    9

    chi

    cities...and took over.  They had the gall to plunk one of their own on

    the pharaoh's holy throne.  Adding insult to injury, these

    gutter-crawlers proceeded to rule Egypt for the next 107 years.

    Nearly a thousand years later, another superpower would be

    overwhelmed by barbarians.  But this time, the tale would end in

    irony.  For this superpower itself began as a barbarian horde.

    The Empire of Babylonia had racked up some astonishing

    accomplishments.  Four hundred years before the Hyksos taught the

    Egyptians the drawbacks of overconfidence, Babylonia's King

    Hammurabi had concocted a political breakthrough that revolu-

    tionized government--the idea of writing down laws.  While the rest of

    the world was mired in illiteracy, the Babylonians were using a system

    of script so simple that every corner merchant could keep lists of his

    inventory and send angry letters to tardy suppliers.6    Even  humble

    miners were able to write graffiti on the walls of the pits in which they

    worked.7

    The Babylonian military machine was a wonder to behold.  With

    its unbeatable strategies, it hacked out a massive realm.  By 600 B.C.,

    Babylonian territory stretched in a thousand-mile arc from the Persian

    Gulf to the shores of the Mediterranean.8  The Babylonians were so

    confident in their power that when they ran into resistance from the

    Hebrews, they tried something no weaker nation would have dared.

    They transported almost the entire population of the Hebrew Kingdom

    of Judah to Babylon,9 and resettled the Jews in the bustling imperial

    capital, hoping that a few years of making a living in the Babylonian

    metropolis10 would turn this Bible-reading throng into nice,

    middle-class idol-worshippers.  (It didn't work.)

    Once Babylonia had trounced every tribal people in sight, its

    major concerns became the other superpowers of the day--the

    Assyrians and Medes.  Babylonia had good reason to worry.  Each of

    these rivals was a mammoth empire famed for military prowess.  For

    example, even the captive Hebrews had commented on the Assyrians'

      cken liver.  Then they rode their chariots into Egypt's splendid

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