The Fertile Crescent

The first chapter of this book was devoted to the period we sometimes refer to as “prehistory.” This means that there are no contemporary records from that period. The period itself took place before people wrote things down about it. Contemporary records are other writings that can complement the history record we have. If you were to write a biography of Winston Churchill and you used his own diary and documents that he wrote for official business, they would be considered contemporary records. If you mentioned that he began working at the Office of the Admiralty in 1911 and you used either of these sources, you would have contemporary records for the assertion. There are no lists of anything from before the Flood and no catalogs of animals on the ark. The only source of information we have is the book of Genesis and other works that parallel the account given there. For instance, the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, presents a parallel flood narrative that can be instructive if given the proper place.
However, after the Tower of Babel, we begin a new phase of history. Many history books, even those written by Christians, begin here. This is partly because writing about the period prior to this takes a lot of speculation, even if we follow the book of Genesis completely. It is difficult to know exactly when and where things took place. After the Tower of Babel, we have better knowledge of these things. We can focus our attention on a specific region and location, the Fertile Crescent.
The Fertile Crescent is known as the birthplace of civilization. Civilization is a very difficult word to define. It has typically been used to describe a city-dwelling culture. This is an unsatisfactory definition. We will not present a full-blown definition here, but we will begin to construct a definition in which civilization has to do with the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. For now, we will accept part of the traditional definition and acknowledge that civilization involves cities. Cities first spring up in the Fertile Crescent, a band of irrigated land stretching from the Persian Gulf in modern Iraq, up through the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys of Assyria and down through Palestine into Lower Egypt (see map below).
It is easy to see why civilization first began to develop in this region once we begin to understand the region. The Fertile Crescent is made up of river valleys. The basic geography of the Fertile Crescent is important to understand.
Rivers are formed when water runs down out of mountains on its way to sea. The Fertile Crescent is surrounded by mountains. To the north in Turkey and Armenia we find the Causasus and Taurus ranges. To the west we have the Zagros range. Deep in the south of central Africa the Ruwenzori range feeds the Nile River. Mountains also run through Palestine, the ranges of Lebanon and Hermon are particularly important. As water runs out of mountains it inevitably picks up sediment from the mountain and carries it down to the sea. However, as water flows rapidly it often overflows its traditional bed and lays this sediment down along its path. This sediment is often mineral-rich and suitable for growing.
The more important information though is the human side of this equation. All the sediment in the world would do nothing valuable if it were not for people. We learned from the Bible that after the Flood, Noah’s descendants traveled down the river valley and settled in the land of Shinar (cf. Gen. 11:1). Here they built the Tower of Babel and here God’s judgment came upon them. Humanity was forced to travel more and we see various groups of people develop different patterns of civilization all around the region of the Fertile Crescent.
In the immediate Persian Gulf area we find the Sumerians and the Akkadians, who we will look at carefully soon. To the east we find the Egyptians settled in the Nile River valley. Between both of these major groups we find a whole host of smaller groups filling in the lands. This first unit of this book will focus mostly on this region of the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent represents the foundational geography we will be concerned with for a while.