• Ancient History  

--Introduction--

The Dawn of Civilization
Jerusalem Forum

"The civilization in which the world live today, is simply carrying on and is still further developing and working and rearranging the relationships between these two civilizations. It is only by the study of their origins that man can begin to understand the social, political and religious questions of the time. The true heritage, of Mesopotamia and particularly of Egypt, is indeed, that which down the centuries, has become woven almost imperceptibly into the never ending web of man's experience." (1)

 

Introduction

In order to understand the Middle East today, with all its social, geographic, religious, ethnic, and political complexities, it is important to understand its beginnings. This section intends to explore the region’s contributions to humanity, as we know it today. The Middle East had in the past achieved breakthroughs in technical and human awareness. True Man, the first species which had anatomical resemblance to the man of today, originated in and inhabited North Africa and the Middle East and moved northwards to Europe when the climatic demands called for such movement. Many possessions of civilization were discovered or invented in the Middle East and Western Asia; the development of the arts, sciences, language, writing, tools, and other inventions, such as irrigation methods, ways in which to transport heavy items as well as religion all had its origins in the Middle East.

In the following chapters we will look at the last glacial age, the Mediterranean race, Semites, Beduin society, settled agricultural communities, temples and priests, God-Kings, among other traditions.

November 28, 1999

-Chapter One--

The Last Glacial Age
Jerusalem Forum

Geologists can reliably trace a series of four Glacial and Inter-glacial periods during the Pleistocene Epoch, that stretched between 2,000,000 to 10,000 years ago. The extent of these Pleistocene glaciers, and particularly the last and fourth is much easier to establish than that of earlier ones, because the glacial landforms and related deposits are not overlaid by extensive blankets of younger sediments. At the peak of the last glacial period, roughly 50,000 years ago, the north pole snow cap spread southward covering Europe down to the Baltic shores, Britain down to the Thames, North America down to New England, and more centrally as far south as Ohio. For thousands of years during these glacier times, enormous volumes of water were withdrawn from the oceans and locked up in the enlarged ice caps of both poles of the globe. This resulted in lowering of the relative levels of seas, causing great areas of land now submerged to be exposed. Continental land masses now separated by water, were then connected by land-bridges, allowing much greater freedom of overland movement than it does today. Britain was joined to the continent along a broad front and America was joined to Asia through the Bering Straits. Northern Australia was connected to the south-east Asian mainland, through Borneo, western Indonesia and New Guinea. The application of radio-carbon analysis has recently shown beyond any doubt, that Australia was first occupied well back in the Late Glacial period.

"Man had spread over most of the Old World and into the New, and so far as we know, he was able to do this on foot". (2)

At the onset of the last Glacial Age and for thousands of years, a higher species of Man appears to be predominating the scene in Europe and the neighbouring areas of Asia and Africa. Fossil bones and implements of this new distinct species were first discovered in a cave at Neanderthal near Dusseldorf in Germany, and has consequently been called the Neanderthal Man. This species is generally described as being thick-set, stooping forward, and unable to hold his head as erect as modern men does. Though chinless and perhaps incapable of speech, yet his brain case was at least as large as modern man, and therefore scientists include him in the genus Homo.

The most significant development of the Neanderthal period was that, in place of the all-purpose axe of his ancestors, this species was able to develop an industry of flint flakes from which a whole range of tools were fabricated to satisfy more specific functions. This development marks the beginning of the Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age. The abundance of flint scrapers indicates the adoption of skin clothing. A matter that arises interest, is the uniformity and global distribution of these implements. No matter where the globally distributed Palaeolithic remains are discovered, they are found to be astonishingly similar.

During the last glacial period, Africa was connected to Europe with two land bridges; across the strait of Gibraltar through Spain and across Sicily into Italy. The climate of the Mediterranean basin was temperate, and the Sahara belt to the south, was not then a desert of baked rock and blown sand, but a well watered and fertile region of abundant rainfall, supporting extensive animal and plant life.

About 15,000 to 25,000 years ago, a more advanced species can be seen drifting into the Neanderthal world. It is generally felt that there was sufficient genus difference between them, to disallow free interbreeding, suggesting it to be more likely that the invaders drove the Neanderthals to extinction. The remains of the new comers show them to have evolved a reduction in the gorilla-like rugged features of the skull, brow ridges, and jaws. Their brain cases, thumbs, necks and teeth were anatomically the same as the Man of today. They also had sufficient tongue cavity to allow articulate speech, thus designating them as social animals. Ethnologists called this new species, Homo Sapiens, the first True Men.

It has not yet been established, where and how these first true men originated. For hundreds of centuries they were acquiring skill of hand and limb, and power and bulk of brain, in that still unknown environment, which could be Western Asia or Africa, or in lands now submerged under waters. More sophisticated tools were being added to their list of equipment, such as needles and harpoons. They produced a greater variety of stone implements, which were smaller in scale and finer than their predecessors.

As century after century the Ice Cap began to recede northwards, more temperate conditions were progressing over Europe, allowing an increase in vegetation, as well as more abundance of game of all sorts. The land bridges with North Africa allowed both man and animal to slowly drift northwards, in quest of animal and plant food that he was accustomed to.

As temperate conditions was creeping northwards, arid and extreme climatic conditions were descending upon the areas of the North Africa and South-west Asia. Struggle for survival, caused Man in these regions to adapt himself to the developing harsher environment. For it is said that life learns its most valuable lessons and undergoes its most radical modifications, during periods of change and hardships. There is evidence that around 7000 BC, the roaming Palaeolithic hunter in this region, in order to make up for the disappearing animal and plant food sources, began to compliment his food gathering habits with food production. This marks the beginning of a new phase in the development of human culture, 'The New Stone Age', or 'Neolithic culture'. The stone implements of this period, lose their coarsely chipped character, becoming highly polished and specialized. The chief tool and weapon becomes the manufactured axes, soon followed by the development of the bow and arrow.

As long as the land bridges with Europe lasted, Man from North Africa with his new implements of Neolithic culture, drifted northward into Europe. But when the melting snows finally caused the rising sea levels to submerge the land bridges, civilization in continental Europe froze at that stage of Neolithic level, while to the south it continued to progress fast and energetically.

"The Land bridges of Europe and Sicily were covered with the rising water levels, and Europe was separated from Africa, and America from Asia. The Late Stone Age villages on the north of the Mediterranean were no longer connected by land directly with Africa and the Nile valley. Thus the older roads by which they had probably received cattle and grain were closed to them, and no more inventions from Egypt could reach by those routes. Nevertheless, after changing from the hunting life to the settled life beside their grain fields and on their pastures, the Stone Age men of Europe made little or no progress. They were still without writing, (nor did inhabitants of the mainland of Europe ever invent a system of writing), for making the records of business and government; they were still without metal with which to make tools and to develop industries and commerce. Without these things they could go no farther. Meanwhile these and many other possessions of civilization were being discovered or invented on the other side of the Mediterranean in Egypt and Western Asia, in the land which we now call the Near East." (3)

It must have been during the later times of the last Glacial Age, that the Mongoloids first made their way into the American continent, across the land connection that is now the Bering Strait. For while in the Old World, primitive civilizations reacted upon one another and were developing, the greater portion of the tribes of the New World, never rose beyond a hunting life. They remained ignorant of the technology of metallurgy and of animal domestication. But in Mexico, Yucutan and Peru developed more progressive civilizations, though in some aspects similar, yet differed substantially from that of the Old World. The exterior designs of temples included sun and serpent, symbols reminisce of the Old World, though their famous pyramid-like structures, were not royal tombs as in Egypt, but high mounds engineered to reflect astronomical calculations, on top of which temples were accommodated. Their priests carried astronomical science to a high level of accuracy. Their art of elaborate inscriptions, looks as if made by delirious minds. The public life and national festivities were centred on human sacrifice. The ritual consisted of cutting open living victims, and pulling out the still beating heart. Thousands of victims were offered in this way each year to appease the gods.

Man discovered in Tasmania by the Dutch few centuries ago had not yet progressed beyond the stage of food gathering. They never learned to build homes, cultivate the soil, or domesticate animals. By radio-carbon analyses, the Scandinavian ice-sheet began its final retreat about 10,000 years ago. And now the Scandinavian peninsula, and perhaps Russia, were becoming possible regions for human occupation. No Palaeolithic remains in Sweden or beyond the latitude 61 North, has so far been found, suggesting that Man, when he entered these regions, was already at the Neolithic stage of social development.

The signs left by the ice, as it was drawing back northward for the last time, shows that nearly 9,000 years ago, the ice cap reached to more or less its present Arctic position of latitude. The geography of the world was then, very similar in its general outline to that of the world today.

November 28, 1999

--Chapter Two--

The Mediterranean Race
Jerusalem Forum

Over the European and Mediterranean area and western Asia there are, and have been for many thousand years, white peoples usually called the Caucasians, subdivided into northern blondes or Nordic race, and the southern dark white Mediterranean or Iberian race. The latter are usually described as the fine-featured, Dark White people, of the dolichocephalic (elongated) skulls. These dark whites, seem to be a central mass of people passing by almost insensible gradations northward, eastward and southward, into the more specialized whites and yellows, and the divergent blacks. "Field, includes the Arabs in the `basic Mediterranean group of Southwestern Asia'." (4)

The Mediterranean people were the Neolithic people of the long barrows, and were everywhere the original possessors of the Neolithic culture and the beginners of civilization. The Mediterranean constituted an inland lake to these people and continued to be as such during historic times. The prevailing element in the Mediterranean islands and southern Europe are to this day, the dark whites, of the Mediterranean race.

"An initial colonization of the Mediterranean coasts seems indicated, with a subsequent spread to the north across France to Switzerland, Britain and the Rhineland of some form or forms of simple stone-using agricultural economy at the end of the fourth millennium BC... Contacts between the eastern and western Mediterranean appear to have led to the development of copper metallurgy at points in the latter area by the middle of the third millennium BC. From the third millennium, too, evidence is found for the spread, first in the Mediterranean and subsequently along the Atlantic littoral, of mortuary cult involving the construction of rock-cut or stone-chambered tombs for collective burial." (5)

The Old World was highly deficient of metals. In order to secure this highly sought after commodity, their sea-going Punic descendants exploited and transported, gold, silver, and copper during the Mesolithic Period, and added tin during the Bronze Age from mines around the Mediterranean, as far as Britannica in the Atlantic. From the Eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, where they set up a string of harbour towns along its shores, among which Tyre and Sidon were the chief, by 2000 BC, they had set up active trading outposts in North Africa, most Mediterranean islands, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and Spain. They sent ships through the straits of Gibraltar, to explore the west coast of Africa. "It is in this context of relationships between the Aegean and Britain at the middle of the second millennium that we must place the final building phases of Stonehenge...which chronologically, must have been built about the middle of the second millennium." (Clark 305)

Excavations on the island of Cheos in the Aegean, has shown that the Etruscans who founded a state in the forest wilderness of central Italy, came from the Eastern Mediterranean, and are not of Indo-European stock as has been originally assumed. Rome appears in history in the eighth century BC, under the rule of Etruscan kings and nobles, whose names of 'Numa' and 'Tarquin' suggest an eastern origin.

The Mediterranean Dark Whites, remained in full possession of all the Mediterranean basin including its islands until the arrival of the Indo-European brachycephalic (rounded) skulls supposedly from the western Asian plateau. It is clear from the concordant evidence of history, philology and archaeology, that the period from 2300 to 1900 was marked not only by internal shifts of power within the great kingdoms of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but also widespread movements of barbarian tribes on the fringes of civilized western Asia. It was at this time that the Hittites moved into Anatolia and the Mycenians into Greece, both settling upon its indigenous inhabitants.

"Examination of the skulls which have been found on several sites in Anatolia shows that in the third millennium the population was preponderantly long-headed or dolichocephalic, with only a small admixture of brachycephalic types. In the second millennium the proportion of brachycephalic skulls increases to about 50 percent... In 1915 B. Horzny published his first sketch of the grammar of the Hittite language and showed that its structure was undoubtedly Indo-European... The Hittite language was not indigenous in Asia Minor, and the name Hatti was given to the country by the earlier people of the land, who we call Hattians. The Indo-European Hittite language was superimposed on the non-Indo-European Hattian by an invading people, and it was presumably at the same time that other Indo-European dialects, Luwian and Palaic, established themselves in other parts of Anatolia." (6)

December 12, 1999

--Chapter Three--

The Semites
Jerusalem Forum

In the development of human societies, as much as there are forces of mixing and integration, there are opposing forces of segregation and isolation. Specialization and long settlement in sub-geographical districts, especially when travel was both difficult and dangerous, tend to create certain amounts of specialization and variations. With the severance of the land-mass of Europe from Africa at the close of the last Ice Age, a comparatively isolated, uninterrupted land mass was formed, bounded by the natural barriers of the Atlantic and the Great Sahara in North Africa, extending east through Egypt, Syria and Iraq to the foot of the Zagros mountains; and from the Indian ocean in the Arabian peninsula to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean and the Taurus mountains to the North. The Taurus and Zagros mountain ranges formed the overland limit of the Semitic world, as well as a disputed borderline between the armies of Mesopotamia and the Indo-European highlanders, who like the bedouins of the western desert coveted and threatened the wealthy cities of the plain. The Semitic native land, consists mostly of flat desert terrain, with no natural impediments to hinder the free movement of man or beast, (until the discovery of passports by Arab chieftains of the twentieth century), which factors gave its inhabitants, a fairly remarkable homogeneity of language, culture and history.

Thus the whole course of history, from the earliest date to which authentic knowledge extends down to the time of the decay of the Caliphate, records no great permanent disturbance of population to affect the constancy of the Semitic type within its original seats, apart from the temporary Hellenisation of the great cities. Such disturbances as did take place consisted partly of mere local displacements among the settled Semites. (7)

Philologists are unable to trace any common features in all the languages of mankind. However, they can find similar root words and similar ways of expression in some groups of languages. One such group is the Aryan or Indo-European family, which includes English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Persian and various Indian tongues.

"With the decipherment of the cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the comparative study of the ancient Assyrian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and Abyssinian tongues, it was found that these tongues have striking points of similarity and are therefore considered cognates. This common root of primary family of languages, is called Semitic.

Schlozer, a German scholar, used the term `Semitic' for the first time in 1781, when referring to this family of related languages, as opposed to the Aryan group of languages. In choosing this name, he was influenced by Hebrew Biblical narrative of Genesis X.18,19: "And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread." Shem, also called `Sam' in some Biblical translations, is supposed to be the father of the Dark White Mediterranean race, and his brothers to be the respective founders of the Negroids and Blondes, statements that are not too informative on the origin of races and peoples. However, the term Semite and Semitic will be used herewith as a term of convenience, when referring to the inhabitants of the above referenced area.

"In general large groups of men do not readily change their language, but go on from generation to generation speaking the ancestral dialect, with such gradual modification as the lapse of time brings about. As a rule, therefore, the classification of mankind by language, at least when applied to large masses, will approach pretty closely to a natural classification... Where unity of speech has prevailed for many generations, we may be sure that the continued action of these influences has produced great uniformity of physical and mental type... The Semites form a singularly well marked and relatively speaking a very homogeneous group. So far as language goes the evidence to this effect is particularly strong. The Semitic tongues are so much alike that their affinity is recognised even by the untrained observer; and modern science has little difficulty in tracing them back to a single primitive speech. (8)

Mr Salibi, a scholar of Semitic languages states that Canaanite, Aramaic and Arabic, could be considered as dialects of the same language, that were spoken simultaneously in different geographical areas of the Arabian peninsula during Biblical times, and that in all times and all ages, the cultures and languages of Syria and Arabia has never been far apart. All are of equal antiquity, and from a linguistic point of view, Arabic is considered to be the oldest of the three.(17,35,44) "In certain respects, the relation between modern Arab dialects and Classical Arabic, resembles that between the old Semitic languages and their presumed ancestor." (9)

"The most ancient linguistic phenomena of the Syrian region, and Ugharitic in particular, manifest unexpectedly archaic characteristics, and thus are in a position parallel to that of Old Akkadian in Mesopotamia, as revealed by Gelb's research. In both cases there is remarkable closeness to proto-Semitic; and if we remember that this proto-Semitic is drawn above all, in the first place, from Arabic, we may see in this situation a further proof of the desert origin of the most ancient Semitic populations of both Mesopotamia and Syria." (10)

All Semitic tongues are almost mutually understandable, except for the Hebrew and Abyssinian tongues. "The late Hebrew language was always a language of learning, and not an everyday spoken one, until the rise of modern Zionism, who faked the use of the language as a spoken one in order to gather the Jews as a nation." (11)

Some early European writers, in accordance with the Biblical narrative that the Egyptians are sons of Ham, and despite the fact that the same source gainsays itself by making the Canaanites and the Phoenicians to be children of Ham and near cousins of the Egyptians, yet they overlooked the contradiction and classified the Egyptian language as Hamitic, and the latter as Semitic. Modern Philologists now conclude that the relationship of the ancient Egyptian language to the Semitic tongues is unmistakable.

"The linguistic relationship between Semitic and Egyptian is self-evident and far more significant. Beside a broad ethnological connexion between Semites and Hamites, there is close cultural affinity between the tribes of North Africa and Arabia, areas which are geologically one. And while natives of North-East Africa can freely cross over into South Arabia, the influence of Syrians, Arabs, and other "Semites" upon Egypt (and North-East Africa) has at one time or another been decisive. Indeed, just as Coptic betrays the influence, though of course at a relatively late date, of "exchanges with Semitic neighbours (Griffith, Ency. Brit. ix.60), so at a very remote date, before the rise of the language we call "Egyptian", intercourse between Egypt and the Semitic area may account for the remarkable points of contact between the two linguistic types.(12)

Even more misguided present-day characters, label the Egyptians as, 'Pharaohists' (Phara'inah) i.e. descendants of the Pharaohs. These must be ignorant of the fact, that the term Pharaoh is a corruption of the old Egyptian words 'Per Ao' meaning Big House, signifying resident of the palace or the ruler. "The savage's unwillingness to mention his own name" say James Frazer, "is based, at least in part, on a superstitious fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes." The term Pharaoh, is in reality, nothing more than a title that signifies 'ruler', just as Caesar or Sultan signifies ruler.

The river valley of the Nile consisted of the down-river flat beds of the delta, and up-river narrow irrigated shoe string across the desert. There is a definite general homogeneity of race and culture among the nomads of the western deserts that extend on to Libya and into North Africa, with the nomads that roamed the eastern deserts of Egypt, extending into Sinai, Syria, and the settled folk of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia. Few of the Egyptian dynasties are acknowledged to be of Libyan origin. This in turn suggests that the River Nile, never constituted a barrier against movement in both directions, as much as the Euphrates and Tigris never prevented movements from the Arabian deserts across these two rivers all the way to the Persian Gulf and foothills of the Zagros that formed a natural geographic barrier.

Africa touches Arabia in the north at the Sinaitic peninsula, and comes close to it in the south at Bab el-Mandab only fifteen miles across.

 A third chief route connected mid-western Arabia at Qusayr on the Red Sea with the opposite Egyptian side, which followed the Wadi al-Hammamat to the bend of the Nile near Thebes During the XIIth Dynasty (ca. 2000-1788 BC), a canal above Bulbais connected the Nile with the Red Sea. Restored by the Ptolemies, this canal, the antecedent of the Suez Canal, was reopened by the Khalifs and used until the discovery (1497) of the route to India around the Cape of Good Hope.

The chief attraction for the Egyptians in South Arabia lay in the frankincense, which they prized highly for temple use and mummification and in which that part of Arabia was particularly rich. Hatshepsut (ca. 1500) the first famous woman of history, subjugated Nubia and Somaliland in pursuit of myrrh, fragrant gums, resin and aromatic woods. The emissaries of her great successor Tut-hmes III, increased the trade to the south to include ivory, ebony, panther skins and slaves.

Another major highway of ancient times passed from Egypt to the Syrian coast, through the 90 mile corridor from el-Qantara to el-Arish, a sandy waterless coastal strip on the northern end of the Sinai, where ancient Palesium (Farama) used to mark the farthest Egyptian boundary. It was through this corridor that the Semites from the Syrian deserts almost continuously infiltrated into the invitingly rich Valley of the Nile, in a trickle during the times when the government was strong, and in a torrent during times of dynasty changes and internal upheavals. That Egypt was most vulnerable to beduin encroachment at its north-eastern corner, can be deduced from the mentioning about 1970 BC, of the Wall of the Ruler, made to repel the Setyu (Asiatics) and to crush the `sand-farers. One of the important occurrences of VIth Dynasty, was the dispatch of a large army to fight an Asiatic intrusion. A narrative found in a VIth dynasty tomb of certain Weni, depicts clearly the fact that Egypt had more difficulty to control her north-eastern boundary, more than any other. The records of Mernptah and Remsiss III relate, that it was at Pelesium that they stopped the tidal wave of the 'Sea People' that were encroaching upon the delta at the beginning of the twelfth century BC.

"Though there were periods of high and low tides of immigration into the Nile Delta from the surrounding deserts, encroachment never entirely ceased. "At a very early period, and certainly in Neolithic times, a considerable number of Semites must have made their way into Egypt, and these came from the Arabian Peninsula...Here they would find themselves not only in fertile land, but they would also be in touch with the tribes living in the region where, from time immemorial, alluvial gold had been found in considerable quantities. ...Coming now to the latest part of the Neolithic Period, and the beginning of the Dynastic Period, we find that there existed in Lower Egypt and the Delta, a population that possessed physical characteristics...[that are] distinctly Semitic in type, and there seems to be little reason for doubting that they came from some part of the Arabian Peninsula. ..These were the men who built the Pyramids and all the other mighty works in stone." (13)

Since the Abyssinian tongue belongs to the group of Semitic languages, it logically follows, that the Mediterranean Dark-whites, post Glacial Age settlers of the Nile, must have gradually penetrated up river all the way to its sources in Ethiopia. The Dark Whites on the Mediterranean coast of the Delta, pass by almost insensible gradations to darker skin southward up the Nile Valley, but in the meantime, preserving their Mediterranean or Semitic fine features.

"The close relationship between the Semitic languages is an incontrovertible fact. Likewise incontrovertible is the assignment to the Semitic language group of its traditional members: Akkadian, Canaanite - this term being taken generally to include Hebrew and Phoenician - Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopic...it is now an established fact that the Semitic languages, along with Egyptian, Libyo-Berber, and Cushitic, make up a wider linguistic family, the Hamito-Semitic, and that the relationship between the members of this family is so close, that it can be explained only on the hypothesis of a common origin." (14)

The lingual variation of the Berbers, inhabitants of the Atlas Mountains of north Africa, are bound to appear as a result of semi-isolation in their difficulty negotiated geographic mountainous stronghold. It logically follows that they are a section of the post-glacial Mediterranean Dark Whites, the same stock as the other inhabitants of the Semitic world. The difference from their coastal neighbours of North Africa, forms a more emphatic parallel with the differences between the Fellah of the down-river delta dwellers, and the more beduin-like up-river Sa'idi. It is obvious that the variation in both cases, is a direct result of environmental specialization.

Another modern misconception, perhaps for divisive political purposes than anything else, is the claim of the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon, that they are not Arabs, by Phoenicians. It is now a matter of common knowledge, that the term Phoenician was first used by the early Greek geographers meaning purple, when referring to the Syrian coast, for the Tyrian purple textile that they were famous for throughout the Mediterranean. In the colour scheme of the garments of the Immortal ten thousand of the Persian Empire, we learn, the royal Phoenician purple plays a large part. It is therefore a designation for a trade commodity, and not for any particular ethnic denomination. The term Phoenician used in the direct quotes in this research, has been maintained in order not to alter the original text of the quotes, but in a scientific sense, must mean the 'Syrian Coast', each time it is used.

It is clear from the above discussion that the term Semite and Semitic in its true sense, refers to the inhabitants of what is commonly called the 'Arab World'. It consequently bears no allusion to what has become customary in the modern western press and literature, to mean Jew and Jewish. As a matter of historical fact, the Hebrews who immigrated into this region, because of their ethnic and cultural differences from the inhabitants of the region, always remained immiscible with its Semitic inhabitants, as much as oil would be immiscible in water. The original home of these Hebrews of antiquity, still needs to be determined, when their own Bible repeatedly remind Abram and Jacob that they are foreigners in their new home of the Land of Canaan. Furthermore it is a matter of common knowledge that the majority of the present world Jewry, are Ashkinaj of Russian Indo-European stock.

"The Hebrew type is a variant of the Oriental one, distinguished by its shorter head, its nose pendulous rather than aquiline, protruding eyes, and outward-turned lower lip." (16)

December 26, 1999

--Chapter Four--

Beduins and Hadhar
(Nomads and Settled Societies)
Jerusalem Forum

As century after century, the ice was retreating northward in Europe, arid desert conditions were descending upon the once fertile lands to the south. "The ecological stresses of the Pleistocene period played an important role in prehistory by their often renewed impact on existing ways of life, an impact which enhanced the adaptive value of responsiveness to change... It can hardly be an accident that the next great break-through in human awareness and technical prowess took place precisely in those territories where ecological changes were most clearly marked. The transformation of climate in south-west Asia and North Africa which occurred at the close of the Ice Age, came at a time when the Advanced Palaeolithic peoples of the regions in question, were fitted, as never before, to take advantage of changes in their external environment." (15)

At this time, a natural sociological reaction to the ecological changes, was the development of two distinct societies. Those who chose to continue the life of unattached freedom, gradually adapted to the hardening conditions upon the plateau, to become the beduins, nomads of the Arabian deserts. To make-up for the disappearing wildlife, and being closer to nature than settled folk, they must have been the first to domesticate the wild animals around them. With their domesticated herds of sheep, goats, and asses, they continued their care-free wondering life of pasturing. On the other hand, those who chose to settle down to an easier life of farming and practical slavery to the land, descended from the drying plateaus, upon the river valleys and around the scattered natural springs of the region, to become the city-dwellers (el-Hadhar). To make up for the vanishing natural vegetation of forest and grasslands, they utilized land to cultivate regular crops. Soon the cave and the temporary hut was exchanged for permanent dwellings, utilizing wood, clay or stone, whichever was closer at hand. Continuous settlement on one location, led to larger groups of people living together. Development in their mode of living ultimately led to diversification in human life and human thought, and provided conditions that were infinitely more stimulating to man's intellectual capacities than his previous modes of living. They became the inventors and developers of the First Two Ancient Civilizations of mankind. Between them, the civilization of Egypt and Iraq, laid down the foundation and the cornerstone of present-day civilizations of mankind.

"Climatic conditions did not always relent: sometimes they grew harsher, as with the desiccation of the land and the formation of desert. Some remained nomads, and adapted their culture to a life of movement with no abiding city. Animal products were their food, and their gods were of the sky and not of the earth. Other moving tribes halted and settled. The attraction was particularly fertile land or an everlasting spring. When they had acquired fruit trees or established irrigation channels, and followed these with more permanent houses and shrines for their deities, they could move no more. Thus it came about that civilisation begins in the oases of the desert, and in the river valleys." (17)

January 6, 2000

--Chapter Five--

The Beduin Society
Jerusalem Forum

Unlike the roaming Palaeolithic hunter, the Beduin's seasonal wanderings are anything but haphazard, being based on a remarkably exact understanding of the life cycles of the various plants, insects and animals on which they depend. His moves are timed with the seasons, north to Syria and Iraq in summer, and southwards to Hijaz and Yemen in winter. They carried out a simple and uncomplicated form of life. Their society had neither land-holding rich nor landless poor. Property in water is older and more important than land. In nomadic Arabia there is no property in desert pastures, but certain tribes hold the watering-places without which the right of pasture is useless.

The magnanimous among them were recognized on the basis of chivalry and literary ability. There was no law among them but the desert laws, and the nomad normally carried a natural code of rules of justice, chivalry and free spirit. Their poets never tired of singing the praises of diyafah (hospitality) which, with hamasah (fortitude and enthusiasm) and maru'ah (gallantry) is considered one of the supreme virtues of the Race. The common consciousness of the helplessness in face of a hostile environment, develops a feeling for the necessity of one sacred duty: that of hospitality. They possessed no writing or record keeping, and therefore excelled in oral delivery of prose and verse, their only available means of expression. They developed prodigious memories passing down their literature and ancestral lineage down the generations.

"All members of the same clan consider each other as of one blood, submit to the authority of one chief. "Banu" (children of) is the title with which they prefix their joint name... 'Asabiyah' is the spirit of the clan. It implies boundless and unconditional loyalty to fellow clansmen and corresponds in general to patriotism of the passionate, chauvinistic type... Isolated in his desert surrounding from the encroachment of foreign nations, the Arab like his Arabian horse, considered himself the purest and noblest of all nations (afkhar al-umam). In the purity of his blood, and in his noble nasab (ancestry) he took infinite pride. The Arab was and still is to this very day and age, excessively fond of prodigious genealogies and often traces his lineage back to Adam. No people, other than the Arabians, have ever raised genealogy to the dignity of a science... The Arabian genealogist, like his brother the Arabian historian, had a horror vacui and his fancy had no difficulty in bridging gaps and filling vacancies; in this way he has succeeded in giving us in most instances a continuous record from Adam or, in more modest compass, from Ishamel and Abraham. Ibn-Durayd's Kitab al-Ishtiqaq and the encyclopaedic work of abu-al-Faraj al-Isfahani entitled Kitab al-Aghani comprise most valuable data on the subject of genealogies." (18)

Learning early, to carry goods between the settled communities, they became the desert route experts that fearlessly lead trade caravans across the treacherous desert wastes between the scattered oases and the settled communities of South Arabia, Egypt Iraq and Syria. The sun by day, and the stars at night, helped to guide their travels. They were not by any means mere common carriers, but acute merchants and traders to their own account, the great Semitic desert merchant of Ancient Times. The desert knowledge of trade and the guidance by the star systems, were readily applied to the seas by the coastal inhabitants of the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. They were the greatest seamen and sea-merchants of ancient times. With their seagoing ships propelled by sails, they navigated the seas to India in quest of the highly prized spices, and to the west in the Mediterranean in quest the badly needed metals. They were the intermediaries between Egypt, Babylonia and Punjab, the three focal centres of earliest trade, and gave their name to the great intervening sea, the Arabian Sea.

"In periods behind historical recollection trade was wider flung than we are apt to imagine". (19)

Living on the milk and flesh of their flocks, and having no industries, they had to stay in close and constant contact with the agricultural communities, in order to exchange their sheep, goats, and camels for grain, dates, tools, weapons and other manufactured commodities. The tribes raided each other, and the borders of the more numerous and less war-like city dwellers, to secure food supplies in meagre times. The desert never yielding enough to feed their increasing numbers, the process of penetration and settlement in the agricultural areas was a continuous process. It must be appreciated that this phenomenon cannot be treated with the same measure as a foreign conquest, because in reality the new comers were simply forcing themselves upon their wealthier cousins, who were racially, linguistically, and culturally, their next of kin. There is no record in history including that of the Islam, that they destroyed an existing civilization, but readily they mixed and intermarried with the existing population, learnt their arts and absorbed their sedentary culture, and within a generation or two became totally integrated in their new homes. The alternation of settlement, nomadic influx, refinement, fresh influx and refinement, in many variations, has been one of the main stories in the history the region,

"The arrival and establishment in the cultivated lands of successive hordes of Semitic nomads from the Arabian wilderness, which on their settlement found themselves surrounded by populations so nearly of their own type, that the complete fusion of the old and new inhabitants, was effected without difficulty, and without modification of the general character of the race." (20)

The Beduin society therefore constituted an active agent, which incessantly maintained and regenerated the homogeneity of blood and race of the entire geographic region of the Arab World.

"Skulls belonging to the Hassuna period (5800-5500 BC) in southern Iraq, that has been studied, [were found to] belong like those from Jbail and Jericho, to a large toothed variety of the long headed Mediterranean Race, which suggest a unity of population through out the Fertile Crescent in late Neolithic times." (21)

His imagination made him people the far reaches of the desert with invisible spirits (the jinn), that inhabited every tree, mountain, spring or rock. He had neither darkened temples nor literate organized priesthood. The open sky dome was his temple. He was accustomed to communicate with the unseen powers of the universe directly, without intermediaries or middlemen.

Islam itself, in its pristine theology, emanated from the very heart of its deserts. The Sociological, political and cultural attributes of the region, cannot be understood, without a full comprehension of its sub-stratum Beduin Society. Being fiercely independent, the beduin's first allegiance centred upon his immediate family, tribal subdivision, and tribe, respectively. This being in strike contrast to Greek and Roman societies, which were built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state.

Chieftainship, is a life-time honorary post but not hereditary. When the shiekh pronounces judgement on a case, it remains at the option of the culprit whether he will comply or continue the feud with his accuser. His authority is more moral than physical, since there is no executive organization to enforce the sentence. The despotism of the modern Eastern type kingship only existed in the large agricultural communities. Upon the shiekh's death, if his life is not cut short by an ambitious next of kin, elders would declare their allegiance to the one from among themselves, whom they consider to be the most capable.

The terrible shortcoming of the beduin society, is that its transient way-of-life, prevented it from the development and maintenance of permanent institutions. Its lack is the cause, that left the beduin maintaining the same Neolithic way of living unchanged, until the discovery of oil under his pasturing lands, during the first half of the twentieth century.

"The life of the desert does not furnish the material conditions for permanent advance beyond the tribal system...The ancient Semitic communities were small, and were separated from each other by incessant feuds." (22)

January 23, 2000

--Chapter Six--

Jerusalem Forum

During the post-glacial period, those who gave up the roaming life, descended upon the few fertile, heavily wooded River-valleys of the region. Out of dire necessity, they found themselves invading the privacy of their ancient sanctuaries of beast and reptile. Wild animals that infested the bush, had to be gradually driven farther and farther away. But even under the new conditions, innumerable holes in the ground harboured scorpions and all kinds of small reptiles, and the country was full of venomous snakes. Herein lies the cause and source, that sun and serpent appear early and universally in the mythology of mankind.

"Nearly every where the Neolithic culture went, there went a disposition to associate the sun and the serpent in decoration and worship. This primitive serpent-worship spread ultimately far beyond the regions where the snake is of serious practical importance in human life. But when at last the centre of diffusion of the Neolithic way of living is determined, it will surely be a land in which snake and sunlight were the facts of primary importance. And with these, no places are more abundantly provided with, than the Nile and the Euphrates-Tigris river valleys. Elliot Smith and Rivers have used the term `Heliolithic' (Sunstone) to describe the Neolithic culture, which they believe had originated in the Mediterranean and western Asia, and spread age by age to bring most of mankind by 10,000 BC, to a common level of Neolithic culture." (23)

The conditions necessary to a real settling down of Man, as distinguished from a merely temporary settlement, was of course a trustworthy all-the-year-round supply of water, among abundant food, and the availability of building materials. Nowhere, were these conditions found upon such a scale and under favourable warm weather conditions, as in Egypt and the Land of Two-Rivers in Iraq. It is in these two areas that began the more advanced stage of human civilization known as the Neolithic culture.

The early settlers, soon exchanged the cave and the temporary hut for permanent dwellings, utilizing wood, clay or stone, whichever was most readily available. Land was to make up for the vanishing natural vegetation of forest and grasslands. Man was changing from food gatherer to food producer. There is evidence that by the seventh millennium BC, plant cultivation had gone hand in hand with animal domestication. One of the basic factors involved in the beginning of animal husbandry and plant domestication is the distribution under post-Glacial climatic conditions, of animals and plants that were suitable for the early attempts at a farming economy. The wild ancestors of dogs, sheep and goats, the wild grasses that were the precursors of cultivated wheat and barley that demanded warmth and dryness, all were available in this region. Animals were domesticated and bred primarily for meat, secondarily for milk, and always for hides. Animal-hair and flax, was utilized to weave their garments, replacing clothing made of skins. Baskets and mats were woven from the river side reeds. Pottery, one of the distinguishing marks of Neolithic culture, was first made in rude sun-dried form for carrying dry objects, and later oven baked, to render it fit for liquid handling and storage. Bone and ivory was used for cosmetic jars, needles and spoons. The axe was the chief tool and weapon, followed by the bow and arrow. The arrow-heads were well-polished flint, tightly lashed to their shafts.

Animal husbandry led to the realization that castration could produce a docile animal of great strength. A well documented invention from the proto-literate and Early Dynastic Sumer, was the two wheeled and four wheeled carts, which when attached to animal power made possible better and faster transportation methods. The plough when attached to animal power, it greatly increased the cultivated area, making it possible for the rise of cities and civilized society. The Growth of population in its turn, resulted in the development of classes, which formed the basis upon which literate civilization was built.

A remarkably homogenous culture, based on the cultivation of cereals and animal husbandry, especially accomplished in the craftsmanship of pottery, and fairly familiar with non-ferrous metallurgy, was diffused throughout the Old World. Carbon 14 readings from the Fayyum in Egypt, show that the earliest agricultural settlements date back from about 4450 BC. Here has been found, straight wooden reaping-knives with multiple flint blades; wheat and barley contained in mat-lined storage pits; baskets, grass and rush mats and the earliest fragments of line fabric so far known.

In Iraq, urban society might be traced back further in time. Carbon dating establishes the age of the Hassuna culture, to start at about 5610 BC. Here there are certain elements of material culture which were to become recurrent throughout the peasant communities of western Asia. The making of pottery with painted designs, was baked in kilns at high temperatures. The potters kiln is allied to the smelting furnace necessary for extraction of copper.

Gold, presumably the first known of the metals, begins to appear among the bone ornaments with jet and amber in Egypt. The oldest implement of metal ever discovered in archaeological excavation, can hardly be much later than 5000 BC. Then copper pins begin to appear among the implements left in tombs. However, many centuries would pass before copper tools and weapons come into common use, finally ousting the Stone Age and ushering in the Metal Age. Around 3500 BC, bronze, a harder alloy of Copper and tin, replaced for all practical purposes the use of copper for implements and arms manufacture. Finally, perhaps as early as 1000 BC, man began to smelt iron.

"True man is first discovered in the Near East. Before the first period of intense rainfall glaciation, he had begun to chip flints. By these flint implements, we may trace his progress through the second, third, and last of these wide swings of climate; at the close he was still at the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone level of culture. During these long ages he had done more than improve his stone or bone technique: he had evolved the family, which he supported by hunting; he had made a cave home; he propitiated or averted the dangerous "powers" by magic; and he hoped for life beyond the grave.

"Near the end of the Palaeolithic period, men of our own species were inhabitants of the Near East. Around the great inland sea the dominant race was Mediterranean - long-headed, slim, of moderate height, with clear olive complexion. Cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were domesticated; barely, wheat and flax were cultivated.

"Some six thousands years ago the first great outpouring of nomads brought a near-Semitic language to Egypt, introduced the Canaanite and Phoenicians to their historic abode, and led the speakers of Akkadian to Babylon.

"Man had learned to hammer pure copper. Later, he discovered that copper might be smelted from ore; soon, gold, silver, and lead were secured by the same process. Metal implements made agriculture more fruitful and industry more productive and assured the basis for a more advanced technology. Clay for the hitherto crude pottery was cleansed, while a primitive wheel permitted more regular forms, and slips and paint gave further ornament. Medicine men, added to their charms and incantations, a knowledge of wild herbs.

"A more complicated civilization expanded villages into cities, and these into city-states which constant fighting gradually welded into larger units. Royal power increased as more complex living conditions demanded more efficient government. (24)

In view of the fact that Turkey was rich in minerals, it is not surprising that connections can be traced between settlements in Mersin in south-eastern Cilicia with the Iraqi sequence, running from Hassuna through to Uruk and indeed well beyond. Carbon 14 dates of 5693 BC had been established at Hacilar in south-western Turkey, where a Neolithic phase comparable to that at Mersin once existed.

"By the time of the Early Dynastic Sumer, bronze working had reached a level approximating to that of the Italian Renaissance... The rapid development of bronze technology in the [metal deficient] Near East from the beginning of the third millennium BC, must have led to an active search for accessible deposits of ore. Transylvania, Spain, and British Isles were not only sources of copper, but as a source of gold as well." (25)

February 6, 2000

--Chapter Seven--
 

Jerusalem Forum

The simple animism of the Neolithic Man, which made him endow all objects around him with indwelling spirits which should be placated if maleficent, and his fertility cults, soon developed into more complex forms of religion. With religion rose the temple which appears to be simultaneous with the appearance of civilization. The city arose around the temple, which dominated its life. In Iraq, it was a great spiral tower, on top of which the priests observed the stars. It was generally oriented toward the East, at the equinox at the time when the flood period occurred. In Egypt it was a one floored massive building. In both cases, the chief god of the region was the true owner of the land. Connected with these early temples, were a class of priests, who dedicated themselves to the service of the god, the management of his lands, and the conduct of all sorts of business and manufacture. Records where essential to keep accounts, where writing and knowledge first developed.

"The life of communities whose economy is based on hunting is necessarily one of tactics rather than strategy, of short-term decisions taken, perhaps rapidly, in relation to the movement and behaviour of the larger mammals which constitute the basic food supply. Hunting economy therefore, did not foster a perspective beyond the lifetime of the individual. The economic stages intermediate between hunting and fully settled agriculture, involving no more than herding, the community may look ahead no further than a single year. But on the other hand, when animal domestication and plant cultivation are consciously envisaged as an essential part of the economy, a long-term view is immediately inevitable. The capacity to adapt to extreme environmental conditions, is especially characteristic of man, and is closely linked both with his lack of biological specialization, as well as with his possession of an apparatus that enables him to store up the experience gained by individuals, and indeed by whole generations." (26)

The process of observing and recording experiences, and utilizing it to build human knowledge, was first begun in the temples, and by the organized priesthood, of the river valleys of Egypt and Iraq. They elaborated theology to explain the nature about them as a deliberate positive action of the gods. They evolved related groups of religious beliefs, expressed in various themes of the earth-mother, associated with fertility, the agricultural seasons, and rebirth. They fitted together into a pantheon, the several divinities of the empire, with its member gods being superhuman in their powers, but human in their behaviour, acted like ordinary men, eating, sleeping, loving and fighting among themselves. The seven celestial bodies, viz., sun, moon and the five planets that could be observed by the unaided eye, outliving mortals in their ceaseless consistent movements across the skies, were regarded as immortal gods of the heavens.

But beside these efforts to explain the universe in terms of legends, the primary functions of the oriental temple and priest, always remained down to earth with practical objectives in mind. In about 3500 to 4000 BC, they invented writing in order to keep records, that in turn helped build human experience. With this invention Man in the Middle and Near East emerged from the Neolithic Age into the beginning of history. The exposition of the mysterious ways of the stellar gods and stars, helped to organize the calendar and to fix the seasonal sowing time. Irrigation cannot be handled on an individual basis, they therefore managed the communal lands and maintained the irrigation systems for the common good. The temple was a centre of communal manufacture and trade. In summary, it constituted the brain trust of the growing community. Because of its mysteries and its power, it attracted imaginative, clever and ambitious men for its service. Priests remained for many ages the only well organized class, which through their attachment to the temple, were the only learned class of the community. Between them, the two priestly institutions of Egypt and Iraq, laid down the first foundations of human scientific knowledge and civilization Though urban society might be traced in Iraq, further back in time than Egypt, yet it cannot in cultural heritage terms, compare with the achievements of the Egyptian's, the world's oldest sophisticated civilization.

"Here is a body of men (the priests) relieved, at least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay, expected and encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret ways of nature. The properties of drugs and minerals, the causes of rain and drought, of thunder and lightning, the changes of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the daily and yearly journeys of the sun, the motions of the stars, the mystery of life, and mystery of death, all these things must have excited the wonder of these early philosophers, and stimulated them to find solutions of problems that were doubtless thrust on their attention in the most practical form by the importunate demands of their clients, who expected them not merely to understand but to regulate the great processes of nature for the good of man...They were the direct predecessors, not merely of our physicians and surgeons, but of our investigators and discoverers in every branch of natural science." (27)

Mr. A.T. Olmstead, in the introductory chapter of his book, History of the Persian Empire, accomplished an admirable task summarizing the development of the practical arts and sciences of the early ancient civilizations, prior to the rise of Persia to power. We are taking the liberty of quoting him at length hereunder.

"Toward the end of the fourth millennium, writing was invented in Babylonia and in Egypt. Each started with simple picture writing, in which the sign meant the word. Each quickly took the next step, employed the sign for any word of like sound, and evolved a purely phonetic writing by syllables. The Babylonians indicated the vowels; the Egyptians did not, but in compensation, they worked out a consonantal alphabet to supplement the ideographic and syllabic characters. Egypt retained its picture-writing for monumental inscriptions, while a conventionalized script - the hieratic - grew from the use of pen and papyrus. Babylonia passed rapidly through a linear form to the cuneiform, best impressed by stylus on clay tablets.

"Writing made possible a narrative history, written when kings of Egypt and Babylonia engaged in war with other peoples. In literature they brought forth the earliest known tales in narrative prose, poems, historical works, codes of law, social discussions, and even drama. In essential features the picture is identical. Everywhere we find the city-state, an urban centre with its surrounding villages and fields. At the head is the king, vice-regent on earth of the local god, and as much partaking of the divine essence. He has direct access to the gods, but there are also priests who perform a ritual prescribed from dim prehistoric times. The land is owned by the divine king who presents the usurfuct to his earthly deputy, the actual ruler; tillers of the soil therefore pay rent and not taxes. A king's first duty is to protect the god's worshippers. Success in war is the victory of the local god over his divine rivals; the subjugated gods become his vassals just as the subjugated kings become the vassals of his deputy.

"Men so close to the soil, whose outdoor life compelled minute observation of the heavens, could not fail to realize the influence of the celestial bodies. Day and night were distinguished by the sun- and moon-gods; waxing and waning of the moon-god gave the next calendar unit, the month; the sun-god, by his northern journey and return, afforded a still larger unit, the year. Soon it was recognized that sun and moon-gods did not agree in their calendar, for the sun did not return to his starting-point in twelve of the moon-god's cycles. Adjustment of the lunar to the solar year was made quite differently by the two peoples. The Egyptians had early learned that the sun's year is approximately 365 days; they therefore added to the twelve months of thirty-days, five extra days to form a year whose deviation from the true solar year would not be discovered for several generations. They thus gave the world the calendar that it still uses. The Babylonians were content to retain the moon year of twelve months, intercalating a new month when it was observed that the seasons were out of order.

"To the decimal system the Babylonians added the sexagesimals for the higher units and broke the complex fractions into subdivisions of sixty which made easier computation. Egyptians knew squares and square roots. The Babylonians prepared tables for multiplication and division, squares and cubes, square and cube roots. Babylonians discovered the theorem for the right-angles triangle we name from Pythagoras.

"Like the Babylonians, the Egyptians divided the triangle and calculated its area as they did the trapezium with parallel sides. Their approximation of pi as eight-ninth of the diameter (or, as we should say 3.1605) was more accurate than the Babylonians, and with it they secured the areas of circles and volumes of cylinders or hemispheres. The Babylonians invented the arch, and the tower or spire. The Egyptians on the other hand, were the first to move great weights and undertake large building enterprises. In Architecture, they were the first to use stone masonry, the clerestory and the colonnade. They produced the earliest refined sculpture, portrait figures, and colossal statues. They gave the world the first potter's wheel, the potter's furnace, the loom and weaving, the earliest metal work, glass making and paper-making.

"Long lists, roughly classified, were prepared of animals, plants, and stones. Lists of plants were prepared generally for medical use. Symptoms of disease are carefully described in regular order from head to foot. Egyptian medical texts are much the same, but in a surgical textbook the attitude is quite scientific. He knows the heart is a pump; he takes the pulse; he has almost discovered the circulation of the blood.

"While in Egypt most trade was done by barter, Babylon was financially far ahead. By the Chaldean period (c. 650 BC), Babylonia had gone fully onto a silver basis. They had coinage on which bankers stamped their names and weights on lumps. Where gold is mentioned in the Chaldean period, its ratio to silver varies from ten to nearly fourteen to one. Despite the fact that they had a severer shortage of metal ores than Egypt, and all metals had to be imported, they sold for surprisingly low prices. Which in turn suggests that organized commerce was far earlier and wider flung than had been imagined.

"Monetary terminology was primarily according to weight. Sixty shekels (shiqlu) made one pound (mana), and sixty manas made one talent (biltu). Since the talent weighed about sixty-six of our pounds, the Babylonian pound was a little heavier than our own.

"Grain was sold by measure. Barely was the most important grain produce, raised on great estates belonging to the temples.

"Without any doubt, the most important economic phenomenon was the emergence of the private banker and the consequent wide extension of credit. The loan business was in the hands of the one great economic unit, the temple, and loans were made principally to temple dependants. Private banking as a commercial proposition made its appearance in Babylonia in the reign of Kandalanu (648-626).

"The more closely we examine temple documents, the more impressed we are with the wide use of credit during this period. The temple had become a huge corporation, shares of which could be transferred on what almost corresponded to our modern stock exchange. From the standpoint of the businessman, Babylonia possessed a remarkably modern system of doing business. Her credit facilities are to be especially noted.

"Toward the end of the 8th century, written contracts, the predecessors of the still more numerous papyri of the Hellenistic and Roman period, had come into general use. Parallels to the cuneiform documents are close, and suggest that the new system of bookkeeping had been introduced under Assyrian influence into Egypt. A new and more quickly written script soon evolved in Egypt; it was called by the Greeks demotic or "popular", in contrast to the more elaborate hieratic or "priestly", henceforth confined largely to copies of the sacred books...

"The path of the sun-god was charted by the Babylonians through the twelve constellations which were to give their names to our zodiac. More than by the stars, the fate of kings and nations was determined by the liver of the sacrificed sheep. Astrology had long since acquainted Babylonian priests with the heavens and had worked out a terminology. Calendar needs brought into use an eight-year cycle and then a nineteen-year cycle to bring together at its close the lunar and solar years in almost exact agreement. Already the course of the planets is definitely fixed in degrees and minutes with reference to the constellations and stars. Venus returns to the same place in the heavens after 8 years; but "4 days you subtract, you observe," and the true cycle is 8 years minus 4 days. They had already discovered the sar (the saros still employed by modern astronomers), the period of 6,585 days or a little more than 18 years, after which eclipses repeat themselves in almost exactly the same order. This very Babylonian clay tablet, may have been the ultimate source from which Hipparchus [of Alexandria] drew his knowledge of the lunar eclipse.

"About the beginning of the fifth century appeared the first great Babylonian astronomer whose name was remembered by the Greeks: Nabu-rimanni, son of Balaru, "descendant" of the priest of the moon-god, who witnessed important documents at Babylon in 491 and 490. Strabo called him Naburianus and gave him the deserved title "mathematician", for while his tables were based on observation, the details are the result of most elaborate calculations. The problem set by Nabu-rimanni was determination of the true date of new or full moon, with which was connected determination of lunar or solar eclipses. How remarkably close to the truth Nabu-rimanni came thus early, may be realized from the fact that this is far more accurate than the estimates of Ptolemy, Copernicus, or even Kepler before he employed the telescope. In his tables, Nabu-rimanni gave the position of new or full moon by degrees in the constellations along the sun's path, the ecliptic, now becoming the regular signs of the zodiac. Sun and moon returned so exactly to the same position on the ecliptic that it took 236 years to bring the error to 1 degree.

"In the fourth column of his tables, he calculated the varying length of the day. The Babylonians had no telescope or other modern instruments, that their time was computed by a water clock. They learned that the seasons are of unequal length; their autumn was only half an hour too short, their spring and summer half a day too long, their winter nearly a day too short, by modern standards.

"In his ninth column, he showed the average month is 29 days, 14 hours, 44 minutes, about 1 hour, 49 minutes, 67 seconds too long... When the moon passes twice the perigee, we have the shortest month, 29 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes; when it twice passes apogee, the longest, 29 days, 17 hours, 13 minutes.

"In the twelfth column is presented the final goal of all these calculations: the true date of new or full moon. Professional astronomers pay their tribute to so able a predecessor, working without their present-day advantages of highly specialized instruments and of a still more developed mathematics. Astronomy was the one science the Orient gave the West fully grown, the one science whose greatest triumphs were achieved in our later Orient. Our fragmentary sources do not permit for our period a similar picture in the other fields of knowledge, but enough has survived to prove that in pure mathematics, in botany, medicine, and grammar, the learning of the ancient past had not been forgotten.

"During the time of Nabu-nasir Babylon adopted the 19-year cycle with a rough alternation of 29 and 30 days months, and adjusted their calendar to the sun-year by adding 7 intercalated months within the cycle.

"From the third dynasty onwards, the Egyptians had known that the year contained 365 days. Although the 19-year cycle worked clumsily in practice, it definitely gave more precise results.

"Babylonian astronomers had already divided the concave celestial sphere into three concentric zones: `The way of Anu', god of the sky above the Pole where revolved the `stars which see the Pole and never set', `The Way of Enlil', god of the atmosphere, which the Greeks were to call the ecliptic and still later the Zodiac; and `The Way of Ea', god of the deep, far down in the celestial ocean.

"A ‘New Moon Tablet of Kidinnu’, copied in 145 at Sippar, in all probability his home, permits us a view of his system, dated to 379 or 373. Kidinnu is another famous astronomers that followed in the footstep of Nabu-rimmani. He showed in his tables that the anomalistic year, for perigee or apogee and back, was 365 days 6 hours 25 minutes 46 seconds, exactly correct according to modern astronomers. Only by the presentation of these figures can we appreciate the extraordinary mathematical ability of this outstanding genius. He also reported the synodic month to be 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3.5 seconds, 1.9 seconds less than the modern. If the accuracy of Nabu-rimanni's calculations are amazing, that of Kidinnu's is almost beyond belief. That such accuracy could be attained without telescopes, clocks, or the innumerable mechanical appliances which crowd our observatories, and without our higher mathematics, seems incredible until we recall that Kidinnu had at his disposal a longer series of carefully observed eclipses and other astronomical phenomena than are available to his present-day successors. Our discovery of oriental mathematicians is so recent, that we are still in a state of amazement at their triumphs, and a history of oriental mathematics, much less an appreciation of their contributions to the Greeks, must be well in the future...

"Nabu-rimanni and Kidinnu were, first of all, priests, their lives devoted to the service of moon-god, sun-god, or the other divinities embodied in the celestial beings. Their sole purpose was to explain this very mechanism of the gods. and to justify the "ways" of gods to men.

"During the Persian Hakhmenid period, also a remarkable science, astronomy, was developing - the science which so profoundly influenced that of the Greeks, and so that of our own day." (End of quote)

Science was therefore no opponent of religion in the ancient Orient; rather, it grew up in the school which lay always in the temple's shadow. These institutions prospered as long as they remained independent. The first Persian Empire of the Hakhmenids, whose star rose above the region in the middle of the sixth century, though linguistically they belong to the Indo-European roots of languages, yet ethnically they are a hybrid, and mentally and culturally they are part of the Near East. Their rulers especially the earlier ones, did not interfere with the priestly institutions, but fostered them in every respect, and showed great respect to their local gods.

"A ruler of consummate organizational capability and statesmanship, Darius the Great, showed tolerance to priests and Egyptians, as he did to all other gods and beliefs of his Empire. To win favour with the gods of Egyptian lands, Darius built a temple to Amen in the town of Hebt, the capital of the Oasis of Khargah. "On one of the walls of the second chamber in the temple is cut a hymn to Amen-Re', who is described as the One God, of whom all the other gods are but forms." (28)

'History', they say, 'repeats itself'. It was during the times of the European occupation of the region, that the indigenous culture and civilization came to an end. As much as present Western Christian civilization is spreading its own by mental as well as brutal means, at the expense of the other civilization of mankind, so did Alexander attempt to Hellenize the east at the expense of its own ancient culture. As a matter of fact, there would even be no Greek Hellenistic culture, if it was not based upon the land mass of Egypt in Alexandria. The final and fatal destruction of the temple based institutions, came at the hands of the brute Romans. It is amazing, that the early historians of these nations refer to the Orientals as barbarians, when it should have been the other way round. With the deliberate extinction of these institutions, humanity irrevocably lost an invaluable wealth of scientific and literary accomplishments. After the Roman occupation, it was again schools attached to mosques in AD eighth century, that resuscitated and preserved whatever remained of the human knowledge of the ancients in Alexandria that survived Theodosius.

February 20, 2000

--Chapter Eight--
 

God-Kings and Priestly-Kings
Jerusalem Forum

"The god-king concept that had developed in the primitive agricultural society of the Nile Valley, developed in a totally different manner from that of Mesopotamia. Unlike Babylonia, there is no trace of autonomous city-states with their assemblies, elders and mortal rulers, and their independent temple organization; rather, from the beginning, there is the insistent fact that there is one king, and that 'the King of Egypt was a god, and that he was a god for the purposes of the Egyptian state'. He was the Sun-God incarnate and his "son" in the flesh, the Lord of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. "Already in the early Pyramid Texts the Pharaoh is man, son of the god, and a god." (29) Being god incarnate, they believed he must be just and good, and therefore had more power than either priest or king.

In Iraq on the other hand, the city-states were organized and ruled by men whose service to the gods of the town was direct, and not conducted through the medium of a single god who as king ruled over all such towns within a realm which existed only in terms of his own divine person. When a power of a king grew, the god of his village found himself the protector of the king and his large empire. An increasing burden would fall on the shoulders of the king, to tend all the deities of his realms, and thus became a key figure in binding the empire into a single unified structure.

"At Babylon, within historical times, the tenure of the kingly office was in practice lifelong, yet in theory it would seem to have been merely annual. For every year at the festival of Zagmuk the king had to renew his power by seizing the hands of the image of Marduk in the great temple of Esagil at Babylon. Even when Babylon passed under the power of Assyria, the monarchs of that country were expected to legalize their claim to the throne every year by coming to Babylon and performing the ancient ceremony at the New Year festival, and some of them found the obligation so burdensome that rather than discharge it they renounced the title of king altogether and contented themselves with the humbler one of Governor." (30) At later times a partition is effected between the civil and the religious aspect of the kingship, the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to another.

In both civilizations, all land belonged to the gods, managed by the temple priests. In Egypt, Pharaoh the earthly embodiment of Re, was the owner of all lands on behalf of Re his father. In Iraq, the priestly-king, derived his divinity from his special connection to the gods, that delegated him to rule the people toiling on god's lands. All people, the 'black-heads', were created by the god for the sole purpose of farming and slaving on god's lands. The king represents, in one sense, the god to the people, and, in another sense, the people to the god. He is an intermediary and intercessor, responsible for benefits as well as evils, and the natural culprit or scapegoat, when things go wrong.

Both civilizations accepted in governing themselves, the principle of the divine rule of kings, and that 'the King was the State'. "The early kingdoms, were forms of despotism in which the people exist only for the sovereign." (31) In this type of a political system, the individual lacked free citizenship. Neither noble nor common man, had a real influence on how they should be governed. This being in strike contrast with the citizens of Ancient Greece and Rome, where it was the duty of citizenship to participate in the communal decision making, which obviously resulted in producing a number of able leaders.

Despite these shortcomings, the autocratic and despotic institutions of the Old World, exerted their influence upon European history, from Greek and Roman times, until the end of the First World War, when the last remnants of them, Kaiser and Czar, finally disappeared from the stage of history in Europe. After centuries of turmoil, and with the decay of despotism, the ancient democratic Indo-European institutions, re-surfaced in the development of the modern parliamentary system, a form of government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity. were the power of the nominal ruler is very great, but in practice, very limited. This development commenced in the geographically isolated British Isles, eventually emulated in other parts of the world.

Both civilizations were the first to produce government on a large scale. Unlike the Roman Empire, built by several generations of energetic senators, their great empires were the work of one man, and rested almost entirely upon the powerful personality of these men. Their death, even if followed for a time by powerful successors, normally would lead at the end, to disputes over succession among the children of many wives and concubines that lead to nothing but confusion and bloodshed, until a new strong dynasty founder appears on the scene.

June 5, 2000

--Chapter Nine--

Contacts Between the Two Civilizations and Their Influence Upon Syria
Jerusalem Forum

Though the two civilizations developed their own cultures independently, yet there are indications that communications between them, primarily for the purposes of trade, never ceased through the ages.

"We now know that organized commerce was far earlier and wider flung than we had imagined. The importance of trade in the development of civilization can scarcely be exaggerated. Without intensive trade, no great expansion of material civilization, or probably higher culture, is possible. We can now trace commerce back to the pre-pottery Neolithic period of the 7th millennium BC at such sites as Jericho in the Jordan valley and Catal Huyuk in south-central Anatolia... Jericho was in fact, an important trade centre to which the mineral riches of the Dead Sea Valley, particularly salt, sulphur and asphalt, were brought in order to export them to surrounding regions." (32)

Despite the fact that it is quite clear that the Egyptian picture characters were copied from purely Egyptian objects both animate and inanimate; yet some historians suggest that they were influenced by the Babylonians in the development of their system of writing,

"Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was an offshoot of direct pictorial representation. In this respect it resembled the original Babylonian script, and it is not improbable that here was actual relationship between them... Babylonian writing, using cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters, quickly ceased to be recognizable as pictures, whereas the Egyptian hieroglyph retained their pictorial appearance throughout the centuries." (33)

The word for wheat in Sumerian is the same as in ancient Egyptian. H Frankfort argues that the Babylonian phase when the similarities between the two civilizations were at its height was the so-called Jemdat Nasr period in Mesopotamia, dated approximately to about the beginning of the First Egyptian Dynasty. A whole series of innovations bespeak critical cultural contacts between them. These innovations include monumental architecture in mud brick with characteristic recessed panels in the exterior walls belonging to the Dynasties I-III, which have their earlier prototype in Mesopotamia. Cylindrical impression seals were found in pre-dynastic Egyptian tombs.

"The cylinder seal is one of the most characteristic products of Babylonian, or perhaps, Sumerian civilization, and it is difficult not to think that the Egyptians borrowed it, as they probably did the mace-head, from the Babylonians." (34)

The major highway of ancient times passed from Egypt to the Syrian coast, through an inhospitable coastal strip running from el-Qantara to el-Arish, where ancient Palesium (Farama) used to mark the farthest Egyptian boundary. Trade caravans travelled on this route in peace, as well as the conquering Egyptian Pharaoh-generals, and in the reverse direction by the armies of the Assyrian Usurhaddon, of the Persian Cambujia (Cambyses), and of Alexander of Macedon.

The Syrian coast formed a natural geographic continuation of the 'Fertile Crescent', generally described as a semicircular area, open to the south to the Syrio-Arabian deserts with its oases and scanty grass-lands; its western horn stretching along the Mediterranean, and its eastern horn covering Iraq and extending to Bushire on the Persian Gulf. The Syrian coast was therefore always wide open to the influence of the civilization of the Land of Two-Rivers.

The northern Syrian coast formed a strategic link between Iraq and Anatolia, a passage upon which the former was totally dependent for the import of its requirements of metals. This in addition to the fact that both civilizations of Egypt and Iraq had abundant supplies of agricultural products, but were terribly short of good quality timber. The closest source to both for securing pine, cypress and cedar for temple and palace construction, was the mountains of the Lebanon behind Jbail. This port town was a centre from which Egyptian civilization and influence radiated, into Syria, and into Anatolia from very early times. The town had an Egyptian temple from the times of the early dynasties. The natives "... wrote their first inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyph, used Egyptian furniture and utensils, and wore Egyptian jewellery." (Breasted p. 139). Thus both civilizations, met on this common ground and developed further mental dispositions and attitudes of thought one to another. Legends of both civilizations made the area, a scene for some episodes in their legends. When Set murdered Osiris and distributed pieces of his body in the various Egyptian nomes, one piece was buried under an oak in Jibal (modern Jbail). The same place was the scene of a Syrian myth, where the infant Ba'al was miraculously born when a boar rent with his task the bark of a tree. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh makes the Lebanon forests the scene in which Gilgamesh and his companion Engido, kills Hawwawa the monster, that infested these woods.

Transport of timber from Jbail to Egypt must have required a considerable number of tolerably large sea-going vessels. Since Egypt depended on bartering for trade, these ships must have come loaded with manufactured products to exchange for timber and other available commodities, forming a lucrative trade for both sides. The

famed Syrian traders in their turn carried the highly prized Egyptian goods on land to Iraq and Anatolia, and by sea to the Greek Mediterranean ports. These factors stimulated trade throughout the region, and in turn spread a degree of basic cultural uniformity over large areas.

"South-western Asia and Egypt, between 3200 and 2800 BC, were closely linked together by trade... there was active trade between them reaching its climax in the so-called Djemdet Nasr period about the beginning of the First Egyptian dynasty. At that time, many innovations were brought into Egypt from Babylonia, and it is probable that other novelties were exported from Egypt to Mesopotamia (though our evidence for the latter inference is still defective)." (35)

June 5, 2000

Bibliography:

(1) Wells, H. G.; The Outline of History, Garden City Books, Garden City, N.Y., copyright 1920, Edition 1961, p. 198

(2) Clark Grahame & Stuart Piggott; Prehistoric Societies, Hutchinson of London, 1965, p. 68

(3) Breasted, James Henry; (Late Director of the Oriental Instiute, University of Chicago), Ancient Times, Ginn and Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 2nd Ed., 1967, p. 46

(4) Moscati, Sabatino; The Semites in Ancietn History, Cardiff University of Wales, 1959; p. 41

(5) Clark Grahame & Stuart Piggott; Prehistoric Societies, Hutchinson of London, 1965, p. 68

(6) Gurney, O.R.; The Hittites, Penguin Books, 1990, First Ed. 1952 p. 284

(7) Smith, W. Robertson; The Religion of the Semites, 3rd Edition, A&C Black Ltd., 4,5&6 Soho Square, London, 1927; P. 11

(8) Ibid p. 6,8

(9) Ibid p. 498)

(10) Moscati, Sabatino; The Semites in Ancient History, Cardiff University of Wales, 1959; p. 100

(11) Salibi, Kamal; Al-Torah Originated in the Arabian Peninsula, (Arabic) translated by Afeef Razzaz, Muassassat al-Abhath al-Arabiah, Beirut Lebanon; p. 57

(12) Smith, W. Robertson; The Religion of the Semites, 3rd Edition, A&C Black Ltd., 4,5&6 Soho Square, London, 1927; p. 496

(13) Budge, E. A. Wallis, A Short History of the Egyptian People, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1914; pp 10,12

(14) Moscati, Sabatino; The Semites in Ancient History, Cardiff University of Wales, 1959; p. 18

(15) Ibid p. 37

(16) Clark Grahame & Stuart Piggott; Prehistoric Societies, Hutchinson of London, 1965; p. 135

(15) Moscati, Sabatino; The Semites in Ancient History, Cardiff University of Wales, 1959;  p. 37

(16) Clark Grahame & Stuart Piggott; Prehistoric Societies, Hutchinson of London, 1965; p. 135

(17) The Glory That was Greece; J.C. Stobart; Sidgwick and Jackson, London; 4th edition; 1987; p. 20

(18) Hitti, Philip K.; (Professor emiritus of Semtic literature, Princeton University), The Arabs, Tenth Edition, MacMillan

(19) Gardiner, Sir Alan; Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford University Press, 1961; p. 44

(20) Smith, W. Robertson; The Religion of the Semites, 3rd Edition, A&C Black Ltd., 4,5&6 Soho Square, London, 1927; p. 12

(21) Roux, Georges; Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books, Third Edition, 1992; p. 50

(22) Smith, W. Robertson; The Religion of the Semites, 3rd Edition, A&C Black Ltd., 4,5&6 Soho Square, London, 1927; p. 34

(23) Wells, H. G.; The Outline of History, Garden City Books, Garden City, N.Y., copyright 1920, Edition 1961, p. 107

(24) Olmstead, A.T.; History of the Persian Empire; The University of Chicago Press; 1948

(25) Clark Grahame & Stuart Piggott; Prehistoric Societies, Hutchinson of London, 1965; p. 184

(26) Ibid

(27) Frazer, Sir James George; The Golden Bough, Abridged edition, Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1924. p. 61

(28) Budge, E. A. Wallis, A Short History of the Egyptian People, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1914; p. 147

29) Smith, W. Robertson; The Religion of the Semites, 3rd Edition, A&C Black Ltd., 4,5&6 Soho Square, London, 1927; p. 545

(30) Frazer, Sir James George; The Golden Bough, Abridged edition, Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1924. p. 281

(31) Ditto p. 171

(32)  Robinson, Cyril E; A History of Rome; Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 4th de.  1949; p58

(33)  Gardiner, Sir Alan; Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford University Press, 1961; p. 22

(34)  Budge, E.A. Wallis, A Short History of the Egyptian People, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1914; p. 18

(35) Albright, William Foxwell; Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, Doubleday and Co., 1968; p. 59