第 八 章 · Moses

THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Some time during the twentieth century before our era, a small and

unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left its old home, which was

situated in the land of Ur on the mouth of the Euphrates, and had tried

to find new pastures within the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They

had been driven away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward

looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they might set

up their tents.

This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as we call them,

the Jews. They had wandered far and wide, and after many years of

dreary peregrinations they had been given shelter in Egypt. For more

than five centuries they had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their

adopted country had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told

you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make themselves useful

to the foreign invader and had been left in the undisturbed possession

of their grazing fields. But after a long war of independence the

Egyptians had driven the Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then

the Jews had come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the

rank of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the royal

roads and on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were guarded by the

Egyptian soldiers it had been impossible for the Jews to escape.

[Illustration: THE WANDERINGS OF THE JEWS]

After many years of suffering they were saved from their miserable fate

by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long time had dwelt in the

desert and there had learned to appreciate the simple virtues of his

earliest ancestors, who had kept away from cities and city-life and had

refused to let themselves be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a

foreign civilisation.

Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways of the

patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian troops that were sent

after him and led his fellow tribesmen into the heart of the plain

at the foot of Mount Sinai. During his long and lonely life in the

desert, he had learned to revere the strength of the great God of the

Thunder and the Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the

shepherds depended for life and light and breath. This God, one of the

many divinities who were widely worshipped in western Asia, was called

Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses, he became the sole Master

of the Hebrew race.

One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews. It was whispered

that he had gone away carrying two tablets of rough-hewn stone. That

afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight. The darkness of

a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man. But when Moses returned,

behold! there stood engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah

had spoken unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder

and the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment,

Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master of their

Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how to live holy lives

when he bade them to follow the wise lessons of his Ten Commandments.

They followed Moses when he bade them continue their journey through

the desert. They obeyed him when he told them what to eat and drink and

what to avoid that they might keep well in the hot climate. And finally

after many years of wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant

and prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country

of the “Pilistu,” the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who had

settled along the coast after they had been driven away from their own

island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Palestine, was already inhabited

by another Semitic race, called the Canaanites. But the Jews forced

their way into the valleys and built themselves cities and constructed

a mighty temple in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace.

[Illustration: MOSES SEES THE HOLY LAND]

As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He had been

allowed to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from afar. Then he had

closed his tired eyes for all time. He had worked faithfully and hard

to please Jehovah. Not only had he guided his brethren out of foreign

slavery into the free and independent life of a new home but he had

also made the Jews the first of all nations to worship a single God.

THE PHŒNICIANS

THE PHŒNICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET

The Phœnicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, were a Semitic

tribe which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the

Mediterranean. They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre

and Sidon, and within a short time they had gained a monopoly of the

trade of the western seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and

Italy and Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar

to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever they

went, they built themselves small trading stations, which they called

colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern cities, such as Cadiz

and Marseilles.

[Illustration: THE PHŒNICIAN TRADER]

They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a good profit.

They were not troubled by a conscience. If we are to believe all their

neighbours they did not know what the words honesty or integrity meant.

They regarded a well-filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all

good citizens. Indeed they were very unpleasant people and did not have

a single friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations

one service of the greatest possible value. They gave us our alphabet.

The Phœnicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented

by the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks as a clumsy waste

of time. They were practical business men and could not spend hours

engraving two or three letters. They set to work and invented a new

system of writing which was greatly superior to the old one. They

borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number

of the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed the

pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed and they

reduced the thousands of different images to a short and handy alphabet

of twenty-two letters.

In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the Ægean Sea and

entered Greece. The Greeks added a few letters of their own and carried

the improved system to Italy. The Romans modified the figures somewhat

and in turn taught them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those

wild barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why

this book is written in characters that are of Phœnician origin and

not in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-script of the

Sumerians.