some early Phoenician story made to suit the existing
circumstances of the people to whom the story was
narrated. The Bible gives us the aócount of King
Solomon’s expedition undertaken under Phoenician
auspices • in fact, the civilised world was full of
accounts of such voyages, told us, unfortunately,
in the vaguest way, owing doubtless to the fact that
those who undertook them guarded carefully their
secret.
Prom an Egyptian source also certain knowledge
may be gained, though the Egyptians themselves
would appear never to have carried their commerce
outside the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, but to have met
at the port of Adule, at the south of the Bed Sea,
Arabian merchants who did so. Now in the reign of
Queen Hatasou, of the eighteenth dynasty, in the
seventeenth century B.C., the land of Punt was conquered
by an Egyptian expedition, and on the
monuments of Deir-el-Bahari the conquered people of
Punt are depicted as sending tribute, which included
ebony, ostrich feathers, leopard skins, giraffes, lions,
living leopards, cynocephalous apes, elephants’ tusks,
and ingots of gold, all products of South-eastern
Africa. When compared with the Biblical account
of King Solomon’s expedition about seven centuries
later, the productions of both show a very
remarkable analogy. Gold was the most important
of the objects brought, gold in ingots such as the
mould would produce which we found at Zimbabwe,
and the gold of Arabia in antiquity was proverbial.
During the height of the prosperity of Borne gold was
sent thither by the Arabians, as we have seen from
Aristeas. Horace bears testimony to this in his line,
‘ Thesauris Arabum et divitis Indise.’. Agatharcides, in
B.C., 120, speaks in glowing terms of the wealth of the
Sabasans ; allusions to it are common in the Bible, and
the connection between Phoenicia and Arabia is borne
testimony to by Ezekiel in his denunciation of Tyre :
‘Arabia and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied
with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats : in these were
they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and
Baamah, they were thy merchants : they occupied in
thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious
stones, and gold.’ 1 Probably community of
origin, the inherent commercial instinct common
to the Semitic races, brought about this intimate
relationship between Phoenicia and Sabsea. Another
testimony to the wealth of gold in Arabia is
given us by the Assyrian inscriptions, on which
Tiglath Pileser H., B.C. 733, is mentioned as receiving
tribute from that country in gold, silver, and much
incense ; and Sargon in his annals also mentions the
tribute of Shamsi, Queen of Arabia, as paid in gold
and spices. There was little, if any, gold to be found
in Arabia itself; on this point all travellers who have
penetrated this country are agreed. * Here, near the
east coast of Africa, .far nearer to Arabia than India
and China; and other places,'which they were accustomed
to visit, not only is there evidence of the extensive
production of gold, but also evidence of a cult
known to Arabia and Phoenicia alike, temples built on
1 Ezek. xxvii. 21, 22.
o