Translating this glorious burst of poetry into prose, we find the following countries mentioned as carrying on an active trade with the Phoenician metropolis:--Northern Syria, Syria of Damascus, Judah and the land of Israel, Egypt, Arabia, Babylonia, Assyria, Upper Mesopotamia,[924] Armenia,[925] Central Asia Minor, Ionia, Cyprus, Hellas or Greece,[926] and Spain.[927] Northern Syria furnishes the Phoenician merchants with _butz_, which is translated “fine linen,” but is perhaps rather cotton,[928] the “tree-wool” of Herodotus; it also supplies embroidery, and certain precious stones, which our translators have considered to be coral, emeralds, and rubies. Syria of Damascus gives the “wine of Helbon”--that exquisite liquor which was the only sort that the Persian kings would condescend to drink[929]--and “white wool,” the dainty fleeces of the sheep and lambs that fed on the upland pastures of Hermon and Antilibanus. Judah and the land of Israel supply corn of superior quality, called “corn of Minnith”--corn, i.e. produced in the rich Ammonite country[930]--together with _pannag_, an unknown substance, and honey, and balm, and oil. Egypt sends fine linen, one of her best known products[931]--sometimes, no doubt, plain, but often embroidered with bright patterns, and employed as such embroidered fabrics were also in Egypt,[932] for the sails of pleasure-boats. Arabia provides her spices, cassia, and calamus (or aromatic reed), and, beyond all doubt, frankincense,[933] and perhaps cinnamon and ladanum.[934] She also supplies wool and goat’s hair, and cloths for chariots, and gold, and wrought iron, and precious stones, and ivory, and ebony, of which the last two cannot have been productions of her own, but must have been imported from India or Abyssinia.[935] Babylonia and Assyria furnish “wrappings of blue, embroidered work, and chests of rich apparel.”[936] Upper Mesopotamia partakes in this traffic.[937] Armenia gives horses and mules. Central Asia Minor (Tubal and Meshech) supplies slaves and vessels of brass, and the Greeks of Ionia do the like. Cyprus furnishes ivory, which she must first have imported from abroad.[938] Greece Proper sends her shell-fish, to enable the Phoenician cities to increase their manufacture of the purple dye.[939] Finally, Spain yields silver, iron, tin, and lead--the most useful of the metals--all of which she is known to have produced in abundance.[940]