Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/155

Rh region naturally became the outposts of the great oriental civilizations which we have found so early on the Nile and the Euphrates. From these centers the Ægean world, at first slow and backward like western and northern Europe, received continual impulses toward a higher civilization—impulses felt in trade, metal-working, pottery, house-building, and in many other ways.

At the northwest corner of Asia Minor, controlling the profitable trade crossing from Asia to Europe at this point, stood the ancient and highly prosperous Ægean city of Troy. By 2500 B.C., some centuries after it had received the first metals, its rulers had erected a strong citadel of sunbaked brick, with massive stone foundations, the earliest fortress in the Ægean world (the Second City, Fig. 58). Here they carried on industries in pottery, metalworking, and textiles, which show wide foreign-trade connections. Their kindred and neighbors on the east were the Hittites. In the later days of the Egyptian Empire the Hittites themselves held a great empire in central and eastern Asia Minor (Figs. 59, 60). They gave Egypt much trouble in Syria, and they early invaded Babylonia and Assyria also (p. 70).

Toward the east, then, the population of Asia Minor merged gradually with the Tigris-Euphrates world, whose history we have