The Chinese ambassador fixes the date of the inscription at about 1200 B.C., and further states that the unknown characters so frequently occurring on the terra cotta are also in the Chinese language, which would show that at this remote period commercial intercourse existed between China and the eastern shores of Asia Minor and Greece.--_Pop. Sci. Monthly_, No. 98, p. 176, June 1880. [114] Pierre Bergeron suggests that Solomon's fleets, starting from Ezion-geber (subsequently Berenice and now Alcacu), arrived at Babelmandeb, and then divided, one portion going to Malacca, Sumatra, or Java, the other to Sofala, round Africa, and returning by way of Cadiz and the Mediterranean to Joppa. [115] There are various accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa in old times. For example, Herodotus (_Melpomene_, 42): "Libya shows itself to be surrounded by water, except so much of it as borders upon Asia. Neco, King of Egypt, was the first whom we know of that proved this; he, when he had ceased digging the canal leading from the Nile to the Arabian gulf, sent certain Phœnicians in ships with orders to sail back through the pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea, and so to return to Egypt. The Phœnicians accordingly, setting out from the Red Sea, navigated the Southern Sea; when autumn came they went ashore, and sowed the land, by whatever part of Libya they happened to be sailing, and waited for harvest; then, having reaped the corn, they put to sea again. When two years had thus passed, in the third, having doubled the pillars of Hercules, they arrived in Egypt, and related what to me does not seem credible, but may to others, that as they sailed round Libya, they had the sun on the right hand." Again, Pliny tells us (Book ii. chap. lxvii, Translation by Bostock and Riley), "While the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno published an account of a voyage which he made from Gades to the extremity of Arabia: besides, we learn from Cornelius Nepos, that one Eudoxus, a contemporary of his, when he was flying from King Lathyrus, set out from the Arabian Gulf, and was carried as far as Gades. And long before him, Cœlius Antipater informs us, that he had seen a person who had sailed from Spain to Ethiopia for the purposes of trade. The same Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern circumnavigation, tells us that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L. Afranius in the consulship, but then proconsul in Gaul, had a present made to him by the King of the Suevi, of certain Indians, who, sailing from India for the purposes of commerce, had been driven by tempests into Germany." Ptolemy Lathyrus commenced his reign 117 B.C. and reigned for thirty-six years. Cornelius Nepos is supposed to have lived in the century previous to the Christian era, and Cœlius Antipater to have been born in the middle of the second century B.C.