But with the decline of the Egyptian power, which sets in after the death of the second Rameses, a change takes place.  External pressure being removed, ambitions begin to develop themselves.  In the north Aradus (Arvad), in the south Sidon, proceed to exercise a sort of hegemony over several neighbouring states.  Sidon becomes known as “Great Zidon."[1411] Not content with her maritime ascendancy, which was already pushing her into special notice, she aspired to a land dominion, and threw out offshoots from the main seat of her power as far as Laish, on the head-waters of the Jordan.[1412] It was her support, probably, which enabled the inhabitants of such comparatively weak cities as Accho and Achzib and Aphek to resist the invasion of the Hebrews, and maintain themselves, despite all attempts made to reduce them.[1413] At the same time she gradually extended her influence over the coast towns in her neighbourhood, as Sarepta, Heldun, perhaps Berytus, Ecdippa, and Accho.  The period which succeeds that of Egyptian preponderance in Western Asia may be distinguished as that of Sidonian ascendancy, or of such ascendancy slightly modified by an Aradian hegemony in the north over the settlements intervening between Mount Casius and the northern roots of Lebanon.[1414] During this period Sidon came to the front, alike in arts, in arms, and in navigation.  Her vessels were found by the earliest Greek navigators in all parts of the Mediterranean into which they themselves ventured, and were known to push themselves into regions where no Greek dared to follow them.  Under her fostering care Phoenician colonisation had spread over the whole of the Western Mediterranean, over the AEgean, and into the Propontis.  She had engaged in war with the powerful nation of the Philistines, and, though worsted in the encounter, had obtained a reputation for audacity.  By her wonderful progress in the arts, her citizens had acquired the epithet of {poludaidaloi},[1415] and had come to be recognised generally as the foremost artificers of the world in almost every branch of industry.  Sidonian metal-work was particularly in repute.  When Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus desired to offer as a prize to the fastest runner the most beautiful bowl that was to be found in all the world, he naturally chose one which had been deftly made by highly-skilled Sidonians, and which Phoenician sailors had conveyed in one of their hollow barks across the cloud-shadowed sea.[1416] When Menelaus proposed to present Telemachus, the son of his old comrade Odysseus, with what was at once the most beautiful and the most valuable of all his possessions, he selected a silver bowl with a golden rim, which in former days he had himself received as a present from Phaedimus, the Sidonian king.[1417] The sailors who stole Eumaeus from Ortygia, and carried him across the sea to Ithica, obtained their prize by coming to his father’s palace, and bringing with them, among other wares,

     . . . a necklace of fine gold to sell,
     With bright electron linked right wondrously and well.[1418]