The oldest city of the Phenicians was Sidon; her daughter-city, Tyre, was also founded at a very ancient period. We found that the inscriptions of Sethos I. mentioned it among the cities reduced by him. The power and importance of Tyre must have gradually increased with the beginning of a more lively navigation between the cities and the colonies; about the year 1100 B.C. her navigation and influence appears to have surpassed those of the mother-city. If Old Hippo in Africa was founded from Sidon, Tyrian ships sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, discovered the land of silver, and founded Gades beyond the pillars. Accordingly we also find that Tyre, and not Sidon, was mistress of the island of Cyprus. According to the statements of the Greeks, a king of the name of Sobaal or Sethlon ruled in Sidon at the time of the Trojan war, _i.e._ before the year 1100 B.C.;[474] about the same time a king of the name of Abelbaal reigned in Berytus.[475] From a fragment of Menander of Ephesus, preserved to us by Josephus, it follows that after the middle of the eleventh century B.C. Abibaal was reigning in Tyre. A sardonyx, now at Florence, exhibits a man with a high crown on his head and a staff in his hand; in front of him is a star with four rays; the inscription in old Phenician letters runs, "Of Abibaal." Did this stone belong to king Abibaal?[476] Hiram, the son of this king, ascended the throne of Tyre while yet a youth, in 1001 B.C. He is said to have again subjugated to his dominion the Kittians, _i.e._ the inhabitants of Citium, or the cities of Cyprus generally, who refused to pay tribute. What reasons and what views of advantage in trade induced Hiram to enter into relations with David in the last years of his reign, and unite these relations even more closely with Solomon, the successor of David, has been recounted above. It was this understanding which not only opened Israel completely to the trade of the Phenicians, but also procured to the latter secure and new roads through Israel to the Euphrates and Egypt, and made it possible for them to discover and use the road by sea to South Arabia. Thus, a good century after the founding of Gades, the commerce of the Phenicians reached the widest extension which it ever obtained. We saw that the Phenicians about the year 990 B.C. went by ship from Elath past South Arabia to the Somali coast, and reached Ophir, _i.e._ apparently the land of the Abhira (_i.e._ herdsmen) on the mouths of the Indus.[477] The other advantages which accrued to Hiram from his connection with Israel were not slight. Solomon paid him, as has been said, 20,000 Kor of wheat and 20,000 Bath of oil yearly for 20 years in return for wood and choice quarry stones, and finally, in order to discharge his debt, had to give up 20 Israelitish towns on his borders.