Upside Down U . . . oops . . . Fertile Crescent, assembled a group of seafaring traders known as the Phoenicians. They established their trading cities on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea at Tyre, Sidon, and other locations, about 1100 BC. The Phoenicians established spin-off trading towns throughout the Mediterranean world, including Carthage which was one of the ancient world’s most remarkable cities. Even though their sailing ships went west with trade goods the cargo itself was coming from inland; that is, the Fertile Crescent and its attendant trading partners. The Phoenicians developed the alphabet (theirs was only 22 letters) from informal Egyptian script. With an alphabet, a few letters are easily assembled into millions of words because the letters stand for sounds rather than ideas. The assembled words are the ideas, and when the words represented by the letters are spoken out loud they sound like the spoken language. Thus, one does not have to commit thousands of picture ideas to memory. All that is necessary is to sound out the word from the letters. This connection between the spoken word and the written word was a brilliant stroke, and from the Phoenicians’ central Mediterranean trading location this idea quickly spread east and west (never made it to China). This Phoenician alphabet leads to Aramaic and Greek scripts, and eventually Latin which was the foundation of many modern western languages (English, French, Spanish . . .).
Walled cities were common in Mesopotamia, and the larger the city the higher the wall. The open nature of the area and its nearness to the Caspian Sea, either side of which was a common incursion route from the plains of southern Russia, caused it to endure constant raids and outright invasions. Picture this roll call of changing kingdoms: the old Babylonian empire (1792 BC) was overthrown by Hittites (1595 BC), the Hittites departed after being vanquished by the Peoples of the Sea (1200), the Assyrians (694 BC) eventually filled the void left by the Hittites; the Assyrians were overthrown by the Chaldeans (neo-Babylonians or Medes) (626 BC), which were replaced by the Persians (539 BC), who were conquered by the Greeks (331 BC). And we have not listed all the empires, just the major ones. The Romans came later, then the empire of Parthia, and on and on. It never really ends. More than a little of this turmoil came from nomads around the Caspian and Black Sea.
For about three hundred years, Assyria was the dominant military and political power in the Middle Eastern region. Assyria began to expand in 911 BC and held on to an empire reaching from the northern Tigris River (Turkey) to the Persian Gulf (Mesopotamia), including Egypt, until its defeat by Babylonian Nabopolassar in 626 BC. The Assyrian capitol at Nineveh fell in 612 BC. The Assyrians used iron weapons, much harder than bronze, and excelled at siege warfare and the use of cavalry. The Assyrians were ruthless beyond compare. An area refusing their demands for subjugation had their cities razed and every inhabitant butchered. For example, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal boasted he overthrew a city, skinned some leaders alive, walled some of them up alive, impaled others, beheaded some and had their heads hung from tree branches around the city, burned the young men and women alive, and the rest, he bragged, were driven into the desert to die of thirst. Not the kind of fellow one chooses to have over for tea. Walled cities often refused demands by invaders because sieges commonly failed; however, the Assyrians invented siege machines that breached the walls and brought cities down quickly. Nevertheless, all the empires, whether benign or ruthless fell one after the other. Whether Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, Persian, or Greek, no one could gain power and hold it indefinitely.
Figure 5 Babylon, The Hanging Gardens
In Babylonia, King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) set forth a code of 282 laws governing
Walled cities were common in Mesopotamia, and the larger the city the higher the wall. The open nature of the area and its nearness to the Caspian Sea, either side of which was a common incursion route from the plains of southern Russia, caused it to endure constant raids and outright invasions. Picture this roll call of changing kingdoms: the old Babylonian empire (1792 BC) was overthrown by Hittites (1595 BC), the Hittites departed after being vanquished by the Peoples of the Sea (1200), the Assyrians (694 BC) eventually filled the void left by the Hittites; the Assyrians were overthrown by the Chaldeans (neo-Babylonians or Medes) (626 BC), which were replaced by the Persians (539 BC), who were conquered by the Greeks (331 BC). And we have not listed all the empires, just the major ones. The Romans came later, then the empire of Parthia, and on and on. It never really ends. More than a little of this turmoil came from nomads around the Caspian and Black Sea.
For about three hundred years, Assyria was the dominant military and political power in the Middle Eastern region. Assyria began to expand in 911 BC and held on to an empire reaching from the northern Tigris River (Turkey) to the Persian Gulf (Mesopotamia), including Egypt, until its defeat by Babylonian Nabopolassar in 626 BC. The Assyrian capitol at Nineveh fell in 612 BC. The Assyrians used iron weapons, much harder than bronze, and excelled at siege warfare and the use of cavalry. The Assyrians were ruthless beyond compare. An area refusing their demands for subjugation had their cities razed and every inhabitant butchered. For example, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal boasted he overthrew a city, skinned some leaders alive, walled some of them up alive, impaled others, beheaded some and had their heads hung from tree branches around the city, burned the young men and women alive, and the rest, he bragged, were driven into the desert to die of thirst. Not the kind of fellow one chooses to have over for tea. Walled cities often refused demands by invaders because sieges commonly failed; however, the Assyrians invented siege machines that breached the walls and brought cities down quickly. Nevertheless, all the empires, whether benign or ruthless fell one after the other. Whether Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, Persian, or Greek, no one could gain power and hold it indefinitely.
Figure 5 Babylon, The Hanging Gardens
In Babylonia, King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) set forth a code of 282 laws governing
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