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EARLY ISRAEL AND THE SURROUNDING NATIONS

BY THE REV. A.H. SAYCE PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY AT OXFORD

AUTHOR OF "THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE HEBREWS," &c

London
SERVICE & PATON
5 HENRIETTA STREET
COVENT GARDEN
1899

INTRODUCTION

One of the first facts which strike the traveller in Palestineis the smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied solarge a space in the history of civilised mankind. It is scarcelylarger than an English county, and a considerable portion of it isoccupied by rocky mountains and barren defiles where cultivation isimpossible. Its population could never have been great, and thoughcities and villages were crowded together on the plains and in thevalleys, and perched at times on almost inaccessible crags, thedifficulty of finding sustenance for their inhabitants preventedthem from rivalling in size the European or American towns ofto-day. Like the country in which they dwelt, the people ofPalestine were necessarily but a small population when comparedwith the nations of our modern age.

And yet it was just this scanty population which has left sodeep an impress on the thoughts and religion of mankind, and thenarrow strip of territory they inhabited which formed thebattle-ground of the ancient empires of the world. Israel was fewin numbers, and [pg vi] the Canaan it conquered was limited inextent; but they became as it were the centre round which theforces of civilisation revolved, and towards which they allpointed. Palestine, in fact, was for the eastern world what Athenswas for the western world; Athens and Attica were alikeinsignificant in area and the Athenians were but a handful of men,but we derive from them the principles of our art and philosophicspeculation just as we derive from Israel and Canaan the principlesof our religion. Palestine has been the mother-land of the religionof civilised man.

The geographical position of Palestine had much to do with thisresult. It was the outpost of western Asia on the side of theMediterranean, as England is the outpost of Europe on the side ofthe Atlantic; and just as the Atlantic is the highroad of commerceand trade for us of to-day, so the Mediterranean was the seat ofmaritime enterprise and the source of maritime wealth for thegenerations of the past. Palestine, moreover, was the meeting-placeof Asia and Africa. Not only was the way open for its merchants bysea to the harbours and products of Europe, but the desert whichformed its southern boundary sloped away to the frontiers of Egypt,while to the north and east it was in touch with the great kingdomsof western Asia, with Babylonia and Assyria, Mesopotamia and theHittites of the north. In days of which we are just beginning tohave a glimpse it had been a province [pg vii] of the Babylonianempire, and when Egypt threw off the yoke of its Asiatic conquerorsand prepared to win an empire for itself, Canaan was the earliestof its spoils. In a later age Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptiansagain contended for the mastery on the plains of Palestine; thepossession of Jerusalem allowed the Assyrian king to marchunopposed into Egypt, and the battle of Megiddo placed all Asiawest of the Euphrates at the feet of the Egyptian Pharaoh.

Palestine is thus a centre of ancient Oriental history. Itsoccupation by Babylonians or Egyptians marks the shifting of thebalance of power between Asia and Africa. The fortunes of the greatempires of the eastern world are to a large extent reflected in itshistory. The rise of the one meant the loss of Palestine to theother.

The people, too, were fitted by nature and circumstances for thepart they were destined to play. They were Semites with the inbornreligious spirit which is characteristic of the Semite, and theywere also a mixed race. The highlands of Canaan had been peopled bythe Amorites, a tall fair race, akin probably to the Berbers ofnorthern Africa and the Kelts of our own islands; the lowlands werein the hands of the Canaanites, a people of Semitic blood andspeech, who devoted themselves to the pursuit of trade. Here andthere were settlements of other tribes or races, notably theHittites, who had descended from the mountain-ranges [pg viii] ofthe Taurus and spread over northern Syria. Upon all these variedelements the Israelites flung themselves, at first in hostileinvasion, afterwards in friendly admixture. The Israelitishconquest of Palestine was a slow process, and it was only in itsearlier stages that it was accompanied by the storming of citiesand the massacre of their inhabitants. As time went on the invadersintermingled with the older population of the land, and the headsof the captives which surmount the names of the places captured bythe Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in the kingdom of Judah all show theAmorite and not the Jewish type of countenance. The main bulk ofthe population, in fact, must have continued unchanged by theIsraelitish conquest, and conquerors and conquered intermarriedtogether. The genealogies given by the Hebrew writers prove howextensive this intermingling of racial elements must have been;