The Oxford History of the Biblical World Read Free Page A

Separating the eastern and western parts of the Fertile Crescent, the desert extends northward to the Euphrates and southward into the Arabian Peninsula, where its easternmost extremity is called the “Empty Quarter.” This desert, punctuated by only a few oases, was an effective barrier, forcing traders and armies to move either along the coastal plain or along the plateau to its west. The Levant thus constitutes a narrow corridor whose geographical setting made it a constant arena of contention between more powerful entities in Egypt to the southwest and Mesopotamia to the northeast.

     
    Palestine: Principal Geographic Divisions.
     
    Egypt essentially forms part of the vast desert extending from the Atlantic Ocean across northern Africa and through the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean. But Egypt contrasts with the surrounding sands because of the river that defined it in antiquity and continues to do so today. In the famous phrase of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, Egypt is the “gift of the Nile.” Spring rains in the African highlands south of Egypt swelled the Nile’s tributaries, causing an annual summer flooding of normally 7 to 8 meters (23 to 25 feet). The abundant water also carried silt in suspension, providing a regular overlay of fertile topsoil. The Nile was thus the lifeline of Egypt, providing water year-round and guaranteeing food production. More than any other factor it explains the extraordinary longevity, stability, and conservatism of Egyptian culture. A second-millennium BCE hymn to the Nile voices the blessings the river brought: “When he rises, then the land is in jubilation, then every belly is in joy, every backbone takes on laughter, and every tooth is exposed. The bringer of food, rich in provisions, creator of all good, lord of majesty, sweet of fragrance” (trans. John A. Wilson; p. 372 in James B. Pritchard, ed.,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament,
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969).
    Harnessing this annual beneficence required effort; dikes and dams, irrigation ditches and canals, and pumps of various sizes extended the watered land and made possible irrigation after the summer flood. The result was a ribbonlike oasis dramatically visible from the air today, extending some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from the First Cataract at Aswan to the Mediterranean. For the ancient Egyptians, this was the “black land,” a stark contrast to the “red land” of the virtually rainless desert.
    The pyramid, the familiar element of Egyptian architecture, found not only in the tombs of the early dynasties but also as the top of every obelisk, is the stylized representation of the primeval mound of earth left behind by the receding Nile waters. Behind the tip of the pyramid are the rays of the sun, under various names the principal deity of the ancient Egyptians, responsible not only for agricultural production but also for the desert on both sides of the Nile.
    This desert is relieved by only a few major oases. It effectively isolated Egypt from its neighbors, giving the ancient Egyptians an arrogant resistance to foreign influence and contributing to their cultural conservatism. But because neither the Nile Valley nor the desert could satisfy Egypt’s needs and desires, throughout its history Egypt launched repeated imperialistic excursions, seeking to control access to raw materials such as cedar from Lebanon and copper from Sinai, as well as agricultural commodities that Egypt’s mostly semitropical climate could not support, such as olive oil and wine.
    Far to the northeast lay Mesopotamia, a region that was home to a succession of Egypt’s rivals for control of the Levant. The term
Mesopotamia
is relatively late, first attested in Greek geographers of the Hellenistic period. But it is apt, for the region “between the rivers” forms a large geographic unit. The Euphrates to the west and the Tigris to the east united the lands through