Afterwards Tyre, with its close intercourse with Egypt, established colonies on the Delta of the Nile, the most renowned of which was called the “New City,” Karthadast, called by the Greeks Carchedon, and by the Romans Carthage.
This daughter of Tyre rose to great prosperity, but never forgot her allegiance to the mother city. Their combined fleets sailed to, and founded, colonies in Sardinia, Cyprus, the Grecian Archipelago, and to Spain, doing enormous trade with both East and West. The Phœnician ships that are known to us from the relief representations are of two kinds, the round-prowed galleys, or cargo-carriers (Fig. 210), and the ram-stemmed vessels, or war galleys (Fig. 211). There is no record that has been found of their larger sea-going “merchantmen” ships.
Fig. 212.—Carthaginian Coin, Silver. (P. & C.)
The growing power of the Greeks and Etruscans, and their improvement in shipbuilding, was a new competition with the ships of Tyre in the East, and at length forced the Tyrians to find new markets in the West.
Fig. 213.—Carthaginian Coin, Electrum. (P. & C.)
The staple trade of the Tyrians had now become that of metals, the chief of which was tin, owing to the great demand for it in the manufacture of bronze in this period.
Their ships went as far as the Scilly Isles, to Cornwall, and to Ireland. Diodorus mentions that the inhabitants of Great Britain were much softened in their manners by their intercourse with the “strangers” who came to their shores for tin. It is supposed that the strangers alluded to were the Phœnician Carthaginians.
