There can be no question that this Phoenician commerce was a principal element in introducing not only their alphabet, but many of the early arts of civilization, among the comparatively rude races of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Britain. The date however of this earliest Phoenician commerce is very uncertain. All we can discern is that, after having enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the progress of civilization among the Mediterranean races enabled them to develop a maritime power of their own, superior to that of Phoenicia, and to drive the Phoenicians from most of their settlements on the mainland and islands, confining them to a few trading posts and factories, and directing their more important enterprises towards the Western Mediterranean, where they encountered less formidable rivals. But although Phoenicia contributed thus largely to the civilization of the ancient world, its antiquity cannot be compared to that of Egypt and Chaldæa. The first reference to the country is found in the cylinder of Sargon I., B.C. 3800, who marched to the coast of the Mediterranean, and crossed over to Cyprus, where a cylinder of his son Dungi has been found, but there is nothing to show that the district was then occupied by the Phoenicians of later times. Kopt, or the land of palms, of which Phoenicia is the Greek translation, is first mentioned in the Egyptian annals of the Middle Empire, and during the rule of the Hyksos the mouth of the Nile had become so thickly populated by Phoenician emigrants as to be known as Kopt-ur, Caphtor, or greater Phoenicia. The priests of the temple of Baal Melcart, the patron deity of Tyre, told Herodotus that it had been founded 2300 years before his time, or about 2750 B.C., and Old Tyre which stood on the mainland was reputed to be more ancient than the city of New Tyre which stood on an island. But this date is negatived by the fact that in an Egyptian papyrus in which an envoy from Ramses II. or Menepthah to the Court of Babylon about 1320 B.C. records his journey, he mentions Byblos, Beryta, and Sidon as important cities, while Tyre is only an insignificant fishing town. The first distinct mention of Phoenician cities in Egyptian annals is in the enumeration of towns captured by Thotmes III., B.C. 1600, in his victorious campaigns in Syria, among which are to be found the names of Beyrut and Acco, and two centuries later Seti I., the father of Ramses II., records the capture of Zor or Tyre, probably the old city on the mainland.