Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/91

 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 59 The life of the wandering Semites in the desert is very simple. Life on the desert They possess only scanty, movable property, chiefly flocks and herds. They hold no land, they know no law, they are unable to write. They are practically without industries, and thus the desert tribesmen lead a life of unhampered freedom. Their needs oblige them to traffic now and then in the towns, and Traffic and ... 11, the caravan through such connections with the townsmen these desert wan- derers often become the common carriers of the settled com- munities, fearlessly leading their caravans across the wastes of the desert sea, especially between Syria-Palestine and Babylonia. The wilderness is the nomad's home. His imagination peoples ReHgion of r 1 1 • 1 • • -1 1 1 the nomad the far reaches of the desert with invisible and uncanny crea- tures, who inhabit every rock and tree, hilltop and spring. These creatures are his gods. Each one of these beings controls only a little corner of the great world ; he becomes the nomad's tribal god and journeys with him from pasture to pasture, sharing his food and his feasts and receiving as his due from the tribesman the first-born of the flocks and herds. The thoughts of the desert wanderer about such a god are crude and barbarous, and his religious customs are often savage, even leading him to sacrifice his children to appease the angry god. On the other hand, the nomad has a dawning sense of justice and of right, and he feels obligations of kindness to his fellows which he be- lieves are the compelling voice of his god. Such lofty moral vision made the Semites the religious teachers of the civilized world. At the same time these Semites had practical gifts which made them the greatest merchants of the ancient world, as their Hebrew descendants among us still are at the present day. As early as 3000 B.C. or a little after, they were drifting in The western from the desert and settling in Palestine, where we find them in possession of walled towns by 2500 B.C. (Fig. 55). These predecessors of the Hebrews in Palestine were a tribe called Canaanites(p. 102); further north settled a powerful tribe known as Amorites (p. 67) ; while along the shores of north Syria some of these one-time desert wanderers had taken to the sea,