244. Entry of Semites and Indo-Europeans
The Semitic invasions seem to have proceeded from the great motherland of that stock, Arabia, whose deserts and half-deserts have been at all times like a multiplying hive. Some of the movements were outright conquests, others half-forceful penetrations, still others infiltrations. Several great waves can be distinguished. About 3000 there was a drift which brought the Akkadians, Sargon’s people, into Babylonia, perhaps the Assyrians into their home up the Tigris, the Canaanites and Phœnicians into the Syrian region. About 2200 the Amorites flowed north: into Babylonia, where Babylon now sprang up and the famous lawgiver Hammurabi ruled; into Mesopotamia proper; and into Syria. Around 1400, the Aramæans gradually occupied the Syrian district, and the Hebrews began to dispossess the Canaanites. Around 700 still another wave brought the Chaldæans into Babylonia, to erect a great Semitic kingdom once more—that of Nebuchadnezzar. Then, for more than a thousand years, Arabia lay contained within herself, dammed perhaps by the Persian, Macedonian, Parthian, and Roman empires, until in the seventh century after Christ Mohammedanism led forth her peoples. A much earlier movement, at an unknown time, had brought the forefathers of the Abyssinians across the mouth of the Red Sea into Africa, and the Hyksos who overthrew the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt may have been Semites.
The Indo-Europeans entered southwest Asia later and permeated it more locally than the Semites. Soon after 2000 the Kassites or Kossæans intruded into Babylonia; they seem to have been Indo-Europeans, perhaps Iranians. Around 1500 the Mitanni were a power on the upper Euphrates between the Assyrians and the Hittites of Asia Minor. Their personal and god names as preserved in Assyrian Cuneiform inscriptions show them to have been an Iranian people. The latter are not recognizably referred to in their permanent home on the Iranian plateau until about 1000, but may well have settled there a thousand years earlier. Their close relatives, the Indic branch, are believed to have begun their entry of India about 2000-1500 B.C. or soon after.