Page 181 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

142 The Chariots

ress of the expansion of the Indo-European horsemen. Yet even
he could see it as a “trend.” The horse had first come to Meso­
potamia in his father’s time (it was as new as the automobile is
to us), and the Kassites would still be regarded as newcomers to
the Persian mountains, even though they may have been there
for about a hundred years. And he would know that the Kassites
were no isolated group of newcomers. He lived at the center of
a network of trade routes extending from Crete to India; and all
along that line he would hear of horse-driving newcomers in the
mountains to the north.
But Samsu-iluna was himself part of a “trend.” Just as the
battle-ax horsemen had expanded eastward and westward and
southward during this third of a millennium, so the Amorite
shepherds, of whom he was conscious of being a descendant, had
expanded eastward and westward and northward. From their
origin in the sparse grasslands of the Syrian and Transjordanian
plateau the Amorites had fanned out within the first century
and a half of the millennium to occupy the Levant coast and the
valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. Their kingdoms, still con­
sciously related, occupied the whole crescent facing the moun­
tains, from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. And if Ham­
murabi’s son believed in “historical necessity” and the irresistible
march of events—as he may well have done—there was just as
much reason for him to expect the Amorite advance to continue
and occupy the mountains as to expect the battle-ax people’s ad­
vance to continue and occupy the plains.
At the end of the first third of the millennium, in 1650 b.c.,
the issue had not been decided (in a way, it has not been de­
cided to this day). The Kassites held their enclave in central
Mesopotamia, and the Hurrians had advanced to occupy much of
north Syria; but on the other hand the Semitic kings of Assyria
held the northern valley of the Tigris between the two and had
extended their rule well into the mountains of Kurdistan.
It was an uneasy stalemate. And it is at such times, when
“trends” cancel each other out, that the deciding factor becomes
the character and action of individual men. From our vantage
point of four millennia, which we have chosen to occupy for one
brief chapter before “descending” again to attempt to see history