Up to very late times the Children of Israel bore many of the characteristics of a nomadic people. It was as a nation of shepherds that they were excluded from the national life of Egypt. For long years after their departure thence they led a wandering life; and though, when they entered Palestine, they found cities ready for their occupation--for the nations which they dispossessed were for the most part settled people, builders of cities--and inhabited them, and, growing corn and wine, settled partly into an agricultural life, yet the chief wealth of the nation still probably consisted in their flocks, and the greater portion of the people still dwelt in tents. This was, perhaps, especially the case with the people of the north, for even so late as the separation, when the ten tribes determined to free themselves from the tyranny of Rehoboam, we know how Jeroboam cried out, ‘To your tents, O Israel.’ ‘So Israel departed unto their tents,’ the narrative continues. After the separation we are told that Jeroboam built several cities in his own dominions. The history of the Israelites generally may be summed up as the constant expression and the ultimate triumph of a wish to exchange their simple life and theocratic government for one which might place them more on a level with their neighbour states. At first it is their religion which they wish to change, whether for the gorgeous ritual of Egypt or for the vicious creeds of Asiatic nations; and after a while, madly forgetful of the tyrannies of a Ramses or a Tiglath-Pileser, they desire a king to reign over them in order that they may ‘take their place’ among the other Oriental monarchies. Still their first two kings have rather the character of military leaders, the monarchy not having become hereditary; the second, the warrior-poet, the greatest of Israel’s sons, was himself in the beginning no more than a shepherd. But under his son Solomon the monarchical government becomes assured, the country attains (like Rome under Augustus) the summit of its splendour and power, and then enters upon its career of slow and inevitable decline.
Now let us turn to the Japhetic people--the Aryans. It is curious that the date of three thousand years before Christ, from which we started in our glance over the world, should also be considered about that of the separation of the Aryan people. Till that time they had continued to live--since when we know not--in their early home near the Oxus and Jaxartes, and we are able by the help of comparative philology to gain some little picture of their life at the time immediately preceding the separation. We have already seen how this picture is obtained; how, taking a word out of one of the Aryan languages and making allowance for the changed form which it would wear in the other tongues, if we find the same word with the same meaning reappearing in all the languages of the family, we may fairly assume that the _thing_ for which it stands was known to the old Aryans before the separation. If, again, we find a word which runs through all the European languages, but is not found in the Sanskrit and Persian, we guess that in this case the thing was known only to the Yavanas, the first separating body of younger Aryans, from whom it will be remembered all the European branches are descended. Thus we get a very interesting list of words, and the means of drawing a picture of the life of our primæval ancestors. The earliest appearance of the Aryans is as a pastoral people, for words derived from the pastoral life have left the deepest traces on their language. Daughter, we saw, meant originally ‘the milker;’ the name of money, and of booty, in many Aryan languages is derived from that of cattle;[51] words which have since come to mean lord or prince originally meant the guardian of the cattle;[52] and others which have expanded into words for district or country, or even for the whole earth, meant at first simply the pasturage. So not without reason did we say that the king had grown out of the head of the family, and the pens of sheepfolds expanded into walled cities.