TIME-TABLE OF THE WORLD: B.C. 8000 to 500

This Chronology, prepared as a companion to the Summary of the World’s History, sets forth in tabular form for ready reference the events dealt with in the narrative on opposite pages

B.C.
8000

B.C.
8000

Early civilisation of the Nile Basin. Egypt before the Pyramids.

7000

7000

Asiatic invasion of Egypt
Pre-Semitic civilisations of the Euphrates Basin. Susa founded.

6000

6000

Invasion of Egypt by dynastic race, 5800. Mena rules all Egypt. First dynasty, 5500.
Babylonian kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad. Ea founds Eridu and civilises Babylonia.

5000

5000

Egypt. The Pyramid builders. Great Pyramid built by Khufu (Cheops), 4700.
Earliest monuments to kings in Babylonia, 4700.

4000

4000

Egypt invaded from the north. First, or Babylonian, Semitic wave in the Euphrates Valley. Rise of Babylonian kingdoms. Sargon and Naram-Sin, Semitic rulers of Akkad. Middle kingdom of Egypt. Revival of art. Twelfth dynasty (3400).
Gudea’s rule in Babylon. Development of commerce, 3300.

3000

3000

Egypt invaded by the Hyksos, nomadic Semitic conquerors, the “Shepherd Kings.” Fifteenth Dynasty (2500). Second Hyksos movement (2250).
Conquest of Babylon by Elamites. Rule of Hammurabi (Amraphel of Gen. xiv.), 2129.
Second, or Canaanite, Semitic wave, extending to the Mediterranean.
First Aryan migration westward over Europe, and southward; conquest of Hindostan.

2000

2000

The Hyksos dominate Egypt. New kingdom. Eighteenth dynasty, 1580.
Expulsion of the Hyksos, about 1560.
Rise of Assyria.
The Kassite dynasty in Babylon, about 1750–1130.
Hittite Empire in Syria.
Latin and Hellenic entry into Europe and Asia Minor.
Third (Aramæan) Semitic wave, dominating W. Asia, but absorbed in existing states.

1500

1500

FAR EAST: Beginning of definite Chinese history, with the Chau dynasty.
EGYPT: Nineteenth dynasty, Sethos and the Ramesides; struggle with Hittite Empire.
WESTERN ASIA: Burnaburiash, 1380. Pashe dynasty in Babylon, 1130–1000.
Period of Phœnician prosperity.
Rise of the United Kingdom of the Hebrews.
Crete, Troy, and Mycenæ. The Ionic and Doric migrations.

1000

1000

WESTERN ASIA: The Hebrew kingdom divided into Judah and Israel or Samaria.
Rise of Aramæan kingdom of Syria. Chaldean domination in Babylon.
Assyrian Middle Empire.
EGYPT: Twenty-second dynasty (“Shishak” king of Egypt).

 900

 900

EUROPE: Early monarchical governments replaced usually by aristocracies.
Probable period of the Homeric poems.
WESTERN ASIA: Successful resistance of Syria to Assyria.
Appearance of the (Aryan) Medes in the East.
AFRICA: Founding of Carthage.

 800

 800

EGYPT: Domination of Ethiopians or Cushites.
WESTERN ASIA: Assyrian New Empire; conquest of Syria, Samaria, and Babylon.
Lydian and Phrygian kingdoms in Asia Minor.
EUROPE: Development of city states in Greece and Italy. Lycurgan legislation of Sparta, about 800.
Rome founded as a monarchy, 753.
Spread of Greek colonies along Mediterranean coasts and islands.

 700

 700

WESTERN ASIA:Extension of Lydian kingdom in Asia Minor 687–546.
Irruption of Cimmerians from the North.
Repulse of Sennacherib before Jerusalem. Decline of Assyria.
EGYPT: Invasion by Esarhaddon. Expulsion of Cushites. The Saitic dynasty.
EUROPE: Between 700 and 500, sporadic displacement of aristocracies by “tyrannies,” followed either by an oligarchical restoration or by democracies.
Rome becomes head of the League of Latin cities.
FAR EAST: Japanese history begins.

 600

 600

 500
B.C.

WESTERN ASIA:Narbonaid, King of Babylon (556–538). Overthrow of Assyrian by New Babylonian Empire; the Babylonish captivity.
Rise of Media, of which Cyrus, the Persian, makes himself master.
Persian Empire: Overthrow of Lydia, New Babylonia, and Egypt. Aahmes (Amasis), 570–526.
FAR EAST: Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, and Buddha in India.
EUROPE: Greek states consolidated. Athens: Solon 594. Pisistratidæ expelled, 510.
ROME:Expulsion of the kings, about 510. The Commonwealth. Administration aristocratic: Army and legislative assembly on basis of land-ownership. Etruscan—pre-Latin—domination in Italy.

 500
B.C.

In the East an Aryan Power overthrew the last of the Assyrian-Babylonian dynasties; but these Persian conquerors became assimilated to the conquered nations. Fundamentally their empire was of the same type as its predecessors. The Persian sway, however, extended not only into Egypt but over the partly Hellenised Asia Minor; and the Ionic revolt, in the first year of the fifth century B.C. brought the spirit of the East and the spirit of the West into fierce collision. The great king hurled his hosts against defiant Hellas; at Marathon and at Salamis, Athens shattered his army and his fleets. Thenceforth, for a thousand years, the West was the aggressor.

Athens and the Greek Immortals

But the rolling back of the “barbarian” tide was not the only glory that fell to Athens; in that same century the little state bore sons whose names stand in the front rank of the immortals for all time: Æschylus and Sophocles, Phidias, Pericles, Socrates, and Plato; in the next half century, Demosthenes; with others almost if not quite, on the same plane. The character of Athens, idealised, no doubt, is epitomised by Thucydides in the speech of Pericles. She was the sum of all that was best and noblest in Hellenism—its love of freedom, of beauty, of energy, of harmony, and its public spirit. Politically, the story of the period which followed Salamis is mainly one of the rivalry between Athens and Sparta; until the rise of Macedon, when King Philip made himself master of all Hellas.

The Coming-up of Alexander

Then, with the beginning of the last quarter of the fourth century, Alexander the Great blazed upon the world, toppled the empires of Western Asia before him, conquered Egypt, and swept over the great mountain-barriers into India, where Buddhism had already begun to displace the ancient Brahmanism of the first Aryans. The Greek influences did not long linger in the far East after the great conqueror’s death. His empire broke up. Asia west of the Euphrates remained, indeed, under the dominion mainly of one Grecian dynasty, the Seleucidæ; Egypt under that of another, the Ptolemies. Yet Alexander’s attempts to blend East and West failed. Orientalism abode, unconquered, ineradicable; Hellenism prevailed almost after the fashion of British domination in India to-day, in the land, but not of it.

Meanwhile, the struggle between Aryans and non-Aryans had been running a partly separate course in the West. The Phœnicians of Carthage and the pre-Aryan Etruscans, the dominant power in Italy, made a joint assault on the Greeks of Sicily and the Latins of the mainland at the beginning of the fifth century. They were beaten back, but for a century the struggle continued between Rome and Veii. The great Celtic incursion of the Gauls threatened destruction to Rome, but completed the destruction of Etruria. In the fourth century and the first half of the third century B.C. Rome was chiefly engaged in the double task of achieving supremacy, passing into actual dominion among the Latin states, and of establishing the great Senatorial oligarchy, against whose stubborn resolution the Epirote Pyrrhus hurled himself in vain.

Just sixty years after Alexander’s death began the sixty years’ struggle between Rome and Carthage, in the latter years of which the genius of Hannibal was pitted against the grim persistence of the Roman oligarchy. Carthage fell; Rome triumphed, and with her triumph entered on her career of extended conquest.

The Triumph of Rome