Part 8 (1/2)

Translating this glorious burst of poetry into prose, we find the following countries mentioned as carrying on an active trade with the Phoenician metropolis:--Northern Syria, Syria of Damascus, Judah and the land of Israel, Egypt, Arabia, Babylonia, a.s.syria, Upper Mesopotamia,[924] Armenia,[925] Central Asia Minor, Ionia, Cyprus, h.e.l.las or Greece,[926] and Spain.[927] Northern Syria furnishes the Phoenician merchants with _butz_, which is translated ”fine linen,” but is perhaps rather cotton,[928] the ”tree-wool” of Herodotus; it also supplies embroidery, and certain precious stones, which our translators have considered to be coral, emeralds, and rubies. Syria of Damascus gives the ”wine of Helbon”--that exquisite liquor which was the only sort that the Persian kings would condescend to drink[929]--and ”white wool,” the dainty fleeces of the sheep and lambs that fed on the upland pastures of Hermon and Antiliba.n.u.s. Judah and the land of Israel supply corn of superior quality, called ”corn of Minnith”--corn, i.e. produced in the rich Ammonite country[930]--together with _pannag_, an unknown substance, and honey, and balm, and oil. Egypt sends fine linen, one of her best known products[931]--sometimes, no doubt, plain, but often embroidered with bright patterns, and employed as such embroidered fabrics were also in Egypt,[932] for the sails of pleasure-boats. Arabia provides her spices, ca.s.sia, and calamus (or aromatic reed), and, beyond all doubt, frankincense,[933] and perhaps cinnamon and ladanum.[934] She also supplies wool and goat's hair, and cloths for chariots, and gold, and wrought iron, and precious stones, and ivory, and ebony, of which the last two cannot have been productions of her own, but must have been imported from India or Abyssinia.[935] Babylonia and a.s.syria furnish ”wrappings of blue, embroidered work, and chests of rich apparel.”[936]

Upper Mesopotamia partakes in this traffic.[937] Armenia gives horses and mules. Central Asia Minor (Tubal and Meshech) supplies slaves and vessels of bra.s.s, and the Greeks of Ionia do the like. Cyprus furnishes ivory, which she must first have imported from abroad.[938] Greece Proper sends her sh.e.l.l-fish, to enable the Phoenician cities to increase their manufacture of the purple dye.[939] Finally, Spain yields silver, iron, tin, and lead--the most useful of the metals--all of which she is known to have produced in abundance.[940]

With the exception of Egypt, Ionia, Cyprus, h.e.l.las, and Spain, the Phoenician intercourse with these places must have been carried on wholly by land. Even with Egypt, wherewith the communication by sea was so facile, there seems to have been also from a very early date a land commerce. The land commerce was in every case carried on by caravans.

Western Asia has never yet been in so peaceful and orderly condition as to dispense prudent traders from the necessity of joining together in large bodies, well provisioned and well armed, when they are about to move valuable goods any considerable distance. There have always been robber-tribes in the mountain tracts, and thievish Arabs upon the plains, ready to pounce on the insufficiently protected traveller, and to despoil him of all his belongings. Hence the necessity of the caravan traffic. As early as the time of Joseph--probably about B.C. 1600--we find a _company_ of the Midianites on their way from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.[941] Elsewhere we hear of the ”travelling _companies_ of the Dedanim,”[942] of the men of Sheba bringing their gold and frankincense;[943] of a mult.i.tude of camels coming up to Palestine with wood from Kedar and Nebaioth.[944] Heeren is entirely justified in his conclusion that the land trade of the Phoenicians was conducted by ”large companies or caravans, since it could only have been carried on in this way.”[945]

The nearest neighbours of the Phoenicians on the land side were the Jews and Israelites, the Syrians of Damascus, and the people of Northern Syria, or the Orontes valley and the tract east of it. From the Jews and Israelites the Phoenicians seem to have derived at all times almost the whole of the grain which they were forced to import for their sustenance. In the time of David and Solomon it was chiefly for wheat and barley that they exchanged the commodities which they exported,[946]

in that of Ezekiel it was primarily for ”wheat of Minnith;”[947] and a similar trade is noted on the return of the Jews from the captivity,[948] and in the first century of our era.[949] But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.[950] Western Palestine was notoriously a land not only of corn, but also of wine, of olive oil, and of honey, and could readily impart of its superfluity to its neighbour in time of need. The oaks of Bashan are very abundant, and seem to have been preferred by the Phoenicians to their own oaks as the material of oars.[951] Balm, or basalm, was a product of the land of Gilead,[952]

and also of the lower Jordan valley, where it was of superior quality.[953]

From the Damascene Syrians we are told that Phoenicia imported ”wine of Helbon” and ”white wool.”[954] The ”wine of Helbon” is reasonably identified with that {oinos Khalubonios} which is said to have been the favourite beverage of the Persian kings.[955] It was perhaps grown in the neighbourhood of Aleppo.[956] The ”white wool” may have been furnished by the sheep that cropped the slopes of the Antiliba.n.u.s, or by those fed on the fine gra.s.s which clothes most of the plain at its base. The fleece of these last is, according to Heeren,[957] ”the finest known, being improved by the heat of the climate, the continual exposure to the open air, and the care commonly bestowed upon the flocks.” From the Syrian wool, mixed perhaps with some other material, seems to have been woven the fabric known, from the city where it was commonly made,[958] as ”damask.”

According to the existing text of Ezekiel,[959] Syria Proper ”occupied in the fairs” of Phoenicia with cotton, with embroidered robes, with purple, and with precious stones. The valley of the Orontes is suitable for the cultivation of cotton; and embroidered robes would naturally be produced in the seat of an old civilisation, which Syria certainly was.

Purple seems somewhat out of place in the enumeration; but the Syrians may have gathered the _murex_ on their seaboard between Mt. Casius and the Gulf of Issus, and have sold what they collected in the Phoenician market. The precious stones which Ezekiel a.s.signs to them are difficult of identification, but may have been furnished by Casius, Bargylus, or Ama.n.u.s. These mountains, or at any rate Casius and Ama.n.u.s, are of igneous origin, and, if carefully explored, would certainly yield gems to the investigator. At the same time it must be acknowledged that Syria had not, in antiquity, the name of a gem-producing country; and, so far, the reading of ”Edom” for ”Aram,” which is preferred by many,[960] may seem to be the more probable.

The commerce of the Phoenicians with Egypt was ancient, and very extensive. ”The wares of Egypt” are mentioned by Herodotus as a portion of the merchandise which they brought to Greece before the time of the Trojan War.[961] The Tyrians had a quarter in the city of Memphis a.s.signed to them,[962] probably from an early date. According to Ezekiel, the princ.i.p.al commodity which Egypt furnished to Phoenicia was ”fine linen”[963]--especially the linen sails embroidered with gay patterns, which the Egyptian n.o.bles affected for their pleasure-boats.

They probably also imported from Egypt natron for their gla.s.s-works, papyrus for their doc.u.ments, earthenware of various kinds for exportation, scarabs and other seals, statuettes and figures of G.o.ds, amulets, and in the later times sarcophagi.[964] Their exports to Egypt consisted of wine on a large scale,[965] tin almost certainly, and probably their peculiar purple fabrics, and other manufactured articles.

The Phoenician trade with Arabia was of especial importance, since not only did the great peninsula itself produce many of the most valuable articles of commerce, but it was also mainly, if not solely, through Arabia that the Indian market was thrown open to the Phoenician traders, and the precious commodities obtained for which Hindustan has always been famous. Arabia is _par excellence_ the land of spices, and was the main source from which the ancient world in general, and Phoenicia in particular, obtained frankincense, cinnamon, ca.s.sia, myrrh, calamus or sweet-cane, and ladanum.[966] It has been doubted whether these commodities were, all of them, the actual produce of the country in ancient times, and Herodotus has been in some degree discredited, but perhaps without sufficient reason. He is supported to a considerable extent by Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, who says:[967]

”Frankincense, myrrh, and ca.s.sia grow in the Arabian districts of Saba and Hadramaut; frankincense and myrrh on the sides or at the foot of mountains, and in the neighbouring islands. The trees which produce them grow sometimes wild, though occasionally they are cultivated; and the frankincense-tree grows sometimes taller than the tree producing the myrrh.” Modern authorities declare the frankincense-tree (_Boswellia thurifera_) to be still a native of Hadramaut;[968] and there is no doubt that the myrrh-tree (_Balsamodendron myrrha_) also grows there. If cinnamon and ca.s.sia, as the terms are now understood, do not at present grow in Arabia, or nearer to Phoenicia than Hindustan, it may be that they have died out in the former country, or our modern use of the terms may differ from the ancient one. On the other hand, it is no doubt possible that the Phoenicians imagined all the spices which they obtained from Arabia to be the indigenous growth of the country, when in fact some of them were importations.

Next to her spices, Arabia was famous for the production of a superior quality of wool. The Phoenicians imported this wool largely. The flocks of Kedar are especially noted,[969] and are said to have included both sheep and goats.[970] It was perhaps a native woollen manufacture, in which Dedan traded with Tyre, and which Ezekiel notices as a trade in ”cloths for chariots.”[971] Goat's hair was largely employed in the production of coverings for tents.[972] Arabia also furnished Phoenicia with gold, with precious stones, with ivory, ebony, and wrought iron.[973] The wrought iron was probably from Yemen, which was celebrated for its manufacture of sword blades. The gold may have been native, for there is much reason to believe that anciently the Arabian mountain ranges yielded gold as freely as the Ethiopian,[974] with which they form one system; or it may have been imported from Hindustan, with which Arabia had certainly, in ancient times, constant communication.

Ivory and ebony must, beyond a doubt, have been Arabian importations.

There are two countries from which they may have been derived, India and Abyssinia. It is likely that the commercial Arabs of the south-east coast had dealings with both.[975]

Of Phoenician imports into Arabia we have no account; but we may conjecture that they consisted princ.i.p.ally of manufactured goods, cotton and linen fabrics, pottery, implements and utensils in metal, beads, and other ornaments for the person, and the like. The nomadic Arabs, leading a simple life, required but little beyond what their own country produced; there was, however, a town population[976] in the more southern parts of the peninsula, to which the elegancies and luxuries of life, commonly exported by Phoenicia, would have been welcome.

The Phoenician trade with Babylonia and a.s.syria was carried on probably by caravans, which traversed the Syrian desert by way of Tadmor or Palmyra, and struck the Euphrates about Circesium. Here the route divided, pa.s.sing to Babylon southwards along the course of the great river, and to Nineveh eastwards by way of the Khabour and the Sinjar mountain-range. Both countries seem to have supplied the Phoenicians with fabrics of extraordinary value, rich in a peculiar embroidery, and deemed so precious that they were packed in chests of cedar-wood, which the Phoenician merchants must have brought with them from Lebanon.[977]

The wares furnished by a.s.syria were in some cases exported to Greece,[978] while no doubt in others they were intended for home consumption. They included cylinders in rock crystal, jasper, hemat.i.te, steat.i.te, and other materials, which may sometimes have found purchasers in Phoenicia Proper, but appear to have been specially affected by the Phoenician colonists in Cyprus.[979] On her part Phoenicia must have imported into a.s.syria and Babylonia the tin which was a necessary element in their bronze; and they seem also to have found a market in a.s.syria for their own most valuable and artistic bronzes, the exquisite embossed paterae which are among the most precious of the treasures brought by Sir Austen Layard from Nineveh.[980]

The nature of the Phoenician trade with Upper Mesopotamia is unknown to us; and it is not impossible that their merchants visited Haran,[981]

rather because it lay on the route which they had to follow in order to reach Armenia than because it possessed in itself any special attraction for them. Gall-nuts and manna are almost the only products for which the region is celebrated; and of these Phoenicia herself produced the one, while she probably did not need the other. But the natural route to Armenia was by way of the Coelesyrian valley, Aleppo and Carchemish, to Haran, and thence by Amida or Diarbekr to Van, which was the capital of Armenia in the early times.

Armenia supplied the Phoenicians with ”horses of common and of n.o.ble breeds,”[982] and also with mules.[983] Strabo says that it was a country exceedingly well adapted for the breeding of the horse,[984]

and even notes the two qualities of the animal that it produced, one of which he calls ”Nisaean,” though the true ”Nisaean plain” was in Media.

So large was the number of colts bred each year, and so highly were they valued, that, under the Persian monarchy the Great King exacted from the province, as a regular item of its tribute, no fewer than twenty thousand of them annually.[985] Armenian mules seem not to be mentioned by any writer besides Ezekiel; but mules were esteemed throughout the East in antiquity,[986] and no country would have been more likely to breed them than the mountain tract of Armenia, the Switzerland of Western Asia, where such surefooted animals would be especially needed.

Armenia adjoined the country of the Moschi and Tibareni--the Meshech and Tubal of the Bible. These tribes, between the ninth and the seventh centuries B.C., inhabited the central regions of Asia Minor and the country known later as Cappadocia. They traded with Tyre in the ”persons of men” and in ”vessels of bra.s.s” or copper.[987] Copper is found abundantly in the mountain ranges of these parts, and Xenophon remarks on the prevalence of metal vessels in the portion of the region which he pa.s.sed through--the country of the Carduchians.[988] The traffic in slaves was one in which the Phoenicians engaged from very early times.

They were not above kidnapping men, women, and children in one country and selling them into another;[989] besides which they seem to have frequented regularly the princ.i.p.al slave marts of the time. They bought such Jews as were taken captive and sold into slavery by the neighbouring nations,[990] and they looked to the Moschi and Tibareni for a constant supply of the commodity from the Black Sea region.[991]

The Caucasian tribes have always been in the habit of furnis.h.i.+ng slave-girls to the harems of the East, and the Thracians, who were not confined to Europe, but occupied a great part of Asia Minor, regularly trafficked in their children.[992]

Such was the extent of the Phoenician land trade, as indicated by the prophet Ezekiel, and such were, so far as is at present known, the commodities interchanged in the course of it. It is quite possible--nay, probable--that the trade extended much further, and certain that it must have included many other articles of commerce besides those which we have mentioned. The sources of our information on the subject are so few and scanty, and the notices from which we derive our knowledge for the most part so casual, that we may be sure what is preserved is but a most imperfect record of what was--fragments of wreck recovered from the sea of oblivion. It may have been a Phoenician caravan route which Herodotus describes as traversed on one occasion by the Nasamonians,[993] which began in North Africa and terminated with the Niger and the city of Timbuctoo; and another, at which he hints as lying between the coast of the Lotus-eaters and Fezzan.[994] Phoenician traders may have accompanied and stimulated the slave hunts of the Garamantians,[995] as Arab traders do those of the Central African nations at the present day.

Again, it is quite possible that the Phoenicians of Memphis designed and organised the caravans which, proceeding from Egyptian Thebes, traversed Africa from east to west along the line of the ”Salt Hills,” by way of Ammon, Augila, Fezzan, and the Tuarik country to Mount Atlas.[996] We can scarcely imagine the Egyptians showing so much enterprise. But these lines of traffic can be ascribed to the Phoenicians only by conjecture, history being silent on the subject.

The sea trade of the Phoenicians was still more extensive than their land traffic. It is divisible into two branches, their trade with their own colonists, and that with the natives of the various countries to which they penetrated in their voyages. The colonies sent out from Phoenicia were, except in the single instance of Carthage, trading settlements, planted where some commodity or commodities desired by the mother-country abounded, and were intended to secure to the mother-country the monopoly of such commodity or commodities. For instance, Cyprus was colonised for the sake of its copper mines and its timber; Cilicia and Lycia for their timber only; Thasos for its gold mines; Salamis and Cythera for the purple trade; Sardinia and Spain for their numerous metals; North Africa for its fertility and for the trade with the interior. Phoenicia expected to derive, primarily, from each colony the commodity or commodities which had caused the selection of the site. In return she supplied the colonists with her own manufactured articles; with fabrics in linen, wool, cotton, and perhaps to some extent in silk; with every variety of pottery, from dishes and jugs of the plainest and most simple kind to the most costly and elaborate vases and amphorae; with metal utensils and arms, with gold and silver ornaments, with embossed s.h.i.+elds and paterae, with fance and gla.s.s, and also with any foreign products or manufactures that they desired and that the countries within the range of her influence could furnish.

Phoenicia must have imported into Cyprus, to suit a peculiar Cyprian taste, the Egyptian statuettes, scarabs, and rings,[997] and the a.s.syrian and Babylonian cylinders, which have been found there. The tin which she brought from the Ca.s.siterides she distributed generally, for she did not discourage her colonists from manufacturing for themselves to some extent. There was probably no colony which did not make its own bronze vessels of the commoner sort and its own coa.r.s.er pottery.

In her trade with the nations who peopled the coasts of the Mediterranean, the Propontis, and the Black Sea, Phoenicia aimed primarily at disposing to advantage of her own commodities, secondarily at making a profit in commodities which she had obtained from other countries, and thirdly on obtaining commodities which she might dispose of to advantage elsewhere. Where the nations were uncivilised, or in a low condition of civilisation, she looked to making a large profit by furnis.h.i.+ng them at a cheap rate with all the simplest conveniences of life, with their pottery, their implements and utensils, their clothes, their arms, the ornaments of their persons and of their houses.