The particular section later occupied by the Jews had itself been the scene of a racial babel. The Israelites were, by their tradition, expressly commanded to dispossess Hittite, Girgashite, Canaanite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite.[71] The recurrence of this enumeration indicates an historical basis for the tradition. It is very likely that nations so named were actually subdued by the invading Hebrews. The fact that the tribes dispossessed are seven in number makes caution necessary in accepting the statement. Perhaps some of these “nations” are different names for the same group. Some of them, _e.g._ Hittite or Amorite, may be vague descriptive terms, like Syrian or even Hebrew. Then there were the Phoenicians, representing perhaps the first Semitic invasion of this territory. Below them, the Philistines, “from Caphthor,” who are very plausibly identified with Cretans or “Minoans,” the Keftiu of the Egyptians.[72] During Mesopotamian and Egyptian sovereignty, Mesopotamian and Egyptian infiltration may be safely assumed. The desert never ceased to contribute its share of tribes. Permanent results of such nomad invasions were the settlement of the various Hebrew tribes—Moab and Edom in the southeast and Israel on both sides of the Jordan. If the analogy of other times and places is to be followed, no one of these groups was ever completely and literally exterminated. Jewish tradition knows of an attempted extermination—that of the Amalekites—only as a very exceptional thing. The resultant nationalities, which in Greek times occupied Palestine, were likely enough to have been of somewhat mixed origin. When the Greeks came to know them well, however, the Jews had long been a well-defined group, frowning upon intermarriage, although it is not likely that the prohibition of connubium had its source in any importance attached to racial purity, or that all Jews everywhere were equally strict in enforcing it.[73] As has been suggested, the first contact was probably military. Since Jews served in the Persian armies as far south as Elephantine, they probably were equally present in the battalions of Datis and of Mardonius.[74] Another early contact was in the slave-mart, no doubt both as buyers and the bought. Enterprising Tyrian traders had made themselves comfortable in Jerusalem before Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 6), and human commodities formed the chief merchandise of most commerce. Before him, perhaps before the Exile, Joel reproaches the Phoenicians with the words, “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians.”[75] “Syrus” had become a common slave-name in Greece in the fifth century, and Syrus might include anything.[76] All these scattered and uncertain hints do not tend to present a very clear picture. However, the time was rapidly coming when Greek contact with “Syria” was to be vastly more intimate.