The rays of history are seen gradually spreading from Egypt up through Mesopotamia to the nations of Palestine--not yet the land of the Hebrews--then to Asia Minor, and so to Greece. That is the land-root of civilization. We are speaking rather of succession in time than of actual succession by inheritance. We cannot tell, at any rate, that Chaldæa was in any way indebted to Egypt for its early civilization, or Egypt to Chaldæa. But with the exception of that blank, the rest of the progress of civilization by inheritance does follow pretty clearly. The Assyrian Empire inherited from the old Babylonian Empire. And the nations of Palestine inherited from Egypt and Assyria both. On the borders of Asia Minor were two peoples who commanded--for a time, at any rate--the trade routes from Palestine and Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. These two peoples were the Hittites[139] and the Phœnicians. One commanded the trade route by land, the other commanded it by sea. Of the first we know at present very little--little more than that they had a capital at Karkemish; that they commanded the navigation of the Orontes and the Upper Euphrates; and that they were at one time strong enough to stand at the head of a confederation of peoples who made war upon Egypt when at the summit of her power. There can be little doubt that the Hittites passed on to the peoples of Asia Minor, who were in blood nearly allied to the Greeks, some of the civilization of the Semitic peoples farther south, and that these peoples passed the same on to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
But of course the Phœnicians must still be reckoned as the great transporters of civilization from Egypt and from Asia to the rest of the world. They could hardly be said to possess a country; but they possessed cities of vast importance and no small magnificence along the coast of Palestine--Lamyra, Aradus, Byblos, Sydon, Tyre. From these centres went out that boundless maritime enterprise which made the Phœnicians the trading people of the world. Very early--in pre-historic ages--the Phœnicians had possessed themselves of Cyprus. From that point to the Grecian coast of Asia Minor, or to the coasts and islands on either side of the Ægean, was an easy transition; then on to the Mediterranean, to Sicily and Italy, but more especially to the island of Sardinia; or again to Egypt and the farther coasts of Africa on to Spain, and finally, through the Pillars of Heracles, to the far-off ‘tin islands’ of the west, which were, it is likely enough, the British Isles. This is, in brief, the picture of the doings of the Phœnicians long before the days of history had begun to dawn upon the Aryan nations of the Mediterranean.