ABOUT 1500 B.C. -- the date is only a very broad approximation
-- a profound structural modification is to be distinguished
in the history of the ancient Near East. Hitherto that history has
been governed by two great motive forces, the powers of Egypt
and Mesopotamia. Owing to the natural conditions, in the great
river valleys civilization emerges sooner, and political aggregates
are formed earlier. Then, after achieving internal unity, each of
these turns towards the other in a natural movement of expansion
and conquest. The other regions and peoples around them, less
favoured by fortune, are passive participants in events, objects and
not subjects in the determination of their outcome. Now the
picture changes: the people of the mountains forming the curving
boundary of the north-eastern section of the ancient Orient, and,
a little later, those of the desert wastes that stretch to the south
of it, intensify their centripetal movement, set up solidly founded
states, and enter into competition on equal terms with the valley
powers. These newcomers are the catalysts of history: they are
responsible for the meeting and synthesis of the opposing forces;
and so, in the last resort, it is with their arrival that the ancient
Near East assumes its well-defined position as an historical entity
beyond and above the individual national elements of which it is
constituted.

The mountain peoples who set up strong states in Western
Asia about the middle of the second millennium B.C. are three

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