Produced by Charles Franks, Julie Barkley and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE No. 92 _Editors_: HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A. PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. THE ANCIENT EAST BY D. G. HOGARTH, M.A., F.B.A., F.S.A. KEEPER OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD; AUTHOR OF "IONIA AND THE EAST," "THE NEARER EAST," ETC. CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY I THE EAST IN 1000 B.C. II THE EAST IN 800 B.C. III THE EAST IN 600 B.C. IV THE EAST IN 400 B.C. V THE VICTORY OF THE WEST VI EPILOGUE NOTE ON BOOKS LIST OF MAPS 1. THE REGION OF THE ANCIENT EAST AND ITS MAIN DIVISIONS 2. ASIATIC EMPIRE OF EGYPT. TEMP. AMENHETEP III 3. HATTI EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY 13TH CENTURY B.C. 4. ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY YEARS OF ASHURBANIPAL 5. PERSIAN EMPIRE (WEST) AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. TEMP. DARIUS HYSTASPIS 6. HELLENISM IN ASIA. ABOUT 150 B.C. THE ANCIENT EAST INTRODUCTORY The title of this book needs a word of explanation, since each of its terms can legitimately be used to denote more than one conception both of time and place. "The East" is understood widely and vaguely nowadays to include all the continent and islands of Asia, some part of Africa--the northern part where society and conditions of life are most like the Asiatic--and some regions also of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. Therefore it may appear arbitrary to restrict it in the present book to Western Asia. But the qualifying term in my title must be invoked in justification. It is the East not of to-day but of antiquity with which I have to deal, and, therefore, I plead that it is not unreasonable to understand by "The East" what in antiquity European historians understood by that term. To Herodotus and his contemporary Greeks Egypt, Arabia and India were the South; Thrace and Scythia were the North; and Hither Asia was the East: for they conceived nothing beyond except the fabled stream of Ocean. It can be pleaded also that my restriction, while not in itself arbitrary, does, in fact, obviate an otherwise inevitable obligation to fix arbitrary bounds to the East. For the term, as used in modern times, implies a geographical area characterized by society of a certain general type, and according to his opinion of this type, each person, who thinks or writes of the East, expands or contracts its geographical area.