The Ancient East | Page 4

and Armenia by high mountain chains, and extending
back to the desert limits of the Ancient East. To this region, although it
comprises only the western part of what should be understood by Iran,
this name may be appropriated "without prejudice."
[Plate 1: THE REGION OF THE ANCIENT EAST AND ITS MAIN
DIVISIONS]

CHAPTER I
THE EAST IN 1000 B.C.
In 1000 B.C. West Asia was a mosaic of small states and contained, so
far as we know, no imperial power holding wide dominion over aliens.
Seldom in its history could it so be described. Since it became
predominantly Semitic, over a thousand years before our survey, it had
fallen under simultaneous or successive dominations, exercised from at
least three regions within itself and from one without.
SECTION 1. BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
The earliest of these centres of power to develop foreign empire was
also that destined, after many vicissitudes, to hold it latest, because it
was the best endowed by nature to repair the waste which empire
entails. This was the region which would be known later as Babylonia
from the name of the city which in historic times dominated it, but, as
we now know, was neither an early seat of power nor the parent of its
distinctive local civilization. This honour, if due to any one city, should
be credited to Ur, whose also was the first and the only truly
"Babylonian" empire. The primacy of Babylonia had not been the work
of its aboriginal Sumerian population, the authors of what was highest
in the local culture, but of Semitic intruders from a comparatively
barbarous region; nor again, had it been the work of the earliest of these
intruders (if we follow those who now deny that the dominion of
Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-sin ever extended beyond the
lower basins of the Twin Rivers), but of peoples who entered with a
second series of Semitic waves. These surged out of Arabia, eternal

motherland of vigorous migrants, in the middle centuries of the third
millennium B.C. While this migration swamped South Syria with
"Canaanites," it ultimately gave to Egypt the Hyksos or "Shepherd
Kings," to Assyria its permanent Semitic population, and to Sumer and
Akkad what later chroniclers called the First Babylonian Dynasty.
Since, however, those Semitic interlopers had no civilization of their
own comparable with either the contemporary Egyptian or the
Sumerian (long ago adopted by earlier Semitic immigrants), they
inevitably and quickly assimilated both these civilizations as they
settled down.
At the same time they did not lose, at least not in Mesopotamia, which
was already half Semitized, certain Bedawi ideas and instincts, which
would profoundly affect their later history. Of these the most important
historically was a religious idea which, for want of a better term, may
be called Super-Monotheism. Often found rooted in wandering peoples
and apt long to survive their nomadic phase, it consists in a belief that,
however many tribal and local gods there may be, one paramount deity
exists who is not only singular and indivisible but dwells in one spot,
alone on earth. His dwelling may be changed by a movement of his
people en masse, but by nothing less; and he can have no real rival in
supreme power. The fact that the paramount Father-God of the Semites
came through that migration en masse to take up his residence in
Babylon and in no other city of the wide lands newly occupied, caused
this city to retain for many centuries, despite social and political
changes, a predominant position not unlike that to be held by Holy
Rome from the Dark Ages to modern times.
Secondly the Arabs brought with them their immemorial instinct of
restlessness. This habit also is apt to persist in a settled society, finding
satisfaction in annual recourse to tent or hut life and in annual
predatory excursions. The custom of the razzia or summer raid, which
is still obligatory in Arabia on all men of vigour and spirit, was held in
equal honour by the ancient Semitic world. Undertaken as a matter of
course, whether on provocation or not, it was the origin and constant
spring of those annual marches to the frontiers, of which royal Assyrian
monuments vaingloriously tell us, to the exclusion of almost all other

information. Chederlaomer, Amraphel and the other three kings were
fulfilling their annual obligation in the Jordan valley when Hebrew
tradition believed that they met with Abraham; and if, as seems agreed,
Amraphel was Hammurabi himself, that tradition proves the custom of
the razzia well established under the First Babylonian Dynasty.
Moreover, the fact that these annual campaigns of Babylonian and
Assyrian kings were simply Bedawi razzias highly organized and on a
great scale should be borne in mind when we speak of Semitic
"empires," lest we