(1) The evidence as to priority can be summarily stated. Civilisation in the Ægean and on the Greek mainland dates from beyond 3000, B.C., and reached its meridian between the sixteenth and the twelfth centuries of that era. Almost all that we know about the Phœnicians is at second-hand, since, if they ever had a literature or native chronicles, these have not survived. Piecing together classical tradition and references in Egyptian and Hebrew records, we gather that for some three centuries onwards from 1600 B.C. Phœnicia was a dependency of the Pharaohs. There was a Tyrian quarter at Memphis 1250 B.C. Hiram appears to have refounded Tyre 1028 B.C., from which time its commercial importance dates; while the refounding of its future great rival Carthage is assigned to the early years of the eighth century B.C. The decay of the Mycenæan civilisation, which followed as one of the many results of the Dorian invasion in the twelfth century B.C., gave the Phœnicians their chance. They overran the Ægean, and remained the dominant power in the Mediterranean until the Greeks, reviving their ancient traditions, expelled the Phœnicians from their waters, and broke their supremacy when Tyre was sacked by Alexander the Great, 332 B.C. Between their rise and fall, their commercial pre-eminence enabled them to impose upon the Greeks the alphabet which was the vehicle of preservation of the intellectual wealth of the Hellenes, and of all literature that followed theirs. What were the probable sources of that alphabet will be considered presently.