Page 411 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

348 Bronze and Iron [1160-1090 B.C.]

Individually, of course, each of the young men born in Assur
in 1160 b.c. experienced personal problems and adventures much
more immediately exciting than the reports of Babylonian vic­
tories and defeats. They settled into their place in the life of the
community, growing richer or poorer, becoming owners of slaves
or traders in slaves or even, via debt and bankrupcy, slaves them­
selves (though there were not many slaves in Assur in these
peaceful times, and those there were were mainly foreigners,
Lullubi or Urartians raided or bought from the hill country to the
east and north). In these years the young men lounged pur­
posefully of an evening at the corners of the narrow city streets or
at the open windows of the beerhouses, their eyes following the
slim dark-eyed girls who passed along the streets bearing the
water jars on their heads. And sooner or later, after considerable
bargaining over the bride price between the fathers, a marriage
would be solemnized before the priests of Assur, the city god, and
another girl would join the ranks of the matrons, for the rest of her
life going veiled along the streets.
Outside the city the small holdings of the free farmers and
the estates of the nobles were once more flourishing, with the
crops stretching green as far as the eye could see, and the new
generation of fruit trees already bearing well. To the north, on
the rolling hills, grazed the flocks of sheep and the herds of cattle
and horses, watched by herdsmen armed with spear and bow
against wolves and lions and raiding hillmen. Even trade began to
pick up, and small well-guarded caravans of pack horses and
oxcarts and ass trains followed once more the age-old route along
the foot of the northern mountains towards Carchemish and the
Mediterranean. This route was still comparatively safe, though
no longer as it had been in the long-gone days when the empires
of the Mitanni and the Hittites had maintained their garrisons
along the road, taking their tolls from the merchants, true enough,
but keeping the ways free from more rapacious brigands.
The southern route, from Babylon along the Euphrates to the
Upper Sea, was, on the contrary, almost unusable these days.
Within the last generation the desert raiders had increased in
numbers and boldness beyond belief. They called themselves
Aramaeans, and they came from the deserts of Arabia, bringing