to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all; and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the comparative celebrity of the temple. The property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with "holy marks," and who must have been numerous, in order to suffice for the service of the large buildings and their constant visitors.

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste or order, whose native name indicated that they stood on the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in Lower Egypt. The Kalasiries had once amounted to 160,000 men, the Hermotybii to 250,000, when at the maximum of their population; but that highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier-caste was assigned a portion of land, equal to about 6 English acres, free from any tax. The lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as privileged property, and exempt from all burdens; while the remaining soil was considered as the property of the king, who, however, received from it a fixed proportion-one-fifth of the total produce-leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators. The soldiers were interdicted from every description of art and trade.'

human life in these gigantic works must have been enormous. About 120,000 men are said to have perished in the digging of a canal, which was left unfinished, between the Red Sea and an arm of the Nile; and according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests of his day described the building of the Pyramids as a time of extreme exhaustion and hardship to the whole country.

The religion of the Egyptians seems to have been, in its popular form at least, a mere gross Fetishism, whose principal characteristic was a worship of teeming animal life the bull, the cat, the ibis, the crocodile, &c.; different animals in different nomes. Whatever profounder meaning lay hid under this gross ceremonial the priest-caste reserved to themselves, as one of the mysteries, the possession of which severed them from the rest of the population. Among these mysteries was the art of writing, which was practised both in the alphabetical and the hieroglyphic form; the latter being used for special purposes. Some vague notion of the immortality of the soul, resembling the Hindoo tenet of transmigration, seems to have pervaded the Egyptian religion; and this belief appears to have lain at the foundation of the Egyptian practice of embalming the dead. The business of embalming was a very dignified one, and was aided by a host of inferior functionaries, who made and painted coffins and other articles which were required. The bodies of the poorer classes were merely dried with salt or natron, and wrapt up in coarse cloths, and deposited in the catacombs. The bodies of the rich and great underwent the most complicated operations, wrapt in bandages

kinds of ornaments. Thus prepared, they were placed in highly-decorated cases or coffins, and then consigned to sarcophagi in the catacombs or pyramids. Bodies so prepared have been called mummies, either from the Arabian word momia, or the Coptic mum, signifying bitumen or gum-resin.

The other castes are differently given in different authors; the most probable account, however, is that which assigns them as three-the caste of the husband-dipped in balsam, and laboriously adorned with all men, that of the artificers, and that of the herdsmen, which last caste included a variety of occupations held in contempt, the lowest and most degraded of all being that of swineherd. The separation between the husbandmen and the herdsmen seems to have arisen from the circumstance that different parts of the country, not suitable for agriculture, were entirely laid out in pasture. The artificers, constituting the vast town population of Egypt, were subdivided into a great variety of occupations, weavers, masons, sculptors, &c. who were compelled to these professions by hereditary obligation. It was by the labour of this vast town population, assisted by that of herds of slaves, that those huge works were accomplished, the remains of which still attest the greatness of ancient Egypt. Part of the artisan population were exclusively occupied in skilled labour; and in a country where there was such a taste for works of masonry, sculpture was necessarily one of the most largely-stocked of the skilled occupations. Perfect exactness of execution,' it is said, mastery of the hardest stone, and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics, so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision.' These skilled artificers may be supposed to have acted as foremen and overseers of the great numbers of labourers who were employed in public works such as the Pyramids. In the construction of these works, no degree of labour for any length of time seems to have intimidated the Egyptians. The huge blocks of stone, sometimes weighing 1000 tons each, were dragged for hundreds of miles on sledges, and their transport, perhaps, did not occupy less time than a year; in one case which is known, 2000 men were employed three years in bringing a single stone from a quarry to the building in which it was to be placed. Usually, the sledges were drawn by men yoked in rows to separate ropes, all pulling at a ring fixed to the block. (See Vol. I. p. 404.) Where it was possible, the blocks were brought from the quarries on flatbottomed boats on the Nile. But the transport of these masses was much more easily accomplished than the placing of them in elevated situations in the buildings. They were raised by the power of levers and inclined planes at immense trouble and cost. The waste of

Although the Egyptians carried on from early times a caravan-commerce with the adjacent countries of Phonicia, Palestine, and Arabia, importing such articles as wine, oil, and spices for embalming, yet exclusiveness and self-sufficiency were characteristics of their civilisation. There, on the banks of the Nile, these millions lived, changeless in their methods through centuries, each individual mechanically pursuing the occupation to which he was born-millions cultivating the soil, and producing wheat, &c. for the subsistence of the whole; others tending the cattle necessary for food or sacrifice; millions, again, crowded into the numerous towns, occupied in the various handicrafts necessary to provide articles of clothing, luxury, &c.—a large proportion of this class being available for stupendous architectural works; and lastly, diffused through these country and town populations, two other proprietorcastes-the one a, militia, occupied in gymnastic exercises alone; the other a sacerdotal or intellectual order, within whose body was accumulated all the speculative or scientific wisdom of the country. Relations existed between Egypt and the adjacent countries; and rumours of the nature of its peculiar civilisation may have spread through the nations of the Mediterranean; but for a long while it was shut, like the present China, against foreign intrusion; and it was not till about the year 650 B. C. that it was thrown open to general inspection. In the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., the philosophers of other countries, and especially of Greece, used to visit Egypt in order to acquire, by intercourse with the Egyptian intellectual caste, some of that precious knowledge of which they were believed to be the depositaries.

Although the Egyptian civilisation is known to have existed pretty much as we have described it from immemorial antiquity, yet, with the exception of what we learn from Scripture, we know little of Egyptian history, properly so called, anterior to the time when the country was thrown open to the Greeks. Herodotus and Manetho, indeed, have given us retrospective lists of the Egyptian kings, extending back into the primi

Arabia.

The great peninsula of Arabia was in the earliest times inhabited by a population of the Semitic stock, it now, partly concentrated in cities, partly wandering in all essential respects similar to that which inhabits in tribes through the extensive deserts which mark the surface of the country. The inhabitants of the towns subsist by agriculture and commerce; the wandering tribes by cattle-rearing and pillage. In ancient times, as now, the Arabs were celebrated for their expert horsefree indomitable spirit. In religion, however, the modern Arabs, who are Mohammedans, differ from the ancient Arabs, who were idolaters, chiefly worshippers of the celestial luminaries, nowhere so beautiful as in the sky of an Arabian desert. The Arabs themselves trace their history back, the older tribes to Kahtan (the Joktan of the 10th chapter of Genesis), the later to Adnan, a descendant of Ishmael the offspring of Abraham. It is unnecessary, however, to enter into this history, as Arabia was not incorporated with the Persian empire, and only assumed historical importance in later times, when it sent forth the religion of Mohammed over the East. (See Nos. 58 and 76.)

Syria.

Syria-which name is generally applied to the country The Semitic or Aramaic population overspreading lying between the Euphrates and Arabian desert on the divided itself into various independent states or kingeast, and the Mediterranean on the west-had early doms, which ultimately resolved themselves, it would appear, into three. These were Phoenicia, a narrow strip of coast-land, extending from Mount Carmel to the river Elentheros; Palestine, or the Holy Land, including the country south of Phoenicia, between the Arabian desert and the Mediterranean, as well as the inland district lying between Mount Carmel and Mount Herman; and Syria Proper, whose capital was Dakings was at its highest, included all the country except mascus, and which, when the power of the Damascan Palestine and Phoenicia. Syrian history possesses no independent importance; we pass, therefore, to the history of the Phoenician and Jewish nations.

tive gloom of the world; but portions of these lists are | after his death the country was subjugated by Cam evidently constructed backwards on mythical prin- byses, and annexed to the Persian empire (B. c. 525). ciples. Thus Manetho, preserving doubtless the traditions of the sacerdotal Egyptian caste, to which he is supposed to have belonged, carries back the imagination as far as 30,000 years before the birth of Christ. From this date till B. c. 5702, great divine personages ruled in Egypt; then (B. C. 5702) it came into the possession of human kings, the first of which was Menes. From the accession of Menes down to the incorporation of Egypt with the Persian empire (B. c. 525), Herodotus assigns 330 kings, or, as they are called in Scripture, Pharaohs, whose names, he informs us, were read to him out of a papyrus manuscript by the Egyp-manship, their hospitality, their eloquence, and their tian priests, who pledged themselves to its accuracy; and Manetho reckons up twenty-six dynasties, some of them native and others foreign, which divided the long period into portions of different lengths. The earlier of these dynasties are of course unhistorical, and are to be treated as Egyptian myths-that is, fictions of the peculiar Egyptian imagination, as the Greek stories of Prometheus, &c. were fictions of the peculiar Greek imagination. The later dynasties, however, are not to be thus dismissed. It was in the fifteenth of Manetho's dynasties, or B. C. 1920, that Abraham is supposed to have visited Egypt; and monuments remain which are referred to the sixteenth and seventeenth dynasties, during which it was that the Israelites remained in Egypt. These three dynasties were foreign ones, and are denominated the dynasties of the Hyksos, or shepherd kings-these shepherds being represented as a red-haired and blue-eyed race of invaders, who came from the Semitic countries in the north-east. The shepherd kings are said to have destroyed the monuments of the previous dynasties. At length they were expelled by a native dynasty of Thebans, the eighteenth in Manetho's list, and the head of which is supposed to have been the Pharaoh' who knew not Joseph. The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is believed to have taken place B.C. 1491, under the reign of the Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, named Thothmes III.-the Pharaoh whose heart was hardened, and who was drowned in the Red Sea. This Theban dynasty produced many able sovereigns; one of whom, Rameses II., was a great conqueror, and extended the Egyptian dominion far into Asia. The nineteenth and twentieth dynasties were likewise from Thebes; the twenty-first were Tanites; the twenty-second, Babastites; the twenty-third, Tanites again; the twenty-fourth, Saites, from Sais in Lower Egypt; the twenty-fifth (B. C. 812) was an Ethiopian dynasty, during whose rule there were frequent wars with the Assyrians. The twenty-sixth dynasty, which succeeded the Ethiopian one after a period of anarchy, was from Sais. The first of its kings was Psammetichus I., whose reign (B. C. 650)| constitutes an epoch in Egyptian history. Having at tained to the throne by the aid of Greek mercenaries, he broke down the barriers which Egyptian exclusiveness had hitherto kept up against foreigners, greatly to the disgust of many of his subjects, especially of the priestly caste, whose trammels in other respects he Originally, Phoenicia was divided into a number of threw off, and of the military caste, who found their little states or communities, each having a town for its places occupied by Ionian and Karian colonists. The metropolis, with a hereditary king of its own; and ere successors of Psammetichus involved themselves in war the country was restricted by the formation of the with the Chaldeans or Assyrians of Babylon. The Jewish nation, the number of these Phoenician or fourth of them, named Amasis (B. C. 570-526), rivalled Canaanitish principalities must have been considerable. Psammetichus in liberality of policy. Besides grant- The Phoenicians were a fragment of the Canaanites of ing permission,' says Mr Grote, to various Grecian Scripture; and doubtless in the annals of the separate towns to erect religious establishments for such of their Phoenician towns, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus, citizens as visited the Greek port of Naukratis, he also were preserved records, from the Phoenician point of sanctioned the constitution of a formal and organised view, of many of those ancient transactions which are emporium or factory, invested with commercial privi-related in the Scriptural account of the settlement of leges, and armed with authority exercised by presiding officers regularly chosen.' To this important establishment was given the name of the Hellênion; just as if, at a hitherto close port of China, an institution were to be permitted to be called 'The British Factory.' Under Amasis, Egypt attained to a great degree of prosperity, which was remembered the more that immediately

6

The Phoenicians.

Phoenicia was an exceedingly small country, its length being only about 120 miles, and its breadth nowhere greater than 20 miles. Indeed it may be described as a mere slip of coast-land, sufficiently large to accommodate a range of port towns, such as a merchant people required. The most northern of these Phoenician cities was Aradus, situated on a small island; the most southern was the famous Tyre; and between the two were situated many others, of which the chief were Sidon, Berytus, Tripolis, and Byblus. The greater part of the population was contained in these cities, the rural population being small in proportion.

the Jews in Canaan. Without going back, however, into the remoter period of Phoenician history, one of the questions connected with which is, whether Tyre (founded, it was said, B. c. 2700) or Sidon was the more ancient town, let us give a summary view of the nature of the Phoenician civilisation at the period of its highest celebrity-namely, from B. c. 1200 to B. c. 700, at which

time we find Tyre exercising a presiding influence over | said, 'their ships bound on a voyage observed that a the other Phoenician communities.

The Phoenicians were the great trading nation of antiquity. Situated at so convenient a point on the Mediterranean, it devolved on them to transport to the sea-shore the commodities of the East, brought to them overland by Arabian and Egyptian caravans, and from the sea-shore to distribute them among the expecting nations of the West. Nor were they without valuable products of their own. The sand of their coasts was particularly suitable for the manufacture of glass; their bays abounded in a species of fish which produced a fine purple dye-the celebrated Tyrian purple of antiquity; and in various parts of the country there were excellent mines of iron and copper. It was, in fact, essential for the general interests of the race that the people inhabiting that portion of the Mediterranean coasts should devote themselves to commerce. In anti-Phoenicia, rendered all the greater by the ancient cuscipation of this, as it might seem, the mountains of Libanus, which separated the narrow Phoenician territory from Syria, were stocked with the best timber, which, transported over the short distance which intervened between these mountains and the sea, abundantly supplied the demands of the Phoenician dockyards. There was something in the Phoenician character, also, which suited the requirements of their geo-able points of the Mediterranean-on the coasts of graphical position. Skilful, enterprising, griping in their desire for wealth, and in other respects resembling much their neighbours the Jews, to whom they were allied in race, and whose language was radically identical with their own-theirs was essentially the merchant type of character.

Standing as the Phoenicians did as the people by whom the exchange between the East and the West was managed, a complete view of their life and manner of activity should embrace first, their relations with the East-that is, their overland trade with Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, and India; secondly, their relations with the West- that is, their maritime trade with the various nations of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts; and thirdly, the peculiar character of mind which either accompanied or resulted from the consciousness of such a position in the great family of mankind.

With regard to the overland trade of the Phoenicians with the Eastern countries, little requires to be said except that it was one attended with great risks-the journey of a caravan across the deserts, and through the roaming tribes which separated Phoenicia from interior Asia, being a more serious enterprise than a long sea voyage. It is probable that the Phoenicians managed this commerce not in their own persons, but as wealthy speculative merchants, dealing in a skilful manner with the native Egyptian, Assyrian, or Arabian caravan-proprietors, with whom they maintained an understood connection. At the same time it is likely that they stimulated and regulated the Eastern commerce, by means of Phoenician agents or emissaries despatched into the interior with general instructions, just as in later times European agents were often despatched into the interior of Africa to direct the movements of native merchants. It was in their maritime trade with the West, however, that the Phoenicians chiefly exhibited the resources of their own character. Shipping the Oriental commodities, as well as their native products, at Tyre or Sidon, they carried them to all the coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Spain, selling them there at immense profit, and returning with freights of Western goods. With some of the nations of the Mediterranean their intercourse would be that of one civilised nation with another; with others, and especially with those of the West, it must have been an intercourse similar to that of a British ship with those rude islanders who exchange their valuable products for nails, bits of looking-glass, and other trifles. Whether their customers were civilised or savage, however, the Phoenicians reaped profits from them. Their aim was to monopolise the commerce of the Mediterranean. If at any time,' it is

stranger kept them company, or followed them in their track, they were sure to get rid of him, or deceive him if they could; and in this they went so far as to venture the loss of their ships, and even of their lives, so that they could but destroy or disappoint him; so jealous were they of foreigners, and so bent on keeping all to themselves. And to add to the dangers of the sea, and discourage other nations from trading, they practised piracy, or pretended to be at war with such as they met when they thought themselves strongest.' This policy succeeded so far, that hardly a merchant ship was to be seen in the Mediterranean not manned by Phoenicians. From this extension of the Phoenician commerce throughout the Mediterranean resulted, by necessity, an extensive system of colonisation. The distance, for instance, of Spain from tom of always sailing close by the coast, made it necessary for the Phoenician traders to have intermediate ports, settlements, or factories, to which their vessels might resort, not to say that such settlements were required for the collection of the produce which was to be taken back to Phoenicia. Accordingly, in process of time, Phoenician colonies were established at all availAfrica, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and in the Balearic Islands; the rising maritime spirit of the Greeks excluding the Phoenicians from the Egean and the coasts of Asia Minor. Among the most ancient of the colonies from Tyre were Carthage and Utica on the African coast, and Gades (Cadiz) in Spain; all of which were founded before the first of the Greek Olympiads (B. C. 884). From these afterwards arose smaller settlements, which diffused the Phoenician agency still more extensively among the uncivilised nations of Africa and western Europe. Gades in Spain, situated, according to the ancient mode of navigation, at a distance of seventy-five days' sail from Tyre or Sidon-a distance larger than that which now divides Liverpool from Bombay-was a colony of special importance; first, as commanding the inland Spanish trade, particularly valuable at that time, inasmuch as the gold and silver mines of Spain caused it to be regarded as the Mexico or Peru of the ancient world; and secondly, as forming a point from which the Phoenician commerce could be still farther extended along the extra-Mediterranean shores. From this point, we are told, the Phoenician ships extended their voyages southwards for thirty days' sail along the western coast of Africa, and northwards as far as Britain, where they took in tin from the mines of Cornwall, and even as far as the Baltic, where they collected amber. Upon what a scale of profit must these expeditions have been conducted, when, from Tyre to Cornwall, not a merchant ship besides those of the Phoenicians was to be seen! And who can tell what influence these Phoenician visits may have had on the then rude nations bordering the Atlantic?-or how far these ante-historic Phoenician impulses may have stimulated the subsequent career of these nations? Like the visit of an English merchantman now to a South Sea island, so must have been the visit of a Phoenician trading vessel 3000 years ago to the Britons of Cornwall.

As might be expected, this great merchant people were among the most cultured of antiquity, and especially skilled in all the arts of luxurious living. The 27th chapter of the book of Ezekiel presents a most striking picture of the pride and magnificence of the Tyrians, and embodies many minute particulars relative to Phoenician customs and mode of life. Indeed it has justly been pronounced the most early and most authentic record extant relative to the commerce of the ancients. We shall therefore quote part of it, inserting parenthetical explanations. "O thou,' says the prophet, that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, thus saith the Lord God, O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the

sians. Among the last of the Phoenician achievements was the circumnavigation of Africa B. c. 600-a feat undertaken by Phoenician sailors at the command of the Egyptian king Nekos, one of the immediate successors of Psammetik; and, as is now believed, really performed the course pursued being from the Red Sea round Africa to Spain-the reverse, therefore, of that followed by Vasco de Gama 2000 years later. About the time that Phoenicia began to wane, her colony, Carthage, assumed her place in the affairs of the world. Carthaginian civilisation was essentially a mere repetition of the Phoenician, although under a different form of government: Carthaginian history interweaves itself with that of the Romans. (See No. 57.)

Palestine-the Jews.

Palestine extends from north to south a length of about 200 miles, and 50 in breadth; and is therefore, in point of size, of nearly the same extent as Scotland. The general character of the country is that of a hilly region, interspersed with moderately fertile vales; and being thus irregular in surface, it possesses a number of brooks or streams, which for the most part are swollen considerably after rains, but are almost dry in the hot seasons of the year. The present condition of Palestine scarcely corresponds with its ancient fertility. This is chiefly attributable to the devastating effects of perpetual wars; and some physical changes have also contributed to the destruction of agricultural industry. Yet, after all, so excellent would the soil appear to be, and so ample its resources, that Canaan may still be characterised as a land flowing with milk and honey.

midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty, they have made all thy shipboards of firtrees of Senir (Mount Hermon); they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks (some translate alders) of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim (better translated "thy benches". - that is, seats in à pleasure-galley-have they made of ivory inlaid in box from the isles of Chittim-supposed to be Cyprus, Corsica, or Pontus in Asia Minor). Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail (some interpret flag; but the reference is probably to a pleasure-vessel, whose sails might consist of fine linen); blue and purple from the isles of Elishah (the Grecian countries) was that which covered thee (were used as awnings-Laconian purple being more suitable for this purpose than the more expensive Tyrian). The inhabitants of Zidon (Sidon) and Arvad (Aradus) were thy mariners: thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots. The ancients of Gebal (another Phoenician city) and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers; all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. (This passage is very minute-Tyre, it seems, supplied its own pilots, but drew its mariners and shipwrights from other parts of Phoenicia.) They of Persia, and of Lud, and of Phut, were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness (Tyre, it seems, like her daughter Carthage, employed mercenary troops, drawing them chiefly from the nomad tribes of Persia, &c.) . . . . Tarshish (here The history of the extraordinary nation which once Tarshish means Tarlessus, the Spanish colony of the inhabited this land, must be so much more familiar to Phoenicians) was thy merchant (agent) by reason of our readers than that of any other ancient nation, that the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, | all that is necessary here is a brief sketch, such as will and lead, they traded in thy fairs. Javan (the Grecian assist the imagination in tracing with due completecountries), Tubal, and Meschach (the countries near ness the general career of the East till the establishthe Black and Caspian Seas), they were thy merchants; ment of the Persian empire. According to the acthey traded the persons of men (slaves-Circassian counts given of the Jews in Scripture, and in their and Georgian slaves, valued then as now) and vessels history by Josephus, they were descended from Abraof brass in thy market. They of the house of Togarmah ham, the tenth in descent from Noah, through his (Armenia) traded in thy fairs with horses, and horse- second son Shem. According to Josephus, Abraham, men, and mules. The men of Dedan (either India or who was born in the 292d year (according to other southern Arabia) were thy merchants; many isles authorities, in the 352d year) after the Deluge, 'left were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years for a present horns of ivory and ebony (either tusks of old, and, at the command of God, went into Canaan, ivory or horns, ivory and ebony). Syria (Cole, Syria, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. and Mesopotamia) was thy merchant by reason of the He was a person of great sagacity, both for understandmultitude of the wares of thy making: they occupied ing of all things and persuading his hearers, and not in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Judah, and the have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he land of Israel, they were thy merchants; they traded determined to renew and to change the opinion all men in thy market wheat of Minnith and Pannag, and happened then to have concerning God; for he was the honey, and oil, and balm. (The proximity of a corn- first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was growing country like Judea was of great advantage but ONE God, the Creator of the universe; and that as to the Phoenicians-the other products mentioned were to other gods, if they contributed anything to the hapalso supplied from Judea; the balm from the neigh-piness of men, that each of them afforded it only accordbourhood of Lake Genesareth.) Damascus was thy ing to His appointment, and not by their own power. merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, For which doctrines, when the Chaldæans and other for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon people of Mesopotamia raised a tumult against him, he (Aleppo) and white wool. Dan also and Javan (here thought fit to leave that country, and at the command part of Arabia is meant), going to and fro, occupied in of God he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy when he was there settled, he built an altar, and permarket. Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes formed a sacrifice to God.' After the death of Abrafor chariots. Arabia (the Bedouin Arabs), and all the ham's son Isaac, his younger son Jacob remained for a princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, number of years in Canaan, surrounded by a family of and rams, and goats.' twelve sons, one of whom, Joseph, as related in Scripture, became the cause of the removal of his father and brethren, and all belonging to them, into Egypt. The Hebrew emigrants were seventy in number, and formed at the first a respectable colony among the Egyptians. Jacob died after having been seventeen years in Egypt, and his body was carried by Joseph to Hebron, and buried in the sepulchre of his father and grandfather. Joseph also died in Egypt at the age of 110, and at length his brethren died likewise. Each of the twelve sons of Jacob became the progenitor of a family or tribe, and the twelve tribes, personified by the term

Among the contributions made by the Phoenicians to the west, were alphabetical writing, the Greek alphabet being a derivative from the Phoenician; the scale of weight; and that of coined money. Having made these and other contributions to the west, Phoenicia began about 700 B. C. to decline in importance; the Ionian Greeks, and latterly the Egyptians, becoming its commercial rivals on the Mediterranean; and the invasions of the Assyrians from the east depriving it of independence. Subdued by the Assyrians and Babylonians, Phoenicia was transferred by them to the Per