Abstract
The shortest distance between the Nile and the Euphrates is about 600 miles. It is inconceivable that the space in between (today occupied by the states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel) could have remained uninfluenced by the civilizations which emerged in Egypt and Mesopotamia. As the evidence discovered so far shows, the Mesopotamian influences appeared earlier and also proved to be the stronger. Yet in the second millennium BC the impact of the Pharaonic Egypt gathered momentum, and a third foreign culture, that of Crete and the Aegean, reached the Syro-Palestinian shore.
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Notes and References
For more detail on these notions see for instance: K.M. Kenyon, Amorites and Canaanites (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)
D.J. Wiseman (ed.) Peoples of the Old Testament Times (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973)
S. Moscati, Ancient Semitic Civilisations (London: Elek Books, 1957).
Gerhard Herrn, The Phoenicians (London: Gollancz, 1975) p.200.
Donald Harden, The Phoenicians (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971), p.77.
O. Eissfeldt, Tautos und Sanchunjaton (Berlin, 1952), p.28.
The texts discovered in Ugarit confirm this rendering of Sanchuniathon’s ideas. S. Moscati, Ancient Semitic Civilisations (London: Elek Books, 1957), p. 106.
A.J. Toynbee, A Study of History I (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 102.
A.T. Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria (New York, London, Chicago University Press, 1931), p.66.
I am following the account by S. Moscati, Ancient Semitic Civilisations, pp. 183–94, (London, New York: Macmillan, 1973)
P.K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London, New York: Macmillan, 1973) pp.49–66.
D.M. Dunlop, Arab Civilization to A.D. 1500 (London: Longman, 1971) p.8.
But, as C.D. Darlington, a biologist turned to social science, points out, the Arabian camel, the dromedary, also ‘contributed on the debit side to the erosion of Arabia, the expansion of the desert and the decay of the Hadramaut basin’. (C.D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969) p.328.)
M.M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization (Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981) pp.186–208 (1st ed. 1934).
I am indebted especially to the following authors: A. Lods, The Prophets and the Rise of Judaism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936);
M. Bič, Zrod a zvěst Starého zákona (The Origin and Message of the Old Testament) (Prague: Kalich, 1951);
M.A. Beek, Geschichte Israels von Abraham bis Bar Kochba (transl. from Dutch) (Stuttgart, 1961).
H.H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua, Biblical Traditions in the Light of Archaeology (London: British Academy, Oxford University Press, 1950).
For further detail see for instance R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel, 2 vols. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978).
H.H. Rowley puts the date of Exodus at c. 1230 BC. For his chronology, see From Joseph to Joshua, p. 194.
P.K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, pp.196–7.
A.T. Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria, p.504.
M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp.704–5.
Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas (London: Collins, 1979), vol. I, pp.346 and 355.
The story is told in minute detail in E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1981).
Except for one day in each year, when the Jews were allowed to lament the fate of their holy city at the Wailing Wall (E.M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule) p.460.
A.J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. XII (London: Oxford University Press, 1964) p.505.
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© 1990 Jaroslav Krejčí
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Krejčí, J. (1990). The Contrasts of Syria: Peoples of the Script and People of the Book. In: The Civilizations of Asia and the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11147-3_3
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