t was a land of wealth and
abundance, but it was also a land of popular superstition and idolatry,
and the idolatry and culture were too closely associated in the minds of
the Israelites to be torn apart. In turning their backs on the Egyptian
idols, it was necessary that they should turn them on Egyptian
civilisation as well. Hence it was that intercourse with Egypt was
forbidden, and the King of Israel who began by marrying an Egyptian
princess and importing horses from the valley of the Nile, ended by
building shrines to the gods of the heathen. Hence, too, it was that the
distinctive beliefs and practices of Egypt are ignored or disallowed.
Even the doctrine of the resurrection is passed over in silence; the
Pentateuch keeps the eyes of the Israelite fixed on the present life,
where he will meet with his punishment or reward. The doctrine of the
resurrection was part of the faith in Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and
Yahveh of Israel would have no other god beside Himself.

Moreover, the Israelites saw but little of the better side of the
Egyptians. They lived in Goshen, on the outskirts of northern Egypt,
where the native population was largely mixed with foreign elements.
When they first settled there the Pharaoh and his court were Asiatic or
of Asiatic descent. And in later days the rise of a purely native
government meant for them a bitter bondage and the murder of their
children. Between the Israelite and the Egyptian there was hostility
from the first; Joseph began by confiscating the lands of both peasant
and noble; the natives revenged themselves by reducing his kinsfolk to a
condition of serfdom, and the last act in the drama of the Exodus was
the "spoiling of the Egyptians."

CHAPTER VI

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

While the influence of Egypt upon Israel may be described as negative,
that of Babylonia was positive. Abraham was a Babylonian by birth; the
Asiatic world through which he wandered was Babylonian in civilisation
and government, and the Babylonian exile was the final turning-point in
the religious history of Judah. The Semitic Babylonians were allied in
race and language to the Hebrews; they had common ideas and common
points of view. Though Egyptian influence is markedly absent from the
Mosaic Code, we find in it old Semitic institutions and beliefs which
equally characterised Babylonia.

But the Semites were not the first occupants of Babylonia. The
civilisation of the country had been foun