Chapter V 

 THE TRUE POSITION OF THE HEBREWS 



One is tempted to pass immediately from Babylon 

 to Jerusalem, which in so extraordinary a manner 

 conveyed much of the Babylonian culture to the 

 modern world. We now know, however, that the 

 story is more complicated than we once supposed. 

 The civilization of Judaea began much later than the 

 Old Testament represents, and the culture of Babylon 

 and Egypt was filtering through several other civiliza- 

 tions before it became important among the Hebrews. 

 We have, for instance, mentioned certain Hittites 

 who sacked Babylon in 1,900 b.c. Here was, clearly, 

 a powerful monarchy, flourishing to the north of 

 Palestine, which it would be interesting and profitable 

 to study. We know that a great Egyptian king 

 married the daughter of a Hittite king. Unfor- 

 tunately, our scholars are still unable to decipher 

 the Hittite language, and the remains are relatively 

 scanty. From representations of them we know that 

 they were a people of strange appearance. They had 

 large noses, low foreheads, and prominent cheek- 

 bones. The men wore peaked caps and pointed 

 shoes. Their religion seems to have been a nature- 

 religion, with a great mother-earth goddess, as in 

 Crete. But we leave them a mystery — some special 

 development of the population that developed thickly, 

 as we saw, east of the Mediterranean, possibly on the 

 hills of Asia Minor. 



63 



