Page 228 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1580-151° b.c.] The Resistance Movement 109
times, the coasters were now coming in again from Byblos and
the other Lebanese ports, carrying mainly cedarwood, but with

occasional cargoes of silver or copper or wines from Asia Minor.
The copper ships came in from Cyprus, too, or direct from
ports along the south coast of Asia Minor, in Kizzuwatna and
Arzawa. These countries had, in the boyhood of the older mer­
chants, been subject to a power in the interior, the Hatti, the
same power that had lashed out fifty-five years earlier and de­

stroyed Babylon; but they had re won their independence a few
years before the Egyptians had expelled the Hyksos.
Perhaps the main trade, though, was with Crete. For Crete
was the great emporium that dealt not only in its own products,

oil and fish and fine pottery, but in all the staple products of the
northern shores of the Mediterranean and even farther afield.
The great broad-beamed merchant ships of Crete docked in
northern Egypt deeply laden with timber and marble and wool,
with tin and copper and dyestuffs, and sailed again with manu­
factured bronzes and linen, and bulk cargoes of barley and

wheat.
And to the coastal cities of Egypt, too, led the overland
caravan routes from the east. There lay the large caravanserais
where the long trains of pack asses ended their journeys down

the coast route through Canaan and across the Sinai peninsula.
They brought bales of goods which had come all the way from
the head of the Persian Gulf by the long route along the Eu­
phrates. Some of the goods had even come from a distance down
the Persian Gulf by sea to the ports of the Sea-land kingdom

which now ruled in Babylon. These were dates for the most part,
and occasionally pearls and carnelian beads.
But the price of carnelian has gone up to unprecedented
heights, and the black-bearded merchants from the Gulf ports

make no secret of the reason. These small consignments of the
translucent red stones are likely to be the last to come through
from India for a very long time to come. As the merchants toss
the small leather bags of stones from one hand to the other,
they tell of the disruption of the eastern trade.

Three weeks’ sail down the Persian Gulf, they say, and
across the sea beyond lies the land of Meluhha, where the Indus

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