Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/28

 16 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES At this early period we find records of several Sumerian cities, warring with each other, and achieving predominance. A Sargon : definite supremacy was established by the Semites 2700 B.C. f Akkadia under the great King Sargon and his son Naram-Sin, and Sargon carried his conquering arms as far as the Mediterranean. They ruled, probably, somewhere between 3000 and 2700 B.C., and at this time there was certainly inter- course between Babylonia and Arabia. Sargon is the founder of the Empire, and in after ages the Semites of Babylonia based their claim to supremacy on the tradition of his greatness. After Naram-Sin, however, princes and governors recovered independ- ence and occasional supremacy; and sundry dynasties are recorded as kings of ' Sumer and Akkad.' The city of Eridu, at the head of the Persian Gulf, became their capital. Babylon had not yet achieved its pre-eminence. Now in the latter part of the third millennium — that is, some- what earlier than the year 2000 B.C. — there was a second great The Semitic movement of Semitic expansion, starting out of Migrations. Arabia. This is called the Canaanite wave. It swept up over Palestine and Syria, occupied those regions per- manently, and again entered Mesopotamia on the north-west. These invading Semites were pastoral nomads, owners of flocks and herds, who did not destroy the states they found before them, but amalgamated with their Semitic predecessors. Of this stock came Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, who migrated from Ur ' of the Chaldees ' to Canaan not long after Babylon had risen to supremacy in Mesopotamia under a Semitic dynasty. The Hyksos invasion of Egypt must be regarded as a wave of this Semitic expansion. In the meantime we have to remark that a considerable Semitic power had grown up at Asshur on the north of Mesopotamia ; and another non-Semitic power in Elam, on the east of Sumer and Akkad, which acquired a temporary supremacy over that kingdom at the time when the new Semitic Babylonian Empire was being founded. This 'First Babylonian Dynasty,' under which Babylon assumed Hammurabi the leading position, began with Sumu-abu, a little circa 2000 B.C. before 2000 B.C. The fifth in succession after Sumu-abu was the great Hammurabi of whom we read in the Old