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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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