The Essential Works of George Rawlinson: Egypt, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Phoenicia, Parthia, Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylon, Persia, Sasanian Empire & Herodotus' Histories. George Rawlinson
rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_01453581-9b43-566d-9323-e6dfe752e98e">936 Upper Mesopotamia partakes in this traffic.937 Armenia gives horses and mules. Central Asia Minor (Tubal and Meshech) supplies slaves and vessels of brass, and the Greeks of Ionia do the like. Cyprus furnishes ivory, which she must first have imported from abroad.938 Greece Proper sends her shell-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, Hellas, 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 multitude 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 οίνος Χαλυβωνιος 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 Antilibanus, or by those fed on the fine grass 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 assigns to them are difficult of identification, but may have been furnished by Casius, Bargylus, or Amanus. These mountains, or at any rate Casius and Amanus, 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 assigned to them,962 probably from an early date. According to Ezekiel, the principal commodity which Egypt furnished to Phoenicia was “fine linen"963—especially the linen sails embroidered with gay patterns, which the Egyptian nobles affected for their pleasure-boats. They probably also imported from Egypt natron for their glass-works, papyrus for their documents, earthenware of various kinds for exportation, scarabs and other seals, statuettes and figures of gods, 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, cassia, myrrh, calamus or sweet-cane, and ladanum.966 It has been doubted