A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 / Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and / Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth / Century, By William Stevenson

by Robert Kerr; William Stevenson

I. There is good reason to believe that most of the maritime adventures and enterprises which have rendered the Phoenicians so famous in antiquity, ought to be fixed between the death of Jacob, and the establishment of monarchy among the Israelites; that is, between the years 1700 and 1095 before Christ; but even before this, there are authentic notices of Phoenician commerce and navigation. In the days of Abraham they were considered as a very powerful people: and express mention is made of their maritime trade in the last words of Jacob to his children. Moses informs us that Tarshish (wherever it was situated) was visited by the Phoenicians. When this people were deprived of a great portion of their territory by the Israelites under Joshua, they still retained the city of Sidon; and from it their maritime expeditions proceeded. The order of time in which they took place, as well as their object and result, are very imperfectly known; it seems certain, however, that they either regularly traded with, or formed colonies or establishments for the purpose of trade at first in Cyprus and Rhodes, and subsequently in Greece, Sicily, Sardinia, Gaul, and the southern part of Spain. About 1250 years before Christ, the Phoenician ships ventured beyond the Straits, entered the Atlantic, and founded Cadiz. It is probable, also, that nearly about the same period they formed establishments on the western coast of Africa. We have the express authority of Homer, that at the Trojan war the Phoenicians furnished other nations with many articles that could contribute to luxury and magnificence; and Scripture informs us, that the ships of Hyram, king of Tyre, brought gold to Solomon from Ophir. That they traded to Britain for tin at so early a period as that which we are now considering, will appear very doubtful, if the metal mentioned by Moses, (Numbers, chap. xxxi. verse 22.) was really tin, and if Homer is accurate in his statement that this metal was used at the siege of Troy; for, certainly, at neither of these periods had the Phoenicians ventured so far from their own country.

Hitherto we have spoken of Sidon as the great mart of Phoenician commerce; at what period Tyre was built and superseded Sidon is not known. In the time of Homer, Tyre is not even mentioned: but very soon afterwards it is represented by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets, as a city of unrivalled trade and wealth. Ezekiel, who prophesied about the year 595 B.C. has given a most picturesque description of the wealth of Tyre, all of which must have proceeded from her commerce, and consequently points out and proves its great extent and importance. The fir-trees of Senir, the cedars of Lebanon, the oaks of Bashan, the ivory of the Indies, the fine linen of Egypt, and the hyacinth and purple of the isles of Elishah, are enumerated among the articles used for their ships. Silver, tin, lead, and vessels of brass; slaves, horses, and mules; carpets, ivory, and ebony; pearls and silk; wheat, balm, honey, oil and gums; wine, and wool, and iron, are enumerated as brought into the port of Tyre by sea, or to its fairs by land, from Syria, Damascus, Greece, Arabia, and other places, the exact site of which is not known.[1] Within the short period of fifteen or twenty years after this description was written, Tyre was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar; and after an obstinate and very protracted resistance, it was taken and destroyed. The inhabitants, however, were enabled to retire during the siege, with the greatest part of their property, to an island near the shore, where they built New Tyre, which soon surpassed the old city both in commerce and shipping.

A short time previous to the era generally assigned to the destruction of old Tyre, the Phoenicians are said to have performed a voyage, which, if authentic, may justly be regarded as the most important that the annals of this people record: we allude to the circumnavigation of Africa. As this voyage has given rise to much discussion, we may be excused for deviating from the cursory and condensed character of this part of our work, in order to investigate its probable authenticity. All that we know regarding it is delivered to us by Herodotus; according to this historian, soon after Nechos, king of Egypt, had finished the canal that united the Nile and the Arabian Gulf, he sent some Phoenicians from the borders of the Red Sea, with orders to keep always along the coast of Africa, and to return by the pillars of Hercules into the northern ocean. Accordingly the Phoenicians embarked on the Erythrean Sea, and navigated in the southern ocean. When autumn arrived, they landed on the part of Libya which they had reached, and sowed corn; here they remained till harvest, reaped the corn, and then re-embarked. In this manner they sailed for two years; in the third they passed the pillars of Hercules, and returned to Egypt. They related that in sailing round Libya, the sun was on their right hand. This relation, continues Herodotus, seems incredible to me, but perhaps it will not appear so to others. Before proceeding to an enquiry into the authenticity of this maritime enterprize, it may be proper to explain what is meant by the sun appearing on the right hand of the Phoenician navigators. The apparent motion of the heavens being from east to west, the west was regarded by the ancients as the foremost part of the world; the north, of course, was deemed the right, and the south the left of the world.

The principal circumstance attending this narrative, which is supposed to destroy or greatly weaken its credibility, is the short period of time in which this navigation was accomplished: it is maintained, that even at present, it would certainly require eighteen months to coast Africa from the Red Sea to the straits of Gibraltar; and "allowing nine months for each interval on shore, between the sowing and reaping, the Phoenicians could not have been more than eighteen months at sea."

To this objection it may be replied, in the first place, that between the tropics (within which space nearly the whole of the navigation was performed) nine months is much too long a time to allow for each interval on shore, between the sowing and the reaping: and, secondly, that though the period occupied by the whole voyage, and some of the circumstances attending it, may be inaccurately stated, the voyage itself ought not to be wholly discredited on these accounts.

The very circumstance which the historian rejects as incredible, is one of the strongest arguments possible in favour of the tradition; though this alone is not decisive, for the Phoenicians might have sailed far enough to the south to have observed the sun to the north, even if they had not accomplished the navigation of Africa. The strongest argument, however, in our opinion, in support of the actual accomplishment of this circumnavigation, has been unaccountably overlooked, in all the various discussion to which the subject has given rise. It is evident that in most voyages, false and exaggerated accounts may be given of the countries visited or seen, and of the circumstances attendant upon the voyage; whereas, with respect to this voyage, one most important and decisive particular lay within reach of the observation of those who witnessed the departure and arrival of the ships. If they sailed from the Red Sea, and returned by the Mediterranean, they must have circumnavigated Africa. It is obvious that if such a voyage was not performed, the story must have originated with Herodotus, with those from whom he received his information, or with those who were engaged in the expedition, supposing it actually to have been engaged in, but not to have accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa. The character of Herodotus secures him from the imputation; and by none is he charged with it:--Necho lived about six hundred and sixteen years before Christ; consequently little more than two hundred years before Herodotus; moreover, the communication and commerce of the Greeks with Egypt, was begun in the time of Psammeticus, the immediate predecessor of Necho, and was encouraged in a very particular manner by Amasis (who died in 525), who married a Greek, and was visited by Solon. From these circumstances, it is improbable that Herodotus, who was evidently not disposed to believe the account of the appearance of the sun, should not have had it in his power to obtain good evidence, whether a ship that had sailed from the Red Sea, had returned by the Mediterranean: if such evidence were acquired, it is obvious, as has been already remarked, that the third source of fabrication is utterly destroyed. Dr. Vincent is strongly opposed to the authenticity of this voyage, chiefly on the grounds that such ships as the ancients had, were by no means sufficiently strong, nor their seamen sufficiently skilful and experienced, to have successfully encountered a navigation, which the Portuguese did not accomplish without great danger and difficulty, and that the alleged circumnavigation produced no consequences.

It may be incidentally remarked that the incredulity of Herodotus with regard to the appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith, is not easily reconcileable with what we shall afterwards shew was the extent of his knowledge of the interior of Egypt. He certainly had visited, or had received communications from those who had visited Ethiopia as far south as eleven degrees north latitude. Under this parallel the sun appears for a considerable part of the year to the north. How, then, it may be asked, could Herodotus be incredulous of this phenomenon having been observed by the Phoenician circumnavigators. This difficulty can be solved by supposing either that if he himself had visited this part of Africa, it was at a season of the year when the sun was in that quarter of the heavens in which he was accustomed to see it; or, if he received his information from the inhabitants of this district, that they, not regarding the periodical appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith as extraordinary, did not think it necessary to mention it. It certainly cannot be supposed that if Herodotus had either seen himself, or heard from others, that the sun in Ethiopia sometimes appeared to the north of the zenith, he would have stated in such decided terms, when narrating the circumnavigation of the Phoenicians, that such a phenomenon appeared to him altogether incredible.

Before we return to the immediate subject of this part of our work, we may be allowed to deviate from strict chronological order, for the purpose of mentioning two striking and important facts, which naturally led to the belief of the practicability of circumnavigating Africa, long before that enterprise was actually accomplished by the Portuguese.

We are informed by Strabo, on the authority of Posidonius, that Eudoxus of Cyzicus, who lived about one hundred and fifty years before Christ, was induced to conceive the practicability of circumnavigating Africa, from the following circumstance. As Eudoxus was returning from India to the Red Sea, he was driven by adverse winds on the coast of Ethiopia: there he saw the figure of a horse sculptured on a piece of wood, which he knew to be a part of the prow of a ship. The natives informed him that it had belonged to a vessel, which had arrived among them from the west. Eudoxus brought it with him to Egypt, and subjected it to the inspection of several pilots: they pronounced it to be the prow of a small kind of vessel used by the inhabitants of Gadez, to fish on the coast of Mauritania, as far as the river Lixius: some of the pilots recognised it as belonging to a particular vessel, which, with several others, had attempted to advance beyond the Lixius, but had never afterwards been heard of. We are further informed on the same authority, that Eudoxus, hence conceiving it practicable to sail round Africa, made the attempt, and actually sailed from Gadez to a part of Ethiopia, the inhabitants of which spoke the same language as those among whom he had formerly been. From some cause not assigned, he proceeded no farther: subsequently, however, he made a second attempt, but how far he advanced, and what was the result, we are not informed.

The second fact to which we allude is related in the Commentary of Abu Sird, on the Travels of a Mahommedan in India and China, in the ninth century of the Christian era. The travels and commentary are already given in the first volume of this work; but the importance of the fact will, we trust, plead our excuse for repeating the passage which contains it.