Author Description

*Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of ancient accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading "Naram-Sin destroyed the people of Babylon, so twice Marduk summoned the forces of Gutium against him. Marduk gave his kingship to the Gutian force. The Gutians were unhappy people unaware how to revere the gods, ignorant of the right cultic practices. Utu-hengal, the fisherman, caught a fish at the edge of the sea for an offering. That fish should not be offered to another god until it had been offered to Marduk, but the Gutians took the boiled fish from his hand before it was offered, so by his august command, Marduk removed the Gutian force from the rule of his land and gave it to Utu-hengal." - The Weidner Chronicle, 6th century BCE World history is replete with many examples of nomadic barbarian hordes that swept into the kingdoms and countries of sedentary peoples, often leaving just as quickly as they had come. Sometimes, the hordes stayed in the territories they conquered and adopted the cultural attributes of the more sophisticated sedentary groups. It is important to know that barbarian invasions throughout history were usually not led by individuals or groups that hated or wanted to see the larger, often more powerful sedentary kingdoms or empires destroyed. Instead, they want a "taste" of it, and in many examples, they wanted to rule with the same style and ideology as the kingdom they had replaced. Many Sea Peoples bands of the eastern Mediterranean in the 13th century BCE entered the region as invaders and pirates, but many stayed and either assimilated into the sedentary kingdoms after their raids or even formed their own kingdoms, such as the Philistines, who were heavily influenced by the older kingdoms. The Turkic nomads, Mongols, and other nomads of the steppe in the Middle Ages are another example of this phenomenon. These groups entered Europe and the Near East as classic hordes in every sense of the word, but after hundreds of