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Their earliest social centre was Asshur in the southern part of their territory. There, in proximity to Babylonia, they fell inevitably under the domination of the latter; but after the fall of the First Dynasty of Babylon and the subsequent decline of southern Semitic vigour, a tendency manifested itself among the northern Semites to develop their nationality about more central points.
She was no longer self-contained within her own borders. If the Semites could conquer her, so could she conquer the Semites. Armed with horse and chariot, the Egyptians went forth to battle, and their revenge was complete. All Palestine and Syria were Egyptian domains for five hundred years after the conquest by Thothmes I and III, and Ashur and Babel sent tribute to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
The people of Sheba belonged to the south Arabian stock. In both blood and language they differed considerably from the Semites of the north. Physically they bore some resemblance to the Egyptians, and it has been suggested that the Egyptians were originally emigrants from their shores.
He is "Baal," master or owner, he is "Adon," lord; in later circumstances he is "Melech," king. "El," mighty one, hero, is a more generic term; like our "God," it is applied to any divine being. These deities, it will be noticed, are all masculine; but it is not to be supposed that the Semites had no goddesses.
Religion appears in another form among the Semites in the worship of the stars among the Babylonians and ancient Arabians. This astrolatry, originally a kind of fetichism, became nature-worship, and gradually rose to the worship of the intelligence manifested to our contemplation in the movement of the heavenly luminaries.
One may wonder how the morality of those tawny Semites was enabled to graft itself upon your alien white-skinned race with such tenacity as to influence your whole national development. Well, I think I have at last puzzled it out," he added, "to my own satisfaction at least." The bishop interposed with a laugh: "I may tell you, Count, that I am not in the Episcopal mood to-day. Not at all.
"On the other hand, Christianity was rapidly diffused among the Greek and Latin peoples, and in all parts of Europe inhabited by our race: even savages and barbarians accepted more or less frankly a doctrine rejected by the Semites in whom it had its origin.
There is thus little reason to doubt that, if we regard the Fish as a Divine Life symbol, of immemorial antiquity, we shall not go very far astray. We may note here that there was a fish known to the Semites by the name of Adonis, although as the title signifies 'Lord, and is generic rather than specific, too much stress cannot be laid upon it.
The empire which pressed back the Egyptians is the last but one which we have to consider before 1000 B.C. It has long been known that the Hittites, variously called Kheta by Egyptians and Heth or Hatti by Semites and by themselves, developed into a power in westernmost Asia at least as early as the fifteenth century; but it was not until their cuneiform archives were discovered in 1907 at Boghazkeui in northern Cappadocia that the imperial nature of their power, the centre from which it was exerted, and the succession of the rulers who wielded it became clear.
These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of Northern Spain. When we first hear of them, they had been living along the shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries.
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