been very restricted; otherwise we should surely have some specimens of writing, some traces of the Phoenician alphabet. It would not have been left to the Aramaeans of Syria to introduce the "Kadmeian letters" into Greece, and Mykenae, rather than Thebes, would have been made the centre from which they were disseminated. Indeed, we may perhaps infer that even the coast of Asia Minor, near as it was to the Phoenician settlements at Kamirus and elsewhere, could have held but little intercourse with the Phoenicians of Egypt from the fact that the Cypriote syllabary was so long in use upon it, and that the alphabets afterwards employed were derived only indirectly from the Phoenician through the medium of the Greek. One point more now alone needs to be noticed. The long-continued influence upon early Greek culture which we ascribe to the Phoenicians cannot but have left its mark upon the Greek vocabulary also. Some at least of the names given by the Phoenicians to the objects of luxury they brought with them must have been adopted by the natives of Hellas. We know that this is the case with the letters of the alphabet; is it also the case with other words? If not, analogy would almost compel us to treat the evidences that have been enumerated of Phoenician influence as illusory, and to fall back upon the position of O. K. Mueller and his school. By way of answer I would refer to the list of Greek words, the Semitic origin of which admits of no doubt, lately given by Dr. August Mueller in Bezzenberger's "Beitrage zur Kunde der indogermanischen Sprachen."[45] Amongst these we find articles of luxury like "linen," "shirt," "sackcloth," "myrrh," and "frankincense," "galbanum" and "cassia," "cinnamon" and "soap," "lyres" and "wine-jars," "balsam" and "cosmetics," as well, possibly, as "fine linen" and "gold," along with such evidences of trade and literature as the "pledge," "the writing tablet," and the "shekel." If these were the only instances of Semitic tincture, they would be enough to prove the early presence of the Semitic Phoenicians in Greece. But we must remember that they are but samples of a class, and that many words borrowed during the heroic age may have dropped out of use or been conformed to the native part of the vocabulary long before the beginning of the written literature, while it would be in the lesser known dialects of the islands that the Semitic element was strongest. We know that the dialect of Cyprus was full of importations from the East.