primarily for “wheat of Minnith;"[947] and a similar trade is noted on the return of the Jews from the captivity,[948] and in the first century of our era.[949] But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.[950] Western Palestine was notoriously a land not only of corn, but also of wine, of olive oil, and of honey, and could readily impart of its superfluity to its neighbour in time of need.  The oaks of Bashan are very abundant, and seem to have been preferred by the Phoenicians to their own oaks as the material of oars.[951] Balm, or basalm, was a product of the land of Gilead,[952] and also of the lower Jordan valley, where it was of superior quality.[953]

From the Damascene Syrians we are told that Phoenicia imported “wine of Helbon” and “white wool."[954] The “wine of Helbon” is reasonably identified with that {oinos Khalubonios} which is said to have been the favourite beverage of the Persian kings.[955] It was perhaps grown in the neighbourhood of Aleppo.[956] The “white wool” may have been furnished by the sheep that cropped the slopes of the Antilibanus, or by those fed on the fine grass which clothes most of the plain at its base.  The fleece of these last is, according to Heeren,[957] “the finest known, being improved by the heat of the climate, the continual exposure to the open air, and the care commonly bestowed upon the flocks.”  From the Syrian wool, mixed perhaps with some other material, seems to have been woven the fabric known, from the city where it was commonly made,[958] as “damask.”

According to the existing text of Ezekiel,[959] Syria Proper “occupied in the fairs” of Phoenicia with cotton, with embroidered robes, with purple, and with precious stones.  The valley of the Orontes is suitable for the cultivation of cotton; and embroidered robes would naturally be produced in the seat of an old civilisation, which Syria certainly was.  Purple seems somewhat out of place in the enumeration; but the Syrians may have gathered the murex on their seaboard between Mt.  Casius and the Gulf of Issus, and have sold what they collected in the Phoenician market.  The precious stones which Ezekiel assigns to them are difficult of identification, but may have been furnished by Casius, Bargylus, or Amanus.  These mountains, or at any rate Casius and Amanus, are of igneous origin, and, if carefully explored, would certainly yield gems to the investigator.  At the same time it must be acknowledged that Syria had not, in antiquity, the name of a gem-producing country; and, so far, the reading of “Edom” for “Aram,” which is preferred by many,[960] may seem to be the more probable.