Page 404 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

THE WOLF ON THE FOLD

H6O--IO9O B.C.

To the Assyrians living in their capital of Assur the
sea was a distant fable. In fact the Achaeans used to say that,
if you took an oar upon your shoulder and walked inland from
Aleppo, by the time you reached the Assyrians they would be
asking you why you were carrying a winnowing fan. That was
a libel, of course, for the Assyrians were well acquainted with
oars and paddles from the boats and rafts which carried men
and merchandise along the broad waterway of the Tigris.
But it was true that few Assyrians had ever seen the sea. Three
hundred fifty miles away across the mountains to the northeast,
they knew, lay the Caspian, and three hundred fifty miles
away across the mountains to the northwest lay the Black Sea.
Three hundred fifty miles away across the desert to the west
lay the Mediterranean, and even farther to the southeast lay the
Persian Gulf. Though farther away in distance, the Persian Gulf
was in many ways closer to them than the other seas—for it was
to that sea one came if one followed the great Tigris downstream,
and it was from there that the barge loads of dates came up the
river. But on the whole they were not interested in the sea; they
preferred to graze their cattle and horses and to grow their wheat
and barley on the broad plains at the foot of the mountains.
Not that they were provincial, of course. If fact, they would
protest with some heat whenever Babylonians from the south
(who, it was well known, thought Babylon the navel of the
world) made the accusation. They reminded the visitors that,
on the contrary, Assyria had kept the ancient culture of Meso-