Israel was united under her early kings; Saul or David or possibly even Solomon may have been reigning. Sargon I (2750 B.C.) of the Akkadian Sumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian history, more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world of the present day. Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. The Assyrians were already dominating the less military Babylonians. In 1100 B.C. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. But there was no permanent conquest; Assyria and Babylonia were still separate empires. In China the new Chow Dynasty was flourishing. Stonehenge in England was already a thousand years old.
The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the XXIInd Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans, South Italy, and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan predominance in Central Italy. We may begin our list of ascertainable dates with—
| B.C. | |
|---|---|
| 800. | The building of Carthage. |
| 790. | The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth Dynasty). |
| 776. | First Olympiad. |
| 753. | Rome built. |
| 745. | Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded the New Assyrian Empire. |
| 738. | Menahem, king of Israel, bought off Tiglath Pileser III. |
| 735. | Greeks settling in Sicily. |
| 722. | Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons. |
| 721. | He deported the Israelites. |
| 704. | Sennacherib. |
| 701. | His army destroyed by pestilence on its way to Egypt. |
| 680. | Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the Ethiopian XXVth Dynasty). |
| 667. | Sardanapalus. |
| 664. | Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the XXVIth Dynasty (to 610). He was assisted against Assyria by Lydian troops sent by Gyges. |
