Page 356 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

princes and nomad tribes in the south. Apparently the chief
troublemakers were the confederacy of nomads calling them­
selves the children of Israel, the people who a score of years back
had left Egypt inches in advance of the chariots of pharaoh. Their

leader, Moses, regarded himself as a man with a destiny, and even
spoke of a god-given mission to carve out a country for his peo­
ple in Palestine. He was apparently a general of some ability, and

no mean organizer into the bargain. During the years since the
escape from Egypt he had trained the men of his tribes in desert
warfare, and had organized them in independent regiments after
the model which he had learnt at the Egyptian court. In addition,

he had imposed a strict code of laws on his confederacy, based,
it would seem, on the law code formulated by Hammurabi of
Babylon five hundred years ago, and had firmly established and
codified the worship of the Israelis’ unique single god. The

portable temple to this god which they carried around was re­
ported to be more magnificent than any of the shrines of any
other nomad tribe.
During these years the Israelis had been moving from graz­

ing ground to grazing ground in Sinai, and had frequently
clashed with the settled peoples of south Palestine. The Ama-
lekites in particular, southwest of the Dead Sea, had often had to

repel raids in force from the nomads, and it was agreed that what
was really required was a full-scale Egyptian punitive expedition.
But the Egyptians were tied up in the north, apparently
forever. And they had other worries. The seafaring peoples who

had enlisted in such numbers before Cadesh were becoming more
and more troublesome. They still occasionally put in on the
Palestine coast in their long ships, to do a little trading or to take

temporary service with the Egyptians. But occasionally, too,
they raided a coast village for supplies or plunder, making off be­
fore the nearest garrison woke up to the fact that they had been
there. The ships that docked at Ascalon told that in the central

Mediterranean these peoples from the wilds of Europe were be­
coming a menace. They were now sailing the seas in large fleets,
putting out from their north-coast harbors with their families and

household goods aboard, clearly intending not merely to raid but