12. The fertility of Egypt, and its central position, made it an emporium of commerce; and there it flourished, in an eminent degree, long before it was cultivated in Europe and in Western Asia. For several ages, however, the Egyptians, on account of their superstitious prejudices against the sea, carried on no maritime commerce.
13. The Phœnicians were the first people who used the Mediterranean Sea, as a highway for the transportation of merchandise. Tyre and Sidon were their chief cities; and the latter was called a great, and the former a strong city, even in the time of Joshua, fifteen hundred years before the advent of Christ. These people, in their original association as a nation, possessed but a small territory; and, being surrounded by many powerful nations, they never attempted its enlargement on the land side.
14. The settlement of the Israelites in the "Promised Land," circumscribed their limits to a very small territory, and compelled them to colonize a great number of their inhabitants. The colonies which they formed in the various countries bordering upon the Mediterranean and on the islands, enlarged the boundaries of civilization, and greatly extended their trade.
15. The Phœnicians continued their colonial system for many centuries after the period just mentioned, and even extended it to the Atlantic coasts of Europe. But the most distinguished of all their colonies was the one which founded the city of Carthage, on the northern coast of Africa, about the year 869 before Christ. Elissa, or, as she is otherwise called, Dido, the reputed leader of this colony, makes a conspicuous figure in one of the books of Virgil's Æneid.
16. Carthage, adopting the same system which had so long been pursued by the great cities of Phœnicia, rose, in a few centuries, to wealth and splendor. But, changing, at length, her mercantile for a military character, she ruled her dependent colonies with a rod of despotism. This produced a spirit of resistance on the part of her distant subjects, who applied to Rome for aid to resist her tyranny. The consequence of this application was the three "Punic wars," so renowned in history, and which terminated in the destruction of Carthage, in the year 146 before the Christian era. During the first Punic war, Carthage contained seven hundred thousand inhabitants; but at its destruction, scarcely five thousand were found within its walls.
17. The period of the greatest prosperity of Tyre, may be placed 588 years before Christ, at which time the remarkable prophecies of Ezekiel concerning it were delivered. Soon after this, it was greatly injured by Nebuchadnezzar; and was finally destroyed by Alexander the Great, about the year 332 before Christ.
18. A new channel was opened to commerce by the monarch just mentioned, he having founded a city in Egypt, to which he gave the name of Alexandria. His object seems to have been, to render this city the centre of the commercial world; and its commanding position, at the mouth of the Nile, was well calculated to make it so; since it was easy of access from the west by the Mediterranean, from the east by the Red Sea, and from the central countries of Asia by the Isthmus of Suez.
19. The plans of Alexander were carried out with vigor by Ptolemy, who received Egypt as his portion of the Macedonian empire, after the death of his master; and, by his liberality, he induced great numbers of people to settle in the new metropolis for the purposes of trade. Far south, on the Red Sea, he also founded a city, which he called Berenice, and which he designed as a depôt for the precious commodities brought into his kingdom from India. From this city, goods were transported on camels across the country, to a port on the Nile; and thence they were taken down the river to Alexandria.
20. Ptolemy also kept large fleets both on the Mediterranean and on the Red Sea, for the protection of commerce, and the defence of his dominions; yet, the Egyptians, even under the Ptolemies, never attempted a direct trade to India. They, as the Phœnicians and their own progenitors had done for ages, depended upon the Arabian merchants for the productions of that country.
21. The Greeks, before their subjugation to the Roman power, had paid much attention to nautical affairs; but this had been chiefly for warlike dominion, rather than for commercial purposes. The city of Corinth, however, had become wealthy by the attention of its inhabitants to manufactures and trade; but it was destroyed by the same barbarian people who, about this time, annihilated Carthage. Both of these cities were afterwards favored by Julius Cæsar; but they never regained anything like their former importance.