Alexander, who had delivered Egypt from the Persian 

 dominion, a new era commenced for Egyptian navigation. The first enter- 

 prise of this kind undertaken by Ptolemy Lagus w^as the enlargement of the 

 harbor of Alexandria, by connecting the island of Pharos with the main 

 land by a dike. Here he placed the first light-house, as a beacon for ships ; 

 this stood on the eastern point of the island, and was completed by Ptolemy 

 Philadelphus : it consisted of four stories ; it was built of white marble, and 

 658 



