THE TEUE POSITION OF THE HEBREWS 67 



world by fire and a general moral judgment of all 

 mankind. 



We must at the same time realize how each of 

 these developing cultures spread over the world. 

 Twenty or thirty peoples, the descendants of the 

 Neolithic population in the Eastern Mediterranean 

 district, were during this period developing in a 

 region which hardly measured a thousand miles in 

 each direction. As each of them became imperialistic, 

 it easily covered the whole region. Egypt's cultural 

 " sphere of influence " extended from Crete to Nubia, 

 and westward to Mesopotamia — in the end to Persia. 

 The Babylonian power spread at one time from Egypt 

 to the Persian Gulf. The Hittites at another time 

 covered half the region. The Persians sent armies 

 and merchants over the whole of it, and even into 

 Europe. The Phoenicians succeeded the Cretans on 

 the sea, and passed even beyond the gates of the 

 Mediterranean. 



Palestine was in the very heart of this stirring 

 region, but its circumstances were unfavourable. It 

 was a narrow strip of only moderately good land — far 

 inferior to Mesopotamia and Egypt — between the 

 mountains and the sea. Beyond the mountains was 

 the Arabian desert. To the south was the desert 

 that cut it off from Egypt. Any one who remembers 

 the tremendous difficulties of the British advance 

 upon Palestine from Egypt in 1918 will realize what 

 the task would have been three thousand years ago. 



Yet shipping was developed so early that civiliza- 

 tion began in Palestine, under Egyptian and Cretan 

 influence, in the third or second millennium before 

 Christ. The Phoenicians and Canaanites, who sus- 

 tained what culture there was, are generally believed 



