You will see, then, these great river regions and will imagine the two powerful empires established in them, and then you will see that there lies between the two a country in which lies the land of Palestine, {25} where the Jews lived. You will see that the big empires are divided from each other, nearly separated, by the Red Sea running up into the land with two arms, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akaba. Between these two stretches or arms lies the Sinai Peninsula, and northward of Egypt and westward of Palestine there is the Mediterranean Sea. The result of this distribution of sea and land is that the only way by which the two big empires could come into touch with one another was by way of Palestine. The southern desert, even where those big arms of the sea did not run up into it, was almost as impassable for the passage of armies as the sea itself. Neither of the empires, in the early days, had much of a fleet, by which they could get at one another across sea. The consequence is that we have to regard that stretch of land which is occupied on the map by Palestine as the bridge, and the only bridge, by which they could come into contact, either for purposes of trade or of war. It is only natural to think, therefore, that when they began, as they did in the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, to make big wars on each other, the tribes that held, or that vainly tried to hold, that bridge, would be terribly squeezed and harassed by first one and then the other of the big neighbours coming upon them, with very little respect for their rights. That is, in fact, exactly what we know did happen. And it is only a wonder that the Jews at that time were not squeezed utterly out of existence between the two. It is one of the biggest wonders, as well as one of the biggest facts, in history that they were not so squeezed out. When I say it is one of the biggest facts, I mean that it made an enormous difference to the history of {26} the world, for if they had allowed themselves to be squeezed out, if they had not even then showed that extraordinary toughness and tenacity which has always been a great part of their national character, the history of the world would have been very different from what it has been, Christianity could not have spread through the world as it has spread, and the whole course of events would have been largely changed. In what way it would have been changed we cannot say; but that it would have been changed enormously we cannot doubt. Keep, then, these great facts clearly in your minds: the position of these two big empires to west and east, and the comparatively narrow bridge between them, by which they could communicate with each other. If you have this, like a map without any of the other names filled in, in the background of your minds, you will be able to fit in the happenings as they occur. And now for our chapter on the Egyptian religions, beliefs, customs, and so on. {27} CHAPTER III