To Solomon more strictly belongs the great commercial results of a long and peaceful reign, materially aided as this was by the king’s personal superintendence, by his visits to Elath and Ezion-geber, by his treaty of amity, mutual forbearance, and important commercial arrangements with Hiram, King of Tyre, and last, not least, by the extraordinary fame he thus obtained, leading, to the memorable visit to him by the Queen of Sheba, and to the display of his wisdom and wealth, till she felt, on beholding them, that “there was no more spirit in her.”[131]
Port of Ezion-geber.
Dean Stanley, in his “Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,” has eloquently described the position of Solomon’s chief port, where, he says,[132] “Ezion-geber, the ‘Giant’s backbone,’ so called, probably, from the huge range of mountains on each side of it, became an emporium teeming with life and activity; the same, on the eastern branch, that Suez has, in our own time, become on the western branch of the Red Sea. Beneath that line of palm trees which now shelters the wretched village of Akaba, was then heard the stir of ship-builders and sailors. Thence went forth the fleet of Solomon, manned by Tyrian sailors, to Ophir, in the far East, on the coast of India or Arabia. From Arabia also, near or distant, came a constant traffic of spices, both from private individuals and from the chiefs. So great was Solomon’s interest in these, that he actually travelled himself to the gulf of Akaba to see the port.”
It appears that the fleets though manned by Tyrian sailors, were under charge of Jewish supercargoes, who were responsible for the stores and merchandise, and conducted all the trading operations. This happy alliance materially extended the commerce of both countries; for shut out from the Mediterranean by the inefficiency of the ports of Palestine, and with no communication with the Indian Ocean, except by caravans traversing the Arabian desert, the Jewish people could in no other way have derived material advantages from the valuable and much coveted trade of the East. For the first time, too, the trade of Europe was opened to the Jews through their connexion with the Tyrians; while, on the other hand, the merchants of Tyre found in Israel a large and lucrative field for the full development of their commerce.
The voyages of the Jewish ships.
So far as can now be ascertained, the joint fleets of Hiram and Solomon sailed periodically from the Ælanitic or Akaba gulf, for the East, somewhere between November and March, when the winds are favourable for a voyage down the Red Sea. Thence, probably, a portion of the ships shaped their course for the south-east shores of Africa, from the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, to Zanzibar and Sofala; while a second portion coasted to the northward till they reached the shores of Beloochistan, Baroach (Barygaza), and even the western coasts of Hindostan. Over-sea voyages from Arabia to India were doubtless of considerably later date, when the character and use of the monsoons had been more or less ascertained. “Every three years once came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks;”[133] a length of time which, at first sight, seems scarcely credible, yet is accounted for by the habits of those early mariners. The merchants of those days had no factors as consignees of their produce or home manufactures, with orders to have ready a cargo in return. They were therefore obliged to keep their ships as a floating warehouse until the exported cargo had been sold, and the produce of the country they were to take in exchange was ready for shipment. Indeed Herodotus states, what seems to have been a common custom, that when their stock of corn was exhausted, the mariners landed at some convenient spot, sowed corn, and reaped the harvest, before proceeding with their voyage.[134]
The inland commerce of Solomon.
There is some difficulty, looking at the present desolate and barren state of Palestine and of the districts around it, in realizing the possibility of such vast productiveness as the story of Solomon evidently implies; and the face of the country must have greatly changed in the last two thousand eight hundred years, for, now at least, the land of the Edomites, and a great portion of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Euphrates on the one side, and to the Red Sea on the other, is perfectly barren. Yet, that Babylonia was once of extraordinary fertility we know from the statements of Herodotus, and it is possible that much of Palestine, now withering under the bane of Turkish despotism, might revive with better and wiser treatment.
Mr. Rich[135] states that Babylonia “is not cultivated to above half the degree of which it is susceptible;” and General Chesney[136] says “that those portions of Mesopotamia which are still cultivated, as the country about Hillah, show that the region has all the fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus.”[137]
But though the Jewish trade under Solomon had reached proportions so unusually large, these soon fell away and dwindled almost to nothing under his successors. With his death came wars and divisions; Jehoshaphat lost his ships at Ezion-geber, the Edomites revolted, the Syrians under Rezin seized the port, till at length it fell into the more powerful grasp of Tiglath Pileser, who thus finally destroyed the only maritime career in which the Jewish people had ever taken an active or successful part.