In ancient times, kings of the two great river-valley civilizations-Mesopotamia and Egypt-dreamed of controlling the entire Middle East. Invariably their path to imperial conquest ran north and south through the Holy Land, the narrow land bridge between Eurasia and Africa through which trade and military traffic had to flow.

Whether it involved Babylonian, Assyrian or Persian emperors from the north or Egyptian pharaohs from the south, the threat to the inhabitants of this crucial strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea was almost constant.

Throughout the course of history, rule over the Holy Land has often changed hands, the inhabitants being at times autonomous but usually subject to some great regional power.

Around 536 B.C., in the third year of the reign of Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, an angel delivered to the Hebrew prophet Daniel a prophecy of what would happen in years to come (Daniel 10:1,14). At that time Persia under Cyrus was the dominant power in the Middle East.

Daniel was told of three more prominent rulers of Persia (Daniel 11:2) who did indeed arise. The prophecy further mentioned the rise of a ruler of great dominion whose kingdom would be divided into four parts (verses 3-4). Combining this with another prophecy of Daniel, in chapter 8, we find that the anticipated ruler, foretold 200 years in advance, was Alexander the Great. In fact, after his death Alexander's Greek Empire was partitioned into four kingdoms, each ruled by one of his generals, the two major dominions being Egypt under Ptolemy to the south of Judah and Greater Syria under Seleucus to the north.

The remainder of Daniel 11 focuses on the north-south divide. It details events in the reigns of successive Seleucid and Ptolemaic rulers-referred to as the king of the North and king of the South respectively-with the Holy Land passing back and forth between them several times. Receiving the most detail is the reign of an evil Seleucid Syrian king named Antiochus Epiphanes, though he wouldn't arise until more than 350 years after Daniel prophesied!

Antiochus was a "tyrannical oppressor who did his utmost to destroy the Jewish religion altogether" (Gleason Archer, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, 1985, Vol. 7, p. 136). He instituted laws that forbade the practice of the Jewish religion under penalty of death. Those who held fast to God's commandments were often brutally murdered. As predicted by Daniel, he desecrated the temple by erecting a massive statue of the pagan god Zeus in it and offering swine on the altar (Daniel 11:31). Daniel's prophecy then shifts to New Testament times. In 65 B.C. the Romans took possession of Syria, and the Roman state thus became the kingdom of the North. Rome also later annexed Judea.

Verses 36-39 appear to show the Roman emperor proclaiming himself divine and later honoring and expanding the power of a previously unrecognized "god" in a high religious office, the former occurring early in the succession of Roman emperors and the latter commencing with Constantine the Great in the fourth century. The honoring of this false religion would progress through various resurrections of the western part of the Roman Empire until the end time.

That brings us to the next verse: "At the time of the end the king of the South shall attack him ..." (verse 40, emphasis added). But who will the northern and southern powers be at the end of the age? The western part of the Roman Empire has been revived numerous times in Europe-by Justinian, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, Charles V, Napoleon and the Hitler-Mussolini Axis. At the 1947 Treaty of Rome, which brought the European Economic Community into existence, the signers were, according to former NATO secretary-general Henri Spaak, "consciously recreating the Roman Empire once more."

Thus it appears that today's European Union, which traces its roots to that starting point, is paving the way toward the final revival of the Roman Empire that the Bible elsewhere prophesies. It will be led by a dictator of whom Antiochus Epiphanes was a forerunner.

But what about the southern ruler? Though the East Roman, or Byzantine, empire continued until 1453, Egypt was separated from this northern power during the Arab conquest of 639 to 642 and became an integral part of the Muslim world. Thus the caliph of Islam became the king of the South, eventually ruling from Baghdad over a huge empire stretching from southwest Asia all the way across North Africa, including the Holy Land.

The struggle between north and south never really abated. The Muslims were repelled by Charlemagne's grandfather from taking control of Europe in 732. The 11th through 13th centuries saw the Crusades, launched by European Christendom in the north to regain the Holy Land from the Muslim powers of the south.

From around 1250 Egypt was ruled by Mamluk sultans until the Ottoman Turks seized it in 1517. The land then remained part of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. The north-south struggle then broke out again when Napoleon attempted to militarily wrest Egypt, Palestine and Syria from the Turks. But the British aided the Turks in repelling him.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire toward the end of World War I in 1917, Egypt became a British protectorate. In 1937 it finally gained its independence. Then, in World War II, the north-south struggle erupted yet again, when Axis forces tried to take over the whole of North Africa and the Middle East. The Allies, though, prevented them from doing so.

After the war Egypt became a key member of the fledgling Arab League in 1945. In 1948 the Arab League jointly attacked the newly formed state of Israel. Later, from 1958 to 1961, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and the United Arab States were merged into one political union, the United Arab Republic. In 1965 the Arab Common Market was founded.

These events may merely represent the beginnings of an Arab confederacy prophesied in Psalm 83. Dedicated to wiping out Israel, it comprises "the tents of Edom (including Palestinians and some of the Turks) and the Ishmaelites (Arabs in general); Moab (central Jordan) and the Hagarites (north Arabians); Gebal (a mountain region of Jordan), Ammon (the environs of Amman, Jordan), and Amalek (a branch of Edomite Palestinians); Philistia (the Gaza Strip) with the inhabitants of Tyre (southern Lebanon)" (verses 5-7).

It seems, then, that the final king of the South will be the leader of a coming Muslim confederation encompassing at least several Arab nations as indicated in Daniel 11. When the king of the North invades the Holy Land, he will conquer Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia, though "Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of Ammon"-the ancient names for what is today Jordan-"shall escape from his hand" (verses 40-43).

As we've seen from Daniel 11:40, at the time of the end the king of the South will act against the northern ruler. What might provoke this action? Perhaps it will involve European overtures of peace toward the Jews (see "Just What Is the Abomination of Desolation?," page 8).

-Tom Robinson