SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
3 
with bounds ;’ n “I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of 
the sea ;” 2 “ He set a compass (circle) upon the face of the depth ;” 3 all seem to indicate 
that the Jews held the same general opinions as to the distribution of land and water 
as prevailed among the Greeks of the Homeric period. The expression in Genesis, “ Let 
the waiters under- the heaven be gathered together unto one place,” 4 and a passage in 
Esdras : “ Upon he third day thou didst command that the waters should be gathered 
in the seventh part of the earth, six parts hast thou dried up and kept them,” 5 have 
been cited to show that they believed that only a seventh part of the surface of the 
world was covered by the waters of the ocean. Some of these passages were cited by 
Columbus in the fifteenth century to prove that the Atlantic could not be of any great 
extent. The book of Esdras, however, was written after the time of Christ, probably 
quite late in the first century of our era, and is no evidence for old Jewish belief. The 
author of Esdras merely shares a view widely held in his time, according to which the 
earth was divided into seven zones or climates. The view that the Hebrews believed the 
land to be much less extended than the ocean cannot be said to be well founded. 6 
Maritime commerce was almost unknown to the Egyptians, who appear to have had at The Egyptian - 
all times an antipathy to everything connected with the sea. We do not find anything in 
the history of this ancient people wdiich indicates that they took any part in discoveries 
relating to oceanography; their ships, as for instance in the voyage of Necho, appear 
always to have been manned by Phoenician sailors. 7 It is among maritime and 
commercial nations, who must familiarise themselves with the phenomena of the sea, that 
we find the first true ideas concerning the morphology of the ocean. 
Long before the Greeks had emerged from a state of barbarism, and long before the The Phoenicians 
oldest Greek and Hebrew records, the Phoenicians had settled all over the Mediterranean. 
The earliest notices represent them as a nation of clever navigators, capable of making 
distant voyages. In pursuit of commerce, they traversed the Mediterranean, that great 
enclosed sea presenting fewer difficulties to navigation than the Erythraean Sea or Indian 
Ocean, from whence they are supposed to have originally emigrated. 8 At first they 
1 Job, xxvi. 10. 2 Psalms, cxxxix. 9. 3 Proverbs, viii. 27. 4 Genesis, i 9. 
5 II. (IV.) Esdras, cliap. vi. v 41, “ Et tertia die imperasti aquis congregari in septima parte terra?.” 
c Humboldt, Examen critique de l’bistoire de la geographie du nouveau continent et des progres de l’astrononiie 
nautique au 15 n,-: et 16 rae sitcles, Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 188. Humboldt states that the Hindus, like th • Hebrews, 
had seven zones and seven climates, but with the Hindus the seven terrestrial zones are separated by seven seas 
In this arrangement, however, the total mass of the liquid zones is not limited— among the zones are the bizarre, 
rather than poetic, seas of curdled mill fc, of sugar, and of clarified hitter. 
7 E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 3, London, 1883. 
8 As stated above, the Phoenicians knew the Erythraean Sea. Herodotus (I., 1 ; VII., 89) reports that they came 
from the coasts of that sea to settle down on the shores of the Mediterranean during historical times. This opinion is 
admitted by several modern historians, among others by Movers (Die Phcenizier, Bd. i., pp. 9-12). The weight t 
modern judgment appears to lie against this view. Kenrick (Phoenicia, p. 52) rejects it. (See also Bunburv, op. at., v< 1. i 
p. 5, note 3 ; Konrad Kretschmer, Die Entdeckung Amerika’s in ihrer Bedeutung fiir die Geschichte des W. Y i!V, 
p. 12, Berlin, 1892; Ency. Brit., art. “Phoenicia,” by Prof. A. von Gutschmid; The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 
by J. T. Bent, London, 1892; Rawlinson’s Hist, of Phoenicia, London. 1889, p. 53; Pietschmann. C.-.hichte r 
Phcenizier, Berlin, 1889, p. 113.) 
