The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

sailed for a second time to To-Neter, and to have returned to Coptus with the tribute of these lands and a rich freight.[448] The need of incense was not less in Babylon than in Egypt. We saw that the preparation of ointments was a main branch of Babylonian industry, and Herodotus tells us that at the feast of Belus, at Babylon, a thousand talents of incense, which according to the light Babylonian weight is more than 60,000 pounds, was burnt on the altar of the great temple. As the Temanites, Kedarites, Nebajoth, and Midianites formed the medium of trade between South Arabia and Egypt, so were the Rhegmæans and Dedanites the communicating link between South Arabia and Babylonia. Among the Sabæans the Babylonian talent was current.[449]

      This carrying trade between South Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia must have increased when the cities of the Phenicians on the Syrian coast became centres of trade which carried the manufactures of Babylonia, as well as the products of their own industry, over the sea to the West, and when the tribes of Greece and Italy began to desire the incense and spices of Arabia. And it was not only the products of South Arabia which the Arabs brought to Syria, Egypt, and Babylonia, but also those of the south coast of Africa, and even of India. Artemidorus told us that the Sabæans crossed the Arabian Gulf on boats of skins in order to bring back the products of Ethiopia. Though it was possible to cross the narrow basin by these means of transit, the mouths of the Indus and the coasts of Malabar were beyond the reach of such skiffs. If in the course of time Indian wares reached Syria through the Sabæans, they must have been brought by the Indians themselves to the coasts of the Sabæans. At the beginning of the second century B.C. the island Dioscoridis, off the coast of Somali, which was known to the West as the Land of Cinnamon, formed the centre of the trade between Egypt, South Arabia, and India. To this island the ships of the Indians brought the products of their land.

In the first instance the Arabs transported the goods from South Arabia to the Euphrates and the Nile on their camels, and afterwards it lay with them to permit or refuse a passage for the caravans of the Babylonians and Phenicians. First one tribe and then another lay in wait for the caravans, plundered them, or allowed them to buy a passage, convoy, or guide.[450] Eratosthenes has already told us that the merchants took seventy days in going from the Minæans to Aela, i.e. to Elath, on the north-east point of the Arabian Gulf, and Pliny fixes the distance from Gaza to Thamna, the chief city of the Cattabani, at seventy-five days' journey. Of the caravan road which led from the Sabæans, i.e. in all probability from Maryab to Elath, we only know that it ran along the coast, then passed from Elath by Sela and Bosra into the mountains of the Edomites, then divided the land of the Moabites and Ammonites, passed by Kir Moab (Charak Moab) and Rabbat Ammon, Edrei and Ashtaroth Karnaim, through the land of the Jeturites, to Damascus, and finally, from this place reached the cities of the Phenicians. A second road led apparently past the Oasis of Duma (Dumætha of Ptolemy, Dumat-el-Dshandal) straight to Damascus. In the east the Dedanites brought the products of South Arabia through the desert, by the land of the Temanites and Kedarites, to the Lower Euphrates.[451] The goods not required for Babylonia then passed up the Euphrates to Harran (Charræ). From this point the caravans turned to the west, and in twenty days arrived through the desert at the coasts of the Phenicians.[452]

How active the trade with the land of frankincense was is shown by the words of the Hebrew prophet, who proclaims to the new Jerusalem: "A multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah (see below); all they from Shebah shall come; they shall bring gold and incense. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; the rams of Nebajoth shall minister unto thee."[453] The Arabs, when conquered by the Persians, were compelled to pay a yearly tribute of 1,000 talents of incense,[454] i.e. at least 60,000 pounds. This they could only obtain from South Arabia, and to Western nations the connection between Damascus and South Arabia appeared so close, that they represented the Sabæans as colonists of the Egyptians, Ninus and Semiramis having sent colonies from Damascus to Arabia Felix.

Though the Phenicians could receive the products of South Arabia and the Somali coast by the high road of Elath, and from the Euphrates by Harran, they were nevertheless eager to have a connection by sea with these regions. They availed themselves of the relations in which they stood to Solomon, king of Israel, in order to send ships from Eziongeber down the Arabian Gulf, to Ophir, as far as the mouth of the Indus. These ships brought back sandalwood, apes, peacocks, and gold. This trade fell with the decline of the kingdom of Judah, after the time of Jehoshaphat. But when Amaziah of Judah again subjugated the Edomites, about the year 790 B.C., and after him his son Uzziah again advanced the borders of Judah to the Red Sea, the Phenicians also resumed their connection with the kings of Judah and the trade to Ophir.[455] Afterwards Pharaoh Necho gave them an opportunity for a short time to set out upon their voyages in the Arabian Gulf, not, indeed, from the north-east, but from the north-west corner of the Red Sea. But immediately afterwards Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, by subduing the Dedanites and planting Babylonian centres of trade on the coast of Dedan and at the mouth of the Euphrates, succeeded in transplanting the marine trade with South Arabia to the Persian Gulf, while the conquest of the Kedarites also put him in a position to strike a road across the desert from Babylon to Sela (in the land of the Edomites, see below). Darius or the Ptolemies were the first to succeed in the attempt made by Rameses II. and Necho, and concentrated in the Bay of Heroonpolis the trade of Egypt and Syria with South Arabia.

Soon after the year 2000 B.C.—so we must conclude—the tribes of South Arabia delivered their spices to the Egyptians, Syrians, and Babylonians, and their incense, which Eastern nations, and in time Western nations also, burned upon the altars of their gods. Then they imported the products of the opposite shore of Africa, a region no less fruitful than South Arabia, and at length the ships of the Indians brought to them the products of the Indus and the Ganges. Thus South Arabia not only exported her own fruits, she became the central mart of East African and Indian products, the point of connection between Eastern and Western Asia. Owing to the fertility of their valleys and terraces, and their old and extensive trade, the tribes of the South soon acquired a more fixed form of constitution and a more advanced civilisation. Numerous remains of magnificent stone structures, ruins of aqueducts, canals, basins, and dams, built with the object of preserving and collecting the water which streamed down the terraces of the mountains and in the valleys, still excite the astonishment of our travellers for the excellence of the plan as well as for the strength of the masonry. The ruins of Nedshran, Sirwah, Ghorab, Nakb-el-Hadshar, and Misenat, and those of Maryab, the old metropolis of the Sabæans, confirm what Western writers and Arab tradition tell us of the glorious palaces of the ancient time and the mighty dams built in the valley of Maryab.[456] The remains of the dams prove that South Arabia, like Egypt and Babylonia, was far better cultivated in those distant times than now; that there also the greatest importance was attached to irrigation, and the inhabitants understood how to preserve and use the water from the mountain-streams on the terraces. The natural assumption that at one time the cultivation of valuable fruits was far more extensive in South Arabia than at present can hardly be incorrect. The inscriptions found in those ruins and elsewhere in the south-west of Yemen, though they do not, so far as is at present ascertained, go back beyond the year 120 B.C.,[457] give us some insight into the nature of the civilisation of these tribes and the ancient form of the South Arabian language and alphabet, which must have grown out of the Phenician at an early date, and then have developed independently beside it.[458] Of a still more recent date, from the first century A.D., we find in the opposite north-west corner of Arabia numerous inscriptions on the rocks in the region of Sinai, written in the North Arabian language and alphabet.