The Ancient East

The Ancient East

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ancient East, by D. G. Hogarth
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Title: The Ancient East
Author: D. G. Hogarth
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7474] [Yes, we are more than
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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
No. 92
_Editors_:
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. PROF. GILBERT MURRAY,
LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A. PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. PROF.
WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

THE ANCIENT EAST
BY
D. G. HOGARTH, M.A., F.B.A., F.S.A.
KEEPER OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD; AUTHOR
OF "IONIA AND THE EAST," "THE NEARER EAST," ETC.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
I THE EAST IN 1000 B.C.
II THE EAST IN 800 B.C.
III THE EAST IN 600 B.C.
IV THE EAST IN 400 B.C.
V THE VICTORY OF THE WEST
VI EPILOGUE
NOTE ON BOOKS

LIST OF MAPS
1. THE REGION OF THE ANCIENT EAST AND ITS MAIN
DIVISIONS
2. ASIATIC EMPIRE OF EGYPT. TEMP. AMENHETEP III

3. HATTI EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY 13TH
CENTURY B.C.
4. ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY
YEARS OF ASHURBANIPAL
5. PERSIAN EMPIRE (WEST) AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. TEMP.
DARIUS HYSTASPIS
6. HELLENISM IN ASIA. ABOUT 150 B.C.

THE ANCIENT EAST
INTRODUCTORY
The title of this book needs a word of explanation, since each of its
terms can legitimately be used to denote more than one conception both
of time and place. "The East" is understood widely and vaguely
nowadays to include all the continent and islands of Asia, some part of
Africa--the northern part where society and conditions of life are most
like the Asiatic--and some regions also of South-Eastern and Eastern
Europe. Therefore it may appear arbitrary to restrict it in the present
book to Western Asia. But the qualifying term in my title must be
invoked in justification. It is the East not of to-day but of antiquity with
which I have to deal, and, therefore, I plead that it is not unreasonable
to understand by "The East" what in antiquity European historians
understood by that term. To Herodotus and his contemporary Greeks
Egypt, Arabia and India were the South; Thrace and Scythia were the
North; and Hither Asia was the East: for they conceived nothing
beyond except the fabled stream of Ocean. It can be pleaded also that
my restriction, while not in itself arbitrary, does, in fact, obviate an
otherwise inevitable obligation to fix arbitrary bounds to the East. For
the term, as used in modern times, implies a geographical area
characterized by society of a certain general type, and according to his
opinion of this type, each person, who thinks or writes of the East,
expands or contracts its geographical area.
It is more difficult to justify the restriction which will be imposed in the
following chapters on the word Ancient. This term is used even more
vaguely and variously than the other. If generally it connotes the
converse of "Modern," in some connections and particularly in the
study of history the Modern is not usually understood to begin where
the Ancient ended but to stand only for the comparatively Recent. For

example, in History, the ill-defined period called the Middle and Dark
Ages makes a considerable hiatus before, in the process of
retrospection, we get back to a civilization which (in Europe at least)
we ordinarily regard as Ancient. Again, in History, we distinguish
commonly two provinces within the undoubted area of the Ancient, the
Prehistoric and the Historic, the first comprising all the time to which
human memory, as communicated by surviving literature, ran not, or, at
least, not consciously, consistently and credibly. At the same time it is
not implied that we can have no knowledge at all of