Literature and history

history come.

Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 7, Heseid's lands and seasons.

In the last three episodes we were in Egypt. Now we're going to go north out of the Nile

Delta. The year is 744 BC. As we pass by the future site of the Suez Canal, the north of Egypt has been suffering

from generations of political turmoil.

Skirting the Sinai Peninsula were not far from the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah,

small nations beleaguered by larger neighbors.

Beyond the mountains of Lebanon and Western Syria are the massive armies of Neo-Assyria, a powerful

Mesopotamian empire.

Coming generations of Israelites and Judaism will see the influx of Assyrians and Babylonians.

And the confluence of these cultures, along with the iron wills of a few generations

of Judahites, will shape the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,

numbers, Deuteronomy, and beyond.

But that's a story for another episode.

We continue north with Cyprus to the west of us and Syria to the east, until we can see the

mountains of southern Turkey rising up out of the Mediterranean, grand even in the far distance, sage green showing trees

and patches of bare rock.

Then finally we turn west and follow the setting sun. For 200, then 400, then 500 miles we sail west and the

land changes. It's never lush, but its shrub lands and scattered woods are a world apart from the ferocious

heat of the Egyptian or Mesopotamian desert.

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