Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/427

 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE About the year 1000 b.c. the Aryan peoples were estabhshing themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, and they were estab- lished in North India ; Cnossos was already destroyed and the spacious times of Egypt, of Thothmes III, Amenophis III and Rameses II, were three or four centuries away. "Weak monarchs of the XXIst Dynasty were ruling in the Nile Valley. Israel was united under her early kings ; Saul or David or possibly even Solomon may have been reigning. Sargon I (2750 B.C.) of the Akkadian Sumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian history, more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world of the present day. Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. The Assyrians were already dominating the less military Babylonians. In 1100 b.c. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. But there was no permanent con- quest ; Assyria and Babylonia were still separate empires. In China the new Chow dynasty was flourishing. Stonehenge in England was already some hundreds of years old. The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the XXIInd Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans, South Italy and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan predominance in Central Italy. We begin our list of ascertainable dates with B.C. 800. The building of Carthage. 790. The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth Dynasty). 776. First Olympiad. 753. Rome built. 745. Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded the New Assyrian Empire. 722. Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons. 721. He deported the Israelites. 680. Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the Ethiopian XXVth Dynasty). 664. Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the XXV Ith Dy- nasty (to 610). 608. Necho of Egypt defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at the Battle of Megiddo. 606. Capture of Nineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes. Foundation of the Chaldean Empire. 604. Necho pushed to the Eu- phrates and was overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar II. (Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon.) 550. Cyrus the Persian succeeded Cyaxares the Mede. Cyrus conquered Croesus. 407