SECTION 4. EARLY ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

Remains Assyria, which before 1000 B.C. had twice conquered an empire of
the same kind as that credited to the First Babylonian Dynasty and twice
recoiled. The early Assyrian expansions are, historically, the most
noteworthy of the early West Asian Empires because, unlike the rest,
they were preludes to an ultimate territorial overlordship which would
come nearer to anticipating Macedonian and Roman imperial systems than
any others precedent. Assyria, rather than Babylon or Egypt, heads the
list of aspirants to the Mastership of the World.

There will be so much to say of the third and subsequent expansion of
Assyria, that her earlier empires may be passed over briefly. The middle
Tigris basin seems to have received a large influx of Semites of the
Canaanitic wave at least as early as Babylonia, and thanks to various
causes--to the absence of a prior local civilization as advanced as the
Sumerian, to greater distance from such enterprising fomenters of
disturbance as Elam and Arabia, and to a more invigorating
climate--these Semites settled down more quickly and thoroughly into an
agricultural society than the Babylonians and developed it in greater
purity. Their earliest social centre was Asshur in the southern part of
their territory. There, in proximity to Babylonia, they fell inevitably
under the domination of the latter; but after the fall of the First
Dynasty of Babylon and the subsequent decline of southern Semitic
vigour, a tendency manifested itself among the northern Semites to
develop their nationality about more central points. Calah, higher up
the river, replaced Asshur in the thirteenth century B.C., only to be
replaced in turn by Nineveh, a little further still upstream; and
ultimately Assyria, though it had taken its name from the southern city,