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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;iamtiberius, post: 2912126, member: 37707&quot;]If any group of people earned the right to place ships on their coins; it was the Phoenicians. This is an excerpt from a translation I own of &quot;The Histories,&quot; by Herodotus. </p><p><br /></p><p><i>&quot;Libya is washed on all sides by the sea except where it joins Asia, as was first demonstrated, so far as our knowledge goes, by the Egyptian king Necho, who, after calling off the construction of the canal between the Nile and the Arabian gulf, sent out a fleet manned by a Phoenician crew with orders to sail west about and return to Egypt and the Mediterranean by way of the Straits of Gibraltar. The Phoenicians sailed from the Arabian gulf into the southern ocean, and every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year&#039;s harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars of Heracles in the course of the third, and returned to Egypt. These men made a statement which I do not myself believe, though others may, to the effect that as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya, they had the sun on their right - to northward of them. This is how Libya was first discovered by sea&quot;</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>You read that correctly. It was recorded that around 600 BC, the Phoenicians sailed around Africa, under Necho&#039;s flag. With Autumn stops and sitting outside of the coast several miles; it would be safe to say they had a 20,000-25,000 nautical mile voyage around a continent with 19,000 miles of coast. </p><p><br /></p><p>My contribution from the Purple People:</p><p><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/phoenicia-shekel-jpg.672249/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><b>PHOENICIA, Byblos (Gebal). <i>Ozbaal. </i></b>Circa 394-352 BC. AR Shekel. Three hoplites, holding shields, on galley left above waves, prow ending in lion&#039;s head; below, hippocamp left above murex shell, `Z (in Phoenician) above dorsal fin / Lion attacking bull left; ‘ZB’L MLK GBL (“Ozbaal, king of Gebal” in Phoenician) above.</p><p>13.3g</p><p>25.2mm[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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