condition. No new power has entered it from without; only one new state
of importance, the Phrygian, has arisen within. The peoples, which were
of most account in 1000, are still of the most account in 800--the
Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mushki of Cappadocia, the tribesmen of
Urartu, the Aramaeans of Damascus, the trading Phoenicians on the Syrian
coast and the trading Greeks on the Anatolian. Egypt has remained behind
her frontier except for one raid into Palestine about 925 B.C., from
which Sheshenk, the Libyan, brought back treasures of Solomon's temple
to enhance the splendour of Amen. Arabia has not begun to matter. There
has been, of course, development, but on old lines. The comparative
values of the states have altered: some have become more decisively the
superiors of others than they were two hundred years ago, but they are
those whose growth was foreseen. Wherein, then, lies the great
difference? For great difference there is. It scarcely needs a second
glance to detect the change, and any one who looks narrowly will see not
only certain consequent changes, but in more than one quarter signs and
warnings of a coming order of things not dreamt of in 1000 B.C.


SECTION 1. MIDDLE KINGDOM OF ASSYRIA

The obvious novelty is the presence of a predominant power. The mosaic
of small states is still there, but one holds lordship over most of
them, and that one is Assyria. Moreover, the foreign dominion which the
latter has now been enjoying for three-parts of a century is the first
of its kind established by an Asiatic power. Twice, as we have seen, had
Assyria conquered in earlier times an empire of the nomad Semitic type,
that is, a licence to raid unchecked over a wide tract of lands; but, so
far as we know, neither Shalmaneser I nor Tiglath Pileser I had so much
as conceived the idea of holding the raided provinces by a permanent