exploration: The Middle East tire tribes of people migrated from the north, the east, and the south into Mesopotamia in the hope of finding a place to settle where they could prosper as the Mesopotamian city-states did Skilled artisans could leave their homes and follow the trade routes, hoping to find a place where their handiwork would be rewarded For example, Jewish metalworkers, beginning in the 500s b.c.e., searched the Near East and perhaps beyond to find work Jewish metalworkers were especially valued and found new homes from Egypt to as far east as Iran Their search for employment had begun in 586 b.c.e., when the Babylonian Empire had deported the people of Judah to Mesopotamia After Persia’s Cyrus the Great (r 558–529 b.c.e.) conquered Babylon in 539 b.c.e., he told the Jews that they could return to Judah, but many remained in their new homes in distant lands, where they prospered Governments of the ancient Near East were often torn between a desire to keep their populations focused on their homes and on their duties to the government and a desire to know what opportunities lay beyond their territories Theirs was a dangerous world, with wars for seizing loot, conquering territory, and achieving glory resulting in destroyed cities and enslaved peoples By the time of Sargon I, exploring unknown lands was becoming a necessity for survival Governments would send explorers to travel into unfamiliar territories to learn about customs, trade, and other governments Nomadic peoples often explored in order to find places to settle within the territory of a nation, as the Kassites did in the late 1700s b.c.e., when they moved into Babylon’s lands The most impressive feat of government-sponsored exploration may have occurred in about 600 b.c.e Over the centuries Egyptian governments had sent expeditions into the Sinai and south into sub-Saharan Africa to seek sources of geological deposits of metal, especially gold, and to discover sources for trade goods valued in Egypt In about 600 b.c.e the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II (r 610–595 b.c.e.) commissioned the Phoenicians to send an expedition to discover how big Africa actually was The explorers sailed south through the Red Sea, past Punt on the east coast of Africa, and then disappeared Three years later they sailed east through the Strait of Gibraltar, having circumnavigated Africa The Phoenicians were great explorers In the 2000s b.c.e people in the northern Levant began trading with the rest of the Near East and Egypt From 1100 to 800 b.c.e the Phoenicians of the northern Levant established trading posts first on Cyprus, then on Crete, and then in southern Greece and the northern Aegean, yet most Phoenician trade was by land In the 1100s b.c.e the Phoenicians sailed westward, trying to find new opportunities for trade They even sailed out of the Mediterranean to Cornwall in Britain and south along the west coast of Africa, where they established trading colonies On the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula, now Portugal and Spain, they found sources of tin and silver On the northern coast of Africa, Phoenician explorers found a good harbor, and between 814 and 714 b.c.e they founded the city of Carthage there 439 FABULOUS VOYAGES OF THE PHOENICIANS The ancient Phoenicians sailed to Cornwall in Britain, to the Azores, to the Canary Islands, and even around the western hump of Africa into the Gulf of Guinea, where they found crocodiles and gorillas In the 900s B.C.E they sailed three times a year to the mysterious Ophir for King Solomon of Israel, bringing home exotic treasures, notably peacocks, suggesting that Ophir may have been in India Yet one voyage stands out in ancient records: the one that circumnavigated Africa in about 600 B.C.E The Phoenicians were very experienced in voyages of discovery by the time Necho II of Egypt commissioned them to discover the full extent of Africa They built ships of wood, usually cut from their extensive cedar forests Some were large 100-foot-long cargo ships with a length-to-width ratio of 2.5 to Others were sleek and swift Both types of ships could sail the oceans, usually staying close to coastlines It was probably in a sleek, swift ship that the Phoenicians sailed south in the Red Sea to start their great voyage The Phoenician explorers brought seeds with them, probably knowing from past experience that the seeds might be needed When autumn came, they went ashore and planted crops After harvesting the crops, they continued onward They planted and harvested each year of their voyage The Greek historian Herodotus recorded that the voyagers said that when they sailed westward around the southern end of Africa, the sun was to their right, meaning to the north Living north of the equator, as the people of the Mediterranean did, meant that the sun crossed the sky to the south; from south of the equator, the sun would appear to cross to the north The way for the Phoenician explorers to have noticed this phenomenon was to have sailed, as they claimed, south past the equator and then westward around the southern tip of the continent, when the sun would be to the north, on their right It took them three years to circumnavigate Africa and enter the Mediterranean from the west and sail to Egypt Another group of impressive seagoing explorers was the Arabs They lived mostly on the Arabian Peninsula They became the great middlemen of southern Asia and explored along the coast of Africa, establishing trade relations with eastern Africa They also ventured eastward, reaching southern India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the 500s b.c.e When the Roman Empire wanted to explore southern Asia