The Arabian Desert and the Semitic Nomads. Arabia is totally lacking in rivers and enjoys but a few weeks of rain in midwinter ; hence it is a desert very little of which is habitable. Its people are and have been from the remotest ages a great white race called Semites, made up of many peoples and tribes. With two of the Semitic peoples we are familiar, — the Arabs and the Hebrews (many of whose descendants dwell among us). They all spoke and still speak slightly differing dialects of the same tongue. Hebrew was one of these dialects. For ages they have moved up and down the habitable portions of the Arabian world, seeking pasturage for their flocks and herds. Such wandering herdsmen are called nomads?-

The Hebrews were all originally men of the Arabian desert,^ wandering with their flocks and herds. For two centuries, beginning about 1400 B.C., they were slowly drifting over into their final home, along the west end of the Fertile Crescent.^ When they entered it the Hebrews were nomad shep- herds  and possessed very little civilization.

The Hebrews found the Canaanites  dwelling there in flourishing towns with massive walls. The Canaanites had learned from Egypt the manufacture of manyvaluable articles of commerce ; from Babylonia the caravans had brought in bills and lists written on clay tablets and the Canaanites had thus learned to use Babylonian cuneiform writing. The Hebrews settled on the land around the towns of the Canaanites and slowly mingled with them until the two peoples, Hebrew and Canaanite, had become one. By this process the Hebrews gradually adopted the civilization of the Canaanites.

Rise of the Hebrew Kingdom (about 1025 to 930 b.c). Even after the Hebrews had set up a king the old nomad customs were still strong ; for Saul, the first king (about 1025 b.c), had no fixed home but lived in a tent. His successor, David, saw theimportance of a strong castle as the king's permanent home. He therefore seized the old Canaanite fortress of Jerusalem. From Jerusalem as his residence David extended his power far and wide and made the Hebrews a strong nation. His people never forgot his heroic deeds as a warrior nor his skill as a poet and singer. Centuries later they revered him as the author of many of their religious songs or "psalms."

 Solomon and the Division of the Kingdom (about 930 B.C.). David's son, Solomon, delighted in oriental luxury and display. To support his extravagance he weighed down the Hebrews with heavy taxes. The discontent was so great that when Solomon died the Northern tribes withdrew from the nation and set up a king of their own. Thus the Hebrew nation was divided into two kingdoms before it was a century old.

There was much hard feeling between the two Hebrew king- doms, and sometimes iighting. Israel, as we call the Northern kingdom, was rich and prosperous; its market places were filled with industry and commerce; its fertile fields produced plentiful crops. Israel displayed the wealth and success of town life. On the other hand, Judah, the Southern kingdom, was poor; her land was meager. Besides Jerusalem, the capital, she had no large and prosperous towns. Many of the people still wandered with their flocks. The South thus remained largely nomad.

These two methods of life came into conflict in many ways, but especially in religion. Every old Canaanite town had for centuries worshiped its "baal," or lord, as its local god was called. These had never died out. The Hebrew townsmen found it very natural to worship these gods of their neighbors, the Canaanite townsmen. They were thus unfaithful to their old Hebrew God Yahveh (or Jehovah).^ To some devout Hebrews,therefore, and especially to those in the South, the Canaanite gods seemed to be the protectors of the wealthy class in the towns, with their luxury and their injustice to the poor. On the other hand, Yahveh appeared to be the guardian of the simpler shep- herd life of the desert, and therefore the protector of the poor and needy.The Hebrews pronounced the name of their God '' Yahveh." The pronunciation " Jehovah " began less than six hundred years ago and was due to a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of the word "Yahveh."

Thoughtful Hebrews began to feel the injustices of town life. They saw among the rich townsmen showy clothes, fine houses,beautiful furniture, and cruel hard-heartedness toward the poor. These were things which had been unknown in the simple nomadlife of the desert. Men who chafed under such injustices of town life turned fondly back to the grand old days of their shepherdwanderings out yonder on the broad reaches of the desert, where no man " ground the faces of the poor." This point of view is pic-turesquely set forth in a simple narrative history of the Hebrew forefathers — a glorified picture of their shepherd life, as we find
it in the immortal tales of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Joseph. These tales, preserved to us in theOld Testament, are among the noblest literature which has sur- vived from the past.^ We should notice also that they are theearliest example of historical writing in prose which we have inherited froril any people.

Amos and the Prophets. Other men were not content merely to tell tales of the good old days. Amos, a simple herdsman clad in sheepskin, who came from the South, entered the towns of the wealthy North and denounced their showy clothes, fine houses, beautiful furniture, and, above all, their corrupt lives and hard-heartedness toward the poor, whose lands they seized for debt and whose labor they gained by enslaving their fellow Hebrews. By such addresses as these Amos, of course, endangeredhis life, but he thus became the first social reformer known in Asia. We apply the term "prophet" to these great Hebrew leaders, who pointed out the way toward unselfish living, broth- erly kindness, and a higher type of religion.
 While all this had been going on, the Hebrews had been learning to write.

The Hebrews borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenician and Aramean merchants (§ 6i). The rolls containing the tales of the patriarchs or the teachings of such men as Amos were the first books which the Hebrews produced — their first literature (seeAncient Times, Fig. 131). But literature remained the only art the Hebrews possessed. They had no painting, sculpture, or architecture, and if they needed these things they borrowed from their great neighbors, Egypt, Phoenicia (§ 139), Damascus, or Assyria.

1200 Bc The northern Mediterranean all along its eastern end was thus being seized by invading peoples of Indo-European blood coming in from the north. The result was that both the Egeans and their Hittite neighbors in Asia Minor were over- whelmed by the advancing Indo-European line (Fig. 27). The Hittite Empire (§ 129) was crushed, and the leading families among the .^geans fled by sea, chiefly to the south and east. In only one place were they able to land in sufficient numbers to settle and form a nation. This was on the coast of southern Phlistina, where a tribe of Cretans called Philistines founded a nation which proved very dangerous to the Hebrews. Palestine is still called after the Philistines, of which the word " Palestine" is a later form.