=Colonies.=--In the countries where they traded, the Phœnicians founded factories, or branch-houses. They were fortified posts on a natural harbor. There they landed their merchandise, ordinarily cloths, pottery, ornaments, and idols.[40] The natives brought down their commodities and an exchange was made, just as now European merchants do with the negroes of Africa. There were Phœnician markets in Cyprus, in Egypt, and in all the then barbarous countries of the Mediterranean--in Crete, Greece, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, on the coasts of Spain at Malaga and Cadiz, and perhaps in Gaul at Monaco. Often around these Phœnician buildings the natives set up their cabins and the mart became a city. The inhabitants adopted the Phœnician gods, and even after the city had become Greek, the cult of the dove-goddess was found there (as in Cythera), that of the god Melkhart (as at Corinth), or of the god with the bull-face that devours human victims (as in Crete). =Influence of the Phœnicians.=--It is certain that the Phœnicians in founding their trading stations cared only for their own interest. But it came to pass that their colonies contributed to civilization. The barbarians of the West received the cloths, the jewels, the utensils of the peoples of the East who were more civilized, and, receiving them, learned to imitate them. For a long time the Greeks had only vases, jewels, and idols brought by the Phœnicians, and these served them as models. The Phœnicians brought simultaneously from Egypt and from Assyria industry and commodities. =The Alphabet.=--At the same time they exported their alphabet. The Phœnicians did not invent writing. The Egyptians knew how to write many centuries before them, they even made use of letters each of which expressed its own sound, as in our alphabet. But their alphabet was still encumbered with ancient signs which represented, some a syllable, others an entire word. Doubtless the Phœnicians had need of a simpler system for their books of commerce. They rejected all the syllabic signs and ideographs, preserving only twenty-two letters, each of which marks a sound (or rather an articulation of the language). The other peoples imitated this alphabet of twenty-two letters. Some, like the Jews, wrote from right to left just as the Phœnicians themselves did; others, like the Greeks, from left to right. All have slightly changed the form of the letters, but the Phœnician alphabet is found at the basis of all the alphabets--Hebrew, Lycian, Greek, Italian, Etruscan, Iberian, perhaps even in the runes of the Norse. It is the Phœnicians that taught the world how to write. FOOTNOTES: [37] Renan ("Mission de Phénicio," p. 818) says, "I noticed at Tripolis a sarcophagus serving as a public fountain and the sculptured face of it was turned to the wall. I was told that a governor had placed it thus so as not to provide distractions for the inhabitants." [38] See ch. xxiii. [39] See chs. xxvi., xxvii., xxviii.