Ancient Trade Goods Given the ambitiously grand arena within which the Phoenician traders plied their wares, goods and knowledge from one end of the Mediterranean easily reached the far limits of the other. The prophet Ezekiel in his Biblical foretelling of the fall of one of Phoenicia's great cities, Tyre, reviews the extensive scope of Phoenician trade, mentioning silver, iron, tin, lead, horses, ebony and ivory, linen, the famous Tyrian purple dye (an extract from sea snails sometimes worth its weight in gold and which when applied to cloth came to be identified with wealth and royalty), coral, honey, spices, oil and precious stones. "These were the merchants of all things," he wrote, "in blue clothes, and embroidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among the merchandise."