Certain of these—Aradus, Sidon, Tyre—were twin settlements, one on the mainland, where they traded and farmed, and the other on adjacent islets, to which they retired for defence. Other diminutive city-states lay at the foot of Mount Lebanon—Tripoli, Batrun, Byblus (modern Jubayl), Beirut—and in southern Syria—Acre, Ascalon and Gaza on the coast, Gezer, Jerusalem, Jericho and others inland. Occasionally several of these would form temporary defensive leagues when menaced by invasion, but usually each purchased immunity by payment of tribute, and concentrated on trade rather than on war. Ugarit, near Latakia, and Qadesh, on the Orontes, occasionally assumed an ephemeral leadership before 1400 B.C., and Byblus, Sidon or Tyre at times thereafter, but more often each stood, or fell, alone. Like their Amorite kinsmen they were pinched between Hittites and Egyptians and were attacked by Aramaean and Israelite invaders, as well as by Hyksos and Hurrians, but they maintained their pre-eminence until conquered by Assyria in the eighth pre-Christian century.
The basis of this prolonged prosperity was of course maritime and mercantile. The Phoenicians utilized Lebanese cedar to build ships powered by sails and oars. Their earliest sea routes were coastwise courses to Egypt and the Aegean, but they learned to navigate the open sea by the stars and established well-charted east-west trunk routes which remained their virtual monopoly. They furnished the whole Mediterranean with whatever each district lacked—timber, wheat, olive oil or wine—peddled tunny fish, glass, earthenware and other local products and developed markets for Canaanite cloth and metalwork, pitch and resin, horses and slaves. They distributed gold and incense, perfume and spices from southern Arabia, and brought back to Syria silver, iron, tin and lead from Spain, slaves and brass vessels from Ionia, linen from Egypt and lambs and goats from Arabia. Other items in Phoenician cargoes included the rose, palm, fig, pomegranate, plum and almond, which they
