It appears then that our traveller would have found Babylonia, rather than Assyria, the leading East Semitic power in 1000 B.C.; but at the same time not a strong power, for she had no imperial dominion outside lower Mesopotamia. Since a dynasty, whose history is obscure--the so-called Pashé kings in whose time there was one strong man, Nabu-Kudur-usur (Nebuchadnezzar) I--came to an inglorious end just about 1000 B.C., one may infer that Babylonia was passing at this epoch through one of those recurrent political crises which usually occurred when Sumerian cities of the southern "Sea-Land" conspired with some foreign invader against the Semitic capital. The contumacious survivors of the elder element in the population, however, even when successful, seem not to have tried to set up new capitals or to reestablish the pre-Semitic state of things. Babylon had so far distanced all the older cities now that no other consummation of revolt was desired or believed possible than the substitution of one dynasty for another on the throne beloved of Marduk. Sumerian forces, however, had not been the only ones which had contributed to overthrow the last king of the Pashé dynasty. Nomads of the _Suti_ tribes had long been raiding from the western deserts into Akkad; and the first king set up by the victorious peoples of the Sea-Land had to expel them and to repair their ravages before he could seat himself on a throne which was menaced by Elam on the east and Assyria on the north, and must fall so soon as either of these found a strong leader. CHAPTER II THE EAST IN 800 B.C. Two centuries have passed over the East, and at first sight it looks as if no radical change has taken place in its political or social condition. No new power has entered it from without; only one new state of importance, the Phrygian, has arisen within. The peoples, which were of most account in 1000, are still of the most account in 800--the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mushki of Cappadocia, the tribesmen of Urartu, the Aramaeans of Damascus, the trading Phoenicians on the Syrian coast and the trading Greeks on the Anatolian. Egypt has remained behind her frontier except for one raid into Palestine about 925 B.C., from which Sheshenk, the Libyan, brought back treasures of Solomon's temple to enhance the splendour of Amen. Arabia has not begun to matter. There has been, of course, development, but on old lines. The comparative values of the states have altered: some have become more decisively the superiors of others than they were two hundred years ago, but they are those whose growth was foreseen. Wherein, then, lies the great difference? For great difference there is. It scarcely needs a second glance to detect the change, and any one who looks narrowly will see not only certain consequent changes, but in more than one quarter signs and warnings of a coming order of things not dreamt of in 1000 B.C. SECTION 1. MIDDLE KINGDOM OF ASSYRIA