Another product of Phœnician skill was glass; of this they were the inventors, and long enjoyed the exclusive manufacture. The sand used for this purpose was found in the southern districts of the country, near the little river Belus, which rose at the foot of Mount Carmel. The glass manufactories continued, according to Pliny, during a long succession of centuries; their principal seats were at Sidon and the neighbouring Sarepta. From the small number of them, the use of glass would seem to have been much less general in antiquity than among us; while the mildness of the climate in all southern countries, as well as all over the East, rendered any other stoppage of the windows unnecessary, except that of curtains or blinds. Goblets of the precious metals or stones were preferred as drinking vessels.
Under this head of Phœnician industry, too, may be ranged ornaments of dress, implements, utensils, baubles, and gewgaws, which they produced. The nature of their trade, which for a long time was confined to a traffic by barter with rude, uncultivated nations, among whom such commodities have always a quick and certain sale, must at a very early period have turned their attention to this branch of industry.
The foreign commerce which the Phœnicians carried on with the nations of the interior of Asia may be divided into three branches, according to its three principal directions. The first of these comprises the southern trade, or the Arabian-East-Indian and the Egyptian; the second, the eastern, or the Assyrian-Babylonian; and the third, that of the north, or the Armenian-Caucasian. It is evident, from the various particulars mentioned by the Hebrew poets, as well as by profane writers, that the first of these three branches of commerce was the most important. We call it the Arabian-East-Indian, not because we here assume it as proved that the Phœnicians themselves journeyed over Arabia to India, but because they procured in Arabia the merchandise of the East Indies, for which it was at that time the great market. With regard to Arabia itself, however, they kept up an intercourse with every part of it, as well its eastern coast as that bordering on the Arabian sea.
Phœnician Vase
(In the Louvre Museum)
Spices, gold, and precious stones are expressly enumerated among the natural productions of Happy Arabia. Gold mines, it is true, are no longer to be found there, but the assurances of antiquity respecting them are so general and explicit that it is impossible reasonably to doubt that Yemen once abounded in gold. Precious stones were found in the mountains of the province of Hadramaut; such at least as were considered precious by the ancients; namely, onyxes, rubies, agates, etc. But in addition to these native productions of Happy Arabia, other wares are mentioned as Arabian, certainly not the proper produce of this country, but either Ethiopian or Indian. To the former belongs cinnamon, or canella; and to the latter, ivory and ebony. Besides these, cardamom, nard, and other spices, used in odoriferous waters and unguents, are expressly enumerated by Theophrastus as coming from India.
The commerce of the Phœnicians, however, was not confined merely to southern Arabia, but stretched along the eastern coast on the Persian Gulf: “The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thy hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony.” Dedan is one of the Baharein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, but if these words of the prophet prove an intercourse between Phœnicia and the Persian Gulf, they also prove not less indisputably the connection in which the Phœnicians stood with India. The large countries to which the Phœnician trade extended beyond Dedan could be no other than India; if this is not sufficiently proved by the situation, it is beyond a doubt by the commodities mentioned. Ivory and ebony could only have been procured in Dedan from India, for there were no elephants in Arabia.
Arabia was then the great seat of the Phœnician land trade. With this was interwoven a connection with the rich countries of the south, Ethiopia and India. Notwithstanding the vast deserts of sand, which protected Arabia from the attacks of foreign conquerors, the merchant’s desire of gain was not damped, but surmounted every difficulty. Caravans, composed of various tribes, penetrated through its wastes in every direction, even to its southern and eastern coasts; here they traded, either directly or indirectly, with the Phœnicians, whose seaports became at last the great staples of their valuable merchandise, whence it was shipped off, and spread over the West at an immense profit to these merchants.