A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY H. G. WELLS
18.EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA
The Egyptians had never submitted very willingly to the rule of their Semitic shepherd kings and about 1600 A.D. a vigorous patriotic movement expelled these foreigners. Followed a new phase or revival for Egypt, a period known to Egyptologists as the New Empire. Egypt, which had not been closely consolidated before the Hyksos invasion, was now a united country; and the phase of subjugation and insurrection left her full of military spirit. The Pharaohs became aggressive conquerors.
They had now acquired the war horse and the war chariot, which the Hyksos had brought to them. Under Thothmes III and Amenophis III Egypt had extended her rule into Asia as far as the Euphrates.
We are entering now upon a thousand years of warfare between the once
quite separated civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile. At first
Egypt was ascendant. The great dynasties, the Seventeenth Dynasty,
which included Thothmes III and Amenophis III and IV and a great queen
Hatasu, and the Nineteenth, when Rameses II, supposed by some to have
been the Pharaoh of Moses, reigned for sixty-seven years, raised Egypt
to high levels of prosperity. In between there were phases of
depression for Egypt, conquest by the Syrians and later conquest by the
Ethiopians from the South. In Mesopotamia Babylon ruled, then the
Hittites and the Syrians of Damascus rose to a transitory predominance;
at one time the Syrians conquered Egypt; the fortunes of the Assyrians
of Nineveh ebbed and flowed; sometimes the city was a conquered city;
sometimes the Assyrians ruled in Babylon and assailed Egypt. Our space
is too limited here to tell of the comings and goings of the armies of
the Egyptians and of the various Semitic powers of Asia Minor, Syria
and Mesopotamia. They were armies now provided with vast droves of war
chariots, for the horse—still used only for war and glory—had spread by
this time into the old civilizations from Central Asia.
TEMPLE AT ABU SIMBEL
Showing the statues of Rameses II at entrance
Great conquerors appear in the dim light of that distant time and pass,
Tushratta, King of Mitanni, who captured Nineveh, Tiglath Pileser I of
Assyria who conquered Babylon. At last the Assyrians became the
greatest military power of the time. Tiglath Pileser III conquered
Babylon in 745 B.C. and founded what historians call the New Assyrian
Empire. Iron had also come now into civilization out of the north; the
Hittites, the precursors of the Armenians, had it first and
communicated its use to the Assyrians, and an Assyrian usurper, Sargon
II, armed his troops with it. Assyria became the first power to
expound the doctrine of blood and iron. Sargon’s son Sennacherib led
an army to the borders of Egypt, and was defeated not by military
strength but by the plague. Sennacherib’s grandson Assurbanipal (who is
also known in history by his Greek name of Sardanapalus) did actually
conquer Egypt in 670 B.C. But Egypt was already a conquered country
then under an Ethiopian dynasty. Sardanapalus simply replaced one
conqueror by another.
AVENUE OF SPHINXES
Leading from the Nile to the great Temple of Karnak
If one had a series of political maps of this long period of history,
this interval of ten centuries, we should have Egypt expanding and
contracting like an amœba under a microscope, and we should see these
various Semitic states of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Hittites
and the Syrians coming and going, eating each other up and disgorging
each other again. To the west of Asia Minor there would be little
Ægean states like Lydia, whose capital was Sardis, and Caria. But
after about 1200 B.C. and perhaps earlier, a new set of names would
come into the map of the ancient world from the north-east and from the
north- west. These would be the names of certain barbaric tribes,
armed with iron weapons and using horse-chariots, who were becoming a
great affliction to the Aegean and Semitic civilizations on the northern
borders. They all spoke variants of what once must have been the same
language, Aryan.
THE GREAT HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK
Round the north-east of the Black and Caspian Seas were coming the
Medes and Persians. Confused with these in the records of the time
were Scythians and Samatians. From north-east or north-west came the
Armenians, from the north- west of the sea-barrier through the Balkan
peninsula came Cimmerians, Phrygians and the Hellenic tribes whom now
we call the Greeks. They were raiders and robbers and plunderers of
cities, these Ayrans, east and west alike. They were all kindred and
similar peoples, hardy herdsmen who had taken to plunder. In the east
they were still only borderers and raiders, but in the west they were
taking cities and driving out the civilized Ægean populations. The
Ægean peoples were so pressed that they were seeking new homes in lands
beyond the Aryan range. Some were seeking a settlement in the delta of
the Nile and being repulsed by the Egyptians; some, the Etruscans, seem
to have sailed from Asia Minor to found a state in the forest
wildernesses of middle Italy; some built themselves cities upon the
south- east coasts of the Mediterranean and became later that people
known in history as the Philistines.
Of these Aryans who came thus rudely upon the scene of the ancient
civilizations we will tell more fully in a later section. Here we note
simply all this stir and emigration amidst the area of the ancient
civilizations, that was set up by the swirl of the gradual and
continuous advance of these Aryan barbarians out of the northern
forests and wildernesses between 1600 and 600 B.C.
And in a section to follow we must tell also of a little Semitic
people, the Hebrews, in the hills behind the Phœnician and Philistine
coasts, who began to be of significance in the world towards the end of
this period. They produced a literature of very great importance in
subsequent history, a collection of books, histories, poems, books of
wisdom and prophetic works, the Hebrew Bible.
In Mesopotamia and Egypt the coming of the Aryans did not cause
fundamental changes until after 600 B.C. The flight of the Ægeans
before the Greeks and even the destruction of Cnossos must have seemed
a very remote disturbance to both the citizens of Egypt and of Babylon.
Dynasties came and went in these cradle states of civilization, but
the main tenor of human life went on, with a slow increase in
refinement and complexity age by age. In Egypt the accumulated
monuments of more ancient times—the pyramids were already in their
third thousand of years and a show for visitors just as they are to-
day—were supplemented by fresh and splendid buildings, more
particularly in the time of the seventeenth and nineteenth dynasties.
The great temples at Karnak and Luxor date from this time. All the
chief monuments of Nineveh, the great temples, the winged bulls with
human heads, the reliefs of kings and chariots and lion hunts, were
done in these centuries between 1600 and 600 B.C., and this period also
covers most of the splendours of Babylon.
FRIEZE SHOWING EGYPTIAN FEMALE SLAVES CARRYING LUXURIOUS FOODS
Both from Mesopotamia and Egypt we now have abundant public records,
business accounts, stories, poetry and private correspondence. We know
that life, for prosperous and influential people in such cities as
Babylon and the Egyptian Thebes, was already almost as refined and as
luxurious as that of comfortable and prosperous people to-day. Such
people lived an orderly and ceremonious life in beautiful and
beautifully furnished and decorated houses, wore richly decorated
clothing and lovely jewels; they had feasts and festivals, entertained
one another with music and dancing, were waited upon by highly trained
servants, were cared for by doctors and dentists. They did not travel
very much or very far, but boating excursions were a common summer
pleasure both on the Nile and on the Euphrates. The beast of burthen
was the ass; the horse was still used only in chariots for war and upon
occasions of state. The mule was still novel and the camel, though it
was known in Mesopotamia, had not been brought into Egypt. And there
were few utensils of iron; copper and bronze remained the prevailing
metals. Fine linen and cotton fabrics were known as well as wool. But
there was no silk yet. Glass was known and beautifully coloured, but
glass things were usually small. There was no clear glass and no
optical use of glass. People had gold stoppings in their teeth but no
spectacles on their noses.
One odd contrast between the life of old Thebes or Babylon and modern
life was the absence of coined money. Most trade was still done by
barter. Babylon was financially far ahead of Egypt. Gold and silver
were used for exchange and kept in ingots; and there were bankers,
before coinage, who stamped their names and the weight on these lumps
of precious metal. A merchant or traveller would carry precious stones
to sell to pay for his necessities. Most servants and workers were
slaves who were paid not money but in kind. As money came in slavery
declined.
A modern visitor to these crowning cities of the ancient world would
have missed two very important articles of diet; there were no hens and
no eggs. A French cook would have found small joy in Babylon. These
things came from the East somewhere about the time of the last Assyrian
empire.
Religion like everything else had undergone great refinement. Human
sacrifice for instance had long since disappeared; animals or bread
dummies had been substituted for the victim. (But the Phœnicians and
especially the citizens of Carthage, their greatest settlement in
Africa, were accused, later of immolating human beings.) When a great
chief had died in the ancient days it had been customary to sacrifice
his wives and slaves and break spear and bow at his tomb so that he
should not go unattended and unarmed in the spirit world. In Egypt
there survived of this dark tradition the pleasant custom of burying
small models of house and shop and servants and cattle with the dead,
models that give us to-day the liveliest realization of the safe and
cultivated life of these ancient people, three thousand years and more
ago.
THE TEMPLE OF HORUS AT EDFU
Such was the ancient world before the coming of the Aryans out of the
northern forests and plains. In India and China there were parallel
developments. In the great valleys of both these regions agricultural
city states of brownish peoples were growing up, but in India they do
not seem to have advanced or coalesced so rapidly as the city states of
Mesopotamia or Egypt. They were nearer the level of the ancient
Sumerians or of the Maya civilization of America. Chinese history has
still to be modernized by Chinese scholars and cleared of much
legendary matter. Probably China at this time was in advance of India.
Contemporary with the seventeenth dynasty in Egypt, there was a
dynasty of emperors in China, the Shang dynasty, priest emperors over a
loose-knit empire of subordinate kings. The chief duty of these early
emperors was to perform the seasonal sacrifices. Beautiful bronze
vessels from the time of the Shang dynasty still exist, and their
beauty and workmanship compel us to recognize that many centuries of
civilization must have preceded their manufacture.