Solomon, like other Oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and horses.  Egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of Asia.  Chariots, at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time when their use in warfare was universal.  As for horses, the cities of the Delta and Middle Egypt possessed a celebrated strain of stallions, from which the Syrian princes were accustomed to obtain their war-steeds.* Solomon decreed that for the future he was to be the sole intermediary between the Asiatics and the foreign countries supplying their requirements.  His agents went down at regular intervals to the banks of the Nile to lay in stock; the horses and chariots, by the time they reached Jerusalem, cost him at the rate of six hundred silver shekels for each chariot, and one hundred and fifty shekels for each horse, but he sold them again at a profit to the Aramaean and Hittite princes.  In return he purchased from them Cilician stallions, probably to sell again to the Egyptians, whose relaxing climate necessitated a frequent introduction of new blood into their stables.** By these and other methods of which we know nothing the yearly revenue of the kingdom was largely increased:  and though it only reached a total which may seem insignificant in comparison with the enormous quantities of the precious metals which passed through the hands of the Pharaohs of that time, yet it must have seemed boundless wealth in the eyes of the shepherds and husbandmen who formed the bulk of the Hebrew nation.

* The terms in which the text, 1 Kings x. 27-29 (cf. 2 Citron, i. 16, 17), speaks of the trade in horses, show that the traffic was already in existence when Solomon decided to embark in it.

** 1 Kings x. 27-29; 2 Chron. i. 16, 17.  Kue, the name of Lower Cilicia, was discovered in the Hebrew text by Pr.  Lenormant.  Winckler, with mistaken reliance on the authority of Erman, has denied that Egypt produced stud-horses at this time, and wishes to identify the Mizraim of the Hebrew text with Musri, a place near Mount Taurus, mentioned in the Assyrian texts.

In thus developing his resources and turning them to good account, Solomon derived great assistance from the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, a race whose services were always at the disposal of the masters of Southern Syria.  The continued success of the Hellenic colonists on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean had compelled the Phoenicians to seek with redoubled boldness and activity in the Western Mediterranean some sort of compensation for the injury which their trade had thus suffered.  They increased and consolidated their dealings with Sicily, Africa, and Spain, and established themselves throughout the whole of that misty region which extended beyond the straits of Gibraltar on the European side, from the mouth of the Guadalete