The Art of The Middle East - Including
Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine

Chapter One [cont.]

Meanwhile in northern Mesopotamia, beyond the apex of the delta, the Semitic population, profoundly influenced by Sumerian culture, was being welded into a formidable power. About 2350 B.C. its king, Sargon of Akkad, established himself as suzerain of Sumer and extended his power westward beyond the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean. A century and half later the Guti, barbarians from the mountains of the Persian frontier, invaded Mesopotamia and destroyed the Sargonid dynasty but, being themselves incapable of forming a government other than in name, were content to leave the old city states more or less in independence. The lack of any central authority allowed these to prosper and even to assert claims to overlordship in the traditional way; in the end they were able to rid themselves of their Guti masters and Ur-Nammu of Ur made himself king of Sumer and Akkad, founding, in 2112 B.C., the Third Dynasty of Ur. [p. 22]

The expansion of Sumerian culture during the Early Dynastic period had not only resulted in the establishment of such centres as Mari and [probably] Haran far away to the west; it had also profoundly influenced non-Sumerian peoples in northern Mesopotamia. Beyond the boundaries of Akkad and north of the Amorite territory lay the country of the Hur.

The Hurri are, at various times, found spread over so vast an area as that from the Persian mountains to the Mediterranean, and from Armenia to Palestine. Not organized under any central government, and mixing freely with Amorites, Canaanites and the Semitic inhabitants of what was to be Assyria, they might form merely a minority in a non-Hurrian state, as seems to have been the case at Ugarit on the Syrian coast and in the Canaanite towns, or they might, in territory more properly their own, found small city states such as Yam-khad, Alalakh and Aleppo in the west and Kirkuk in the east. In any case they were ready to assimilate the superior culture of Sumer, and from the Sumerians they learned the art of writing and much mythological lore, learning which they in their turn handed on to their neighbours. So it was with the Hittites. [p. 23]

The Anatolian Hittites were immigrants of Caucasian stock whose earliest home seems to have been in the Araxes valley, where their settlements have been traced back to neolithic times. Sometime in the third millennium B.C. a great body of them [perhaps preceded by others at a yet earlier date] moved through the Hurri country to the Amq plain, which they occupied in force; later, hard pressed by the Hurri, they crossed the mountain barrier into Anatolia and gradually made their way northwards, conquering some of the small states amongst which the country was parcelled out and making allies of others. The invaders were an Aryan-speaking people, and some of the ten or more principalities which they absorbed were likewise Aryan-speaking, presumably earlier immigrants, but others seem to have been non-Indo-European and indigenous; amongst the latter was the principality of Hattusas, in the Halys basin, and it was the conquest of this that gave to the conquerors the name of Hatti, or Hittite, by which they were subsequently to be known. King Anittas, after securing and destroying Hattusas, carried his victories further to the east and added to his dominions Kanesh [c. 1900 B.C.] where a colony of Akkadian merchants had long been established; he transferred his seat from Kussura to Nesa, but put a curse upon the site of Hattusas, and it was only in the seventeenth century that king Hattusil made that the capital of what was then an empire, stretching from Malatya to the Ionian coast.

At the same time as the al 'Ubaid culture was developing in the Mesopotamian delta, before 3500 B.C., the chalcolithic people of Palestine showed a promise which proved to be illusory. The painted model-house burial-chests from Khudheirah and, still more, the actual house-remains at Ghassul with their mud-brick walls adorned with polychrome designs in tempera seem to have no parallels or development in the Bronze Age.

In northern Syria there was a large Hurri element in the population; in the south the Semitic strain, constantly reinforced by immigrants from the desert, was predominant from the beginning. One such immigration--its date is quite unknown--resulted in the foundation of the coastal towns which later were to be called Phoenician; according to their own tradition the Phoenicians came into Syria from the Persian Gulf: certainly that would satisfactorily account for their choice of seaside sites, and it may well be that the increasing desiccation of the eastern coast of the Arabian peninsula compelled their move. That the Phoenician harbour-towns throughout history jealously [p. 24] preserved their independence is characteristic of Syria as a whole; little towns, walled for defense against their neighbours and against Bedouin raiders, were content to exist under local sheikhs or petty princes. Never was there any centralized powers; consequently there was but little uniformity of culture. At the beginning of the Bronze Age, c. 3200 B.C., the country as a whole came very much under the cultural influence of Mesopotamia; at about that date Mesopotamian seals of Jamdat Nasr type occur freely at Byblos, in the south, while in the north Alalakh witnesses to trade relations with Sumer. In the northern and eastern parts of the country this influence continued for a very long time, so much so that at a place like Meshrifeh there was by the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur a resident Sumerian colony and temples were built to Mesopotamian gods, while the law was based on Mesopotamian codes. This was due to trade. It was in the interests of trade that Sargon of Akkad invaded northern Syria, his object being to secure control of the sources of supply of hard timber. Precisely the same timber trade brought the southern country into close relation with Egypt. From the time of the First Dynasty Egyptian objects fond in Palestine and Palestinian pottery found in Egypt prove a regular exchange of goods, while at Byblos gold-mounted stone vases bearing the cartouche of the Pharaoh witness to more important connections; it is indeed likely that the Pharaohs of the Thinite dynasty extended their dominions into Asia. A stela fund at Balu-ah in Transjordan, which should belong to the close of the third millennium B.C., seems to echo the contemporary art of Egypt as influenced by Jamdat Nasr originals. Certainly in the time of the Sixth Dynasty Palestine and south Syria passed under the control of Egypt, though such control was interrupted by the invasion of the 'Hittite' tribes responsible for the introduction of the Khirbet Kerak pottery originating in the Araxes valley. By 2400 B.C. that invasion had spent its force [it is indeed possible that conquest and destruction had been confined to the villages, while the more important towns of the Canaanites held out] and with the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt Pharaoh's authority was extended far to the north, including even Ugarit, the northernmost of the 'Phoenician' city states.

Thus at the beginning of the second millennium the position was that the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur controlled the whole of Mesopotamia proper, had made themselves masters of Elam and were the dominant influence in north Syria. The rest of Syria was subject [p. 25] to Pharaoh, who kept his official representatives in the courts of the local princes, who were suffered to remain as chiefs of the states. In Anatolia the Hittites were consolidating their position in the central area and thanks to the conquest of Arzawa by Labarnas had, at least temporarily, extended their western frontier to the Aegean Sea; but the confederacy of the disparate tribes was still precarious. The position was indeed far from being stable. In Mesopotamia the Semitic north, centered on Babylon, was growing more and more powerful and self-conscious, while the Assyrians were building themselves up into a considerable power. But the first blow was dealt by Elam. The Elamites invaded the Euphrates valley, overthrew the Third Dynasty of Ur and set up at Larsa an Elamite dynasty which they hoped--but without reason--would assure their suzerainty. Babylon, beyond the reach of the Elamites, now grew in strength until after a long-drawn struggle the great king Hammurabi made himself master of all that had been Sumer and Akkad, including Assyria in the north and Mari in the west, in the Babylonian empire; his conquest of Rim-Sin of Larsa came about the year 1754. Meanwhile the once strong Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt had come to an inglorious end, and soon after 1700 B.C. Egypt was invaded and conquered by Syrians.

The records of early Egyptians raids into Palestine, with their lists of booty, imply that the southern towns were richer and more prosperous than the results of excavation suggest; but for some reason or other the country had deteriorated, and while Transjordan had become almost entirely a nomad land the Canaanite towns, except for those on the coast, were much reduced in status. A movement into the Nile valley had already started from southern Syria when, as the scanty evidence seems to show, a wave of Hurri and Indo-European migrants from the north reached the Canaanite territory and, reinforced by the Palestinian population, by malcontents from the coastal [p. 26] towns resentful of Egypt's past control, and by Bedouin from the eastern desert, invaded Egypt and, under the name of Hyksos, took over the government of the country. Syrian control of Egypt was no less potent than government by Pharaoh had been in the Egyptianising of Canaan, the evidence for which is never more marked than under the brief rule of the Hyksos, followed as it was in due course by the reconquest of Syria and the establishment of the New Empire by the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

In north Syria the collapse of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt had meant, for the time being at least, local independence, and the city states such as Yamkhad, Ugarit and Aleppo enjoyed a century or so of unexampled prosperity. But the Hittite Old Kingdom was by now firmly established and, tempted perhaps by the wealth of the north Syrian towns, began to expand southwards. Hattusil led his forces through the passes of the Taurus range and seized Aleppo and Yamkhad, and soon after 1600 B.C. his successor Mursilis raided and sacked Babylon, so putting an end to the First Dynasty of Babylon which Hammurabi had made the supreme power of the Middle East. It was but a raid, from which Mursilis returned home only to be murdered, and for three generations the Hittite kingdom was in anarchy; but the effects of the raid were lasting, for the throne of Babylon was seized by usurpers from the north-east, the Kassites--probably an Indo-European stock--whose dull and uneventful government was to endure through good fortune and bad for more than five hundred years.

Not very long after the Kassite invasion of Babylonia another Indo-European people infiltered into the Hurri territories of northern Mesopotamia and [apparently by peaceful rather than by violent methods] imposed themselves as a ruling aristocracy over the Hurri tribes; their kingdom of Mitanni had, by the middle of the fifteenth century, spread from the Zab valley to the Amanus, and where their rule was not direct it was exercised effectively enough through vassal princes of the old city states. A new power had thus arisen which threatened the growing kingdom of Assyria, denied Syria to the Hittites and endangered the Egyptian dominions in Asia. The Hurri had recently been defeated by Thothmes III, and at about the same time the Hittites, perhaps in league with Egypt, had raided south and sacked Aleppo; but with the rise of the Mitanni now the principalities subject to the Hittites fell away, and Dushratta, the Mitanni king, [p. 27] while professing the deepest friendship for the Pharaoh Amenhotep, now an old man and feeble, actively fostered rebellion in the Egyptian provinces of Syria. The accession, in 1375, of the incompetent Akhenaten to the throne of Egypt precipitated events. Five years before this the great soldier and statesman Suppiluliumas had become king of the Hittites, and after spending some years in consolidating his position in Anatolia he led his forces through the Taurus; his first attack was repulsed, but a second attack, taking the Mitanni in the rear, was completely successful. Carchemish being the only north Syrian state which did not at once submit to him; --it was to fall to him later, and then the Great King's brothers were installed as kings of Carchemish and Aleppo. With the elimination of Mitanni Suppiluliumas' southern border marched with that of his 'friend' Akhenaten; fortunately for him the king of Kadesh, a faithful subject of Egypt, ventured to come out to battle, and with his defeat the Hittite frontier could be pushed south to the outskirts of Damascus, and even some of the coastal cities made treaties with the victor. Faced with intrigue and rebellion and with the incursions of the nomad Habiru the Egyptians had evacuated the whole of southern Syria; petty states, the chief of them being the Amurru kingdom of Damascus, now formed a buffer between Egypt and the Hittite empire: Suppiluliumas was content to leave them alone.

Actually, in pursuance of the same policy, he recreated a kingdom of Mitanni, under the son of Dushratta [who had been murdered by a political faction] to act as buffer against the menace of Assyria; evidently the king was satisfied with his conquests. The succeeding reigns experienced troubles enough to prove the old man's wisdom, but although Assuruballit of Assyria destroyed the Mitanni buffer and advanced to the Euphrates, he attempted nothing more. The real danger came from an Egyptian revival.

About 1300 Seti I recovered south Syria as far as Kadesh, a challenge which Muwatallis the Hittite could not disregard. In 1286/5 B.C. the two powers met in the battle of Kadesh; each side claimed the victory, but the Hittites actually advanced their frontier, while Pharaoh strengthened his hold upon the southern Canaanite states. In 1269 a treaty was signed between Hattusil and Ramses II guaranteeing peace and security throughout the Levant.

This halycyon interval, marred only so far as the Hittites were concerned by an unsuccessful war with the 'Achaeans' of western Anatolia and by apprehensions regarding Assyria, whose rulers, after [p. 29] their almost continuous campaigns against Urartu in the north and the peoples of Zagros mountains in the east, finally turned their arms to the south: Tukulti-Enurta defeated and sacked Babylon. The Assyrian victory, soon followed by attacks from Elam, resulted in the final collapse of the long-lived Kassite dynasty of Babylon.

But such distant rumours of trouble could be disregarded. What broke the peace of the Levant was actual disaster on a colossal scale and from a quite different quarter.

Just after 1200 B .C. there flowed into Asia Minor, from the north, a vast horde of land-seeking immigrants, warriors armed with iron weapons more effective than anything the bronze-users had known, who swarmed across the country killing those who opposed them and forcing into their ranks those who surrendered; their wives and children came with them, carried in heavy covered waggons, for they were seeking a new home in the land of their choice. Hattusas fell before them and was burned, and the Hittite power in Anatolia was wiped out. The invaders crossed the Taurus and marched south, their fleet keeping pace with the land army. Already 'the islands had been disturbed' and the northern sea-captains, hiring themselves out as mercenaries, had served under the king of Libya in war against Egypt; but now they came with their kinsfolk and their allies, and their aim was not to sack but to seize for themselves that rich Nile land which was a paradise for landless men. They were a mixed crowd, Danaans from Cilicia Peleset or Philistines, some of whom had come from Crete, the Sherden and the Shekelesh, Rushu and Ekwesh, Lycians, and many other unknown, 'their hearts relying on their arms'. They burned Aleppo and Alalakh, Carchemish and Ugarit; they sailed to Cyprus and wasted it, and they made havoc of the Amorite kingdom of southern Syria; only on the borders of Egypt were they defeated, the glory of the day going to the Egyptian bowmen, who shot the enemy down in swathes before they could come to close quarters with their iron rapiers. Egypt was saved, but the invasion, though it failed, had changed the face of the whole Middle East. The epic of Troy deals with one incident of the wars that shook the Aegean world, but the real drama was set upon a far wider stage and had consequences that Homer could not guess.

In Syria the Philistines, beaten back from Egypt but not broken, settled in the fertile coastland of Palestine, leaving only the hill country to the Israelites, who had arrived with the Habairu in the time of Akhenaten and were in possession of the uplands during [p. 30] the reign of Merneptah. In the sea-port towns the old Canaanite-Phoenician population remained, but with a strong leavening of Mycenaeans; the latter, inheriting the tradition s of Minoan and Mycenaean sea power, virtually took command in such matters and persuaded the Phoenicians to abandon the modest cabotage which had contented them in the past, when Egypt was their main market, and to risk the oversea routes that led to the western Mediterranean, establishing commercial exchanges in Marseilles, Cartagena and Carthage. In north Syria, where there had always been a pro-Hittite element, refugees from Anatolia founded a galaxy of Syro-Hittite states which flourished exceedingly through the next five hundred years, subject only to sporadic attacks by the Assyrians made when Assyria was strong but interrupted when she was involved in war with, or reduced to vassalage by, her more formidable neighbour Babylon. In Anatolia there was a complete change. The Hittites had disappeared except one principality in Cilicia, whose capital was at Adana; it was only an extension of the Syro-Hittite area in north Syria; its mixed character is best shown by the fact that the Hittite hieroglyphic and the Phoenician scripts were equally employed and that its king claimed descent from the Greek Mopsos. On the Aegean coast, which had been 'Achaean', Ionian Greek colonies were to grow up. In the centre the Phrygians took the place of the Hittites and were themselves supplanted in the course of time by the Lydians, while in the east arose the kingdom of Urartu, enriched by the metal ores of the Lake Van district. In the eighth and seventh centuries conditions in Anatolia were further complicated by waves of Cimmerian invaders who, c. 680 B.C., put an end to Phrygia as an independent power. When therefore the Lydians conquered the Cimmerian hordes the way was open for them to take over what had been Phrygian territory: active kings, Alyattes and Croesus, succeeded in extending their suzerainty over the entire plateau west of the Halys river, even making themselves masters of the Greek colonies on the Ionian coast, so that Lydia was the supreme power in Asia Minor at the time of Croesus' defeat by Cyrus, King of Persia, in 546 B.C.

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[Woolley, Leonard. The Art of The Middle East, including Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine. New York: Crown Publishers. 1961.]