Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/30

 1 8 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES of the Sea. By an error, these kings of the Sea-Country have been spoken of as the ' Second Babylonian Dynasty ' ; hence The the Kassite dynasty is called the third. They Kassites. mastered Akkadia to begin with, and at a later stage completed the conquest, overthrowing the kings of the sea. But like all other conquerors of Babylonia, they succumbed to the existing civilisation. While they were dominant, there came another wave of Semitic expansion, called the Aramaic; and this resulted in the immediate rise of Assyria, with its capital at Asshur and later at Nineveh, to challenge the Babylonian and Hittite powers. This rise of Assyria is almost contemporaneous with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. While the eighteenth dynasty was ruling in the land of the Nile, we have seen how Thothmes in. appeared as a conqueror The Tell m Syria. At a rather later stage, while the same el-Amarna dynasty was in Egypt, and the Kassites were still at Letters. Babylon, we have records of the relations of all these powers in the great collection of tablets known as the Tell el-Amarna letters, which have very recently been discovered (in 1888). These were letters to the Egyptian kings Amenhotep 1. and 11., from the Kassite King of Babylon, the Hittite King of Mitani, from another King of Khatti or Hittites, from the King of Assyria, and other lesser kings. They discuss royal marriages, • and usually ask for money. All the kings use the same manner of writing, the cuneiform, and the same language, the dialect of Babylon — very much as the different courts of Europe communi- cate with each other in French. Even the King of Egypt, who reckoned himself a much greater potentate than any of the others, used the Babylonian language, and Babylonian literature was taught in the Egyptian schools. We must now revert to Egypt itself, and the successors of the great Thothmes. His immediate successors maintained the prestige of Egypt ; but then there came a time, at the close of the fifteenth century, when the priestly caste became predominant. Amenhotep III. began making handsome presents to the princes of Asia, by way of averting war ; hence the correspondence above referred to, since the Asiatic princes were all anxious to ask for more.