State of the MARE MEDIVM ORIENTALIS, c.750AUC and later
The Greek states struggle against the failing rule of the Antigonids, rebuffed at PVGNA ANGRAMANIIA, and afflicted by the Illyrian flight south from the Slavic tide, the Greek states are beginning to reassert their independence. The Doric League of Southern Italia supported the overthrow of the pro-Macedonian kings in Argos, Corinth, and the Aetolian league; these states subsequently joined Sparta and their Italian colonies in the Doric Alliance, arrayed against the Illurian tide, they repulsed the invasions into their peninsula.
Meanwhile, Athens was experimenting yet again with Democracy, this time with the participation of her old colonies, but under the auspices of the Hellenised Kingdom of Pergamon, which was expanding its influence in the Aegean following the Thracian flight into her northern marches, again from the Slavic migrations. Pergamon, engaged in a new rivalry with Ptolemaic Kemet, also was expanding its territory to the east, as a counterweight to the Kemet-aligned Phrugian Kingdom of Cilicia and the Kemetic client states of the southern Anatolian mountains.
The Fertile Crescent was undergoing a regieme change, with the Grecian state of the Seleuclids gradually giving way in the east to the Iranian Parthians, from north of Iran proper. The Seleuclids would survive as a Kemetic client state in Suria for some time.
Kemet itself was still under the
rule of the Ptolemies, but that would not last long. In 780AUC, the nomes of
Upper Egypt, those least hellenised, revolted against the Ptolemies, and led
their rebellion all the way to Alexandria, where they began a siege. The
Ptolemies, fearful, fled for the relative saftey of Crete, and established
their Kemetised Greek state there. In Kemet, there was rejoicing that the
invaders were finally gone, and the leader of the rebellion,
In the East, the new clash of cultures was beginning. The resurgent Kemetic state, along with its newfound empire in Suria and coastal southern Anatolia, promised to expand even further into the Semitic lands, and particularly into the Arabian desert, where the strangely monotheistic Hebrew religion was finding an increasing number of converts. There were also the indiginous Arab nomads, feared for their prowess with horses and camels.
Of the other main powers, Pergamon was becoming a true Empire, with client states in the Aegean, among the Gallic tribes centered on Angora, and allies in the great Kingdom of Phrugian Pontus, and its allied tribes of the southern Phrugians, who were also closely aligned to the Haianin, who occupied the old Urartuan-Hurrian lands in the north, and were feared for their ferocity in war (as was testified by Xenophon in his Anabasis, before Alexander's great Empire); all these peoples were allied to Pergamon, either directly or through intermediaries, primarily the Kingdom of Pontus, which under the legacy of Mithridates the Elder, ruled the Pontic Hellenes and a greater portion of the Phrugian people (through their old marriage of the last female of Mithridates' line to the Phrugian prince Midas VII, the heir apparent to the Phrugian throne. When Midas VII inherited the Phrugian throne from his dying, a number of the southern tribes agitated, and requested to be allied tribes of the Phrugian throne, not direct subjects, which he granted (in his infinite wisdom; he also negotiated with the Thracian tribes to stop their raiding of Phrugian lands before he ascended the throne). It was through this act that he gained the allegiance of the Haianin tribes, who respected wisdom, and after his death deified him as a god of judgement, his mind was so great and his wisdom so widely respected.
Farther east was the expanding Empire of Parthia. Heir to the great persian empires of old, she ruled primarily through the old Satrapy system, except along the frontiers in the west, where royal authority was concentrated. In the northern frontiers, they were blocked by the Haianin and their Phrugo-Hellene allies, but they expanded north of that, into the lands of the Albans and assorted other tribes of the Caucasus, into the plains of the east. North of the mountains, they were bested by Alan horsemen (the Parthians had not brought their calvary over the mountains, since they did not know of the steppes to the north). They thus settled in Alban, and brought many of their steppe tribe relations there to settle, eventually replacing the Albans themselves. The Parthian Empire, thus blunted in the North, turned its attentions to the decaying rule of the Seleuclids in Mesopotamia and northern Suria. They took over the majority of Akkad, Chaldea, and Assuria, but in the west they were blunted by the might of the resurgent Kemet.
Thus was set up the main powers in the next wars of the Fertile Crescent. They continued their rivalries, but only Kemet realised the importance of the so-called 'primitive' tribes of Arabia and Numidia. Kemet envoys journeyed among the tribes extensively, noting their various habits and abilities. This they greatly capitalised on. by this point (900AUC), most of the Arab tribes followed the religion of Ibrahim, that of the Hebrew tribes under Kemet rule. sensing an opportunity here, the newly ascended pharaoh Ramses VI Warrior (a prince well schooled in the art of diplomacy, having in his youth been educated in Carthage and making peace between the Punic colonists in Iberia and the natives) made independant the Hebrews, and rebuilt their temple in Ierušalim, endearing himself to the Hebro-Canaanite-Arab tribes of Palestine and Arabia. This action was to have severe consequences for Parthia in the next war.