Next came the Romans
and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second
centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness
where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.
MOSES
THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE
JEWISH PEOPLE
SOME time during the twentieth century before our era,
a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left
its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth
of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within
the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven
away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward
looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they
might set up their tents.
This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as
we call them, the Jews. They had wandered far and wide,
and after many years of dreary peregrinations they had been
given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries they
had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted country
had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told
you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make themselves
useful to the foreign invader and had been left in the
undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a
long war of independence the Egyptians had driven the
Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had
come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank
of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the
royal roads and on the Pyramids.
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