so-called Pashe kings in whose time there was one strong man,
Nabu-Kudur-usur (Nebuchadnezzar) I--came to an inglorious end just about
1000 B.C., one may infer that Babylonia was passing at this epoch
through one of those recurrent political crises which usually occurred
when Sumerian cities of the southern "Sea-Land" conspired with some
foreign invader against the Semitic capital. The contumacious survivors
of the elder element in the population, however, even when successful,
seem not to have tried to set up new capitals or to reestablish the
pre-Semitic state of things. Babylon had so far distanced all the older
cities now that no other consummation of revolt was desired or believed
possible than the substitution of one dynasty for another on the throne
beloved of Marduk. Sumerian forces, however, had not been the only ones
which had contributed to overthrow the last king of the Pashe dynasty.
Nomads of the _Suti_ tribes had long been raiding from the western
deserts into Akkad; and the first king set up by the victorious peoples
of the Sea-Land had to expel them and to repair their ravages before he
could seat himself on a throne which was menaced by Elam on the east and
Assyria on the north, and must fall so soon as either of these found a
strong leader.




CHAPTER II

THE EAST IN 800 B.C.


Two centuries have passed over the East, and at first sight it looks as
if no radical change has taken place in its political or social