10 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



grown, ground into flour, and made into bread. Exact- 

 ness in commercial transactions is proved by the use of 

 the balance. Pledges were given. Wealth in gold and 

 silver abounded. Oil was expressed from plants or 

 trees. Golden earrings were worn by men as amulets. 

 They played on the timbrel and the harp, and " rejoiced 

 in the sound of the organ " ; and, like almost all known 

 peoples, they danced. They trapped animals with nets 

 and snares. They lived in a state of perpetual war with 

 the neighbouring peoples ; and they fought with iron 

 weapons and glittering swords and bows of steel. 

 Cities existed, and some kind of a government, with 

 the stocks as one form of punishment. Above all, the 

 true God was worshipped, though sacrifices of rams and 

 bullocks, as long afterwards in ancient Israel, revealed 

 its somewhat sanguinary character. Evidently, we 

 have in this account, drawn directly from Job, a picture 

 of a pastoral state that has long passed out of its in- 

 fancy. 



That the pastoral state just described was Semitic 

 may, perhaps, be inferred from the fact that the Palesti- 

 nian pastoralism was plainly a continuation of it. An 

 intermediate stage is revealed by the delineation of 

 pastoral life in Mesopotamia, when Jacob revisited his 

 kindred in the old land. The narrative, as Milman 

 remarks, breathes the free air of the open inland plains 

 of Central Asia, where wide spaces are still left to be 

 occupied by the flocks, herds, and camels of those opu- 

 lent pastoralists. 



A parallel and kindred development took place in 

 Palestine. There Abram, sheik or emir of a pastoral 

 clan — himself and his wife both belonging to a fair- 

 complexioncd people — possessed largo Hocks of sheep 

 and herds of oxen, asses and camels, men-servants and 

 maid-servants. So rich was he too in silver and gold 

 that he could pay down 400 pieces of silver, coined or 

 not. He was still nomadic, and, having migrated from 

 far Carrhan, where Marcus Crassus in later days was 

 defeated with a Roman army, to iVi'abia and Canaan, 



