Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

The first great wave of Semitic migration from Arabia is placed in the fourth millennium B.C., 3500 to 2500 or earlier; it affected Babylonia and probably Syria and Palestine, judging from the Palestinian place-names belonging to this "Babylonian-Semitic" period, and the close connection between Palestine and Babylonia in culture and in religious ideas, indicating prehistoric relationship[1153]. A second wave, Winckler's Canaanitic or Amoritic migration, followed in the third millennium, covering Babylonia, laying the foundations of the Assyrian Empire, invading Syria and Palestine (Phoenicians, Amorites) and possibly later Egypt (Hyksos). A third wave, the Aramaean, which spread over Babylonia, Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium, was preceded by the swarming into Syria from the desert of the Khabiri (Habiru) or Hebrews (Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Israelites among others). From the same area the Suti pressed into Babylonia about 1100, followed by another branch, the Chaldeans from Eastern Arabia.

These are but a few of the earlier waves of migration from the south of which traces can be detected in Western Asia. Of all invasions from the north, that of the Hittites is the most important and the most confusing. The Hittites appear to have moved south from Cappadocia about 2000 B.C., and they are found warring against Babylonia in the eighteenth century. A Hittite dynasty flourished at Mittanni 1420-1411 and in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries they conquered and largely occupied Syria[1154]. Invasions of Phrygians and Philistines from the west followed the breaking up of the Hittite Empire. The last great Semitic migration was the most widespread of all. "It issued, like its predecessors, along the whole 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 Sicily, raided Constance, and in France was only checked at Poitiers in 732. Eastward it flooded Persia, founded an empire in India, and carried war and commerce by sea past Singapore[1155]."

"Thus Western Asia has been swept times and again, almost without number, by conquering hordes and the no less severe ethnical disturbances of peaceful infiltrations converging from every point of the compass in turn.... How, then, is it possible to learn anything today from the contents of this cauldron, filled with such an assortment of ingredients and still seething from the effects of the disturbance incidental to the harsh mixing of such incompatible elements[1156]?" Some of the problems must for the present be regarded as insoluble, but with the evidence provided by archaeologists and anthropologists an attempt may be made to read the ethnological history in these obscure regions.

The earliest Semitic wave was traceable in Babylonia, but, as seen above, opinions differ as to its origin and date. "At what period the Semites first invaded Babylonia, when and where they first attained supremacy, are not yet matters of history. We find Semites in the land and in possession of considerable power almost as early as we can go back[1157]." The characteristic Semitic features are clearly marked, and the language is closely connected with Canaanitic and Assyrian[1158]. From the monuments we learn that the Babylonian Semites had full beards and wore their hair long, contrasting sharply with the shaven Sumerians, and thus gaining the epithet "the black-headed ones." In nose and lips, as in dress, they are clearly distinct from the Sumerian type[1159].

When history commences, the inhabitants of Babylonia were already highly civilised. They lived in towns, containing great temples, and were organised in distinct classes or occupations, and possessed much wealth in sheep and cattle, manufactured goods, gold, silver and copper. Engraving on metals and precious stones, statuary, architecture, pottery, weaving and embroidery, all show a high level of workmanship. They possessed an elaborate and efficient system of writing, extensively used and widely understood, consisting of a number of signs, obviously descended from a form of picture writing, but conventionalised to an extent that usually precludes the recognition of the original pictures. This writing was made by the impression of a stylus on blocks or cakes of fine clay while still quite soft. These "tablets" were sun-dried, but occasionally baked hard. This cuneiform writing was adopted by, or was common to, many neighbouring nations, being freely used in Elam, Armenia and Northern Mesopotamia as far as Cappadocia.

Assyrian culture was founded upon that of Babylonia, but the Assyrians appear to have differed from the Babylonians in character, though not in physical type[1160], while they were closely related in speech. "The Assyrians differed markedly from the Babylonians in national character. They were more robust, warlike, fierce, than the mild industrial people of the south. It is doubtful if they were much devoted to agriculture or distinguished for manufactures, arts and crafts. They were essentially a military folk. The king was a despot at home, but the general of the army abroad. The whole organisation of the state was for war. The agriculture was left to serfs or slaves. The manufactures, weaving at any rate, were done by women. The guilds of workmen were probably foreigners, as the merchants mostly were. The great temples and palaces, walls and moats, were constructed by captives.... For the greater part of its existence Assyria was the scourge of the nations and sucked the blood of other races. It lived on the tribute of subject states, and conquest ever meant added tribute in all necessaries and luxuries of life, beside an annual demand for men and horses, cattle and sheep, grain and wool to supply the needs of the army and the city[1161]."

The early history of Syria and Palestine is by no means clear, although much light has been shed in recent years by the excavations of R. A. S. Macalister at Gezer[1162], where remains were found of a pre-Semitic race, of Ernst Sellin at Tell Ta'anek and Jericho[1163], and the labours of the Deutscher Palaestina-Verein and especially G. Schumacher at Megiddo[1164]. Caves apparently occupied by man in the Neolithic period were discovered at Gezer, and are dated at about 3500 to 3000 B.C. from their position below layers in which Egyptian scarabs appear. Fragments of bones give indications of the physical type. None of the individuals exceeded 5 ft. 7 inches (1.702 m.) in height, and most were under 5 ft. 4 inches (1.626 m.). They were muscular, with elongated crania and thick heavy skull-bones. From their physical characters it could be clearly seen that they did not belong to the Semitic race. They burned their dead, a non-Semitic custom, a cave being fitted up as a crematorium, with a chimney cut up through the solid rock to secure a good draught[1165].

The first great influx of Semitic nomads is conjectured to have reached Babylonia, not from the south, but from the north-west, after traversing the Syrian coast lands. They left colonists behind them in this region, who afterwards as the Amurru (Amorites) pressed on in their turn into Babylonia and established the earliest independent dynasty in Babylon[1166].

The second great wave of Semitic migration appears to have included the Phoenicians[1167], so called by the Greeks, though they called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan[1168], and are referred to in the Old Testament, as in inscriptions at Tyre, as "Sidonians." They themselves had a tradition that their early home was on the Persian Gulf, a view held by Theodore Bent and others[1169], and recent discoveries emphasise the close cultural (not necessarily racial) connection between Palestine and Babylonia[1170].

The weakening of Egyptian hold upon Palestine about the fourteenth century B.C. encouraged incursions of restless Habiru (Habiri) from the Syrian deserts, commonly identified with the Hebrews, and invasions of Hittites from the north. In the thirteenth century Egypt recovered Palestine, leaving the Hittites in possession of Syria. About this time the coast was invaded by Levantines, including the Purasati, in whom may perhaps be recognised the Philistines, who gave their name to Palestine[1171].

With the Hebrew or Israelitish inhabitants of south Syria (Canaan, Palestine, "Land of Promise") we are here concerned only in so far as they form a distinct branch of the Semitic family. The term "Jews[1172]," properly indicating the children of Judah, fourth son of Jacob, has long been applied generally to the whole people, who since the disappearance of the ten northern tribes have been mainly represented by the tribe of Judah, a remnant of Benjamin and a few Levites, i.e. the section of the nation which to the number of some 50,000 returned to south Palestine (kingdom of Judaea) after the Babylonian captivity. These were doubtless later joined by some of the dispersed northern tribes, who from Jacob's alternative name were commonly called the "ten tribes of Israel." But all such Israelites had lost their separate nationality, and were consequently absorbed in the royal tribe of Judah. Since the suppression of the various revolts under the Empire, the Judaei themselves have been a dispersed nationality, and even before those events numerous settlements had been made in different parts of the Greek and Roman worlds, as far west as Tripolitana, and also in Arabia and Abyssinia.

But most of the present communities probably descend from those of the great dispersion after the fall of Jerusalem (70 A.D.), increased by considerable accessions of converted "Gentiles," for the assumption that they have made few or no converts is no longer tenable. In exile they have been far more a religious body than a broken nation, and as such they could not fail under favourable conditions to spread their teachings, not only amongst their Christian slaves, but also amongst peoples, such as the Abyssinian Falashas, of lower culture than themselves. In pre-Muhammadan times many Arabs of Yemen and other districts had conformed, and some of their Jewish kings (Asad Abu-Karib, Dhu Nowas, and others) are still remembered. About the seventh century all the Khazars--a renowned Turki people of the Volga, the Crimea, and the Caspian--accepted Judaism, though they later conformed to Russian orthodoxy. The Visigoth persecution of the Spanish Jews (fifth and sixth centuries) was largely due to their proselytising zeal, against which, as well as against Jewish and Christian mixed marriages, numerous papal decrees were issued in medieval times.

To this process of miscegenation is attributed the great variety of physical features observed amongst the Jews of different countries[1173], while the distinctly red type cropping out almost everywhere has been traced by Sayce and others to primordial interminglings with the Amorites ("Red People"). "Uniformity only exists in the books and not in reality. There are Jews with light and with dark eyes, Jews with straight and with curly hair, Jews with high and narrow and Jews with short and broad, noses; their cephalic index oscillates between 65 and 98--as far as this index ever oscillates in the genus homo[1174]!" Nevertheless certain marked characteristics--large hooked nose, prominent watery eyes, thick pendulous and almost everted under lip, rough frizzly lustreless hair--are sufficiently general to be regarded as racial traits.

The race is richly endowed with the most varied qualities, as shown by the whole tenour of their history. Originally pure nomads, they became excellent agriculturists after the settlement in Canaan, and since then they have given proof of the highest capacity for science, letters, erudition of all kinds, finance, music, and diplomacy. The reputation of the medieval Arabs as restorers of learning is largely due to their wise tolerance of the enlightened Jewish communities in their midst, and on the other hand Spain and Portugal have never recovered from the national loss sustained by the expulsion of the Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In late years the persecutions, especially in Russia, have caused a fresh exodus from the east of Europe, and by the aid of philanthropic capitalists flourishing agricultural settlements have been founded in Palestine and Argentina. From statistics taken in various places up to 1911 the Jewish communities are at present estimated at about 12,000,000, of whom three-fourths are in Europe, 380,000 in Africa, 500,000 in Asia, the rest in America and Australia[1175].

Intimately associated with all these Aramaic Canaanitic Semites were a mysterious people who have been identified