Little is known of the construction and equipment of Phoenician ships. All that can be said with certainty is, that there were two kinds,--those employed in commerce and those used for war,--a distinction, indeed, which all nations, both ancient and modern, have found it convenient to make. The hulls of the trading-vessels were round, that they might carry more goods, while the fighting-ships were longer and sharp at the bottom. In other respects they probably resembled the vessels of Greece and Rome, for which they undoubtedly furnished models. Of these fuller details have reached us, and we shall speak of them in their place. The Phoenicians were better astronomers than the unskilful navigators who had preceded them; for, while these attempted to guide their course by the imperfect aid of the constellation known as the Great Bear,--some of whose stars are forty degrees from the pole,--the Phoenicians were the first to apply to maritime purposes the Lesser Bear,--the group which has furnished to more modern navigation the North or Polar Star. It is not probable that they fixed upon this particular star, for at that period--1250 years B.C.--it was eighteen degrees from the pole, too distant to serve any positive astronomical purpose. We come now to the Egyptians as a maritime people in the earliest historical periods, of whom we have incidentally said that they were characteristically disinclined to enter with spirit into any maritime enterprises, whether for commerce or war. This may have been owing to the want of proper timber, to the insalubrity of the sea-coasts, and to the absence of good harbors; while the advantages presented by the Nile for intercourse and traffic with the interior precluded the necessity of resorting to commerce by sea. Sesostris, who lived about 1650 years before Christ, is supposed to have been the first king who overcame the dislike of the Egyptians to the water. Herodotus assigns him a large fleet in the Red Sea, and other historians attribute to him fleets upon the Mediterranean. Upon his death, his subjects relapsed into their former aversion for commerce. Bocchoris, 700 B.C., imitated and revived his legislation upon the subject; and during the reign of Psammeticus the ports of Egypt were first opened to foreign ships, and intercourse with the Greeks was for the first time encouraged. It was Necho, the successor of Psammeticus, who employed, 600 B.C., the Phoenicians in the voyage around Africa of which we have spoken; and this enterprise bespeaks a monarch bent on maritime discovery. Apries, the grandson of Necho, took the city of Sidon by storm and defeated the Phoenicians in a sea-fight. It is probable that the Egyptians, had they continued independent, would have become distinguished as a commercial people; but seventy years afterwards they were conquered by the Persians, and became successively subject to the Macedonians and Romans.