The Ancient East | Page 3

influence on subsequent history, were settling down into
their historic homes.
A westward and southward movement of peoples, caused by some
obscure pressure from the north-west and north-east, which had been
disturbing eastern and central Asia Minor for more than a century and
apparently had brought to an end the supremacy of the Cappadocian
Hatti, was quieting down, leaving the western peninsula broken up into
small principalities. Indirectly the same movement had brought about a
like result in northern Syria. A still more important movement of
Iranian peoples from the farther East had ended in the coalescence of
two considerable social groups, each containing the germs of higher
development, on the north-eastern and eastern fringes of the old
Mesopotamian sphere of influence. These were the Medic and the
Persian. A little earlier, a period of unrest in the Syrian and Arabian
deserts, marked by intermittent intrusions of nomads into the western
fringe-lands, had ended in the formation of new Semitic states in all
parts of Syria from Shamal in the extreme north-west (perhaps even
from Cilicia beyond Amanus) to Hamath, Damascus and Palestine.
Finally there is this justification for not trying to push the history of the
Asiatic East much behind 1000 B.C.--that nothing like a sure
chronological basis of it exists before that date. Precision in the dating
of events in West Asia begins near the end of the tenth century with the
Assyrian Eponym lists, that is, lists of annual chief officials; while for
Babylonia there is no certain chronology till nearly two hundred years
later. In Hebrew history sure chronological ground is not reached till
the Assyrian records themselves begin to touch upon it during the reign
of Ahab over Israel. For all the other social groups and states of
Western Asia we have to depend on more or less loose and inferential
synchronisms with Assyrian, Babylonian or Hebrew chronology,
except for some rare events whose dates may be inferred from the alien
histories of Egypt and Greece.
* * * * *
The area, whose social state we shall survey in 1000 B.C. and re-survey

at intervals, contains Western Asia bounded eastwards by an imaginary
line drawn from the head of the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea. This
line, however, is not to be drawn rigidly straight, but rather should
describe a shallow outward curve, so as to include in the Ancient East
all Asia situated on this side of the salt deserts of central Persia. This
area is marked off by seas on three sides and by desert on the fourth
side. Internally it is distinguished into some six divisions either by
unusually strong geographical boundaries or by large differences of
geographical character. These divisions are as follows--
(1) A western peninsular projection, bounded by seas on three sides and
divided from the rest of the continent by high and very broad mountain
masses, which has been named, not inappropriately, Asia Minor, since
it displays, in many respects, an epitome of the general characteristics
of the continent. (2) A tangled mountainous region filling almost all the
rest of the northern part of the area and sharply distinct in character not
only from the plateau land of Asia Minor to the west but also from the
great plain lands of steppe character lying to the south, north and east.
This has perhaps never had a single name, though the bulk of it has
been included in "Urartu" (Ararat), "Armenia" or "Kurdistan" at
various epochs; but for convenience we shall call it Armenia. (3) A
narrow belt running south from both the former divisions and
distinguished from them by much lower general elevation. Bounded on
the west by the sea and on the south and east by broad tracts of desert,
it has, since Greek times at least, been generally known as Syria. (4) A
great southern peninsula largely desert, lying high and fringed by sands
on the land side, which has been called, ever since antiquity, Arabia. (5)
A broad tract stretching into the continent between Armenia and Arabia
and containing the middle and lower basins of the twin rivers,
Euphrates and Tigris, which, rising in Armenia, drain the greater part of
the whole area. It is of diversified surface, ranging from sheer desert in
the west and centre, to great fertility in its eastern parts; but, until it
begins to rise northward towards the frontier of "Armenia" and
eastward towards that of the sixth division, about to be described, it
maintains a generally low elevation. No common name has ever
included all its parts, both the interfluvial region and the districts
beyond Tigris; but since the term Mesopotamia, though obviously
incorrect, is generally understood nowadays to designate it, this name

may be used for want of a better. (6) A high plateau, walled off from
Mesopotamia