Page 158 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1720-1650 B.C.] The Princes of the Desert 129

they held now firmly the lands of the old Amorite kingdom along
the upper Euphrates, as far down the river as the marches of
the Babylonian king north of Mari. But of late they had begun to
push southwards again. Not in organized campaigns, but in dar­
ing long-distance raids, using to the full the mobility of the new
chariots. The Amorite nomads in the hills had been able to avoid
the raiders in the main, but the towns and villages of Palestine
had suffered severely before they had found the solution—build­
ing keeps and fortresses strong enough to defy the light-armed
horsemen and providing a refuge for the population when the
raiders were out. Now these adobe forts were springing up in
every village in Canaan and south Syria, and the raids were be­
coming less frequent. Moreover, under the threat from the north
both the townsfolk and the pastoral tribes were uniting, energetic
chieftains were being given the military command over large
areas, and there was even talk of a unified command in time of
danger. They had already captured both horses and drivers dur­
ing the skirmishes, and were organizing their own squadrons of
chariots. The Amorites had always been warriors to reckon with,
they boasted, and in their new unity they would prove more than
a match for the Hurrian armies—or for anyone else who opposed
them.
The children of 1720 b.c. listened avidly, wriggling their
feet. And for months to come they played Amorites and Hurrians
up and down the embankments, charging and wheeling imagi­
nary chariots drawn by fantastic fire-breathing monsters.
And life went on, with the yearly inundation followed by the
spring sowing and the harvest and the collection of taxes and the
next inundation. The children went out to help in the fields, to
scare birds with their throwing sticks and, as they grew taller,
to help to bear the barley home, to thresh and flair the ears, and
to winnow the grain from the chaff. And before they really knew
of it they were grown men, sitting themselves around the court­
yard fires of the inn, drinking barley beer as they listened to new
tales from the travelers from the northeast.
There were more travelers these days. While merchants were
just as numerous as ever, there were now frequently bands of
mercenaries passing through, and occasionally whole army units