Thus the beginnings of settled life, of agriculture, of cities and trade in Canaan cannot be placed later than the year 2,000 B.C., and this result is confirmed by the tradition of the Hebrews. According to Genesis, Ham, the second son of Noah, begat Canaan, and Canaan begat Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, and Amori, and Hivi, and Arvadi, and Hamathi, and afterwards the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad.[485] Hence, with the Hebrews, the Sidonians passed for the oldest Canaanites. The name means Fishcatcher, and a tribe limited to a narrow strip of coast may soon have betaken themselves to the sea. The primogeniture of the Sidonians was afterwards explained to mean that the origin of their city, Sidon, belonged to the oldest period. That the second city of this tribe, Sor (Tyre), "the daughter of Sidon,"[486] was proud of her great antiquity, we learn from other sources. When Herodotus was there, and inquired about the erection of the most sacred temple in the city, the temple of Melkarth, he received the answer that this shrine had been built, together with the city, about 2,300 years before his time, i.e. about the year 2,750 B.C. Lucian also assures us that the temples of Phenicia and the temple of Melkarth at Tyre were founded not much later than the oldest Egyptian temples.[487] Northward of Sidon, at the mouths of the Nahr Ibrahim and the Nahr-el-Kelb (Adonis and Lycus), was settled the tribe of the Giblites, _i.e._ the mountaineers, whose cities were Gebal (Byblus) and Berothai (Berytus). Byblus claimed to be the oldest city in the land--older than Sidon--and to have been built by El, the supreme deity. At any rate, as we have already seen, it was in existence at the time of Tuthmosis III., whose inscriptions also mention the city of a third tribe, that of Arvadi, _i.e._ the Arvadites, whom the Hebrews mention among the sons of Canaan. This tribe was in possession of a considerable district to the north of Byblus, on the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kebir (Eleutherus), and of a rocky island off the coast, on which lay their city Arvad, the Aratu of the Egyptians, the Aradus of the Greeks.