“King Hiram to King Solomon [sends greeting]:—­Needs must I praise God, that hath given thee to sit upon thy father’s throne, seeing that thou art a wise man, and possessed of every virtue.  And I, rejoicing at these things, will do all that thou hast desired of me.  I will by my servants cut thee in abundance timber of cedar and timber of cypress, and will bring them down to the sea, and command my servants to construct of them a float, or raft, and navigate it to whatever point of thy coast thou mayest wish, and there discharge them; after which thy servants can carry them to Jerusalem.  But be it thy care to provide me in return with a supply of food, whereof we are in want as inhabiting an island."[1460]

The result was an arrangement by which the Tyrian monarch furnished his brother king with timber of various kinds, chiefly cedar, cut in Lebanon, and also with a certain number of trained artificers, workers in metal, carpenters, and masons, while the Israelite monarch on his part made a return in corn, wine, and oil, supplying Tyre, while the contract lasted, with 20,000 cors of wheat, the same quantity of barley, 20,000 baths of wine, and the same number of oil, annually.[1461] Phoenicia always needed to import supplies of food for its abundant population,[1462] and having an inexhaustible store of timber in Lebanon, was glad to find a market for it so near.  Thus the arrangement suited both parties.  The hillsides of Galilee and the broad and fertile plains of Esdraelon and Sharon produced a superabundance of wheat and barley, whereof the inhabitants had to dispose in some quarter or other, and the highlands of Sumeria and Judaea bore oil and wine far beyond the wants of those who cultivated them.  What Phoenicia lacked in these respects from the scantiness of its cultivable soil, Palestine was able and eager to supply; while to Phoenicia it was a boon to obtain, not only a market for her timber, but also employment for her surplus population, which under ordinary circumstances was always requiring to be carried off to distant lands, from the difficulty of supporting itself at home.

A still greater advantage was it to the rude Judaeans to get the assistance of their civilised and artistic neighbours in the design and execution, both of the Temple itself and of all those accessories, which in ancient times a sacred edifice on a large scale was regarded as requiring.  The Phoenicians, and especially the Tyrians, had long possessed, both in their home and foreign settlements, temples of some pretension, and Hiram had recently been engaged in beautifying and adorning, perhaps in rebuilding, some of these venerable edifices at Tyre.[1463] A Phoenician architectural style had thus been formed, and Hiram’s architects and artificers would be familiar with constructive principles and ornamental details, as well as with industrial processes, which are very unlikely to have been known at the time to the Hebrews.  The wood for the Jewish Temple was roughly cut, and the stones