Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/33

 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES 21 the Hittites, and when Syria again emerges as a definite power with its capital at Damascus, it is definitely Aramaean. The consolidation of its power was due to the king, who appears in the Old Testament as Ben-hadad. The Kassite dynasty of Babylon was overthrown, and for a long period Assyria and Babylon strove with alternating suc- cess for supremacy in Mesopotamia. Perhaps the strife for truest way of looking at this period is to see in Babylonia. Babylonia itself a state for which Assyria and an Elamite power were striving, the successes of Babylon against Assyria really meaning the success of Elam. But the immediate successors of the Kassites were a genuine Babylonian dynasty which ejected the foreign rulers, and under Nebuchadnezzar 1. (not the king we read of in the Bible) revived the glories of Babylon for a short time. Here again the inability of Babylon to maintain itself against Assyrians on one side and Elamites on the other may be due to the incursions of the Aramaeans ; possibly the Chaldeans, who now become prominent in Babylonia, as tribes in the south-eastern region, are to be connected with this new Semitic migration. When Babylon once again rises to a great empire under the Nebuchadnezzar of the Old Testament, the dynasty is Chaldean. Between these two Nebuchadnezzars, Babylon itself may be regarded as being in a state of eclipse — for a period of about 500 years. During this time Assyria must be treated as the leading power, in spite of the general uncertainty of its supremacy. Tiglath- pileser 1., after a fashion somewhat common with Assyrian Assyrian kings, began his reign as a successful Supremacy, conqueror, who carried his arms northward into the mountains of Armenia or Urartu, cleared Northern Mesopotamia of rivals, and claimed dominion as far west as the Mediterranean, where Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had been before him. Then came disaster, and a long period followed as to which the Assyrian records convey the most meagre information. When they become less scanty, at the beginning of the ninth Aramaean century, the Aramaeans had obviously set up Incursion. principalities of their own over a great part of the nominal Assyrian empire. A struggle between Assyria and the