But the Bab. idea of Western dominion, inherited
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by Assyria, was at length realized. Assyria was the first of Sem. nations to learn how to govern as well as to subdue the territory of its rivals. After intermittent attempts at conquests, progress west- ward was surely made and maintained from the 9th cent. onwards till the middle of the 7th. The Arameans were crushed ; and Israel, repressed for a time, arose again to prosperity under Jeroboam I. and Uzziah. But its ‘day’ also came at last. N. Israel was obliterated and added to the realm of Assyria, while Judah was made an Assyr. vassal. Till near the close of the 7th cent. B.C. Assyria remained the undisputed mistress of W. Asia, not simply controlling the other Sem. communities, but making most of them an administrative portion of her own empire. Thus it came to pass that the individuality of the various communi- ties was gradually destroyed, that one was dis- tinguished from the other less by racial con- nexion than by traditional usages and spoken language. Ethnical terms were generalized, so that Western seafaring men and merchants came to be known as ‘Pheenicians’ or ‘Canaanites,’ inland traders and travellers as ‘ Arameeans,’ and at a later date also learned men and astrologers as ‘Chaldeans.’ The general revolution of which this phraseology is a symptom was immensely accelerated by the irruptions of northern barbari- ans, Kimmerians, and Scythians, which took place during the later years of the Assyr. dominion. The same influx of foreigners hastened the fall of Assyria, which was in any case inevitable, on account of the impossibility of holding together for ever a multitude of petty communities by cen- tralized force alone.
But when Nineveh fell, in B.c. 607, its ruin was utilized by new exponents of the ancient Bab. spirit, the Chaldeans from the shores of the Persian Gulf. Combined with them, and foremost in the attack upon Nineveh, were the Aryan Medes—a people new to dominion, but the precursors of a move- ment which was to put an end to the réle of the N. Semites. In the partition which followed the conquest, the Chaldeans retained the proper Sem. domain, while the Medes claimed the highlands to the east and north. The régime of the Chaldeans was stern and strenuous, though not so. cruel as that of the Assyrians. Egypt, which had been sub- dued and then given up by the later Assyr. empire, made a futile attempt, during the brief inter- regnum, to occupy Syria and Palestine. It was thrust out by Nebuchadrezzar the Chaldean. Egypt itself was in due time visited and dis- piltined within its own domain. The kingdom ot Judah, removed from Egyp. control, was put under bond to the Chaldeans. Repeated revolts brought about at last the destruction of Jerus. and the kingdom, and the exile of the people.
But internal decline effected a decay of the Chaldzean empire almost as swift as that of the Assyrian. A round seventy years limited its dura- tion. J¢ts destruction also was accelerated by an Aryan power. Cyrus the Persian, beginning his career as the head of a little province of Media, had become lord of the vast Median dominion, the conqueror of Lydia, and the ruler of a territory stretching from the Indus to the Aigean Sea. Babylon fell to him in the summer of 539, and with its transfer into Aryan hands the political sway of the N. Semites was for ever ended.
The rule of Cyrus was tolerant and humane. Under it the principle of delegated power, un- known to the Semitic rulers, was put in force. Under the comparatively genial sway of the Persians, many of the old Sem. communities, Bab., Aram., Can. (Phoen.), and Heb., continued to exist, and some of them to flourish, The Aram. people, in small communities, survived in greatest
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numbers, and taught their language to most of the old N. Semitic realm. But Jerusalem and Tyre were long the most outstanding representatives of the Sem. genius. Surviving longest as centres of influence, they recalled to the world the ancient power of the Sem. mind and spirit. The one handed over to Europe the method as well as the example of a world-wide commerce. The other, in the more potent and more enduring realm of religion, continued to verify and to publish the essential truth about God and man and duty.
It was, above all, in this region of thought and feeling that the Semites did their work for humanity. In their front we place the community of Israel, with all its feebleness and insignificance. It was under the vassalage to Assyria and Baby- lonia that the prophets and poets of Israel uttered those words which form the most precious legacy of allancient time. And it was after the national life had been finally extinguished that the ancient Church abjured false gods for ever, and first realized the idea of local and individual worship apart from the central sanctuary. ‘Thus was prepared the way for that final epoch, when He who was not only a Semite and a Hebrew but the Son of Man, did away with ritual, priesthood, and caste, and erected His temple in the heart of humanity. Thus a greater service was done for the world by the most potent of the forces of Semitism under political disability and decline, than any which had been wrought by the mightiest of Semitic empires in the days of their power and pride.