The Royal Road up into Asia
In speaking of such land routes, we do not, of course, mean to imply the existence of any made road, nor even of a single track. When most definite, they probably resembled the Syrian Pilgrim Way—a skein of separate paths now spreading widely, now running into and across one another; and doubtless the early tracks diverged far more than this, and making great elbows, followed now one valley, now another, to meet again only after many days. One of the great lines from Mesopotamia to the western Anatolian coast, that described last in our enumeration, came to be defined more strictly than the rest, perhaps by the Kings of Nineveh and their “Hittite” rivals and allies in Cappadocia, and was known in the Persian era to the Greeks as the Royal Road “of all who go up into Asia.” But at the much earlier time with which we are most concerned, the influences of the East did not rush westward torrent-wise in one bed, but soaked slowly, finding a way now here, now there, in one general westward direction, and sending offshoots far out to right and left of the main streams.
LAND ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
The great natural roads along which lay the path of Egyptian and Mesopotamian culture are marked in white lines on this map. A study of the map, with a careful reading of this chapter, will make clear the way in which civilisation spread in Egypt and Babylon. It is along these lines that there are found evidences of the influence exerted upon Europe by the civilisation of the valley of the Nile and the Euphrates.
LARGER IMAGE
[Western Part of Preceding Map]
[Eastern Part and Legend of Preceding Map]