ization.

Later a branch moved north and settled higher up on the Tigris,
founding the city of Nineveh. The Elamites, another Semitic tribe on
the east of the Euphrates, founded the great cities of Susa and
Ecbatana. Far to the northwest were the Armenian group of Semites, and
directly east on the shores of the Mediterranean were the Phoenicians.
This whole territory eventually became Semitic in type of civilization.
Also, the Hixos, or shepherd kings, invaded Egypt and dominated that
territory for two hundred years. Later the Phoenicians became the
great sea-going people of the world and extended their colonies along
the coasts through Greece, Italy, northern Africa, and Spain. So there
was the Semitic influence from the Pillars of Hercules far east to the
River Indus, in India.

Strange to say, the mighty empires of Babylon and Nineveh and Phoenicia
and Elam failed, while a little territory including the valley of the
Jordan, called Palestine, containing a small and insignificant branch
of the Semitic race, called Hebrews, developed a literature, language,
and religion which exercised a most powerful influence in all
civilizations even to the present time.

_The Phoenicians Became the Great Navigators_.--While the Phoenicians
are given credit for establishing the first great sea power, they were
not the first navigators. Long before they developed, boats plied up
and down the Euphrates River, and in the island of Crete and elsewhere
the ancient Aegeans carried on their trade in ships with Egypt and the
eastern {162} Mediterranean. The Aegean civilization preceded the
Greeks and existed at a time when Egypt and Babylon were young. The
principal city of Cnossus exhibited also a high state of civilization,
as shown in the ruins discovered by recent explorers in the island of
Crete. It is known that they had trade with early Egypt, but whether
their city was destroyed by an earthquake or by the savage Greek
pirates of a later day is undetermined. The Phoenicians, however,
developed a strip of territory along the east shore of the
Mediterranean, and built the great cities of Tyre and Sidon. From
these parent cities they extended their trade down through the
Mediterranean and out through the Pillars of Hercules, and founded
their colonies in Africa, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Long after Tyre
and Sidon, the parent states, had declined, Carthage developed one of
the most powerful cities and governments of ancient