The Ancient East | Page 8

Assyria, that her earlier empires may be passed over briefly. The
middle Tigris basin seems to have received a large influx of Semites of
the Canaanitic wave at least as early as Babylonia, and thanks to
various causes--to the absence of a prior local civilization as advanced
as the Sumerian, to greater distance from such enterprising fomenters
of disturbance as Elam and Arabia, and to a more invigorating
climate--these Semites settled down more quickly and thoroughly into
an agricultural society than the Babylonians and developed it in greater
purity. Their earliest social centre was Asshur in the southern part of
their territory. There, in proximity to Babylonia, they fell inevitably
under the domination of the latter; but after the fall of the First Dynasty
of Babylon and the subsequent decline of southern Semitic vigour, a
tendency manifested itself among the northern Semites to develop their
nationality about more central points. Calah, higher up the river,
replaced Asshur in the thirteenth century B.C., only to be replaced in
turn by Nineveh, a little further still upstream; and ultimately Assyria,
though it had taken its name from the southern city, came to be
consolidated round a north Mesopotamian capital into a power able to

impose vassalage on Babylon and to send imperial raiders to the
Mediterranean, and to the Great Lakes of Armenia. The first of her
kings to attain this sort of imperial position was Shalmaneser I, who
early in the thirteenth century B.C. appears to have crushed the last
strength of the north Mesopotamian powers of Mitanni and Khani and
laid the way open to the west lands. The Hatti power, however, tried
hard to close the passages and it was not until its catastrophe and the
retirement of those who brought it about--the Mushki and their
allies--that about 1100 Tiglath Pileser I could lead his Assyrian raiders
into Syria, and even, perhaps, a short distance across Taurus. Why his
empire died with him we do not know precisely. A new invasion of
Arabian Semites, the Aramaeans, whom he attacked at Mt. Bishri (Tell
Basher), may have been the cause. But, in any case, the fact is certain.
The sons of the great king, who had reached Phoenician Aradus and
there embarked vaingloriously on shipboard to claim mastery of the
Western Sea, were reduced to little better than vassals of their father's
former vassal, Babylon; and up to the close of the eleventh century
Assyria had not revived.
SECTION 5. NEW FORCES IN 1000 B.C.
Thus in 1000 B.C., we look round the East, and, so far as our vision can
penetrate the clouds, see no one dominant power. Territories which
formerly were overridden by the greater states, Babylonia, Egypt,
Cappadocia and Assyria, seem to be not only self-governing but free
from interference, although the vanished empires and a recent great
movement of peoples have left them with altered political boundaries
and sometimes with new dynasties. None of the political units has a
much larger area than another, and it would not have been easy at the
moment to prophesy which, or if any one, would grow at the expense
of the rest.
The great movement of peoples, to which allusion has just been made,
had been disturbing West Asia for two centuries. On the east, where the
well organized and well armed societies of Babylonia and Assyria
offered a serious obstacle to nomadic immigrants, the inflow had been
pent back beyond frontier mountains. But in the west the tide seems to

have flowed too strongly to be resisted by such force as the Hatti
empire of Cappadocia could oppose, and to have swept through Asia
Minor even to Syria and Mesopotamia. Records of Rameses III tell
how a great host of federated peoples appeared on the Asian frontier of
Egypt very early in the twelfth century. Among them marched men of
the "Kheta" or Hatti, but not as leaders. These strong foes and allies of
Seti I and Rameses II, not a century before, had now fallen from their
imperial estate to follow in the wake of newcomers, who had lately
humbled them in their Cappadocian home. The geographical order in
which the scribes of Rameses enumerated their conquests shows clearly
the direction from which the federals had come and the path they
followed. In succession they had devastated Hatti (i.e. Cappadocia),
Kedi (i.e. Cilicia), Carchemish and central Syria. Their victorious
progress began, therefore, in northern Asia Minor, and followed the
great roads through the Cilician passes to end at last on the very
frontiers of Egypt. The list of these newcomers has long interested
historians; for outlandish as their names were to Egyptians, they seem
to our eyes not unfamiliar, and are possibly travesties of some which
are writ large on pages of later history. Such are the Pulesti or