Now Available!
Click to order from Amazon.com.uk

Empire

Empire.  To speak the word is to fill the imagination with apparitions of grandeur and strength.  Say it aloud, and hear the very sound of power.  Empire.  The first empire of modern times arrived with Alexander the Great, ascending like a meteor to a blaze of glory, then, in a few brief years, disappearing soon after the death of its creator.  Next came the mighty Roman Empire of Caesar and Augustus that spread civilization throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

A thousand years later Genghis Khan reigned for three generations undefeated across a vast empire that encompassed nearly one hundred and eighty degrees of longitude.  Next came the far-reaching Spanish Empire that spanned the oceans around the world and colonized the new world.  The French Republic under Emperor Napoleon, like Alexander before him, blazed briefly across Europe, and was almost immediately superseded by the British Empire where the sun never set for over a hundred years.  Even in modern times the Soviet Union was, at the height of its power, a mighty empire that spanned more than half the globe and influenced events in nearly every country in the world.

In all these great undertakings, the will of one man, or perhaps just a few, ruled the fates not only of their own country, but the lands of others, usually strangers and often subjugated, all of whom exist only to provide men and resources to the ruling country, in exchange, occasionally, for the benefits of empire.

But before these great empires came to exist, there were others, smaller in scale, earlier in time, that provided the basis for the beginnings of civilization to evolve.  These early empires brought stability out of chaos and barbarism, while providing men the opportunity to learn both the rules on how to govern themselves and the necessary skills to lift him out of a rural existence. 

These first empires provided the protection needed for farmers to create villages, then cities, and defended these cities against the incessant attacks by barbarian outsiders.  Now we’ve reached much further back in time and smaller in scope.  The Egyptian Empire.  The Assyrian Empire.  The ancient Sumerians.  Finally we reach history’s very first recorded empire, the Empire of Akkad, far back in the Age of Bronze.  With the establishment of this Akkadian Empire, the basic rules for empire-building were developed: first consolidate, then preserve and protect, and finally, administer.

Five thousand years ago, there was no word for ‘empire’ because none existed, and few could even imagine such a concept.  There was only the farm, the small village, and the migrating nomads, themselves descendants of the first hunter-gatherers.

Even the rules of empire, taken for granted now, were difficult to learn, and so that first empire was slow to be born, a complex combination of many new and innovative constructs.  The mysterious secrets of bronze weapons had to be discovered, understood, and then used to revolutionize warfare.  Bronze had other uses as well.  Bronze also changed agriculture, husbandry, and craftsmanship.

At roughly the same time, breakthroughs in farming enabled farms to grow in size, and become fruitful enough to support an extended family.  That led to the first small villages, weak and vulnerable, but still a potent place where men could work together and share skills and resources.  Gold entered the scene, and gave mankind a way to store and transport value.  The horse supplied the muscle to support these new technologies.  A small creature in the wild, it had been bred into a larger and more powerful animal capable of carrying a man and his weapons. 

Finally there came the innovation and evolution of the bow.  No longer the weak weapon of antiquity, scarcely able to bring down a bird or a rabbit.  Stronger now, curved and reinforced, it possessed newfound strength and accuracy, and for the first time in history the weaker man could learn a skill that gave him equality with his physically stronger neighbors or attackers. 

But the most important skill of empire was the knowledge of how to unite men, not only in warfare but in communal living.  The power of men was multiplied enormously when they learned to live together in relative peace.  The village became the city, and the city created the technology of civilization.

Before civilization could begin its slow rise, the first empire had to be born.  It was a long, painful birth, one that lasted many hundreds of years, before the Empire of Akkad could spread from a single small village in the Land Between The Rivers, and extend its reach to the Mediterranean Sea in the west and the Indian Ocean in the south. 

Those very first steps toward that empire took place on the banks of the Tigris River, more than six hundred years earlier.  There was no road to guide wayfarers, not even a dirt track between the tiny villages and isolated farms.  The countryside was mostly empty, inhabited only by fierce hunters constantly on the move, as they migrated from place to place in search of food. 

But time was moving faster now, and mankind was restless, searching for a better way of life.  Conditions were nearly ripe, and now the three requirements needed to begin the journey toward empire and civilization were present: need, determination, and intelligence.  Only the right man was missing to begin the progression.  At last a man appeared, but he had only two of the necessary requirements.  Fortunately, there was another, and she possessed the missing element.  Together, and with luck, they would see the dawn of empire begin.

Dawn of Empire  -  Original Preface

   It was a time of great change, though none knew it.  It was a time when change came slowly, and not always for the better.  Most of all, it was a time when a few men could change the world, though not in the ways they imagined.  A time for mankind to take a great step forward, or fall back toward the past, as they had done for thousands of years.   And, even as it is today, it was a time when one man might change himself into something better, by first unlocking the mysteries within his soul, and then the mysteries of life itself. 

   It was the start of the Age of Bronze, the gleaming, golden metal forged in the hot fires of melting tin and copper.  The nomadic life of the hunter-gatherer had reigned supreme since the beginning of the stone age.  With the discovery of bronze came new and better tools, as well as strong, hard-edged weapons – and new ways of thinking.  Now the path that mankind had followed for thousands of years was about to shift.  And none would be more surprised at the coming change than those that began it. 

   Against this new bronze background, the mysteries of life were simmering in the cauldron, mixing together, changing the pattern of life itself.  The secrets of agriculture mixed with the magic of metallurgy, and both blended together on the back of the horse, itself bred from a small beast of burden into an animal large and powerful enough to carry a man and his weapons.  These new ingredients seasoned one of the oldest and deadliest weapons of mankind, a weapon so ancient that its discovery is lost in the beginnings of life –  the bow and arrow.  The bow became a powerful weapon that could kill over great distances, even as it closed the gap between the weaker man and his stronger brethren.  Finally, a new weapon was born – the sword.  When first made of copper, it was a fragile and unreliable weapon.  But its bronze offspring was heavier and kept a hard, sharp edge.  In only a few generations, the bronze sword completely replaced the club or mace, mankind’s weapon of choice for thousands of years. 

   Now only one more genesis was needed to change the world forever.  The birth of this new element would be difficult, and its labor pains would last thousands of years.  The new infant would require a special place and time to appear, a plot of earth blessed by the gods but inhabited by simple, mortal men.  Time and again, this new child had died, stillborn.  But the day finally came, and like any newborn infant, it came into the world covered with blood.

  Someone, somewhere, built the first wall around a village, a wall strong enough to withstand the raids and migrations of both the hunters and marauders.   A wall that not only changed a crude village into a true city, but changed civilization for all time.  That first city was built on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, and was called, in the beginning, Orak.