came to be consolidated round a north Mesopotamian capital into a power
able to impose vassalage on Babylon and to send imperial raiders to the
Mediterranean, and to the Great Lakes of Armenia. The first of her kings
to attain this sort of imperial position was Shalmaneser I, who early in
the thirteenth century B.C. appears to have crushed the last strength of
the north Mesopotamian powers of Mitanni and Khani and laid the way open
to the west lands. The Hatti power, however, tried hard to close the
passages and it was not until its catastrophe and the retirement of
those who brought it about--the Mushki and their allies--that about 1100
Tiglath Pileser I could lead his Assyrian raiders into Syria, and even,
perhaps, a short distance across Taurus. Why his empire died with him we
do not know precisely. A new invasion of Arabian Semites, the Aramaeans,
whom he attacked at Mt. Bishri (Tell Basher), may have been the cause.
But, in any case, the fact is certain. The sons of the great king, who
had reached Phoenician Aradus and there embarked vaingloriously on
shipboard to claim mastery of the Western Sea, were reduced to little
better than vassals of their father's former vassal, Babylon; and up to
the close of the eleventh century Assyria had not revived.


SECTION 5. NEW FORCES IN 1000 B.C.

Thus in 1000 B.C., we look round the East, and, so far as our vision can
penetrate the clouds, see no one dominant power. Territories which
formerly were overridden by the greater states, Babylonia, Egypt,
Cappadocia and Assyria, seem to be not only self-governing but free from
interference, although the vanished empires and a recent great movement
of peoples have left them with altered political boundaries and
sometimes with new dynasties. None of the political units has a much
larger area than another, and it would not have been easy at the moment