barbarous region; nor again, had it been the work of the earliest of
these intruders (if we follow those who now deny that the dominion of
Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-sin ever extended beyond the lower
basins of the Twin Rivers), but of peoples who entered with a second
series of Semitic waves. These surged out of Arabia, eternal motherland
of vigorous migrants, in the middle centuries of the third millennium
B.C. While this migration swamped South Syria with "Canaanites," it
ultimately gave to Egypt the Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings," to Assyria its
permanent Semitic population, and to Sumer and Akkad what later
chroniclers called the First Babylonian Dynasty. Since, however, those
Semitic interlopers had no civilization of their own comparable with
either the contemporary Egyptian or the Sumerian (long ago adopted by
earlier Semitic immigrants), they inevitably and quickly assimilated
both these civilizations as they settled down.

At the same time they did not lose, at least not in Mesopotamia, which
was already half Semitized, certain Bedawi ideas and instincts, which
would profoundly affect their later history. Of these the most important
historically was a religious idea which, for want of a better term, may
be called Super-Monotheism. Often found rooted in wandering peoples and
apt long to survive their nomadic phase, it consists in a belief that,
however many tribal and local gods there may be, one paramount deity
exists who is not only singular and indivisible but dwells in one spot,
alone on earth. His dwelling may be changed by a movement of his people
_en masse_, but by nothing less; and he can have no real rival in
supreme power. The fact that the paramount Father-God of the Semites
came through that migration _en masse_ to take up his residence in
Babylon and in no other city of the wide lands newly occupied, caused
this city to retain for many centuries, despite social and political
changes, a predominant position not unlike that to be held by Holy Rome