How active the trade with the land of frankincense was is shown by the words of the Hebrew prophet, who proclaims to the new Jerusalem: "A multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah (see below); all they from Shebah shall come; they shall bring gold and incense. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; the rams of Nebajoth shall minister unto thee."[453] The Arabs, when conquered by the Persians, were compelled to pay a yearly tribute of 1,000 talents of incense,[454] _i.e._ at least 60,000 pounds. This they could only obtain from South Arabia, and to Western nations the connection between Damascus and South Arabia appeared so close, that they represented the Sabæans as colonists of the Egyptians, Ninus and Semiramis having sent colonies from Damascus to Arabia Felix. Though the Phenicians could receive the products of South Arabia and the Somali coast by the high road of Elath, and from the Euphrates by Harran, they were nevertheless eager to have a connection by sea with these regions. They availed themselves of the relations in which they stood to Solomon, king of Israel, in order to send ships from Eziongeber down the Arabian Gulf, to Ophir, as far as the mouth of the Indus. These ships brought back sandalwood, apes, peacocks, and gold. This trade fell with the decline of the kingdom of Judah, after the time of Jehoshaphat. But when Amaziah of Judah again subjugated the Edomites, about the year 790 B.C., and after him his son Uzziah again advanced the borders of Judah to the Red Sea, the Phenicians also resumed their connection with the kings of Judah and the trade to Ophir.[455] Afterwards Pharaoh Necho gave them an opportunity for a short time to set out upon their voyages in the Arabian Gulf, not, indeed, from the north-east, but from the north-west corner of the Red Sea. But immediately afterwards Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, by subduing the Dedanites and planting Babylonian centres of trade on the coast of Dedan and at the mouth of the Euphrates, succeeded in transplanting the marine trade with South Arabia to the Persian Gulf, while the conquest of the Kedarites also put him in a position to strike a road across the desert from Babylon to Sela (in the land of the Edomites, see below). Darius or the Ptolemies were the first to succeed in the attempt made by Rameses II. and Necho, and concentrated in the Bay of Heroonpolis the trade of Egypt and Syria with South Arabia.