Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/79

Western Asia 43 fondly back to the grand old days of their shepherd wanderings on the broad reaches of the desert, where no man "ground the faces of the poor." It was a gifted Hebrew 1 of this kind who put together a simple narrative history of the Hebrew fore- fathers a glorified picture of their shepherd life. He told the immortal tales of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Joseph. These, preserved to us in the Old Testa- ment, are among the noblest literature which has survived from the past. 61. Amos and the Prophets. Amos, a simple herdsman clad in sheepskin, who came from the South, entered the towns of the wealthy North and denounced the rich for their sinful lives and disregard of the poor, whose lands they seized for debt and whose labor they profited from by enslaving them. By such bold talk Amos endangered his life, but he may be regarded as the first social reformer known in Asia. We apply the term "prophet" to the Hebrew leaders who, like Amos, exhorted people to unsel- fish living, brotherly kindness, and higher conceptions of God and religion. 62. The Hebrews learn to Write. The peoples of Western Asia were now abandoning the clay tablets so long in use ( 35, 45) and beginning to write on papyrus with Egyptian pen and ink. The Hebrews borrowed an alphabet from their neighbors (84) and began to reduce their traditions, laws, and religious ideas to writing. The rolls containing the unknown historian's tales of the patriarchs or the teachings of such men as Amos were the first books which the Hebrews produced. But literature remained the only art the Hebrews possessed. They had no painting, sculpture, or architecture, and if they needed these things they borrowed from their great neighbors, Egypt, Phoenicia, Damascus, or Assyria. 63. Destruction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria (722 B.C.). As Amos had foreseen, the Assyrians crushed the 1 Unfortunately we do not know his name, for the Hebrews themselves early lost all knowledge of his identity and finally associated the surviving fragments of his work with the name of Moses.