[Footnote 1: It is interesting to note that the earliest empires, Assyria and Egypt, were not naval powers, because they arose in rich river valleys abundantly capable of sustaining their inhabitants. They did not need to command the sea.] On this sea power Crete reared an astonishingly advanced civilization. Until recent times, for instance, the Phoenicians had been credited with the invention of the alphabet. We know now that 1000 years before the Phoenicians began to write the Cretans had evolved a system of written characters--as yet undeciphered--and a decimal system for numbers. A correspondingly high stage of excellence had been reached in engineering, architecture, and the fine arts, and even in decay Crete left to Greece the tradition of mastery in laws and government. [Illustration: EGYPTIAN SHIP From Torr, _Ancient Ships_.] The power of Crete was already in its decline centuries before the Trojan War, but during a thousand years it had spread its own and Egyptian culture over the shores of the AEgean. The destruction of the island empire in about 1400 B.C. apparently was due to some great disaster that destroyed her fleet and left her open to invasion by a conquering race--probably the Greeks--who ravaged her cities by sword and fire. On account of her commanding position in the Mediterranean, Crete might again have risen to sea power but for the endless civil wars that marked her subsequent history. The successor to Crete as mistress of the sea was Phoenicia. The Phoenicians, oddly enough, were a Semitic people, a nomadic race with no traditions of the sea whatever. When, however, they migrated to the coast and settled, they found themselves in a narrow strip of coast between a range of mountains and the sea. The city of Tyre itself was erected on an island. Consequently these descendants of herdsmen were compelled to find their livelihood upon the sea--as were the Venetians and the Dutch in later ages--and for several hundred years they maintained their control of the ocean highways.