The industry of the Babylonians quickly attained great skill and wide development. They were famous for their weaving in wool and linen. The nations of the West agree in acknowledging the excellence of the cloths and coloured stuffs of Babylonia. Their pottery was excellent and the manufacture active; the preparation of glass was not unknown; the ointments prepared in Babylon were famous and much sought after, and the stones cut there were highly valued. The products of Babylonian skill and industry were first brought to their kinsmen in Syria, who could offer oil and wine in exchange. In the Hebrew scriptures we find Babylonian cloaks in use in Syria before the immigration of the Hebrews into Canaan.[421] How active the commerce between Babylonia and Syria was even before that date is proved by the circumstance that the tribute which in the sixteenth century B.C. was received by Tuthmosis III. from Syria is put down on the inscriptions at Karnak (p. 135) in part in weight by the mina, and in part, when reduced from the Egyptian to the Babylonian weight, gives round sums corresponding to the Babylonian weight, from which the conclusion can be drawn that the imperial Babylonian weight and the Babylonian money weight were already in use in Syria about this time. That the trade mina of the Syrians was the sixtieth part of the heavy (weight) talent of the Babylonians is ascertained; but the heavy and light gold talent, as well as the silver talent of 67-1/3 pounds, must, according to these deductions, have been known to the Syrians about this date.[422] Afterwards the Hebrews put their gold shekel, on the basis of the heavy gold talent of Babylon, at the fiftieth part of the mina of this talent. Besides the silver talent of Babylonia, there was also a heavy silver talent of about ninety pounds (44,760 kil.) in use in Syria. This came into existence because in Syria fifteen, and not ten, silver pieces (fiftieths of the mina) were equal to the fiftieth of the heavy gold mina (1-3/5 pounds), (p. 285).[423] Along with their weights the Syrians also adopted the cubic measures of the Babylonians.