Page 361 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

308 Bronze and Iron [1300-1230 B.C.]

them together against the centrifugal forces that normally lead
nomad tribes, as they grow larger, to disintegrate and go each
fragment its own way. Time after time during Moses’s leader­
ship there had been crises and schisms, and it had taken all his
religious authority, court-learnt diplomacy, and cold-blooded
ruthlessness to hold the tribes together. Now the Amorites of the
hills and the Canaanites of the plains weighed the chances that
the confederacy would break up. Already three of the tribes
had settled down on the rich pasturelands of the newly con­
quered territory in Transjordan, and had openly lost interest in
invading Canaan proper.
For a while indeed it looked as though the immediate dan­
ger was past, and the established burghers of the cities of Canaan
had leisure to look at the world beyond their own doorstep. This
was admittedly little more encouraging. Their agents and branch
managers and business associates in the Hittite-colonized cities of
the Syrian and Lebanese coasts were pessimistic about the fu­
ture. Assyria had been extending its domains to a threatening
degree, and was now a very present danger. It was twenty
years since the Hittites had made peace with Egypt and had
occupied Mitanni, hoping thereby to confine Assyria within its
frontiers on the upper Tigris. But Shalmaneser of Assyria had
succeeded only a few years later in recovering the lost
province. Shalmaneser had died ten years ago, but his son
Tukulti-Ninurta had proved himself a vigorous and competent
general. He had struck again and again in yearly campaigns
against the eastern provinces of the Hittite empire, and his
latest campaign had resulted in the capture of Carchemish, a
city which had been Hittite since the time of Suppiluliumas. He
was now within striking distance of Aleppo, and in addition con
trolled, and could tax or interrupt at will, the trade passing
along the great Euphrates route between the Mediterranean and
the Persian Gulf, between the far west and the far east. How­
ever, trade still moved, and the latest reports were that the
Kassite king of Babylon, Kastilias, was prepared to dispute
Assyrian interference with the route on which Babyions liveli­
hood depended. And Babylon was still strong enough to cause
an Assyrian king to think twice. Why the Hittites had not