The Dawn of History

125195

 

HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
No. 26
Editort :
HERBERT FISHER, M.A,, F.B.A,
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, Lrrr.D,,
LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
A complete classified list of the volumes of THE
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY already published
will be found at the back of this book*
THE DAWN OF
HISTORY
BY
J. L. MYRES, M.A.
WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF ROME," ETC.
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
COPYRIGHT,
BV
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
THK tmiVBRSXXY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, tJ.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 7
CHAP.
I THE PEOPLES WHICH HAVE NO HISTORY . . , 13
II THE DRAMA OF HISTORY: ITS STAGE AND ACTORS 29
III THE DAWN OF HISTORY IN EGYPT 45
IV THE DAWN OF HISTORY IN BABYLONIA ... 84
V THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 104
VI THE UPLAND NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA. . . 119
VII THE DAWN ALONG THE LAND-BRIDGES. . . . 336
VIII THE DAWN IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN . 162
IX THE COMING OF THE NORTH 189
X THE DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY ..... 21 T
XI THE DAWN IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 938
NOTE on BOOKS 253
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES $55

INTRODUCTION
HISTORY, in the widest usage of the word, is the
study of events, the discovery and record of what
happens; when we speak of Natural History, for
example, we mean nothing less than the study
of what goes on in Nature, the world about us.
In a rather narrower sense, the "historical"
sciences are those in which we cannot make experiments,
but are limited to studying what goes
on, in that order of time in which things happen
to occur. When we describe things, therefore,
in their "historical" order, we are stating their
distribution in time; just as we give their geographical
order when we describe their distribution
in space. In this sense, therefore, History is
a sister-science to Geography/ Both deal with
the arrangement of events, together with the
causes and effects of this arrangement.
But usually, when we speak of history, we
mean not Natural History, but the record of the
doings of Han. Even so, however, man does
many things of which historians, take little account,
unless they happen to be writing the
8 INTRODUCTION
special history of those particular achievements,
such as writing or music or war. Even the
general history of the human race is commonly
resigned to another science, Anthropology; and
the behaviour of man-in-groups, to another department
again, which is properly Ethnology (or
a chief part of it), but commonly has the barbarous
and awkward title of Sociology.
To draw a dividing line between History and
these other studies is not easy. It is useful however
to remember that when we wish to express
a historical fact most briefly, we reduce it to a
name and a date. The fact of the Norman Conquest,
for example, is as conveniently expressed
by the formula "William I, 1066," as the facts
about the composition of water by the chemical
formula H^O. In neither case does acquaintance
with the formula convey much information about
the facts, least of all is it any substitute for
knowledge of them, and it is mainly because
some people treat names and dates as a substitute
for historical knowledge, instead of a
mere historical notation, that many beginners
find history dull.
At the same time, without dates, more or less
accurately determined, how can we be sure of
the order in which events occurred, the length
of the intervals between them, or the duration
of periods? And without names, of peoples,
INTRODUCTION 9
places, and (above all) of individuals, how should
we know what it was that happened at any given
"date"? who did it? and where? and what
other people joined in it, or felt its effects?
Now it is common knowledge that in ordinary
history the names and doings of individuals are
among the most important of its facts; so much
so, that history has even been described as the
study of the influence of great men. We know
well, also, that the greater part of history is the
record not of things immutable, but of change;
and that the reason why we pay so much attention
to great men, is because they are the agents
by whom, or through whose means, great changes
are wrought. It is less commonly realized, on
the other hand, that it is among savage and
barbarous peoples that there is the least room
for change in their way of life. There, nearly
everything is fixed and ordained by rigid custom:
innovation is feared, and innovators are detested
and suppressed. In savage society, therefore,
there is almost as little room for a **
great
man," as there would be among gorillas for a
**
great ape." Such groups of men, though their
members individually are quite rational beings,
are trained by their surroundings, and their
elders, to conformity with a way of living which
seems only to change as the habits of animals
change, in response to changes in their surround10
INTRODUCTION
ings, and above all in the way they get their
food. Such people as these can hardly be said
to have any history, except in the wide sense of
"Natural History" with which we began; for
that includes the doings of all animals alike.
Further, we commonly speak of "prehistoric**
times; and in doing so we admit that there are
early stages of the development even of
"
historical
5 '
peoples, which are beyond our direct
knowledge, through the simple fact that the ancestors
of these people have not left any record
intelligible to us. For the study of these "prehistoric"
times we are reduced to what we can
discover indirectly by the study of such ancient
implements, habitations, or works of art, as
have lasted down to the present: and though
we can often make out the order in which inventions,
improvements, or other changes occurred,
we are usually very far from being able
to discover either names or dates.
But when people pass from "prehistoric"
times, with primitive almost animal uniformity
of behaviour, into a "historic" existence, with
successive changes of habits and institutions
brought about at ascertainable dates, and more
and more usually, as time goes on, through the
influence and agency of "historical characters,"
they generally do so not suddenly, but by degrees.
Frequently, for example, we know a good
INTRODUCTION 11
deal about the art, the trade, and the manufactures
of a people, before we know much about
their language or their institutions. At the same
time, most of the peoples who have played a
great part in history, have as a matter of fact
started their "historical" period with something
of a crisis, and period of rapid change.
It is in this sense that we may speak of a
"Dawn of History" as a subject of scientific
study; and it is the object of this book to answer
the question, how, when, and where, each of the
peoples whose doings have most affected the
course of human history made its first historical
appearance; and also, as far as we can, the
reason why they made their appearance in this
particular way.

THE DAWN OP HISTOKY
CHAPTER I
THE PEOPLES WHICH HAVE NO HISTORY
AJUL* history, then, is the record of human
achievement; of man's struggle with nature and
with other men. But we have seen also that not
all human achievement is regarded as matter for
history in the narrower and more usual sense.
There may be peoples, or more strictly speaking,
groups of men, who in this sense "have no history/*
and we may gain clearer conceptions of
what history is, and how a people's achievements
come to have historical value, if we look
first at a few examples of this opposite kind.
We have only to glance at a globe or a general
map, to realise that as a matter of fact almost
all historians have confined their attention to a
few quite small regions of the world. Nine books
of history out of ten are concerned with the
doings of the nations of Europe, or their emigrant
people: and of the other tenth a large proportion
deals with, a very few non-European
14 THE DAWN OF HISTOEY
regions; Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, India,
China, and (latterly) Japan. Very large areas,
meanwhile, have little or no historical literature;
and the reason for this is obvious; there has
been little or nothing there in the way of human
achievement for the historian to write about.
There is probably a reason for this. At all
events there are certainly other geographical
distributions which will be found to throw light
on this strange geographical distribution of historical
interest. Note first the distribution of
rainfall, which determines the supply of water
on the world's land-surfaces. Both excess and
defect of moisture, clearly are inconsistent with
high historical importance, and a brief sketch of
the conditions of human life in regions of desert
where it rains but rarely, and in forest-regions
where it may rain almost any day, will show the
significance of this correlation. Out of many
possible instances I choose these two extremes,
partly because of the extreme simplicity of both;
partly because of their strong contrast; but
most of all because, so far as I can see, all the
existing political societies, in the ancient world
round the Mediterranean, and the modem world
of Europe, seem to have arisen ultimately out
of a state of things in which peoples who began
their existence on the great grasslands which lie
to the East, in South Russia, and beyond, and
PEOPLES WITHOUT HISTORY 15
to the South, in the deserts of Arabia beyond
Jordan, have been forced or tempted to leave
them and migrate into moister and more forestclad
regions, nearer the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic; taking with them institutions and
customs of family and social life which were
essential to existence on the grassland, but were
not necessarily so well fitted to maintain life and
promote prosperity in the new regions into which
they were now transplanted.
For the moment, however, we are to deal with
human societies in grasslands and forests, not
as they appear when their normal existence i$
disturbed, but as examples of equilibrium in the
struggle between Nature and Man.
If we pass from a region of ample rainfall into
one where rain is deficient, we see in every part
of the world the same series of effects on vegetation,
animals, and men. Forest trees, instead of
forming dense continuous groves, spread out into
open order, with glades of undergrowth and
grass. Then, becoming rarer and stunted by
drought, they give place wholly to scrubland of
heat-enduring evergreens; and scrubland and
evergreens fade out in turn before mere grass.
The forest deer, and the wild boar out of the
wood, are replaced by antelopes and goats;
forest beasts of prey, the wolves and bears, give
place to the lion and puma, with khaki tints
16 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
for stalking among dry grass. Man, who cannot
live on grass, or even on thyme and sage-bush,
can only venture into these dry places at all
either as the predatory foe (like the Bushmen
and Prairie "Redskins"), or as the compulsory
guest the parasite, in fact of other animals.
Merely predatory man, under bush and prairie
conditions, need not detain us long. Even if
he owns a dog, like the native Australian, his lot
is pitiably perilous. A few Prairie Indians are
said to have had speed and endurance enough
to run down deer or bison, but in open country
man's erect posture and conspicuous head betray
him from afar; and if the region is really
woodless he is almost disarmed. Most grassland
animals, too, are specialized for swift movement;
in the almost total absence of cover the
hunter has no chance to approach them.
The only way, indeed, in which man can occupy
grassland at all, is by taming and domesticating
herbivorous animals, and living upon their milk
and their superfluous young. Wandering thus
in the trail of his flocks as they move from earlier
to later pastures, he can "cultivate a migratory
farm/' in the graphic phrase of Aristotle, and
maintain himself alive over wide tracts of country
where otherwise he would surely die. But
once launched on a pastoral career, in a distant
age, through the one initial discovery of domesPEOPLES
WITHOUT HISTORY 17
tication, man becomes little more than the
parasite of the milk-giving animals which he
tends. He can defend them against beasts of
prey, and perhaps even aid them in their choice
of pasture. But in general he has nothing to do
but to follow their habitual instinctive migrations
round the year, and to draw from them his
daily food when they come morning and evening
for accustomed relief. Even the docile horse,
which not only feeds its keeper but will carry
him on its back from one green patch to another,
is really master of the situation, for he too will
not go far beyond the limits of his food. only
the camel has commissariat inside; and even
this is no good to the rider.
Something man can do, and has done, by
selective breeding, to improve the quality and
yield of milk and of wool or hair, but to improve
the pastures is out of his power; in fact, the less
he tampers with the surface of a grassland the
better, even by the wear and tear of a prolonged
encampment, much more by breaking up pasture
intentionally. Agriculture, therefore, is out of
the question for him.
Nor has ingenuity much scope, to devise collateral
occupations: the raw material for industries
is as rare as are the needs which might
bring them into existence. Pastoral man must,
above all things, travel light, unhampered by
18 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
any but pastoral considerations; furniture, therefore,
and even implements, are reduced to a
mfmrmim, and are of materials which can be
replaced at any point in the journey: the wool,
hair, skins, sinews, and bones of the sheep and
goats, and the reeds and stunted timber which
fringe the water holes and beds of streams. His
tents and clothes are of leather or felt, or the
simplest textiles which need no bulky loom.
Tools he hardly needs, beyond a knife, a scraper
for the hides, a spindle and distaff, and the
leathern buckets and bottles of the dairy; nor
weapons either, beyond an ox-goad, and a sling,
and a lasso; for on the grassland he is not likely
to meet any one better armed than himself. It
is to the common interest of pastorals to range
apart, not to collide; and on the steppe there is
room for all.
Tinder these circumstances, induistry can hardly
pass beyond the replacement of things worn
out or lost; and these are all things which any
one can make and every one does, if he cannot
pass on the task to another: and as every one
can and does make everything as it is needed,
exchange of products and specialization of skill
are alike out of the question. The raw material
is always to hand, so there is no use in accumulating
it in advance; and to manufacture la
advance of demand is simply to cumber the bagPEOPLES
WITHOUT HISTORY 19
gage each time the camp is moved on. Within
a single family, no one pays or receives wages;
there are no profits, no savings; almost no individual
property but a favourite ox-goad or
dagger; the soil is as free as the sea with ourselves;
the grass is common property till it is
grazed, as a fish before it is caught. Foresight,
and the rewards of skill and the attractions of
labour are thus reduced to a minimum. The
cattle and the men are alike members of a
common group what the Greeks and modern
naturalists after them call a syntrophy and
both alike "belong" to it and to each other.
The institutions of pastoral peoples are of the
simplest. Everywhere these societies have been
observed to consist of small compact groups of
actual relatives, each living as a single "patriarchal
family" without other apparatus of government.
The "patriarchal family" consists of
a father, some mothers the number of these
depends principally on the supply and some
other animals and children. The last two ingredients
form, economically speaking, a single
group; first, because out on grasslands the
maintenance and reproduction of the domesticated
animals is as essential a function of the
social group as the rearing of children; without
these, indeed, it would be extinguished as surely
as if its human members were childless : secondly,
20 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
because whenever any primitive society is left
to itself, it is just as careful not to keep more
of its children than it thinks it will want, as it
is in regard to its lambs or puppies. If the country
is poor, like ancient Greece, or the Chaco
of Paraguay, or fertile but over-populous, like
modern China, the great object of society is to
keep its numbers as nearly constant as possible.
In patriarchal society, however, the apparent
heartlessness of this proceeding is much mitigated
in practice by the family's views on childlabour.
Quite small children can look after
young animals, and the well-being of a patriarchal
family depends so directly on the number
of its flocks, that it can do with almost any
quantity of children. Children, in fact, are a
very paying form of property: "an heritage and
a gift which cometh of the Lord." If the supply
runs short, they are even stolen from unwaiy
neighbours. The childless man or woman, on
the other hand, is an object of pity, almost of
terror; for surely they have offended, and the
gods hate them.
As with the children, so with their mothers.
These also earn their keep, not only by bringing
up the children,' but by dealing with the
flocks and their produce; milking, preserving,
turning skins, wool, and hair, into clothes and
tents; and teaching these arts to the children.
PEOPLES WITHOUT HISTORY 81
A. woman who knows her business is, in fact,
worth many cattle; and it may be good business
to exchange superfluous cattle for additional
women, who are of course added to the family
during good behaviour. If there has been a bad
bargain, the family cuts its losses: Hagar, and
Ishmael with her, is cast out, to find her way
back whence she came, if she can.
This type of human society, with its state
limited to a single family, its government vested
in a single elderly man, and its conception of
women and children as desirable kinds of highly
domesticated animals, is simply man's ancient
and habitual clothing, in the political sense,
against a particular kind of weather. It will
wear indefinitely and unchangeably as long as
external conditions remain the same; and it
will begin to wear out, and be discarded, in the
event of any serious change. It presumes the
presence of certain ** external goods/' as Aristotle
used to call them; and it presumes also the absence
of all other "goods." It presumes the
presence of domesticated animals, which can
live on plants such as, grass which man himself
cannot eat; and it presumes also a wide world
of such grass-covered land, practically infinite
and inexhaustible* But it presumes also the
absence of any other means of subsistence, such
as the hunting of undomesticable animals, or
m THE DAWN OF HISTORY
the gathering of fruits and roots which man can
eat for himself: and it is this presumption which
explains the rigid and exclusive hold which the
patriarchal family-state is found to have over
the individuals, men and women alike, which
compose it.
But the point which it is essential above all
to make clear at this stage is this, that this
patriarchal pastoral society, though a very
primitive, is at the same time a highly specialized
way of supporting human life, under conditions
which are themselves exceptional just because
they are so exceedingly simple; and that, given
these conditions and until they change, patriarchal
society has solved the problem, not merely
of living at all, but of living as well as is possible
under these exceptional conditions. Now it is
mainly because they have solved the problem
of existence, as it is presented to them, that
purely pastoral societies are absent as they are
from the historian's page, and the regions where
they exist are such blanks in the historical atlas.
On the other hand, whenever any cause expels
a pastoral population from its grasslands, the
historical effects of its migration are as tremendous
as they are, mainly because its mode of
living and all the range of its ideas is so narrowly
specialized, and so rigidly enforced on its members.
Now let us look at an opposite case* In any
PEOPLES WITHOUT HISTORY 23
region which is well enough watered to maintain
a forest vegetation, man keeps himself alive by
catching and eating wild animals, or by gathering
berries and roots. Here he is independent of the
produce of flocks and herds; and in dense forest
it is not possible to keep a flock together: sooner
or later it is lost or destroyed by beasts of prey.
Having then neither need nor ability to keep
flocks and herds, man has here no use, either, for
the larger family, which we have seen that he
needs to tend them. Even from the wife and
children that he has, he will necessarily be parted,
and they from him, whenever he goes hunting;
for the children cannot keep up with him as he
hunts, and besides there are berries and roots
to get; for an unmixed diet of meat brings discomfort
or worse; and sometimes it is the man
who comes back from the chase empty-handed
and hungry. The children, on the other hand,
being usually hungry, in default of daily milk
and store of cheese, which are the staple diet of
the pastoral, rapidly learn to fend for themselves.
Most of all in the forest, and more or less also
in fact in any other form of life than the pastoral,
man and woman alike are more or less independent
of family ties as soon as they are able
to hunt or gather roots and berries for themselves.
This anti-social fact, that a life of hunting or
foraging permits the early escape of the young
24 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
from parental care, is fortunate for both parties
at the moment; for in no form of existence are
helpless children such an encumbrance, or so
likely to be lost, as in woodland or bush-veldt.
But it clearly minimizes the prospect that the
experience of one generation will be transmitted
to the next; or indeed accumulated at all.
At the same time, children there must be if
society is to go on; and clearly the long helplessness
of the human infant, which has gone
so closely side by side with human advancement,
both as cause and as effect, affects the mother's
activities much more than the father's. He, in
his hunting life, cannot easily get back; she, for
her part, cannot easily get away; still less can
she easily move house. Broadly speaking, however,
primitive hunting groups fall apart at this
very point into two economic classes. In the
lower, the woman remains migratory, like the
Bushmen and Chaco Indians, and carries the baby
with her, kangaroo-like, but without the same facilities;
and in all these societies (if we can call
them so) she has had to repress severely her impulse
to make, own, and carry anything dse*
From the homeless, baby-carrying peoples,
now almost extinct and only found whare open
country devoid of tameable animals lies under
the lee of forest land, and has received its human
refuse, we may part company forthwith. They
PEOPLES WITHOUT HISTORY 25
like the pastoral nomads, have found an equilibrium,
and have no history for us. The other
group must hold us longer.
Here woman has dropped the baby, and thereby
discovered the home; for where she keeps her
babies, she can keep also other things that she
could only keep before by carrying them; and
once anchored thus by the babies to one spot of
ground, even temporarily, mail (and woman still
more) has a chance to accumulate wealth, and to
begin the transformation of Nature. Encumbered
and distracted though she is by her children, there
are yet many things which woman can do in spare
moments to improve what we hav6 called her
home. Fruit-bearing plants may be cleared of
undergrowth and creepers. Chance seeds and
kernels, scattered carelessly, or fruit and nuts,
stored squirrel-fashion in too damp a nook, may
sprout and receive similar care till they are mature
enough to repay it. Jungle-fowls which come
pecking after pips and peelings may be induced
to stay; perhaps to lay eggs near by. In short,
the stationary base, the enforced inactivity, and
the proverbial frittering of time which make up
nursery life are the very circumstances which permitted
the invention, at all, of such a thing as
agriculture. Similarly, the half-thoughtless ravelling
of creepers or strands of bark into a skein of
cord, the provident selection of straight stems
26 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
and saplings to dry and store for the motherv
s
own use, provides the hunter also, on his next
rare visit, with an unhoped-for duplicate of that
broken spear or frayed noose or bowstring. The
man has now a fresh reason to come back, because
the woman makes these things: and industry is
added to agriculture round the nursery home.
Nevertheless, in regions where the rainfall is
excessive, vegetation grows too rankly for human
effort scattered in single families to bring it
into control; at the same time food is not plentiful
enough to allow association of families in
larger groups. Such hunting hordes as come
together to attack large or gregarious game are
temporary associations, composed of men only;
held together by no bond of kinship, but by
consent and comparable skill. It goes hard
with the weak and the old: and authority is
with the strong and the strong-minded*
At what exact point the equilibrium is attained
in any given forest-community depends
upon a balance of forces, human and external,
which it has never been possible as yet to estimate
exactly. All that can be said is that over very
large tracts both of tropical and of north temperate
forest, such equilibrium has been achieved,
economic, social, and political, beyond which
it is literally waste of time and strength for
those particular communities to work harder.
PEOPLES WITHOUT HISTORY 27
plan further, or organize themselves more closely
or elaborately than they actually do. Here,
therefore, again history finds nothing to record,
over enormous periods of time.
Here again, however, it only needs the introduction
of a fresh weight into the scales, to upset
the equilibrium. A change of rainfall; the
spread of a new plant or tree; a new group of
immigrant men; more inevitable still, the communication
of a new idea to destroy the forest
by fire, to cut and barter the timber for other
means of life, to dig beneath the trees for mineral
wealth all these have been known to challenge
response from an instinct of adaptation to
change which was there all the time, and only
needed change to occur, in order to come into play.
If space permitted, it would be our next duty
to illustrate these very general outlines of contrasted
types by quoting particular instances in
which they have actually been seen in working
order. Of pastoral man, we have at hand a very
full example, in the earlier books of the Old
Testament, of purely patriarchal society in working
order the record of the migratory flockkeeping
ancestors of the Chosen People; and
I venture to suggest that for educational purposes,
and particularly at a very early stage of
education, this graphic first-hand picture of a
type of society which in important respects is so
8 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
totally unlike our own, is of the very highest
value as an introduction to the elements both of
citizenship and of history. As, however, the
object of this chapter is only to illustrate the
contrast between social types which have achieved
the aim of their creators, and thenceforth have
no history, and those other kinds of society
in which repeated changes have challenged repeated
adjustment, and led to a series of
"
great
deeds" and "great men" in an ascertainable
order of time, it must be enough to add the assurance
that there has not knowingly been
included any circumstance either of pastoral
or of woodland life, for which there is not warrant
in more than one instance; and for further
security against distortion through local peculiarities,
the evidence which has been used is
on nearly every point derived from primitive
societies of more than one continent.
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 29
CHAPTER II
THE DRA2A OP HISTOBY: ITS STAGE AND ACTORS*
FROM the point where we can first trace it, the
main current of human history has passed through
four principal phases; and each of these phases
stands intimately related to distinct geographical
surroundings.
The first stage is one in which the centres
of advancement are provided and defined, by
great river valleys, with alluvial irrigable soil.
The precise course of events in Egypt and in
Babylonia has depended, in detail, upon external
factors; but the common character of what historians
group together as the Ancient East, is
that of detached, riparian, essentially agricultural
civilizations, in recurrent peril from the
men of the grassland and the mountain, and only
in intermittent touch with each other. Intercourse
between the Euphrates and the Nile took
place along one narrow line of communication;
half river-bank, the upper course of the Euphrates
1 In this chapter some use has been made of paragraphs
from the writer's previous essays on The Value of Ancient
Hwtory (Liverpool, 1010), and The Geographical Study of
Greek and Roman Culture (Scottish Geogr. Magazine. March,
1910).
30 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
itself; half a narrow strip of hill country bordered
on one side by the Mediterranean Sea, and
on the other by the Arabian desert, into which
it fades gradually away. To and fro along this
ridge went commodities and individuals and
ideas between Babylonia and Egypt; along it
too went armies, when either of these powers was
strong enough to strike out towards the other:
more often, the same avenues were trodden by
the outland enemies of both. Such, for our purpose,
is the first stage of human history, the'devclopment,
within the limits of alluvial river valleys,
of self-centred and almost self-sufficient worlds,
each with its own highly special type of civilization
adapted to local conditions. Outside these
twin sources of light lay for the most part darkness
or satellites, enlightened only by reflected
rays from one or both of them.
The second phase of history opened when
the dwellers on islands secluded within one gulf
of a Midland Sea began to make interchange
of commodities with all its shores, and thereby
grew up to the conception of the habitable world
as an Orbi$ Terrarum, a
"
Circuit of Lands,"
a ring of countries convergent about a single
water-basin, on the inward-sloping rim of wWch,
and oh its islands, men lived their lives; communicating
with each other over the "wet-ways,"
as Homer calls them, a desert, not of sand, but
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 31
of waves. That this conception of a ring of
lands lasted so persistently, and produced in
Greek and Roman life the practical consequences
which it did, is due to the fact that it did
actually represent, so nearly, the geographical
conditions in which Greece and Rome played
out their game; for if we look at the great civilization
which grew up in Mediterranean lands,
we shall see that each principal phase of it was
obviously and emphatically "Mediterranean."
It owed its greatness, indeed, to conformity
with Mediterranean conditions. The empires of
Minos, of Athens, and of Rome are successive
attempts to realize a civilized Orbis Terrarum.
The momentary efforts of Alexander, of Augustus,
and of Trajan to transcend these limits
die with their authors, or before them. only
the genius of Caesar foreknew that, when he
crossed the Rhone, the New World which he
was discovering was to face, not towards the
Elbe, but to the Altantic.
The third phase opens, then, when Csesar's
galleys with oars, pine-built, from the Midland
Sea, met the oaken sailing craft of the oceangoing
Veneti, It passes, by long transition
of northern sea-powers in strife with southern
Teutonic seafarers displacing Rome in the
Channel, Baltic North-men occupying Sicily
and harrying Athens and Constantinople,
32 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
down to the point where northern and southern
powers alike, England and Holland, Portugal
and Spain and Genoa, demonstrate by the discovery
and colonization of the Americas, that
the Atlantic too is no outland sea, but, like the
Mediterranean and the old Aegean, an intercontinental
gulf between "United States" and
disunited; and is itself in turn the avenue, beyond
its Gates of Horn and Good Hope, into
what might well seem at last to be a real ocean.
A fourth phase into which the world seems
now to be passing, with the occupation of Australia
and the westward coasts of America, and
with the introduction of western thought into
India, Japan, and China, raises anew the question:
Is not, after all, what seemed to be an
outer sea, itself really landlocked like its prototypes?
Have not the eastern and western halves
of our Mercator's Projection served their turn
long enough as coast-lands of the Atlantic?
Ought they not now, in fact, to be transposed,
to be the inward-facing shores of a Pacific
world?
These are the chief successive scenes in the
Drama of History. We have next to look rather
more closely at the theatre on which this drama
has been played; at the characteristics of the
various regions which man has domesticated
in turn; and at the distribution of the different
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 38
varieties of Man which have effected these conquests
over Nature.
Looked at upon a terrestrial globe, the northwest
quadrant of the mass of land which we call
the Old World presents the general appearance
of a series of flat slabs, bounded to the northwest
by a few rugged hummocks of weatherbeaten
highland, and intersected also by a tangled
skein of mountain folds, part of a planetary
wrinkle which runs continuously from the Pyrenees
to the Hindu Kush, and then forks apart
to the Malay Peninsula on the one hand, and
Behring Strait and the Rockies on the other.
This section of the planetary ridge runs in general
from west to east, between the Pyrenees
and Ararat, and then swerves apart to enclose
the large tableland of Persia, between the Caspian
and the Indian Ocean*
Most of the slabs above mentioned lie nearly
level, and not far above the surface of the ocean.
The plains of North Germany and Russia, of
Siberia again beyond the Urals, and of Saharan
Africa are obvious examples. A few are gently
tilted, like a badly laid pavement, with one
edge in the air and the opposite one under water:
the best instance of this is Arabia, with its abrupt
western precipices overhanging the Jordan Valley
and Red Sea, and its long eastward descent
into the Persian Gulf and the mud-flats round
84 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
its head: over which, in turn, towers the steep
and crumpled edge of the next eastward plateau.
Yet other examples are the westward slope which
is bisected by the valley of the Nile, and dips
from the Red Sea to the Oases, till the Fayum
is below the level of the ocean; the shelving
northern margin of the Caspian, also below
sea level; and the African shore of the Mediterranean
between Tunis and Gyrene. Yet
other slabs, again, of smaller extent, enclosed
within the folded ridges, have been left almost
at sea-level, like the Hungarian plain; or have
been uplifted with them, like the central tablelands
of Spain, Asia Minor, and Persia; or,
finally, have been let down below water-level
altogether, and form inland seas, like the southern
end of the Caspian, the Black Sea, or the chain
of similar depressions which form the Mediterranean
basin. Thrice, indeed, parts of the Mountain
Zone itself have been let down similarly
and partly submerged; at the west end of the
Atlas range, where it is all but continuous at
Gibraltar with south-eastern Spain, and this
with the Balearic islands; at its eastern end,
where the short promontories on either hand of
Tunis and old Carthage are prolonged through
Sicily and the South Italian highlands to meet
the Apennines; and once again, more abruptly
still, where nearly the whole width of the mounTHE
DRAMA OF HISTORY 35
tain zone between the Balkan Peninsula and
Asia Minor, is waterlogged to form the Aegean
Sea, with its archipelago of half-drowned islandpeaks.
Here Crete, for example, rises at most
8,000 feet above the sea-level; and the seafloor
between it and the Cydadic islands sinks
quite as far below it. Further north, the depression
is less: the Greek Olympus exceeds
10,000 feet, while the Thracian Sea hardly reaches
5,000 feet: and the other Olympus, in northwest
Asia Minor, at 7,500 feet, looks down on
barely 600 feet of water in the Sea of Marmora.
This varied surface of wide flat-lands, continuous
mountain zone, and linked sea-basins, we
have next to clothe with types of vegetation
adapted to their respective climates. Referring
to the companion volume on "Modern
Geography" for the causes and distribution of
sun's heat, winds, and rainfall, we may go direct
to describe their effects, and distinguish three
main types of vegetation. on the great flatlands,
unless the rainfall exceeds some ten inches annually,
there is only low-growing grass, and
annual plants which flower in the brief spring,
and then cast their seed and wither away: at
best, in hollows where drainage can collect, or
deep springs break out, there may be permanent
oases, green all the year; at worst, even the
prairie grass gives place to scanty tufts of camel's
36 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
food, leathery and thorny, and allows the parched
soil to sift and drift before the wind like dry
snow, to swell the sand waves of the deserts.
At the moister edge of the grassland, where
the range of annual rain is from ten to twenty
inches, and particularly' where the soil is favourable
to deeper-rooted shrubs, dense shrubland
with copses of dwarf trees replaces the prairie
grass. Where the rainfall is distributed fairly
evenly around the year, as in Northern and
Central Europe, this scrubland rises to deciduous
brushwood of hawthorn, blackthorn, and bramble,
and passes without break into the deciduous
forest of oak and beech which once ranged, with*
out intermission, from the Atlantic into Siberia,
enclosing the grass-grown steppe from the Carpathians
to the Urals and beyond.
In the south, on the other hand, where the
rain all falls in the winter months, the scrub is
composed of evergreens, bay, myrtle, and box,
with smaller aromatic plants beneath, like thyme,
sage, and rosemary* Where there is water enough
or deep enough rooting in valley soil or rock
clefts, there will be olive, fig, and plane, Spanish
chestnut, and evergreen oaks; with climbing vine
and ivy. In. uplands, as soon as the altitude
permits of clouds and rain in summer, the deciduous
forest-trees come in again, as we have
seen them in lowlands further north.
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 37
At last, whether northwards or upwards,
cold nights and winter snow kill off the deciduous
trees, and leave a free field to pines, firs, and
other forests of coniferous evergreens; almost barren
of undergrowth, and terminated themselves
with a fringe of dwarf birch, and snow-moist
turf, along the frontier of perennial snowfields.
These are among the principal features of
the distribution of land and water and of types
iaf vegetation in the region where history dawned.
'.Details must be added if necessary, when we
ideal with each separate region. only one more
general point needs to be emphasized, for us
who inhabit a less sharply featured world, and
instinctively draw on our experience of that,
when we have to interpret a map. The Mediterranean
region and the Mountain Zone, are not
in two dimensions merely. Height in those lands
counts geographically for almost as much as
length or breadth. It is not merely that with an
average altitude of two and three thousand feet
in the mountain zone as a whole, and peaks running
up commonly to seven and eight thousand,
almost every variety of temperate climate can
be encountered at times on the same mountain
side; nor merely that this variety of climate necessarily
finds its reflection in the graduated series
of trees and plants, from palm to olive; from
olive to chestnut; and from chestnut to pine, and
38 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
snow. Par more important are the effects of these
same high ridges in isolating from each other the
deep valleys and plains which lie between them,
and in furnishing them with rich alluvial soil,
and a supply of water far more copious locally
than the latitude or the climatic average would
lead us to expect. The best land is almost invariably
near the sea-level, choking the heads
of half-submerged valleys; but the higher ground
also, barren as it often is, yet offers livelihood
for shepherd folk, almost up to the snow-line.
Under these circumstances it is possible, particularly
in the districts bordering on the Mediterranean,
and flanking the Mountain Zone fot
a very small area to include a great variety of
climates, each with its own type of vegetation
and animal inhabitants, and each consequently
capable of maintaining a different order of human
organization, social and economic. Further,
with the annual change of seasons, the dividing
line between the highland and lowland moves
regularly up and down the hillside, with the
result that, over a large part of the region pastoral
elements even in the most settled communities
are locally migratory, between summer and
winter pastures.
Within this region of the world, and under
these conditions of climate and vegetation, three
principal kinds of men are found to live. Though
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 39
seldom to be observed in isolation and typical
purity, they may yet be distinguished, as true
animal breeds, from whose rich inner variety and
marginal intermixture all actual human groups
within the region have been formed. They are
commonly known as "Mediterranean," "Alpine,"
and Northern or "Boreal" man.
The labours of two generations of anthropologists,
and particularly the synthetic work of
Sergi and Ripley, have familiarized us with the
conception of a "Mediterranean" type, the
southernmost of the great white-skinned varieties
which monopolize the north-western quadrant
of the Old World; less purely white-skinned,
however, than either the blonde giants of the
Baltic basin, or the sallow, parchment-skinned
types which are distributed along the Alpine
ridge and far out into its northward forelands.
Like the blondes of the North, Mediterranean
man, though dark in complexion and hair, is
markedly oval in face and skull. Like Alpine
man he is brunette, though he differs from him
otherwise in build and proportions, and offers
special contrast by his narrower head, longer
face and clearer skin. Though he dominates
the Mediterranean region, and is alone habituated
fully to the Mediterranean regime of life,
Mediterranean man does not occupy the basin
wholly; nor is he by any means confined to it.
40 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
The western Mediterranean igtdeed is his almost
wholly, though the men of the mountain zone
press hard upon the sea along the Riviera, and
have affected appreciably the population of all
Lombardy: but in the eastern basin his hold
upon the whole north shore is of the slightest.
When we consider how instinctively we regard
the Greeks as typical of Mediterranean humanity,
this sounds at first sight almost incredible;
but Dr. von Luschan's observations in Lycia
show that here, as in the Riviera, a continental
type known as "Anatolian" or "Armenoid,"
which is the eastward counterpart of the Alpine
and continuous with it, descends to sea-level
and restricts Mediterranean man to the coast*
The same is true of the whole eastern side of
the Adriatic, and southward thence to the Gulf
of Corinth; and there is growing reason to believe
that the strong "Alpine'* strain in the Morea,
which is certainly ancient, may even be primitive
there. Even in the Aegean islands, and in
Crete, which were admittedly occupied early
and decisively by Mediterranean man, tracer
of continental intruders, of Alpine affinity, begin
already at the close of the Stone Age, showing
that Alpine man was already present in force on
the neighbouring mainlands. Mediterranean mau,
therefore, must be regarded as in all probability
an intruder from the south; just as "Alpine'
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 41
man reveals himself more and more clearly
now, as a longitudinal immigrant from the east,
along the Mountain Zone. Both movements
alike are very ancient, and are a part of a much
larger convergence of animals and plants from
the south and south-east into the colder, moister
regions which have been released since the Ice
Age closed,
It entirely accords with this view of the origin
of Mediterranean man to find that outside the
Mediterranean region, this type spreads widely
away in three principal directions. Southwards,
with little modification, it dominated all habitable
lands of North Africa until the arrival of the
Arabs, so that the Egyptian's portrait of his
western neighbour, the Libyan, shows him almost
indistinguishable from his contemporaries
"within the Great Sea." Eastward, these southern
types seem to link up very closely with those
which inhabit all Arabia; the difference between
them being rather facial than structural, just
as the physical breach of continuity between
Arabia and Africa is a very late incident of their
geological story. Between them now, however,
the permeable barrier of the Red Sea is answered,
beyond the Gulf of Atabah, by a promontory
of "Annenoid" (that is to say East-Alpine)
types, which run out from Eastern Asia Minor,
down the Syrian hills, to their Palestinian extrem42
THE DAWN OP HISTORY
ity, cutting off the Arab from the Mediterranean
and from Africa in a highly significant way.
Contrast with this the fact that throughout
historic times the African shore of the Red Sea
has been just as "Arabian" in population as the
eastern. These southern and southeastern extensions
of our Mediterranean type entirely support
the view stated here, that it originates south
of the Mediterranean, and that its partial occupancy
of the north shore is recent.
Thirdly, to the north-west, in proportion as
the Atlantic seaboard enjoys a milder climate,
and is at the same time rendered more accessible
from the Mediterranean, round the flanks
of the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean types, popularly
grouped as "Iberian," have long been propagated
as far north as our own islands, and
eastwards as far as the Rhine and Upper Danube*
Their arrival here seems to have been considerably
earlier than the westward spread of "Alpine"
man into central and south-central France, or the
fenland of the Lower Rhine. Such a long northwestward
extension of the area of Mediterranean
man1
is again exactly what would occur if the
main check upon him northward were his notorious
intolerance of cold and his high mortality
from diseases of the lungs. His true home is on
the northern margin of the deserts which separate
him from the negro, and he only extends as far
THE DRAMA OF HISTORY 43
away from this as his sensitive physique will
allow. It is probably for this reason that he ends
off short, as he does, at the foot of the Mountain
Zone, and at the Palestinian hills.
The "Alpine" type, on the other hand, and
still more its eastern "Armenoid" equivalent,
seems almost as intolerant of lowland life, and
fades out rapidly in the foothills: so much so,
that it has even been thought that "Alpine"
types are actually formed out of lowland peoples
who have been pushed up into the hills and
rigidly selected there. This view, however, hardly
does justice to the longitudinal continuity of
type within the mountain zone itself, or to the
evidence, archaeological and historic, as to actual
movements along it.
With the blonde giants of the north, whose
place of origin, and purest survivals still, are
round the shores of the Baltic, and in all southern
Scandinavia, we shall have little to do, till the
latter part of our story, when we find them penetrating
the mountain barrier at several distinct
points. We have to note, however, that there
is considerable probability that in early times
they (or near kinsfolk of theirs) held at least the
western half of the northern grassland; and\he
legends of blonde invaders of Northern India
suggest that once they ranged over the whole.
In any case, there seems no reason to believe
44 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
that the coming of Mongol folk into this region is
other than quite recent. The comparative beardlessness
of this type of man was still unfamiliar
enough after the Greek exploration of South
Russia, to give rise to controversy, and to legends
of "women-warriors" on the steppe. And even
among the Scythians, who were crossing the
Don about 700, this peculiarity was far from universal.
If they were Mongoloid at all, which
seems really doubtful, there was some other large
ingredient. on the tableland of Asia Minor, the
earliest portraits of Hittite peoples (about 1285
B.C.) have been thought by some to be Mongoloid;
but the evidence is still scanty and inconclusive:
on Hittite monuments, bearded figures
are frequent, and the type is Armenoid.
These in main outline are the natural features,
and the human population, of the north-west
quadrant. Our task is now to trace the first
efforts, by which in separate favoured regions,
various kinds of men set out to domesticate and
master the gifts and forces around them; to "live
well/' in the old Greek phrase, under the given
conditions of their home, or failing this, to seek
and make a new one: in either event, to comply
as well as to command; to conquer Nature by
observance of her laws*
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 45
CHAPTER m
THE DAWN OF HISTOBY IN EGYPT
EGYPT is the gift of the Nile, and the Nile is a
river without parallel on this earth. Its wide
upper basin, which extends to the confluence
of the Atbara, below Khartum, hardly concerns
us here; and even the great S-shaped bend, which
carries the full-grown stream through Nubia,
from Berber to Assuan, only affects Egypt rarely
and from outside. Egypt, ancient and modern,
is simply the Nile Valley, from the last cataract
at Assuan to the sea. But the function of the
Nile is different, according as it flows down a rift
in the solid continent of Africa, or over mud flats
of its own making within a Mediterranean bay.
Egypt, therefore, has always consisted of two
distinct and contrasted lands, upper and lower,
the Valley and the Delta.
Lower Egypt is a typical Delta, with a convex
sea-front of 155 miles, and a depth of about
100, from this front to the apex. Its rich alluvial
soil is deposited from the Nile water at the
rate of about 4% inches a century, and it is now
from 50 to 70 feet thick. But as we do not know
how deep originally was the bay which this mass
of deposit had to fill, it is not safe to argue from
46 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
these figures as to the length of human occupancy
here. Wherever the Delta has been left to itself,
it is an expanse of reed-grown fen; intersected
by sluggish streams, swarming with fish
and water birds, and infested in historic times
by malaria. Eastwards and westwards, marsh
gives place to mud-flat, and mud in turn to drifting
sand; sunken shoals and sand-dunes fringe
the sea-front too, enclosing wide lagoons. These
banks, however, are little defence against stormwater
and sea-salt; and large districts are so
brackish that they are unreclaimed, and perhaps
irreclaimable.
Neither east nor west is the Delta screened by
any natural barrier. Westward the barren foreshore
of Africa stretches low and inhospitable,
with gentle rise; at best it is open grassland, but
much of it is desert. About 200 miles inland, a
string of shallow depressions form oases, sufficiently
near to each other to form a line of route-
On the sea-front, there has been some subsidence
within historic times; and the accounts which
we have of the ancient population make it probable
that the lost strip was more habitable than
what is left, and also better furnished with har~
bours. Similar changes further west have paralyzed
and isolated the tableland of Cyrene, which
in Greek hands was accessible and very prosperous.
Prom this ancient Libya, Egypt had reTHE
DAWN IN EGYPT 47
peatedly to face tumultuary migration, caused
probably by periods of drought which drove out
the pastoral occupants of the grassland, and made
the Delta fens a Naboth's vineyard to the farmers
of the coast-strip; perhaps even to the men of
the oases. The great battle of Merenptah against
the Libyans and their oversea friends, in 1230
B.C., is the best historical instance of such an
inroad, when Egypt was strong enough to stop
it; allusions to Libyan alliance with a "king of
the fens," under Persian rule, reveal the fate of
the western Delta, when the invaders had their
way.
Eastward the Delta is almost as defenceless.
Behind the lagoons, which extend inland from
this margin of the fen almost to the head of the
Red Sea, there is enough harder ground to form
a real causeway into Asia, where the desert of
Tih, north of Sinai, repeats the features of Libya:
low barren coast, with more lagoons and mudflats
the proverbial "Serbonian bog"; and beyond
them sand-dunes and steppe till you reach
the Philistine lowland, a little better watered
below the Jewish hills: inland, a barren plateau
increasing southwards in height and ruggedness
towards the granites and rich mineral veins of
Sinai, a miniature Arabia lying between the two
gulfs of the Red Sea. Here, again, though the
natural obstacles are enough to keep Egypt aloof,
48 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
they are quite insufficient to stop either organized
invasion out of Asia, or enforced overflow of
famished desert tribes, if they "hear that there
is corn in Egypt/' At all times, however, there
has been at least one caravan-road, across the
high Tih, from Akabah to Suez, and so along the
Sweet-water Canal to the head of the Delta,
and usually another "by the way of the Philistines,"
skirting the Mediterranean shore.
All this, however, is only one-half of Egypt,
and in many respects the less important. The
moment we pass south of Cairo at the head of
the Delta we are in Upper Egypt, the "fortunate
"
land, as the Arabs say, set like a string of emeralds,
within a deep rift across the body of Africa,
which here lies desert, with even surface of bare
rock between 1,000 and 1,500 feet above the sea.
Rain rarely falls south of the Delta, and the
country is quite barren, except a string of oases
in isolated depressions further west, or in indentations
of the west edge of the rift itself. For
300 miles south of Cairo the rift is from ten to
fifteen miles wide: its sides are of limestone,
much worn into gorges by former side-streams;
and fringed below by a dry belt of old gravel
which the water never reaches now. South of
Thebes the bed and walls are of sandstone, and
the rift narrows to an average of less than two
miles; and at Assuan and again at Wady Haifa,
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 49
on the Nubian frontier, transverse reefs of granite
and other hard rocks interrupt the valley, and
form the famous "cataracts/* narrow and dangerous
rapids among a wilderness of iron-bound
islands. At Kalabsha the whole valley is less
than 200 yards wide.
As all this region of 600 miles is practically
rainless, and dried continually by thirsty north
winds, vegetation even within the rift is limited
to the narrow strip which is reached by the
summer flood, which has an average rise of 26
feet at Assuan and 23 at Cairo. As the valley
floor is itself formed now wholly of Nile mud,
it is practically flat; and consequently a very
small variation in the flood maximum means an
enormous difference in the extent of the year's
fertility. And therefore, in a land where otherwise
all life seems easy, this one unanswerable
question recurs every year How high will the
Nile flood go? But as the water for the Nile
flood comes merely from the melting of winter
snow fax away on the mountains of Abyssinia,
nothing that human ingenuity or force can contrive,
affects the answer to this question: all
that man can do is to regulate the distribution
of whatever water may come; to prevent waste;
and to save a few crops beyond the actual margin,
by pitiless toil with lever and bucket.
From the scanty evidence of the "weeds of
50 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
cultivation," and cautious comparison of that
other rift-valley, the Jordan, it is possible to
recover some idea of the natural vegetation of
the Nile. The date palm may be native, but
apart from this there are few trees. The largest
are sycamore and acacia; and even these are
rare; mulberry, pomegranate, and vine have
probably all been imported by man. Thorny
shrubs and halfa-grass cover the drier margins;
papyrus (extinct since the Saracen conquest
displaced the agriculturist's "paper'* by the
"parchment" natural to a pastoral folk) and
many reeds thrive by the river edge; and the
spring flowers are brilliant. The commonest
are iris and asphodel, with poppy, cornflower,
and large yellow daisy. The lotos flowers which
play so large a part in Egyptian decorative art,
love standing water, and are best developed in
the Delta. Spring, however, is short, and harvest
is over before the Nile rises in July,
The wild animals and birds include both Mediterranean
and tropical forms; wild boar in the
delta, wild ass on the desert edge, crocodile and
hippopotamus, less common now than formerly
in the lower reaches* Camel, horse, and buffalo
were introduced by man; the horse not until
about 1500 B.C., and the other two probably
in Greek times. Ibis, flamingo, and other marsh
birds abound, and many birds of prey; the vulTHE
DAWN IN EGYPT 51
ture, far-sighted, ubiquitous, importunate, becomes
the grim emblem of royal power.
The men of the Nile Valley belong essentially
to the wide-spread "Berber" type, which dominates
all the dry area of Northern Africa, as
well as the Atlas range, and is probably akin
to the Arab types in the similar region beyond
the Red Sea: Arabian inter-mixture, therefore,
ancient or mediaeval, is uncommonly hard to
detect. Negroid folk from the region of tropical
rains, who have interbred with these aborigines
along the whole of their common frontier, have
been enabled, by their jungle habit, to push
down-stream far northward of their average
extension. The milder climate of the Delta permitted
the development of a larger and more
muscular type; but probably allowance must
also be made here for early immigration from
Syria, where the Alpine or "Armenoid" type
(p. 48) which is very different, extends as far
south as the rain-swept Palestinian highlands
offer congenial climate and permit agriculture.
After political unification under the first dynasty,
the dominant types in Upper Egypt approximate
rather suddenly to those of the Delta;
perhaps through intermixture, perhaps in part
also through the spread of more favourable conditions.
We may compare the enlarged dimensions
of those classes among ourselves who have
52 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
been first to profit by the comfortable prosperity
of the nineteenth century.
These are the main outstanding conditions of
all human life in the Nile Valley, and the principal
facts about the earliest men of whom we have
bodily record. We have now to see what changes
we can trace, first in the dealings of nature with
Egyptian man, and then in those of man with
Egyptian nature.
The frequent discovery of palaeolithic implements
on the high desert floor, on both sides of
the Nile-rift, and at many points along its course,
makes it clear that human occupation goes back
far. Similar traces of the first human population
are found in Nubia and Somaliland to the
south, and in Syria to the north-east. It is difficult
to put them into relation with history.
Some still think that there was actually a break
in the human occupation of the valley that in
palaeolithic times the climate and even the configuration
of the land were different. Others arc
satisfied that the distribution of the implements
is not inconsistent with a state of things very
like the present. All, however, are agreed that
when the neolithic population occupied the region,
the whole plateau outside the valley was
desert, and in fact all essential features were
almost as they are now.
Of these early inhabitants we know little more
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 53
than of their palaeolithic predecessors, down to
the moment when they learned how to make
other durable objects besides stone implements.
As long as they lived in mere mud-huts, or reed
booths, like the modern fellahin and Nubians,
and were content with vessels of skin or gourd,
we have clearly little chance of making much
acquaintance with their mode of life. With the
art of pottery, however, Egypt, like many other
countries, took the first great step towards civilization
and history.
To us, with our wide command over Nature's
gifts and forces, the potter's power over the
clay, to shape it as he will, has become a proverb
almost for omnipotence. But among primitive
peoples, it is otherwise. To choose a round
stone as a missile, a splintered bone as an awl or
pin, or the hard rind of a dried-up gourd as a
cup or bottle, is to exert but little intellectual
effort: it is to utilize, not to invent, hardly even
to adapt. Adaptation, indeed, comes in when
a once sharp-edged stone, worn down by use,
is given a fresh cutting edge by chipping or
grinding; or the cup-shaped stone is worked
into a stone bowl; or the growing gourd is throttled
with a bit of string so that when it ripens
and dries it will be a bottle with a neck; or the
skin flayed from kid or lamb is not split open,
but kept entire as a bag to hold food or drink*
54 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
But here, too, Nature is but assisted and improved;
creative art is still to seek.
When, however, with the soft clay which has,
so to say, no natural shape or utility at all, the
human hand, guided by imagination, but otherwise
unaided, creates a new form, gourd-like,
or flask-like, or stone-bowMike, but not itself
either gourd, or skin, or stone, then invention
has begun, and an art is born which demands on
each occasion of its exercise a fresh effort of imagination
to devise, and of intellect to give effect
to, a literally new thing. It is a fortunate accident
that the material in question, once fixed in
the given form by exposure to fire, is by that very
process made so brittle that its prospect of utility
is short; consequently the demand for replacement
is persistent, and in some primitive communities,
as among the Kabyles and in the Aures
mountains of North Africa, each household
replaces its own crockery; "potting" in fact is
as regular, if not so frequent, a housewife's task
as washing or baking. The only group of industries
which can compare with potmaking in
intellectual importance is that of the textile
fabrics; basketry and weaving. But whereas
basket-work and all forms of matting and cloth
are perishable and will burn, broken pottery is
almost indestructible, just because, once broken,
it is so useless. It follows that evidence so perTHE
DAWN IN EGYPT 55
manent, so copious, and so plastic, that is to
say so infinitely sensitive a register of the changes
of the artist's mood, as the potsherds on an ancient
site, is among the most valuable that we
can ever have, for tracing the dawn of culture.
Further, in a country so treeless as Egypt, many
common objects were made in clay, for which we
should use wood; and so we have here an even
fuller record of household ways and means than
we should have reason to expect in a more forestgrown
region.
We do not know at present from what source
the primitive Egyptians acquired their knowledge
of the potter's art. There is no evidence
that it was invented in the Nile valley, and the
raw Nile mud has not the qualities of a good
pot-day. The methods of the first Egyptian
potters, too, though not the forms of the vases,
are identical with those first practised in Syria,
Cyprus, and other parts of the nearer East; and
it is not possible, with our present knowledge,
to decide which regions borrowed the art from
another. All that we can say is that in one welldefined
district of Upper Egypt the new art
appears, rather suddenly, at a high level of
technical skill, and with evidence of wide, though
not necessarily very long, experience behind it.
The region in question extends from a little
below Abydos to a little above Hierakonpolis
56 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
and El Kab. Thebes, in later ages the capital
of Upper Egypt, lies almost at its mid-point;
but its early focus seems to have lain on the
nearly semi-circular bend of the Nile between
Thebes and Abydos, where Koptos lies on the
east bank, and Nagada and Dendera on the
western shore. In this section, the Nile flows
more nearly in the middle of its valley than anywhere
below Abydos, where it begins already
to skirt the eastern cliffs; the flood plain therefore
is bisected. It is also already somewhat narrower
over all than lower down; and above El
Kab the valley soon narrows to the gorge of Silsileh,
and there is not much alluvial land at all.
In this region also the rigid isolation of the
valley is infringed in two distinct ways. on
the east, the bend of the river, already mentioned,
brings the Nile nearer to the Bed Sea coast than
at any point in its course hitherto; and almost'
as near as at the head of the Gulf of Suez. The
actual distance is about 100 miles^. At Koptos,
moreover, a large side-valley, the Wady Hammamat,
coming in from the east, has worn a
deep basin far back into the plateau, and opened
a practicable route to the coast at Kosseir, along
which there is sufficient water at intervals, though
the wady itself is dry. If, therefore, there was
any population, and any element of culture, on
the Red Sea coast, either at Kosseir itself, or
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 57
further south towards the foothills of Abyssinia,
this is the point at which alone it could have intercourse
with the men of the Nile.
On the west also, at about the same distance,
lies Kharga, the nearest and largest of the Libyan
oases: accessible by an easy desert road, either
from Abydos or from the neighbourhood of
Thebes, and itself the access to Dakla, Farafra,
and other habitable spots. Of the early history
of these oases little is known as yet, but there is
no reason to think that they were either uninhabited,
or more inaccessible than Kosseir; in any
event, such intercourse as there was between them
and the Nile necessarily reached and left the
river in this section.
The picture of these simple folk which is suggested
by their remains is easily drawn. Their
settlements were large villages confined to the
narrow strip of land which is above flood level,
but yet within the range of its influence: they
occupied spurs of higher ground, projecting from
the high valley sides, healthy because elevated
above the level of fen and flood, and defensible
at need, though not actually fortified with mudbrick
walls till later. The houses have left
almost no sign: they must have been the slightest
shelters of reeds and thatch; sufficient, however,
to keep off the sun's heat by day, and mitigate
the night-chill; rain, of course, there was none.
58 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Their cemeteries lie near them, further out into
the dry, so as not to encumber pasture or cultivable
land. The villagers were partly pastoral,
for they owned oxen and goats, with dogs to
tend them, and asses for transport. It is not
certain that they had reclaimed any part of the
scrub and jungle which choked the valley, as
it still does much of the upper reaches of the
Nile, or that they practised irrigation as yet.
On the other hand, they hunted crocodile and
hippo, as well as deer, antelope, and waterfowl;
and they have left vivid impressions, in their
art, of the ostriches which still ranged as far
north as this, and were valued for their plumage
and eggs. They navigated the Nile in large
boats, with high deck houses, many oars, and
regular standards, the emblems of their tribes.
Each of these tribes was recognized as possessor
of its own district, which was denoted by
the name of some sacred animal, or other symbol
of the deity most venerated by the tribesmen:
and some of these names and symbols remained
in observance until historic times. This points
to some degree of reasoned give and take; to
elementary ideas of law, and consideration for
other folks' claims; and to primitive experiments
in the two directions of local authority and federal
harmony. Bisected as it was, however, the
river jungle was less impassable than elsewhere;
TEE DAWN IN EGYPT 59
and with settlements on both banks, there was
something to cross it for: intercourse led to
comparison, perhaps even to competition; certainly
to simple forms of exchange. We must
remember, too, that the valley changes its character
somewhat beyond El-Kab, and therewith
its products and the mode of life which it imposes;
and every such transition, once again, challenges
comparisons and provokes exchange of commodities.
Every great river which has human inhabitants
has a current of trade up and down
stream.
A region in which inter-tribal intercourse,
friendly, competitive, or hostile, was supplemented
not only by up-and-down-stream traffic,
but also by the supply and demand of transverse
routes between the coast and the oases, was
clearly in an exceptional position for acquiring
both commodities and ideas, to facilitate the hard
task of living in a region which as yet was far
from being the "blessed land'* Es-Said, as its
Arab conquerors called it and to provide that
elementary margin of leisure, and reserve of
vitality, which permits such luxuries and superfluous
achievements as art, organization, and
indeed enterprise of any kind. Somehow or other
(and we may be quite sure it was not for the
asking, but for sheer service rendered in return)
the people of these linked districts acquired
60 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
small treasure of gold, ivory, coral, and turquoise,
and knowledge of copper and iron. Gold
may have reached them from several quarters,
from the Upper Nile, from the far west beyond
the oases, or by the Red Sea road from Abyssinia.
Ivory points mainly up-river, though it may
have been traded, like the gold, along the Red
Sea shore, from Somaliland or beyond. The
elephant, moreover, ranged as far north as Nubia,
for his picture occurs in the earliest art. The
coral is certainly from the Red Sea; turquoise,
almost as surely, from the famous mines of Wady
Moghara in Sinai, which were certainly exploited
by Egyptians as early as the First Dynasty, and
probably annexed under the Third* For the
first copper ores; Sinai and Nubia are very probable
sources and the identity of the forms of
the earliest daggers, axe-heads, and pins, with
those which long remained characteristic of the
copper-island, Cyprus, makes it possible to regard
this as an alternative source, especially in
view of the close technical similarity of the first
Egyptian and Cypriote pottery.
The presence of iron, rare though it is, as
far back as the First Dynasty, puts Egypt into
a position which is unique among metal-using
lands; for, apart from these rare but quite indisputable
finds, Egypt remains for thousands
of years a bronze-using, and for long a merely
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 61
copper-using, country: like the compass and
gunpowder in China, so iron in Egypt was known
as a rarity, worn as a charm and an ornament,
and even used, when it could be gotten readymade,
as an implement; and it does not seem
to have been worked in the country, and probably
its source was unknown to the Egyptians. In
historic times they still called it "the metal
of heaven," as if they obtained it from meteorites;
and it looks at present as though their earliest
knowledge of it was from the south; for Central
Africa seems to have had no bronze age, but
direct and ancient transition from stone to iron
weapons. Yet when they conquered Syria in
the sixteenth century, they found it in regular
use, and received it in tribute. At home, however,
they had no real introduction to an "Age
of Iron" until they met an Assyrian army in 668
B.C., and began to be exploited by Greeks from
oversea.
Intercourse with other villages within a favoured
section of the Nile Valley itself, and intercourse
beyond its borders with East, West, and South,
thus seem to lie at the root of Egyptian advancement;
fresh demands stimulating to fresh efforts,
and each fresh effort rewarded by a wider, freer,
and securer basis of subsistence and new enterprize.
Thus far it is the old, old story of the
self-made man. The opportunities are there,
62 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
geographical position, natural wealth, congenial
like-minded neighbours: but it needs a man
to seize them and make use of them; and the
more of such men there are to grasp at them,
the more sure is the spur to inventive control.
The clearer head and the livelier imagination
surely come to the front, and find ever fresh
fields to conquer, as they learn to see clearly,
and to know what it is that they see, and what
it is good for in their hands,
It is, however, commonly thought at present
that this is not the whole story of Egyptian
origins. It has been noted by good observers
that the Egyptian language, though generally
akm to the large Hamitic or Berber group which
dominates Northern Africa, presents also such
points of likeness to the Semitic type of speech,
which has its first home in Arabia, as might be
expected to result from the intrusion of a small
body of Semitic folk among a native Berberspeaking
population.
It is also common knowledge that whereas
from the Fifth Dynasty onward, the engraved
seal-stones of Egypt were beetle-shaped "scarabs
"
with the design engraved on their undersides, the
seals of the earlier Dynasties were cylindrical, with
the design on their convex surface, to be impressed
by a rolling motion. Now cylindrical seals are
charateristic of early Babylonia, and are quite
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 63
in place in a civilization where documents were
habitually written, as they were there, on tablets
of day. Clay, however, though used for
sealing wine-jars and other stores, was never
employed for documents in Egypt, where the
papyrus plant grew wild and paper was in early
use; and it is argued that Egyptian acquaintance
with cylindrical seals is a loan from Babylonia;
not necessarily direct, but through the medium
of trade, in which sealed contracts are almost
indispensable, or perhaps through immigration of
Orientals acquainted with Babylonian culture.
Other characteristic objects, such as the finely
carved stone mace-heads, and fringed robes of
dignitaries, and the well-built brick forts of which
pictures remain, are quite alien to the habits
of the Nile men, and akin to Babylonian custom:
and some students even see Babylonian influence
in the sculpture and other arts of this time.
Further, at about the same phase, a number
of fresh burial customs appear in the district round
Abydos and Koptos; they are best represented
in the large cemetery of El-Amra. Of these innovations
the most important and permanent is
the substitution of fuU-length for contracted posture,
and of a brick chamber for a simple earth
grave* The old contracted burials indeed went on
locally as at Deshasheh till the Fifth Dynasty,
and both rituals were used together under the
64 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Fourth; by which time bodies buried at full
length are also found to be embalmed and laid
in coffins. As the chamber-tombs become more
elaborate, they assume more and more the character
of a chapel, where the spirit of the deceased
could reside and be approached, as well as a
resting-place for the body. The new ritual
seems to be closely related with the spread of
fresh beliefs as to the fate of the soul and its
relation to the body after death. As these mummied
burials have also a richer equipment to
represent the upper classes, it is inferred that
they indicate the presence of some new element
in the population.
About the same time again, the worship of
deities revealed in the sun and sky, side by side
with the old local gods embodied in sacred animals,
offers a close parallel with the religion both
of early Babylonia and of the Semitic-speaking
peoples. From all this it is inferred that some
historical weight is to be given to the Egyptians'
own story that Horus, their god of sun and sky,
and also a great sky and pasture goddess, Hathor,
came to them from a "holy land'* somewhere
on the Red Sea coast, and far to the south; together
with a company of followers who were
metal-workers, and either actually were, as later
writers tell us, "ghosts," or in some new and
special sense had ghosts or souls. These newTHE
DAWN IN EGYPT 65
comers were believed to have reached the Nile
Valley at Edfu, in the very district which we have
been studying, and to have extended their beneficent
conquest down stream, fighting a great battle
at Dendera, near Abydos, with "benighted"
natives, because all who did not believe in the
sun-god were "children of darkness" in the eyes*
of thpse who did.
Something similar seems to have been going
on about the same time in the Delta: for at
Heliopolis, the "city of the sun," on the east
side near its apex, just such another sun-god was
worshipped as at Edfu; and more than this,
as soon as the worshippers of the up-river sun-god
extended their power to the Delta, he was recognized
as identical with him. In the same way the
snake goddess of Buto, also in the Delta, was
identified with the goddess Nekhabet of Hierakonpolis.
We may probably infer that another
body of intruders, of Semitic speech and religion,
and more or less Babylonian civilization, invaded
the Delta by way of Suez about the same time
as the Abydos region was entered from the Red
Sea. Such an invasion would go far to explain
also the difference of physical type between the
Delta folk and Upper Egypt, which is revealed
by recent measurements and is also perceptible
among the ancient attempts at portraiture.
It cannot at present be ascertained how far
66 THE DAWN OP HISTOBY
the organization of the whole country into provinces
or "nomes," each under the guardianship
of a local deity, usually of animal form, preserves
the record of primitive disunion, with many
separate tribes; or how far this system owes its
eventual shape to the genius of new rulers from
elsewhere. Certainly the boundaries became
precise in proportion as the influence of the
"allied clans" extended: and there was a sound
economic reason why this should be so. With
the reclamation of the Nile Valley the lands
of each community greatly increased in value:
cultivation also was extended far more continuously
up and down stream than hitherto, and
frontiers formerly vague and marginal had therefore
to he delimited accurately and beyond risk
of derangement by the annual inundation.
Until the movement of expansion, of which
we have been tracing the causes, there is no
dear evidence of systematic irrigation to extend
the cultivable area, and as long as the Nile Valley
was divided among independent tribes, neither
the labour nor the planning of such a work was
possible. It is no good to plan a great canal along
the desert edge of your territory unless your
neighbours upstream can pass down water to
fill it, and your neighbours downstream will draw
off your overflow into suitable channels of their
own. Yet very shortly after this movement, there
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 67
is clear evidence that the economic Egypt which
has lasted ever since had already come into being.
One of the first kings of all, Narmer by name, is
seen, on his sculptured mace-head now at Oxford,
going out, hoe in hand, to open trenches and
inaugurate the irrigation season; and by the time
of King Den of the Fourth Dynasty, the Bahr
Yusuf, that great canal which marks the western
limit of irrigation, as the natural course of
the river does the eastern, was in order for
three hundred miles, from Abydos to the Payum
depression, only fifty miles from Cairo; and the
Fayum itself, an oasis in touch with the Nile,
was already partly under cultivation. It does
not follow that the whole valley floor was already
reclaimed in the time of King Den; but it does
follow that the creator of the Bahr Yusuf contemplated
an Egpyt which should in time be
wholly fertile, though jungle-covered then, and
not only laid his plans accordingly, but had
enough authority all down the valley to translate
those plans into earthwork.
Side by side with the reclamation of the valley,
and the creation of historic Egypt, from the
economic point of view, two other great achievements
belong to the earliest dynasties. The king
could only be in one place at once; and in a
country so peculiarly shaped as Egpyt is, the
practical difficulties of personal rule were excep68
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
tionally great. Two remedies only were possible:
an efficient public service, and a trustworthy
vehicle for the royal commands. The latter,
though by far the greater service to mankind, was
the simpler creation of the two: the last thing
which man ever learns how to bring into control
is his fellow-man.
Far back in the pre-dynastic age, pictures
had been used freely by neolithic artists to record
events and convey information. Chiefs and
private persons also used emblems, like the
crests of modern heraldry, and arbitrary marks,
abbreviated from rough sketches, to identify
their property. Gods were symbolized by their
sacred animals, Upper Egypt by t a typical lily,
and so forth. It was an easy step from this to
group such symbols together so as to call up, in
connection, the ideas of the things which they
represented, and so suggest secondary meanings.
But it was a different and far more ingenious
invention when punning similarities of sound
were used to give pictorial signs for words and
ideas of which there could be no picture: for
example, the Egyptian words for "son" and
"goose" were so nearly alike that the royal
title "Son of the Sun" could be suggested by
grouping the pictures of the sun and a goose.
From this great artifice, by which a pictured
sign is associated not with an object or even an
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 69
idea, but with a sound, proceed all systems of
writing. They began no doubt in jest; for, like
children, all barbarous peoples are quick to enjoy
the incongruous and absurd: they love puns,
riddles, and figurative speech. But the jest soon
turned to earnest. It supplied at one and the
same time a cypher to convey a hidden meaning
unsuspected, and a picturesque device the ancestor
of all sign-boards and election-placards
to impress on simple people a public announcement
to which it was urgent that they should attend:
two instruments of government which the
first kings of all Egypt were prompt to utilize
and develop. It is possible that in the earliest
times more than one district had already its own
set of signs in local use; but the federated clans
of the Thebaid had already their common code
when their conquests began, and the annexation
of the rest of the valley to this one district was
both the occasion of its universal use, and very
much facilitated by it. Even under the First
Dynasty the royal property was habitually marked
with the king's name and titles; and annual records
were kept of important events, conspicuous
among which, as we should expect, are measurements
of the height of the Nile flood.
It is almost needless to add that with the best
will in the world, picture-signs, written fast, degenerate
into scrawls bearing as little apparent
70 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
resemblance to their originals as modern handwriting
to printed capitals. It is less generally
known that the running-hand known a "hieratic"
was already well developed under the First
Dynasty.
The problem of administration was far more
difficult than that of keeping the king and his
subjects in touch by means of writing. Two
alternative solutions were always possible in
Egypt; centralization at the king's court, or
local government within the ancient "nomes":
and the political history of Egypt is the record
of successive compromises in the interest of one
or the other. In either case, however, the responsibility
for public works for anything, that is,
which involved orderly co-operation of individual
cultivators rested with the owners of the land,
regarded as the representatives of him who in the
beginning made that land serviceable at all. All
others, who shared in the advantages thus won
from nature under his leadership, were on their
part the representatives of his original helpers.
They shared in the fertility which resulted from
their common labours, on terms representing an
original bargain of recompense for initiative,
guidance, and security against danger from without.
A large share of all three was attributed, as
was natural, to superhuman partners, and above
all to the god of the district. For, as we have
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 71
seen, nature in the Nile valley is for the most
part hostile and ruthless; the powers of destruction
and evil (above all, the sun's heat, and noxious
animals) are very strong, and only to be kept
at bay, after man has done his utmost, by the
good will of a power on his side which also has
dominion over them.
Such was the theory of government in Egypt,
and the theory of the government of the world,
so far as we can extract it from Egyptian practice.
Much of the land-rights, and also the waterrights,
which in an irrigated region are as
inseparable from the land (provided only that
there is water available) as the right to rainfall
is with us, were from the first in the hands of
powerful individuals, and were held by their
families. The rest was held by the priesthoods
as corporate trustees for their gods; and the
proportion of sacred to lay property was always
rising as centuries passed; since in successive
dangers from drought or violence, lay landowners
would surrender their land to the god to ensure
his protection, remaining on it, they and
their children, to cultivate it for him for ever,
and receive their maintenance as his hereditary
tenants. Such was the theory: in practice the
policy of the First Dynasty transferred to the
king the lands of the chiefs he conquered in each
district, and public works which only a king of
72 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
all Egypt could put in hand created large new
royal domains, which were his by right of conquest
over nature. As almost all serious disputes
arose either about land and water, or about
the impaired efficiency or contentment of this
or that cultivator there being really nothing
else to quarrel about justice was administered
by the chief man of the district, well acquainted
with local custom; in practice* by the chief
landowner. As the population was wholly sedentary,
and there was little to take men away
from their own fields, local courts and local
customs might vary in detail without inconvenience.
At the same time they could be
trusted not to vary far, because the plain needs
and rights of the situation were everywhere so
obvious and uniform. Hence Egypt never felt
the need of a general code of law: but there was
always an appeal to the king, against smaller
and nearer oppressors, if only the king could be
made to hear; and at times the king heard
enough to make him lay down general rules
to prevent injustice to the cultivators. These
are the theory and practice of Egyptian local
government.
On the other hand, as we have seen, historic
Egypt came into existence through a series of
conquests carried out under able guidance by
the "allied clans" of the Thebaid; and this
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 78
initial act of beneficial violence set a precedent
of absolute monarchy and centralized administration.
By right of conquest Egypt was the
king's estate; he had made himself responsible
for its prosperity as a whole: he had assumed
the right of defence and administration, and
therewith the duty of collecting the necessary
means. The local chiefs and great landowners
had surrendered themselves to the king and
sworn allegiance: they had been confirmed in
their estates, and held them at the king's pleasure,
but were required by him to contribute to the
cost of government, to supply locally the forced
labour which is required so urgently and promptly
in irrigated lands if a dam gives way or the Nileflood
fails or exceeds. "Give me of your land
and your labour, and you shall have my water":
that is the "social contract" between the king
of Egypt, his territorial nobility, and the peasant
cultivators. The king held his court at a fixed
point, at first in one of the old centres near
Abydos, where his own gods were, and the tombs
and chapels of his predecessors; afterwards,
when he became the "King of the Two Lands"
and wore the red crown of the Delta outside the
white helmet of the Valley-princes, the court descended
to Memphis, where Delta and Valley
join; and to Memphis or its neighbourhood it
recurs whenever Egypt is wholly in one hand.
74 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
But delegation of authority was inevitable
in more or less degree; and as early as King Den,
we hear of a viceroy of the Delta, "the Bearer of
the King's Seal in Lower Egypt." The king
himself, however, kept the Valley in his own
hand, true to old custom and wise statesmanship
as well. For it is in the Valley that the troubles
come. only a very strong king can keep control
of a country so inconveniently shaped, and so
tightly organized round old local centres of
sentiment and production. Sooner or later, mistakes
and ambitions led to friction between the
court on one side, and the nobles and priesthoods
on the other. A clever court could keep
the nobles at bay by humoring the priesthoods;
a secret of empire not unknown to other ages
and countries, and mainly responsible for the
vast royal buildings and "restorations" of temples
which commemorate all the strong kings of
Egypt from end to end of the Valley. But
if priests and nobles came together in conspiracy
against the crown, or nobles were allowed
to annex the functions of the priesthood
within their own districts, as happened under
the Sixth Dynasty, Egyptian unity was doomed,
and periods of dark confusion supervened. Then
some lucky chance gave a new leader the upper
hand once more, first round his own district
more than once Thebes or its neighbourhood
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 75
then over the whole Valley; and lastly (as a
rule) over the Delta as well. This latter victory
comes, however, only after long struggle,
steadily wearing down the hardy north, or foreign
conquerors of it, by the superior resources
and organization of the south, and success is
signalized once more by the transference of the
new court from its native "nome" either to
Memphis itself, or to some favourite site in the
same central district, with the Fayum for an
imperial back-garden.
Successive experiments closed one false way
of government after another. only the broadest
outlines can be given here. The kings of the
Old Kingdom, which includes the first six Dynasties,
were content to rule the local nobility with
a very light hand. Royal officials are numerous,
it is true; but they are all concerned with departmental
work which concerns only the king's
domains or high matters of policy. They are
men who owe all to the king's favour; and they
have often risen from the bottom. The court
consists mainly of "royal sons" and "royal
friends." only the army is feudally organized,
each local prince sending his own contingent;
but even here the king has bodies of professional
troops maintained from his own revenues. As
the population of Egypt itself is already accounted
for by the feudal levy, these royal troops
76 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
are almost necessarily foreigners, such as Libyans
or Sudanese.
This experiment of regional autonomy degenerated
into the long period of discord which
lies between the Sixth and the Eleventh Dynasties:
and its lesson was not lost on the great
Theban family which founded the "Middle
Kingdom" of Dynasty XH. The old baronies
were recognized, it is true, as self-governed
provinces, but in each there was now a "royal
secretary" to collect the king's taxes, audit the
accounts, and report to headquarters. Moreover,
chieftaincies which lapsed do not seem to
have been regranted, and in other parts also old
noble families seem to have lost their prestige
and most of their powers. on the other hand,
the king's business now required not one but
three viceroys, ruling the north, the centre, and
the south. This answered better, and the Twelfth
Dynasty ranks as one of the most brilliant periods
of Egyptian history. But it was already showing
defects under weaker leading, when the whole
course of events was interrupted by the Hyksos
invasion, the first serious interference which
Egypt had experienced from outside. The causes
and character of this conquest we must investigate
later: for the moment we are only concerned
with its domestic effects. Under foreign domination,
a native monarchy still seems to have mainTHE
DAWN IN EGYPT 77
tained a precarious existence in the original
Thebaid region far up the Valley; but it was not
the nobles who profited. Alien rulers held them
in small respect: and the task of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, when the tide turned once more, was
greatly facilitated by this. We may recall how
the Wars of the Roses made ready for Tudor
autocracy.
The expulsion of the Etyksos was completed
by Dynasty XVIII, of Theban descent once
more. In the "New Kingdom" which it created,
everything rests with the king. The royal
family holds entirely aloof from every class of
subjects: even its marriages are either within its
own limits, or ally it politically with foreign courts.
Royal officers are in charge of all departments of
public work; they are innumerable, ubiquitous,
and in due course oppressive, as a bureaucracy
easily becomes. The nobles almost disappear
from view, with the transference of their old functions
to the crown. In the climax of the period
the court is even strong enough to over-ride the
priesthoods, and promulgate, under a king of
genius, the "heretic" Akhen-aten, a new and
pure monotheism, to supersede the many animalnatured
gods of native belief. The result might
have been foreseen. Akhen-aten, with his lofty
motto, "Living in Truth," might be an artist,
a theologian, a saint; a statesman, clearly, he
78 THE DAWN.OF HISTORY
was not. To challenge ideas and customs which
were those of the cultivators as well as of their
priestly landlords was to throw the whole country
into passionate resistance. The religious
reformation of Akhen-aten died with its inventor;
and- the new Nineteenth Dynasty,
which rose from brief anarchy after his death,
showed by its stupendous temple-buildings what
efforts were required to recover the confidence
of the priesthoods. But the priests had felt
their power. It was only a matter of time and
opportunity to secure for themselves privileges
enjoyed by the king; and the real unsuccess of
the Nineteenth Dynasty in its foreign wars was
undermining its prestige hardly less than were
the domestic extortions of the bureaucracy
which had been forced into being, to replace the
territorial oligarchy.
With the open revolt of the priests of the
Theban Sun-God Amon-Ra, and their assumption
of the royal titles at the end of Dynasty
XX, the New Empire in its turn comes to an
end. Of the old balance of power between
king, nobles, and priesthoods, only the third
partner survived. Its administration, unchecked,
was oppressive, brief, and disastrous. For the
first time in history a kingdom of Ethiopia,
perhaps based in the highlands of Abyssinia,
became aggressive in Nubia hitherto a mere
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 79
stone-quarry of Egypt and mastered nearly
all the Valley. Then Assyria, undisputed ruler,
now, of all tie nearer West, reached out a long
arm in 668 B.C., annexed the Delta, and momentarily
broke the power of the South. But
Assyria in turn retreated, only four years later,
before a new nationalist movement in the Delta,
of which the real forces were Greeks and other
adventurers from the west, "Bronze Men from
the Sea/' as the oracle called them. Finally,
these western influences, in spite of Persian
efforts to re-incorporate Egypt in an empire of
all the East, broke down, gradually but once
for all, the traditional reserve of the Nile people,
and had prepared it, by 33 B.C., for inclusion in
Alexander's empire.
This forecast of the political growth of Egypt
has taken us far beyond the "Dawn of History."
Its object is to indicate how the same natural
conditions, which had so profoundly determined
the first aspect of human culture there, remained
effective to shape its growth long after: and it
would be instructive to trace them still in operation,
in the Greek and Roman and Arab attempts
to "live well" in the same Nile Valley. More
instructive still is it to watch, as we are privileged
to do, a new breed, this time of "Iron Men
from the Sea," encountering the same difficulties
of water supply, and land-tenure, and imme80
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
morially ancient ways of life among the modern
Nile-cultivators, the descendants of the old, and
applying their own solution of the same problems
of defence against the Sudan, the nearer East,
and the sun and the desert sand.
It remains to say a word about Egypt's foreign
history. Normally, if we may use such a word,
it has none: the desert, at first sight, encloses
the Nile Valley, from the cataracts to the sea.
But this insulation is imperfect, as we have seen.
The Bed Sea road seems clearly responsible
for very early influence, of vital import, from
Arabia and beyond. The barbaric and warlike
Sudan, mainly nomad and pastoral, but locally
responsive to simple forms of cultivation, was
able more than once to cause anxiety even north
of Egypt's rock-threshold at Assuan: and once
at least, under able leadership, it dominated the
whole Valley (p. 79).
So, too, in the West, one of the first tasks of
each successive "kingdom" is to restore order
on the desert fringe, particularly where the string
of oases gives access obliquely to the west margin
of the Delta. Libyan aggression at this point
assumed more than once a dangerous aspect,
particularly towards the close of the New Empire,
when wholesale migration, probably provoked
by abnormal drought on the grasslands within
reach of Mediterranaen dew, brought large
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 81
hordes of semi-pastoral people in search of
"corn in Egypt," and settlements on the edge
of the Delta. Such intrusion was most dangerous
of all when, as in the reigns of Merenptah
(1230 B.C.) and Rameses III. (1200 B.C.), it was
accompanied by movements of seafaring peoples
.From the west along the Libyan foreshore; for
these took the defences in flank and in rear, by
pushing up the Nile mouths, and harrying the
Delta itself. Who these Sea-raiders were, we
shall have to discover later on (Chapter IX);
at the moment it is enough to note their existence,
and their partnership with the men of
Libya.
There remains the isthmus, and the road to
Asia. By this route, Egypt has been invaded
and held repeatedly in historic time; by the
Hyksos "Shepherd Bongs"; by Assyria, and
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (though both these
occupations were cut short by external distractions);
by Persia under Cambyses; by Alexander;
by Islam: and it was in full accordance with the
geography of war that it was not by Alexandria,
but by this eastern edge of the Delta along the
canal of Necho and Darius that the British
effected their present occupation of Cairo. By
this road alone, also, had Egypt itself any prospect
of foreign conquests. The repeated attempts
to reach the gold and ivory country of Punt,
82 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
southwards along the Red Sea, were exploration
and trade rather than annexation: the desirable
region lay in fact too far. But beyond
the isthmus, by a short stretch of desert road,
lay Sinai, in grand isolation, with copper, turquoise-
mines, and hard stones for statuary like
those of Assuan and Nubia. There too lay
Palestii and Syria, desirable themselves; traversed
by great roads leading to Babylonia and
the far East; invaded for their own sakes, or to
meet enemies unknown to us, by the Twelfth
Dynasty; and more coverted still by the Eighteenth,
as an outwork to Egypt itself, now that
the Shepherd-Kings had shown what ruin nomad
enemies could make. Here again it is enough, at
this stage, to show, in brief phrase, "how the
land lay" from the beginning onwards. The
actual fortune of these Egyptian conquests, and
of their outland invaders, will meet us again,
rather later (Chapters V, VII).
Summing up, then, as now we fairly may,
the substance of our study of Egypt, we see it as
an unusually secluded and exceptionally constituted
region, in which we can watch the rise and
growth of an essentially native civilization, for
a period of time and with an abundance of detail
unexampled elsewhere. We have traced the
economic causes of its peculiar development;
the political problems with which its people and
THE DAWN IN EGYPT 83
their rulers were confronted, and the various
expedients by which they met them; the slow
realization, as trade and ambition grew, first
that there was an outer world worth knowing
beyond the desert; and then, in the mind of this
outer world, that there existed an Egypt worth
invading; and we have seen the disturbances
in which this knowledge issued when people
came to act upon it. The details of the picture
we leave to be filled in at leisure by those who
wish to do so, T?ith the help of special studies on
an ampler scale. (See Note on Books at end.)
But still we find two questions left outstanding,
to which we must seek answer elsewhere. on
one side, what is to be known of that other apparently
older culture, to whose distant operation
we have had to attribute the first and only outside
stimulus to change and effort, , which our
survey of Egyptian origins has revealed? Where
is its home, what is its origin, and what were its
relations with intervening regions more directly
under its spell? The answer to this question will
be the Dawn of History in Babylonia, Assyria,
and the Syrian coast. on the other side, what
is the meaning of that apparition of "Peoples
from beyond the Green Sea," who hover beyond
the Delta frontage, and gather such strength
and coherence with each intermittent visit, that
at last, more potent than Babylonia or any of its
84 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
daughter states, they seal the fate of Egypt
by including it in empires of their own? The
Dawn of History here is in the West, in the
Midland Sea.
CHAPTER IV
THE DAWN OF HISTORY IN BABYLONIA
BABYLONIA is the joint delta of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and owes its prosperity and ruin
alike to man's use or abuse of the gifts of these
two rivers.
The Euphrates, like the Nilei passes through
three distinct phases in its course to the sea.
Its two main sources lie deep in the Armenian
highland, and carve out parallel courses of over
400 miles before their joint streams leave the
mountains through a tremendous gorge. Then
for 720 miles from Samsat to Hit the river crosses
open treeless country, more level and barren as
it recedes from the hills. From the west it receives
only one important tributary, the Sajur,
which comes in quite high up near Carchemish,
and from the east only two, the Belikh and the
Khab'ur, both in the middle third of this section.
As far as the Sajur, both banks are habitable;
and the east bank was formerly so as far as the
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 85
JHhabur, forming the district of Harran, and
the ancient kingdom of Mitanni. Beyond this
the country is desert, both on the Arabian side
and in the greater part of Mesopotamia, the
region between the Two Rivers. The river itself
flows with swift stream and intermittent
rapids within a deep rock-walled bed, usually
a few miles wide and capable of cultivation,
but naturally a jungle of tamarisk and reeds,
infested by wild pig. The few sedentary Arabs,
who practise a primitive irrigation with waterwheels,
pay blackmail to powerful nomad tribes
of the desert. The palm replaces the olive about
half way down. Above Hit the river has narrows
and is full of islands; but at Hit itself solid ground
ends in a reef of harder rocks with springs of sulphur,
brine, and bitumen. The river here is
about 250 yards in width, and still flows briskly
through this last obstruction.
The third section consists wholly of alluvial
soil, and extends for 550 miles from Hit to the
Persian Gulf. The river soon divides into two
principal channels, and these into minor backwaters,
the wreck of ancient canals. It first
deposits copious silt, and then fine mud like that
of the Nile. The shore line has therefore been
advancing rapidly within historic time: Eridu,
for example, which was a chief port of early
Babylonia, lies now 125 miles from the sea. If
86 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
the present rate of advance, about a mile in thirty
years, may be taken as an average which is,
however, not demonstrable yet Eridu may have
begun to be mud-bound about 1800 B.C.
The course of the Tigris is geographically
similar. Two chief sources, rising near those of
the Euphrates, drain the south-eastern ranges of
Armenia. From their junction to Samarra, where
the Tigris fairly enters the delta, is about 50
miles, first through rolling foothills, in an open
valley which is the home-country of the Assyrians;
then through steppe and desert. on the
west bank there are now no tributaries, though
there was formerly a flood-channel from the
south-east of the Khabur basin. on the east
bank, however, the copious drainage of the
Median highlands, which lie nearly parallel with
its course, is brought in by a number of streams,
of which the most notable are the Greater and
Lesser Zab. Consequently, the Tigris brings
down eventually rather more waiter than the
Euphrates: and also on its swifter current a
good deal more silt.
In the latitude of Bagdad, about 100 miles
below Samarra, and consequently well within
the alluvial area, Euphrates and Tigris approach
within 85 miles of each other, but soon diverge
again to a distance of 100 miles. It was a little
above this point that the Euphrates was first
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 87
divided in antiquity into two main branches,
of which the eastern Saklawie canal is at part,
at least, artificial. Designed to water a large
district west of Bagdad, and also as an overflow,
for in Upper Babylonia the Euphrates lies higher
than the Tigris. Lower down, the levels are
reversed, and the great Shatt-el-Hai canal, past
the site of Lagash, relieves the Tigris, and at
times overloads the Euphrates at TJr and below.
In addition, the whole of the joint delta has been
from very early times a network of canals, designed
both to distribute irrigation water, and
also to defend the cultivated lands against the
desert. The most important are the Shatt-
Hindie, which diverges at Babylon, and follows
the western edge of the delta, rejoining near
ancient Erech; and the transverse Shatt-el-Hai
already mentioned. The management of these
great canals needs some skill; the rivers rise rather
irregularly, as the mountain snow melts, from
March to May, and often carry away the soft
earthen dams and embankments. They also
carry down so much silt, that centuries of deposition
and dredging have raised the main channels,
and the country near them, above the general
level. The two main streams, whose mouths
were still a day's journey apart in Alexander's
time, now unite at Basra, 300 miles below Bagdad.
Their joint channel, the Shatt-el-Arab, is
88 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
1,000 yards wide, and navigable. A little further
down again, it receives on the east side the main
stream of the Karun River, from the highlands
of ancient Elam.
Tinder careful management, the whole alluvial
region is of amazing fertility. The date
palm is indigenous, and wheat was anciently
believed to be so. In ancient times it raised two,
or even three, crops of wheat a year, with a yield
of 200 or 800 grains from one seed. The rice,
which is now the principal grain crop, came in
under the Arab regime. The present desolation
is due, first to the Turkish nomads in the eleventh
century; then to the reckless behaviour of Mesopotamian
Arabs.
All through the summer, the principal streams
are navigable, or can easily be made so, and
sailing boats ascend as far as Hit and Samarra;
but by September the flood is over, and in November
the rivers are at their lowest; and natural
shoals and the remains of old dams are grievous
obstacles.
Such is Babylonia. But before we enquire
what human enterprize was to make of it, we
must note equally briefly the regions which
enclose it.
West of Euphrates lies the great plain of
Arabia, rising gently towards the Jordan and
the Red Sea. It is nearly featureless, grassland
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 89
at best, and in great part utter desert now. Its
nomad pastoral inhabitants, however, have exercised,
as we shall see, an influence on the fortunes
both of Babylonia and all other regions which
fringe it, which is one of the great facts of history.
Eastward, beyond the Tigris, towers the highland
zone, range upon range of massive limestone
mountains, till the passes to the plateau
behind them rise to 5,000 and 6,000 feet, and the
peaks to over 11,000 feet. The nearer parts of
the plateau vary in altitude from 3,000 to 1,500
feet. The width of the mountain belt averages
about 800 miles, and its parallel ranges from five
to ten in number. Between them lie valleys of
varying size and elevation, all more or less habitable,
but secluded from each other and from the
outer world on either side. A few have no outfall,
but enclose considerable lakes, like Van and
Urmia in the north, and Shiraz in the south;
but the majority discharge the copious water
which pours from the snow-clad ridges, through
great gorges into more westerly troughs, and
so eventually into a few large rivers. Some of
these, as we have seen, are tributary to the Tigris;
others further south issue independently into the
Persian Gulf, and form their own hot sodden
deltas; while in a middle section three of the
largest, Karuri, Jarahi, and Tab, now join their
mudflats with those of the Shatt-el-Arab, and
90 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
have created an alluvial area nearly half as large
as Babylonia
"
between the rivers"; more encumbered
indeed by silt, but with lowlands almost
as fertile under cultivation.
Above these foreshores the hills between Karun
and Tigris, lying nearest to the ancient head of
the gulf, rise gently at first, in a wide expanse
of rolling country. Then, where the first mountains
stand up, and catch the moisture from the
winds, comes a long narrow belt of forest, dense
oak below, passing to cedar and pine; and extending
from the Diyala River as far south as Shiraz.
Access to this, in a region so timberless otherwise,
seems to have been one of the great objects of
contention in ancient times. on the greater
heights come more alpine conditions, with some
moisture and hardy vegetation in deep valleys;
but on the eastern slopes, prevalent drought,
with aromatic scrubland locally, and some output
of medicinal resins and gums. Then, inter
spersed with marginal oases, wherever a mountain
stream runs out into the plain, begins a desolate
and often salt-strewn plateau, the dead heart
of Persia, ancient as well as modern. With this
dead heart, however, and even with the fringe
of oases mediaeval and modern Persia we are
not now concerned; only with the sequence of
alluvium, foothills, and forest belt, which make
up the ancient region of Elam, and with the
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 91
interment plains and upland valleys which sustained
the old Medes and Persians, the first highlanders
to play a part in universal history.
These then are the neighbours of Babylonia:
on the east, the foothills of high mountains:
on the west, low featureless desert: upstream,
other deserts and steppes traversed only by the
strict courses of the rivers themselves. From
which of these quarters did Babylonia receive
its men?
The civilization which dominated this patchwork
of river, steppe, and fen, goes back so far,
and retains its well-marked character so uniformly
in early stages, that it is impossible to
be sure about its origin. only one thing is certain,
that it had a long and prosperous existence before
it shows signs even of contact with the pastoral
peoples of Arabia. Neither does Cie physical
character of its creators show the least likeness
to the physiognomy of the desert men; nor,
what is more to the point, does th primitive
native language, to their "Semitic" speech.
More than tldb, the Babylonian people and their
language do resemble rather markedly the men
and the speech of a large region which begins
with the high ground on the other side of the
Tigris and extends thence far eastward. The
agglutinative structure of the "Sumerian" languageto
give it the old native name of the
92 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
lower and richer half of the delta region, has been
compared with that of Turkish and other Mongol
languages native to the high plateau of Central
Asia; and as languages of this general type
extend over nearly the whole of the New World
as well, there is no reason to doubt the possibility
of a very early extension of ths same over
the Persian plateau, and beyond its western edge.
And as we shall see presently, the culture which
alone is nearly akin to that of early Babylonia
is that of the foothills next to the head of the
Persian Gulf, and immediately beyond the Tigris.
It would be natural, however, to suppose that
one of the earliest, perhaps even the first, of the
attempts to reclaim these fens would originate
with the inhabitants of the cultivable channel
by which the Euphrates traverses the desert:
for with some labour agriculture is practicable
here, as we have seen (p. 85). It also seems
to be ancient here, at all events along the upper
reaches; and there is some reason to believe that
the first regulation of the streams which diverge
below Hit and enclose the Delta, was planned
to serve only the upper half of the alluvial region.
They certainly needed to be regulated afresh from
time to time, as reclamation became general, and
the settlements and organization of Babylonia
began to be those of historic times,
By some such double origin as this, it seems
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 93
necessary to explain, the double-headedness of
the first civilization. In the north lay the smaller
and poorer district of Accad, ever more and more
restricted by the coarser silt which is the first
to be deposited. In the south the wider, fertile,
intricate, and evergrowing Sumer, with a sea
front on the gulf, one flank on the Tigris and the
great ancient lagoon beyond, towards the delta
of the Karun; and the other flank bearing on
the desert in a district where, as in primitive
Egypt, one of the few practicable routes led southwest
to the central oases. How this last circumstance
affected the history of Babylonia, we
must see later on, when we deal in Chapter V
with its relations with the steppe peoples.
Pausing now for a moment to compare the
situation in Mesopotamia with that on the Nile,
we note first that through the difference in direc- .
tion of the two valleys the Nile has its sub-tropical
region upstream, and its almost temperate
delta in the north; the Euphrates has its delta
in one of the hottest summer climates of the
world. The Nile has its cataracts all far upstream,
so that the fall of the valley is concentrated at a
few points, and a sluggish navigable fairway is
reserved from Assuan to the coast: far away
beyond these rapids, moreover, the Nile has
already deposited its obstructive silt, and bears
down to Egypt only beneficial mud, which is
94 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
invisibly fine, and causes little trouble in irrigation.
The Euphrates, on the contrary, descends
rapidly, for so large a river, all through
its upper course; its last barrier is at Hit, which
in the anatomy of this valley corresponds rather
to Cairo than to Assuan; it consequently enters
the fenland still laden with silt, and in all ages
has industriously .blocked one bed after another,
and spread the disastrous floods of which memory
was preserved by Babylonian legends of a deluge
which flooded even the desert; as we read in
the best known version "all the high hills that
were under the whole heaven were covered: fifteen
cubits upwards did the waters prevail";
and there are very few "mountains'* in alluvial
Babylonia which would not be devastated by a
flood of this moderate depth. Like the ordinary
summer flood of the Euphrates which begins in
April and May, and is highest in August, that
deluge lasted about twenty-one weeks; and
in September "the seventh month*' it abated.
From these anxieties the Nile is free. In Egyptian
religion it is the sun which is all-beneficent,
or all-destroying, and therefore (in due course)
chief god, and the "power behind the throne.'*
His enemies are powers of dark and cold, not of
wet. In Babylonia, and still more in Assyria,
which lies closer under the hills, men and the
high gods were alike powerless when the stormTHE
DAWN IN BABYLONIA 95
demons were out. The first victory of good was
the binding of the dragon which broods in dark
water; a fit emblem of the creeping silt-shoal
which grows till it throttles the canal.
For many reasons therefore, it is in the delta,
and not in the valley, that Babylonian civilization
grows; as it might indeed have grown in
Egypt too, had not the valley culture ripened
sooner. Consequently, again, the Babylonian
centres some dozen in all lie in a cluster, not
strung on one green thread for hundreds of miles.
And as the Tigris and the Euphrates interweave
their currents, first one receiving, and then the
other, internal communication is abnormally
complete; a striking contrast with the perils of
cross-delta travel in Egypt. No one went up
to Babylon to go from Lagash to Ur, as train
and boat alike go almost up to Cairo from Alexandria
to Port Said; almost everywhere there
was direct canal. The Euphrates, however, is
barred to large navigation at Hit, and though
the Tigris is navigable by steamers to Mosul,
ancient traffic on it, and on the Euphrates too,
was exclusively down-stream; the rivers being
over-rapid and unfit for towing; the upstream
wind which overcomes the Nile quite absent;
and the boats (or more often rafts) far more
valuable for timber in so woodless a country
than for laborious haulage upstream. The best
96 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
were, and are, made like coracles, of skins over
a wooden frame, and returned, folded up, on
donkey-back.
The basis of Babylonian culture was the intense
fertility of the alluvial soil, wherever water
could be applied to it in due amount. With
excess of water it became noisome fen: in defect,
it parched to a desert: and there are now large
tracts of utter desert within the limits of irrigation.
But the two valleys were there, nevertheless,
and could bring goods in, if they could
not convey them out. They flowed, moreover,
as we have just seen, from regions of produce
which Babylonia lacked; wine in particular, and
olive oil; timber, too, and bitumen from Hit,
for building and for waterproofing; and stone,
above all. It is difficult for us now to conceive
the limitations under which an architect worked,
when a stone door-socket was a rich gift of a
king to his god, and was rescued from one ruin
after another, to be re-used and proudly rededicated.
Then again eastward, beyond Tigris,
there was trade through the foothills to a nearer
timber-country, and beyond it to sunburned
lands of spices aad drugs. Across the desert,
too, you could reach another spice-country in
the south; and westward lay the Eed Sea coast,
for coral, copper, and other hard stones.
In return, what Babylonia had to offer was,
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 97
first its inexhaustible surplus of foodstuff, corn,
and dates; much wool, of finer quality, because
better nourished, than that of the desert breeds;
still richer cargoes of woven woollens, "Babylonitish
garments," and in due time other kinds
of manufactures too. It became, also, needless
to say, a supreme centre of exchange; a kind of
ancient London, whither the world's produce
converged into wholesale hands, and was retailed
over vast distances by regular correspondents
and branch houses. The beasts of burden were
the ass and man; camel and horse alike belong
to a far later age, the former introduced from
Arabia, where it is native, the latter from the
east beyond the hills.
With manufactures and commerce standing
so high in the economy of Babylonia, it is not
to be wondered at if the social structure of the
country developed some of the same features
as begin to perplex our modern world. In particular,
the right was fully recognized, to practise
industry and skill and enjoy the fruits of them,
irrespective of sex. Not only was the status of
married women high (for their partnership was
valued) and their freedom great, but a distinct
industrial status had been found for unmarried
women, in large co-operative societies under
religious sanction, with vows of celibacy and
strict attention to business. Unlike mediaeval
98 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
nuns, however, members of these orders were
free mistresses of their time and labour: they
lived where they would and worked at what they
liked, insured by their membership, so long as
they kept their vows, and paid their dues. The
only social distinctions were those between slaves
and freemen, and between landless (which practically
meant industrial) persons, and land owners.
The latter class included all public servants,
because public services, as in mediaeval Europe,
were rewarded, not by salaries, but by a grant
of land sufficient to maintain the official and
meet the expenses of his duty. Privilege entailed
responsibility; and offenders were punished more
heavily if they belonged to the "upper classes";
doctors* fees were graduated, too, according to
the status of the patient. At the other end
of the scale, slaves could save, hold property,
and buy their freedom; their state, as throughout
the ancient world, was at bottom a compulsory
initiation into culture higher than their
own.
Each Babylonian city centred round the
temple of its patron god; and the antiquity of
this whole system of society is nowhere better
illustrated than in the overwhelming power of
the temple authorities. It recalls more nearly
the despotism of the priest-kings of the Twentyfirst
Dynasty than any earlier phase in the growth
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 99
of society in Egypt. The chief priest of the temple
was ruler of the city. When conquests took
place, and Babylonian empires were built up,
the conqueror provided all the viceroys he required,
by appointing a man whom he could trust,
to be chief priest in each place. This personal
rule was well suited to the needs of such cities.
In a close-knit industrial society, pre-eminent
ability discovers itself, incompetence is found out:
and as the patron god was at the same time largest
landlord, chief employer, and master merchant,
he had the largest interest of any one in the
selection of an efficient minister. In this way a
city got approximately the government it deserved.
It is to the centralized personal responsibility,
which is the mainspring of these simple
constitutions, that we owe a large part of our
knowledge of their working, through the copious
official correspondence which passed between
over-lords like Hammurabi and his viceroys, or
the natural pride of an administrator like Gudea
of Tello, in recording his own efficiency.
The temple formed a distinct quarter of the
city, and had usually a distinctive name. It
consisted of an artificial mound, high enough,
like the "Tower of Babel" itself, to out-top
the severest inundation, with a platform large
enough to contain the house of the god, which
was exactly modelled on the palace of a king,
100 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
just as his daily service was, on the routine of
a royal household. The deity takes his meals,
hears music, sleeps, walks in his garden or tends
his pet animals, just like a human sovereign. If
he is not there when you call upon him, it is
because he is a-hunting, like Baal on Carmel.
Below clustered the stores, workshops, and dwellings
of the temple servants, who included masons,
smiths, and other industrials: as well as the
quarters of the lay population. Other important
buildings occupied similar platforms. Originally
perhaps these mounds were the normal accumulation
of ages of d6bris, more copious than ever
when architecture was almost wholly in mud;
but in later times they seem to have been faced
with decorative brickwork and adapted as floodplatforms,
like those of the temples. Any building
in fact which was intended to last, had perforce
to be defended so, in this home-country
of the deluge. But the ordinary houses were
not worth preserving long. They were the merest
hovels of mud-brick, little more than sleepingrooms
and shelters from the sun, with verandahs
of shittim-wood from the fen poplar. Baked
brick was indeed in use, even in the earliest layers,
but mainly for palaces and temples. In the
absence of native stone, sculpture was a rarity;
and the Euphrates mud bakes to a dull brown,
which defies decoration. Of all the great civilizaTHE
DAWN IN BABYLONIA 101
tions, Babylonia alone contributes nothing essential
to the potter's art.
Clay, however, had here one unexampled use,
as a vehicle for writing; with picture-signs originally,
representing, as in Egypt, first objects,
then sounds and syllables; rudely outlined with
a sharp point, and ranged in vertical columns.
Later these signs were greatly abbreviated, and
impressed instead of scratched, for greater speed
and accuracy, with the sharp angle of a threesided
graver, which left a "cuneiform" (that is,
a wedge-shaped) mark, longer or shorter according
as the instrument was held. This invention
represents the same advance of convenience as
the "hieratic" running-hand of Egypt; but unlike
hieratic, it completely superseded the pictorial
signs, mainly because there was no durable
material on which picture-writing could be used
to decorate architecture.
From the written records of the few Sumerian
cities which have been excavated as yet the
chief of these are Lagash and Nippur we learn
already something of their relations to each other.
These were not always peaceful. The principal
troubles, as may be imagined, arose out of the
boundary ditches, which were liable to damage
by flood, or to displacement in the course of repair:
"to remove my neighbour's landmark" was
among the worst offences, in a country where
102 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
land in right hands yields so lavishly. This kind
of feud between Lagash-Shirpurla and its neighbour
Gishku, is graphically described in documents
from the mounds of Tello, on the site of
the former. These records extend over more than
a century: and reveal almost a modern state of
international law: treaties, arbitrations, frontier
commissions, indemnities levied in grain or in
forced labour on the victor's lands. once one of
these states annexes the other and appoints a new
priest-king; at another time both seem to be
vassals of Lugalzaggisi, a man of Gishku, who
rose to be king of Erech, further down stream,
and then "King of the World," ruling, "from the
Lower to the Upper Sea." The latter cannot
be nearer than Lake Van, and may possibly mean
the Mediterranean.
Now that we have made such acquaintance as
is possible here with the features of Bablyonian
culture, let us return to note one more characteristic
in which this region most contrasts with
the Nile. Egypt lies quite remote even from its
nearest neighbours; and the desert on either side
of the valley is real desert and has been so at
least from neolithic times. Even the westward
oases are self-contained, and rigidly restricted by
their surroundings to the slightest of commercial
intercourse. Babylonia, on the other hand,
though it lies right against the two desert regions
THE DAWN IN BABYLONIA 103
of Arabia and Mesopotamia, is very far from
being isolated by them. Both of them indeed are
rather steppe than desert, and able to support a
nomad population of pastoral tribes, large enough
to be dangerous, and poor enough to be veiy
predatory. We remember the Midianites who
wrecked in a night the prosperity of Job: they
were true children of the desert. The foreign
history of Babylonia is therefore in all ages the
history of its relations first with the nomads of
Arabia; second, with the men of Elam, a sedentary
people partly lowland and in many respects
akin in culture and mode of life to the Babylonians
themselves, but including also a strong highland
and forest-bred element which made Elam far
more efficient, if once it was roused to activity
abroad; third, with its own colony and fosterchild,
Assyria, half civilized from Babylonia itself,
but again, like Elam, invigorated, and it may
be even a trifle barbarized, by harder conditions
of life and a similar upland alloy.
We have now to discover, rather more in detail,
the quality of the intercourse of Babylonia with
its three chief neighbours and enemies; and we
shall do so best if we treat them in the order in
which each first comes upon the scene: Semitic
Arabians, Elamites, and Assyrians.
104 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
CHAPTER V
THE COMING OP THE SEMITES
THE Arabian desert is one of the earth's great
reservoirs of men. Much of it, indeed, is usually
uninhabitable; but its surface, gently sloping eastward
till it dips into the Persian Gulf, is much
more diversified than the Libyan desert by hollows
which are moist enough for grass. These
are at all times numerous enough to be within
reach of each other; and parts of the peninsula
are a maze of interwoven tracks. When the supply
of moisture is at its maximum, Arabia can
therefore breed and support vast masses of pas*
toral folk, each with its wealth of sheep and goats,
its rigid patriarchal society, its ill-defined orbit
within which it claims first bite of the grass and
first draught from the wells, which it believes
its forefathers opened. But if moisture fails, as
there seems reason to believe that it does from
time to time, in large pulsations of climatic
change, man and his flocks must either escape
or perish. Fortunately, escape is easy; the tribes
are always on the move; and the drought spreads
but gradually. There are only two obstacles.
To reach the edge of the desert the way lies, for
^11 but the outermost, through the pastures of
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 105
other tribes: and for those escape is perilous,
for they are already in perennial feud with all
who hold lands where they can practise agriculture.
Sooner or later, however, some master spirit
grasps the situation. "If we all go out, and go
all together, nothing can withstand us: we are
like flood or sand; we envelop obstructions by
numbers and mobility. At the worst, we have
nothing to lose: and by experience of their outposts,
up desert gullies, or in the stream bed of
Euphrates, where we have always blackmailed
them, we know that they can afford to pay us,
in fact to keep us alive, if we will but spare their
fields." So, when the moment comes, the whole
desert population seems to break forth unanimous.
It penetrates wherever there is pasture; far into
the hills, and deep into marshes. Rivers cannot
stop it, and it will outmarch an army.
In one point only were the nomads of Arabia
withheld from the worst destruction. There is
reason to hold that they did not acquire the
horse till after 2000 B.C.; the "first servant"
of civilized man, but in reckless hands the most
destructive weapon of war till the invention of
steam. Compared with the Mongol nomads of
the Middle Ages, therefore, or with their own
Arab descendants when they had acquired this
weapon, Semitic nomads did only moderate;
harm. Yet whenever we can trace them, in
106 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
periodic outbreaks from their dry home, they
brought devastation and set back civilization
for centuries.
Even with the fragmentary sources which we
have, we can trace at least four such periods of
outpouring from Arabia: and the intervals between
them, or other causes within the desert,
of which we know nothing at present, have been
sufficient to ensure that the characteristics of
"Semitic" speech, which is common to all emigrants
from Arabia, should have had time to alter
slightly. As these successive groups of dialects
retained their peculiarities (and, if anything,
added to them) after their separation from the
parent language, it is possible to discover with
certainty the period of emigration to which the
ancestors of any given Semitic people belonged:
provided always that nothing has happened
since, to make them learn a fresh tongue. That,
however, actually happens but rarely; so strictly
does patriarchal society, which few Semiticspeaking
peoples have been induced by their
surroundings to modify, transmit to the new
generation the speech of the father of the family.
He sees to it, you may be sure, that his people
understand him when he speaks, and also that
they answer him "intelligibly."
Now there is no need to suppose that a nomad
people remains in voluntary isolation, when its
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 107
grasslands border on more fertile and progressive
districts; least of all if such districts bound it on
more than one side. Casual raids bring back
captives and .booty from the settled country;
cattle and their products, leather and cheese,
are exchanged for metals, weapons, and drugs.
More important than either theft or exchange, is
the fact that the nomad alone can traverse the
desert, as the sailor traverses the sea, and put
one margin into touch with the opposite side.
He alone knows the landmarks and the wells,
and can arrange safe-conduct from tribe to tribe,
utilizing his friends, and avoiding the neighbourhood
of his enemies. At first such traffic is almost
accidental: a knife, bought on this side openly
in the bazaar, turns out to be of a metal or fashion
unheard-of on the other; so next time the nomad
takes two, and trades the spare one, buying
cheap and selling dear. But in time the thing
becomes habitual; terminal bazaars spring up,
like seaports on the desert margin; landmarks,
wells, and camping grounds are respected by
common consent; caravans are organized and
ply regularly, going armed like an East-Indiaman
against the pirates of the sand-ocean. These
desert voyages, as may easily be imagined, earn
enormous returns, in spite of the great risks from
sand-storm and robbers. once successfully attempted,
they cast an irresistible spell, and be108
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
come habitual to the trader, and indispensable
to his sedentary customers. The caravans are
conducted, of necessity, by the nomads themselves,
and among them they necessitate some
changes of habit and organization. They train
to foresight and discipline, for a caravan, however
large (and the larger the safer), moves as
one family, with military precision, and rigid
obedience to the leader. Above all, at either
end, they involve more than momentary or
hostile contact with sedentary life: for caravanfolk,
like sailors, necessarily spend part of their
time in harbour, waiting or seeking for cargo.
Moreover, wives, children, and grazing flocks
can no longer accompany the men in their journeys:
for in speed there is safety as well as
economy, and the caravan carries no non-combatants,
nor useless mouths to be fed on the road.
To provide for these, the desert-ports become
regular cities, controlled sooner or later by the
desert folk: and to feed these cities, territory is
acquired and cultivated. Best of all for these
purposes is an oasis just within the desert margin,
where a snow-fed stream from the hills is strong
enough to flow out into the waste; such are
Damascus and Bokhara. Or the desert may
touch a navigable river, as at Deir on the middle
Euphrates, or Astrakhan, or Berber in the Sudan;
or the sea, as at Suakin, the terminal of the road
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 109
from Berber, or the African Tripoli, or Eziongeber
on the Gulf of Akabah. We have very
likely hit upon one such route already, between
the Red Sea coast and the prehistoric Nile (p. 56).
Now the coming of the Semites into Babylonian
history seems to include both these classes
of contact, exodus and traffic. Two of the oldest
and most famous of Babylonian cities, Ur and
Eridu, lie not "between the rivers" at all, but
on the Arabian side of the Euphrates. Ur stands
by the main stream, well above even its ancient
mouth, at a point where the largest cross-canal
comes in from the Tigris : it was mainly suited for
up-river trade. Eridu, on the other hand, looked
down the gulf, which has an immemorial coasting
trade with India and the spice countries: it lay
lower down and further away, on what may have
been an old side channel of the river, or perhaps
originally a creek of the open gulf. We may
compare their respective sites with those of
modern Kerbela and Koweit. They certainly
have all the look of terminals of just such desert
roads as have determined the position of those
modern successors. These roads lead to the
central group of oases, and communicate thence
with Arabia Felix, the spice-land in the far south,
and again with Sinai and the southern fringe
of Syria. It is in the latter direction probably
that we should trace the faint link of connection
110 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
between the nascent civilization of Egypt and
its Babylonian models. Here then we may reasonably
think that Semitic folk had a sedentaryfoothold,
as early as there was any one to trade
with in the delta itself. And whatever may
be the truth about earlier times, it was precisely
at this point that the second or Canaanite
movement of Semites (p. 113) made its chief
contact with Babylonia, refounding the ancient
city as "Ur of the Chaldees," and eventually
uniting all southern Babylonia into a Chaldean
kingdom.
The other point at which Semitic aggressors
pressed most effectively upon Babylonia was
quite at the head of the delta. Here, at Kerbela,
another desert road from the south which has
long started the western bank, has its terminal
and junction with the river traffic; and almost
opposite, in the heart of the canal navigation,
lies Babylon, in historic times the greatest city
of them all. It can hardly be doubted that one
reason why Babylon, which in Sumerian hands
had no such supremacy, came to the front as it did
under the new Semitic regime, was that its position
linked it directly with some ancient equivalent
of Kerbela, and so with the desert roads, and
made it the chief alternative to Ur as a centre
of Semitic activity,
On the other hand, the second Semitic occuTHE
COMING OF THE SEMITES 111
pation, and the impression which is given by
our meagre accounts of the conquest of Accad
in the first, suggest less the persistent influence
of desert ports, than forcible migrations in mass,
of the drought-impelled kind which we noted
to begin with. The circumstance that the dynasty
to which Sargon and Naram-sin belonged
had its capital not in Sumer at all, but in the more
northerly Accad, suggests very strongly that it
did not come into possession by direct attack on
the west frontier of the irrigated land, which had
been deliberately strengthened (as we have seen)
by a great marginal canal, but crossed the Euphrates
higher up, into the Mesopotamian steppe,
and invaded Babylonia from the north, on which
side it is most exposed. Some disastrous experience
of the kind, and the fear of its recurrence,
must certainly have been the reason for constructing
the so-called "Median Wall," which
runs across the tip of this desert, from Euphrates
to Tigris, a little outside the natural limit of
Babylonia. It is certainly far older than the
Median conquest; it is closely comparable in
conception with the Great Wall of China; its
object, no less clearly, is to keep out nomads;
and the first Mesopotamian nomads of whom
we have any record are the Semitic kinsmen of
Sargon of Accad.
Once settled in Northern Babylonia, with their
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
chief stronghold at Agade or Accad, this first
swarm of Semitic invaders rapidly annexed the
Sumerian south, and was able with united forces
to cross the Tigris, and occupy Elam. Other
campaigns of Sargon and Naram-sin seem to have
covered all the foothills which limit the level
country to the north; some think that they can
identify places in North Syria, in chronicles of
the time; and there seems much reason to think
that the country which Naram-Sin calls Magan
is the peninsula of Sinai. This, however, may
have been reached in trade by the direct desert
route.
Both in Babylonia and in Elam, the Semites
succeeded in imposing their own language on their
subjects; in Elam only as an official language
alongside the native tongue, so that important
documents are sometimes recorded in both; in
Babylonia as the regular speech of the country.
Only for antiquarian and certain ritual purposes
was the Sumerian language preserved: and much
of our actual acquaintance with it is due to
the preservation of Sumerian documents by the
learned of later days, in Babylonia and still more
in Assyria; and to the vocabularies of Sumerian
words with their Semitic equivalents, which they
compiled to aid in reading them. Apart from
the gift of their language, and a vigour in organization
which hardly outlasted the first impulse
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES US
of conquest, these earliest Semites contributed
little to the culture of Babylonia: and indeed
they had little else to give. Outside Babylonia,
their migrations can hardly be traced at all:
mainly, however, because the second wave of
emigration, about a thousand years later, spread
so much further, that it overflowed and washed
out, as it were, whatever was left of the first.
Of this second Semitic migration, which occurred
somewhere in the later half of the third
millennium, we have but a shadowy history.
From the circumstance that its most durable
effects were to be seen in the Syrian coastland,
it has commonly been described as "Canaanite";
but it is not certain whether the name
of Canaan properly belongs to the immigrant
Semites, or to the land or the people to which
they came. The same doubt, by the way, rests
on the name Amtirri or **
Amorite," which was frequently
applied to the parts inland of "Canaan,"
both by Egyptians and by Assyrians, some time
before the third or "Aramaean" wave of Semites
settled there.
But it was not into Canaan alone that this
second or Canaanite migration made its way.
In Babylonia, from about 2800 onwards, names
of gods and men which are of definitely "Canaanite"
type Hadad, Rimmon, Dagon, and
the like become suddenly common; in North
114 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Babylonia a new dynasty is installed, of great
vigour and prestige; its kings bear Canaanite
names; it conquers the south and, instead of
trusting (like its predecessors) to an Accadian
base, makes Babylon hitherto a city quite of
secondary rank the central capital of a compact
and united kingdom. It is to this period apparently
that we are to ascribe that great "battle
of four kings with five," on the Jordan frontier,
of which we catch the echoes as a crisis in the
story of Abraham. At all events "Amraphel,
King of Shinar," who is one of the confederates
of Chedorlaomer in this Israelite tale, appears
to have the same name as Hammurabi, the
reorganizer of Babylonian independence later
on, and the first great legislator of the world.
Another section of the same Semitic inroad
penetrated northwards beyond the first hills
into the middle valley of the Tigris, and laid
here the foundations of that other Semitic state
which was afterwards famous as Assyria; for
its earliest recorded princes, about 1800 B.C.,
bear similar "Canaanite" names. Others again
of the same linguistic stock reached the rolling
country of Harran between the Khabur and the
Euphrates: but here they founded no state;
only detached and ephemeral settlements. The
country is in fact too featureless either to centralize
its population, or to subdivide it valley
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 115
by valley into coherent neighbourhoods. West
of the Euphrates, similarly, the "Canaanite"
immigrants certainly affected all the strip of
highland country between Euphrates and the
Mediterranean, and everything south of this
as far as the edge of the great desert.
But of their spread over the Syrian coastland
we know little. Our most graphic account
is still that in Genesis, Vhich describes how the
heads of a migratory clan which once had lived
around Ur on the desert edge of Babylonia, and
afterwards had crossed the Euphrates higher up
and "lived in Harran," moved westwards once
more, by way of Kadesh, and entered the coastland
of "Canaan*' from the north-east. Eventually
(so the story is told) it passed on into
Egypt, and back into Canaan again; a glimpse
into the Hyksos period, surely, from the standpoint
of one who was himself a "Shepherd King."
The region round the desert edge is represented
as being all in nomad hands; for the family of
Abraham maintained communication still with
kindred near its old home, and Isaac and Jacob
could still get wives from thence. This particular
clan, as we know, is eventually brought, by its
traditions, once more into Egypt, at a period
which corresponds with that of the Eighteenth
Egyptian Dynasty, and then makes its escape
into the desert in the later days of the Nineteenth;
116 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
re-entering Palestine finally from "beyond Jordan,"
and in the course of the twelfth century.
But this is another story, and we shall tell it
later on (p. 140) : it is only its first wanderings,
up the Euphrates and into Syria, that can be
taken as reflecting the conditions of the second
Semitic migration.
It is an open question whether Egypt was
not affected also by the "Canaanite" movement.
In the centuries 2300 to 1500, within
which it is contained, Egyptian history falls into
well-marked periods. The brilliant prosperity of
the Twelfth Dynasty, as we have already seen,
was both preceded and followed bly a period
of anarchy and foreign oppression, and either
of these is at first sight attributable in part to a
Canaanite conquest. Unfortunately, the date
of the Twelfth Dynasty is still in some dispute.
Some authorities place it as far back as 500, in
which case the Canaanite movement came later,
and is available to explain the foreign attacks
which paralyzed Egypt afterwards. Others bring
it as low down as 1900-1800; and on this reckoning
it is possbile that all primary movements
of Canaanite folk were over already before the
Twelfth Dynasty began. There remains, however,
the third possibility, that the Twelfth Dynasty
was in power during the crucial period; and delayed
a catastrophe which it was not able to avert.
THE COMING OF THE SEMITES 117
That migratory Semites did reach Egypt, in
the course of this movement even if only in
small and occasional parties seems to be clear
from the story of Abraham's "
descent into Egypt/'
and for this an approximate date can be given;
for Abraham was recently settled in Palestine
at the time of the "battle of four kings with
five,** which seems to represent events of the
reign of Hammurabi of Babylon; and Hammurabi
came to the throne soon after 300.
The third Semitic migration is known as the
"Aramaean," from the region between Lebanon
and the Euphrates, where alone it established a
Great Power. The Aramaeans appear to have
begun to emerge from north-eastern Arabia about
1850, when the nomad hordes whom kings of
Babylon call "Suti" and "Achlame" are found
harrying almost the whole Euphrates frontier.
From the fact that about the same time the same
peoples begin to give trouble to Assyria, we may
infer that they passed the river, and spread through
Mesopotamia. By 1300, Shalmaneser I finds
what he calls "Arimi" pushing up the Khabur,
and threatening the upper Tigris, a close repetition
of the "Canaanite" procedure in Harran
a thousand years before. By about 1130, when
Assyria begins to recover from a phase of prolonged
disorder, there are indeed "Aramaean
Achlame" still scattered through the foothills,
118 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
from the upper Tigris to the Euphrates, but the
centre of their power is now a group of organized
states west of Carchemish, between the Euphrates
and the Western Sea. The Hittite regime in
North Syria, whose rise fills the interval between
the Canaanite movement and this one, has broken
up, and "Aramaeans" predominate in its stead.
As this Aramaean confederacy held all the desert
routes, Damascus was at its mercy, and in due
course became its capital, when it felt the need
of one. The "Syrians" who threaten Israel
from the time of David to that of Ahab, are in
fact these Aramaean people in their civilized and
sedentary stage: its later analogue is the Damascus
of the Arab Khalifs. Ubiquitous already, and
now in control of commerce, they found their
dialect accepted as an international language
from Mesopotamia to the frontier of Egypt;
and in "Syriac" speech and literature it survived
until the Arab conquest. With only minor
relapses and changes of fortune, this kingdom
of Damascus remained dominant in Syria for
nearly two hundred years.
Fourthly, and nearest to ourselves, comes the
Arab migration of the seventh century A.D. It
issued, like its predecessors, along the whole
north margin of the desert, and in the course of
a century had flooded not only Syria and Egypt,
but all North Africa and Spain; it had occupied
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 119
Sicily, raided Constance, and in France was only
checked at Poitiers in 73. Eastward it flooded
Persia, founded an empire in India, and carried
war and commerce by sea past Singapore, Its
details obviously do not concern us here; and
its history is dealt with fully in the volume in
this series on "Islam."
CHAPTER VI
THE UPLAND NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA
THE coming of the Semities introduced us to
the first great example of a dash of civilizations;
sedentary, agricultural, and eventually industrial,
on the one hand; nomad and pastoral on
the other, or at best trafficking in the surplus
produce of other people's labour. We have seen
men of pastoral habit forced to migrate into regions
where settlement and agriculture were inevitable;
where their highly specialized habits and institutions
were doomed to break down in time under
the stress of new needs and new facilities. And
we have watched this transformation effected
not once only, but repeated, each time with a
fresh flood of untamed men pouring over the
conquests of the last; intensifying the Semitic
elements in the mixed culture of the settled
120 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
regions, but never wholly obliterating its indigenous
pre-Semitic basis.
So much for the relations of Babylonia with
its desert neighbour; and of the desert peoples
in general, with the regions which border on
their home. We have now to look at the other
side of the delta.
""""^It was the tragedy of Babylonia, first, that not
all its hothouse fertility lay within the embrace
of the two rivers; second, that the Tigris, unlike
the Euphrates, passes through the foothill region
so obliquely and gradually, and receives such
large side-streams in this part of its course, that
it can support a considerable population, at a
distance far enough removed from Babylonia
to be beyond its permanent control, and yet
near enough to it to feel its spell, and to become
a standing menace to it. The first cause brought
a great power into existence in Elam; the second
permitted the rise of Assyria to independence,
rivalry, and then to empire. Both brought a
variety and a turmoil into the long history of
Babylonia, which contrast very markedly with
the habitual seclusion of Egypt.
1. ELAM
Of the beginnings of Elamite history, we know
in some ways even more than we do of BabyloNEIGHBOURS
OF BABYLONIA 131
nian. At all events, its more upland situation
has permitted us already to discover much that
in Babylonia is sealed deep down in the mud, if
indeed it exists there at all. on the site of Susa
"Shushan the Palace "'in later days, and the capital
of the Persian Empire, M. de Morgan has
had the good fortune to find nor merely a great
mass of remains and documents covering all the
chief periods of Babylonian history, but below
these again two distinct strata of neolithic settlements:
the earlier of which, as is so often
found to happen, represents the sudden rise or
arrival of an original and vigorous art and civilization;
while the later shows the same ideas
perpetuated after some crisis which has cost
them their vitality, and left them spiritless and
decadent. The pottery, as usual, is especially
instructive: its dark brown patterns, painted
on a pale ground, partly imitating basketry and
textiles, partly rendering plants and animals
with childish simplicity, might at first sight be
compared with the painted wares of the period
of awakening in Egypt. But the style is quite
different: and resembles moreover in a rather
striking way a few widely scattered series which
are all that have been secured hitherto from a
very ill-explored area; from a neolithic site underlying
the Hittite castle at Sakje-Guezi in
North Syria; from the surface of early mounds
122 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
in Cappadocia, and from low levels of the Hittite
capital there at Boghaz-keui; and, more surprising
still, from an important site, also neolithic, at
Anau on the northern edge of the Persian plateau,
looking over into Turkestan; and at a number of
points scattered over the flat lowland on the
north side of the Black Sea, and thence into the
Balkan Peninsula as far south as Macedonia and
Thessaly,
It is easy to lay undue stress on the similarities
between stages of art which are all elementary:
but widely separated as these sites are, they seem
to represent an area which is definite and (if
continuous) intelligible: for it is an area closely
similar to that which would be covered by any
attempt to express on a map the dispersal of the
group of peoples whom the Greeks called Scythians
and Sacae; or the distribution of any fact
of culture which the mediaeval world got from the
Turks and Tartars. Geographically speaking in
fact, we seem to be dealing with the record of a
dispersal of people in a neolithic stage of culture,
but with a fairly well formed tradition of decorative
art already: a dispersal which had its starting-
point, like the Turkish and Tartar invasion,
on the grassland north of the Mountain Zone*
and penetrated outside this grassland, westwards
beyond the Danube and south-westward as fai
as the Euphrates, and even into Asia Minor,
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 123
Similar distributions in other departments of
culture will come before us later on, in Chapter
IX.
The analogy, rather than likeness, of the
Egyptian pottery is of value in this, that, as we
saw, it was at about this stage of development
that the Nile-men seem to have first taken
seriously to irrigation and intensive agriculture:
and further, that in Egypt one of the first
sequels to this new application of their energies
was a marked decline in those arts which had
been their pride hitherto. Just such a sequence
we seem to have in the neolithic strata of Susa,
and it is permissible to ask whether the decline
of handicraft which M. de Morgan records may
not be the symptom that the reclamation of the
valley-sides and fenland of the Elainite region
was already under way. The fact that no such
phase is represented as yet, even by casual potsherds,
on any Babylonian site except Nippur,
suggests that Elam was already past this stage
when Babylonian reclamation began; and this
in turn helps us at last to understand how it is
that Babylonian civilization as a whole seems to
start so abruptly and full-grown. It had had
indeed to start full-grown, with features acquired
elsewhere, because, like the dynastic culture of
Egypt, it was based upon an economic and geographical
situation which had been brought into
124 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
existence by the intellect and effort of men already
well advanced in elementary culture. The transitional
phase will be found, if anywhere, in the
more lowland sites of Elam, where the first experiments
had to be made along the hill-ward mar^
gin of the great swamp. Other such experiments,
in the valley bed of the Euphrates above Hit
we have already been led to assume (p. 9) to
account for differences which appear from th*
first between Accad and the Sumerian south.
But Sumeriaii Babylonia, though it probably
owed its creation to what we may fairly now call
Elamite enterprise, was soon to outrun it in
advancement, and in due course to repay its
obligation, though not always with very good will.
After these comparisons of the cultures east
and west of the Tigris in regard to their origin
and relationship, we come now to watch them in
interaction. Elam, like Babylonia, was a geographical
region, not a state. It contained a
number of cities, some upland, like Susa, which
has yielded all the detailed evidence we have as
yet; some maritime, and probably engaged in
oversea trade like Babylonian Erech: some, lowland
and fenland settlements like Babylon and
Lagash. The states, like those of Babylonia, had
their own material interests, their own friendships
and feuds, their own ideals of conduct and
beliefs about the will of heaven. But in addition
NEIGHBOURS OP BABYLONIA 15
they clearly maintained a type of civilization
which had a strong common likeness, and developed
strong contrasts with that which prevailed
beyond the Tigris.
There were also two standing sources of trouble
between the two regions. First, Babylonia is
practically devoid of stone, of wood with the
exception of palm and willow, and of metals
of any kind. Elam abounds in all these, and
Susa in particular is the key to some of the best
and most accessible. More than this, Elam held
a practical monopoly, for nowhere else beyond
the lower Tigris is there water transport, or
even a valley road, like those offered by the Kerkheh
and Karun: the nearest alternative sources,
in fact, are in Assyria, some three hundred miles
away. Here, then, was a "Naboth's vineyard'*
to tempt any Babylonian king who thought he
was strong enough.
Secondly, the course of the Tigris has always
been liable to sudden, violent, and extensive
alteration; and if, as seems probable, this swift
and nTmnn.TiAgft5i.KTft stream was the customary
boundary between the two regions, it is dear
that in the course of centuries its vagaries would
raise questions of ownership which could only be
settled by war. At the same time, though approximately
ixiarginal in its upper course, the Tigris
ceased to be so where its delta merged with those
126 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
of the Elamite rivers. Here Babylonian conditions
extended, so to speak, outside conventional
Babylonia. We may compare the embarrassments
of Rome in her dealings with Cisapline
Gaul, this side and that side of the Po; and
with the tribes of the valley of the Rhine. The
economic frontier of Babylonia is at the edge
of the alluvial land; and alluvium beyond Tigris
was liable to be Babylonia irredempta.
These were the main conditions under which
the long rivalry was pursued. How it was pursued,
and with what effects on either side, is a
matter of historical record, of which some chapters
are already dear; the balance of power
depended on the extent to which the forces of
either could be co-ordinated in one efficient hand.
. ASSYRIA
The other upland peril of Babylonia came
ever from the north. Unlike the upper Euphrates,
the Tigris, after exit from the high mountains
and before it skirts the desert, traverses about a
hundred miles of open, cultivable country, and
receives there several of its largest tributaries.
These also have fertile valleys, and the last of
them, the Lesser Zab, offers also a frontier against
raiders from the south-east.
The lower half of this region is hotter, drier,
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 127
tind far less extensively fertile than the northern;
but it is this, nevertheless, which first became
known to people from downstream, and was
permanently settled by them. Here, therefore,
Jies the district whose regional deity, Asshur,
i originally (it seems) the tribal god of its Semitic
conquerors, becomes the national patron of all
Assyria, as his people made good their mastery
over the rest. By comparison with Babylonia,
or even with the later Nineveh, it is a hard land,
hedged by harder still; and it bred hard men and
a hard political creed. Asshur was a stern friend,
and a ruthless enemy; no Assyrian monarch
dared ascribe his achievements but to the command
and the ruling of Asshur. Was Asshur
angry? then the best-planned strategy would
go awry. No aggression was too unprovoked, no
atrocity too cruel, to be perpetuated on the
enemies of "Asshur, my good Lord/* No ancient
nation not even Rome has practised realpolitik,
as modern Germany calls it, with the
callous fanaticism, the sheer indifference to
humane pretences, which mark Assyrian warfare
and, still more, Assyrian diplomacy. What its
expectant victims thought of it is written large
in Jewish prophecy.
When and why the Semites first occupied
Assyria is not clear; but the conquest certainly
preceded the time of Hammurabi, who held
128 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Assyria as a garrisoned province; and it may
very well have been part of either or both of
the first two Semitic movements. It is still less
dear what the conquerors found there. Probably
it was a simple upland culture like that of
early Elam, only little removed from the neolithic
phase. What the Semites brought with
them was knowledge and organization. With
experience won in Babylonia, they practised
extensive irrigation; they exploited metals and
timber in the hills, rapidly dominated the moister
upper valley, civilized its Kurdish occupants,
and completely interbred with them. National
physiognomy, and (no less) the national behaviour,
has changed so little hereabouts that we may
fairly apply this modern name. When the Kurd
breaks loose, as he is occasionally encouraged to
do, his methods of diplomacy, of warfare, still more
of "pacification," are the simple methods of old
Assyria, little aggravated by the use of gunpowder.
The architecture of the Assyrians is the brickwork
of Babylonia, faced heavily with sculptured
stone, the doorwarys guarded by monstrous
human-headed bulls; everywhere are scenes and
long cuneiform inscriptions glorifying Asshur
and the king. Their art, Babylonian at bottom,
gains in technical skill, but forfeits originality
to the sombre realism of the national temper.
Only in its last days does it borrow, perhaps from
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 129
the far west, a new grace, and joy in the natural
beauty of landscape, horses, hounds, and hunted
lions, which strike us as almost modern.
The Assyrian garrison of Hammurabi stands
isolated, before a long period of which we still
know nothing. Later Assyrian kings trace their
dynasty to a crisis not long after 000 B.C.,
probably the point at which Kassite pressure
in the south cost Hammurabi's successors their
suzerainty. Soon after 1400 there is a treaty
between Assyria and a Kassite king; then a marriage
alliance with Amenhotep IV of Egypt, a
court conspiracy fostered by Babylon, and a
punitive raid by King Assurballit, which placed
a puppet-king, Burnaburiash, on the Babylonian
throne. The letters of Burnaburiash to Amenhotep
IV form part of the famous archives of
TeU-el-Amatoa (p. 154). Other wars before
1800 are the prelude to two decisive events; the
first Assyrian aggressions that we can trace, up
the Tigris northward, and westward towards the
Euphrates, in the reign of Shalmaneser I, the
re-founder if not the creator of Nineveh; and
a formal conquest of Babylonia about 1275.
The old city of Babylon*was destroyed, and the
statue of its god Marduk carried off to Assyria,
like the "Ark of God" to Philistia, and Juno of
Veii to Borne. But the conqueror had constructive
designs. Babylon was splendidly re-built,
130 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
and a new canal was cut from the Tigris, to
irrigate a large stretch of country, and improve
communications with the new master's home.
The impression created by this achievement in
Western Asia may be judged from the promptness
with which Egypt and its Hittite enemies
(p. 156), who had been in op'en war in 1826,
struck hands in 1271 as allies for attack and defence.
Then, after a long tussel, with alternate
successes, for more than a century, the expulsion
of the Kassites from Babylon, and the long
anarchy which followed there, gave to Assyria
the first of three chances of empire, and allowed
its armies to reach the Mediterranean seaboard,
penetrate into Asia Minor, and speak on equal
terms with the King of Egypt. The hero of
these wars is Tiglath-pileser I, whose long reign
runs from about 1150 to 1100. The occasion of
the subsequent decline is quite obscure; its duration
is more than a century.
The second empire of Assyria begins about
950, and falls to pieces a little before 800. The
third, widest and most splendid of all, begins
with the usurpation of Tiglath-pileser HI in
745, attains its climax about 670, and comes
to a tragic end in the years immediately before
600. Its conquests, divided between its allied
conquerors, both ancient enemies, as we shall
see, formed (1) an empire of the Medes, mainly
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 131
northern and upland, with Assyria itself in the
foreground, and large possibilities of conquests
or reverses in Asia Minor, which Assyria had
raided but never subdued; and (&) a new Babylonia;
the revolted Assyrian viceroy of Babylon
claiming the reversion of all the Syrian fringe of
Arabia, and the right to deal with Egypt if he
chose.
Into this balance of power, ingeniously devised,
and on the whole justified by its effects,
it was the fortune of Cyrus of Persia to plunge,
uncommitted, a bolt from the blue, or as Herodotus
says of him "his own forerunner"; with
a policy of re-union for all, under kings and
customs of their own; and, over all, the Great
King, literally "King of Kings/' ruling from
Shushan the Palace, an ancient Elamite capital.
"Who Cyrus was, and in what way he came to
be king over the Persians," we may still read
best in the pages of old Herodotus. For the
detailed chronicles of Assyrian rule we must
refer to special books of history (p. 253). But
the main features and origins of those other
states, the Medes, New Babylonia, and the
tangled "Nearer West" in Syria and Asia Minor,
we shall best bring into one field of view, if we
analyze those regions from the point of view of
their contact with Assyria itself.
With the rise of Assyria to political imporTHE
DAWN OF HISTORY
tance we begin to have dealings with a power
which had a positive foreign policy, and more
than one foreign objective: and the difficulty
which confronts the historian of this power is
to do justice to a people which appeared on the
scene late, after most of the surrounding countries
had made their first contact with one another,
and achieved a distribution of authority
and spheres of influence. Like other late-comers,
Assyria seems to have been first used and exploited
by its neighbours; then respected and
feared, as its power grew and its determination
was realized. Like England in the sixteenth
century, and United Germany in our own day,
Assyria seems to have discovered rather suddenly
that it had claims to a c
*place[in the sun **;
and to have worked with notable determination
and great foresight to secure this place for itself:
though not without severe set-backs, andmorethan
onecollapse<which might well have seemed decisive.
Omitting details, and concentrating attention
on the broadest outlines, we reduce the perennial
problems of any possible state in the geographical
position of Assyria to three: the
problems of Babylonia, of the Northern Highland,
and of the Nearer West. So long as Assyria
could keep these three sets .of enemies apart,
and deal with them in detail or play them off
against each other,jthere was some hope of sueNEIGHBOURS
OF BABYLONIA 133
cess. If any two of them joined forces, the situation
became serious for Assyria. If the entente
included all three, disaster was at hand; and it
was a triple entente of this kind that at last
brought Nineveh to its fall.
South-eastwards, as we have seen, at a distance
of some two hundred miles from Nineveh,
lies Babylonia; on its flank, Elam; and behind
Elam, untamed highlands, between the Persian
Gulf and the habitable section of the plateau
from Shiraz to Kirman. The latter region was
occupied (probably during the Kassite rule in
Babylonia) by a vigorous stock of new immigrants
from the northern grassland, to whose
special history we shall return in Chapter IX.
But Babylonia was the key to it all. Assyria,
as we have seen, first comes into history at all
as a dependency of a Babylonian Empire, in the
great days of Hammurabi. The momentary
climax of Assyrian splendour was reached in 668
when Esarhaddon named his two sons viceroys
of Babylonia and Assyria, in what seemed at
last to be a "united kingdom." The two fatal
blunders of Assyrian management were, first,
the foolish attempt of Sennacherib Qust before)
to annihilate Babylon, and then, as it turned
out, this very attempt of Esarhaddon to humour
it; for it confessed the despair of the conqueror,
revealed Babylonia to itself, and resulted in
134 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
successive revolts Shamassumukin in 664 and
Nabopolassar in 625 and a New Babylonian
Empire before 600, on the ruins of the Assyrian.
The second problem of Assyria lies in the
north-east, among the mountaineers of Armenia
and the Zagros range. As long as Assyria was
weak and poor, a land of second-rate agriculture
and negligible trade, there was little to tempt
the rough ancestors of the hill Kurds to raid the
Tigris midland, still less to sink their feuds to do
so. But just in proportion as protection was
assured to fanner and merchant by the strong
hand in Nineveh, enterprise spread and wealth
accumulated; trouble broke out, or was expected
to break out, on the borders; and one great
reign after another is found either to begin, or
to be soon interrupted, by punitive expeditions
among the mountains.
Twice, in a long history, the catalogue of
police-operations is ennobled by a serious adversary.
In the second or ninth-century phase
of Assyrian growth, we hear of a great kingdom
of Urartu with its centre on Lake Van in Armenia:
it was a monarchy with a regular dynasty,
commanding the allegiance of tributary kings,
now more, now fewer in number. It had its own
language and national religion; but it had borrowed
the cuneiform script, and its art was
deeply influenced by that of Assyria itself. The
NEIGHBOURS OF BABYLONIA 135
thorn in its side, which Assyria eventually used
to disable it, is a hostile power to the west, in the
direction of Asia Minor. The same geographical
region regains political unity and military importance
in the seventh and sixth centuries; but
now its rulers are different. They speak a new
language, connected with the Phrygian speech
of recent intruders from Europe into Asia Minor:
and they rely apparently on western support,
instead of warring against the west like the old
kings of Van. We shall recur to their meaning
in Chapter IX.
The other highland danger comes into existence
in the same dark period as veils the change
of masters by Lake Van. When Sargon of
Assyria invades the Zagros highlands east of
his own country in 713, he records among the
more obstinate of his enemies one Daiakku, who
bears a Median name; and Greek tradition,
which begins in this period to be worthy of respect,
dates Deiokes, the first historic king of
the Medes, within the same generation. They
are probably the same person. How long the
Medes had already occupied their intermont
plateaux it is not easy to say: but their language
belongs to the same Iranian group as that of the
grassland intruders into the southern plateaux
behind Elam (p. 200), and their civilization,
when we come to know it better, is also in essen136
THE DAWN OF HISTOEY
tials the same. Assyria's constant apprehensions
during its last century of empire, the bewildering
confusion of chiefs and dans in its Median
wars, and the rapid growth of aggressiveness
among the highland folk, suggests that some
new element came to the front about this time;
either from beyond, or by successful effort in
the highland itself. It is notable, too, that in
spite of their western origin, the language of the
new masters of Lake Van belongs to the same
Indo-European family as that of the Medes and
their Iranian kinsmen; and also that, even further
west, new aggressive states had been forming
in eastern Asia Minor, "Muski" (p. 158), and
then, later, "Gimmirri" (p. 245), in which some
at least of the tribes were migratory if not actually
nomad. It was the third historical king of the
Medes, Kyaxares, who, according to Herodotus,
was the chief ally of Babylon in the deathgrapple
with Nineveh.
CHAPTER VIE
THE DAWN ALONG THE LAND-BRIDGES
THE third problem of Assyrian foreign policy
was in the Nearer West. From the Mesopotamian
point of view, as from that of Greek
THE LAND-BRIDGES 137
systematic geography, which was in great part
based on Mesopotamian ideas, the Nearer West
consisted of two divergent causeways or landbridges,
projecting from the continental mass of
Asia, and leading respectively in the direction of
other land-masses, which both Greek and modern
geography know as Europe and Africa. Our
wider knowledge shows us that while the northern
of these causeways, Asia Minor, is in fact just
such a promonotory, roughly four-sided, and communicating
eventually with the Balkan promonotory
of Europe at the Hellespontine strait,
the other neither runs westerly, nor is peninsular
at all. It does, however, consist essentially of
a narrow causeway of highland and coast-plain,
running from the Gulf of Antioch to that of Suez,
between the Mediterranean on the west, and the
no less dreadful sand-waves of Arabia on the
other. The ancient mistake as to its general
direction -seems to have arisen mainly, though
not wholly, through the difficulty of estimating
accurately the total amount of curvature in a
road when the way is very long and the change
of direction gradual: even in a modern city the
curvature of familiar thoroughfares like the
Victoria Embankment, or the High at Oxford,
can lead to similar errors. The goal of this
southern causeway is Egypt, known vaguely
perhaps in Babylonia in the time of the Kassite
138 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
kings since a monument of the Hyksos King
Khyan has been found near Bagdad but not
a serious factor in Mesopotamian politics till the
conquests of the Eighteenth Dynasty, completed
about 1500, brought the Egyptian frontier up to
the Euphrates.
1. SraiA
All this region had originally a population
racially akin, as it still mainly is, to that of the
Mountain Zone; its civilization is mainly based
on laborious upland agriculture, but it had acquired
very early a veneer of Babylonian civilization,
with cuneiform writing and habitual use
of seal-cylinders; and it had been thoroughly
over-run by the same "Canaanite" swarm of
Semitic people as had established the dynasty
of Hammurabi in Babylon and a Semitic garrison
in Assyria. Some think, as we have seen (p.
116) that the Hyksos conquest of Egypt may
have been a further adventure along this southjern
land-bridge. Three principal regions along
this southward avenue, which in general we may
describe as Syria, are strongly enough characterized
in natural features and resources to determine
the course of their human history in
three distinct ways, southern, central, and northern.
Palestine lies in the south, Phoenicia and
Damascus are in the centre, and North Syria
THE IAND-BRIDGES 189
includes all between Phoenicia, the Euphrates,
and the Mountain Zone.
The southernmost section of the Syrian coast
is probably the only part of the ancient world
of which most people have any knowledge at all:
and they are as familiar as they are with its
features, and some parts of its history, only
because here lies the cradle of that ancient
nation which next to the Greeks has most profoundly
set its mark on the modern world; the
ismall confederacy of kindred tribes which called
Ithemselves the "Children of Israel/' Their
neighbours called them "Hebrews/' a name
which means simply "people from beyond"; and
was applied in early times to more than one band
of nomads tempted "across Jordan" by the
glamour of the "good land flowing with milk and
honey" which lay between that gorge and the
sea. A good land truly it was, once you passed
the sweltering jungle in the gorge, and climbed
the steep ravines of the "mountains of Judah*"
Even this landward face of the highland lies
near enough to the Great Sea to catch some dew
and winter rain: and on the moors there is pasture
in plenty. The seaward slope is long and
at first gradual, with moorland still, parkland in
the glens, and occasional wider hollows with rich
soil, deep-seated springs, and margins terraced
by centuries of effort, for vineyards, olive-groves,
140 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
and corn. Nearer the coast, the slopes are
steeper and there are defensible narrows in
the seaward valleys: Sochoh, Rephaim, and the
Vale of Elah. Then, along an old coast line
running nearly north and south, the limestones
end abruptly, almost in cliffs, and you look
out over a coast plain which was to become the
home of the Philistines, but long before had
been cornland and steppe-pasture; richest, because
more securely watered, in the north under
the flank of Carmel; widest and barest where
it fades away southward into the "desert of the
wanderings,'* and rises imperceptibly to Sinai.
A highway from Egypt used to follow the coast;
in Israelite tradition it was the "Way of the
Philistines.
5 '
Northward, the same road becomes
the "Way of the East." Climbing from the
coast plain by a defensible pass at Megiddo,
through the Carmel ridge, and under Mount
Gilboa, it crosses the head waters of the Kishon,
where the plain of Esdraelon makes a great gap
between the hills of Judah and of Galilee. Then,
skirting the lake, "by the way of the sea, beyond
Jordan," under the landward slopes of Hermon,
it makes a straight course to Damascus.
Into this "good land" the Sons of Israel were
to come, and this is perhaps the moment to note
their fate when they arrived. For the geographer
it is the scientific interest, for the hisTHE
LAND-BRIDGES 141
torian it is the tragedy, of the Chosen People,
that they should have been led thus to exchange
their nomad, pastoral, patriarchal life, with its
simple needs and economy, and almost complete
seclusion from the troubles of the world, for a
Land of Promise which like all the paradises of
the Nearer East only yields its fruit to arduous
toil and anxious "thought for the morrow";
where the man without capital is ruined by a
late frost; where hired labour is the sole alternative
to slavery; where even the "good land" can
only be won by fighting and held by intrigue
and oppression of the conquered, "hewers of
wood and drawers of water"; and where "Midianites
going down into Egypt," and Syrians
"going up to Damascus," and Phoenicians from
the coast cities, display their wares along the flank
of a great highway, or peddle them among the
villages, and tempt to luxury and overspending.
Studied, in fact, in its economic and political
aspect, the history of the. Chosen People, after
its entry into the Promised Land, is a tragedy;
for it is the attempt of intrusive desert-bred
folk to maintain their patriarchal customs and
traditional exclusiveness in surroundings thoroughly
sedentary, agricultural, and highly social.
To "learn the works of the heathen" meant comfort
and material advancement, at the price of
Intercourse, and sooner or later amalgamation
142 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
with them; to abstain meant abstention from
temporal power, no less than from the gifts of
the "daughter of Tyre": it meant that the
world would go op. without you; that you would
be "a stranger and a sojourner" even in the Land
of Promise. By what various compromises and
expedients the Sons of Israel or sections of them
attempted to solve this problem of their destiny,
it is the task of Jewish History to record.
Here it is enough to state in brief the rules of the
game, to set the board, and lay outjthe pieces.
For the rest, Isra-el! "God rules."
But the Israelite settlement in Palestine is
only one, and a rather late episode, in the history
of this southern land-bridge. It belongs, according
to the traditional chronology, to the confused
centuries, 1200-1000 which succeed the
collapse of the New Empire of Egypt and the
dose of its Syrian protectorate. As the language
of Israel is of the "Canaanite" type, we must
probably regard the invasion "from beyond
Jordan" as a very belated backwash of the great
"Canaanite" movement.
It was very long before this, however, that
those other "Canaanite" hordes swept westward,
who had penetrated to seaward of the double
mountain chains, Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon,
of which the hills of Judah and the mountains of
Moab and Bashan are the humbler southward
THE LAND-BRIDGES 143
prolongations. Here, in a narrow strip, almost
& shelf, of torrent-watered coast, they founded,
or more probably re-occupied, a string of defensible
ports, on rocky capes or inshore islands,
where fishing and garden-agriculture went handin-
hand. Under Semitic masters, this strip
became Phoenicia; but its great prosperity
ijomes late, after long obscurity. Quite early
in Egyptian history, however, under the Sixth
nnd again under the Twelfth Dynasty, we find
Byblus, one of these towns, in commerce with
the Nile for timber and for drugs. The timber
is easily explained by the "cedars of Lebanon'*
which towered above the coast. The other
transaction suggests that Byblus was in early
touch with Damascus, an ever-green oasis which,
watered from Anti-Libanus, projects like a seapromontory
into the desert margin, and has
been an immemorial haven of the chief caravan
route from Babylonia to Syria and Egypt. We
do not know for certain whether, thus early,
Byblus traded by land or by sea. There was
certainly a good and ancient road down the
Palestinian coast, as well as northwards past
Antioch into Cilicia; but timber floats, and, as
it must needs be seasoned, it is seldom traded in
a hurry; the larger logs also cannot go far on
a donkey. There is therefore every probability
that this, at all events, went raftwise to Egypt,
144 THE DAWN OF HISTOBY
in the sailing season, manned by a few fishermen.
The prevalent wind along the Syrian coast is
obliquely southwards and in-shore: as favourable,
therefore, to the transport of drift-wood,
as it was perilous to other navigation. Egypt once
reached habitually, and discovered to be the
woodless country that it is, intercourse with a
coast so rich in timber rapidly grew. It was
reinforced, in time, by trade in other home-grown
produce, particularly wine and oil, perhaps also
in fresh fruit, as later; by copper from Cyprus
just within sight to the westward; by silver
from the far north a rarity in Egypt as late as
the Eighteenth Dynasty and by an increasing
volume of oriental spices, confections, and manufactures.
In return, was there not "corn in
Egypt"? and papyrus for cordage, and fine
linen, and ivory; with quaint charms and ornaments
in the wonderful blue glaze, assured averters
of evil, "so the priests told us," and highly
priced. Egypt, we must remember, was in ancient
limes, as under Saracen rule, one of the
"manufacturing countries" of the world. Labour
was cheap; flax, papyrus, and other raw
materials indigenous, and in some instances a
monopoly; skill and* capital were abundant in
its kings' palaces. Damascus was another such
centre, with one of the earliest steel-industries,
at least as far back as the Eighteenth Dynasty:
THE LAND-BRIDGES 145
and the Phoenician towns themselves competed
with both Egypt and Damascus in due time.
But until the close of the Hyksos period,
about 1500, we have no history of Phoenicia.
Only under the Eighteenth Dynasty do we
see its cities, rich, self-contained, autonomous,
paying little more than nominal service to the
king of Egypt, constantly quarrelling among
themselves, and quick to change their allegiance
if they can score a point over a rival and neighbour,
or to pay court to the rising sun of Egypt's
last new enemy. Of all sea-traffic out into the
west, history is silent till the period of Assyrian
supremacy. The name "Phoenician" indeed is
used in the Homeric poems: the word, however,
is not the native name, but a Greek descriptive
term simply meaning "Redskin"; applicable
therefore to any sun-tanned sailor; and not
demonstrably applied to these particular sailors
at all. In the oldest Greek tradition, Homer's
"Phoenicia," when it is visited by the sea-king,
Menelaus, is something quite distinct from the
bronze-working city of Sidon; and "Phoenix" himself
is a king of Crete and grandfather of Minos.
Further north again, as it approaches and at
last adjoins the Taurus range of the mountain
zone, the structure of the Syrian upland becomes
more complicated, and widens to 01 the whole
interval between the sea and the Euphrates.
146 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
The hflls are, however, less rugged and continuous,
the rainfall is ample and less intercepted
by coast-ranges than in the Lebanon section,
and the population consequently is larger and
more generally distributed, in many valley states,
ranged in loose federations and leagues. This
foot-hill character does not of course change
appreciably if we cross the Euphrates at Samsat:
the transition from mountain to desert, however,
becomes rather more gradual, in aspect and in
climate, as we go east; and the whole region
depends less upon rain, and more upon riverwater,
as it leaves the sea-breeze behind. The
great western roads for this region, and for the
parts beyond Taurus, leave the Euphrates at
Carchemish and Samsat, not at Deir; Aleppo
plays the part of Damascus, as bazaar and middleman;
and the northern cities of Phoenicia give
outlet seaward. But westward traffic through
this region goes less by sea than along the coast
road into Cilicia, where the maritime plain is
larger than Philistia, and far better watered out
of Taurus by snow-fed rivers, whose united deltas
it is; young cousins of the upper Euphrates,
that have struck the Great Sea instead of the
desert. Prom Cilicia again, deep gorges through
tjie narrowest part of Taurus permit access to
the plateau-heart of Asia Minor, and introduce
us to the other of our two land-bridges. And
THE LAND-BRIDGES 147
as the first history of all this foot-hill region, on
both sides of the Euphrates, as well as of all Syria
and Palestine, presents it as the conquest and
battleground of an independent power from the
north-west, we must press our survey further
till we come to this power's starting point and
home.
2. ASIA MINOR AND THE HITMTES
A rough picture of Asia Minor may be given
by supposing a longish rectangle, with its east
side joined to Asia, its other three sides washed
by the sea, and its north-west corner somewhat
flattened up against an angle of Balkan Europe,
and separated from it merely by a drainagechannel
from Black Sea to Aegean, through
the Bosporus, Sea of Marmora and Dardanelles.
Within this rectangle of coasts an elevated
plateau, between oval and lozenge-shaped, fills
the centre; and is enclosed by multiple ranges
of folded mountains, which coalesce in great
mountain knots, in Armenia to the east, in Lycia
at the south-west angle, and in highland Phrygia
behind the blunt corner towards Europe. Outside
the folded ranges lie hot sheltered coastplains,
wherever drainage converges to bring
enough alluvium, in Cilicia, in Pamphylia, on
the Sea of Marmora, and between the parallel
spurs which dissect the west coast and sink down
148 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
slowly into promontories and islands beneath
the waters of the Aegean. Elsewhere the outer
slopes plunge sheer into deep sea. Of inward
drainage there is little, for the coast-hills intercept
the rain: but the Halys, rising in Armenian
snows, flows perennial westward through the
rougher half of the plateau, and then swings
northward to reach the Black Sea through a
deep gorge about the middle of the north coast.
The only incongruous feature is the river Sangarius.
Originally it was a mere coast-slope
stream emptying into the Black Sea so little
east of the Bosporus that it barely misses a gulf
of the Sea bf Marmora but now it steals all
the drainage there is, from nearly a third of the
plateau, through a deep notch cut in the northwest
corner; and offers to any one coming in
from Europe a tempting avenue into the very
heart of the peninsula. It was the avenue of
Homer's Phrygians when King Priam was young;
the route of the Cimmerians in the seventh century,
and the Galatians in the third; the highway
which bound the Eastern Empire to Constantinople;
and now it gives easy gradients for the
railway to Bagdad.
Clearly, the two main questions, the answers
to which are the history of "Little Asia," will
be these: Has it, at any time and, if so, how?
supported a people capable of holding its own
THE LANDrBRIDGES 149
as a political force? If so, and as long as that
has been so, it has been a complete barrier to
conquest, perhaps even to peaceful intercourse
between the East and Europe: and clearly if
either the East or Europe was weak enough, a
people in such a position has had the chance to
play a part in history. Or, in the other event,
has either Asia or Europe been strong enough,
and if so, when and how? either to penetrate
by intelligent exploitation this avenue between
East and West, or to throw it open by force?
Within the present limits, it is only possible to
watch the first occasion on which either of these
questions has been answered.
As the seat of a homogeneous and coherent people,
the plateau has many advantages. Though
a small district in the south-east is waterlogged,
like Persia, with salt marsh and lagoon, the
greater part is pasturable, and all the marginal
pastures can be ploughed for corn, on a prairie
scale. In one of the happiest phrases of Herodotus,
the Phrygians, who held then all the western
half of it, were "richest in sheep and richest in
crops of all the peoples that we know.*' The
encircling TuiUs are rich in minerals and timber,
and (except for the Sangarius gap) promise ample
protection: at the same time they are not here
so wide or so complicated as to harbour highland
dans powerful enough to be a danger. East
150 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
of the Halys, and embraced by its great bend,
lies a rather more rolling country, less fit for
flocks, but favourable for olive, fig, and wine:
south of it, on the foot-hills of Taurus, back to
back with Cilicia, are several small tracts fed
by summer torrents from the snow, and therefore
perennially fertile. Of these the most important
is Tyana, almost a little Damascus, with its
gorge-road to the coast. Derbe and Iconium
further west, and Caesarea Mazaca dose to the
upper Halys, repeat the same features in some
measure; and this south-central district seems
at times to have tried to coalesce.
Even after many historic invasions and resettlements,
by Europeans, Phrygians, and Galatians,
by Mediterranean Greeks, and by Mongol
nomads from Central Asia, the population of
Asia Minor preserves on the whole the characteristics
of "Alpine" man, aboriginal inhabitant
of the whole mountain zone: and its rugged
margins in Lycia, Armenia, and North Syria
exhibit this type still pure. Of early civilization
here we still know next to nothing; but the
traditional site of Troy, on the Hellespont shore,
reveals a long series of vicissitudes between
European and indigenous fashions from the end
of the neolithic age to the beginning of that of
iron (p. 165).
On the plateau itself only one site has as
THE LAND-BRIDGES 151
yet been examined thoroughly. This is Boghazkeui,
a few miles east of the middle Halys, in a
region where main lines of ancient communication
cross, some going north and south from Cilicia
to Sinope, others east and west between Mesopotamia
and Europe. Under the name of Pteria
it was the capital of a kingdom of Cappadocia
in the sixth century B.C., and before that has a
long and strenuous story, of which the main
episodes are as follows:
Cuneiform documents found recently at Boghaz-
keui itself, and at other points in Cappadocia,
reveal Babylonian merchants settled in this
region and actively engaged in trade at a period
probably not much later than the First Babylonian
Dynasty (p. 114). This is important
evidence of the extent and organization of Babylonian
commerce: still more important is it as
revealing a community at Boghaz-keui in which
it was worth while for Babylonian merchants
to reside.
This discovery gives new importance to a
reference in documents of Hammurabi's time
(p. 114) to a serious political force somewhere
beyond Taurus: to Egyptian records of a war
of the Twelfth Dynasty (perhaps about 2000 B.C.),
against a power newly aggressive in North Syria,
and believed to have arrived from the north;
to the fact that the First Babylonian Dynasty
152 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
was overthrown, somewhere about 1800, by an
invasion of a people from the north-west, along
the Euphrates, whom the Babylonians describe
as Khatti; and to Israelite traditions (incorporated
in the story of Abraham) that a "Hittite,"
as the English versions call him, held land at
Hebron in South Palestine. Lastly, "Tidal,
Lord of the North," one of the combatants in
the "battle of four kings with five," seems to
bear the same name as a known king of this
people at Boghaz-keui: whom it will simplify
matters now to call "Hittites" without further
apology. Their name under various slight disguises,
due to foreign scribes, is prominent in
the annals of Egypt from 1500 to 1200; and in
those of Assyria from 850 to 700. Their correspondence,
like all official documents of this age
outside the Nile valley, was written on clay
tablets in cuneiform script; usually in Semitic
speech, but occasionally also in local non-Semitic
idioms. Their monuments, half Babylonian
and Assyrian, but with a characteristic halfbarbaric
vigour of their own, and much picturewriting
which cannot yet be read with confidence,
are spread over the countries which they occupied,
from the Euphrates to Sardis, and as far
south as Hamath in Syria, and seem to cover the
whole period between the extreme dates given
above; some indeed may be earlier still, and
THE LAND-BRIDGES 153
others later. Clearly, therefore, in the centuries
round about 000 the Ancient East was becoming
aware of a new political factor in the north-west,
which was occupying North Syria, holding land
in South Palestine, raiding Babylonia, and causing
anxiety to Egypt under the Twelfth Dynasty.
If we could be certain of the date either of
the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt or of the First
Dynasty of Babylon, we should be able to form
an opinion of the view that has been put forward
more than once, that these Khatti or Kheta people
are either wholly or in part those foreign conquerors
whom the Egyptians knew as the Hyksos,
who form their Dynasties XIV, XV, and XVI,
and from whose rule they were delivered by the
Dynasties XVII, and XVm. Thus much at
least is certain, that the immediate sequel of
this deliverance was an Egyptian conquest of
all Syria as far as Carchemish on the Euphrates,
which has all the appearance of a war of revenge,
and at the same time a political precaution against
any further trouble of that kind. This conquest
of Syria was complete by the year 1500. It
involved the conqueror in direct diplomatic
correspondence with the Kassite Kings of Babylonia
(p. 129). It brought Egypt also face to
face with a homogeneous state called Mitanni,
occupying the whote foothill country east of the
Euphrates, and with a loose confederation of
154 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
semi-nomad Aramaeans (p. 117) rapidly encroaching
all round the north edge of the desert;
and it brought homage and tribute in 1469 from
"Hittite" states up and down in the foothills
of North Syria.
The Egyptian conquest came just in time
to relieve the kingdom of Mitanni from severe
pressure exerted simultaneously, and probably
in collusion, by its neighbours in the foot-hills,
Assyria on the east and the Hittites west of the
Euphrates. Egypt, which had no desire to
advance further, and every wish to retain what
it had won, made friends with Mitanni, and more
than one marriage was arranged between the
royal houses. But these obvious precautions
precipitated the catastrophe which they were
planned to prevent. Our evidence is from the
royal archives of Boghaz-keui, supplemented, as
the crisis approached, by the "Tell-el-Amarna
letters" of Amenhotep III and IV of Egypt.
Soon after the treaty between Egypt and Mitanni,
Subiluliuma, King of the Hittites of Cappadocia
(whom Egyptian scribes conveniently abbreviate
as Saplel), was overlord apparently of a number
of outpost baronies in North Syria. Assured
of their help, and watching his opportunity, he
flung his whole force, about 1400, upon Mitanni,
and over-ran the foothill country as far as the
Tigris; as far indeed as the conquests of his
THE LAND-BRIDGES 155
great predecessor Hattusil I, of whom unfortunately
we have little news but this bare allusion.
This closed the career of Mitanni, and totally
upset the calculations of Egypt. It also impressed
greatly the leading chiefs of the Aramaeans.
Another forward move must needs be at their
expense; so they made the best of a bad business
by throwing in their lot with the Hittites; at
first secretly, on account of allegiance only recently
sworn to Egypt; then, on detection,
openly, as a tributary state. Egypt, deserted
on all hands, made terms with the victor, and
ceded all North Syria, and this treaty was renewed
between Mursil, the second successor of
Saplel (about 1360), and Amenhotep IV, who
found himself quite cut off by hostile Aramaeans
from his hereditary friends in Babylonia, and
was rapidly losing his hold even on the coast
towns of Phoenicia, who were as hard pressed
as he through the defection of all North Syria.
Others, however, whom the Hittite victories
had taken no less by surprise, had now had time
to revise their policy. Assyria, when it had
harried Mitanni in time past, had not meant to
weaken it for Hittites to destroy. To redress
the balance, Shalmaneser I decided to scramble
for its remains: he raided about 1820 as far as
the Euphrates, and his successor invaded Commagene,
in the hills between Syria and Cappadocia
156 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
itself. About the same time Seti I, an early
king of the XIX Dynasty, claims to have
reached the Euphrates again, and his successor,
Rameses EC, certainly re-occupied the Lebanon.
The situation was critical: and the Hittites, who
by this time had overlordship over almost the
whole of Asia Minor, gathered all their allies,
including Lycians from the far south-west, and
Dardanians from the neighbourhood of Troy,
and met the Egyptian army in 1287 in a great
battle at Kadesh in North Syria. Rameses
claims to have won; but he did not pursue his
victory; and as the Aramaeans took opportunity
to revolt from the Hittites, the truce which resulted
was probably needed on both sides. It
was followed in 1271 by a most elaborate treaty
between Rameses and the king of Boghaz-keui,
Hattusil IE (whom Rameses calls Khetasar)
providing for a frontier to be delimited in the
Lebanon, for extradition of evil-doers, and for
offensive and defensive alliance against whom?
The king of Babylon, for one, was uneasy, and
sent to Boghaz-keui to enquire. Two possibilities
are open. Hattusil had occasion about this
time to use very firm language to a Babylonian
pretender in reference to an unnamed enemy:
and this enemy can hardly be other than Assyria,
which had lately been so active westward.
The other danger was a new one; Europe, as
THE LAND-BRIDGES 157
we shall see again, more clearly (p. 08), was
emptying itself with violent spasms into the
Mediterranean, and not least into north-west
Asia Minor. The Hittite Empire was being
attacked in the rear.
On this ground, Rameses too had his own
cause for anxiety: for "the islands were restless,
disturbed among themselves," and he may well
have foreseen the great sea-raid which in fact
befell Egypt soon after his death. In such an
event, the friendship of the overlord of Asia
Minor and the maritime 1/ykM and Dardanui
and their friends, who in fact took part in that
raid, would be invaluable to Egypt. Quite apart
from all this, however, Syria was all the while
a hot-bed of intrigue, and only a clear rule about
extradition could prevent the "high contracting
parties" from being worried into war by the
quarrels of little men.
Their frontiers and approaches thus secured,
Hattusil and his successors could turn to organize
their empire: their great land-register, and
their treaty with the client state of Aleppo are
among the clay tablets of Boghaz-keui. They
had an outer ring of self-governing allies; closerlinked
subjects, who paid tribute, and were supervised
from court; and large domains administered
directly by the king. Of their social conditions
all that we see clearly is that women had some158
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
of the same high status and economic freedom
as in old Babylonia, and down to Greek times
in backward Lycia; it is the same, it seems, whereever
agriculture and industry (where brains and
perseverance count for so much more than strength
and animal courage) have been dominant long
enough to shape institutions into conformity.
The Hittite Empire drew rein not a moment
too soon. If, as the Greeks believed, the Trojan
War began about 1194, the Phrygian invasion
of the plateau, and their great fight with the "henpecker"
Amazons, must have occurred about
forty years before: i.e., about 1230, within a
year or two of the great sea-raid which fell on
Egypt under Merenptah. And when another
sea-raid, and a wholesale land-migration also,
fell upon Syria about 1#00, and was only beaten
off from Egypt by the courage and diplomacy of
Barneses HI, the Hittites who took part in it
were not the leaders, but colleagues of subordinates
of peoples with Aegean and West-Anatolian
names. Of these newcomers, the people
who come most into view are the Muski, ancestors
probably of the Moschoi of Greek geography.
Still migratory, by 1170 they were threatening
the Assyrian border, and (in spite of promises)
remained dangerous till Tiglath-pileser I drove
them back "as far as the Upper Sea," which in
this context may well mean the Black Sea. This
THE LAND-BRIDGES 159
was in 110, and it gave the fragments of Assyria's
old enemy, the Hittite Empire, a chance to
revive. Their chief city now, however, was not
Boghaz-keui, but the fortress of Carchemish on
the Euphrates, which seems to have survived untaken
when Tiglath-pileser's army swept through
the North Syrian baronies to the Lebanon and
the Phoenician coast. This first Assyrian conquest,
however, was short-lived: formal acknowledgments
may have been paid to Nineveh by
states west of the Euphrates, for some generations,
but a revolt about 1060 released Syria, and broke
an Assyrian army at Carchemish.
The Assyrian conquerors of the ninth century
had, therefore, all the work of the eleventh to
do over again. But the conditions of the problem
were the same. Between Tigris and Euphrates
lay a weak, peaceable, mainly agricultural
region, in the foothills of old Mitanni. Beyond
the river, Aramaean Semites, pastoral and only
half-sedentary, round the fringe of the desert,
respected only the merchant-princes of their own
blood, Benhadad and Hazael, who ruled and intrigued
and made catspaws of their neighbours
through the bazaar politics of Damascus. Upstream
from these, Carchemish, impregnable for
centuries, but easy to evade in the warfare of
those days, "kept the bridge," so to speak, in
front of the Hittite baronies, and took toll of
160 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
the road to Aleppo. Of the foothill baronies,
Hamath would seem to have been the chief,
and Aleppo a rival of Damascus. In time of need,
it seems, they could call for help on kinsmen
beyond Taurus: but there is no longer a Hittite
empire. Muski and Phrygians were there to
stay; lowland Cilicia, and Commagene in the
hills, and Tyana beyond them, had cut themselves
loose from Cappadocian Boghaz-keui; and by
the end of the eighth century there was an independent
king in Sardis as well.
Seawards of Aleppo and Hamath, the Phoenician
towns, which had been old Semitic centres
before the Aramaeans moved, took a new lease
of life since troubles began "in the islands," and
had now their counter-parts oversea in Carthaginian
Africa. -Temporal power they could
forego, in their all but landless home, for now
they had the power of the purse, the merchant's
freedom. "Syria is so placed," says M. Maspero,
"that it cannot be independent except on condition
that is has no powerful neighbours:" but
the converse also is true. In Israel, the southern
cousins of the Phoenicians used the treble
respite offered by the decay of Egypt, the disruption
of the Hittites, and the temporary relapse
of Assyria, to extend a protectorate over all the
country from the Euphrates to the "river of
Egypt": they levied rich blackmail, and went
THE LAND-BRIDGES 161
partner with Hiram, King of Tyre, King of the
Sidonians, in rich traffic through the "south
country" and down the Red Sea. In Jerusalem,
even the northern silver, a rarity in Egypt still, was
"nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon."
But in the moment of climax, and apparently
on some matter of finance and of the division of
its gains, the Israelite confederacy quarrelled
within itself. It had indeed never been more
than a confederacy of highlanders, though two
great generals and a great diplomatist, Saul,
David, and Solomon, had made it a monarchy
and an empire. So its "Syrian," that is to say
Aramaean vassals seceded, and carved their
kingdom of Damascus out of the wreck of the
protectorate. only the military genius of Omri,
the brilliant marriage of Ahab with the "Daughter
of Tyre," and the commercial speculations of
Jehoshaphat nearly brought the two groups once
more together. But in the battle of Ramothgilead
the Syrians won; the revolt of Jehu was
attributed to the same anti-dynastic motives as
the accession of Hazael; and the new Red Sea
flotilla was "broken at Ezion-geber by the east
wind."
How Assyria, in the ninth and eighth centuries,
was able to carve an empire out of this disordered
and complicated world, witibi its three outstanding
problems, in Babylonia, the mountains, and
162 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
the coastlands, is a matter not of the dawn, but
of the full light of history.
But how Phoenicia succeeded now in recouping
oversea the losses of her disordered land
trade; and, further, why her cities had not done
this long before, is still within our province; and
to this question we now must turn.
CHAPTER
THE DAWN IN" THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
NOWHERE have the results of archaeological
excavation produced so complete a revolution
in our idea of the course of events, as in the
cradle of Greek civilization. For Egypt and for
Babylonia we have always had at least an outline,
inherited by Greek writers from the later
Egyptians and Babylonians themselves, imperfect,
distorted, exaggerated, and often overlaid with
fanciful allegory and folk tale; but Herodotus
could write about Menes, and Cheops, and Sesostris,
and give some approach to a chronology,
based essentially, as we now know, on much
the same kind of evidence as ours. Babylonia,
indeed, is a rather nearer parallel to Greece; for
though Sargon of Accad was known to the learned
world of new Babylonia, and Hammurabi and
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 163
Kudurlagamer figure in the early traditions of
Israel, continuous history can hardly be said to
go back to the First Dynasty of Babylon, and
synchronisms only appear under the Kassite
kings. But in Greece, continuous history begins
with the Trojan War, or at best with the coming
of the Achaeans. As Professor Ridgeway picturesquely
contends, if the Minos of Greek tradition
was the tyrant whom Theseus overcame
(as the more popular legends tell us), and was
the grandfather of Idomeneus and the contemporary
of Pelops and Laomedon, he was rather
the destroyer than the creator of the "Minoan"
civilization. At best, if we follow non-Homeric
versions which make him the nephew of Cadmus,
Bang of Thebes, he mounts back only into the
eighth, or last but one, of the nine main subdivisions
of the
" Minoan"
age. All before this,
for the Greeks, and for ourselves till lately, lay
in the black darkness of
"
Aryan
" and "
Pelasgian
"
mythologies.
The new knowledge has of course been gathered
gradually; and while it was being accumulated,
frequent attempts were made to show its relation
to Greek history as it was being taught in schools.
Each theory, of course, was at best an attempt
to explain what was known at the time: and it
was only rarely that the historian either realized
fully all that was known, even at the time of
164 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
writing, or could refrain from exaggerating
the importance of whatever was newest or most
upsetting among the data that he had. The
same thing was happening, of course, in Egyptology,
and the other departments; but as these
sections of history suffer less from "practical
applications" in the cause of education, discrepancies
between hypotheses, though no less
glaring, and quite as justifiable scientifically,
came less into the popular eye. The same thing
was happening, too, in progressive sciences such
as chemistry or natural history. It is only because
the popular mind was possessed much longer and
more obstinately by its childish idea that in the
human sciences all, or at least enough, was authoritatively
known already, that archaeological
discrepancies were not also acclaimed as symptoms
of the "advance of knowledge" or the
"progress of research." It is only fair therefore
to predecessors, from whose honest work and
fertile suggestions one is compelled to differ, by
evidence inaccessible when they were writing,
and to one's own point of view, which is just as
likely td be modified by fresh facts before long,
to introduce at this point a very brief outline of
the principal stages of discovery in this region,
with some insistence on the order in which, and
the precise dates at which, the several facts became
available to the learned, and also to the
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 165
popular world. only thus can earlier summaries
be read intelligently or criticized with justice.
Let it be remembered also that the following
pages were written in the summer of 1911, and
without knowledge of discoveries which are imminent,
perhaps in this very autumn, through
operations now planned or undertaken, particularly
in Macedonia and Thrace, on the west coast
of Asia Minor, and in certain parts of North Africa.
Apart from casual finds, and a few premature
excavations in Melos, Thera, Rhodes, or Cyprus,
the prehistoric archaeology of the Aegean begins
with Schliemann's attempt in 1872-4 to find
"Homer's Troy'* in the mound of Hissarlik,
near the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont. The
six distinct strata of remains, over fifty feet
deep in all, which he found beneath "New Troy,"
the Grseco-Roman city, wakened general astonishment
and some perplexity; for from their
neolithic beginnings to the early-iron-age layer
next to the surface, all was barbarous, and suggestive
mainly of the work of corresponding periods
in Central Europe. There was almost no
painted pottery; there was nothing in the least
like the pictures of the Homeric Age to which
Flaxman, and Renaissance artists, and even the
Greek vase-painters, had accustomed us.
From Troy, Schliemann went on in 1876 to
Mycenae, in southern Greece, to find here also a
166 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
bronze age, totally un-Hellenic, but quite different
from that of Troy; in particular, painted
pottery was abundant, with dark outlines of
animals and plants on a light ground. The
splendour of Mycenae, moreover, unlike that of
Troy, belonged exclusively to the later bronze
age; it showed clear signs of contact with Egypt,
apparently under the Eighteenth Dynasty (1500-
1850 B.C.); and on the other hand, surprising
coincidences with well known early works of
art from North-Western Europe, attributed at
that time to the "Celts." It may be noted in
passing that "Celtic" analogies still seem to fascinate
some students of this region. Sir Charles
Newton, however, supplied some counterpoise
in 1878 by recognizing as "Mycenaean" the British
Museum's large collection of objects from tombs
at lalysus in Rhodes, as well as scattered finds
from many lands round the Mediterranean.
Returning in 1878 to Troy to dear up the
discrepancy between his two sets of data, and
the many points of comparison between Troy
and the primitive North, Schliemann allowed his
own interest, centring round the "Burnt City,
second from the bottom, which seemed to him
to represent "Homeric Troy," to distract him
from the upper layers, which were in fact most
difficult of all to dissect and reconstitute, at all
events with the methods of work in vogue at that
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 167
time. So it was not till 1898, after his death,
that the sixth city was revealed as the truly
"Mycenaean" stratum. Meanwhile, in 1884, he
had revealed a fine prehistoric palace, at Tiryns,
near Mycenae, of about the same period as the
Mycenaean tombs: and penetrating beneath its
floors, he proved the existence of earlier settlements
with a different style of art, and pottery
with several colours instead of the Mycenaean
brown. But "Homeric" enthusiasm prevented
further "desecration" of the upper stratum: and
we had to wait till 1908 for further knowledge of
"pre-Mycenaean" things on this site.
By this time general interest was aroused.
Helbig's great investigation of the relation of
the "Mycenaean" to the Homeric Age was published
in 1883. In 1886 Diimmler found, in the
Cycladic islands, the first of the missing links?
between the cultures of Troy and Mycenae; and
in Cyprus a civilization even more like that of
the "Burnt City" than anything hitherto accepted
as its counterpart in south-east Europe.
It took Austrian and Servian archaeologists another
twenty years to restore the balance of evidence
on this point, and to show how Europe and Asia
were forcing their respective cultures now this
way, now that, across the Hellespontine bridge,
competing for its control. Pabricius and Milchhoefer
in the same years were demonstrating the
168 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Mycensean importance of Crete; and Tsountas
and other explorers, Greek and foreign, were
proving by many discoveries of sites and tombs
(1) that "Mycensean" culture had dominated
all the southern Aegean in the later bronze
age, and most of mainland Greece, as far north
as South Thessaly, and as far west as Cephallenia;
(2) that it was probably of indigenous growth;
(3) that its intercourse with Egypt was extensive;
and (4) that, whatever its origin or precise date,
it was wholly prior to that of historic Greece,
and separated from it by a violent catastrophe,
in which cities were sacked and deserted, palaces
and tombs looted, and the whole distribution
not only of political power, but of economic
vigour, was fundamentally changed, in a "dark
&ge" of tumult and barbarism.
The question of date was cleared up in part
by Flinders Petrie's discovery in 1893 of "Mycenaean"
pottery of rather late type, in the Egyptian
royal palace of Amenhotep IV at Tell-el-Amarna,
which could be securely dated within a few years
of 1350 B.C.; in part, when some "Aegean"
pottery (so named by Flinders Petrie in anticipation)
from a Twelfth Dynasty site at Kahun
was recognized in 1893 as of Cretan fabric; still
more in 1897 when this style was found in th#
important because well-stratified site at Phylakopi,
in Melos, about as much earlier than the
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 169
"Mycenaean" wares as the Twelfth Dynasty
was believed to be before the Eighteenth; and
most of all, when Crete began to yield to Sir
Arthur Evans indications of a system of writing,
analogous to that of Egypt, clearly not
derived from it at any recent period, and associated
with forms and styles of engraved sealstones
which seemed inspired by Egyptian
models at least as far back as the Fifth Dynasty.
The question of origin indigenous or oriental
was settled in principle within the same ten
years, mainly by three considerations. (1)
Asia Minor, so far from originating this culture,
in Caria or Phrygia, or any other of its coast
regions, remained as it were waterproof to it,
almost till the end, receiving only at last the
shattered bands of refugees who fled like Pilgrim
Fathers before the final catastrophe, and
founded Ionia unawares. (&) Phylakopi, in Melos,
already mentioned, provided for the first
time that consecutive record of advancement
from the stone age to the close of that of bronze,
which Tiiyns ought to have been made to yield
to Schliemann. Here for the first time it was
possible to study the whole life-history of one
and the same Aegean settlement, and determine
its essential independence of the East. (S)
Extensive excavation in Cyprus proved that
Aegean civilization was implanted here abruptly,
170 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
intentionally, and late: whereas if (as Helbig
and some others once believed) this civilization
had originated in Phoenicia so long the deias
ex machina of puzzled antiquaries it was in
Cyprus if anywhere that we should find its
earliest offshoots; for Cyprus lies in sight of
the Phoenician coast, whereas Crete and Rhodes,
the gate-posts of the Aegean, are more than eight
hundred miles away.
The wide westward extension of "Mycenaean"
culture was attested, too, in these same years,
by many finds in Sicily, in Sardinia, in Spain,
and at Marseilles; and also, less clearly, at the
head of the Adriatic.
Not till 1900, however, did political conditions
worst weapon (as ever) of malignant chance,
to distort the growth of learning permit the
crowning discovery by Sir Arthur Evans, reinforced
now by British, Italian, and American
fellow-workers, that the birthplace of this whole
culture, and its chief home throughout, was in
Crete; a fact not unduly commemorated in the
name "Minoan" derived from Minos, the legendary
Cretan sea-king which its chief discoverer
has proposed. Through these Cretan explorations,
the whole "Mycenaean question" has been completely
re-formulated, with a precision and completeness
quite unhoped-for hitherto.
At the present time, new evidence comes
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 171
most copiously from the margins of the Minoan
world; from Syria and Palestine, from the west
coast of Asia Minor, and from central and northern
Greece, In the last-named region it has
been known now for some years that even the
latest Mycenaean enterprise hardly extended beyond
the southern margin of Thessaly, and was
held at bay in the Thessalian plain by an alien
and much lower culture, which there is already
some reason to regard as an offshoot of the neolithic
civilization of the South Russian grassland;
the precise connection, however, remains obscure,
as long as Macedon and Thrace are closed to
archaeology.
From the results of nearly forty years of work,
the picture which we reconstruct of Aegean
peoples and their culture is in main outline as
follows: From the later stone $ge onwards the
islands of the Aegean have been mainly peopled
by members of the "Mediterranean" race, ^
small of stature, with oval face, and rather long
head, small hands and feet, and brunette complexion,
with dark eyes and black wavy hair.
Though the same type is represented on early
sites on the coasts, there is no evidence that it
extended any distance inland, either in Europe
or in Asia Minor before historic Greek times.
On the contrary, the occurrence, even in the
islands, and from the earliest times, of more or
172 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
less "Alpine" types, thickset (but often also
tall), broad-faced, and round-headed, suggests
that this very different breed already held all
the adjacent sections of the Mountain Zone, and
was able to intrude itself into the Cycladic islands,
and into both ends of Crete. The proportion of
more or less "Alpine" individuals mounts up
perceptibly in the latter half of the bronze age,
and again at its dose. In historic times, similar
and even larger changes in the same direction
are attributed, justly, to mediaeval movements
southwards on the part of other Alpine peoples,
from the heart of the Balkan peninsula; and the
earlier changes are probably due to similar intrusions.
It is important to bear in mind this
evidence as to physical characters, in view of the
current tendency to treat Aegean culture as the
spontaneous creation of pure Aegean aborigines.
As in Egypt, Syria, and the Babylonian region,
there is dear evidence of a widespread barbarism
of long duration, in the latter part of the neolithic
age. In the South Aegean, and most clearly in
Crete, this culture progressed very slowly and
without perceptible crises to the moment when
copper was introduced, and along with copper
the art of painting on pottery. on the Hellespont,
where Schliemann's six-fold "Troy" is
still our standard of comparison, there is repeated
interruption and fresh settlement, associated with
THE EASTERN MEDITEBHANEAN 173
such alternations of style and technique as point
unmistakably to abrupt changes of population.
In Thessaly, as already noted, a totally distinct
type of neolithic culture was established
suddenly over the wide lowland area, and endured
till the bronze age on the sea coast was
near its end. But this very circumstance makes
it impossible as yet to institute comparisons of
its earlier phases; or to determine the date of its
introduction.
But while Thessaly thus stands apart from the
continuous Aegean development, Crete and the
Hellespontine region can be correlated: since at
Cnossus, under the Minoan palace, the uppermost
neolithic layers, some twenty feet already
above the base of the deposit, seem to represent
only the same stage of culture as the "First City'*
at Troy. The earliest tombs in Cyprus are comparable
with the second or "Burnt City," and
the beginning of the "Minoan Age" of Crete;
while the first bronze age tombs in Melos, and
the bottom layer at Phylakopi, help to fill the
gap which results at Cnossus from the extensive
levelling of neolithic rubbish in preparation for
the first Minoan palace. The "Minoan Age,"
as defined by Sir Arthur Evans, includes the
whole of the bronze age. It is classified in three
principal periods, early, middle, and late: and
each of these similarly into three sub-divisions,
174 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
forming a ninefold series in which each phase is
sufficiently distinguished by changing styles of
pottery and other manufactures, sufficiently reflected
in the analogous products of Melos,
Thera, and other sites, to provide a standard
series for the whole Aegean area. Objects of
foreign, and particularly of Egyptian make, and
of known date, are found at sufficiently numerous
points in this series, to permit us to regard
the Early-Minoan period as contemporary with
Dynasties I-VI in Egypt; the many-coloured
pottery of the Middle-Minoan is found on Egyptian
sites accurately dated to Dynasty XII;
and at Cnossus the deposits classed as Middle-
Minoan-3 yield an Egyptian statuette of Dynasty
XTTT and an inscription of the Shepherd-
King Khyan, between 1*900 and 1600. The
Late-Minoan period is more precisely dated still.
Its first two phases, "L. M. 1 and 2" are contemporary
with Dynasty XVlJLL, and datable
to 1600-1400; they serve in turn to date the
royal tombs at Mycenae, and the Vaphio tomb
in Laconia with its magnificent embossed goldcups.
A sudden destruction of the Cnossian
Palace, dated securely between 1400 and 1350,
marks the boundary between "L. M. &" and
"L. M. 8," to which last phase belong the third
city at Phylakopi, the later graves at Mycenae
and lalysus, the "Sixth City" at Troy, and the
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 175
large Minoan settlements in Cyprus and Sicily.
Rather later than these, but still within the
Late-Minoan period, comes the attempt, perhaps
temporarily successful, to occupy Thessaly: and
the first contact with the west coast of Asia
Minor.
Then, with the cessation of intercourse with
Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus, and the simultaneous,
though gradual, introduction of iron,
first for tools, then for weapons it had been
known as a "precious metal" in the Aegean
since "L. M. 3" or even "L. M. 2"; of a new sort
of costume which required safety-pins (fibula);
of a new type of decorative art, non-representative,
with a limited stock of stiff geometrical
designs based on basketwork and incised ornament;
and of the practice of cremation wholly
new in the Aegean, but long familiar in the
forest-dad north, begins a new period, the Early
Iron Age, with a new distribution of settlements,
and centers of power and industry, and almost
total extinction of the Late-Minoan culture,
which was still relatively high, though already
far gone in decadence, by the eleventh century.
These are the broad external outlines of the
Minoan Age. We have now to look within, at
the salient characters of its culture, in relation
to the region and the mode of life which shaped
them. In our first survey of the geography in
176 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Chapter IH, we saw that Crete and the other
Aegean islands, together with the long promontories
and peninsulse which fringe both its shores,
represent all that remains unsubmerged of an
intensely complicated section of the Mountain
Zone, between the Albanian highland and western
Asia Minor. Basing, nevertheless, to a few
supreme peaks, like Parnassus and the Cretan
Ida, of about 8,000 feet above the sea, and frequently
to heights of 5,000 and 6,000 feet, the
sunken region offers a surprising variety of
climates and types of vegetation within a narrow
compass; from pine forest, above, through great
woods of deciduous oak and Spanish chestnut,
now sadly destroyed, down into a scrubland of
evergreen oak, box, bay, and myrtle, with olive,
fig, and vine, native and capable of cultivation.
Interspersed, oasis-like, in scrubland lie small
alluvial plains, screened and secluded by rugged
lateral ranges, well watered in winter by ample
rain, in spring by melting snows above, and in
summer locally by many deep-seated springs.
These last are fringed with plane, tamarisk, and
oleander, and are capable of maintaining irrigated
crops of beans and cucumbers all through
the great heat. Li this soil and climate, the year
falls into three parts, not four as in Italy or the
north; the "reaping season" begins on the coast
in May, and ends in the uplands in July; then
THE EASTEBJST MEDITEBHANEAN 177
without delay comes the "fruit season" with
vintage, figs, and olive crop in their turn, and
time enough for autumn ploughing and sowing,
before the winter rains. Then, in this "storm
season," from December to February, the flocks
are recalled oflf the hills, and man and beast alike
remain near home; but in March, days lengthen,
buds burst, children and lambs break bounds
up-hill. For a brief six weeks, between the rains
and the heat, the spring flowers annuals, bulbs,
dry-footed anemones, and evergreen rock-rose,
sage, and rosemary make nature unspeakably
beautiful and fragrant. only man is momentarily
unemployed: if he is a shepherd, he quarrels
with his neighbour about their goats, or lies in
the shade and pipes to his own; if he is an archaeologist,
it is time to dig, for the villagers can
now sell him all their time; if he is an ancient
Greek, he pays off the old scores of a twelvemonth,
in litigation with his fellow-citizens, or in seasonal
war with the city in the next valley.
On either margin of this gardener's paradise
lie, half-detached, half-linked by mutual needs,
two minor careers. on the hills, half-nomad
forest-haunting pastorals Pan and the Satyrs,
of Greek folk-memory with magic skill in the
ways of all cattle and game, and rather like wild
things themselves; kindly or mischievous at will
(like pur Pucks and Little People), but in either
178 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
mood incomprehensible to the cultivators, and
much to be propitiated in simple ways. Artemis,
too, and the Nymphs are up there: you can hear
their hunting-cry far up when the wind is still,
and the mountain goats scurry down, panic
stricken, to the edge of the cornland. This is all
that is left now of the days before the Great
Mother brought us the corn she was the first to
sow, and claimed her tithe of the forest-fed pigs;
for we are not like the men of the grass, who
hate the forest-feeders. Those were the days
when men and pigs alike ate acorns and chestnuts,
and there were water-dragons in the fens,
and lions in the scrubland; not wholly fancy,
this, for Minoan art has its famous lion-scenes.
But the Great Mother has tamed the snakes,
and her Son the lions; the fruit trees are her gift
too, and hers the doves that take the firstfruits
from her corn: above all, hers are the
iris and lily, the flying fish and beach shells;
and all the strange and beautiful things of this
world are her playthings and ours. These are
the broad outlines of the Aegean creed, and
articles inherited from it into Greek religion:
they link, as we see at once, Minoan exploitation
with a pre-Minoan undeveloped past.
Remote from the waste, and on the other
margin of the garden, lies the sea. on this we
may go in simple canoes at first, long, lean, with
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 179
high prow and stern, and tribal standard like a
primitive Nile-boat; and later, with great ships
of many oars, and a single mast and wide squaresail,
such as crowded to invade the Delta, and
were memorably shattered by "that Rameses
who had the fleet and cavalry," as Manetho
notes, ages on. We fish, we dredge shells of many
kinds and uses, we dive for urchins and rich
merchandise of sponges. Above all, we go over
to other lands and see other men, with our
sponges, our dried fish, our oil and raisins, wine
and olives, our pot-stone gems and vessels, our
gay pottery with the flowers and foliage patterns:
it is much better than theirs. But there is stone
in their hills that makes knife-edges, keener than
our flint; and they have the snow-white stone
that glistens of that we have none in Crete,
though our pot-stone is good, and our carving
better than in the islands. With the summer
wind and the current that always sets so, we can
go south too, to the palm country where they
are sitting under the trees whenever we go, and
doing no work at all; and so on by the east to
the lagoons and the great river where the king's
palace is. There we get good value, for they
have neither oil nor wine, and their palaces and
wall-paintings are bigger than anything of ours.
We shall tell our king what we have seen, and
bring him stone bowls and gem-cutting of theirs,
180 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
and he will make our men in the palace do things
like that; though our way is better after all than
this eastern fashion: it does not speak to the
heart, as our things do.
These are the natural conditions in which
a Minoan world grew up; easy livelihood from
small secluded corn-lands, and abundant culture
of fruit-bearing trees; supplemented by
upland pasturage, and the harvest of the sea.
Easy intercourse with many similar lands, or
coast plains of the same land, identical in natural
economy, almost infinitely various in mineral
resources and in artistic and industrial dialect.
Intercourse less easy, but within the power of
moderate seamanship in the sailing season, with
a venerable centre of art and luxury, like Egypt.
Above all, a landscape of exceptional beauty, of
brilliant atmosphere; grandly contrasted profile
of ridge and promontoiy; infinitely various form
and colouring of spring flowers and spongediver's
trophies, seaweed, shells, and sea-anemones.
It is not surprising, then, that it is here
that man first achieved an artistic style which
was naturalist and idealist in one; acutely observant
of the form and habit of living things,
sensitive to the qualities and potentialities of
raw material, wonderfully skilled in the art of
the potter, painter, gem-engraver, and goldsmith;
and above all, able to draw inspiration
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 181
from other styles and methods, without losing
the sureness of its own touch, or the power to
impress its own strong character on its works of
art. There are moments when we might be in
Japan instead of Crete.
We have seen that, in Egypt, one of the first
consequences of the extension of a homogeneous
culture, and the same economic and political
regime, over a peculiarly long and narrow region
like the Nile valley, was the necessity for a sure
means of communication at a distance: and that
this need was met, concurrently with the cultural
expansion, by the development of a system
of writing. In Crete the same problem was set,
within a much smaller region, by the mountain
spurs which separated one small habitable area
from another, and made direct converse by word
of mouth between adjacent valleys as impracticable
as between Thebes and Memphis. As in
Egypt, again, this need became acute in proportion
as any one town, such as Cnossus, succeeded
in imposing its leadership on the rest of Crete;
still more, when navigation brought Crete into
intercourse with other islands and the continental
foreshores; and from time to time into
political predominance also. The Cretan script,
which grew up under these conditions, shows a
superficial likeness both to the Egyptian hieroglyphic
system, and to all the other great scripts
18* THE DAWN OP HISTORY
of the world. It begins with pictorial, wellmodelled
representations of common objects,
but these have already come to have phonetic
values when we first encounter them, about the
time of the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt. It is at
this early stage, if not earlier, that we must
place such contact as there may be between the
pictography of Crete and that of the plateau of
Asia Minor (p. 152) : but it is quite possible that
the continental system too may be found to
have originated independently.
In Crete the "pictographs" are supplemented,
and eventually replaced, by linear forms more
suited to rapid work with a pointed graver.
Their invention seems to mark the stage at
which clay came into use, as a vehicle for writing:
we cannot tell at present whether this invention
was independent, or borrowed from
Babylonia. The development of more than one
variety of script is only what was to be expected,
in a region so discontinuous as Crete, and with
the evidence that we have already that the
leadership of Cnossus was intermittent. Still
more was it natural that, later on, the Late-
Minoan colonists of Cyprus, and perhaps of
Spain and parts of North Africa, should modify
the script which they had brought with them
to suit local conditions, and that native peoples
who acquired the use of it from them should
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 183
change its character still more. The result is
evident in derivative syllabic systems, which
remained in use until the Hellenic period in
Cyprus; in Spain till Roman time; and on
trade-routes across North Africa until the present
day. Less clear is the process by which a true
consonantal "alphabet" was selected from the
much more numerous stock of syllabic signs, to
record Semitic speech in the Phoenician cities,
and on other parts of the Syrian coast, as far
inland as Moab on the edge of the desert. Obscurest
of all is the replacement of the old Cretan
syllabary in its Aegean homes, after the Minoan
Age, by another group of alphabetic systems,
closely ftlnTi to each other, and perhaps derived
from the Phoenician, but provided with signs for
vowels as well as for consonants, to suit the
grammatical peculiarities of Greek in the islands
and Ionia, and of the Pamphylian, Lycian, and
Cariaa languages in south-west Asia Minor.
The language of the script is not yet deciphered,
but from the form of the written documents,
which Arthur Evans has found in very
large numbers in the palace archives of Cnossus,
and other explorers in smaller quantity at
Phaestos and Agia Triadha, it is possible to
learn something of Minoan government and
organization. Most of the tablets are inventories
of treasure and stores, and receipts for
184 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
chariots, armour, metal vessels, ingots of copper
such as have been found in store at Agia Triadha,
and singly in Cyprus and Sardinia; and smaller
quantities of unworked gold by weight. Other
tablets contain lists of persons, male and female;
perhaps tribute paid in slaves, or in person, as
in the Greek legend of the Minotaur. Clearly
we have to do with the details of a vast and
exact administration, far more extensive than.
Cnossus itself would justify; and the comparative
insignificance of other Cretan towns during
the great "Palace Period" (^"Late-Minoan
2"), the temporary extinction of some of them,
and the traces of a system of highly engineered
roads and forts over the mountain passes, confirm
the impression that the later Greeks were right
in the main, in regarding Minos of Cnossus as
a monarch who ruled the seas and terrorized
the land, absolute and ruthless, if only because
inflexibly just.
The palace architecture gives the impression
of great luxury based on abundant wealth of oil
and other produce; supplemented by skill in
applied science, mechanical, hydraulic, sanitary,
which is unparallelled till modern times. on to
a central court, entered by an elaborate gateway,
opened halls of reception, with deep porticoes
and antechambers. Others, more secluded, opened
on to terraces and bastioned platforms down the
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 185
slope. Between and behind these principal suites,
winding corridors gave access to magazines and
smaller living rooms. Staircases led to upper
stories, with two or even three floors in some
places. Practical convenience laid greater stress
on inner planning, and room-decoration by fresco
and fine stone panelling, than on external design.
Only the plinths of a few original walls, facing on
to the great courts, show any promise of a fine
fagade; and there was in any case so much
rebuilding and patchwork addition, that the
general effect must have been that of a crowded
village rather than a single residence. Private
houses were constructed of mixed timber and
stone, with stuccoed fronts, many windows, and
flat roofs. They crowded one another along
narrow tortuous alleys on uneven ground, more
stair than street; and the general effect of a
Minoan town must have been very like what is
still to be seen in the Cretan villages.
In Crete the climate is mild enough, even in
winter, for portable braziers to suffice, and this
release from anxiety for smoke-vents encouraged
the architects to daring experiments in planning
and internal lighting. on the Greek mainland,
however, where the cold and rain are more severe,
the need for a permanent hearth in the centre
of the principal living room led to profound
changes of construction; smoked-holes had to be
186 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
contrived in the roof, and perhaps also covered
by ventilators to keep out rain; while in proportion
as this hall was more used, its importance
grew till it not merely dominated the planning,
but imposed its portico as a chief feature of the
fagade. It is characteristic of the changed relations
between the centre and the circumference
of the Minoan world, after the fall of Cnossus,
that this "mainland" type of palace is the one
which seems most nearly to correspond with the
descriptions of Achaean palaces in the Homeric
poems.
The dwellings of the dead passed through
many changes of fashion during the Minoan
Age, and it has been reasonably argued from
this that we may be dealing with more than one
set of beliefs, perhaps held and put in practice
by peoples of different origin. All Aegean rituals,
however, agree in this, that the dead are buried,
not burned, and that they are provided with
copious equipment for their other life. The
luxury of the rich late graves, and even of some
of the earlier, is comparable with that of Egypt
itself. The earliest tombs are "contracted burials,"
in cist-graves like those of pre-dynastic
Egypt, and of most other parts of the Mediterranean
world, as well as of the western regions
which have been reached by Mediterranean
man. As in Egypt, also, some localities, in
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 187
early periods, practised secondary burial; the
body was interred provisionally until it was well
decayed, and then the bones were transferred
to the common charnel-house, as in a modern
Greek churchyard. Later, families of distinction
practised coffin-burial in larger and larger chambers,
constructed underground or in hill-sides,
and (on the mainland) with domed masonry
linings. The coffins are often of clay, richly
painted, or frescoed as at Agia Triadha with
funerary scenes. In the latest phases, such
chambers on a smaller scale, with flat roofs,
became common and superseded the old "cistgraves";
but the royal tombs at Mycenae still
preserve, on a glorified plan, and with bodies
at full length, the form of the primitive "cistgrave.
5 *
'In Cyprus, Sicily, and Sardinia, the native
custom of cave-burial was but slightly modified
by the Minoan colonists, who were already
accustomed to "bee-hive" burial in their old
homes.
Among many other originalities, the dress
and armour of the Minoan Age deserve brief
mention, if only for their contrast with that of
the Aegean in Hellenic times. The men's dress
was of the simplest; long hair-plaits without
other head-dress, strong top-boots (as in modern
Crete) for scrubland walking, and a loin-cloth
188 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
or kilt, plain or fringed, and upheld by a waspwaisted
belt: elders and officials indulged in
ample cloaks, and quilted sleeveless copes, like
a crinoline hung from the shoulders. Women
wore shaped and flounced skirts, richly embroidered,
with "zouave" jackets, low in front, puffsleeved,
with a standing collar or a peak behind
the neck; they were tight-laced, and the skirts
were belted like the men's. Gay curls and shady
hats with ribbons and rosettes completed the
costume, which resembles more than anything
the peasant-girls' full dress in a Swiss valley, and
may be "alpine" too. Armour was simple; for
attack, a long spear, and dagger-like sword with
two straight hollow-ground edges; on the head
a conical helmet of leather, strengthened with
metal plates or boar's tusks in rows: and for
other protection, the ordinary high boots, and
a flexible shield of leather, oblong or oval, with
metal rim, but no handle or central boss. It was
slung over the left shoulder by a strap, and
became distorted by its own weight to a quaint
8-shape; however, it wholly enveloped the
wearer from ankles to chin,
' and could be bent
so as to enclose hini on each side. The horse was
in use, and was brought from oversea; it was
driven, not ridden, apparently; and light chariots
were used both for hunting and in war.
But in the main, the Aegean was at peace in
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 189
the Minoan Age: a striking contrast with the
wear-and-tear of the Hellespontine bridge, as
successive "cities" reveal it at Troy. In the
south, on the contrary, it is difficult to trace any
non-Aegean enemy either in Crete or even in
the islands, down to the fall of Cnossus; and it
remains obscure whether this last catastrophe
was not due to internal discord; the circumference,
as has been recently suggested, turning
against the centre, and terminating its tyranny.
Cretan tradition told also, later, how a Lord of
Cnossus went a Sicilian expedition, with all his
force, and never came back-
But at this point in the story, Egyptian records
come to our aid where Cretan archives are still
dumb. They know of a change in the name and
behaviour of the "people from over-sea"; and
they give a clue to the decline and fall of the
Cretan culture, which it is our next business to
investigate.
CHAPTER IX
THE COMING OF THE NORTH
WHEN we were looking at the theatre of lands
and waters, in which the drama of history was
to be placed (pp. 32-7), we had occasion to note
the existence of a great grassland extending
190 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
from the Carpathians and the Lower Danube
to the foothills below Altai and Tianshan in
Central Asia, skirting the shores of the Black
Sea and Caspian, and extending south to the
Caucasus and the steep north edge of Persia.
Northwards, this grassland changes rather suddenly
to forest of oak and beech, along a nearly
straight line drawn from the north of Roumania
to the south end of the Urals, and so on to the
middle course of the Ob in Central Siberia, where
the tree-line swings round to the south along
the slopes of Altai. South of this there is free
going for nomad people, by the head-waters of
the Irtish, into the west end of Mongolia, once a
similar grassland, though at a much higher altitude,
but much more completely drought-ridden
now. Westward, it should be noted that within
the Carpathian enclosure, the Hungarian plain is
mainly grassland too, and that very open country
runs up the Danube some way beyond Vienna;
disclosing easy passes to the upper Elbe. Locally
there are grasslands again within the Balkan
Peninsula; notably in Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedon,
and, best of all, in Thessaly. The significance of
these detached interment grasslands will appear
as we proceed.
In Persia a wide fringe of the high plateau
is grassland also, though the centre is salt desert.
The northern rim, though mountainous, is narrow
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 191
and very easily passable. Grassland folk therefore
have direct access from the steppe of Turkestan
to the intennont plains of the Median and
Persian hills, whose steep western slopes look
out on the Semitic region. Lastly and at first
sight most unexpected our knowledge of the
mediaeval inroads of Mongol nomads warns us
that the grassland heart of Asia Minor, remote
as it looks on the map, and defended as it would
seem by the whole width of Ararat and Taurus,
is in fact as open as Hungary or Persia to intruders
who started in Turkestan or beyond.
In the grassland margin of Arabia, we have
already watched the history of a region of this
kind, with its pulsations of climate, and recurring
eruptions of men in search of sustenance.
We have only to add two further points, before
tracing the course of events in the northern area.
First, the passage from grass to forest, though
abrupt in parts, is nowhere so abrupt as to forbid
transit from one to another; and in many
districts it is so gradual as to present a strong
inducement to the nomad to stray into the richer
pasture which grows in the summer shade of
parkland trees. As there is no change of level
northwards, and the gradations of climate here
are almost imperceptible, it is obvious that these
are conditions exceptionally favourable to a gradual
breaking-in of pastoral man to a different
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
mode of life, enriched by new prospects, on the
one hand of hunting, on the other of settled
agriculture. The process itself has been studied
in recent examples among the Bashkirs on the
slopes of the Urals, and in the settled Cossack
country north of the Caucasus. Its effects are
apparent, as we shall see, in the social structure
of all Mstoric peoples in the forest lowlands of
peninsular Europe.
Secondly, we must keep in mind that whereas
in Arabia the only native beast of burden is the
ass, and the sole early flocks are sheep and goats
for it is only "this side Jordan" that the land
"flows with milk and honey" from the bees and
the cows which its richer vegetation can maintain;
in the north, and particularly along the forest
fringe, wild oxen and wild horses, both known to
have been native there, have been domesticated
since very early times: how early, and in what
historical order we are now beginning to learn
from Mr. Pumpelly's excavations at Anau in
Turkestan. The precise date matters the less,
because none of all the nomad peoples whom we
can trace at all on this side of the mountain zone,
come into our view unfurnished both with horned
cattle and with horses. on the true steppe the
horse was certainly broken in to be ridden, from
the first; but near the parkland, the existence
of timber permitted the appendage first of a mere
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 193
**
trailer** for the transport of goods, like those
of the reindeer-driving Laplanders or the dogsledges
of Eskimos and Redskins, and later of
true carts on rollers, or on solid wheels cut from
tree-trunks. In some parts of the west it seems
as if in time this practice of haulage superseded
the art of riding altogether.
It will be seen at once that the possession of
so swift, docile, and independent a creature as
the horse made an enormous difference to nomad
life in the north. Mares, it must be remembered,
give rich and copious milk; colts' flesh is as deEcate
as veal; and the horse, which is as wary as
a watch-dog, is defended against strangers by
his heels. He can even be taught to use them in
war, and the Persians certainly had these fighting
horses still in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.
The horse also, though he eats leisurely, naturally
feeds at night, and loses little of his master's
time; a Tartar pony can literally "travel with
the sun." In spite, therefore, of the vastly
greater extent of the northern grassland, and of
its horseshoe form, from Persia to Turkestan,
and from Turkestan to the Carpathians, its
dimensions, compared with its facilities for travel
are relatively less than those of Arabia; and we
may be prepared for similar punctuality in the
appearance of related emigrants at widely distant
points on its circumference.
194 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
We have seen how Arabia has been the nest
not only of a type of man, but of a family of
languages: and that while the successive broods
which it threw off can be shown to have retained
in their new homes peculiarities of speech which
were habitual in the desert-reservoir, the language
of those who stayed behind was changing too;
slowly indeed, but sufficiently to provide the
next swarm with an idiom as different, as Hebrew,
for example, ip from Aramaean, or Aramaean from
Arabic. In this instance we can even measure
the rate at which linguistic forms can change, for
we know approximately the dates of at least
three of the four Semitic migrations. The problems
of defining their relationships would clearly
be far more difficult if we knew neither the date
nor the place of their origin, but had to argue
only from their words and grammatical forms,
and from the geographical distribution of the
regions in which they were respectively spoken
at the time when they come into history; since
grammar and vocabulary are liable to change
rapidly under the influence of contact with other
languages and modes of life; and each successive
migration destroys and disturbs the distribution
of peoples and languages which resulted from its
predecessor.
Just this, however, is the problem actually
presented by the distribution of the "IndoTHE
COMING OF THE NOETH 195
European" languages. Their wide geographical
range, from our own islands to Northern India,
and from South Persia to Norway, is nevertheless
limited enough to suggest that the whole
group stands in somewhat the same relation to
the northern grassland, as the Semitic languages
to that of Arabia. Though the Indo-European
languages differ far more widely from one another
than even the most distinct among the Semitic
group, they all possess a recognizable type of
grammatical structure, and a small stock of
words common to them all, for the numerals,
family relationships, parts of the body, certain
animals and plants, and other things and acts.
. It is still generally believed, in spite of much
discouraging experience in detail, that from
their primitive vocabulary it is possible to discover
something of the conditions of life in regions
where a common ancestor of all these languages
was spoken: and when we find it generally
admitted; (1) that the domestic animals of this
"Indo-European home" included the horse, cow,
and pig as well as sheep, goat, and dog, and
that the cow was the most honoured of all;
() that these societies, though mainly pastoral,
were not nomad, but had homes and some agriculture;
that they used both plough and cart,
had a considerable list of names for trees, and
some experience of the simplest forms of trade;
196 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
(3) that the social structure was patriarchal, and
that the patriarchal households lived in large
loosely federated groups under elected chiefs;
we are probably not far wrong in regarding
the first users of this type of speech as having
inhabited some part, perhaps many contiguous
parts, of the parkland country, which fringes
these steppes, and as having spread in a long
period of slow development; accelerated from
time to time by drought, and migrations caused
by drought. Some drifted in moister periods in
the direction of the tree-less steppe, losing er
confusing their vocabulary for forestry and farming;
others, in dry spells, further into the forests,
with corresponding forgetfulness of their more
pastoral habits. Much recent controversy over
details would have been avoided if it had been
realized earlier by students of these languages
that the geographical regime of all grassland
regions is liable to these periodic changes; and
that the immediate effect of such change is either
to alter the mode of life of the inhabitants till
it suits their new surroundings, or else to drive
them out into regions where they still can live
in the ancestral way.
It is essential, too, to bear in mind that as
the differences between Indo-European languages
are so much more marked than between Semitic,
we are justified in assuming either much longer
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 197
periods of time for their differentiation, or else
much, more potent and varied changes in environment
and mode of life. It should be
noted particularly in this connection, that whereas
the Semitic languages of antiquity all lie round
the immediate fringe of the Arabian desert, in
a semi-circle about 700 miles in diameter, it is
no less than 1,500 miles from the Carpathians
to Orenburg at the south end of the Urals, and
another thousand from that point to the high
ground either of Elburz or of Tienshan.
Note finally, that, though the steppe is actually
continuous, and though rivers even as large as
the Volga have interposed no obstacle to the
nomad movements of historic times, yet there
is a wooded belt, clothing the wide valley of the
lower Volga, which so nearly reaches the fringe
of a patch of real desert on the Caspian shore
near Astrakhan as to divide the whole grassland
area into hour-glass form, with two great reservoirs,
semi-detached, semi-connected by a comparative
narrow passage. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find that Indo-European speech
may be separated in the first instance into two
main groups, eastern and western, of which the
eastern only gradually began to spread "Slavonic"
languages' west of the Volga almost within historic
times.
Hitherto we have been dealing only with very
198 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
general conclusions, based on a comparison of
the linguistic and geographical studies of two
generations of scholars: omitting much that is
disputed or obsolete, and much also that would
be of value, on a larger scale, to qualify and complete
this statement of the position. Now we
have to turn to the first historic appearances
of Indo-European-speaking peoples on the margins
of the ancient world.
Of the current speech of these peoples we
naturally hear nothing till a late stage, when
they learned to write for themselves. But the
majority of ancient names of men and gods are
descriptive, and the gods' names endure; so that
often it is possible tobe satisfied that individuals or
dynasties were of Indo-European speech, though
our only proofs are names such as these, in their
enemies' record of wars and treaties with them.
For example, the Medo-Persian names Teispes
and Hystaspes are, found in Babylonian and
Assyrian records of campaigns in the mountain
regions, long before we hear anything definite
about either Medes of Persians there; and in
the same way divine names, Indra and Varuna,
occur with other deities in cuneiform writings
from Boghaz-keui, which prove that these gods
were worshipped by a people which was in active
diplomatic intercourse with the great Hittite
monarchy.
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 199
The first occurrence of such Indo-European
names is in the TeU-el-Ainarna correspondence,
which gives so vivid a picture of Syrian affairs
in the years immediately after 1400. They represent
chieftains scattered up and down Syria
and Palestine, and they include the name of
Tushratta, king of the large district of Mitanni
beyond Euphrates (p. 158). Some even t.Tifnfc
that the language of Mitanni itself, of which a
few specimens remain, was Indo-European. But
this is a minor matter: nothing is commoner in
the history of migratory peoples, than to find
a very small leaven of energetic intruders ruling
and organizing large native populations, without
either learning their subjects' language or imposing
their own till considerably later, if at all
The Norman princes, for example, bear Teutonic
names, Robert, William, Henry; but it is Norman-
French in which they govern Normandy
and correspond with the "King of France. All
these Indo-European names belong to the Iranian
group of languages, which is later found widely
spread over the whole plateau of Persia.
To only a slightly later time belongs the Hittite
document with Iranian divine names which has
been already noted. The district to which it
refers is not clearly described, but was certainly
somewhere in Asia Minor; and it is thought by
some that the language of Arzawa, the district
200 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
round and north of Boghaz-keui, shows Indo-
European features. Here again, the names are
valid, quite apart from the language of the people,
as evidence for the origin of their chiefs. Rather
later again comes a Babylonian record with the
first Iranian name from the Persian highlands
south of Elam.
Clearly, before the time of the Eighteenth
Dynasty of Egypt, there had been a very extensive
raid of Indo-European-speaking folk by way
of the Persian plateau, as far as the Syrian coastland
and the interior of Asia Minor. But we
must also conclude that it was not very long before,
since scattered chieftaincies of this kind
do not last very long: they either are strong
enough to impose their language on their subjects,
which in most of these cases they clearly
had failed to do; or they axe so weak that sooner
or later they are absorbed or overwhelmed, and
then their personal names disappear too.
It is, therefore, of t|ie first importance to find
that it is in the dark period which immediately
precedes the Eighteenth Dynasty revival when
Egypt was prostrate under mysterious "Shepherd
Kings/' and Babylon under Kassite invaders
equally mysterious that the civilized world
first became acquainted with one of the greatest
blessings of civilization, the domesticated horse.
So strange was it, that in Babylonia its written
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 201
name signified simply "the ass of the east"; a
fortunate hint as to the quarter whence the new
creature came. It would not be surprising, in
any case, that acquaintance with so great an
aid to rapid travel should itself travel rapidly.
But it is easier still to account for its universal
acceptance, as far afield as Egypt and the Hittite
country, if we are at liberty to suppose that it
was brought not in trade from afar, but as a
weapon of nomad invasion. And this is exactly
the case. The two hypotheses are complementary
and we are probably justified further in adding
that the period of Arabian drought, which drove
forth the "Canaanite" emigrants, may have had
its counterpart on the northern steppe, to provoke
the migration "of these horsemen. There is
at all events a general likelihood that a pulsation
of climate large enough to affect Arabia so
severely was not without effect over a much wider
area. At present, however, our knowledge both
of the extent of these droughts, and of the chronology
of both these migrations, is too vague for
this to be taken as more than a provisional
basis for more exact enquiry. The geological
evidence from the deeply stratified site at Anau
(p. 193), already proves that cycles of drought
and moisture did occur in that region also, and
it need not be long before these new facts are
dovetailed to our other knowledge.
202 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Thus far we have been dealing with traces of
Indo-European immigration by way of Turkestan
and the Persian plateau. The still more easterly
aggression of closely kindred peoples into Northern
India marks the Dawn of History there; but
falls outside the scope of this volume. It is
enough to note in passing that this
"
Aryan"
movement is commonly dated, on quite independent
evidence, about 1600 B.C. It consequently
forms part of the same series as that of the Iranians
through Persia, and affords important confirmation
of our date for this.
Now we have to look further west. We have
seen far back (p. 121) that notable likeness has
been observed between the neolithic arts of
Susa, Turkestan, certain parts of South Russia,
and the little grassland of Thessaly. Both in
Susa and in Thessaly this culture was clearly
introduced ready-made, and gradually fades
away in its new home; at Anau it precedes a
period of drought and desolation. There is consequently
some reason to suspect that the likeness
results from real identity; and that the reason
why this culture is preserved in Thessaly and
hardly represented in the rougher country towards
the Danube is that the bearers of it were a
pastoral folk who were absorbed or annihilated
if they tried to live in the hills, but were able to
propagate their mode of life when they pressed
THE COMING OP THE NORTH 203
through them, and found good country once
more. When Macedon and Thrace, which also
offer some stretches of pasture, have been a
little better explored, we shall be more able to
judge whether this suggestion is of value.
Meanwhile, it is clear from the successive refoundations
of "Troy" (pp. 172-3) and from
the successive changes in the quality of Hellespontine
culture, that the land-bridge between
Europe and Asia Minor was the scene of much
coming and going, in the early bronze age, and
of repeated disturbance of its inhabitants. At
the close of the neolithic age (in about the same
stage, that is, as the new settlement of Thessaly,
though without its characteristic art), a culture
which attains its highest development in Servia
spreads its influence far into Asia Minor; but
it gives way later to strong reverse currents of
south-eastern culture akin to that of Syria and
Cyprus in the earliest age of metal (p. 167).
It cannot be too clearly insisted, that such an
extension of culture does not necessarily mean
the migration of a people, unless other evidence
such as resettlement also points that way; if
anything, it rather indicates that the region
through which the new arts were spreading was
settled and at peace. We should therefore probably
think of the early metal age in Asia Minor
as the long, quiet period which gave birth to
204 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Egypt and Sumerian Babylonia; but as broken,
towards the Hellespont, by crises of disturbance
such as that which brought in the ancestors of
Sargon of Accad (p. 112).
It was in this peaceful interlude, too, that
the Minoan culture grew undisturbed to its
splendid culmination in Crete (p. 174). It began,
as we have seen, about the same period as that of
Egypt; reached its Middle-Minoan phase in the
days of the Twelfth Dynasty; and was already
beginning to lose its vigour and be distracted by
internal quarrels and ambitions, in the Late
Minoan phases which overlap the "New Empire**
of Egypt, and its Syrian conquests. The destruction
of the Palace at Cnossus, which may be
dated very close below 1400, cuts short the continuous
development, and transfers the chief
centre of influence from Crete to the Greek mainland,
to Mycenaean Argolis and Laconia. From
Aegean evidence it is not possible at present to
decide whether the destroyers of Cnossus were
other Aegean peoples, or intruders from elsewhere;
but contemporary Egyptian records of the visits
of oversea peoples of Minoan culture show that,
about this time, fresh names and qualities were
making their appearance in the home of this
civilization.
Minoan visitors had been familiar at the
Egyptian court for nearly a century. Until the
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 205
reign of Amenhotep III, who came to the throne
about 1415, they had always been called Keftiu
by the Egyptians, and had come as friends or
traders, wearing their characteristic hair-plaits
and gaily coloured kilts (p. 187), and bringing
rich samples of their gold and silver works of
art. But from the accession of Amenhotep in
no more Keftiu come; and the Shardana and
Danauna (how like the Homeric "Danaoi"!)
who take their place, are men of war, hostile or
mercenary, like the Goths in Kingsley's Hypatia.
Some of them enlisted with the King of Egypt,
and were set to keep their countrymen out. If
a late but learned native historian, Manetho,
is to be believed, one such "Danaan" perhaps
one of these very guardsmen made himself
king for a moment, in the brief anarchy which
followed the death of Akhen-aten about 1365:
and Shardana continue to make disastrous raids
at intervals until about 1200.
But after 1800 they are no longer alone; an
increasing number of other peoples accompany
them, and their raids are on a larger and more
offensive scale. The two principal attacks are
about 1280 and 1200. The former, in the reign
of Merenptah, was in concert with an alongshore
invasion of Libyans (p. 81) on the west
edge of the Delta. Besides Libyans and Shardana
there were Akhaivasha, Shakalsha, and Tursha:
206 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
the jBrst-named commonly identified now as
Achseans the termination -ska is the same as
is preserved in Cnossus, Sagalassus, and similar
Aegean place-names; the others still the subjects
of controversy, but increasingly regarded
as emanating from the same Aegean source.
It is certainly tempting to regard the Tursha as
representing the Turseni, some of whom settled
in Etruria, and the Shakalsha and Shardana as
having given their name to similar new homes
in Sicily and Sardinia. We have already noted a
Cretan tradition of a disastrous "sea-raid 9 * on
Sicily. This Egyptian "sea-raid" was an analogous
effort to settle in the Delta; and Merenptah
had hard work to prevent it.
The second attack was made in the eighth
year of Barneses HI, by a combined land and
sea force, operating this time from the Syrian
side. As before, there were Danauna and Shakalsha,
and with them Tikkarai and other new
tribes, some apparently from the Aegean, others
from North Syria and Asia Minor, and among
them a force of Hittites. This time the motive
is even clearer than before. The land force came
with its families and property in large wheeled
carts; the sea-men in great sailing ships, with a
fighting-top on the masthead, and the decks
crowded with well-armed "heroes," as their
chivalrous enemy calls them. They had clearly
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 207
come to stay: and though the king of Egypt
kept them out, by a hard-fought battle in South
Syria and a great sea-fight, he had still to dispose
of the survivors and non-combatants. There
were already half-foreign settlements on the
Palestinian coast plain, and to reinforce these
with the newcomers would put a warlike popular
tion, under obligations to Egypt, in a position to
stop any further attack that might come. It
was the same policy again, as had made Egyptian
guardsmen out of the Shardana, a century ago.
The chief of these settlers bore the name
Pulishta, perhaps akin to the obscure name
Pelasgi, borrowed by Greek writers from an
ancient pirate-people in the Aegean; and certainly
identical with that of the Philistines, and with
the word "Palestine" which has spread from the
coast to be the name of all southern Syria. Their
later history is entwined for ever in that of their
Israelite neighbours. They did not settle here
alone, however; nearly a century and a half later
there were still piratical Tikkarai established on
this coast, a ruthless terror to travellers. The
"Teucrian" settlement at Salamis in Cyprus
which grew into a great Greek city, may well be
one of their foundations, and perhaps also they
gave their name to modern Zakro, a serviceable
and already ancient harbour in eastern Crete facing
out towards Egypt and Philistia,
208 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
The twofold character of the sea-raid of 1200
throws sudden light on the meaning of all this.
It was always difficult to account for the abrupt
change of name and character among the seaborne
visitors of Egypt, from friendly Keftiu
to hostile Berserker folk like the Shardana and
Philistines. It was difficult also to explain such
intimate association between Aegean sea-raiders
and a land invasion issuing from Syria. But
the fact that the Hittites, who as late as 1271
had been a co-equal power with Egypt, are now
only one of many congregated tribes; and the
other fact (already noted in its place, p. 156) that
in their great Syrian campaign of 1286 the Hittites
themselves had allies with Hellespontine
names Dardanui and Masa which are of the
same Thraco-Phiygian group as the Tikkarai
and perhaps others among the sea-raiders, gives
the obvious clue. Sea-raiders, and land-raiders
with their wheeled carts, are alike representatives
of a general outpouring of people from the western
end of the steppe region. They have pressed over
the Danube and the Balkans, occupied Thrace
and what was afterwards Macedonia, crossed the
Hellespont, and invaded the plateau, as Homer's
Phrygians are expressly described as doing, up
the Sangarius bank (p. 148); re-founding Troy
and building with external aid its mighty walls
the walls of the "sixth city" at a date which
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 09
is given approximately, in Greek tradition, to
the same generation as the reign of Khetasar,
the enemy and the ally of Rameses EL
In the Aegean, meanwhile, there was pandemonium.
Written records we have none, and all
we can do is to piece together the evidence of
Greek tradition, which remembered three main
events in quick succession. The first was the
"Coming of the Achseans," blonde fair-skinned
giants, "tamers of horses," "shepherds of the
people." Their chief political centres are at
Mycenae and in Laconia, where the Achaean kings
were in some sense of "Phrygian" origin; their
conquests, which include almost all mainland
Greece, Crete, and the south end of the island
fringe of Asia Minor, are rough-hewn before
1250, but there are still "unpacified" districts
after 1180, for Menelaus sends word from Sparta
that he can "sack a town or so" if Telemachus
will find h.fc father and bring him round from
rocky Ithaca. We almost hear Roger of Sicily
inviting Robert of Normandy to come south
and share the fun. This makes the Achaeans
exact contemporaries both of the sea-raids on
Egypt, and of the Phrygian occupation of northwest
Asia Minor.
The second event is the "Trojan War" which
the Greeks dated accurately 1194 to 1184. During
an absence oversea of Menelaus, King of Sparta,
210 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
within a year or two of the sea-raid of 1&00, and
not improbably on business connected with it,
Paris, a Phrygian prince, ran away with his
queen. As Fair Helen was the heiress, in right
of whose hand this Achaean adventurer reigned
a notable glimpse of the pre-Achsean status of
women Paris had now a claim to the throne of
Sparta quite as good as that of Edward III to
that of France; and something had to be done.
The whole Achaean force was flung upon Troy
and after a ten years' war the Phrygian city
was destroyed and the lady recovered. But it
was a hard-bought victory. High gods were
angry with both sides: and there were "too many
men in the world." Achseans and Phrygians
alike, were scattered over the waters; some as
far as western Sicily, and the mouth of the Tiber,
and the recesses of the Adriatic: others, like
Menelaus himself, to Egypt again. Their palaces
at home were full of sedition, and vagrant ne'erdo-
weels with "old soldier
"
yarns. Men who
could make verses sang of little but the wars
and the wanderings. It is the very picture of the
foiled Sea-raiders, reeling back before the fleet
of Rameses HI.
Third comes the "Dorian Invasion"; two
generations more after the Trojan War, and therefore
a little before 1100. Who the Dorians were,
was not quite clear to the Greeks; in some sense
THE COMING OF THE NORTH
they were a "clan of Macedon," and had arisen
from Pindus, the Alpine backbone of the Greek
peninsula. Unlike the Achseans, they have no
skill in horses, but fight in close order on foot.
Their traditional history and tribal nomenclature
make them a mixed company, including some
almost Albanian-looking Highlanders with names
of north-western form: there were also descendants
of pre-Achsean "Heradids" from the south,
perhaps dispossessed Minoans. Certain it is that
their subjects, all through southern Greece, stood
aloof from the Dorians, and the Dorians from
them, and for some centuries the peninsula was
paralysed by a nightmare of race-feud. Other
northern peoples, moving nearer the east coast,
conquered almost all the north, in a loose "confederacy
of neighbours" from Thessaly to the
frontier of Attica. on the mainland, Attica
alone outrode the storm; invaded but unconquered;
thanks, so men believed, to wise reorganization
by Theseus about the time of the
"Achaean Coming." In the islands, things were
rather better; though, in the soutii, Crete, Rhodes,
and other parts were counted eventually as Dorian.
The refugees from Greece had obviously two
ways of escape oversea; eastward and westward.
How far they used the latter is not dear,
though it seems likely that it was not wholly
neglected; certainly some of the sea-raiders had
212 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
*
travelled far that way. Eastward, in any case,
they profited by the havoc which Phrygian raids
had made in the western half of the Hittite dominion,
to colonize extensively on the west coast,
richer and much more open-featured than the
land of bays and promontories that they had
left, but essentially the same in structure, soil,
and climate. Here, in due course, grows up
Ionian Greece, prolonged northward and southward
by the cities of JEolis and the Hellespont,
and of the Carian coast.
These are the outstanding facts of tradition;
and their general drift is in agreement with other
evidence that we have. Certainly, the Mxnoan
Age sank suddenly and under violence; certainly,
also, it was still living, though decadent, at the
time of the second Sea-raid: the wall-paintings
of Rameses HI are decisive as to that. The
armour, however, of those sea-raiders was new
and their own, very much as we should expect
of conquerors recently arrived; a round parrying-
shield, dose-fitting helmet with horns and
sometimes also cheek-pieces, and strange bodyarmour
of transverse belts made flexible as a
lobster's.
After Rameses IH, we have no more news
from Egypt; but in the Aegean, the evidence
from tombs and early sanctuaries is dear. Minoan
naturalism is replaced, as we saw in advance
THE COMING OF THE NOETH 213
(p. 175), by stiff "geometrical" decoration; and
its luxury by comparative barbarism. Minoan
dress gives way to a mere blanket, hitched together
by safety-pins, an invention probably of
the rough mountain zone along the Adriatic,
for it was imparted simultaneously to Italy.
Bronze is superseded, more gradually, by iron;
and the first iron weapons, too, are of types
which begin, in bronze, both rarely in Italy and
more freely in the Danube valley. Most instructive
of all, perhaps, the immemorial custom of
burial gives place very generally to cremation,
which had long been habitual in Central Europe.
So profound a change in the disposal of the dead
may safely be taken as a measure of the revolution
of thought and manners.
But all this does not take us far. Till Minoan
writings can be read, we cannot be certain at
what point, or by what stages, Indo-European
speech, or names of men and gods, or institutions
of northern origin were introduced. They can
hardly have come later than the Achaeans, about
1250; but were the Achaeans the first to bring
them, or the Danauna and Shardana of 1350, or
did the Late-Minoan Keftiu speak already a
language of this type? Archaeological evidence,
in the same way, if it is unsupported by records,
rarely gives us periods and sub-divisions so precise
as would distinguish "Achaean" tombs or
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
sword-blades from "Dorian." only in one locality,
moreover, have we at all a complete enough
series, even of tombs, to survey the whole Dark
Age.
Cyprus, as we saw, was colonized late but
copiously about the time of the Fall of Cnossus;
not from Crete, it seems, but probably from
rival centres elsewhere in the Aegean. Its position,
within sight of Phoenicia and Asia Minor,
and within a few days' sail of Philistia and Egypt,
gave it great opportunities for wealth: and
these it used to the full. "Teucrian" Salamis
on its east coast has some of the richest Late-
Minoan tombs that have been found at all. But
the repulse of the sea-raids left Cyprus isolated.
Copper and timber it had been exporting for
ages already. Now it acquired iron, and then
manufactured it copiously with native ores and
fuel. This art it may well have learned from
Damascus, but the types of its iron weapons are
those of the Aegean and the Adriatic. Its decorative
art, too, loses Minoan vitality, which it had
never appreciated fully; without, however, adopting
the elaborate "geometry" of the next Aegean
style. The Cypriotes also buried their dead
throughout: and retained unaffected their ancient
worship of the Mother, Our Lady of Trees and
Doves (p. 178).
It is in Cyprus again that we can watch, in
THE COMING OF THE NORTH 215
some measure, the effects of the Minoan catastrophe,
and the new regime in the Aegean, on
the cities of the Phoenician coast, while these
await their hour for direct exploration. During
the Late-Minoan Age they had been importing
the fine art-work of the Keftiu, but there is no
evidence that they either made it or sent for it
themselves. In the Homeric poems, which, in
this point, too, preserve good memories of the
Sea-raids, more visits are paid by western seafarers
to Phcenica and Sidon than "Phoenician"
merchants pay to the west. Phoenician merchants,
however, are there; though not yet
clearly linked with Sidon, except as carriers of
its trade. Sidon, however, is already "full of
bronze," and manufactures silverware and jewellery,
which are prized in Achaean palaces. The
wide Phoenician trade of historic times had
clearly begun to grow, as the Minoan sea-power
failed: yet, even in Cyprus, there is a long period
'of impoverishment between the last Minoan contact
and the first clear imports of oriental origin.
The steps by which order was re-created out
of chaos in the Aegean, and contact was reestablished
with Eastern culture, over the seaways
to Sidon and Tyre, and over old Hittite
land-routes from Ionia to the Euphrates, deserve
far fuller treatment than would accord with the
scale of this book. The results, moreover, belong
816 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
not to the dawn but to the full daylight of history
the history of the Ancient Greeks.
One fact, however, may be noted before passing
on. The Greeks of history are now clearly
revealed as the product of intense fusion. An
immemorial civilization, bred in the fair surroundings
of an Aegean world, and gloriously
dominant over them, has stooped to conquer,
not for the last time, a ruder folk who broke in
to enjoy its paradise. For a while, these conquerors
spoiled more than they were able to
enjoy. But like Semitic intruders in Babylonia
and Syria, these folk of northern nomad origin
and "Indo-European" ways of thought, brought
with them qualities, traditions, and institutions
which offered a new standpoint for looking at
Aegean nature, just because in origin they were
independent of it. The result was Greece: and
it is one of the dramatic situations of history,
that when the movement of penetration, beginning,
as we used to say, "somewhere in Asia,**
on what now we may define more surely as the
northern steppe and its parkland fringe, reached
the full width of its original extension, it marshalled
the whole eastern world, from the Adriatic
to the Caspian and the Persian Gulf, in two
final camps, Eastern and Western in name, but
held and directed on both sides alike by longlost
brothers and true kinsmen. In the west,
DAWN OP HISTORY IN ITALY 217
they were the men who had "come from the
north," and changed the Aegean world from
Minoan to Greek. And if the others came from
the east, they were yet the same clear-eyed,
chivalrous horse-tamers; the Persian "companions"
of the King of Kings, the efficient
civil-service of Darius the "counter of pence,"
the men who kept the Persian empire working for
nearly two centuries after it lost its intellectual
head. For it was these whom the greatest of
the Hellenes, Alexander himself, too, by birthright,
a "horse-tamer" could recognize as fit to
share with his own "companions" from Macedon
the rule of the world. It was these, too, whose
ideal of old parkland chivalry, Herodotus, who
knew and understood them, defined with Hellenic
insight and happy epigram "to ride, and
to shoot, and to tell the truth."
CHAPTER X
THE DAWN OF H1STOEY EST ITAfcY
To pass from the Dawn of History in the
Aegean to its counterpart in the Western Mediterranean,
is to step down once again some hundreds
of years on the path of time. To take a
218 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
simple instance: the traditional date for the
foundation of Rome is no earlier than 753 B.C.,
and the last new-comers into peninsular Italy, the
Sabellians of the central highlands, did not find
complete settlement until after 400; but in 753
Sparta, the chief Dorian camp in Greece, had already
set her own affairs in order, and was engaged
in new wars of conquest. Within a generation
later, Corinth and Chalcis were trading widely
and founding Greek colonies in Sicily; Sparta
established Tarentum in 700; and Cumse in
Campania was perhaps even older than Rome.
For companion picture to that of Romulus the
half-legendary founder of Rome, the biographer
Plutarch has to go back to the Athenian Theseus,
whose revolt from Minoan oppression was the
prelude to federal union. His United States of
Athens, which are probably historical, and to be
dated, as in Plutarch, about 1250, are therefore
just five hundred years older than Rome.
The ancient historians of Italy, trained in
Greek methods of allegorical ethnology, give us
indeed poetic glimpses into a long pre-history,
in which one barbaric people succeeds another,
expelling its predecessor usually towards the
south, so that Sicels, for example, pass on from
Rome and leave their name in Sicily. They give
us also glimpses of Aegean exploration and settlement
in the west: ^Eneas of Troy, after nearly
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY 219
founding a Carthage and a Libybseum, plants
a Phrygian colony on the coast of Latium; Antenor
settled far up the Adriatic; Tyrrhenians
from Thessaly, by the mouth of the Po, and
others from Lydia on the other coast north of
the Tiber; Achaean heroes "coming back from
the Trojan War" leave their fame in Campania
and Magna Grsecia. Of the historical
equivalents of these sea-borne raids we have
already seen something in Chapter IX. But
clearly they only touch the fringe. It is from
Italy herself, and through some forty years'
work, mainly of Italian archaeologists, that we
recover the Dawn of her History.
The physical features of Italy present strong
contrasts with those of Greece. Essentially the
peninsula forms, with Sicily and Tunisian Africa,
a crescent fold of the mountain system, such as
we have already learned to recognize (p. 84) : but
its materials are much softer; the structure of
its ranges less contorted and abrupt; its total
elevation is much less; and its flanks are thickly
buried in soft recent beds, mainly composed of
its own rain-washings, or of the shell-strewn
floor of inshore seas. Though the Western
Mediterranean lies nearly its own breadth further
north than the Eastern, and its own length
nearer to the moist air of the Atlantic, Italy
compensates for this in great measure by its
220 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
south-easterly position, and Sicily still more:
they are washed indeed by both the seas, and
this two-shored character strongly impresses
their history. Cut off from Africa by a submergence
so slight that mere hilltops like Malta and
Lampedusa stand unsubmerged Salisbury Cathedral
or a New York "sky-scraper" would project
above water from most points along the
bottom they are yet separated, for all that,
and are fractured again to sea level, at the Strait
of Messina. This Italian ridge, therefore, was
no impassable barrier, so far as it went; yet, as
it did not go far enough, it is not in historic times
a bridge into Africa (as once, perhaps, even in
human times); only a long pier-head of Europe,
carrying European ways of life far out into the
heart of a Mediterranean world.
For the history of Italy has ever been that of
her invaders. In the Ancient East, we have had
to take account of intruders from elsewhere: but
their function has been that of a leaven or a
stimulant; the human mass which was there to
be leavened, or has taken shape and life under
that stimulus, has been indigenous in essentials.
In the Aegean, the invaders came late, to destroy,
or at best to paralyse and re-create, an indigenous
culture which had passed its prime and was
already stiffening when they arrived; as that of
Egypt stiffened under the dynasties after the
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY
Fourth. They brought their language, their
social structure, a large part of their religion;
but they accepted a culture and a mode of life
which was indigenous; and propagated a "Greek
nation" of magnificent mongrels, to clarify and
harmonize this wealth of incongruous gifts*
In Italy, the native culture of Mediterranean
man, beginning from simple forms, quite as advanced,
however, in essentials as that of the
JSgean or Egypt, remained secluded and unprovoked
to change. Isolated and interrupted
by forest-uplands, which were no less formidable
because they only needed to be used for their
terrors to vanish, it passed into many local varieties,
and accepted something from the wilder
West, on to whose seas it fronted; and rather
more from the Aegean, chiefly, though not quite
wholly in its Late-Minoan phase. Minoan colonies
extended from the heel of Italy to the
south-east corner of Sicily. Minoan enterprise
pressed further, to Sardinia and southern Spain,
to the mouth of the Rhone, and to the head of
the Adriatic, and indirectly through the Alpine
passes into the Middle Danube.
But in main outline Italy and Sicily emerged
almost from the end of the Minoan Age with economic,
industrial, and political conditions hardly
in advance of those with which the Aegean had
entered on its great career. The reasons for
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
this backwardness are easy to see. Italy enjoys
a rainfall sufficiently copious, and (what is more)
sufficiently widely distributed round a large part
of the year, to encourage rich forests of deciduous
trees, beech, oak, and chestnut in particular, and
to retain many stretches of summer grass at least
on its higher slopes. Though the rivers are of
small volume, they seldom run wholly dry. Their
valleys descend gently from uplands of moderate
altitude and gentle open forms; and it is an easy
matter to drive cattle up and down these natural
avenues, between summer and winter pastures.
Cattle-keeping, therefore, of this half-nomad
kind, plays a large part in Italian country life
in all ages. Note that here the chief herds are
no longer of sheep and goats, but of cows; more
dainty and capricious grazers, it is true, but
incomparably more profitable, and also far more
domesticated; far less perilous neighbours, that
is, to sown crops, orchards or vineyards. on the
other hand, agriculture, though still very well
worth while, is a far more laborious task. Vine
and olive count for less, and share their honours
with apple and plum. Corn counts for more
with oats, too, now, along with barley and wheat
and there is a deal of spring sowing, with the
season so much later and the winter more open.
Garden crops, and (above all) peas, beans, and
lentils, are most valued of all: but they also
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY 223
demand most effort. Irrigation, though only
possible on a small scale, permits a quick succession
of crops right through the summer, and
anchors the Italian to his valley-farm, however
his cattle may tempt him to a highland holiday;
or, if he moves, he has his "Sabine farm" in the
hills as well. Year in, year out, therefore, the
farmer's calendar is full; there is no spring respite,
as in the Aegean, either for seasonal war,
or for inventive industry. Tribal wars in early
Italy arise not from neighbourly friction, but
from the stern stress of folk-movement and overpopulation.
Culture, for the same reason, remains
almost stationary, its few needs being
easily satisfied with simple appliances: a Sabine
farm of to-day could be farmed again by Horace
to-morrow. Copious timber and flint, and the
useful bones of large cattle, disguised the natural
poverty of the whole peninsula in all kinds
of metal. The result was a long chalcolithic (or
as the Italians say, eneolithic) phase, in which
good cheap stone and bad expensive bronze were
in use concurrently. Settlements remained small
and scattered, mainly from the arm's-length instinct
of the herdsman, which we have studied
already (p. 18). Commerce was at a minimum:
marls and sands offer few mineral rarities; timber
a$d cattle were not yet worth sea-carriage, even
had their existence been known to the older
224 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
centres of industry; and in any case Italy, and
particularly its eastward coasts, offered worse
accommodation for sailors than any part of the
Mediterranean with which we have had to do
as yet. Writing and organization were therefore
needless luxuries; nothing was to be gained
by co-operation; there were no orders to give,
and nothing to say or to record.
This peasants' paradise as Central and Southern
Italy have ever been, and long may expect to
remain was rudely threatened, like the Aegean,
by a series of invasions from the mainland of
Europe; but the sequel was very different. At
first sight, Italy seems to be more securely fortified
by nature against intrusion on this side
than any peninsula in the world. The Alps rise
with peaks of over ten thousand feet and eternal
snows, in a great crescent from the Riviera to
Dalmatia, plunging at one extremity into deep
sea, at the other into a sunken shore-line with
strings of islands, continuous with that of Greece.
Within, concentric with the Alps, and continuous
with their maritime section, rise the
Apennine ridges, less lofty, with easy passes,
but densely obstructed with forest. Thirdly,
between Alps and Apennines lay the most impenetrable
barrier of all, the waterlogged valley
of the Po; a hundred miles or more of fen from
its Adriatic delta, and then another hundred of
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY 25
dense oak-wood, infested with Wild pig and wild
oxen, and continuous with the forests of the
foothills north, west, and south. But the Alps
as a frontier are a broken reed, a splendid traitor.
Their steep face is towards Italy; and the long
oblique valleys of Bavaria and the Tyrol tempt
men up from the Danube water-meadows to
easy passes: almost before they are aware, they
are on the down-road to the Po. The Apennines
are no better: their escarpment too frowns southward
over Genoa and Florence, not on Bologna
and Turin; and the copious tributaries of the Po
play the same part as those of the Danube. only
the fen-land, in fact, held Italy and the northern
world apart.
In a warmer climate, and with less dense impediment
of forest fringe, Lombardy might have
become an independent focus of culture like
Babylonia. As it was, there were the trees as
well as the reeds to fight; and the short steep
upper courses of the Po drainage permit even
less separation of silt from mud than in the Two
Rivers (p. 94). But the Po was circumvented
none the less.
In an Alpine region with numerous parallel
ridges, many of the intermont troughs have
insufficient outlet, or none. They become lakebasins,
and are liable to be forested down to the
water's edge, except where mountain torrents
226 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
feed the lake and push out their miniature deltas.
Land and water seem alike inhospitable, except
to the merest hunterfolk. But all along the
Alpine chain, and in some other regions as well,
man has learned even here how to make himself
at home. Felling the great trees on the lakeshore,
he has cleared himself a field on the bank,
and built out into the water a pier of piles, secure
against bear and mountain-cat, and defensible
against hostile man along a narrow gangway,
easily blocked or (at need) withdrawn altogether.
On the piles is a platform, with huts and stores,
and a trap-door for fishing. Refuse is cast into
the lake: infants, as Herodotus quaintly notes,
north of the Aegean, "are tethered lest they roll
off." on the little clearing in front of the gangway,
where the piles once grew, are simple crops
of corn and vegetables; flax for clothing and
fishing tackle, and apple-trees and stone-fruit;
beyond them, nuts grow wild. Hunting and fishing
were, of course, still a main source of food;
cattle, easily acquired, could be kept on the
**alp" the rich meadow-strip above the treeline,
which is snow-sodden in spring, and green
all summer through. In winter, of course, they
stayed indoors, on the platforms or hard by.
Herodotus may well be in earnest when he says
that pile-dwelling horses ate fish!
In almost all the Alpine lakes, "lake-dwellDAWN
OF HISTORY IN ITALY 227
ings" of this kind were established in the stone
age. They are notably uniform in culture, over
great distances; but this need not surprise us.
The natural conditions are simple and rigid,
and the propagation of this type of settlement
is peculiarly rapid, through the circumstance
that between shore and deep water there is
no room for endless extension of a pile-dwelling.
As population increases, therefore and in such
security it can increase rapidly somebody must
go, and start a fresh one further on. Colonization,
therefore, is a fundamental habit among
pile-dwelling peoples. Their log canoes give
them access to the whole shore of their own
lake, and the fact that their summer pastures
are on the high "alp," above the trees, ensures
acquaintance with the passes which lead to the
next one.
It was in the latter part of the stone age that
the Italian lakes found themselves at last com*
pletely populated with lake-dwellers, and they
overflowed in the customary way. These lakes,
however, lie not in enclosed basins, but in lateral
valleys opening onto the Lombard plain, obstructed
only by clots of ice-borne rubbish which
have dammed up mountain streams and inundated
their upper courses. But down-stream
there was still timber for piles, the same timber,
adjacent to the fens, which had hitherto baulked
228 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
all human efforts to reclaim them: and now that
the right men had come, what had been the chief
obstacle became the very means of progress.
Pile-dwellings of improved pattern, adapted to
riverside life, were pushed forward into the fens,
as far out as there were trees for piles. Bound
the head of the marshes, and all along the Apennine
foothills they spread, hundreds in number,
as far as Bologna and a little beyond. Here, in
due time, and once more for want of space, the
upper courses of the tributaries were explored,
suitable sites were dammed with pile-barrages
to form artificial lakelets, and the old rectangular
timber-framed platforms continued to be built,
though to all intents and purposes these "terremare"
settlements were now on dry land. Old
habits of life die hard, as we know; far beyond
the Apennines, and in the age of iron, Roman
armies fortified their nightly camps with a ditch
and wooden palisade; their huts still ranged in
four-square "islands'* like the structure-lines
of the old platforms; and the bridge over the
Tiber which was kept by Horatius "in the
brave days of old" was still a bridge of piles,
in which no iron nail might be found; to be
cut away in an hour on the near approach of
an enemy.
There seems no doubt that the "terremare"
people maintained free communication over the
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY
large areas which they had reclaimed: their culture
and industries remain surprisingly uniform
in essentials, all over the Po valley. There was
indeed no obstacle, unless they fell out among
themselves, for the territory was in the main
their own creation. What is even more important,
is that, like the lords of a sand-desert,
they were clearly in the position to create and
exploit a monopoly of intercourse and transport
between peninsular Italy and the Danube valley,
as soon as either of these regions offered any element
of civilization worth communicating to the
other, and the "terremare" folk discovered the
convenience of their own position.
Exactly what it was which brought this discovery
about, is not yet wholly clear. Some lay
stress on the rather summary and simultaneous
way in which the old "terremare" sites were
deserted in favour of open settlements on dry
land, and on the spread of the use of iron, of
improved types of safety-pin, and of an elaborate
and characteristic convention of abstract geometrical
art. They infer that the motive force*
as in Aegean lands, was a fresh conquest by
people from the Danube, and they support their
conclusion by the rather marked contrast which
is perceptible in some districts between certain
tombs of warriors and those of the civilian population,
the latter being almost devoid of weapons,
230 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
though copiously furnished with other kinds of
fine metalwork. They are also at a loss to account
in any other way for the geographical
distribution of the two principal Italian types
of Indo-European speech, which between them
occupy all the regions of the peninsula except
Etruria. Others are more impressed with the
gradualness of the change in many departments
of industry; the continuity of the tomb-type
and ritual of cremation; and the accumulated
proof that there was no such general disturbance
and re-occupation of peninsular Italy as we
would expect to find if the "terremare" civilization
which screened the Apennine passes had
been suddenly and violently overwhelmed.
Probably the truth lies between* For the first
time since we left the neighbourhood of the Nile
and Euphrates we are dealing with a culture
based on a great reclamation of previously manless
country, and with the creation of a new
copious source of agricultural wealth, in a region
where there were also rich possibilities of exchange
with large neighbouring districts, of con*
trasted climate and resources. Now nothing was
more striking in the history of Babylonia than
the way in which a region of this kind, once
thoroughly brought under economic control, is
capable of tolerating repeated conquests by men
of either kindred or of alien antecedents the
DAWN OP HISTORY IN ITALY 231
Elamites and Semites, of our Babylonian analogy
without disturbance of the main processes of
civilized development, though with quick appreciation
of anything for good; fresh commodities,
like the timber and stone of Elam, or fresh ideas
like those which Babylonia owed to the Semitic
genius for political organization and for some
aspects of thought and religion.
To do justice to this view of the course of
events in Northern Italy, we must look a little
afield on either flank of the Po Valley. Southwards
the story is fairly dear. With the exception
of one isolated site near Tarentum, which
here too seems to have given place, and perhaps
birth, to a dry-land settlement at Timmari,
curiously like the earliest dry-land settlements
in the north, the "terremare" people seem to
have been stopped by the Apennines. The
similarities in the culture of the Tiber valley
and of early Etruria, hardly amount to proof of
a permanent "terremare" occupation, though it
is very likely that other bands, less fortunate
than that which reached Tarentum, attempted
this from time to time, and left some traces of
their culture, though little of their blood or
name. Above all, there are no
"
terremare"
there. The difficulty which is unsolved as
yet, is that already hinted at, of correlating
the sequence and distribution of the Italic Ian*
THE DAWN OP HISTORY
guages with the successive stages of material
advancement.
Consequently the Early Iron Age, which like
the Bronze Age which it succeeds, comes in with
remarkably gradual transition here, presents on.
the one hand a strong and increasing contrast
between the regions north and south of the
Apennines; and, on the other, well-marked
differentiation among a number of separate districts
in the southern, all lying geographically
in detached low-lying coastlands of greater
agricultural fertility. Prom their detachment
from each other, we get the impression (which
the earliest Italian history amply confirms) that
the central highlands, from the Apennine frontier
to Calabria, were held throughout this
period by mainly pastoral tribes belonging to
the latest or Sabellian-speaking group; easily
upset and uprooted, with alternate periods of
quiescence and of confused movement southwards.
In Sicily, South Italy, Campania, and the
short isolated valleys of Picenum, far up the
Adriatic shore, the immemorial custom of earthburial
was retained (except at Timmari) unaltered,
and the principal fresh developments are
clearly due to oversea intercourse with the reviving
culture of the Aegean, now essentially
Greek. Eturia and Latium show cross currents
DAWN OF HISTOBY IN ITALY 233
of Greek seaborne trade, competing with arts
(and even manufactured objects) from beyond
the Apennines; and burial and cremation go on
side .by side. The "Italic "-speaking peoples
of those lowland districts represent a rather
earlier phase of Indo-European speech than the
highland Sabellians. Though we do not know
for certain the moment of their arrival, they had
certainly been in the peninsula long enough to
adapt themselves in great measure to native
modes of life, and to become thoroughly amalgamated
with the old Mediterranean inhabitants.
The social structure of all
"
Italic" Italy,
however, is of an even more strictly patriarchal
type than had come into being round the less
pasturable Aegean; and social and political
development was retarded in proportion. City
life hardly existed, for a long while. The loosely
related dans lived in small scattered settlements,
such as we see perched on defensible foothills
round the Latin plain, and on the slopes of the
Alban Hills in its centre. Both in Latium and in
Campania, and probably elsewhere, regional federations
were formed, for common defence and
for the public worship of Indo-European deities
closely akin to those of the Greeks.
Across the north .corner of the "flat-land"
which gave a name to Latium and to its people
the Latini, the northernmost and largest of these
34 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
coastland leagues, runs out the only navigable
river of the peninsula, the "yellow Tiber," heavy
with clayey soil, after its frequent and dangerous
floods. The "flat-land" indeed is in great part
built of the deposits of its ancient estuary.
About twelve miles up stream, just clear of
the coast marshes, which give protection against
piracy, an island and some shoals in the river
facilitate transit from the south intp Etruria;
even while they stop navigation, A low isolated
hill on the Latin shore commands the crossing
in face of any ordinary force. This is the Palatine
hill, the site of a "Square Rome" of prehistoric
age. In theory and in normal times
this little fort should enable Latin occupants
to "hold the bridge" against Etruria until the
rest of their allies could rally. But in fact things
were not so simple. Man intervened, and probably
a great man, with an eye for so strong a
situation. The legend is very likely true that
Rome originated as an Outland; a "Coventry"
or a Cave of Adullam; an "Asylum" or City of
Refuge, for ne'er-do-wells on both banks. It
never wholly belonged to the Latins; still less
had it any love for Etruscans; probably its only
serious industry at first was blackmail of passersby.
It was not for nothing that Rome's chief
priests, perhaps her original priest-kings, were
by title "Bridgemakers," Ponijfice*. They held
DAWN OP HISTORY IN ITALY 235
just such a monopoly of the transit between
Latium and Etruria, as their successors in the
title have claimed between Heaven and Earth.
Other low hills or spurs of table-land encircling
the Palatine were occupied early by independent
settlements, for the most part Latin,
though by tradition one of them was a "Sabine"
outpost of the highlanders. The Aventine hill,
furthest down stream, had a different character
again. It hangs more steeply above the river
than any of the others, just at the point where
navigation was closed by the "Bridge on Piles."
This, then, like London .Bridge, and Oxford,
Cambridge, Paris, and Baltimore, was where
sea-borne traffic had to disembark, and proceed
by land. The salt from lagoons by the river
mouth was traded and distributed here too:
and the valley road inland from Rome was
always still the Salt-way via Solaria. Thus
the Aventine, too, became a settlement of outlanders,
like the Palatine, though in another
sense; for they were men of all countries and
tongues. It was an "East End," and foreign
quarter, tolerated, and then encouraged, for its
utility, but outside the close circle of "patrician
"
patriarchal groups of native clansmen; it was
"plebeian" in fact, in the first and proper sense
of the word a flhfftfag crowd of mere individuals.
From these small tangled origins grew the
236 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
city of Rome, the City of the Seven Hills; with
its Latin language and culture; its more than
Sabellian hardihood; its Etruscan genius for
exploitation, the genius of the proverbial "Philistine";
and its inveterate hospitality for "desirable
aliens."
The only serious problem in this peninsular
Italy is presented by the Etruscans, a mysterious
people which has inspired as much wild theory
as the Phoenicians or the Celts. Its language is
still practically unintelligible, though written
plainly in an alphabet borrowed from Greek
traders. All that seems dear is that it is not
Indo-European; but whether the Etruscans
brought it with them from elsewhere, or preserved
an old native language from extermination by
their opportune arrival in Etruria, is still quite
uncertain. The Greek historians and their Italian
disciples were unanimous that the Etruscans
were of foreign origin; almost all were agreed
that they came from the Aegean, though it was
disputed whether from Lydia or the Thessalian
side, or whether they had no country at all, but
wandered like Vikings, or the Sea Dyaks of
Borneo. It was also debated whether they
reached Etruria by its own sea coast, or from
an Adriatic landing-place near the mouth of the
Pa Probably we may regard them provisionally
as a substantial body of Aegean Sea-raiders,
DAWN OF HISTORY IN ITALY 237
who struck out into the West about the same
time as their namesakes, the Tursha, took part
in attacks on Egypt (p. 205); and their settlement
in Etruria as a western counterpart of
Philistia. The little we know of their political
organization points the same way; strong "fenced
cities," forcibly ruled by exclusive aristocracies,
with war-lords, and the practice of championfighting;
oppressive to the mass of the population;
aggressive both southwards through Latium as
far as Campania, and also for a brief period in
all the Po Valley, to the foothills of the Alps. The
cruel insolence of the "proud house of Tarquin,"
Etruscan overlords of Latium, provoked a general
revolt there, a little before 500; which even
"Lars Porsena of Clusium" up the Tiber was impotent
to quell. The Campanian garrisons held
their own till a raid of Sabellian highlanders
expelled them in 424. The Etruscan empire
in the north fell to pieces almost in the same
year, before a new northern enemy, the predatory
Gauls (p. 245)* For Rome, too, "the Gaul
was at the gate" in 390, and the Gaulish raids
of the next few years extended within sight of
Tarentum.
What follows, in the recovery and rapid consolidation
of the districts south of the Apennines,
not excluding what was left of Etruria, is the
written history of early Rome. So it is time to
238 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
return upon the question, what events were in
progress north of that frontier-line, from the
close of the "terremare" Bronze Age to the Gallic
inroad which we have just described*
CHAPTEE XI
THE DAWN IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EtJROPE
WHILE Sicily and Italy south of the Apennines
were absorbing the elements of the new Hellenic
culture through great Greek colonies from
Tarentum to Syracuse, and at least the material
arts by way of Etruria also, the Po Valley was
being drawn in exactly the opposite direction;
and converted, for the second, and by no means
for the last time, into a "Cisalpine" appendage
of Central Europe. Of this process it is even
more difficult to write with confidence than of
the course of events on the
"
Italic
"
side; mainly
because until recently evidence has been scanty,
guesswork copious, and the conflict of opinion
between students of culture and language embittered
by racial and political fanaticism.
Behind the Balkan Peninsula and the broken
Alpine frontier of Italy lies the great Hungarian
plain, encircled by the Carpathians and watered
CENTBAL & NORTHERN EUROPE 239
by the Danube and its tributaries. The foothills
which surround it are of forest and parkland:
then comes, as in Asia Minor, a broad zone of
pasture, partly available for corn in due time,
and then a central steppe, fading locally into
desert. The upper valley of the Danube, wide,
passable, and fertile, yet fully furnished by
nature with good timber, invites exploration
westward: and a little beyond its angle at Vienna,
broad easy slopes connect it to the north with
the upper Elbe, and thereby through parkland
Bohemia with the coast plains towards the Baltic.
Its population is fundamentally "Alpine/* enriched
however by the qualities of successive
intruders; nomads from the great steppe, like
the mediaeval Huns, and the first introducers of
the horse and Indo-European speech; and also,
from time to time, blonde "Northern" giants
from the lands round the Baltic.
Clearly within this region there was room for
great variety of modes of life. For nomad horsebreeders
and other pastorals there is the central
steppe, and as more than one variety of horse
was known even to the "terremare" people, we
are safe in assuming the existence of horse-using
folk on the Danube, at least from the beginning
of the Bronze Age. on the other hand the mixed
country round the edge of the plain offered the
same freedom of compromise between pastoral
840 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
and agricultural life as we have had to contemplate
already on the margin of the larger grassland,
and in peninsular Italy. Finally, there is
quite gradual transition of environment and climate
over the open valley-heads of the Tyrol into
the southward foothills of the Alps, and thence
into the region of the "terremare" culture.
The civilization of the Lake-dwellers can be
traced descending on the Danubian side of the
hills in something the same fashion as on the
Cisalpine; with this difference however, that
here, it struck dry land much sooner, and consequently
went through no such "terremare" phase
as we have traced in the Po Valley. It found,
in fact, on this side of the hills, an Elam, not a
Babylonia.
All through a long and brilliant Bronze Age this
Danubian civilization grew: influenced slightly
by imports from the Minoan south; but far
too distant to be dominated by them, and already
well developed on lines of its own before
it felt their charm. It was probably never wholly
out of touch with the Cisalpine region: but as
it had not the exceptional difficulties which the
"terremare" folk had to contend with, it need
not surprise us that it developed faster, and was
ready to give a lead to the settlers of the Po
Valley, when at length they were ready to follow.
To decide at what point in this series of events
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE
the first and second groups of Italic-speaking
peoples passed into the peninsula, is the crux of
the whole problem. It is certain that the later
Sabellian group is nearly related with the Umbrian
language, the speakers of which still extended
from the head of the Tiber valley to the Alps until
the Gallic inroads, and these as we have seen
(p. 37) were in progress about 400 B.C. Two
linguistic stocks, therefore, had dominated the
Cisalpine region in succession between the coming
of the "terremare" folk and that of the Gauls;
and the only period of more than normal progress,
or of any rapid change of quality, in the archaeological
evidence, is that of transition from the
"terremare" phase to that of the dry-land settlements,
of which Villanova, close to Bologna,
is the type* It is here, consequently, that some
are inclined to place the introduction of Umbro-
Sabellian speech.
But this does not necessarily mean a displacement
of the population. Like the Semitic
peoples, the early speakers of Indo-European
languages possessed a remarkable genius which
we cannot at present analyse for imposing their
speech, and with it much of their beliefs and social
practices, on the populations among whom
they came, while adapting themselves to enjoy
the material culture which they found in vogue
in each new region. It is certain, also, from the
THE DAWN OP HISTORY
diversity of physical type among the peoples
who are actually found speaking these languages,
that exposure to such varied climates and environments
was fatal to the separate existence
of the originally intrusive stocks. Either they
interbred and lost their identity, or they died
out, leaving their speech and their ideas to be
propagated by pupils of alien race. It is also
probable that, in most cases, the actual intruders
were few: that it was quality, not numbers, that
prevailed. We have further to note that we are
now dealing with a region with far greater rainfall,
and far more evenly distributed round the
year, than any which has come before us yet:
with a region, therefore, far more densely forested,
and consequently far less continuously
peopled than the great oriental centres: far
more easy, therefore, for determined invaders
to occupy without displacing the natives, or
to traverse without disturbing them permanently;
provided only that the intruders have
the ability to move about at all, in such encumbered
country. The most nearly similar regions
in the nearer East are North Syria and the
western half of Asia Minor, though even here it
was the mountain, not the forest, which was the
more effective barrier.
In general, then, we are to conceive the whole
region of the Danubian and Cisalpine plains as
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE 243
having come to form one homogeneous province
of civilization before the end of the Bronze
Age, and as having retained this general uniformity
during a long period of quiescence and free
intercourse: marred, but not interrupted, like
the internal development of Babylonia or the
Syrian coast, by occasional, perhaps even frequent,
attempts of ambitious or over-populated groups
to make conquests or new settlements.
Of the general character of this "ItaJo-Danubian"
civilization, we learn something from the
evidence of its richly furnished tombs; and most
of all from a large and very characteristic series
of vessels of embossed bronze, decorated in a
style which owes something in detail to the
Orientalizing art of Greece and the Levant in
the eighth and seventh centuries, though it
remains , vigorously independent in style and
sentiment. These vessels show many scenes
of ceremonial daily life, chariot-races, operations
of war, processions, feasts, and public assemblies;
with various accessories of native fashion, such
as are found in the same tombs with them. It
is all the more unfortunate, therefore, that this
highly cultured people remained wholly illiterate
till much later, and has therefore left us nothing
at first hand as to its law, policy, and religion.
Something, however, has come down, nevertheless,
through the geographers of Greece and
44 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Rome, who lived near enough to its great days
to collect some facts about it. From them we
learn that in the days before the Gallic inroads,
a group of peoples called the CeUce the name
has been sadly mishandled since had their home
north of the Alps, along the whole length of
the Danube valley: that at the time of their
greatest extension they were dominant as far
east at the Crimea (where they felt the pressure
of Scythians incoming from the east, from about
700 onwards); they had spread beyond the
Rhine, and as far as the Atlantic coast; and
offshoots of the great tribe of the Bituriges,
who were settled in Central France when the
Greeks reached Marseilles in 600 had established
themselves firmly in many parts of Spain.
The descriptions of them as tall and fair or ruddy,
intolerant of southern heat, eaters of pork and
drinkers of beer, horse-racers, and skilled chariotdrivers,
desperate fighters, chivalrous and exuberant,
complete a picture which has many
claims to accuracy.
These rather miscellaneous hints are enough
to permit the indentification of well-marked
types of swords, safety-pins, and other portable
objects of bronze and iron, derived from several
ascertainable phases of Danubian development,
and found scattered among the products of local
industry over the whole of this wide area, as the
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE 245
belongings of the adventurous bands who reclaimed
these new regions to their own culture,
perhaps even annexed them to a transitory
empire. As Herodotus sums up the Scythians,
and Thucydides the peoples of Thrace, so the
modern historian may epitomize the Celts: "If
they could but agree among themselves, nothing
could withstand them/*
But by the time that these Celtic peoples
tread the threshold of history, they are beset
by many enemies. on the east, the nomad
Scythians drove the "Cimmerian" section of
them off the grassland altogether, in a flood of
desperate fugitives, which broke through into
Asia Minor in the seventh century, wrecked
the nascent kingdom of the Lydians about 650,
and swept on, like the new lords of Armenia
before them (p. 186), till they laid the last straw
on the tottering back of Assyria. A century
later, Etruscan conquests detached the whole
Cisalpine province, and another century after
that, a central European section of them, closely
akin but of ruder manners, and standing in
much the same relation to what Roman writers
called the "older or Umbrian" Celts, as the
Sabellians to the older Italic peoples, broke
loose somewhere in the north, and rapidly made
themselves master of large parts of the Danube
valtey. About 400 B.C., these "Gallic" tribes
246 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
flooded out southward to create a "Cisalpine
Gaul" on the ruins of Etruscan rule; maiming
Etruria itself, sacking Rome in 390, and threatening
Tarentum, as we have seen. Next, in the
following century, another horde of them penetrated
far into Greece (reaching Delphi in 279),
and then across the Hellespont into a new "Galatia"
on the plateau of Asia Minor. The inrush
of the dreaded Gaesatae into Cisalpine Gaul,
about 285, which precipitated the intervention
of Rome beyond the Apennines, was probably
a backwash of this Galatian wave. Northwestward,
similar conquests are rather later, and
the chronology of them is obscure; but the
Belgic movement was still in progress north of
the Seine, in the first century B.C., when the
intervention of Julius Caesar brought all the
country between the Rhine and the Atlantic
under the domination of Rome, and replaced
by a Roman sea-police the naval and commercial
enterprises of the Breton Veneti, whom he found
engaged in trade with both Celts and aborigines
in Britain.
It is no part of the plan, of this volume to
follow the Dawn of History into the modern
world. only one other twilight lies between
Caesar's day and ours, and begins to lighten
before he crossed the Rhone and invaded Outer
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE 247
Gaul. The Helvetii, whose enforced migration
challenged him in 58 B.C., were themselves victims
of Teutonic pressure across the Upper Rhine:
and in the same autumn Caesar had to deal with
the Teutonic army of Ariovistus, which was
attempting to enter Gaul by the gap between
Vosges and Jura.
But the difference of language between Teutons
and Celts concealed a large identity of culture
economic, social, and political. The blood of
both, too, was by this time a mixture, in varying
proportions, of Alpine and Northern elements,
and their aspect not easy for a southron to distinguish.
The Teutonic peoples, however, had
grown up, not in a Central European region within
the Carpathian ring, but in those parts of the
forested flat-land which lie between that barrier
and the Baltic. Their home spreads back as far
east as the great marsh of the Pripet, and as far
west as the Oder: outside these early limits we
find relics of their later advancement only. Such
intercourse, therefore, as they had with Mediterranean
culture Hellenic mainly, though perhaps
also Minoan, for the amber trade, which
brought it about, is immemoriaUy old was
conducted wholly at second hand, by Danubian
and later also by Cisalpine middlemen, who had
their own wares to sell. Indo-European speech
had spread here too: how and when, we cannot
248 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
tell for certain. All that is clear is that in all
this wooded region, movement was constant,
and mainly away from the grasslands. Occasional
back-rushes seem to have been organized
raids of comparatively small force, political rather
than ethnic in importance.
In the same way, too, the still later outpouring
of the Scandinavian peoples which made the
first real sea-power of the Atlantic, after the
Roman coastguard was withdrawn can only be
sketched, on the margin of a closing page. The
culture of these peoples begins with a brilliant
stone age, whose finer flint-work challenges that
of Egyptian Koptos. A no less brilliant bronze
age follows, spread over both shores of what in
truth we may characterize as a northern Mediterranean.
Whereas, however, the southern Mediterranean
has its archipelago in an inner recess,
and all its wilder shores between that
and the Atlantic, the Baltic
"
Aegean" lies between
Sweden and Denmark, with its Gibraltar
at Elsinore, and a great avenue to the Danube
and the industrial south by the valley-route of
the Elbe. It is natural, therefore, that it should
be from hence, not from Minoan Crete, or Carthage,
or even Rome, that the first Atlantic
sea-power originated, which had more than a
cross-Channel range.
The people who created it were by blood pure
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE 249
"Northerners," and yet by speech so purely
Indo-European that it has even been contended,
more than once, that the home of that whole
family of languages is here. once again, chronology
is impossible, both for language and institutions;
and even the periods of Bronze and Early
Iron industry are still very variously dated. This,
however, matters the less, as history begins here
so much later even than with the Teutons.
Though pictorial records of Baltic seafaring go
back, at Bohuslan in Sweden, to a very early
time, the great age of the Northmen falls between
the ninth century and the twelfth. The range of
their enterprise is, however, enormous. By land
they cut their way through the heart of Russia
to the Black Sea, where they were once more in
their element: by sea they colonized Iceland,
and explored beyond Greenland. They conquered
all Normandy, and much of Brittany, and profoundly
affected the coast population of all the
"narrow seas." They harried the Mediterranean,
and made possible the Crusades; recovering
Sicily from the Saracens, and South Italy from
the paralysed dutch of dying Constantinople.
To the Atlantic coasts, and to Mediterranean
sailors also, they gave methods of navigation and
shipbuilding which guaranteed, to all men brave
enough to use them, the instruments to control
the Atlantic, both shores alike, in time. And
250 THE DAWN OF HISTORY
the conquest of the Atlantic is the signal for a
Modern World.
The conclusion of the whole matter may be
sketched in a few words. From our study of
typical examples of peoples who "have no history,"
we were led to the conclusion that it may
happen in various ways that the struggle in which
Man is engaged with Nature is so nearly balanced
that as long as the men themselves and the world
in which they live remain unaltered, further change
is out of the question: that conditions actually
have thus remained unchanged, over wide areas
and for long periods of time; and that, as long
as this has been so, no "history" has been made
there worth recording.
It would seem to follow, as the converse of this,
that "historical" events occur when moments
of change in the balance of power between Nature
and Man challenge men, to fresh control over
Nature: and from instances on the Nile and
Euphrates, in the islands and peninsulas of the
Midland Sea, in the Central European woodlands,
and round the Baltic inlet; above all, on the
great Grasslands north and south of the Mountain
Zone, we have begun to see further that, broadly
speaking, there are three principal kinds of "historical
event," in this sense of the word.
First, change may occur in the very quality
CENTRAL & NORTHERN EUROPE
of a people. We are familiar with the apparition
of an individual of genius, in a family which has
not shown any previous sign of talent; and there
seems no reason why what happens rarely in a
single example should not happen also to a whole
generation: still more rarely of course, but yet
often enough for the historian to have to take
it into account. The thirteenth century in Europe,
and our own Elizabethan Age, are instances of
this kind of fertility; and it hardly needs to be
stated in words, either that the motive-power
of exceptional men is out of all proportion to
their numbers, or that their efficiency, disproportionate
as it is in any case, increases in still
higher ratio when, by a happy accident, many or
even several great men are active simultaneously.
Secondly, the nature of the region may change.
The best attested mode of such change is by
alteration of climate, affecting the means of subsistence;
which either compels emigration into
other regions, or attracts immigrants from elsewhere.
Thirdly, without change either in the nature
of the region or in the quality of its men, other
changes elsewhere, on the part either of Nature
or of Man, may bring fresh men into contact
and conflict with the actual population; into
fresh forms bf struggle with Nature and mastery
over Nature's resources.
252 THE DAWN OP HISTORY
All these kinds of disturbance are alike in this,
that their immediate effect is to make human
life more difficult. Either the new conditions
require more effort of the same kind, or the old
kind of effort no longer produces the effect required,
and those who cannot, or will not, make
the effort now required, pay the penalty of their
inefficiency. Life also becomes more complicated.
There is not only more to do, but more
kinds of things to be done. Work is differentiated,
as well as different; and the workers are specialized.
Civilization, and therewith citizenship
the skill to behave in a civilized world are the
consequence; but in every region they express an
attempt, appropriate to it, to
"
live well
"
just there*
To trace these processes till they reach their
climax in a "historic age*' in the regions whence
our own civilization comes, has been the plan
of this essay. It is an attempt to apply geographical
criticism to history, historical criticism
to geography, and biological to both; and
it results as no one could be more conscious
than the writer in a temporary vagueness of
outline, as of things half seen, and processes halfrealized.
If the reader feels a biological bias overprominent,
and is moved to complain with that
other, "I see men as trees walking>" let him remember
that he, who said that, was well on the
way to "see every man clearly."
NOTE on BOOKS
ON the general question of the relation between Man and his
environment, reference should be made to handbooks of
Geography and Ethnology;, such as the volume on Modern
Geography in the Home University Library, or Brunhes, Etude
fa Geographie Humaine, and the opening chapters of Batzel's
History of Mankind (English translation, 1896). Compare
also von Helmolt's Wdtgeschichte, and Reclus, La Terre, of
which there are English translations, and Langlois and Segnobos*
Introduction to the Study of History (English translation,
1898). The outlines of savage and patriarchal society
are well suromarized in a very small but suggestive book
Jenks/ History of Politic* (Temple Primers). There is graphic
description of types of primitive society in Demoting, Comment
la route cr4e k type social, de Preville, Les Soctetts Africaines,
and two French series entitled La Science sociale, and UAnn&e
For the geography of the region described in Chapter III.;
Hogarth's Nearer East gives fuU details, with illustrations both
from ancient and from modern history, and references to
the literature. Bipley, The Races of Europe, includes also all
as far as Persia; and a full bibliography. Sergi, The Mediterranean
Race* and Deniker, Races of Man, are brief but good.
An admirable study of the Mediterranean region is Philippson,
Da$lMittelmeer0ebiet. George Adam Smith, Historical Geography
of the Holy Land, is invaluable. For the north-west, see
Partich, Central Europe* w the same series as Hogarth's Nearer
East. For pastoral conditions of life, and questions of climatic
change, consult Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia.
The best general histories of the Ancient East are Eduard
Meyer, GesMcMe dee AUerthwns (a French translation is
announced), and Maspero, L'histoire andenne des Peuples de
VOrient (English translation in three large illustrated volumes). A most useful supplement to Maspero, bringing the record of
discoveries down to 1910, is King and Hall, Egypt and Western
Asia in the light of recent Discoveries. For early Babylonia,
King's History of Burner and Accad is complete as far as in
goes. The bearings of recent work at Susa are discussed in
de Morgan, Les Premieres Civilisations.
For Egypt, Breasted'a History of Egypt, and Newberry and
arstanrs Short History of Ancient Egypt* may be supplemented
by Flinders Petriefs History (in six volumes), and by
the admirable article Effypt by Griffith and others in the new
Encyclopedia Britannica, The prehistoric period is fully
253
254 NOTE on BOOKS
treated in de Morgan's Recherche* sur Us Orfaines ,._ .
and the later times in Erraan, Life in Ancient Egypt. Thpro
is important new work in Reisner, Early Dynastic Cemeteries,
and Elliott Smith, The Ancient Egyptians^
On Arabia consult Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage
in early Arabia, Hogarth, Penetration of Arabia, and tho
principal travels in Hogarth's bibliography. For the legislation
of Hammurabi, consult S. A. Cook, The Laws of Moses
and Code of Hammurabi, and on all similar questions, Driver's
Schweich Lectures, entitled Modern Research as illustrating
the Bible.
For Asia Minor, Sayce's Hittites, and Garstang's Land of
ihe HiUites, treat the historical results of recent expeditions
in Cappadocia and North Syria.
Of the Minoan Age in Prehistoric Greece, there is an admirable
brief summary by Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, Crete, the
Forerunner of Greece. See also Aegean Civilization in the new
Encycl. Brit. Details must bo sought in tho reports of excavations
and in Evans, Scripta Minoa, vol. i. For the environment
of Greek] life, see Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth.
On the Indo-European Languages consult the careful article
in the new Encyclopaedia, and tho references given there. In
its main facts, Schrader's Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan
Peoples is still of value (English translation, 1890)* The
earlier history of the subject is fairly put in Isaac Taylor's
Origin of the Aryans.
For the beginnings of Historic Greece, Hogarth, Ionia and
the East, is the best recent discussion of the new evidence.
Helbig's Homerisches Epos, dealing with the arohaaological
problems of the Homeric Age, appeared in 1883, but is still
useful. Subsequent work is reviewed in the second edition
of Cauer's Grundfragen der Homerischen JKritik. Recent English
contributions (on very different hypotheses) are Ridgeway,
Early Age of Greece, Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic,
and Lang, Homer and his Age, and The World of Homer.
For Early Italy, Feet's Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and
Sicily is an exhaustive guide to the archsoological evidence. See
also Modestov's Introduction a Vffistoire Romaine. on the
special question of the relations between the Po valley and the
Danube, Bertrand and Reinach, Les Celtos dans Ids valUes du
Po et du Danube is still of value,. The archaeology of France
ManadnuWeelsdt'earrncheEoulorgoipe.e generally is summarized in Deohelotto,
For Scandinavian and northern antiquities generally,aeo
Montelius, The Civilization of Sweden in Heathen Tim**, Worsaae,
The Primeval Antiffutties of Denmark, Sophus Mftller,
Nordische AUerthumsJounde and Urgeschichfo Europe*, and the
other works cited in the well illustrated Encyclopedia article
on Scandinavian Antiquities.
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
This index only includes selected details. The principal topics 'must be sowM
ov meant of toe chapter Juadiags.
or mv u.
147-8, 153, 165 .,
Africa, 33, 41 fl., 62-119, 137, 220
Aaab, 118\ 161
Aleppo, 146, 157. 160, 225
Alexander, 31, 79, 81. 87. 217
"Alpine" Man, 39 ft., 51, 150, 172
Amenhotep III, 154, 205
101
AHfl, 113 .,
ArnwniA, t. 134,
Asauan, 45 fl,,
BfcbeLTovroror, 99
, _._, 230 fl., 246
Euphratea, 29, 84 fl.. 215. 230, 250
Ezlon-gebor, 161
Fayum, 34, 67, 75
tlajoa,148, 150, 246
lB, 237 ft.
31, 162 fl., 209 fl., 243-4
i?114fl..27fl.,151
r, 150, 165 fl-, 203 fl.
il, 136, 149, 162, 217,
55
139 fl.
114fl.,139fl.
29 Jt.. 187, US, 168. 200
256 INDEX
Maeedon, 122, 165, 171. 190, 208 fl.
Magna Grsecla, 219
Medff^/lii
2
^, 198. "Median
" MWeadlilt,e"rr11a1nean" Man, 39 fl., 186*7
Melos, 165, 169, 174
Memphis, 73 fl., 181
Menelaus, 145, 209-10
Menes, 1&
Merenptah, 47. 81, 158, 206
Mesopotamia, 85, 93, 103 fl., 136 fl.
-aa. Age, 173, 13 fl., 212, 221
j, 3V145, 1&, 170, 184
Mltannl, 85, 153 fl., 199
, 44, 92, 105, 150, 190
n Zone; 34 fl.. 139, 176,
158,160
111, 162, 204
_.i, 135
K3UJUUU.LUCUJLU. 165 fl., 172
Scytfclana, 44, 122, 244, 245
^ftaJ2*' 103fl'* 127ff" 197'
1 111-2
tr, 81
"34, 450., 143, 152, 230,
_, 127 fl., 159
ir, 101, 125
* 45, 49, 52-8, 78, 82
Omrl, 161
>, 82, 116 fl., 142 fl., 171 fl.,
PeiassL~2b7
Per^,fl
33 fl., 47, 79 ff., 90 fl., 119 ff.,
y_JB^47-8, 140 fl., 207 fl.,
Phoenicia. 159 fl., 214-5, 236
FJtuygla, 147 fl.. 209 fl.
Po, 126, 219, 2ifo fl.
Pontlfloes 234
Priam, 148
156 fl., 209
7rfftJti*i
^m.mwe J Kings, 81-2, 115, 200
114
81olly,31,34, 119, 170, 187, 206 fl., 249
Sidon, idl. 215-6
Slnal, 47,
60^
82, 109 fl., 140
, 91 fl., 101, 110 ff., 204
Tarentum, 218, 231 ff.
Teuorlans, Tlkkaral, 206. 207-8*
7
57. 69, 72 fl.,
;i6
A
THE HOME UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY of Modern Knowledge
Is made up of absolutely new books by leading authorities.
The editors are Professors Gilbert Murray, H. A. L.
Fisher, W. T. Brewster, and J. Arthur Thomson.
Cloth bound, good paper, clear type, 256 pages, per volume,
bibliographies, indices, also maps or illustrations
where needed. Each complete
and sold separately. Per volume.
LITERATURE AND ART.
Numbr\
73. EURIPIDES AND HIS ACE. By Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor
of Greek, Oxford.
101* DANTE. By Jefferson B. Fletcher, Columbia University. An
interpretation of Dante and his teaching from his writings.
2. SHAKESPEARE. By John Masefield. one of the v^ry few indispensable
adjuncts to a Shakespearean Library." Boston
Transcript.
81, CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. By Grace E. Hadow, Lecturer Lady
Margaret Hal), Oxford; Late Reader, Bryn Mawr.
07. MILTON. By John Bailey.
59. DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE. By Job Bailey. Johnson's life,
character, works, and friendships are surveyed; and there is a
notable vindication of the "Genius of Boswetl,"
83. WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE. By A.
Clnttoft Brock, author of "Shelley: The Man and the Poet/*
"William Morris believed that the artist should tot for love of his
work rather than the gain of his employer, and so he turned from
making works of art to remaking society.
75. 'SHELLEY, GODWIN AND THEIR CIRCLE. By H. N.
The influence of the French Revolution on England.
70. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Jane E. Harrison, LL D.,
D. Litt. one of the 100 most important boob of 1913,"
Neto York Times Review.
4S. MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE. By W. P. Ker, Professor
of English Literature, University College, London. one
ofjhe
soundest scholars. His style is effective, simple, yet never dry."
The. Athenaeum.
*7. THE RENAISSANCE. By Edith Sichel, author of "Catherine de
Medici," "Men and Women of the French Renaissance."
9. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By J. M. Robertson, M. P.,
author of "Montaigne and Shakespeare/* "Modern Humanists/'
27. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By G. H. Mair. From Wyatt
and Surrey to Synge and Yeats. one of the best of this great
series." ^Chicago Evening Post.
61. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. By G. K. Chesterton.
40. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. ByLP.Snritfc. A concise history
of its origin and development.
66. WRITING ENGLISH PROSE. By William T. Brewster, Professor
of English, Columbia University. "Should be put into the hands
of every man who is beginning to write and of every teacher of
English that has brains enough to understand sense/*' New York
Sun.
58. THE NEWSPAPER. By G. Binney Dibble. The first full account
from the inside of newspaper organization as it exists to-day.
48. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA. By W. P. Trent and John
Erikine, Columbia University..,
93. AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Maurice Barinr,
author of 'The Russian People," etc. Tolstoi, Tourgenieff,
Dostoievsky, Pushkin (the fattar of Russian Literature), Saltykov
(the satirist,) Leskov, and many, other authors*
31. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE. By G. L. Stnchey,
Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. "It is difficult to imagine
how a better account of French Literature could be given in 250
pages/* London Times.
64. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By J. G. Robertson.
62. PAINTERS AND PAINTING. By Sir Frederick Wedbnofe. With
16 half-tone illustrations.
38. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W. R. Letfcaby. An introduction to
the history and theory of the art of building.
NATURAL SCIENCE,
68. DISEASE AND ITS CAUSES. By W. T. Councilman, M. D.>
LL D.| Professor of Pathology, Harvard Univeriity.
85. SEX. By J. Arthur Thompson and Patrick Geddw, joint authors
of "The Evolution of Sxst."
71. PLANT LIFE. By J. B. Farmer, D. Sc., F. R. S., Professor of Botany
in the Imperial College of Science, London. This very fully
illustrated volume contains an account of the salient features of
plant form and function.
63. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. By Benjamin M. Moore,
Professor of Bio-Chemistry, Liverpool.
90. CHEMISTRY. By Raphael Meldola, F. R. S., Professor of Chemistry,
Finsbury Technical College. Presents the way in which
the science has developed and the stage it has reached.
53. ELECTRICITY. By Gisbert Kapp, Professor of Electrical Engineering,
University of Birmingham.
54. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By J. W. Gregory, Professor of
Geology, Glasgow University. 38 maps and figures. Describes
the origin of the earth, the formation and changes of its surface
and structure, its geological history, the first appearance of life,
and its influence upon the globe.
56. MAN: A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY. By A. Keith, M. D.,
Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons, London. Shows
how the human body developed.
74. NERVES. By David Frattr Harris, M. D., Professor of Physiology,
Dalhousie University, Halifax. Explains in non-technical
language the place and powers of the nervous system.
21. AN INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE. By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson,
Science Editor of the Home University Library. For those unacquainted
with the scientific volumes in the series, mis would
prove an excellent introduction.
14. EVOLUTION. By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson and Prof. Patrick
Gedsltt. Explains to the layman what the title means to the
scientific world.
23. ASTRONOMY. By A, R. Hinks, Chief Assistant at die Cambridge
Observatory, "Decidedly original in substance, and the
most readable and informative little took on modern astronomy
we have seen for a long time*" Naiurc.
24. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Prof. W, F. Bamit, formerly President
of the Society for Psychical Research.
9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS. By Dr. D. H. Scott, Presided
of the Linnean Society of London. The itory of the development
of flowering plants, from the earliest zoological times, unlocked
from technical language*
43. MATTER AND ENERGY. 87 F. Soddy, Lecher
in^ Physical
Chemistry and Radioactivity, University of Glasgow. "Brilliant*
Can hardly be surpassed. Sure to attract attention/' NfO>
York Sun.
41. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR. By William Me-
Dougall, of Oxford. A well digested summary of the essentials
of the science put in "excellent literary form by a leading
authority.
42. THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof. J. G. McK*aricfc,
A compact statement by the Emeritus Professor at Glasgow* for
uninstructed readers.
37. ANTHROPOLOGY. By R. R. Marett, Reader in Social Anthropology,
Oxford. Seeks to plot oat and sum up the general
aeries of changes, bodily and mental, undergone by man in the
course of history. "Excellent. So enthusiastic, so clear and witty,
and so well adapted to the general reader. American Library
Association Booklist.
17. CRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr. C. Mercicr, author of "Test
Book of Insanity," etc.
12. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By Prof. F. W. Gamble.
15. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS. By A* N* Whiuh.td,
author of "Universal Algebra/'
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
69. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By John B. Bury,
M. A., LL. D., Regius Professor of Modern History in Cambridge
University. Summarizes the history of the long strugglebetween
authority and reason and of me emergence of the principle
that coercion of opinion is c mistake.
06. A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By Clement C J. Webb,
Oxford.
35. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. By B*rtran<J
Lecturer and Late Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge.
60. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By Prof.
J. Eitlin Carpenter.
' >
4tOne of. the, few authorities on this subject compares all. the religions
to see what they hare to offer on the .great themes of re*
Ixgion." CArw/fon
44. BUDDHISM. By Mrs, Rkys Davids, Lecturer on Indian Philoso*
phy, Manchester.
46. ENGLISH SECTS: A HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY. By W.E. fl_tl<_ n ?. 1 r H* l^jntW ** t t
f
*& MISSIONS: THEIR RISE AND DEVELOPMENT. By Mrs. Ma*
dell Creifhton, author of "History of England.'* The author
seeks to prove that missions have done more to civilize the world
than any other human agency.
52. ETHICS. By G. E, Moore, Lecturer in Moral Science, Cambridge,
Discusses what is right and what it wrong, and the whys
and wherefores.
*5. THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By George F
Moore, Professor of the History of Religion, Harvard University*
"A popular work of the highest order. Will be profitable
to anybody who cares enough about Bible study to read a
serious book on the subject"~*v4mericfln Joumd of Theology.
88. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.
Bf R. E. Claries, Canon of Westminster. Shows how
religious and ethical thought between 160 B. C and 100 A. D<
grew naturally into that of the New Testament.
SO. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By B. W. Bacon,
Professor of New Testament Criticism, Yale* An authoritative
summary of the results of modem critical research with regard to
the origin* of the New Testament.
SOCIAL SCIENCE.
It THE NEGRO. By W. E. Bnrgnardt DuBoii, author of "Souls of
Black Folks," etc. A history of the black man in Africa,
America or wherever else his presence has been or is important*
*7. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT SHARING. By Aaenrin Wil
. Hams, Chairman, Executive Committee, International Co-operative
Alliance, etc. Explain* the various types of co-partnership
or profit-sharing, or both, and give* details of the arrangements
now in force in many of the great industries.
10. POLITICAL THOUGHT: THE UTILITARIANS, FROM BENT*
HAM TO J. S. HILL Br William L P. Davidson.
9S. POLITICAL THOUGHT: PROM HERBERT SPENCER TO THE
PRESENT DAY, By Ernest Barker, M. A.
70, UNEMPLOYMENT. By A. C Pifon, & A,, Professor of Political
Economy at Cambridge. The meaning, measurement, distribution,
aw) effects of ^employment* its relation to wages, trade fluctuations,
and disputes* and (tame proposal* of remedy or
*0. COMMON.SENSE IN LAW. By Prof. Paul
Yia<jgr*aoff,
D. C. L,
U. D. Social and Legal Rule* Legal Rights and Duties--
Facts and Acts in Law Legislation Custom Judicial PrecedentsEquityThe
Law of Nature,
49. ELEMENTS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. Br S. J. ttapinatt,
Professor of Political Economy and Dean of Faculty of Commerce
and Administration, University of Manchester.
11. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH. By J. A. Hobion, author of "Problems
of Poverty." A study of the structure and working of the
modern business world.
1. PARLIAMENT. ITS HISTORY, CONSTITUTION, AND PRACTICE.
By Sir Courtonay P. Ilbert, Clerk of the House of Commons.
16. LIBERALISM. By Prof. L. T. Hobhou.e, author of "Democracy
and Reaction.
1' A masterly philosophical and historical review of
the subject
5. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By F. W. Hirst, Editor of the London
Economist. Reveals to the non-financial mind the facts about
investment, speculation, and the other terms which the title suggests.
10. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. By J. Ramsay Macdonald,
Chairman of the British Labor Party,
28. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY. By D. H. MacGrtfor,
Professor of Political Economy, University of Leeds. An outline
of the recent changes that have given us the present conditions
of the working classes and the principles involved.
29. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW. By W. M. Geldtrt, Vmerian
Professor of English Law, Oxford. A simple statement of the
basic principles of the English legal system on which that of the
United States is based.
32. THE SCHOOL: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EDUCATION.
By X J. Findlty, Professor of Education, Manchester.
Presents the history, the psychological basis* and the theory
of the school with a rare power of summary and suggestion*
6. IRISH NATIONALITY. By Mrs. J. R. Green. A brilliant account
of the genius and mission of the Irish people, "An entrancing
work, and I would advise every one with a drop of Irish blood
in h veins or a vein of Irish sympathy in his heart to rd it"~-
/V*u Ytrtr Tfmc**
GENERAL HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By A. F. Pollard, Professor of
English History, University of London.
$5. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. Eosor, Sometime Scholar of Balliol
College* The geographical, linguistic, historical, artistic and literary
associations.
100, POLAND* By W. Alison Phfflips, University of Dublin. The
history of Poland with special emphasis upon the Polish question
of the present day.
34. CANADA. By A. G. Bradley.
72. GERMANY OF TO-DAY. By Qarlw Tower.
78. LATIN AMERICA. By William R. Shepherd, Professor of History,
Columbia. With maps. The historical, artistic, and commercial
development of the Central South American republics.
18. THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA. By Sir H. H. Johnston.
The first living authority on the subject tells how and why the
"native races** went to the various parts of Africa and summarizes
its exploration and colonization.
19. THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. By H. A. Giles, Professor of
Chinese, Cambridge.
36. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA. By Sir T. W. HoHtrness.
"The best small treatise dealing with the range of subjects fairly
indicated by the tide." H Dial
26. THE DAWN OF HISTORY. By J.L Myers, Professor ofAncient
History, Oxford.
92, THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. Hot*rth, M. A.* F. B. A.,
F. S, A. Connects with Prof. Myers's "Dawn of History" (No.
26) at about 1000 B. C. and review* the history of Assyria,
Babylon, Cilicia, Persia and Macedon*
30* ROME. By W. Ward* Fowler, author of "Social Life at Rome/*
etc. "A masterly sketch of Roman character and what it did
for the world." Lone/on Spectator*
13. MEDIEVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C. Davii, Fellow at Balliol College,
Oxford, author of "Charlemagne," etc.
3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Hilkirt Bifloc.
57. NAPOLEON* By H. A* L Fisher, Vice-chancellor of Sheffield
University, Author of "The Republican Tradition in Europe.**
20. HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885-1911). By C. P. Goock, A "moving picture** of the world since 1885.
21 THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES. By Rev. William Barry,
D. D*, aurW of "The Papal Monarchy/' etc. The story of the
rto and fall of the Ttmpdrt! Power*
4. A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE. By G. H. Perrit,
author of ''Russia in Revolution," etc.
34. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER. By David Hannay, aathor of
"Short Histoiy of the Royal Navy," etc. A brief history of the
navies, sea power, and ship growth of air nations, including the
rise and decline of America on the sea, and explaining the
present British supremacy thereon.
8. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr. W. S. Bruce, Leader of the
"Scotia" expedition. Emphasizes the results of the expeditions.
51. MASTER MARINERS. By John R. Spears, author of "The His*
lory of Our Navy,** etc. A history of sea craft adventure from
the earliest times.
86. EXPLORATION OF THE ALPS. By Arnold Lwm, ML A.
7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY. By Dr. Marion Newbigin, Shows the re*
lation of physical features to
4
living things and to some of the
chief institutions of civilization.
76. THE OCEAN. A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE SCIENCE OF
THE SEA. By Sir John Murray, K. C. B., Naturalist H. M. S.
"Challenger," 1872-1876, joint author of "The Depths of the
Ocean," etc,
84. THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By GranviHe Cole, Professor of
Geology, Royal College of Science, Ireland. A study of the
geology and physical geography in connection with the political
geography.
AMERICAN HISTORY.
47. THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1607*1766). By Charles McLean Andraws,
Professor of American History, Yale.
82. THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA (1763-1815).
By Theodore C. Smith, Professor of American History, Williams
College. A history of the period, with especial emphasis
on The Revolution and The War of 1812.
67. FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN
(1815-1860). By William
MacDonald, Professor of History, Brown University. The
author
(
makes the history of this period circulate about conitita*
tional ideas and slavery sentiment,
25. THE CIVIL WAR (1854-1865.;) By Frederic L Pawoa,
Professor of American History, University of Wisconsin.
39. RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION (1865-1912). By Paul Leltnd
Havrorth. A History of the United States in our own time*
OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION ,
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