History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Quotes

“We have here another interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early Minoan Crete.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The country occupied by this ancient people of Van was the great table-land which now forms Armenia. The people themselves cannot be connected with the Armenians, for their language presents no characteristics of those of the Indo-European family, and it is equally certain that they are not to be traced to a Semitic origin. It is true that they employed the Assyrian method of writing their inscriptions, and their art differs only in minor points from that of the Assyrians, but in both instances this similarity of culture was directly borrowed at a time when the less civilized race, having its centre at Van, came into direct contact with the Assyrians.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Up to the time of Tukulti-Mnib no Assyrian king had actually seated himself upon the Babylonian throne. This feat was achieved by Tukulti-Mnib, and his reign thus marks an important step in the gradual advance of Assyria to the position which she later occupied as the predominant power in Western Asia.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The country to the north of Babylonia was known as Assyria at the time of the kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the fact that Babylonian troops were stationed there by Hammurabi proved that the country formed an integral part of the Babylonian empire.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“It has been supposed by Prof. Petrie that Queen Tii, the mother of Akhunaten, was of Mitannian (Armenian) origin, and that she brought the Aten religion to Egypt from her native land, and taught it to her son.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Goliath the giant was, then, a Greek; certainly he was of Cretan descent, and so a Pelasgian.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The reader will have noticed that one no longer treats the siege of Troy as a myth. To do so would be to exhibit a most uncritical mind; even the legends of King Arthur have a historic foundation, and those of the Nibelungen are still more probable.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“There is no doubt whatever that these Keftiu of the Egyptians were Cretans of the Minoan Age. They used to be considered Phoenicians, but this view was long ago exploded. They are not Semites, and that is quite enough. Neither are they Asiatics of any kind. They are purely and simply Mycenaean, or rather Minoan, Greeks of the pre-Hellenic period—Pelasgi, that is to say.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“On the western shore of this lake Amenhetep erected the "stately pleasure dome" ... This is the palace of him whom the Greeks called Memnon, who ruled Egypt when Israel was in bondage and when the dynasty of Minos reigned in Crete.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“But at the end of the XIIIth Dynasty the great invasion of the Hyksos probably occurred, and all Northern Egypt fell under the Arab sway.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The kings of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties were not buried at Thebes, as we have seen, but in the North, at Dashûr, Lisht, and near the Fayymn, with which their royal city at Itht-taui had brought them into contact.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The contrast between these splendid XIth Dynasty walls, with their great base-stones of sandstone, and the bad rough masonry of the XVIIIth Dynasty temple close by, is striking. The XVIIIth Dynasty architects and masons had degenerated considerably from the standard of the Middle Kingdom.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“During the period of the Kassite kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt, and from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was continuous and unbroken.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“One of Hammurabi's letters proves that the king regulated the calendar, and it is legitimate to suppose that he sought the advice of his astrologers as to the times when intercalary months were to be inserted.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at all, and the penalty for denying her husband was death. These regulations were modified in favour of the woman in Hammurabi's code; for under its provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to make proper provision for her maintenance.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at all, and the penalty for denying her husband was death.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“It is held by many writers that the First Dynasty of Babylon was of Arab origin.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The kings of the First Babylonian Dynasty wrote their votive inscriptions sometimes in Sumerian, sometimes in Semitic Babylonian; at other times they employed both languages for the same text, writing the record first in Sumerian and afterwards appending a Semitic translation by the side; and in the legal and commercial documents of the period the old Sumerian legal forms and phrases were retained intact. In Elam we may suppose that the use of the Sumerian and Semitic languages was the same.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“In Babylonia the Semites eventually predominated and the Sumerians as a race disappeared, but during the process of absorption the two languages were employed indiscriminately.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was an indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when a stele of victory was found bearing an inscription of Naram-Sin, the early Semitic King of Agade, who reigned about 3750 B.C.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“while the examples of their art and the representations of their form and features, which were also afforded by the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that the Sumerians were a race of strongly marked characteristics and could not be ascribed to a Semitic stock.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“M. Halévy started a theory to the effect that Sumerian was not a language at all, in the proper sense of the term, but was a cabalistic method of writing invented by the Semitic Babylonian priests.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Moreover, by means of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia Sumerian culture continued to exert its influence on other and more distant races. We have already seen how a Babylonian element probably enters into Egyptian civilization through Semitic infiltration across the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb or by way of the Isthmus of Suez, and it was Sumerian culture which these Semites brought with them. In like manner, through the Semitic Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Kassites, and the inhabitants of Palestine and Syria, and of some parts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan, all in turn experienced indirectly the influence of Sumerian civilization and continued in a greater or less degree to reproduce elements of this early culture.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“On their invasion of Babylonia the Semites fell absolutely under Sumerian influence, and, although they eventually conquered and absorbed the Sumerians, their civilization remained Sumerian to the core.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Even the King of Cyprus calls the King of Egypt his brother. But Palestine was admitted to be an Egyptian possession, and the Phoenicians were always energetic supporters of the Egyptian régime against the lawless Bedawîn tribes, who were constantly intriguing with the Kheta or Hittite power to the north against Egypt.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“At any rate, when the war of liberation, which was directed by the princes of Thebes, was finally brought to a successful conclusion and the Arabs were expelled, we find the Egyptians a much changed nation. They had adopted for war the use of horse and chariot, which they learnt from their Semitic conquerors, whose victory was in all probability largely gained by their use, and, generally speaking, they had become much more like the Western Asiatic nations. Egypt was no longer isolated, for she had been forcibly brought into contact with the foreign world, and had learned much. 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.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“We do not know whether any regular communication between Egypt, under Semitic rule, and Babylonia was now established; but we do know that during the Hyksos period there were considerable relations between Egypt and over-sea Crete, and relations with Mesopotamia may possibly have been established.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“For the First Dynasty of Babylon, to which the famous Hammurabi belonged, was very probably of Arab origin, to judge by the forms of some of the royal names. It is by no means impossible that there was some connection between these two conquests, and that both Babylonia and Egypt fell, in the period before the year 2000 B.C. before some great migratory movement from Arabia, which overran Babylonia, Palestine, and even the Egyptian Delta.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“Now it is not a little curious that almost at the same time that a nomad Arab race conquered Lower Egypt and settled in it as rulers (just as 'Amr and the followers of Islam did over two thousand years later), another Arab race may have imposed its rule upon Babylonia. Yet this may have been the case;”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

“The Kheta, or Hittites, were certainly not Semites, yet the Hyksos names are definitely Semitic. In fact it is most probable that the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were, as the classical authorities say they were, and as their name (hiku-semut or hihu-shasu,) "princes of the deserts" or ("princes of the Bedawîn") also testifies, purely and simply Arabs.”
― Leonard William King, History of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery