Ancient Man by Hendrik Willem van Loon - HTML preview

In the olden days, before the Jewish people had moved into

Egypt, they too had been wanderers among the endless plains

of Arabia. They had lived in tents and they had eaten plain

food, but they had been honest men and faithful women,

contented with few possessions but proud of the righteousness

of their mind.

All this had been changed after they had become exposed to

the civilization of Egypt. They had taken to the ways of the

comfort-loving Egyptians. They had allowed another race to rule

them and they had not cared to fight for their independence.

Instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had

begun to worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering

splendors of the dark Egyptian temples.

Moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people

from their fate and bring them back to the simple Truth of the

olden days.

And so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that

they leave the land of slavery and join him in the desert.

But the Egyptians heard of this and guarded the Jews more

carefully than ever before.

It seemed that the plans of Moses were doomed to failure when

suddenly an epidemic broke out among the people of the Nile

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Valley.

The Jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of

health (which they had learned in the hardy days of their desert

life) escaped the disease while the weaker Egyptians died by

the hundreds of thousands.

Amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this Silent

Death, the Jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from

the land which had promised them so much and which had given

them so little.

As soon as the flight became known the Egyptians tried to

follow them with their armies but their soldiers met with

disaster and the Jews escaped.

They were safe and they were free and they moved eastward

into the waste spaces which are situated at the foot of Mount

Sinai, the peak which has been called after Sin, the Babylonian

God of the Moon.

There Moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and

commenced upon his great task of reform.

In those days, the Jews, like all other people, worshipped many

gods. During their stay in Egypt they had even learned to do

homage to those animals which the Egyptians held in such high

honor that they built holy shrines for their special benefit.

Moses on the other hand, during his long and lonely life amidst

the sandy hills of the peninsula, had learned to revere the

strength and the power of the great God of the Storm and the

Thunder, who ruled the high heavens and upon whose good-will

the wanderer in the desert depended for life and light and

breath.

This God was called Jehovah and he was a mighty Being who

was held in trembling respect by all the Semitic people of

western Asia.

Through the teaching of Moses he was to become the sole

Master of the Jewish race.

One day Moses disappeared from the camp of the Hebrews. He

took with him two tablets of rough-hewn stone. It was

whispered that he had gone to seek the solitude of Mount

Sinai's highest peak.

That afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight.

The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man.

But when Moses returned, behold! ... there stood engraved upon

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the tablets the words which Jehovah himself had spoken amidst

the crash of his thunder and the blinding flashes of his

lightning.

From that moment on, no Jew dared to question the authority of

Moses.

When he told his people that Jehovah commanded them to

continue their wanderings, they obeyed with eagerness.

For many years they lived amidst the trackless hills of the

desert.

They suffered great hardships and almost perished from lack of

food and water.

But Moses kept high their hopes of a Promised Land which

would offer a lasting home to the true followers of Jehovah.

At last they reached a more fertile region.

They crossed the river Jordan and, carrying the Holy Tablets of

Law, they made ready to occupy the pastures which stretch from

Dan to Beersheba.

As for Moses, he was no longer their leader.

He had grown old and he was very tired.

He had been allowed to see the distant ridges of the Palestine

Mountains among which the Jews were to find a Fatherland.

Then he had closed his wise eyes for all time.

He had accomplished the task which he had set himself in his

youth.

He had led his people out of foreign slavery into the new

freedom of an independent life.

He had united them and he had made them the first of all

nations to worship a single God.

JERUSALEM--THE CITY OF THE LAW

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Palestine is a small strip of land between the mountains of

Syria and the green waters of the Mediterranean. It has been

inhabited since time immemorial, but we do not know very much

about the first settlers, although we have given them the name

of Canaanites.

The Canaanites belonged to the Semitic race. Their ancestors,

like those of the Jews and the Babylonians, had been a desert

folk. But when the Jews entered Palestine, the Canaanites lived

in towns and villages. They were no longer shepherds but

traders. Indeed, in the Jewish language, Canaanite and

merchant came to mean the same thing.

They had built themselves strong cities, surrounded by high

walls and they did not allow the Jews to enter their gates, but

they forced them to keep to the open country and make their

home amidst the grassy lands of the valleys.

After a time, however, the Jews and the Canaanites became

friends. This was not so very difficult for they both belonged to the same race. Besides they feared a common enemy and only

their united strength could defend their country against these

dangerous neighbors, who were called the Philistines and who

belonged to an entirely different race.

The Philistines really had no business in Asia. They were

Europeans, and their earliest home had been in the Isle of

Crete. At what age they had settled along the shores of the

Mediterranean is quite uncertain because we do not know when

the Indo-European invaders had driven them from their island

home. But even the Egyptians, who called them Purasati, had

feared them greatly and when the Philistines (who wore a

headdress of feathers just like our Indians) went upon the war-

path, all the people of western Asia sent large armies to protect their frontiers.

As for the war between the Philistines and the Jews, it never

came to an end. For although David slew Goliath (who wore a

suit of armor which was a great curiosity in those days and had

been no doubt imported from the island of Cyprus where the

copper mines of the ancient world were found) and although

Samson killed the Philistines wholesale when he buried himself

and his enemies beneath the temple of Dagon, the Philistines

always proved themselves more than a match for the Jews and

never allowed the Hebrew people to get hold of any of the

harbors of the Mediterranean.

The Jews therefore were obliged by fate to content themselves

with the valleys of eastern Palestine and there, on the top of a

barren hill, they erected their capital.

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The name of this city was Jerusalem and for thirty centuries it

has been one of the most holy spots of the western world.

In the dim ages of the unknown past, Jerusalem, the Home of

Peace, had been a little fortified outpost of the Egyptians who

had built many small fortifications and castles along the

mountain ridges of Palestine, to defend their outlying frontier

against attacks from the East.

After the downfall of the Egyptian Empire, a native tribe, the

Jebusites, had moved into the deserted city. Then came the

Jews who captured the town after a long struggle and made it

the residence of their King David.

At last, after many years of wandering the Tables of the Law

seemed to have reached a place of enduring rest. Solomon, the

Wise, decided to provide them with a magnificent home. Far

and wide his messengers travelled to ransack the world for rare

woods and precious metals. The entire nation was asked to

offer its wealth to make the House of God worthy of its holy

name. Higher and higher the walls of the temple arose guarding

the sacred Laws of Jehovah for all the ages.

Alas, the expected eternity proved to be of short duration.

Themselves intruders among hostile neighbors, surrounded by

enemies on all sides, harassed by the Philistines, the Jews did

not maintain their independence for very long.

They fought well and bravely. But their little state, weakened by petty jealousies, was easily overpowered by the Assyrians and

the Egyptians and the Chaldeans and when Nebuchadnezzar,

the King of Babylon, took Jerusalem in the year 586 before the

birth of Christ, he destroyed the city and the temple, and the

Tablets of Stone went up in the general conflagration.

At once the Jews set to work to rebuild their holy shrine. But

the days of Solomon's glory were gone. The Jews were the

subjects of a foreign race and money was scarce. It took

seventy years to reconstruct the old edifice. It stood securely

for three hundred years but then a second invasion took place

and once more the red flames of the burning temple brightened

the skies of Palestine.

When it was rebuilt for the third time, it was surrounded by two

high walls with narrow gates and several inner courts were

added to make sudden invasion in the future an impossibility.

But ill-luck pursued the city of Jerusalem.

In the sixty-fifth year before the birth of Christ, the Romans

under their general Pompey took possession of the Jewish

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capital. Their practical sense did not take kindly to an old city with crooked and dark streets and many unhealthy alley-ways.

They cleaned up this old rubbish (as they considered it) and

built new barracks and large public buildings and swimming-

pools and athletic parks and they forced their modern

improvements upon an unwilling populace.

The temple which served no practical purposes (as far as they

could see) was neglected until the days of Herod, who was King

of the Jews by the Grace of the Roman sword and whose vanity

wished to renew the ancient splendor of the bygone ages. In a

half-hearted manner the oppressed people set to work to obey

the orders of a master who was not of their own choosing.

When the last stone had been placed in its proper position

another revolution broke out against the merciless Roman tax

gatherers. The temple was the first victim of this rioting. The

soldiers of the Emperor Titus promptly set fire to this center of the old Jewish faith. But the city of Jerusalem was spared.

Palestine however continued to be the scene of unrest.

The Romans who were familiar with all sorts of races of men

and who ruled countries where a thousand different divinities

were worshipped did not know how to handle the Jews. They did

not understand the Jewish character at all. Extreme tolerance

(based upon indifference) was the foundation upon which Rome

had constructed her very successful Empire. Roman governors

never interfered with the religious belief of subject tribes. They demanded that a picture or a statue of the Emperor be placed in

the temples of the people who inhabited the outlying parts of

the Roman domains. This was a mere formality and it did not

have any deep significance. But to the Jews such a thing

seemed highly sacrilegious and they would not desecrate their

Holiest of Holies by the carven image of a Roman potentate.

They refused.

The Romans insisted.

In itself a matter of small importance, a misunderstanding of

this sort was bound to grow and cause further ill-feeling. Fifty-

two years after the revolt under the Emperor Titus the Jews

once more rebelled. This time the Romans decided to be

thorough in their work of destruction.

Jerusalem was destroyed.

The temple was burned down.

A new Roman city, called Aelia Capitolina was erected upon the

ruins of the old city of Solomon.

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A heathenish temple devoted to the worship of Jupiter was built

upon the site where the faithful had worshipped Jehovah for

almost a thousand years.

The Jews themselves were expelled from their capital and

thousands of them were driven away from the home of their

ancestors.

From that moment on they became wanderers upon the face of

the Earth.

But the Holy Laws no longer needed the safe shelter of a royal

shrine.

Their influence had long since passed beyond the narrow

confines of the land of Judah. They had become a living symbol

of Justice wherever honorable people tried to live a righteous

life.

DAMASCUS--THE CITY OF TRADE

The old cities of Egypt have disappeared from the face of the

earth. Nineveh and Babylon are deserted mounds of dust and

brick. The ancient temple of Jerusalem lies buried beneath the

blackened ruins of its own glory.

One city alone has survived the ages.

It is called Damascus.

Within its four great gates and its strong walls a busy people

has followed its daily occupations for five thousand consecutive

years and the "Street called Straight" which is the city's main artery of commerce, has seen the coming and going of one

hundred and fifty generations.

Humbly Damascus began its career as a fortified frontier town of

the Amorites, those famous desert folk who had given birth to

the great King Hammurapi. When the Amorites moved further

eastward into the valley of Mesopotamia to found the Kingdom

of Babylon, Damascus had been continued as a trading post

with the wild Hittites who inhabited the mountains of Asia

Minor.

In due course of time the earliest inhabitants had been

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absorbed by another Semitic tribe, called the Aramaeans. The

city itself however had not changed its character. It remained

throughout these many changes an important center of

commerce.

It was situated upon the main road from Egypt to Mesopotamia

and it was within a week's distance from the harbors on the

Mediterranean. It produced no great generals and statesmen

and no famous Kings. It did not conquer a single mile of

neighboring territory. It traded with all the world and offered a safe home to the merchant and to the artisan. Incidentally it

bestowed its language upon the greater part of western Asia.

Commerce has always demanded quick and practical ways of

communication between different nations. The elaborate system

of nail-writing of the ancient Sumerians was too involved for the Aramaean business man. He invented a new alphabet which

could be written much faster than the old wedge-shaped figures

of Babylon.

The spoken language of the Aramaeans followed their business

correspondence.

Aramaean became the English of the ancient world. In most

parts of Mesopotamia it was understood as readily as the native

tongue. In some countries it actually took the place of the old

tribal dialect.

And when Christ preached to the multitudes, he did not use the

ancient Jewish speech in which Moses had explained the Laws

unto his fellow wanderers.

He spoke in Aramaean, the language of the merchant, which

had become the language of the simple people of the old

Mediterranean world.

THE PHOENICIANS WHO SAILED

BEYOND THE HORIZON

A pioneer is a brave fellow, with the courage of his own

curiosity.

Perhaps he lives at the foot of a high mountain.

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So do thousands of other people. They are quite contented to

leave the mountain alone.

But the pioneer feels unhappy. He wants to know what

mysteries this mountain hides from his eyes. Is there another

mountain behind it, or a plain? Does it suddenly arise with its

steep cliffs from the dark waves of the ocean or does it overlook a desert?

One fine day the true pioneer leaves his family and the safe

comfort of his home to go and find out. Perhaps he will come

back and tell his experience to his indifferent relatives. Or he

will be killed by falling stones or a treacherous blizzard. In that case he does not return at all and the good neighbors shake

their heads and say, "He got what he deserved. Why did he not stay at home like the rest of us?"

But the world needs such men and after they have been dead

for many years and others have reaped the benefits of their

discoveries, they always receive a statue with a fitting

inscription.

More terrifying than the highest mountain is the thin line of the distant horizon. It seems to be the end of the world itself.

Heaven have mercy upon those who pass beyond this meeting-

place of sky and water, where all is black despair and death.

And for centuries and centuries after man had built his first

clumsy boats, he remained within the pleasant sight of one

familiar shore and kept away from the horizon.

Then came the Phoenicians who knew no such fears. They

passed beyond the sight of land. Suddenly the forbidding ocean

was turned into a peaceful highway of commerce and the

dangerous menace of the horizon became a myth.

These Phoenician navigators were Semites. Their ancestors had

lived in the desert of Arabia together with the Babylonians, the

Jews and all the others. But when the Jews occupied Palestine,

the cities of the Phoenicians were already old with the age of

many centuries.

There were two Phoenician centers of trade.

One was called Tyre and the other was called Sidon. They were

built upon high cliffs and rumor had it that no enemy could take

them. Far and wide their ships sailed to gather the products of

the Mediterranean for the benefit of the people of Mesopotamia.

At first the sailors only visited the distant shores of France and Spain to barter with the natives and hastened home with their

grain and metal. Later they had built fortified trading posts

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along the coasts of Spain and Italy and Greece and the far-off

Scilly Islands where the valuable tin was found.

To the uncivilized savages of Europe, such a trading post

appeared as a dream of beauty and luxury. They asked to be

allowed to live close to its walls, to see the wonderful sights

when the boats of many sails entered the harbor, carrying the

much-desired merchandise of the unknown east. Gradually they

left their huts to build themselves small wooden houses around

the Phoenician fortresses. In this way many a trading post had

grown into a market place for all the people of the entire

neighborhood.

Today such big cities as Marseilles and Cadiz are proud of their

Phoenician origin, but their ancient mothers, Tyre and Sidon,

have been dead and forgotten for over two thousand years and

of the Phoenicians themselves, none have survived.

This is a sad fate but it was fully deserved.

The Phoenicians had grown rich without great effort, but they

had not known how to use their wealth wisely. They had never

cared for books or learning. They had only cared for money.

They had bought and sold slaves all over the world. They had

forced the foreign immigrants to work in their factories. They

cheated their neighbors whenever they had a chance and they

had made themselves detested by all the other people of the

Mediterranean.

They were brave and energetic navigators, but they showed

themselves cowards whenever they were obliged to choose

between honorable dealing and an immediate profit, obtained

through fraudulent and shrewd trading.

As long as they had been the only sailors in the world who could

handle large ships, all other nations had been in need of their

services. As soon as the others too had learned how to handle a

rudder and a set of sails, they at once got rid of the tricky

Phoenician merchant.

From that moment on, Tyre and Sidon had lost their old hold

upon the commercial world of Asia. They had never encouraged

art or science. They had known how to explore the seven seas

and turn their ventures into profitable investments. No state,

however, can be safely built upon material possessions alone.

The land of Phoenicia had always been a counting-house

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without a soul.

It perished because it had honored a well-filled treasure chest

as the highest ideal of civic pride.

THE ALPHABET FOLLOWS THE TRADE

I have told you how the Egyptians preserved speech by means

of little figures. I have described the wedge-shaped signs which

served the people of Mesopotamia as a handy means of

transacting business at home and abroad.

But how about our own alphabet? From whence came those

compact little letters which follow us throughout our life, from

the date on our birth certificate to the last word of our funeral notice? Are they Egyptian or Babylonian or Aramaic or are they

something entirely different? They are a little bit of everything, as I shall now tell you.

Our modern alphabet is not a very satisfactory instrument for

the purpose of reproducing our speech. Some day a genius will

invent a new system of writing which shall give each one of our

sounds a little picture of its own. But with all its many

imperfections the letters of our modern alphabet perform their

daily task quite nicely and fully as well as their very accurate

and precise cousins, the numerals, who wandered into Europe

from distant India, almost ten centuries after the first invasion of the alphabet. The earliest history of these letters, however,

is a deep mystery and it will take many years of painstaking

investigation before we can solve it.

This much we know--that our alphabet was not suddenly

invented by a bright young scribe. It developed and grew during

hundreds of years out of a number of older and more

complicated systems.

In my last chapter I have told you of the language of the

intelligent Aramaean traders which spread throughout western

Asia, as an international means of communication. The

language of the Phoenicians was never very popular among their

neighbors. Except for a very few words we do not know what

sort of tongue it was. Their system of writing, however, was

carried into every corner of the vast Mediterranean and every

Phoenician colony became a center for its further distribution.

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