Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/27

 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES 15 oppression, itself developed a new military character. The kings of this dynasty overcame the Ethiopians on the south-east of Egypt, and carried their arms into Asia, and began to come into collision with the Hittites in Syria ; but the great conqueror was Thothmes ill. in the first half of the fifteenth century. We turn now to the development of the Asiatic Empires with which Egypt was thus brought in direct contact. The story of the Asiatic Empires begins in the region called Babylonia. The whole district lying enclosed by the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris is called Mesopotamia, 3, Mesopo- meaning the land between the rivers. Babylonia tamia. includes the south-eastern half of this district, with the basins of both the rivers and the land lying between their junction and the Persian Gulf. Babylonia itself is divided into two, to begin with ; the southern part called Sumer, and the northern called Akkad. The earliest records — that is, graven inscriptions — take us back at least as far as the earliest Egyptian records ; and already we find the presence of two distinct races marked, sumerians who are known as Sumerians and Semites. The and Semites, language and the ' script,' that is the ' cuneiform ' or arrow- shaped writing, are Sumerian — neither Semitic nor Aryan ; and they remain the official language and script long after the language had become much changed by a Semitic admixture. The probabilities are that the Sumerians had become a fairly highly civilised people— civilised enough to have created the art of writing — before the more vigorous but ruder Semites appeared on the scene ; and the Semites adopted the civilisa- tion which they found before them. In the same sort of way, some thousands of years later, the Teutons conquered Western Europe, but the Latin language and civilisation prevailed over the conquerors in the regions where Rome had held sway before. Outside the Sumerian area the Semite characteristics prevailed as the Teutonic characteristics prevailed outside the bounds of the old Roman Empire. Probably these Semites, like the later Semitic waves, came out of Arabia, crossed Syria, the region between the Upper Euphrates and the Mediterranean, entered Mesopotamia, and bore down south-eastwards upon the land of Sumer.