A new empire was formed in which the power still belonged to the Sabæans of the race of Cush. ... Little by little the new nation of Ad was formed. The centre of its power was the country of Sheba proper, where, according to the tenth chapter of Genesis, there was no primitive Joktanite tribe, although in all the neighbouring provinces they were already settled. ... It was during the first centuries of the second Adite empire that Yemen was temporarily subjected by the Egyptians, who called it the land of Pun. ... Conquered during the minority of Thothmes III., and the regency of the Princess Hatasu, Yemen appears to have been lost by the Egyptians in the troublous times at the close of the eighteenth dynasty. Ramses II. recovered it almost immediately after he ascended the throne, and it was not till the time of the effeminate kings of the twentieth dynasty, that this splendid ornament of Egyptian power was finally lost. ... The conquest of the land of Pun under Hatasu is related in the elegant bas-reliefs of the temple of Deir-el-Bahari, at Thebes, published by M. Duemichen. ... The bas-reliefs of the temple of Deir-el-Bahari afford undoubted proofs of the existence of commerce between India and Yemen at the time of the Egyptian expedition under Hatasu. It was this commerce, much more than the fertility of its own soil and its natural productions, that made Southern Arabia one of the richest countries in the world. ... For a long time it was carried on by land only, by means of caravans crossing Arabia; for the navigation of the Red Sea, much more difficult and dangerous than that of the Indian Ocean, was not attempted till some centuries later. ... {122} The caravans of myrrh, incense, and balm crossing Arabia towards the land of Canaan are mentioned in the Bible, in the history of Joseph, which belongs to a period very near to the first establishment of the Canaanites in Syria. As soon as commercial towns arose in Phœnicia, we find, as the prophet Ezekiel said, 'The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold.' ... A great number of Phœnician merchants, attracted by this trade, established themselves in Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman, and Bahrein. Phœnician factories were also established at several places on the Persian Gulf, amongst others in the islands of Tylos and Arvad, formerly occupied by their ancestors. ... This commerce, extremely flourishing during the nineteenth dynasty, seems, together with the Egyptian dominion in Yemen, to have ceased under the feeble and inactive successors of Ramses III. ... Nearly two centuries passed away, when Hiram and Solomon despatched vessels down the Red Sea. ... The vessels of the two monarchs were not content with doing merely what had once