In the year 1856 B. C., Inachus a Phœnician adventurer, is said to have arrived in Greece at the head of a small band of his countrymen. Phœnicia, a petty state on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, was at this time one of a few countries, including Egypt and Assyria, in which some degree of civilization prevailed, while all the rest of the people of the earth remained in their original barbarism like the Pelasgians before the supposed arrival of Uranus. Navigation for the purposes of commerce, and the art of writing, are said to have originated with the Phœnicans. On their arrival in Greece, Inachus and his friends founded the city of Argos, at the head of what is now called the Gulf of Napoli, in the Peloponnesus. Three hundred years after this event (1556 B. C.), a colony, led by an Egyptian named Cecrops, arrived in Attica, and founded the celebrated city of Athens, fortifying a high rock which rose precipitously above the site afterwards occupied by the town. Egypt is situated in the north-eastern part of Africa. It is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and is watered by the great river Nile, the periodical overflowings of which by supplying the moisture necessary for vegetation, render the soil very fertile. From this country, which had at a very early period made considerable advances in some of the arts and sciences (see ANCIENT HISTORY), Cecrops imparted much valuable knowledge to the rude inhabitants of Attica, whom he had persuaded or obliged to acknowledge him as their chief or king. He placed his rocky fastness under the protection of an Egyptian goddess, from whose Greek name, _Athena_ (afterwards changed by the Latins into Minerva), the city which subsequently rose around the eminence was called Athens. About the year 1493 B. C., Cadmus, a Phœnician, founded the city of Thebes in Bœotia; and among other useful things which he communicated to the Greeks, he is said to have taught them alphabetical writing, although it is certain that that art did not come into common use in Greece until several centuries after this period. The city of Corinth, situated on the narrow isthmus which connects the Peloponnesus with the mainland of Greece, was founded in the year 1520 B. C., and from its very advantageous position on the arm of the sea to which it anciently gave its name, but which is now known as the Gulf of Lepanto, it very soon became a place of considerable commercial importance. Sparta or Lacedæmon, the celebrated capital of Laconia in the Peloponnesus, is said to have been founded about 1520 B. C. by Lelex, an Egyptian.