There are some facts here that are worthy of special emphasis: (1) There were no horses in Egypt till the period of the Shepherd Kings, i. e., about the time of Joseph. (2) All Egyptologists down to the present day agree that the supply of Egyptian horses was procured from Northern Syria. (3) The Egyptians and the Arabians were adjoining nations in constant, friendly intercourse, exchanging the products of their respective countries, and yet there is no shadow of an intimation that the Arabians had then ever owned a horse. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, not only from what is written, but from what is implied, that the Arabians at about the period of 1600 B.C. had no horses. Northern Syria, as the source of Egyptian supply, points directly to Armenia, adjoining on the east, as the original source. When Strabo wrote at the beginning of the Christian era that there were no horses in Arabia at that time, he would still have been within the bounds of the truth if he had said there had been none there for more the sixteen hundred years before his day. All these considerations confirm the history that has come down to us from Philostorgius. As early as the dynasties of the Shepherd Kings and while the Israelites were still in Egyptian bondage, the Phœnician merchants had accumulated great wealth and great power and were literally the masters of the seas. The Phœnicians were a commercial and maritime people and the Egyptians were, in fact, dependent upon them for all their foreign supplies. These conditions leave hardly a doubt that Egypt’s first supply of horses came through the Phœnicians. But upon the establishment of the eighteenth dynasty under the old Thebans, the spirit of war and conquest revived, and under Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis III., notably, numerous and successful campaigns were made against Northern Syria and then extending eastward across the Euphrates into the borders of Armenia and Assyria. And from the number of horses and chariots captured in battle and collected as tribute, the careful student cannot avoid the conclusion that this kind of spoil was the chief incentive to the various campaigns. “Besides the usual species,” Maspero informs us, “powerful stallions were imported from Northern Syria, which were known by the Semitic name of _Abiri_, the strong.” This is the first mention in history of an improved type of horse noted for his strength.