The second is the celebrated legend of Queen Semiramis, and of the fleet she employed the Phœnicians in building, which is given at great length by Diodorus.[59] That such a fleet was ever built, or that Semiramis invaded India by its means, may well be questioned; but, since the interpretation by Sir Henry Rawlinson of the Assyrian inscriptions, we know that Semiramis is not a mythical personage, but a real queen within historical times. In the Assyrian Hall at the British Museum stand two statues of the god Nebo, each bearing a cuneiform inscription, with the statement that they were made for Queen Semiramis by a sculptor of Nineveh. Semiramis was, in fact, the wife of the Assyrian king who is mentioned in the Bible under the name of Pul.[60] [Sidenote: The Phœnicians.] To recur to the Phœnicians. There has been much discussion as to whence they came; and many able writers a few years since, as Bochart and Heeren, held the view that they were the same as the Canaanites. Modern research, however, fully confirms the judgment of Herodotus,[61] that they were really immigrants from the shores of the Persian Gulf; thereby, in themselves, affording an illustration of that great law of migration westwards, of which that of Abraham and of his family, and that of Chedorlaomer from Elam to the valley of the Jordan, are the earliest recorded instances. There seems, indeed, to have been a marked distinction between the Phœnicians and the Canaanites; the former having been a peaceable mercantile population, generally on terms of good will with the Jews, while the Canaanites were a fierce and warlike race. The names, too, of many of the Phœnician cities in Syria are believed to be of Hamite, and not of Semitic origin, as, for instance, those of Askalon, Arka, Aradus, Gaza, and, most probably, those also of Sidon and Tyre. It is remarkable that a district, whose people became so famous in the early history of the world, should have been confined within so limited an area; for the average breadth of Phœnicia never exceeded twelve miles, while sometimes it is considerably less. In length it was about two hundred and twenty-five miles, from Aradus in the north to Joppa in the south. [Sidenote: Early notices of them.] But if its territory was small, its position was admirably fitted for the grandest development of over-sea trade; and Tyre itself occupied pre-eminently the situation best fitted for carrying on the commerce of the then known world. We shall, therefore, briefly trace the course of that commerce, with a sketch of the chief places to which the Tyrians traded, and with some notice of the colonies they founded in the prosecution of this object; for to the activity of this remarkable people we owe the first link connecting the civilization of the East with Europe and Western Africa.[62]