ABSTRACT

W e must now follow the development of this first State in relation to the human environment it found around it in the East Mediterranean world of the third millenium B.C. We shall sketch in their main outlines the actions and reactions which took place between the Egyptians and other Orientals. They are defined at first by the Egyptian documents alone, and then revealed by Chaldaean, Hittite, Assyrian, CretoJSgean, and Palestinian monuments as and when such become available. We shall try to depict the patient efforts of various human groups to form themselves in turn into States, and the wider ambition of the more gifted to create an Empire which should organize the Oriental world into a single society. These efforts and ambitions were often frus­ trated, either by incapacity or organic weakness, or by the intrusion of human hordes still uncivilized in quest of better lands, eager to enjoy this Oriental civilization which, like a lighthouse in the night of barbarism, attracted to it all the nomads. In fact, each of the great peoples of the Ancient East-Egyptians, Chaldaeans, Assyrians, Medes and Persians —spent themselves on this task. The spasmodic attempts at empire foundered beneath the periodic onslaughts and suc­ cessive waves of migrating peoples until Hellenic culture and the peace of Rome were imposed, for a few centuries, on the whole of the Mediterranean world.