5.2 The near east: 3000 to 1500 b.c.

The near east

Back to The Near East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

In addition to some new civilizations appearing in this region there were great changes in the old one. We must realize that in this single chapter we are reviewing events spanning 1,500 years or a period equal to that from the time of Christ to the Reformation in Europe. In a few limited ways, there was actual regression in the Near East at this time as the local tin deposits became exhausted and the area slipped back out of the Bronze Age.

The arabian peninsula

Nomadic Semitic tribes continued domination of the central areas of the peninsula, while other Semitic empires controlled the fertile northwestern region of Arabia and present day Jordan. About 2,250 B.C. the Akkadians were extending their influence down into this area and some 400 years later an Arabian tribe of Amorites began their first expansion and began to overflow this entire area of the Fertile Crescent, rolling over into Mesopotamia and beyond.

Mediterranean coastal areas of israel and lebanon

The ancient basic population of this area were Canaanites, originally Semitic nomads who had early migrated north from Arabia, but in the period under review, two other peoples appeared--the Jews and the Phoenicians. (Ref. 175 ) Additional Notes

1. israel

Semitic speaking people lived a Bronze Age urban life in Palestine from 3,000 to 2,200 B.C. but then for two or three hundred years the city life appears to have been destroyed by an invading nomadic people, probably the Amorites from deep in the Arabian peninsula. After 1,900 B.C. population returned to the urban areas and that period may then be described as the true Canaanite era. The African camel was used in Palestine for caravan trade by 1,600 B.C. The exact time of the arrival of the Jews is debated. Their own tradition says that they came from Ur in about 2,200 B.C., but they probably came up out of the Arabian Peninsula somewhat later. They too, of course, were a Semitic group who rarely intermarried with other stocks, yet some feel that they received their characteristic nose from the non-Semitic Hittites. (Ref. 229 ) During these early centuries the Jews remained as twelve more or less independent tribes, with a state of civilization developing about 1,800 B.C. Most of them then entered Egypt between 1,800 and 1,650 B.C. perhaps with their "cousins", the Hyksos. It is said that Judaism was founded by Abraham, a prince of Ur, living in Canaan in 1,700 B.C., as he replaced human sacrifice with sacrifice of rams. (Ref. 18 , 213 , 222 )

2. lebanon (phoenicia)

The origin of the Phoenicians who founded the city of Tyre and settled along a strip of coast one hundred miles long and ten miles wide, about 2,800 B.C. is not definitely known, but they may have been simply another Semitic tribe from the region of the Persian Gulf. From 2,600 B.C. on, they were the busiest merchants of the ancient world, manufacturing forms of glass, working metal and producing a famous purple dye from Mediterranean mollusca. The forest of Lebanon supplied the entire middle east with timber and the incredibly durable Lebanon cedar allowed the early Phoenicians, as well as the Hittites, to abandon the earlier papyrus reeds for boats of wood. These people were shrewd traders, stealing from the weak, cheating the stupid and dealing honestly with the rest of mankind. They sailed the seas in seventy feet long, narrow galleys with oars and one large rectangular sail, developing the art of navigation as they sailed from their home cities of Tyre, Byblos and Sidon to develop a great colonial empire. They were known in the Bible as Siddonians. Ugarit was a Canaanite and Phoenician city which has been dubbed the "Shanghai of the mid-2nd millenium B.C.", because it seemed a cross-road of world trade. Texts in Sumerian-Akkadian, Hurrian, Egyptian and Hittite have been found there. The oldest known alphabet was apparently native Canaanite, later improved by the Phoenicians. Some texts show close association of Hebrews to Canaanites before the time of Moses, and much of the moral teaching and ideals of justice of later Hebrew pro- phets were foreshadowed here and there are parallels to the later Biblical psalms, etc. (Ref. 95 , 87 )