The next stage was that in which individual cities began to extend their dominion widely and to form little empires of their own. One city after another thus arose to power, until there came to bea few independent kingdoms instead of many. These, however, could not all survive in the rivalries and ambitions of that time and country, and so there came to be two domin- ant centres, the one in Northern and the other in Southern Babylonia. About B.c. 4000 we find Akkad in the north aiming at dominion, not only over Southern Babylonia, but over the most productive regions of Arabia and Syria, as far as the Mediterranean. This, however, we have reason to believe, was not the first great ‘ empire.’ It is only the first that is fairly well known as yet. The centre of authority was also sometimes in the south, where, among the monarchies of B.C. 3000 and onwards, Ur of the Chaldees occupies a prominent place. The term of this alternating dominion lasted very long. In the 28rd cent. B.C. the rule was broken by an invasion of the Elam- ites, of whose subsequent domination Gn 14 gives a partial record. Not long thereafter the city of Babylon came to the front, and was made the capital of a united Babylonia, a position which was never abdicated till the close of the Sem. régime. But foreign rule was not at an end. After a lengthy period of native control, Kassites from the eastern highlands broke in upon Babylonia and held sovereign sway from the 18th to the 13th century. This is the period of the political decadence of Babylonia, due not merely to the domination of a foreign dynasty, but to the rivalry of a kindred nationality. For the result of the gradual rise of Assyria was that Babylonia played no world-moving réle till its revival under the Chaldean dynasty at the close of the 7th cen- tury B.C.
he early history of Assyria is obscure. Begin- ning very early with the growth of the city of Asshur, it gradually extended northward, mainly
SEMITES
on the east of the Tigris, till it touched on the mountains of Kurdistan. The kingdom proper was never very large, but the race had a genius for war, and more capacity for government than any of the other ancient Semites. Its steadily cherished purpose was to secure the dominion in W. Asia already claimed by Babylonia, and to enlarge it till it should embrace the world. It took many centu- ries to reach the summit of power; but the idea was at length in a measure realized. By far the most important incident in this process of Assyr. extension was the prolonged and bitter strife with Babylonia, ending in the total subjugation of that venerable empire.
Bible students are concerned primarily with the people of Revelation, and secondarily with the actors in the events that prepared the way for that people and determined their providential destiny. From these points of view we are able to look at the history of the N. Semites as one great connected series of events co-operating towards the making and the discipline of Israel. In this ‘increasing purpose’ each one of the great divisions of the N. Semites played an important part. The home of Israel was to be in the West-land, more particularly in Palestine. This region from the remotest known times was of special interest to the inhabitants of the East. Thither came from the East the Can. immigrants. Thither followed them in course of time the slower-moving Ara- means. Thither came the Hebrews themselves, also from the farther East, as to a land of promise. Thither, before and after the earliest and latest of these permanent emigrants, came the all-dominat- ing Babylonians, for conquest and still more for exploration and for self-enrichment. Normally, until the 16th cent. B.c., the whole of the West- land was under the sway of Babylonia. And when its political control was relinquished, its tallecheal influence remained, so that near the close of the 15th cent. the Bab. language and its cuneiform writing were the international means of communication between the remotest regions. Even letters from Mesopotamia, Syria, Pheenicia, and Palestine, not to speak of Assyria and Baby- lonia itself, were written therein to the court of Egypt, 300 miles up the Nile. This state of things at length passed away, because Babylonia and Assyria spent their force upon one another, and thus both alike lost their hold upon the West.
It was in this period, which we may fairly call exceptional in the history of ancient W. Asia, that the opportunity for independent action came to the peoples of the western coastland. It was then also that the Egyptians, who in their whole history never successfully interposed in Asia, except when the Babylonians or Assyrians were enfeebled or quiescent, essayed to conquer Pales- tine and Syria. It was in this period, too, that the Hittites arose to power in Northern and Central Syria, and contended long and bitterly for supre- macy with the invaders from over the Isthmus. Within the same limits of time, Israel, emerging from the obscurity and shame of Egypt, began to play its rdle in Palestine. Then was enacted the earlier half of its unique history, including its conquest and absorption of one branch of the Canaanite race, and its ‘brotherly covenant’ (Am 1°) with the other, and culminating in its greatest external power and splendour under David and Solomon. Then also were formed the settlements in Syria of the Arameeans, which be- came so fateful for Israel in its ‘hundred years’ war,’ in its cruel suffering, and its moral and spiritual chastening after its own internal dis- memberment.