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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Man, by Hendrik Willem van Loon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ancient Man
+       The Beginning of Civilizations
+
+Author: Hendrik Willem van Loon
+
+Posting Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #9991]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: November 6, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT MAN
+
+THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATIONS
+
+BY HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION To HANSJE AND WILLEM.
+
+My darling boys,
+
+You are twelve and eight years old. Soon you will be grown up. You will
+leave home and begin your own lives. I have been thinking about that
+day, wondering what I could do to help you. At last, I have had an idea.
+The best compass is a thorough understanding of the growth and the
+experience of the human race. Why should I not write a special
+history for you?
+
+So I took my faithful Corona and five bottles of ink and a box of
+matches and a bale of paper and began to work upon the first volume. If
+all goes well there will be eight more and they will tell you what you
+ought to know of the last six thousand years.
+
+But before you start to read let me explain what I intend to do.
+
+I am not going to present you with a textbook. Neither will it be a
+volume of pictures. It will not even be a regular history in the
+accepted sense of the word.
+
+I shall just take both of you by the hand and together we shall wander
+forth to explore the intricate wilderness of the bygone ages.
+
+I shall show you mysterious rivers which seem to come from nowhere and
+which are doomed to reach no ultimate destination.
+
+I shall bring you close to dangerous abysses, hidden carefully beneath a
+thick overgrowth of pleasant but deceiving romance.
+
+Here and there we shall leave the beaten track to scale a solitary and
+lonely peak, towering high above the surrounding country.
+
+Unless we are very lucky we shall sometimes lose ourselves in a sudden
+and dense fog of ignorance.
+
+Wherever we go we must carry our warm cloak of human sympathy and
+understanding for vast tracts of land will prove to be a sterile
+desert--swept by icy storms of popular prejudice and personal greed and
+unless we come well prepared we shall forsake our faith in humanity and
+that, dear boys, would be the worst thing that could happen to any
+of us.
+
+I shall not pretend to be an infallible guide. Whenever you have a
+chance, take counsel with other travelers who have passed along the same
+route before. Compare their observations with mine and if this leads you
+to different conclusions, I shall certainly not be angry with you.
+
+I have never preached to you in times gone by.
+
+I am not going to preach to you today.
+
+You know what the world expects of you--that you shall do your share of
+the common task and shall do it bravely and cheerfully.
+
+If these books can help you, so much the better.
+
+And with all my love I dedicate these histories to you and to the boys
+and girls who shall keep you company on the voyage through life.
+
+HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.
+
+_Barrow Street, New York City. May 8, xx_.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.    PREHISTORIC MAN
+II.   THE WORLD GROWS COLD
+III.  END OF THE STONE AGE
+IV.   THE EARLIEST SCHOOL OF THE HUMAN RACE
+V.    THE KEY OF STONE
+VI.   THE LAND OF THE LIVING AND THE LAND OF THE DEAD
+VII.  THE MAKING OF A STATE
+VIII. THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT
+IX.   MESOPOTAMIA--THE COUNTRY BETWEEN THE RIVERS
+X.    THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS
+XI.   ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA--THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT
+XII.  THE STORY OF MOSES
+XIII. JERUSALEM--THE CITY OF THE LAW
+XIV.  DAMASCUS--THE CITY OF TRADE
+XV.   THE PHOENICIANS WHO SAILED BEYOND THE HORIZON
+XVI.  THE ALPHABET FOLLOWS THE TRADE
+XVII. THE END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
+
+
+
+PREHISTORIC MAN
+
+It took Columbus more than four weeks to sail from Spain to the West
+Indian Islands. We on the other hand cross the ocean in sixteen hours in
+a flying machine.
+
+Five hundred years ago, three or four years were necessary to copy a
+book by hand. We possess linotype machines and rotary presses and we can
+print a new book in a couple of days.
+
+We understand a great deal about anatomy and chemistry and mineralogy
+and we are familiar with a thousand different branches of science of
+which the very name was unknown to the people of the past.
+
+In one respect, however, we are quite as ignorant as the most primitive
+of men--we do not know where we came from. We do not know how or why or
+when the human race began its career upon this Earth. With a million
+facts at our disposal we are still obliged to follow the example of the
+fairy-stories and begin in the old way:
+
+  "Once upon a time there was a man."
+
+This man lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
+
+What did he look like?
+
+We do not know. We never saw his picture. Deep in the clay of an ancient
+soil we have sometimes found a few pieces of his skeleton. They were
+hidden amidst masses of bones of animals that have long since
+disappeared from the face of the earth. We have taken these bones and
+they allow us to reconstruct the strange creature who happens to be
+our ancestor.
+
+The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and
+unattractive mammal. He was quite small. The heat of the sun and the
+biting wind of the cold winter had colored his skin a dark brown. His
+head and most of his body were covered with long hair. He had very thin
+but strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. His
+forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which
+uses its teeth both as fork and knife.
+
+[Illustration: PREHISTORIC MAN.]
+
+He wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the
+rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke and
+their lava.
+
+He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests.
+
+When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of
+plants or he stole the eggs from the nest of an angry bird.
+
+Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he managed to catch a
+sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit These he would eat raw,
+for prehistoric man did not know that food could be cooked.
+
+His teeth were large and looked like the teeth of many of our own
+animals.
+
+During the hours of day this primitive human being went about in search
+of food for himself and his wife and his young.
+
+At night, frightened by the noise of the beasts, who were in search of
+prey, he would creep into a hollow tree or he would hide himself behind
+a few big boulders, covered with moss and great, big spiders.
+
+In summer he was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun.
+
+During the winter he froze with cold.
+
+When he hurt himself (and hunting animals are for ever breaking their
+bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take care of him.
+
+He had learned how to make certain sounds to warn his fellow-beings
+whenever danger threatened. In this he resembled a dog who barks when a
+stranger approaches. In many other respects he was far less attractive
+than a well-bred house pet.
+
+Altogether, early man was a miserable creature who lived in a world of
+fright and hunger, who was surrounded by a thousand enemies and who was
+for ever haunted by the vision of friends and relatives who had been
+eaten up by wolves and bears and the terrible sabre-toothed tiger.
+
+Of the earliest history of this man we know nothing. He had no tools and
+he built no homes. He lived and died and left no traces of his
+existence. We keep track of him through his bones and they tell us that
+he lived more than two thousand centuries ago.
+
+The rest is darkness.
+
+Until we reach the time of the famous Stone Age, when man learned the
+first rudimentary principles of what we call civilization.
+
+Of this Stone Age I must tell you in some detail.
+
+
+
+THE WORLD GROWS COLD
+
+Something was the matter with the weather.
+
+Early man did not know what "time" meant.
+
+He kept no records of birthdays and wedding-anniversaries or the hour of
+death.
+
+He had no idea of days or weeks or years.
+
+When the sun arose in the morning he did not say "Behold another day."
+He said "It is Light" and he used the rays of the early sun to gather
+food for his family.
+
+When it grew dark, he returned to his wife and children, gave them part
+of the day's catch (some berries and a few birds), stuffed himself full
+with raw meat and went to sleep.
+
+In a very general way he kept track of the seasons. Long experience had
+taught him that the cold Winter was invariably followed by the mild
+Spring--that Spring grew into the hot Summer when fruits ripened and the
+wild ears of corn were ready to be plucked and eaten. The Summer ended
+when gusts of wind swept the leaves from the trees and when a number of
+animals crept into their holes to make ready for the long
+hibernal sleep.
+
+[Illustration: THE GLACIAL PERIOD.]
+
+It had always been that way. Early man accepted these useful changes of
+cold and warm but asked no questions. He lived and that was enough to
+satisfy him.
+
+Suddenly, however, something happened that worried him greatly.
+
+The warm days of Summer had come very late. The fruits had not ripened
+at all. The tops of the mountains which used to be covered with grass
+lay deeply hidden under a heavy burden of snow.
+
+Then one morning quite a number of wild people, different from the other
+inhabitants of his valley had approached from the region of the
+high peaks.
+
+They muttered sounds which no one could understand. They looked lean and
+appeared to be starving. Hunger and cold seemed to have driven them from
+their former homes.
+
+There was not enough food in the valley for both the old inhabitants and
+the newcomers. When they tried to stay more than a few days there was a
+terrible fight and whole families were killed. The others fled into the
+woods and were not seen again.
+
+For a long time nothing occurred of any importance.
+
+But all the while, the days grew shorter and the nights were colder than
+they ought to have been.
+
+Finally, in a gap between the two high hills, there appeared a tiny
+speck of greenish ice. It increased in size as the years went by. Very
+slowly a gigantic glacier was sliding down the slopes of the mountain
+ridge. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With the noise of
+a dozen thunderstorms they suddenly tumbled among the frightened people
+and killed them while they slept. Century-old trees were crushed into
+kindling wood by the high walls of ice that knew of no mercy to either
+man or beast.
+
+At last, it began to snow.
+
+It snowed for months and months and months.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAVE-MAN.]
+
+All the plants died. The animals fled in search of the southern sun. The
+valley became uninhabitable. Man hoisted his children upon his back,
+took the few pieces of stone which he had used as a weapon and went
+forth to find a new home.
+
+Why the world should have grown cold at that particular moment, we do
+not know. We can not even guess at the cause.
+
+The gradual lowering of the temperature, however, made a great
+difference to the human race.
+
+For a time it looked as if every one would die. But in the end this
+period of suffering proved a real blessing. It killed all the weaker
+people and forced the survivors to sharpen their wits lest they
+perish, too.
+
+Placed before the choice of hard thinking or quick dying the same brain
+that had first turned a stone into a hatchet now solved difficulties
+which had never faced the older generations.
+
+In the first place, there was the question of clothing. It had grown
+much too cold to do without some sort of artificial covering. Bears and
+bisons and other animals who live in northern regions are protected
+against snow and ice by a heavy coat of fur. Man possessed no such coat.
+His skin was very delicate and he suffered greatly.
+
+He solved his problem in a very simple fashion. He dug a hole and he
+covered it with branches and leaves and a little grass. A bear came by
+and fell into this artificial cave. Man waited until the creature was
+weak from lack of food and then killed him with many blows of a big
+stone. With a sharp piece of flint he cut the fur of the animal's back.
+Then he dried it in the sparse rays of the sun, put it around his own
+shoulders and enjoyed the same warmth that had formerly kept the bear
+happy and comfortable.
+
+Then there was the housing problem. Many animals were in the habit of
+sleeping in a dark cave. Man followed their example and searched until
+he found an empty grotto. He shared it with bats and all sorts of
+creeping insects but this he did not mind. His new home kept him warm
+and that was enough.
+
+Often, during a thunderstorm a tree had been hit by lightning. Sometimes
+the entire forest had been set on fire. Man had seen these forest-fires.
+When he had come too near he had been driven away by the heat. He now
+remembered that fire gave warmth.
+
+Thus far, fire had been an enemy.
+
+Now it became a friend.
+
+A dead tree, dragged into a cave and lighted by means of smouldering
+branches from a burning forest filled the room with unusual but very
+pleasant heat.
+
+Perhaps you will laugh. All these things seem so very simple. They are
+very simple to us because some one, ages and ages ago, was clever enough
+to think of them. But the first cave that was made comfortable by the
+fire of an old log attracted more attention than the first house that
+ever was lighted by electricity.
+
+When at last, a specially brilliant fellow hit upon the idea of throwing
+raw meat into the hot ashes before eating it, he added something to the
+sum total of human knowledge which made the cave-man feel that the
+height of civilization had been reached.
+
+Nowadays, when we hear of another marvelous invention we are very proud.
+
+"What more," we ask, "can the human brain accomplish?"
+
+And we smile contentedly for we live in the most remarkable of all ages
+and no one has ever performed such miracles as our engineers and
+our chemists.
+
+Forty thousand years ago when the world was on the point of freezing to
+death, an unkempt and unwashed cave-man, pulling the feathers out of a
+half-dead chicken with the help of his brown fingers and his big white
+teeth--throwing the feathers and the bones upon the same floor that
+served him and his family as a bed, felt just as happy and just as proud
+when he was taught how the hot cinders of a fire would change raw meat
+into a delicious meal.
+
+"What a wonderful age," he would exclaim and he would lie down amidst
+the decaying skeletons of the animals which had served him as his dinner
+and he would dream of his own perfection while bats, as large as small
+dogs, flew restlessly through the cave and while rats, as big as small
+cats, rummaged among the left overs.
+
+Quite often the cave gave way to the pressure of the surrounding rock.
+Then man was hurled amidst the bones of his own victims.
+
+Thousands of years later the anthropologist (ask your father what that
+means) comes along with his little spade and his wheelbarrow.
+
+He digs and he digs and at last he uncovers this age-old tragedy and
+makes it possible for me to tell you all about it.
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE STONE AGE
+
+The struggle to keep alive during the cold period was terrible. Many
+races of men and animals, whose bones we have found, disappeared from
+the face of the earth.
+
+Whole tribes and clans were wiped out by hunger and cold and want.
+First the children would die and then the parents. The old people were
+left to the mercy of the wild animals who hastened to occupy the
+undefended cave. Until another change in the climate or the slowly
+decreasing moisture of the air made life impossible for these wild
+invaders and forced them to find a retreat in the heart of the African
+jungle where they have lived ever since.
+
+This part of my history is very difficult because the changes which I
+must describe were so very slow and so very gradual.
+
+Nature is never in a hurry. She has all eternity in which to accomplish
+her task and she can afford to bring about the necessary changes with
+deliberate care.
+
+Prehistoric man lived through at least four definite eras when the ice
+descended far down into the valleys and covered the greater part of the
+European continent.
+
+The last one of these periods came to an end almost thirty thousand
+years ago.
+
+From that moment on man left behind him concrete evidence of his
+existence in the form of tools and arms and pictures and in a general
+way we can say that history begins when the last cold period had become
+a thing of the past.
+
+The endless struggle for life had taught the survivors many things.
+
+Stone and wooden implements had become as common as steel tools are in
+our own days.
+
+Gradually the rudely chipped flint axe had been replaced by one of
+polished flint which was infinitely more practical. It allowed man to
+attack many animals at whose mercy he had been since the beginning
+of time.
+
+The mammoth was no longer seen.
+
+The musk-ox had retreated to the polar circle.
+
+The tiger had left Europe for good.
+
+The cave-bear no longer ate little children.
+
+The powerful brain of the weakest and most helpless of all living
+creatures--Man--had devised such terrible instruments of destruction
+that he was now the master of all the other animals.
+
+The first great victory over Nature had been gained but many others were
+to follow.
+
+Equipped with a full set of tools both for hunting and fishing, the
+cave-dweller looked for new living quarters.
+
+The shores of rivers and lakes offered the best opportunity for a
+regular livelihood.
+
+The old caves were deserted and the human race moved toward the water.
+
+Now that man could handle heavy axes, the felling of trees no longer
+offered any great difficulties.
+
+For countless ages birds had been constructing comfortable houses out of
+chips of wood and grass amidst the branches of trees.
+
+Man followed their example.
+
+He, too, built himself a nest and called it his "home."
+
+He did not, except in a few parts of Asia, take to the trees which were
+a bit too small and unsteady for his purpose.
+
+He cut down a number of logs. These he drove firmly into the soft bottom
+of a shallow lake. On top of them he constructed a wooden platform and
+upon this platform he erected his first wooden house.
+
+It offered many advantages over the old cave.
+
+No wild animals could break into it and robbers could not enter it. The
+lake itself was an inexhaustible store-room containing an endless supply
+of fresh fish.
+
+These houses built on piles were much healthier than the old caves and
+they gave the children a chance to grow up into strong men. The
+population increased steadily and man began to occupy vast tracts of
+wilderness which had been unoccupied since the beginning of time.
+
+And all the time new inventions were made which made life more
+comfortable and less dangerous.
+
+Often enough these innovations were not due to the cleverness of man's
+brain.
+
+He simply copied the animals.
+
+You know of course that there are a large number of beasties who prepare
+for the long winter by burying nuts and acorns and other food which is
+abundant during the summer. Just think of the squirrels who are for ever
+filling their larder in gardens and parks with supplies for the winter
+and the early spring.
+
+Early man, less intelligent in many respects than the squirrels, had not
+known how to preserve anything for the future.
+
+He ate until his hunger was stilled, but what he did not need right away
+he allowed to rot. As a result he often went without his meals during
+the cold period and many of his children died from hunger and want.
+
+Until he followed the example of the animals and prepared for the future
+by laying in sufficient stores when the harvest had been good and there
+was an abundance of wheat and grain.
+
+We do not know which genius first discovered the use of pottery but he
+deserves a statue.
+
+Very likely it was a woman who had got tired of the eternal chores of
+the kitchen and wanted to make her household duties a little less
+exacting. She noticed that chunks of clay, when exposed to the rays of
+the sun, got baked into a hard substance.
+
+If a flat piece of clay could be transformed into a brick, a slightly
+curved piece of the same material must produce a similar result.
+
+And behold, the brick grew into a piece of pottery and the human race
+was able to save for the day of tomorrow.
+
+If you think that my praises of this invention are exaggerated, look at
+the breakfast table and see what pottery, in one form and the other,
+means in your own life.
+
+Your oatmeal is served in a dish.
+
+The cream is served from a pitcher.
+
+Your eggs are carried from the kitchen to the dining-room table on a
+plate.
+
+Your milk is brought to you in a china mug. Then go to the store-room
+(if there is no store-room in your house go to the nearest Delicatessen
+store). You will see how all the things which we are supposed to eat
+tomorrow and next week and next year have been put away in jars and cans
+and other artificial containers which Nature did not provide for us but
+which man was forced to invent and perfect before he could be assured of
+his regular meals all the year around.
+
+Even a gas-tank is nothing but a large pitcher, made of iron because
+iron does not break as easily as china and is less porous than clay. So
+are barrels and bottles and pots and pans. They all serve the same
+purpose--of providing us in the future with those things of which we
+happen to have an abundance at the present moment.
+
+And because he could preserve eatable things for the day of need, man
+began to raise vegetables and grain and saved the surplus for future
+consumption.
+
+This explains why, during the late Stone Age, we find the first
+wheat-fields and the first gardens, grouped around the settlements of
+the early pile-dwellers.
+
+It also tells us why man gave up his habit of wandering and settled down
+in one fixed spot where he raised his children until the day of his
+death when he was decently buried among his own people.
+
+[Illustration: PREHISTORIC MAN IS DISCOVERED.]
+
+It is safe to say that these earliest ancestors of ours would have given
+up the ways of savages of their own accord if they had been left to
+their fate.
+
+But suddenly there was an end to their isolation.
+
+Prehistoric man was discovered.
+
+A traveler from the unknown south-land who had dared to cross the
+turbulent sea and the forbidding mountain passes had found his way to
+the wild people of Central Europe.
+
+On his back he carried a pack.
+
+When he had spread his wares before the gaping curiosity of the
+bewildered natives, their eyes beheld wonders of which their minds had
+never dared to dream.
+
+They saw bronze hammers and axes and tools made of iron and helmets made
+of copper and beautiful ornaments consisting of a strangely colored
+substance which the foreign visitor called "glass."
+
+And overnight the Age of Stone came to an end.
+
+It was replaced by a new civilization which had discarded wooden and
+stone implements centuries before and had laid the foundations for that
+"Age of Metal" which has endured until our own day.
+
+It is of this new civilization that I shall tell you in the rest of my
+book and if you do not mind, we shall leave the northern continent for a
+couple of thousand years and pay a visit to Egypt and to western Asia.
+
+"But," you will say, "this is not fair. You promise to tell us about
+prehistoric man and then, just when the story is going to be
+interesting, you close the chapter and you jump to another part of the
+world and we must jump with you whether we like it or not."
+
+I know. It does not seem the right thing to do.
+
+Unfortunately, history is not at all like mathematics.
+
+When you solve a sum you go from "a" to "b" and from "b" to "c" and from
+"c" to "d" and so on.
+
+History on the other hand jumps from "a" to "z" and then back to "f" and
+next to "m" without any apparent respect for neatness and order.
+
+There is a good reason for this.
+
+History is not exactly a science.
+
+It tells the story of the human race and most people, however much we
+may try to change their nature, refuse to behave with the regularity and
+the precision of the tables of multiplication.
+
+No two men ever do precisely the same thing.
+
+No two human brains ever reach exactly the same conclusion.
+
+You will notice that for yourself when you grow up.
+
+It was not different a few hundred centuries ago.
+
+Prehistoric man, as I just told you, was on a fair way to progress.
+
+He had managed to survive the ice and the snow and the wild animals and
+that in itself, was a great deal.
+
+He had invented many useful things.
+
+Suddenly, however, other people in a different part of the world entered
+the race.
+
+They rushed forward at a terrible speed and within a very short space of
+time they reached a height of civilization which had never before been
+seen upon our planet. Then they set forth to teach what they knew to the
+others who had been less intelligent than themselves.
+
+Now that I have explained this to you, does it not seem just to give the
+Egyptians and the people of western Asia their full share of the
+chapters of this book?
+
+
+
+THE EARLIEST SCHOOL OF THE HUMAN RACE
+
+We are the children of a practical age.
+
+We travel from place to place in our own little locomotives which we
+call automobiles.
+
+When we wish to speak to a friend whose home is a thousand miles away,
+we say "Hello" into a rubber tube and ask for a certain telephone number
+in Chicago.
+
+At night when the room grows dark we push a button and there is light.
+
+If we happen to be cold we push another button and the electric stove
+spreads its pleasant glow through our study.
+
+On the other hand in summer when it is hot the same electric current
+will start a small artificial storm (an electric fan) which keeps us
+cool and comfortable.
+
+We seem to be the masters of all the forces of nature and we make them
+work for us as if they were our very obedient slaves.
+
+But do not forget one thing when you pride yourself upon our splendid
+achievements.
+
+We have constructed the edifice of our modern civilization upon the
+fundament of wisdom that had been built at great pains by the people of
+the ancient world.
+
+Do not be afraid of their strange names which you will meet upon every
+page of the coming chapters.
+
+Babylonians and Egyptians and Chaldeans and Sumerians are all dead and
+gone, but they continue to influence our own lives in everything we do,
+in the letters we write, in the language we use, in the complicated
+mathematical problems which we must solve before we can build a bridge
+or a skyscraper.
+
+And they deserve our grateful respect as long as our planet continues to
+race through the wide space of the high heavens.
+
+These ancient people of whom I shall now tell you lived in three
+definite spots.
+
+Two of these were found along the banks of vast rivers.
+
+The third was situated on the shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+The oldest center of civilization developed in the valley of the Nile,
+in a country which was called Egypt.
+
+The second was located in the fertile plains between two big rivers of
+western Asia, to which the ancients gave the name of Mesopotamia.
+
+The third one which you will find along the shore of the Mediterranean,
+was inhabited by the Phoenicians, the earliest of all colonizers and by
+the Jews who bestowed upon the rest of the world the main principles of
+their moral laws.
+
+This third center of civilization is known by its ancient Babylonian
+name of Suri, or as we pronounce it, Syria.
+
+The history of the people who lived in these regions covers more than
+five thousand years.
+
+It is a very, very complicated story.
+
+I can not give you many details.
+
+I shall try and weave their adventures into a single fabric, which will
+look like one of those marvelous rugs of which you read in the tales
+which Scheherazade told to Harun the Just.
+
+
+
+THE KEY OF STONE
+
+Fifty years before the birth of Christ, the Romans conquered the land
+along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and among this newly
+acquired territory was a country called Egypt.
+
+The Romans, who are to play such a great role in our history, were a
+race of practical men.
+
+They built bridges, they constructed roads, and with a small but highly
+trained army of soldiers and civil officers, they managed to rule the
+greater part of Europe, of eastern Africa and western Asia.
+
+As for art and the sciences, these did not interest them very much. They
+regarded with suspicion a man who could play the lute or who could write
+a poem about Spring and only thought him little better than the clever
+fellow who could walk the tightrope or who had trained his poodle dog to
+stand on its hind legs. They left such things to the Greeks and to the
+Orientals, both of whom they despised, while they themselves spent their
+days and nights keeping order among the thousand and one nations of
+their vast empire.
+
+When they first set foot in Egypt that country was already terribly old.
+
+More than six thousand and five hundred years had gone by since the
+history of the Egyptian people had begun.
+
+Long before any one had dreamed of building a city amidst the swamps of
+the river Tiber, the kings of Egypt had ruled far and wide and had made
+their court the center of all civilization.
+
+While the Romans were still savages who chased wolves and bears with
+clumsy stone axes, the Egyptians were writing books, performing
+intricate medical operations and teaching their children the tables of
+multiplication.
+
+This great progress they owed chiefly to one very wonderful invention,
+to the art of preserving their spoken words and their ideas for the
+benefit of their children and grandchildren.
+
+We call this the art of writing.
+
+We are so familiar with writing that we can not understand how people
+ever managed to live without books and newspapers and magazines.
+
+But they did and it was the main reason why they made such slow progress
+during the first million years of their stay upon this planet.
+
+They were like cats and dogs who can only teach their puppies and their
+kittens a few simple things (barking at a stranger and climbing trees
+and such things) and who, because they can not write, possess no way in
+which they can use the experience of their countless ancestors.
+
+This sounds almost funny, doesn't it?
+
+And why make such a fuss about so simple a matter?
+
+But did you ever stop to think what happens when you write a letter?
+
+Suppose that you are taking a trip in the mountains and you have seen a
+deer.
+
+You want to tell this to your father who is in the city.
+
+What do you do?
+
+You put a lot of dots and dashes upon a piece of paper--you add a few
+more dots and dashes upon an envelope and you carry your epistle to the
+mailbox together with a two-cent stamp.
+
+What have you really been doing?
+
+You have changed a number of spoken words into a number of pothooks and
+scrawls.
+
+But how did you know how to make your curlycues in such a fashion that
+both the postman and your father could retranslate them into
+spoken words?
+
+You knew, because some one had taught you how to draw the precise
+figures which represented the sound of your spoken words.
+
+Just take a few letters and see the way this game is played.
+
+We make a guttural noise and write down a "G."
+
+We let the air pass through our closed teeth and we write down "S."
+
+We open our mouth wide and make a noise like a steam engine and the
+sound is written down "H."
+
+It took the human race hundreds of thousands of years to discover this
+and the credit for it goes to the Egyptians.
+
+Of course they did not use the letters which have been used to print
+this book.
+
+They had a system of their own.
+
+It was much prettier than ours but not quite so simple.
+
+It consisted of little figures and images of things around the house and
+around the farm, of knives and plows and birds and pots and pans. These
+little figures their scribes scratched and painted upon the wall of the
+temples, upon the coffins of their dead kings and upon the dried leaves
+of the papyrus plant which has given its name to our "paper."
+
+But when the Romans entered this vast library they showed neither
+enthusiasm nor interest.
+
+They possessed a system of writing of their own which they thought
+vastly superior.
+
+[Illustration: THE KEY OF STONE]
+
+They did not know that the Greeks (from whom they had learned their
+alphabet) had in turn obtained theirs from the Phoenicians who had again
+borrowed with great success from the old Egyptians. They did not know
+and they did not care. In their schools the Roman alphabet was taught
+exclusively and what was good enough for the Roman children was good
+enough for everybody else.
+
+You will understand that the Egyptian language did not long survive the
+indifference and the opposition of the Roman governors. It was
+forgotten. It died just as the languages of most of our Indian tribes
+have become a thing of the past.
+
+The Arabs and the Turks who succeeded the Romans as the rulers of Egypt
+abhorred all writing that was not connected with their holy book,
+the Koran.
+
+At last in the middle of the sixteenth century a few western visitors
+came to Egypt and showed a mild interest in these strange pictures.
+
+But there was no one to explain their meaning and these first Europeans
+were as wise as the Romans and the Turks had been before them.
+
+Now it happened, late in the eighteenth century that a certain French
+general by the name of Buonaparte visited Egypt. He did not go there to
+study ancient history. He wanted to use the country as a starting point
+for a military expedition against the British colonies in India. This
+expedition failed completely but it helped solve the mysterious problem
+of the ancient Egyptian writing.
+
+Among the soldiers of Napoleon Buonaparte there was a young officer by
+the name of Broussard. He was stationed at the fortress of St. Julien on
+the western mouth of the Nile which is called the Rosetta river.
+
+Broussard liked to rummage among the ruins of the lower Nile and one day
+he found a stone which greatly puzzled him.
+
+Like everything else in that neighborhood, it was covered with picture
+writing.
+
+But this slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever
+been discovered.
+
+It carried three inscriptions and one of these (oh joy!) was in Greek.
+
+The Greek language was known.
+
+As it was almost certain that the Egyptian part contained a translation
+of the Greek (or vice versa), the key to ancient Egyptian seemed to have
+been discovered.
+
+But it took more than thirty years of very hard work before the key had
+been made to fit the lock.
+
+Then the mysterious door was opened and the ancient treasure house of
+Egypt was forced to surrender its secrets.
+
+The man who gave his life to the task of deciphering this language was
+Jean Francois Champollion--usually called Champollion Junior to
+distinguish him from his older brother who was also a very learned man.
+
+Champollion Junior was a baby when the French revolution broke out and
+therefore he escaped serving in the armies of the General Buonaparte.
+
+While his countrymen were marching from one glorious victory to another
+(and back again as such Imperial armies are apt to do) Champollion
+studied the language of the Copts, the native Christians of Egypt. At
+the age of nineteen he was appointed a professor of History at one of
+the smaller French universities and there he began his great work of
+translating the pictures of the old Egyptian language.
+
+For this purpose he used the famous black stone of Rosetta which
+Broussard had discovered among the ruins near the mouth of the Nile.
+
+The original stone was still in Egypt. Napoleon had been forced to
+vacate the country in a hurry and he had left this curiosity behind.
+When the English retook Alexandria in the year 1801 they found the stone
+and carried it to London, where you may see it this very day in the
+British Museum. The Inscriptions however had been copied and had been
+taken to France, where they were used by Champollion.
+
+The Greek text was quite clear. It contained the story of Ptolemy V and
+his wife Cleopatra, the grandmother of that other Cleopatra about whom
+Shakespeare wrote. The other two inscriptions, however, refused to
+surrender their secrets.
+
+One of them was in hieroglyphics, the name we give to the oldest known
+Egyptian writing. The word Hieroglyphic is Greek and means "sacred
+carving." It is a very good name for it fully describes the purpose and
+nature of this script. The priests who had invented this art did not
+want the common people to become too familiar with the deep mysteries of
+preserving speech. They made writing a sacred business.
+
+They surrounded it with much mystery and decreed that the carving of
+hieroglyphics be regarded as a sacred art and forbade the people to
+practice it for such a common purpose as business or commerce.
+
+They could enforce this rule with success so long as the country was
+inhabited by simple farmers who lived at home and grew everything they
+needed upon their own fields. But gradually Egypt became a land of
+traders and these traders needed a means of communication beyond the
+spoken word. So they boldly took the little figures of the priests and
+simplified them for their own purposes. Thereafter they wrote their
+business letters in the new script which became known as the "popular
+language" and which we call by its Greek name, the "Demotic language."
+
+The Rosetta stone carried both the sacred and the popular translations
+of the Greek text and upon these two Champollion centered his attack. He
+collected every piece of Egyptian script which he could get and together
+with the Rosetta stone he compared and studied them until after twenty
+years of patient drudgery he understood the meaning of fourteen
+little figures.
+
+That means that he spent more than a whole year to decipher each single
+picture.
+
+Finally he went to Egypt and in the year 1823 he printed the first
+scientific book upon the subject of the ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+Nine years later he died from overwork, as a true martyr to the great
+task which he had set himself as a boy.
+
+His work, however, lived after him.
+
+Others continued his studies and today Egyptologists can read
+hieroglyphics as easily as we can read the printed pages of our
+newspapers.
+
+Fourteen pictures in twenty years seems very slow work. But let me tell
+you something of Champollion's difficulties. Then you will understand,
+and understanding, you will admire his courage.
+
+The old Egyptians did not use a simple sign language. They had passed
+beyond that stage.
+
+Of course, you know what sign language is.
+
+Every Indian story has a chapter about queer messages, written in the
+form of little pictures. Hardly a boy but at some stage or other of his
+life, as a buffalo hunter or an Indian fighter, has invented a sign
+language of his own, and all Boy Scouts are familiar with it. But
+Egyptian was something quite different and I must try and make this
+clear to you with a few pictures. Suppose that you were Champollion and
+that you were reading an old papyrus which told the story of a farmer
+who lived somewhere along the banks of the river Nile.
+
+Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw.
+
+[Illustration: saw]
+
+"Very well," you said, "that means, of course, that the farmer went out
+and cut a tree down." Most likely you had guessed correctly.
+
+Next you took another page of hieroglyphics.
+
+They told the story of a queen who had lived to be eighty-two years old.
+Right in the middle of the text the same picture occurred. That was very
+puzzling, to say the least. Queens do not go about cutting down trees.
+They let other people do it for them. A young queen may saw wood for the
+sake of exercise, but a queen of eighty-two stays at home with her cat
+and her spinning wheel. Yet, the picture was there. The ancient priest
+who drew it must have placed it there for a definite purpose.
+
+What could he have meant?
+
+That was the riddle which Champollion finally solved.
+
+He discovered that the Egyptians were the first people to use what we
+call "phonetic writing."
+
+Like most other words which express a scientific idea, the word
+"phonetic" is of Greek origin. It means the "science of the sound which
+is made by our speech." You have seen the Greek word "phone," which
+means the voice, before. It occurs in our word "telephone," the machine
+which carries the voice to a distant point.
+
+Ancient Egyptian was "phonetic" and it set man free from the narrow
+limits of that sign language which in some primitive form had been used
+ever since the cave-dweller began to scratch pictures of wild animals
+upon the walls of his home.
+
+Now let us return for a moment to the little fellow with his saw who
+suddenly appeared in the story of the old queen. Evidently he had
+something to do with a saw.
+
+A "saw" is either a tool which you find in a carpenter shop or it means
+the past tense of the verb "to see."
+
+This is what had happened to the word during the course of many
+centuries.
+
+First of all it had meant a man with a saw.
+
+Then it came to mean the sound which we reproduce by the three modern
+letters, s, a and w. In the end the original meaning of carpentering was
+lost entirely and the picture indicated the past tense of "to see."
+
+A modern English sentence done into the images of ancient Egypt will
+show you what I mean.
+
+[Illustration: eye bee leaf eye saw giraffe]
+
+The [Illustration: eye] means either these two round objects in your
+head which allow you to see, or it means "I," the person who is talking
+or writing.
+
+A [Illustration: bee] is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks
+you in the finger when you try to catch it, or it represents to verb "to
+be," which is pronounced the same way and which means to "exist." Again
+it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." In this
+case the bee is followed by a [Illustration: leaf] which represents the
+sound which we find in the word "leave" or "leaf." Put your "bee" and
+your "leaf" together and you have the two sounds which make the verb
+"bee-leave" or "believe" as we write it nowadays.
+
+The "eye" you know all about.
+
+Finally you get a picture which looks like a giraffe. [Illustration:
+Giraffe] It is a giraffe, and it is part of the old sign language, which
+has been continued wherever it seemed most convenient.
+
+Therefore you get the following sentence, "I believe I saw a giraffe."
+
+This system, once invented, was developed during thousands of years.
+
+Gradually the most important figures came to mean single letters or
+short sounds like "fu" or "em" or "dee" or "zee," or as we write them, f
+and m and d and z. And with the help of these, the Egyptians could write
+anything they wanted upon every conceivable subject, and could preserve
+the experience of one generation for the benefit of the next without the
+slightest difficulty.
+
+That, in a very general way, is what Champollion taught us after the
+exhausting search which killed him when he was a young man.
+
+That too, is the reason why today we know Egyptian history better than
+that of any other ancient country.
+
+
+
+THE LAND OF THE LIVING AND THE LAND OF THE DEAD
+
+The History of Man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food.
+
+Wherever food was plentiful and easily gathered, thither man travelled
+to make his home.
+
+The fame of the Nile valley must have spread at an early date. From far
+and wide, wild people flocked to the banks of the river. Surrounded on
+all sides by desert or sea, it was not easy to reach these fertile
+fields and only the hardiest men and women survived.
+
+We do not know who they were. Some came from the interior of Africa and
+had woolly hair and thick lips.
+
+Others, with a yellowish skin, came from the desert of Arabia and the
+broad rivers of western Asia.
+
+They fought each other for the possession of this wonderful land.
+
+They built villages which their neighbors destroyed and they rebuilt
+them with the bricks they had taken from other neighbors whom they in
+turn had vanquished.
+
+Gradually a new race developed. They called themselves "remi," which
+means simply "the Men." There was a touch of pride in this name and they
+used it in the same sense that we refer to America as "God's
+own country."
+
+Part of the year, during the annual flood of the Nile, they lived on
+small islands within a country which itself was cut off from the rest of
+the world by the sea and the desert. No wonder that these people were
+what we call "insular," and had the habits of villagers who rarely come
+in contact with their neighbors.
+
+They liked their own ways best. They thought their own habits and
+customs just a trifle better than those of anybody else. In the same
+way, their own gods were considered more powerful than the gods of other
+nations. They did not exactly despise foreigners, but they felt a mild
+pity for them and if possible they kept them outside of the Egyptian
+domains, lest their own people be corrupted by "foreign notions."
+
+They were kind-hearted and rarely did anything that was cruel. They were
+patient and in business dealings they were rather indifferent Life came
+as an easy gift and they never became stingy and mean like northern
+people who have to struggle for mere existence.
+
+When the sun arose above the blood-red horizon of the distant desert,
+they went forth to till their fields. When the last rays of light had
+disappeared beyond the mountain ridges, they went to bed.
+
+They worked hard, they plodded and they bore whatever happened with
+stolid unconcern and profound patience.
+
+They believed that this life was but a short preface to a new existence
+which began the moment Death had entered the house. Until at last, the
+life of the future came to be regarded as more important than the life
+of the present and the people of Egypt turned their teeming land into
+one vast shrine for the worship of the dead.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAND OF THE DEAD.]
+
+And as most of the papyrus-rolls of the ancient valley tell stories of a
+religious nature we know with great accuracy just what gods the
+Egyptians revered and how they tried to assure all possible happiness
+and comfort to those who had entered upon the eternal sleep. In the
+beginning each little village had possessed a god of its own.
+
+Often this god was supposed to reside in a queerly shaped stone or in
+the branch of a particularly large tree. It was well to be good friends
+with him for he could do great harm and destroy the harvest and prolong
+the period of drought until the people and the cattle had all died of
+thirst. Therefore the villages made him presents--offered him things to
+eat or a bunch of flowers.
+
+When the Egyptians went forth to fight their enemies the god must needs
+be taken along, until he became a sort of battle flag around which the
+people rallied in time of danger.
+
+But when the country grew older and better roads had been built and the
+Egyptians had begun to travel, the old "fetishes," as such chunks of
+stone and wood were called, lost their importance and were thrown away
+or were left in a neglected corner or were used as doorsteps or chairs.
+
+Their place was taken by new gods who were more powerful than the old
+ones had been and who represented those forces of nature which
+influenced the lives of the Egyptians of the entire valley.
+
+First among these was the Sun which makes all things grow.
+
+Next came the river Nile which tempered the heat of the day and brought
+rich deposits of clay to refresh the fields and make them fertile.
+
+Then there was the kindly Moon which at night rowed her little boat
+across the arch of heaven and there was Thunder and there was Lightning
+and there were any number of things which could make life happy or
+miserable according to their pleasure and desire.
+
+Ancient man, entirely at the mercy of these forces of nature, could not
+get rid of them as easily as we do when we plant lightning rods upon our
+houses or build reservoirs which keep us alive during the summer months
+when there is no rain.
+
+On the contrary they formed an intimate part of his daily life--they
+accompanied him from the moment he was put into his cradle until the day
+that his body was prepared for eternal rest.
+
+Neither could he imagine that such vast and powerful phenomena as a bolt
+of lightning or the flood of a river were mere impersonal things. Some
+one--somewhere--must be their master and must direct them as the
+engineer directs his engine or a captain steers his ship.
+
+A God-in-Chief was therefore created, like the commanding general of an
+army.
+
+A number of lower officers were placed at his disposal.
+
+Within their own territory each one could act independently.
+
+In grave matters, however, which affected the happiness of all the
+people, they must take orders from their master.
+
+The Supreme Divine Ruler of the land of Egypt was called Osiris, and all
+the little Egyptian children knew the story of his wonderful life.
+
+Once upon a time, in the valley of the Nile, there lived a king called
+Osiris.
+
+He was a good man who taught his subjects how to till their fields and
+who gave his country just laws. But he had a bad brother whose name
+was Seth.
+
+Now Seth envied Osiris because he was so virtuous and one day he invited
+him to dinner and afterwards he said that he would like to show him
+something. Curious Osiris asked what it was and Seth said that it was a
+funnily shaped coffin which fitted one like a suit of clothes. Osiris
+said that he would like to try it. So he lay down in the coffin but no
+sooner was he inside when bang!--Seth shut the lid. Then he called for
+his servants and ordered them to throw the coffin into the Nile.
+
+Soon the news of his terrible deed spread throughout the land. Isis, the
+wife of Osiris, who had loved her husband very dearly, went at once to
+the banks of the Nile, and after a short while the waves threw the
+coffin upon the shore. Then she went forth to tell her son Horus, who
+ruled in another land, but no sooner had she left than Seth, the wicked
+brother, broke into the palace and cut the body of Osiris into
+fourteen pieces.
+
+[Illustration: A PYRAMID.]
+
+When Isis returned, she discovered what Seth had done. She took the
+fourteen pieces of the dead body and sewed them together and then Osiris
+came back to life and reigned for ever and ever as king of the lower
+world to which the souls of men must travel after they have left
+the body.
+
+As for Seth, the Evil One, he tried to escape, but Horus, the son of
+Osiris and Isis, who had been warned by his mother, caught him and
+slew him.
+
+This story of a faithful wife and a wicked brother and a dutiful son who
+avenged his father and the final victory of virtue over wickedness
+formed the basis of the religious life of the people of Egypt.
+
+Osiris was regarded as the god of all living things which seemingly die
+in the winter and yet return to renewed existence the next spring. As
+ruler of the Life Hereafter, he was the final judge of the acts of men,
+and woe unto him who had been cruel and unjust and had oppressed
+the weak.
+
+As for the world of the departed souls, it was situated beyond the high
+mountains of the west (which was also the home of the young Nile) and
+when an Egyptian wanted to say that someone had died, he said that he
+"had gone west."
+
+Isis shared the honors and the duties of Osiris with him. Their son
+Horus, who was worshipped as the god of the Sun (hence the word
+"horizon," the place where the sun sets) became the first of a new line
+of Egyptian kings and all the Pharaohs of Egypt had Horus as their
+middle name.
+
+Of course, each little city and every small village continued to worship
+a few divinities of their own. But generally speaking, all the people
+recognized the sublime power of Osiris and tried to gain his favor.
+
+This was no easy task, and led to many strange customs. In the first
+place, the Egyptians came to believe that no soul could enter into the
+realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had been its
+place of residence in this world.
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE PYRAMIDS GREW.]
+
+Whatever happened, the body must be preserved after death, and it must
+be given a permanent and suitable home. Therefore as soon as a man had
+died, his corpse was embalmed. This was a difficult and complicated
+operation which was performed by an official who was half doctor and
+half priest, with the help of an assistant whose duty it was to make the
+incision through which the chest could be filled with cedar-tree pitch
+and myrrh and cassia. This assistant belonged to a special class of
+people who were counted among the most despised of men. The Egyptians
+thought it a terrible thing to commit acts of violence upon a human
+being, whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be
+hired to perform this unpopular task.
+
+Afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of ten weeks
+he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron which was brought for
+this purpose from the distant desert of Libya. Then the body had become
+a "mummy" because it was filled with "Mumiai" or pitch. It was wrapped
+in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a
+beautifully decorated wooden coffin, ready to be removed to its final
+home in the western desert.
+
+The grave itself was a little stone room in the sand of the desert or a
+cave in a hill-side.
+
+After the coffin had been placed in the center the little room was well
+supplied with cooking utensils and weapons and statues (of clay or wood)
+representing bakers and butchers who were expected to wait upon their
+dead master in case he needed anything. Flutes and fiddles were added to
+give the occupant of the grave a chance to while away the long hours
+which he must spend in this "house of eternity."
+
+Then the roof was covered with sand and the dead Egyptian was left to
+the peaceful rest of eternal sleep.
+
+But the desert is full of wild creatures, hyenas and wolves, and they
+dug their way through the wooden roof and the sand and ate up the mummy.
+
+This was a terrible thing, for then the soul was doomed to wander
+forever and suffer agonies of a man without a home. To assure the corpse
+all possible safety a low wall of brick was built around the grave and
+the open space was filled with sand and gravel. In this way a low
+artificial hill was made which protected the mummy against wild animals
+and robbers.
+
+Then one day, an Egyptian who had just buried his Mother, of whom he had
+been particularly fond, decided to give her a monument that should
+surpass anything that had ever been built in the valley of the Nile.
+
+He gathered his serfs and made them build an artificial mountain that
+could be seen for miles around. The sides of this hill he covered with a
+layer of bricks that the sand might not be blown away.
+
+People liked the novelty of the idea.
+
+Soon they were trying to outdo each other and the graves rose twenty and
+thirty and forty feet above the ground.
+
+At last a rich nobleman ordered a burial chamber made of solid stone.
+
+On top of the actual grave where the mummy rested, he constructed a pile
+of bricks which rose several hundred feet into the air. A small
+passage-way gave entrance to the vault and when this passage was closed
+with a heavy slab of granite the mummy was safe from all intrusion.
+
+The King of course could not allow one of his subjects to outdo him in
+such a matter. He was the most powerful man of all Egypt who lived in
+the biggest house and therefore he was entitled to the best grave.
+
+What others had done in brick he could do with the help of more costly
+materials.
+
+Pharaoh sent his officers far and wide to gather workmen. He constructed
+roads. He built barracks in which the workmen could live and sleep (you
+may see those barracks this very day). Then he set to work and made
+himself a grave which was to endure for all time.
+
+We call this great pile of masonry a "pyramid."
+
+The origin of the word is a curious one.
+
+When the Greeks visited Egypt the Pyramids were already several thousand
+years old.
+
+[Illustration: THE MUMMY]
+
+Of course the Egyptians took their guests into the desert to see these
+wondrous sights just as we take foreigners to gaze at the Wool-worth
+Tower and Brooklyn Bridge.
+
+The Greek guest, lost in admiration, waved his hands and asked what the
+strange mountains might be.
+
+His guide thought that he referred to the extraordinary height and said
+"Yes, they are very high indeed."
+
+The Egyptian word for height was "pir-em-us."
+
+The Greek must have thought that this was the name of the whole
+structure and giving it a Greek ending he called it a "pyramis."
+
+We have changed the "s" into a "d" but we still use the same Egyptian
+word when we talk of the stone graves along the banks of the Nile.
+
+The biggest of these many pyramids, which was built fifty centuries ago,
+was five hundred feet high.
+
+At the base it was seven hundred and fifty-five feet wide.
+
+It covered more than thirteen acres of desert, which is three times as
+much space as that occupied by the church of Saint Peter, the largest
+edifice of the Christian world.
+
+During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were used to carry the
+stones from the distant peninsula of Sinai--to ferry them across the
+Nile (how they ever managed to do this we do not understand)--to drag
+them halfway across the desert and finally hoist them into their
+correct position.
+
+But so well did Pharaoh's architects and engineers perform their task
+that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart
+of the pyramid has never yet been pushed out of shape by the terrific
+weight of those thousands and thousands of tons of stone which press
+upon it from all sides.
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A STATE
+
+Nowadays we all are members of a "state."
+
+We may be Frenchmen or Chinamen or Russians; we may live in the furthest
+corner of Indonesia (do you know where that is?), but in some way or
+other we belong to that curious combination of people which is called
+the "state."
+
+It does not matter whether we recognize a king or an emperor or a
+president as our ruler. We are born and we die as a small part of this
+large Whole and no one can escape this fate.
+
+The "state," as a matter of fact, is quite a recent invention.
+
+The earliest inhabitants of the world did not know what it was.
+
+Every family lived and hunted and worked and died for and by itself.
+Sometimes it happened that a few of these families, for the sake of
+greater protection against the wild animals and against other wild
+people, formed a loose alliance which was called a tribe or a clan. But
+as soon as the danger was past, these groups of people acted again by
+and for themselves and if the weak could not defend their own cave, they
+were left to the mercies of the hyena and the tiger and nobody was very
+sorry if they were killed.
+
+In short, each person was a nation unto himself and he felt no
+responsibility for the happiness and safety of his neighbor. Very, very
+slowly this was changed and Egypt was the first country where the people
+were organized into a well-regulated empire.
+
+The Nile was directly responsible for this useful development. I have
+told you how in the summer of each year the greater part of the Nile
+valley and the Nile delta is turned into a vast inland sea. To derive
+the greatest benefit from this water and yet survive the flood, it had
+been necessary at certain points to build dykes and small islands which
+would offer shelter for man and beast during the months of August and
+September. The construction of these little artificial islands however
+had not been simple.
+
+[Illustration: THE YOUNG NILE.]
+
+A single man or a single family or even a small tribe could not
+construct a river-dam without the help of others.
+
+However much a farmer might dislike his neighbors he disliked getting
+drowned even more and he was obliged to call upon the entire
+country-side when the water of the river began to rise and threatened
+him and his wife and his children and his cattle with destruction.
+
+Necessity forced the people to forget their small differences and soon
+the entire valley of the Nile was covered with little combinations of
+people who constantly worked together for a common purpose and who
+depended upon each other for life and prosperity.
+
+Out of such small beginnings grew the first powerful State.
+
+It was a great step forward along the road of progress.
+
+It made the land of Egypt a truly inhabitable place. It meant the end of
+lawless murder. It assured the people greater safety than ever before
+and gave the weaker members of the tribe a chance to survive. Nowadays,
+when conditions of absolute disorder exist only in the jungles of
+Africa, it is hard to imagine a world without laws and policemen and
+judges and health officers and hospitals and schools.
+
+But five thousand years ago, Egypt stood alone as an organized state and
+was greatly envied by those of her neighbors who were obliged to face
+the difficulties of life single-handedly.
+
+A state, however, is not only composed of citizens.
+
+There must be a few men who execute the laws and who, in case of an
+emergency, take command of the entire community. Therefore no country
+has ever been able to endure without a single head, be he called a King
+or an Emperor or a Shah (as in Persia) or a President, as he is called
+in our own land.
+
+[Illustration: THE FERTILE VALLEY.]
+
+In ancient Egypt, every village recognized the authority of the
+Village-Elders, who were old men and possessed greater experience than
+the young ones. These Elders selected a strong man to command their
+soldiers in case of war and to tell them what to do when there was a
+flood. They gave him a title which distinguished him from the others.
+They called him a King or a prince and obeyed his orders for their own
+common benefit.
+
+Therefore in the oldest days of Egyptian history, we find the following
+division among the people:
+
+The majority are peasants.
+
+All of them are equally rich and equally poor.
+
+They are ruled by a powerful man who is the commander-in-chief of their
+armies and who appoints their judges and causes roads to be built for
+the common benefit and comfort.
+
+He also is the chief of the police force and catches the thieves.
+
+In return for these valuable services he receives a certain amount of
+everybody's money which is called a tax. The greater part of these
+taxes, however, do not belong to the King personally. They are money
+entrusted to him to be used for the common good.
+
+But after a short while a new class of people, neither peasants nor
+king, begins to develop. This new class, commonly called the nobles,
+stands between the ruler and his subjects.
+
+Since those early days it has made its appearance in the history of
+every country and it has played a great role in the development of
+every nation.
+
+I must try and explain to you how this class of nobles developed out of
+the most commonplace circumstances of everyday life and why it has
+maintained itself to this very day, against every form of opposition.
+
+To make my story quite clear, I have drawn a picture.
+
+It shows you five Egyptian farms. The original owners of these farms had
+moved into Egypt years and years ago. Each had taken a piece of
+unoccupied land and had settled down upon it to raise grain and cows and
+pigs and do whatever was necessary to keep themselves and their children
+alive. Apparently they had the same chance in life.
+
+How then did it happen that one became the ruler of his neighbors and
+got hold of all their fields and barns without breaking a single law?
+
+[Illustration: THE ORIGINS OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.]
+
+One day after the harvest, Mr. Fish (you see his name in hieroglyphics
+on the map) sent his boat loaded with grain to the town of Memphis to
+sell the cargo to the inhabitants of central Egypt. It happened to have
+been a good year for the farmer and Fish got a great deal of money for
+his wheat. After ten days the boat returned to the homestead and the
+captain handed the money which he had received to his employer.
+
+A few weeks later, Mr. Sparrow, whose farm was next to that of Fish,
+sent his wheat to the nearest market. Poor Sparrow had not been very
+lucky for the last few years. But he hoped to make up for his recent
+losses by a profitable sale of his grain. Therefore he had waited until
+the price of wheat in Memphis should have gone a little higher.
+
+That morning a rumor had reached the village of a famine in the island
+of Crete. As a result the grain in the Egyptian markets had greatly
+increased in value.
+
+Sparrow hoped to profit through this unexpected turn of the market and
+he bade his skipper to hurry.
+
+The skipper handled the rudder of his craft so clumsily that the boat
+struck a rock and sank, drowning the mate who was caught under the sail.
+
+Sparrow not only lost all his grain and his ship but he was also forced
+to pay the widow of his drowned mate ten pieces of gold to make up for
+the loss of her husband.
+
+These disasters occurred at the very moment when Sparrow could not
+afford another loss.
+
+Winter was near and he had no money to buy cloaks for his children. He
+had put off buying new hoes and spades for such a long time that the old
+ones were completely worn out. He had no seeds for his fields. He was in
+a desperate plight.
+
+He did not like his neighbor, Mr. Fish, any too well but there was no
+way out. He must go and humbly he must ask for the loan of a small
+sum of money.
+
+He called on Fish. The latter said that he would gladly let him have
+whatever he needed but could Sparrow put up any sort of guaranty?
+
+Sparrow said, "Yes." He would offer his own farm as a pledge of good
+faith.
+
+Unfortunately Fish knew all about that farm. It had belonged to the
+Sparrow family for many generations. But the Father of the present owner
+had allowed himself to be terribly cheated by a Phoenician trader who
+had sold him a couple of "Phrygian Oxen" (nobody knew what the name
+meant) which were said to be of a very fine breed, which needed little
+food and performed twice as much labor as the common Egyptian oxen. The
+old farmer had believed the solemn words of the impostor. He had bought
+the wonderful beasts, greatly envied by all his neighbors.
+
+They had not proved a success.
+
+They were very stupid and very slow and exceedingly lazy and within
+three weeks they had died from a mysterious disease.
+
+The old farmer was so angry that he suffered a stroke and the management
+of his estate was left to the son, who worked hard but without
+much result.
+
+The loss of his grain and his vessel were the last straw.
+
+Young Sparrow must either starve or ask his neighbor to help him with a
+loan.
+
+Fish who was familiar with the lives of all his neighbors (he was that
+kind of person, not because he loved gossip but one never knew how such
+information might come in handy) and who knew to a penny the state of
+affairs in the Sparrow household, felt strong enough to insist upon
+certain terms. Sparrow could have all the money he needed upon the
+following condition. He must promise to work for Fish six weeks of every
+year and he must allow him free access to his grounds at all times.
+
+Sparrow did not like these terms, but the days were growing shorter and
+winter was coming on fast and his family were without food.
+
+He was forced to accept and from that time on, he and his sons and
+daughters were no longer quite as free as they had been before.
+
+They did not exactly become the servants or the slaves of their
+neighbor, but they were dependent upon his kindness for their own
+livelihood. When they met Fish in the road they stepped aside and said
+"Good morning, sir." And he answered them--or not--as the case might be.
+
+He now owned a great deal of water-front, twice as much as before.
+
+He had more land and more laborers and he could raise more grain than in
+the past years. The nearby villagers talked of the new house he was
+building and in a general way, he was regarded as a man of growing
+wealth and importance.
+
+Late that summer an unheard-of-thing happened.
+
+It rained.
+
+The oldest inhabitants could not remember such a thing, but it rained
+hard and steadily for two whole days. A little brook, the existence of
+which everybody had forgotten, was suddenly turned into a wild torrent.
+In the middle of the night it came thundering down from the mountains
+and destroyed the harvest of the farmer who occupied the rocky ground at
+the foot of the hills. His name was Cup and he too had inherited his
+land from a hundred other Cups who had gone before. The damage was
+almost irreparable. Cup needed new seed grain and he needed it at once.
+He had heard Sparrow's story. He too hated to ask a favor of Fish who
+was known far and wide as a shrewd dealer. But in the end, he found his
+way to the Fishs' homestead and humbly begged for the loan of a few
+bushels of wheat. He got them but not until he had agreed to work two
+whole months of each year on the farm of Fish.
+
+Fish was now doing very well. His new house was ready and he thought the
+time had come to establish himself as the head of a household.
+
+Just across the way, there lived a farmer who had a young daughter. The
+name of this farmer was Knife. He was a happy-go-lucky person and he
+could not give his child a large dowry.
+
+Fish called on Knife and told him that he did not care for money. He was
+rich and he was willing to take the daughter without a single penny.
+Knife, however, must promise to leave his land to his son-in-law in
+case he died.
+
+This was done.
+
+The will was duly drawn up before a notary, the wedding took place and
+Fish now possessed (or was about to possess) the greater part of
+four farms.
+
+It is true there was a fifth farm situated right in between the others.
+But its owner, by the name of Sickle, could not carry his wheat to the
+market without crossing the lands over which Fish held sway. Besides,
+Sickle was not very energetic and he willingly hired himself out to Fish
+on condition that he and his old wife be given a room and food and
+clothes for the rest of their days. They had no children and this
+settlement assured them a peaceful old age. When Sickle died, a distant
+nephew appeared who claimed a right to his uncle's farm. Fish had the
+dogs turned loose on him and the fellow was never seen again.
+
+These transactions had covered a period of twenty years.
+
+The younger generations of the Cup and
+
+Sickle and Sparrow families accepted their situation in life without
+questioning. They knew old Fish as "the Squire" upon whose good-will
+they were more or less dependent if they wanted to succeed in life.
+
+When the old man died he left his son many wide acres and a position of
+great influence among his immediate neighbors.
+
+Young Fish resembled his father. He was very able and had a great deal
+of ambition. When the king of Upper Egypt went to war against the wild
+Berber tribes, he volunteered his services.
+
+He fought so bravely that the king appointed him Collector of the Royal
+Revenue for three hundred villages.
+
+Often it happened that certain farmers could not pay their tax.
+
+Then young Fish offered to give them a small loan.
+
+Before they knew it, they were working for the Royal Tax Gatherer, to
+repay both the money which they had borrowed and the interest on
+the loan.
+
+The years went by and the Fish family reigned supreme in the land of
+their birth. The old home was no longer good enough for such
+important people.
+
+A noble hall was built (after the pattern of the Royal Banqueting Hall
+of Thebes). A high wall was erected to keep the crowd at a respectful
+distance and Fish never went out without a bodyguard of armed soldiers.
+
+Twice a year he travelled to Thebes to be with his King, who lived in
+the largest palace of all Egypt and who was therefore known as
+"Pharaoh," the owner of the "Big House."
+
+Upon one of his visits, he took Fish the Third, grandson of the founder
+of the family, who was a handsome young fellow.
+
+The daughter of Pharaoh saw the youth and desired him for her husband.
+The wedding cost Fish most of his fortune, but he was still Collector of
+the Royal Revenue and by treating the people without mercy he was able
+to fill his strong-box in less than three years.
+
+When he died he was buried in a small Pyramid, just as if he had been a
+member of the Royal Family, and a daughter of Pharaoh wept over
+his grave.
+
+That is my story which begins somewhere along the banks of the Nile and
+which in the course of three generations lifts a farmer from the ranks
+of his own humble ancestors and drops him outside the gate but near the
+throne-room of the King's palace.
+
+What happened to Fish, happened to a large number of equally energetic
+and resourceful men.
+
+They formed a class apart.
+
+They married each other's daughters and in this way they kept the family
+fortunes in the hands of a small number of people.
+
+They served the King faithfully as officers in his army and as
+collectors of his taxes.
+
+They looked after the safety of the roads and the waterways.
+
+They performed many useful tasks and among themselves they obeyed the
+laws of a very strict code of honor.
+
+If the Kings were bad, the nobles were apt to be bad too.
+
+When the Kings were weak the nobles often managed to get hold of the
+State.
+
+Then it often happened that the people arose in their wrath and
+destroyed those who oppressed them.
+
+Many of the old nobles were killed and a new division of the land took
+place which gave everybody an equal chance.
+
+But after a short while the old story repeated itself.
+
+This time it was perhaps a member of the Sparrow family who used his
+greater shrewdness and industry to make himself master of the
+countryside while the descendants of Fish (of glorious memory!) were
+reduced to poverty.
+
+Otherwise very little was changed.
+
+The faithful peasants continued to work and pay taxes.
+
+The equally faithful tax gatherers continued to gather wealth.
+
+But the old Nile, indifferent to the ambitions of men, flowed as
+placidly as ever between its age-worn banks and bestowed its fertile
+blessings upon the poor and upon the rich with the impartial justice
+which is found only in the forces of nature.
+
+
+
+THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT
+
+We often hear it said that "civilization travels westward." What we mean
+is that hardy pioneers have crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled along
+the shores of New England and New Netherland--that their children have
+crossed the vast prairies--that their great-grandchildren have moved
+into California--and that the present generation hopes to turn the vast
+Pacific into the most important sea of the ages.
+
+As a matter of fact, "civilization" never remains long in the same spot.
+It is always going somewhere but it does not always move westward by any
+means. Sometimes its course points towards the east or the south. Often
+it zigzags across the map. But it keeps moving. After two or three
+hundred years, civilization seems to say, "Well, I have been keeping
+company with these particular people long enough," and it packs its
+books and its science and its art and its music, and wanders forth in
+search of new domains. But no one knows whither it is bound, and that is
+what makes life so interesting.
+
+[Illustration: THE SOIL OF THE FERTILE VALLEY.]
+
+In the case of Egypt, the center of civilization moved northward and
+southward, along the banks of the Nile. First of all, as I told you,
+people from all over Africa and western Asia moved into the valley and
+settled down. Thereupon they formed small villages and townships and
+accepted the rule of a Commander-in-Chief, who was called Pharaoh, and
+who had his capital in Memphis, in the lower part of Egypt.
+
+After a couple of thousand years, the rulers of this ancient house
+became too weak to maintain themselves. A new family from the town of
+Thebes, 350 miles towards the south in Upper Egypt, tried to make itself
+master of the entire valley. In the year 2400 B.C. they succeeded. As
+rulers of both Upper and Lower Egypt, they set forth to conquer the rest
+of the world. They marched towards the sources of the Nile (which they
+never reached) and conquered black Ethiopia. Next they crossed the
+desert of Sinai and invaded Syria where they made their name feared by
+the Babylonians and Assyrians. The possession of these outlying
+districts assured the safety of Egypt and they could set to work to turn
+the valley into a happy home, for as many of the people as could find
+room there. They built many new dikes and dams and a vast reservoir in
+the desert which they filled with water from the Nile to be kept and
+used in case of a prolonged drought. They encouraged people to devote
+themselves to the study of mathematics and astronomy so that they might
+determine the time when the floods of the Nile were to be expected.
+Since for this purpose it was necessary to have a handy method by which
+time could be measured, they established the year of 365 days, which
+they divided into twelve months.
+
+Contrary to the old tradition which made the Egyptians keep away from
+all things foreign, they allowed the exchange of Egyptian merchandise
+for goods which had been carried to their harbors from elsewhere.
+
+They traded with the Greeks of Crete and with the Arabs of western Asia
+and they got spices from the Indies and they imported gold and silk
+from China.
+
+But all human institutions are subject to certain definite laws of
+progress and decline and a State or a dynasty is no exception. After
+four hundred years of prosperity, these mighty kings showed signs of
+growing tired. Rather than ride a camel at the head of their army, the
+rulers of the great Egyptian Empire stayed within the gates of their
+palace and listened to the music of the harp or the flute.
+
+One day there came rumors to the town of Thebes that wild tribes of
+horsemen had been pillaging along the frontiers. An army was sent to
+drive them away. This army moved into the desert. To the last man it was
+killed by the fierce Arabs, who now marched towards the Nile, bringing
+their flocks of sheep and their household goods.
+
+Another army was told to stop their progress. The battle was disastrous
+for the Egyptians and the valley of the Nile was open to the invaders.
+
+They rode fleet horses and they used bows and arrows. Within a short
+time they had made themselves master of the entire country. For five
+centuries they ruled the land of Egypt. They removed the old capital to
+the Delta of the Nile.
+
+They oppressed the Egyptian peasants.
+
+They treated the men cruelly and they killed the children and they were
+rude to the ancient gods. They did not like to live in the cities but
+stayed with their flocks in the open fields and therefore they were
+called the Hyksos, which means the Shepherd Kings.
+
+At last their rule grew unbearable.
+
+A noble family from the city of Thebes placed itself at the head of a
+national revolution against the foreign usurpers. It was a desperate
+fight but the Egyptians won. The Hyksos were driven out of the country,
+and they went back to the desert whence they had come. The experience
+had been a warning to the Egyptian people. Their five hundred years of
+foreign slavery had been a terrible experience. Such a thing must never
+happen again. The frontier of the fatherland must be made so strong that
+no one dare to attack the holy soil.
+
+A new Theban king, called Tethmosis, invaded Asia and never stopped
+until he reached the plains of Mesopotamia. He watered his oxen in the
+river Euphrates, and Babylon and Nineveh trembled at the mention of his
+name. Wherever he went, he built strong fortresses, which were connected
+by excellent roads. Tethmosis, having built a barrier against future
+invasions, went home and died. But his daughter, Hatshepsut, continued
+his good work. She rebuilt the temples which the Hyksos had destroyed
+and she founded a strong state in which soldiers and merchants worked
+together for a common purpose and which was called the New Empire, and
+lasted from 1600 to 1300 B.C.
+
+Military nations, however, never last very long. The larger the empire,
+the more men are needed for its defense and the more men there are in
+the army, the fewer can stay at home to work the farms and attend to the
+demands of trade. Within a few years, the Egyptian state had become
+top-heavy and the army, which was meant to be a bulwark against foreign
+invasion, dragged the country into ruin from sheer lack of both men
+and money.
+
+Without interruption, wild people from Asia were attacking those strong
+walls behind which Egypt was hoarding the riches of the entire
+civilized world.
+
+At first the Egyptian garrisons could hold their own.
+
+One day, however, in distant Mesopotamia, there arose a new military
+empire which was called Assyria. It cared for neither art nor science,
+but it could fight. The Assyrians marched against the Egyptians and
+defeated them in battle. For more than twenty years they ruled the land
+of the Nile. To Egypt this meant the beginning of the end.
+
+A few times, for short periods, the people managed to regain their
+independence. But they were an old race, and they were worn out by
+centuries of hard work.
+
+The time had come for them to disappear from the stage of history and
+surrender their leadership as the most civilized people of the world.
+Greek merchants were swarming down upon the cities at the mouth of
+the Nile.
+
+A new capital was built at Sais, near the mouth of the Nile, and Egypt
+became a purely commercial state, the half-way house for the trade
+between western Asia and eastern Europe.
+
+After the Greeks came the Persians, who conquered all of northern
+Africa.
+
+Two centuries later, Alexander the Great turned the ancient land of the
+Pharaoh? into a Greek province. When he died, one of his generals,
+Ptolemy by name, established himself as the independent king of a new
+Egyptian state.
+
+The Ptolemy family continued to rule for two hundred years.
+
+In the year 30 B.C., Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemys, killed
+herself, rather than become a prisoner of the victorious Roman general,
+Octavianus.
+
+That was the end.
+
+Egypt became part of the Roman Empire and her life as an independent
+state ceased for all time.
+
+
+
+MESOPOTAMIA, THE COUNTRY BETWEEN THE RIVERS
+
+I am going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid.
+
+It is a good deal of a climb.
+
+The casing of fine stones which in the beginning covered the rough
+granite blocks which were used to construct this artificial mountain,
+has long since worn off or has been stolen to help build new Roman
+cities. A goat would have a fine time scaling this strange peak. But
+with the help of a few Arab boys, we can get to the top after a few
+hours of hard work, and there we can rest and look far into the next
+chapter of the history of the human race.
+
+Way, way off, in the distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the vast
+desert, through which the old Nile had cut herself a way to the sea, you
+will (if you have the eyes of a hawk), see something shimmering
+and green.
+
+It is a valley situated between two big rivers.
+
+It is the most interesting spot of the ancient map.
+
+It is the Paradise of the Old Testament.
+
+It is the old land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called
+Mesopotamia.
+
+The word "Mesos" means "middle" or "in between" and "potomos" is the
+Greek expression for river. (Just think of the Hippopotamus, the horse
+or "hippos" that lives in the rivers.) Mesopotamia, therefore, meant a
+stretch of land "between the rivers." The two rivers in this case were
+the Euphrates which the Babylonians called the "Purattu" and the Tigris,
+which the Babylonians called the "Diklat." You will see them both upon
+the map. They begin their course amidst the snows of the northern
+mountains of Armenia and slowly they flow through the southern plain
+until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian Gulf. But before they
+have lost themselves amidst the waves of this branch of the Indian
+Ocean, they have performed a great and useful task.
+
+They have turned an otherwise arid and dry region into the only fertile
+spot of western Asia.
+
+That fact will explain to you why Mesopotamia was so very popular with
+the inhabitants of the northern mountains and the southern desert.
+
+It is a well-known fact that all living beings like to be comfortable.
+When it rains, the cat hastens to a place of shelter.
+
+When it is cold, the dog finds a spot in front of the stove. When a
+certain part of the sea becomes more salty than it has been before (or
+less, for that matter) myriads of little fishes swim hastily to another
+part of the wide ocean. As for the birds, a great many of them move from
+one place to another regularly once a year. When the cold weather sets
+in, the geese depart, and when the first swallow returns, we know that
+summer is about to smile upon us.
+
+Man is no exception to this rule. He likes the warm stove much better
+than the cold wind. Whenever he has the choice between a good dinner and
+a crust of bread, he prefers the dinner. He will live in the desert or
+in the snow of the arctic zone if it is absolutely necessary. But offer
+him a more agreeable place of residence and he will accept without a
+moment's hesitation. This desire to improve his condition, which really
+means a desire to make life more comfortable and less wearisome, has
+been a very good thing for the progress of the world.
+
+It has driven the white people of Europe to the ends of the earth.
+
+It has populated the mountains and the plains of our own country.
+
+It has made many millions of men travel ceaselessly from east to west
+and from south to north until they have found the climate and the living
+conditions which suit them best.
+
+In the western part of Asia this instinct which compels living beings to
+seek the greatest amount of comfort possible with the smallest
+expenditure of labor forced both the inhabitants of the cold and
+inhospitable mountains and the people of the parched desert to look for
+a new dwelling place in the happy valley of Mesopotamia.
+
+It caused them to fight for the sole possession of this Paradise upon
+Earth.
+
+It forced them to exercise their highest power of inventiveness and
+their noblest courage to defend their homes and farms and their wives
+and children against the newcomers, who century after century were
+attracted by the fame of this pleasant spot.
+
+This constant rivalry was the cause of an everlasting struggle between
+the old and established tribes and the others who clamored for their
+share of the soil.
+
+Those who were weak and those who did not have a great deal of energy
+had little chance of success.
+
+Only the most intelligent and the bravest survived. That will explain to
+you why Mesopotamia became the home of a strong race of men, capable of
+creating that state of civilization which was to be of such enormous
+benefit to all later generations.
+
+
+
+THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS
+
+In the year 1472, a short time before Columbus discovered America, a
+certain Venetian, by the name of Josaphat Barbaro, traveling through
+Persia, crossed the hills near Shiraz and saw something which puzzled
+him. The hills of Shiraz were covered with old temples which had been
+cut into the rock of the mountainside. The ancient worshippers had
+disappeared centuries before and the temples were in a state of great
+decay. But clearly visible upon their walls, Barbara noticed long
+legends written in a curious script which looked like a series of
+scratches made by a sharp nail.
+
+When he returned he mentioned his discovery to his fellow-townsmen, but
+just then the Turks were threatening Europe with an invasion and people
+were too busy to bother about a new and unknown alphabet, somewhere in
+the heart of western Asia. The Persian inscriptions therefore were
+promptly forgotten.
+
+Two and a half centuries later, a noble young Roman by the name of
+Pietro della Valle visited the same hillsides of Shiraz which Barbaro
+had passed two hundred years before. He, too, was puzzled by the strange
+inscriptions on the ruins and being a painstaking young fellow, he
+copied them carefully and sent his report together with some remarks
+about the trip to a friend of his, Doctor Schipano, who practiced
+medicine in Naples and who besides took an interest in matters
+of learning.
+
+Schipano copied the funny little figures and brought them to the
+attention of other scientific men. Unfortunately Europe was again
+occupied with other matters.
+
+The terrible wars between the Protestants and Catholics had broken out
+and people were busily killing those who disagreed with them upon
+certain points of a religious nature.
+
+Another century was to pass before the study of the wedge-shaped
+inscriptions could be taken up seriously.
+
+The eighteenth century--a delightful age for people of an active and
+curious mind--loved scientific puzzles. Therefore when King Frederick V
+of Denmark asked for men of learning to join an expedition which he was
+going to send to western Asia, he found no end of volunteers. His
+expedition, which left Copenhagen in 1761, lasted six years. During this
+period all of the members died except one, by the name of Karsten
+Niebuhr, who had begun life as a German peasant and could stand greater
+hardships than the professors who had spent their days amidst the stuffy
+books of their libraries.
+
+This Niebuhr, who was a surveyor by profession, was a young man who
+deserves our admiration.
+
+He continued his voyage all alone until he reached the ruins of
+Persepolis where he spent a month copying every inscription that was to
+be found upon the walls of the ruined palaces and temples.
+
+After his return to Denmark he published his discoveries for the benefit
+of the scientific world and seriously tried to read some meaning into
+his own texts.
+
+He was not successful.
+
+But this does not astonish us when we understand the difficulties which
+he was obliged to solve.
+
+When Champollion tackled the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics he was able
+to make his studies from little pictures.
+
+The writing of Persepolis did not show any pictures at all.
+
+They consisted of v-shaped figures that were repeated endlessly and
+suggested nothing at all to the European eye.
+
+Nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know that the original
+script of the Sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as much as
+that of the Egyptians.
+
+But whereas the Egyptians at a very early date had discovered the
+papyrus plant and had been able to paint their images upon a smooth
+surface, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia had been forced to carve their
+words into the hard rock of a mountain side or into a soft brick
+of clay.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROCKS OF BEHISTUN.]
+
+Driven by necessity they had gradually simplified the original pictures
+until they devised a system of more than five hundred different
+letter-combinations which were necessary for their needs.
+
+Let me give you a few examples. In the beginning, a star, when drawn
+with a nail into a brick looked as follows. [Illustration: Star]
+
+But after a time the star shape was discarded as being too cumbersome
+and the figure was given this shape. [Illustration: Asterisk]
+
+After a while the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of "star," and
+the picture was simplified in this way [Illustration: Odd Cross] which
+made it still more of a puzzle.
+
+In the same way an ox changed from [Illustration: Ox Head] into
+[Illustration: Pattern]
+
+A fish changed from [Illustration: Fish] into [Illustration: Fish
+Scales] The sun, which was originally a plain circle, became
+[Illustration: Diamond] and if we were using the Sumerian script today
+we would make an [Illustration: Bike] look like this [Illustration:
+Pattern].
+
+You will understand how difficult it was to guess at the meaning of
+these figures but the patient labors of a German schoolmaster by the
+name of Grotefend was at last rewarded and thirty years after the first
+publication of Niebuhr's texts and three centuries after the first
+discovery of the wedge-formed pictures, four letters had been
+deciphered.
+
+These four letters were the D, the A, the R and the Sh.
+
+They formed the name of Darheush the King, whom we call Darius.
+
+Then occurred one of those events which were only possible in those
+happy days before the telegraph-wire and the mail-steamer had turned the
+entire world into one large city.
+
+While patient European professors were burning the midnight candles in
+their attempt to solve the new Asiatic mystery, young Henry Rawlinson
+was serving his time as a cadet of the British East Indian Company.
+
+He used his spare hours to learn Persian and when the Shah of Persia
+asked the English government for the loan of a few officers to train his
+native army, Rawlinson was ordered to go to Teheran. He travelled all
+over Persia and one day he happened to visit the village of Behistun.
+The Persians called it Bagistana which means the "dwellingplace of
+the Gods."
+
+Centuries before the main road from Mesopotamia to Iran (the early home
+of the Persians) had run through this village and the Persian King
+Darius had used the steep walls of the high cliffs to tell all the world
+what a great man he was.
+
+High above the roadside he had engraved an account of his glorious
+deeds.
+
+The inscription had been made in the Persian language, in Babylonian and
+in the dialect of the city of Susa. To make the story plain to those who
+could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had been added showing
+the King of Persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body of Gaumata,
+the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the legitimate
+rulers. For good measure a dozen followers of Gaumata had been added.
+They stood in the background. Their hands were tied and they were to be
+executed in a few moments.
+
+The picture and the three texts were several hundred feet above the road
+but Rawlinson scaled the walls of the rock at great danger to life and
+limb and copied the entire text.
+
+His discovery was of the greatest importance. The Rock of Behistun
+became as famous as the Stone of Rosetta and Rawlinson shared the honors
+of deciphering the old nail-writing with Grotefend.
+
+Although they had never seen each other or heard each other's names, the
+German schoolmaster and the British officer worked together for a common
+purpose as all good scientific men should do.
+
+Their copies of the old text were reprinted in every land and by the
+middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language (so called
+because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the Latin name for
+wedge) had given up its secrets. Another human mystery had been solved.
+
+[Illustration: A TOWER OF BABEL.]
+
+But about the people who had invented this clever way of writing, we
+have never been able to learn very much.
+
+They were a white race and they were called the Sumerians.
+
+They lived in a land which we call Shomer and which they themselves
+called Kengi, which means the "country of the reeds" and which shows us
+that they had dwelt among the marshy parts of the Mesopotamian valley.
+Originally the Sumerians had been mountaineers, but the fertile fields
+had tempted them away from the hills. But while they had left their
+ancient homes amidst the peaks of western Asia they had not given up
+their old habits and one of these is of particular interest to us.
+
+Living amidst the peaks of western Asia, they had worshipped their Gods
+upon altars erected on the tops of rocks. In their new home, among the
+flat plains, there were no such rocks and it was impossible to construct
+their shrines in the old fashion. The Sumerians did not like this.
+
+All Asiatic people have a deep respect for tradition and the Sumerian
+tradition demanded that an altar be plainly visible for miles around.
+
+To overcome this difficulty and keep their peace with the Gods of their
+Fathers, the Sumerians had built a number of low towers (resembling
+little hills) on the top of which they had lighted their sacred fires in
+honor of the old divinities.
+
+When the Jews visited the town of Bab-Illi (which we call Babylon) many
+centuries after the last of the Sumerians had died, they had been much
+impressed by the strange-looking towers which stood high amidst the
+green fields of Mesopotamia. The Tower of Babel of which we hear so much
+in the Old Testament was nothing but the ruin of an artificial peak,
+built hundreds of years before by a band of devout Sumerians. It was a
+curious contraption.
+
+The Sumerians had not known how to construct stairs.
+
+They had surrounded their tower with a sloping gallery which slowly
+carried people from the bottom to the top.
+
+A few years ago it was found necessary to build a new railroad station
+in the heart of New York City in such a way that thousands of travelers
+could be brought from the lower to the higher levels at the same moment.
+
+It was not thought safe to use a staircase for in case of a rush or a
+panic people might have tumbled and that would have meant a terrible
+catastrophe.
+
+To solve their problem the engineers borrowed an idea from the
+Sumerians.
+
+And the Grand Central Station is provided with the same ascending
+galleries which had first been introduced into the plains of
+Mesopotamia, three thousand years ago.
+
+
+
+ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA--THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT
+
+We often call America the "Melting-pot." When we use this term we mean
+that many races from all over the earth have gathered along the banks of
+the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans to find a new home and begin a new
+career amidst more favorable surroundings than were to be found in the
+country of their birth. It is true, Mesopotamia was much smaller than
+our own country. But the fertile valley was the most extraordinary
+"melting-pot" the world has ever seen and it continued to absorb new
+tribes for almost two thousand years. The story of each new people,
+clamoring for homesteads along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates
+is interesting in itself but we can give you only a very short record of
+their adventures.
+
+[Illustration: HAMMURAPI.]
+
+The Sumerians whom we met in the previous chapter, scratching their
+history upon rocks and bits of clay (and who did not belong to the
+Semitic race) had been the first nomads to wander into Mesopotamia.
+Nomads are people who have no settled homes and no grain fields and no
+vegetable gardens but who live in tents and keep sheep and goats and
+cows and who move from pasture to pasture, taking their flocks and their
+tents wherever the grass is green and the water abundant.
+
+Far and wide their mud huts had covered the plains. They were good
+fighters and for a long time they were able to hold their own against
+all invaders.
+
+But four thousand years ago a tribe of Semitic desert people called the
+Akkadians left Arabia, defeated the Sumerians and conquered Mesopotamia.
+The most famous king of these Akkadians was called Sargon.
+
+He taught his people how to write their own Semitic language in the
+alphabet of the Sumerians whose territory they had just occupied. He
+ruled so wisely that soon the differences between the original settlers
+and the invaders disappeared and they became fast friends and lived
+together in peace and harmony.
+
+The fame of his empire spread rapidly throughout western Asia and
+others, hearing of this success, were tempted to try their own luck.
+
+A new tribe of desert nomads, called the Amorites, broke up camp and
+moved northward.
+
+Thereupon the valley was the scene of a great turmoil until an Amorite
+chieftain by the name of Hammurapi (or Hammurabi, as you please)
+established himself in the town of Bab-Illi (which means the Gate of the
+God) and made himself the ruler of a great Bab-Illian or
+Babylonian Empire.
+
+This Hammurapi, who lived twenty-one centuries before the birth of
+Christ, was a very interesting man. He made Babylon the most important
+town of the ancient world, where learned priests administered the laws
+which their great Ruler had received from the Sun God himself and where
+the merchant loved to trade because he was treated fairly and honorably.
+
+Indeed if it were not for the lack of space (these laws of Hammurapi
+would cover fully forty of these pages if I were to give them to you in
+detail) I would be able to show you that this ancient Babylonian State
+was in many respects better managed and that the people were happier and
+that law and order was maintained more carefully and that there was
+greater freedom of speech and thought than in many of our modern
+countries.
+
+But our world was never meant to be too perfect and soon other hordes of
+rough and murderous men descended from the northern mountains and
+destroyed the work of Hammurapi's genius.
+
+The name of these new invaders was the Hittites. Of these Hittites I can
+tell you even less than of the Sumerians. The Bible mentions them. Ruins
+of their civilization have been found far and wide. They used a strange
+sort of hieroglyphics but no one has as yet been able to decipher these
+and read their meaning. They were not greatly gifted as administrators.
+They ruled only a few years and then their domains fell to pieces.
+
+Of all their glory there remains nothing but a mysterious name and the
+reputation of having destroyed many things which other people had built
+up with great pain and care.
+
+Then came another invasion which was of a very different nature.
+
+A fierce tribe of desert wanderers, who murdered and pillaged in the
+name of their great God Assur, left Arabia and marched northward until
+they reached the slopes of the mountains. Then they turned eastward and
+along the banks of the Euphrates they built a city which they called
+Ninua, a name which has come down to us in the Greek form of Nineveh. At
+once these new-comers, who are generally known as the Assyrians, began a
+slow but terrible warfare upon all the other inhabitants of Mesopotamia.
+
+In the twelfth century before Christ they made a first attempt to
+destroy Babylon but after a first success on the part of their King,
+Tiglath Pileser, they were defeated and forced to return to their
+own country.
+
+Five hundred years later they tried again. An adventurous general by the
+name of Bulu made himself master of the Assyrian throne. He assumed the
+name of old Tiglath Pileser, who was considered the national hero of the
+Assyrians and announced his intention of conquering the whole world.
+
+[Illustration: NINEVEH.]
+
+He was as good as his word.
+
+Asia Minor and Armenia and Egypt and Northern Arabia and Western Persia
+and Babylonia became Assyrian provinces. They were ruled by Assyrian
+governors, who collected the taxes and forced all the young men to serve
+as soldiers in the Assyrian armies and who made themselves thoroughly
+hated and despised both for their greed and their cruelty.
+
+Fortunately the Assyrian Empire at its greatest height did not last very
+long. It was like a ship with too many masts and sails and too small a
+hull. There were too many soldiers and not enough farmers--too many
+generals and not enough business men.
+
+The King and the nobles grew very rich but the masses lived in squalor
+and poverty. Never for a moment was the country at peace. It was for
+ever fighting someone, somewhere, for causes which did not interest the
+subjects at all. Until, through this continuous and exhausting warfare,
+most of the Assyrian soldiers had been killed or maimed and it became
+necessary to allow foreigners to enter the army. These foreigners had
+little love for their brutal masters who had destroyed their homes and
+had stolen their children and therefore they fought badly.
+
+Life along the Assyrian frontier was no longer safe.
+
+Strange new tribes were constantly attacking the northern boundaries.
+One of these was called the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians, when we first
+hear of them, inhabited the vast plain beyond the northern mountains.
+Homer describes their country in his account of the voyage of Odysseus
+and he tells us that it was a place "for ever steeped in darkness." They
+were a race of white men and they had been driven out of their former
+homes by still another group of Asiatic wanderers, the Scythians.
+
+The Scythians were the ancestors of the modern Cossacks, and even in
+those remote days they were famous for their horsemanship.
+
+[Illustration: NINEVEH DESTROYED.]
+
+The Cimmerians, hard pressed by the Scythians, crossed from Europe into
+Asia and conquered the land of the Hittites. Then they left the
+mountains of Asia Minor and descended into the valley of Mesopotamia,
+where they wrought terrible havoc among the impoverished people of the
+Assyrian Empire.
+
+Nineveh called for volunteers to stop this invasion. Her worn-out
+regiments marched northward when news came of a more immediate and
+formidable danger.
+
+For many years a small tribe of Semitic nomads, called the Chaldeans,
+had been living peacefully in the south-eastern part of the fertile
+valley, in the country called Ur. Suddenly these Chaldeans had gone upon
+the war-path and had begun a regular campaign against the Assyrians.
+
+Attacked from all sides, the Assyrian State, which had never gained the
+good-will of a single neighbor, was doomed to perish.
+
+When Nineveh fell and this forbidding treasure house, filled with the
+plunder of centuries, was at last destroyed, there was joy in every hut
+and hamlet from the Persian Gulf to the Nile.
+
+And when the Greeks visited the Euphrates a few generations later and
+asked what these vast ruins, covered with shrubs and trees might be,
+there was no one to tell them.
+
+The people had hastened to forget the very name of the city that had
+been such a cruel master and had so miserably oppressed them.
+
+Babylon, on the other hand, which had ruled its subjects in a very
+different way, came back to life.
+
+During the long reign of the wise King Nebuchadnezzar the ancient
+temples were rebuilt. Vast palaces were erected within a short space of
+time. New canals were dug all over the valley to help irrigate the
+fields. Quarrelsome neighbors were severely punished.
+
+Egypt was reduced to a mere frontier-province and Jerusalem, the capital
+of the Jews, was destroyed. The Holy Books of Moses were taken to
+Babylon and several thousand Jews were forced to follow the Babylonian
+King to his capital as hostages for the good behavior of those who
+remained behind in Palestine.
+
+But Babylon was made into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
+
+Trees were planted along the banks of the Euphrates.
+
+Flowers were made to grow upon the many walls of the city and after a
+few years it seemed that a thousand gardens were hanging from the roofs
+of the ancient town.
+
+As soon as the Chaldeans had made their capital the show-place of the
+world they devoted their attention to matters of the mind and of
+the spirit.
+
+Like all desert folk they were deeply interested in the stars which at
+night had guided them safely through the trackless desert.
+
+They studied the heavens and named the twelve signs of the Zodiak.
+
+They made maps of the sky and they discovered the first five planets. To
+these they gave the names of their Gods. When the Romans conquered
+Mesopotamia they translated the Chaldean names into Latin and that
+explains why today we talk of Jupiter and Venus and Mars and Mercury
+and Saturn.
+
+They divided the equator into three hundred and sixty degrees and they
+divided the day into twenty-four hours and the hour into sixty minutes
+and no modern man has ever been able to improve upon this old Babylonian
+invention. They possessed no watches but they measured time by the
+shadow of the sun-dial.
+
+They learned to use both the decimal and the duodecimal systems
+(nowadays we use only the decimal system, which is a great pity). The
+duodecimal system (ask your father what the word means), accounts for
+the sixty minutes and the sixty seconds and the twenty-four hours which
+seem to have so little in common with our modern world which would have
+divided day and night into twenty hours and the hour into fifty minutes
+and the minute into fifty seconds according to the rules of the
+restricted decimal system.
+
+The Chaldeans also were the first people to recognize the necessity of a
+regular day of rest.
+
+When they divided the year into weeks they ordered that six days of
+labor should be followed by one day, devoted to the "peace of the soul."
+
+[Illustration: THE CHALDEANS.]
+
+It was a great pity that the center of so much intelligence and industry
+could not exist for ever. But not even the genius of a number of very
+wise Kings could save the ancient people of Mesopotamia from their
+ultimate fate.
+
+The Semitic world was growing old.
+
+It was time for a new race of men.
+
+In the fifth century before Christ, an Indo-European people called the
+Persians (I shall tell you about them later) left its pastures amidst
+the high mountains of Iran and conquered the fertile valley.
+
+The city of Babylon was captured without a struggle.
+
+Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, who had been more interested in
+religious problems than in defending his own country, fled.
+
+A few days later his small son, who had remained behind, died.
+
+Cyrus, the Persian King, buried the child with great honor and then
+proclaimed himself the legitimate successor of the old rulers of
+Babylonia.
+
+Mesopotamia ceased to be an independent State.
+
+It became a Persian province ruled by a Persian "Satrap" or Governor.
+
+As for Babylon, when the Kings no longer used the city as their
+residence it soon lost all importance and became a mere country village.
+
+In the fourth century before Christ it enjoyed another spell of glory.
+
+It was in the year 331 B.C. that Alexander the Great, the young Greek
+who had just conquered Persia and India and Egypt and every other place,
+visited the ancient city of sacred memories. He wanted to use the old
+city as a background for his own newly-acquired glory. He began to
+rebuild the palace and ordered that the rubbish be removed from
+the temples.
+
+Unfortunately he died quite suddenly in the Banqueting Hall of
+Nebuchadnezzar and after that nothing on earth could save Babylon
+from her ruin.
+
+As soon as one of Alexander's generals, Seleucus Nicator, had perfected
+the plans for a new city at the mouth of the great canal which united
+the Tigris and the Euphrates, the fate of Babylon was sealed.
+
+A tablet of the year 275 B.C. tells us how the last of the Babylonians
+were forced to leave their home and move into this new settlement which
+had been called Seleucia.
+
+Even then, a few of the faithful continued to visit the holy places
+which were now inhabited by wolves and jackals.
+
+The majority of the people, little interested in those half-forgotten
+divinities of a bygone age, made a more practical use of their
+former home.
+
+They used it as a stone-quarry.
+
+For almost thirty centuries Babylon had been the great spiritual and
+intellectual center of the Semitic world and a hundred generations had
+regarded the city as the most perfect expression of their
+people's genius.
+
+It was the Paris and London and New York of the ancient world.
+
+At present three large mounds show us where the ruins lie buried beneath
+the sand of the ever-encroaching desert.
+
+
+
+THIS IS THE STORY OF MOSES
+
+High above the thin line of the distant horizon there appeared a small
+cloud of dust. The Babylonian peasant, working his poor farm on the
+outskirts of the fertile lands, noticed it.
+
+"Another tribe is trying to break into our land," he said to himself.
+"They will not get far. The King's soldiers will drive them away."
+
+He was right. The frontier guards welcomed the new arrivals with drawn
+swords and bade them try their luck elsewhere.
+
+They moved westward following the borders of the land of Babylon and
+they wandered until they reached the shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+There they settled down and tended their flocks and lived the simple
+lives of their earliest ancestors who had dwelt in the land of Ur.
+
+Then there came a time when the rain ceased to fall and there was not
+enough to eat for man or beast and it became necessary to look for new
+pastures or perish on the spot.
+
+Once more the shepherds (who were called the Hebrews) moved their
+families into a new home which they found along the banks of the Red Sea
+near the land of Egypt.
+
+But hunger and want had followed them upon their voyage and they were
+forced to go to the Egyptian officials and beg for food that they might
+not starve.
+
+The Egyptians had long expected a famine. They had built large
+store-houses and these were all filled with the surplus wheat of the
+last seven years. This wheat was now being distributed among the people
+and a food-dictator had been appointed to deal it out equally to the
+rich and to the poor. His name was Joseph and he belonged to the tribe
+of the Hebrews.
+
+As a mere boy he had run away from his own family. It was said that he
+had escaped to save himself from the anger of his brethren who envied
+him because he was the favorite of their Father.
+
+Whatever the truth, Joseph had gone to Egypt and he had found favor in
+the eyes of the Hyksos Kings who had just conquered the country and who
+used this bright young man to assist them in administering their new
+possessions.
+
+As soon as the hungry Hebrews appeared before Joseph with their request
+for help, Joseph recognized his relatives.
+
+But he was a generous man and all meanness of spirit was foreign to his
+soul.
+
+He did not revenge himself upon those who had wronged him but he gave
+them wheat and allowed them to settle in the land of Egypt, they and
+their children and their flocks--and be happy.
+
+For many years the Hebrews (who are more commonly known as the Jews)
+lived in the eastern part of their adopted country and all was well
+with them.
+
+Then a great change took place.
+
+A sudden revolution deprived the Hyksos Kings of their power and forced
+them to leave the country. Once more the Egyptians were masters within
+their own house. They had never liked foreigners any too well. Three
+hundred years of oppression by a band of Arab shepherds had greatly
+increased this feeling of loathing for everything that was alien.
+
+[Illustration: MOSES.]
+
+The Jews on the other hand had been on friendly terms with the Hyksos
+who were related to them by blood and by race. This was enough to make
+them traitors in the eyes of the Egyptians.
+
+Joseph no longer lived to protect his people.
+
+After a short struggle they were taken away from their old homes, they
+were driven into the heart of the country and they were treated
+like slaves.
+
+For many years they performed the dreary tasks of common laborers,
+carrying stones for the building of pyramids, making bricks for public
+buildings, constructing roads, and digging canals to carry the water of
+the Nile to the distant Egyptian farms.
+
+Their suffering was great but they never lost courage and help was near.
+
+There lived a certain young man whose name was Moses. He was very
+intelligent and he had received a good education because the Egyptians
+had decided that he should enter the service of Pharaoh.
+
+If nothing had happened to arouse his anger, Moses would have ended his
+days peacefully as the governor of a small province or the collector of
+taxes of an outlying district.
+
+But the Egyptians, as I have told you before, despised those who did not
+look like themselves nor dress in true Egyptian fashion and they were
+apt to insult such people because they were "different."
+
+And because the foreigners were in the minority they could not well
+defend themselves. Nor did it serve any good purpose to carry their
+complaints before a tribunal for the Judge did not smile upon the
+grievances of a man who refused to worship the Egyptian gods and who
+pleaded his case with a strong foreign accent.
+
+Now it occurred one day that Moses was taking a walk with a few of his
+Egyptian friends and one of these said something particularly
+disagreeable about the Jews and even threatened to lay hands on them.
+
+Moses, who was a hot-headed youth hit him.
+
+The blow was a bit too severe and the Egyptian fell down dead.
+
+To kill a native was a terrible thing and the Egyptian laws were not as
+wise as those of Hammurapi, the good Babylonian King, who recognized the
+difference between a premeditated murder and the killing of a man whose
+insults had brought his opponent to a point of unreasoning rage.
+
+Moses fled.
+
+He escaped into the land of his ancestors, into the Midian desert, along
+the eastern bank of the Red Sea, where his tribe had tended their sheep
+several hundred years before.
+
+A kind priest by the name of Jethro received him in his house and gave
+him one of his seven daughters, Zipporah, as his wife.
+
+There Moses lived for a long time and there he pondered upon many deep
+subjects. He had left the luxury and the comfort of the palace of
+Pharaoh to share the rough and simple life of a desert priest.
+
+In the olden days, before the Jewish people had moved into Egypt, they
+too had been wanderers among the endless plains of Arabia. They had
+lived in tents and they had eaten plain food, but they had been honest
+men and faithful women, contented with few possessions but proud of the
+righteousness of their mind.
+
+All this had been changed after they had become exposed to the
+civilization of Egypt. They had taken to the ways of the comfort-loving
+Egyptians. They had allowed another race to rule them and they had not
+cared to fight for their independence.
+
+Instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had begun to
+worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering splendors of the
+dark Egyptian temples.
+
+Moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people from
+their fate and bring them back to the simple Truth of the olden days.
+
+And so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that they leave
+the land of slavery and join him in the desert.
+
+But the Egyptians heard of this and guarded the Jews more carefully than
+ever before.
+
+It seemed that the plans of Moses were doomed to failure when suddenly
+an epidemic broke out among the people of the Nile Valley.
+
+The Jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of health (which
+they had learned in the hardy days of their desert life) escaped the
+disease while the weaker Egyptians died by the hundreds of thousands.
+
+Amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this Silent Death, the
+Jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from the land which had
+promised them so much and which had given them so little.
+
+As soon as the flight became known the Egyptians tried to follow them
+with their armies but their soldiers met with disaster and the
+Jews escaped.
+
+They were safe and they were free and they moved eastward into the waste
+spaces which are situated at the foot of Mount Sinai, the peak which has
+been called after Sin, the Babylonian God of the Moon.
+
+There Moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and commenced upon his
+great task of reform.
+
+In those days, the Jews, like all other people, worshipped many gods.
+During their stay in Egypt they had even learned to do homage to those
+animals which the Egyptians held in such high honor that they built holy
+shrines for their special benefit. Moses on the other hand, during his
+long and lonely life amidst the sandy hills of the peninsula, had
+learned to revere the strength and the power of the great God of the
+Storm and the Thunder, who ruled the high heavens and upon whose
+good-will the wanderer in the desert depended for life and light
+and breath.
+
+This God was called Jehovah and he was a mighty Being who was held in
+trembling respect by all the Semitic people of western Asia.
+
+Through the teaching of Moses he was to become the sole Master of the
+Jewish race.
+
+One day Moses disappeared from the camp of the Hebrews. He took with him
+two tablets of rough-hewn stone. It was whispered that he had gone to
+seek the solitude of Mount Sinai's highest peak.
+
+That afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight.
+
+The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man.
+
+But when Moses returned, behold! ... there stood engraved upon the
+tablets the words which Jehovah himself had spoken amidst the crash of
+his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning.
+
+From that moment on, no Jew dared to question the authority of Moses.
+
+When he told his people that Jehovah commanded them to continue their
+wanderings, they obeyed with eagerness.
+
+For many years they lived amidst the trackless hills of the desert.
+
+They suffered great hardships and almost perished from lack of food and
+water.
+
+But Moses kept high their hopes of a Promised Land which would offer a
+lasting home to the true followers of Jehovah.
+
+At last they reached a more fertile region.
+
+They crossed the river Jordan and, carrying the Holy Tablets of Law,
+they made ready to occupy the pastures which stretch from Dan to
+Beersheba.
+
+As for Moses, he was no longer their leader.
+
+He had grown old and he was very tired.
+
+He had been allowed to see the distant ridges of the Palestine Mountains
+among which the Jews were to find a Fatherland.
+
+Then he had closed his wise eyes for all time.
+
+He had accomplished the task which he had set himself in his youth.
+
+He had led his people out of foreign slavery into the new freedom of an
+independent life.
+
+He had united them and he had made them the first of all nations to
+worship a single God.
+
+
+
+JERUSALEM--THE CITY OF THE LAW
+
+Palestine is a small strip of land between the mountains of Syria and
+the green waters of the Mediterranean. It has been inhabited since time
+immemorial, but we do not know very much about the first settlers,
+although we have given them the name of Canaanites.
+
+The Canaanites belonged to the Semitic race. Their ancestors, like those
+of the Jews and the Babylonians, had been a desert folk. But when the
+Jews entered Palestine, the Canaanites lived in towns and villages. They
+were no longer shepherds but traders. Indeed, in the Jewish language,
+Canaanite and merchant came to mean the same thing.
+
+They had built themselves strong cities, surrounded by high walls and
+they did not allow the Jews to enter their gates, but they forced them
+to keep to the open country and make their home amidst the grassy lands
+of the valleys.
+
+After a time, however, the Jews and the Canaanites became friends. This
+was not so very difficult for they both belonged to the same race.
+Besides they feared a common enemy and only their united strength could
+defend their country against these dangerous neighbors, who were called
+the Philistines and who belonged to an entirely different race.
+
+The Philistines really had no business in Asia. They were Europeans, and
+their earliest home had been in the Isle of Crete. At what age they had
+settled along the shores of the Mediterranean is quite uncertain because
+we do not know when the Indo-European invaders had driven them from
+their island home. But even the Egyptians, who called them Purasati, had
+feared them greatly and when the Philistines (who wore a headdress of
+feathers just like our Indians) went upon the war-path, all the people
+of western Asia sent large armies to protect their frontiers.
+
+[Illustration: JERUSALEM.]
+
+As for the war between the Philistines and the Jews, it never came to an
+end. For although David slew Goliath (who wore a suit of armor which was
+a great curiosity in those days and had been no doubt imported from the
+island of Cyprus where the copper mines of the ancient world were found)
+and although Samson killed the Philistines wholesale when he buried
+himself and his enemies beneath the temple of Dagon, the Philistines
+always proved themselves more than a match for the Jews and never
+allowed the Hebrew people to get hold of any of the harbors of the
+Mediterranean.
+
+The Jews therefore were obliged by fate to content themselves with the
+valleys of eastern Palestine and there, on the top of a barren hill,
+they erected their capital.
+
+The name of this city was Jerusalem and for thirty centuries it has been
+one of the most holy spots of the western world.
+
+In the dim ages of the unknown past, Jerusalem, the Home of Peace, had
+been a little fortified outpost of the Egyptians who had built many
+small fortifications and castles along the mountain ridges of Palestine,
+to defend their outlying frontier against attacks from the East.
+
+After the downfall of the Egyptian Empire, a native tribe, the
+Jebusites, had moved into the deserted city. Then came the Jews who
+captured the town after a long struggle and made it the residence of
+their King David.
+
+At last, after many years of wandering the Tables of the Law seemed to
+have reached a place of enduring rest. Solomon, the Wise, decided to
+provide them with a magnificent home. Far and wide his messengers
+travelled to ransack the world for rare woods and precious metals. The
+entire nation was asked to offer its wealth to make the House of God
+worthy of its holy name. Higher and higher the walls of the temple arose
+guarding the sacred Laws of Jehovah for all the ages.
+
+Alas, the expected eternity proved to be of short duration. Themselves
+intruders among hostile neighbors, surrounded by enemies on all sides,
+harassed by the Philistines, the Jews did not maintain their
+independence for very long.
+
+They fought well and bravely. But their little state, weakened by petty
+jealousies, was easily overpowered by the Assyrians and the Egyptians
+and the Chaldeans and when Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, took
+Jerusalem in the year 586 before the birth of Christ, he destroyed the
+city and the temple, and the Tablets of Stone went up in the general
+conflagration.
+
+At once the Jews set to work to rebuild their holy shrine. But the days
+of Solomon's glory were gone. The Jews were the subjects of a foreign
+race and money was scarce. It took seventy years to reconstruct the old
+edifice. It stood securely for three hundred years but then a second
+invasion took place and once more the red flames of the burning temple
+brightened the skies of Palestine.
+
+When it was rebuilt for the third time, it was surrounded by two high
+walls with narrow gates and several inner courts were added to make
+sudden invasion in the future an impossibility.
+
+But ill-luck pursued the city of Jerusalem.
+
+In the sixty-fifth year before the birth of Christ, the Romans under
+their general Pompey took possession of the Jewish capital. Their
+practical sense did not take kindly to an old city with crooked and dark
+streets and many unhealthy alley-ways. They cleaned up this old rubbish
+(as they considered it) and built new barracks and large public
+buildings and swimming-pools and athletic parks and they forced their
+modern improvements upon an unwilling populace.
+
+The temple which served no practical purposes (as far as they could see)
+was neglected until the days of Herod, who was King of the Jews by the
+Grace of the Roman sword and whose vanity wished to renew the ancient
+splendor of the bygone ages. In a half-hearted manner the oppressed
+people set to work to obey the orders of a master who was not of their
+own choosing.
+
+When the last stone had been placed in its proper position another
+revolution broke out against the merciless Roman tax gatherers. The
+temple was the first victim of this rioting. The soldiers of the Emperor
+Titus promptly set fire to this center of the old Jewish faith. But the
+city of Jerusalem was spared.
+
+Palestine however continued to be the scene of unrest.
+
+The Romans who were familiar with all sorts of races of men and who
+ruled countries where a thousand different divinities were worshipped
+did not know how to handle the Jews. They did not understand the Jewish
+character at all. Extreme tolerance (based upon indifference) was the
+foundation upon which Rome had constructed her very successful Empire.
+Roman governors never interfered with the religious belief of subject
+tribes. They demanded that a picture or a statue of the Emperor be
+placed in the temples of the people who inhabited the outlying parts of
+the Roman domains. This was a mere formality and it did not have any
+deep significance. But to the Jews such a thing seemed highly
+sacrilegious and they would not desecrate their Holiest of Holies by the
+carven image of a Roman potentate.
+
+They refused.
+
+The Romans insisted.
+
+In itself a matter of small importance, a misunderstanding of this sort
+was bound to grow and cause further ill-feeling. Fifty-two years after
+the revolt under the Emperor Titus the Jews once more rebelled. This
+time the Romans decided to be thorough in their work of destruction.
+
+Jerusalem was destroyed.
+
+The temple was burned down.
+
+A new Roman city, called Aelia Capitolina was erected upon the ruins of
+the old city of Solomon.
+
+A heathenish temple devoted to the worship of Jupiter was built upon the
+site where the faithful had worshipped Jehovah for almost a
+thousand years.
+
+The Jews themselves were expelled from their capital and thousands of
+them were driven away from the home of their ancestors.
+
+From that moment on they became wanderers upon the face of the Earth.
+
+But the Holy Laws no longer needed the safe shelter of a royal shrine.
+
+Their influence had long since passed beyond the narrow confines of the
+land of Judah. They had become a living symbol of Justice wherever
+honorable people tried to live a righteous life.
+
+
+
+DAMASCUS--THE CITY OF TRADE
+
+The old cities of Egypt have disappeared from the face of the earth.
+Nineveh and Babylon are deserted mounds of dust and brick. The ancient
+temple of Jerusalem lies buried beneath the blackened ruins of its
+own glory.
+
+One city alone has survived the ages.
+
+It is called Damascus.
+
+Within its four great gates and its strong walls a busy people has
+followed its daily occupations for five thousand consecutive years and
+the "Street called Straight" which is the city's main artery of
+commerce, has seen the coming and going of one hundred and fifty
+generations.
+
+Humbly Damascus began its career as a fortified frontier town of the
+Amorites, those famous desert folk who had given birth to the great King
+Hammurapi. When the Amorites moved further eastward into the valley of
+Mesopotamia to found the Kingdom of Babylon, Damascus had been continued
+as a trading post with the wild Hittites who inhabited the mountains of
+Asia Minor.
+
+In due course of time the earliest inhabitants had been absorbed by
+another Semitic tribe, called the Aramaeans. The city itself however had
+not changed its character. It remained throughout these many changes an
+important center of commerce.
+
+It was situated upon the main road from Egypt to Mesopotamia and it was
+within a week's distance from the harbors on the Mediterranean. It
+produced no great generals and statesmen and no famous Kings. It did not
+conquer a single mile of neighboring territory. It traded with all the
+world and offered a safe home to the merchant and to the artisan.
+Incidentally it bestowed its language upon the greater part of
+western Asia.
+
+Commerce has always demanded quick and practical ways of communication
+between different nations. The elaborate system of nail-writing of the
+ancient Sumerians was too involved for the Aramaean business man. He
+invented a new alphabet which could be written much faster than the old
+wedge-shaped figures of Babylon.
+
+The spoken language of the Aramaeans followed their business
+correspondence.
+
+Aramaean became the English of the ancient world. In most parts of
+Mesopotamia it was understood as readily as the native tongue. In some
+countries it actually took the place of the old tribal dialect.
+
+And when Christ preached to the multitudes, he did not use the ancient
+Jewish speech in which Moses had explained the Laws unto his fellow
+wanderers.
+
+He spoke in Aramaean, the language of the merchant, which had become the
+language of the simple people of the old Mediterranean world.
+
+
+
+THE PHOENICIANS WHO SAILED BEYOND THE HORIZON
+
+A pioneer is a brave fellow, with the courage of his own curiosity.
+
+Perhaps he lives at the foot of a high mountain.
+
+So do thousands of other people. They are quite contented to leave the
+mountain alone.
+
+But the pioneer feels unhappy. He wants to know what mysteries this
+mountain hides from his eyes. Is there another mountain behind it, or a
+plain? Does it suddenly arise with its steep cliffs from the dark waves
+of the ocean or does it overlook a desert?
+
+One fine day the true pioneer leaves his family and the safe comfort of
+his home to go and find out. Perhaps he will come back and tell his
+experience to his indifferent relatives. Or he will be killed by falling
+stones or a treacherous blizzard. In that case he does not return at all
+and the good neighbors shake their heads and say, "He got what he
+deserved. Why did he not stay at home like the rest of us?"
+
+[Illustration: THE DISTANT HORIZON]
+
+But the world needs such men and after they have been dead for many
+years and others have reaped the benefits of their discoveries, they
+always receive a statue with a fitting inscription.
+
+More terrifying than the highest mountain is the thin line of the
+distant horizon. It seems to be the end of the world itself. Heaven have
+mercy upon those who pass beyond this meeting-place of sky and water,
+where all is black despair and death.
+
+And for centuries and centuries after man had built his first clumsy
+boats, he remained within the pleasant sight of one familiar shore and
+kept away from the horizon.
+
+Then came the Phoenicians who knew no such fears. They passed beyond the
+sight of land. Suddenly the forbidding ocean was turned into a peaceful
+highway of commerce and the dangerous menace of the horizon became
+a myth.
+
+These Phoenician navigators were Semites. Their ancestors had lived in
+the desert of Arabia together with the Babylonians, the Jews and all the
+others. But when the Jews occupied Palestine, the cities of the
+Phoenicians were already old with the age of many centuries.
+
+There were two Phoenician centers of trade.
+
+One was called Tyre and the other was called Sidon. They were built upon
+high cliffs and rumor had it that no enemy could take them. Far and wide
+their ships sailed to gather the products of the Mediterranean for the
+benefit of the people of Mesopotamia.
+
+At first the sailors only visited the distant shores of France and Spain
+to barter with the natives and hastened home with their grain and metal.
+Later they had built fortified trading posts along the coasts of Spain
+and Italy and Greece and the far-off Scilly Islands where the valuable
+tin was found.
+
+[Illustration: THE PHOENICIANS.]
+
+To the uncivilized savages of Europe, such a trading post appeared as a
+dream of beauty and luxury. They asked to be allowed to live close to
+its walls, to see the wonderful sights when the boats of many sails
+entered the harbor, carrying the much-desired merchandise of the unknown
+east. Gradually they left their huts to build themselves small wooden
+houses around the Phoenician fortresses. In this way many a trading post
+had grown into a market place for all the people of the entire
+neighborhood.
+
+Today such big cities as Marseilles and Cadiz are proud of their
+Phoenician origin, but their ancient mothers, Tyre and Sidon, have been
+dead and forgotten for over two thousand years and of the Phoenicians
+themselves, none have survived.
+
+This is a sad fate but it was fully deserved.
+
+The Phoenicians had grown rich without great effort, but they had not
+known how to use their wealth wisely. They had never cared for books or
+learning. They had only cared for money.
+
+They had bought and sold slaves all over the world. They had forced the
+foreign immigrants to work in their factories. They cheated their
+neighbors whenever they had a chance and they had made themselves
+detested by all the other people of the Mediterranean.
+
+They were brave and energetic navigators, but they showed themselves
+cowards whenever they were obliged to choose between honorable dealing
+and an immediate profit, obtained through fraudulent and shrewd trading.
+
+As long as they had been the only sailors in the world who could handle
+large ships, all other nations had been in need of their services. As
+soon as the others too had learned how to handle a rudder and a set of
+sails, they at once got rid of the tricky Phoenician merchant.
+
+From that moment on, Tyre and Sidon had lost their old hold upon the
+commercial world of Asia. They had never encouraged art or science. They
+had known how to explore the seven seas and turn their ventures into
+profitable investments. No state, however, can be safely built upon
+material possessions alone.
+
+The land of Phoenicia had always been a counting-house without a soul.
+
+It perished because it had honored a well-filled treasure chest as the
+highest ideal of civic pride.
+
+
+
+THE ALPHABET FOLLOWS THE TRADE
+
+I have told you how the Egyptians preserved speech by means of little
+figures. I have described the wedge-shaped signs which served the people
+of Mesopotamia as a handy means of transacting business at home
+and abroad.
+
+But how about our own alphabet? From whence came those compact little
+letters which follow us throughout our life, from the date on our birth
+certificate to the last word of our funeral notice? Are they Egyptian or
+Babylonian or Aramaic or are they something entirely different? They are
+a little bit of everything, as I shall now tell you.
+
+Our modern alphabet is not a very satisfactory instrument for the
+purpose of reproducing our speech. Some day a genius will invent a new
+system of writing which shall give each one of our sounds a little
+picture of its own. But with all its many imperfections the letters of
+our modern alphabet perform their daily task quite nicely and fully as
+well as their very accurate and precise cousins, the numerals, who
+wandered into Europe from distant India, almost ten centuries after the
+first invasion of the alphabet. The earliest history of these letters,
+however, is a deep mystery and it will take many years of painstaking
+investigation before we can solve it.
+
+This much we know--that our alphabet was not suddenly invented by a
+bright young scribe. It developed and grew during hundreds of years out
+of a number of older and more complicated systems.
+
+In my last chapter I have told you of the language of the intelligent
+Aramaean traders which spread throughout western Asia, as an
+international means of communication. The language of the Phoenicians
+was never very popular among their neighbors. Except for a very few
+words we do not know what sort of tongue it was. Their system of
+writing, however, was carried into every corner of the vast
+Mediterranean and every Phoenician colony became a center for its
+further distribution.
+
+It remains to be explained why the Phoenicians, who did nothing to
+further either art or science, hit upon such a compact and handy system
+of writing, while other and superior nations remained faithful to the
+old clumsy scribbling.
+
+The Phoenicians, before all else, were practical business men. They did
+not travel abroad to admire the scenery. They went upon their perilous
+voyages to distant parts of Europe and more distant parts of Africa in
+search of wealth. Time was money in Tyre and Sidon and commercial
+documents written in hieroglyphics or Sumerian wasted useful hours of
+busy clerks who might be employed upon more useful errands.
+
+When our modern business world decided that the old-fashioned way of
+dictating letters was too slow for the hurry of modern life, a clever
+man devised a simple system of dots and dashes which could follow the
+spoken word as closely as a hound follows a hare.
+
+This system we call "shorthand."
+
+The Phoenician traders did the same thing.
+
+They borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptian hieroglyphics and
+simplified a number of wedge-shaped figures from the Babylonians.
+
+They sacrificed the pretty looks of the older system for the benefit of
+speed and they reduced the thousands of images of the ancient world to a
+short and handy alphabet of only twenty-two letters. They tried it out
+at home and when it proved a success, they carried it abroad.
+
+Among the Egyptians and the Babylonians, writing had been a very serious
+affair--something almost holy. Many improvements had been proposed but
+these had been invariably discarded as sacrilegious innovations. The
+Phoenicians who were not interested in piety succeeded where the others
+had failed. They could not introduce their script into Mesopotamia and
+Egypt, but among the people of the Mediterranean, who were totally
+ignorant of the art of writing, the Phoenician alphabet was a great
+success and in all nooks and corners of that vast sea we find vases and
+pillars and ruins covered with Phoenician inscriptions.
+
+The Indo-European Greeks who had migrated to the many islands of the
+Aegean Sea at once applied this foreign alphabet to their own language.
+Certain Greek sounds, unknown to the ears of the Semitic Phoenicians,
+needed letters of their own. These were invented and added to
+the others.
+
+But the Greeks did not stop at this.
+
+They improved the whole system of speech-recording.
+
+All the systems of writing of the ancient people of Asia had one thing
+in common.
+
+The consonants were reproduced but the reader was forced to guess at the
+vowels.
+
+This is not as difficult as it seems.
+
+We often omit the vowels in advertisements and in announcements which
+are printed in our newspapers. Journalists and telegraph operators, too,
+are apt to invent languages of their own which do away with all the
+superfluous vowels and use only such consonants as are necessary to
+provide a skeleton around which the vowels can be draped when the story
+is rewritten.
+
+But such an imperfect scheme of writing can never become popular, and
+the Greeks, with their sense of order, added a number of extra signs to
+reproduce the "a" and the "e" and the "i" and the "o" and the "u." When
+this had been done, they possessed an alphabet which allowed them to
+write everything in almost every language.
+
+Five centuries before the birth of Christ these letters crossed the
+Adriatic and wandered from Athens to Rome.
+
+The Roman soldiers carried them to the furthest corners of western
+Europe and taught our own ancestors the use of the little
+Phoenician signs.
+
+Twelve centuries later, the missionaries of Byzantine took the alphabet
+into the dreary wilderness of the dark Russian plain.
+
+Today more than half of the people of the world use this Asiatic
+alphabet to keep a record of their thoughts and to preserve a record of
+their knowledge for the benefit of their children and their
+grandchildren.
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
+
+So far, the story of ancient man has been the record of a wonderful
+achievement. Along the banks of the river Nile, in Mesopotamia and on
+the shores of the Mediterranean, people had accomplished great things
+and wise rulers had performed mighty deeds. There, for the first time in
+history, man had ceased to be a roving animal. He had built himself
+houses and villages and vast cities.
+
+He had formed states.
+
+He had learned the art of constructing and navigating swift-sailing
+boats.
+
+He had explored the heavens and within his own soul he had discovered
+certain great moral laws which made him akin to the divinities which he
+worshipped. He had laid the foundations for all our further knowledge
+and our science and our art and those things that tend to make life
+sublime beyond the mere grubbing for food and lodging.
+
+Most important of all he had devised a system of recording sound which
+gave unto his children and unto his children's children the benefit of
+their ancestors' experience and allowed them to accumulate such a store
+of information that they could make themselves the masters of the forces
+of nature.
+
+But together with these many virtues, ancient man had one great failing.
+
+He was too much a slave of tradition.
+
+He did not ask enough questions.
+
+He reasoned "My father did such and such a thing before me and my
+grandfather did it before my father and they both fared well and
+therefore this thing ought to be good for me too and I must not change
+it." He forgot that this patient acceptance of facts would never have
+lifted us above the common herd of animals.
+
+Once upon a time there must have been a man of genius who refused any
+longer to swing from tree to tree with the help of his long, curly tail
+(as all his people had done before him) and who began to walk on
+his feet.
+
+But ancient man had lost sight of this fact and continued to use the
+wooden plow of his earliest ancestors and continued to believe in the
+same gods that had been worshipped ten thousand years before and taught
+his children to do likewise.
+
+Instead of going forward he stood still and this was fatal.
+
+For a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon and the
+ancient world was doomed.
+
+We call these new people the Indo-Europeans. They were white men like
+you and me, and they spoke a language which was the common ancestor of
+all our European languages with the exception of Hungarian, Finnish and
+the Basque of Northern Spain.
+
+When we first hear of them they had for many centuries made their home
+along the banks of the Caspian Sea. But one day (for reasons which are
+totally unknown to us) they packed their belongings on the backs of the
+horses which they had trained and they gathered their cows and dogs and
+goats and began to wander in search of distant happiness and food. Some
+of them moved into the mountains of central Asia and for a long time
+they lived amidst the peaks of the plateau of Iran, whence they are
+called the Iranians or Aryans. Others slowly followed the setting sun
+and took possession of the vast plains of western Europe.
+
+They were almost as uncivilized as those prehistoric men who made their
+appearance within the first pages of this book. But they were a hardy
+race and good fighters and without difficulty they seem to have occupied
+the hunting grounds and the pastures of the men of the stone age.
+
+They were as yet quite ignorant but thanks to a happy Fate they were
+curious. The wisdom of the ancient world, which was carried to them by
+the traders of the Mediterranean, they very soon made their own.
+
+But the age-old learning of Egypt and Babylonia and Chaldea they merely
+used as a stepping-stone to something higher and better. For
+"tradition," as such, meant nothing to them and they considered that the
+Universe was theirs to explore and to exploit as they saw fit and that
+it was their duty to submit all experience to the acid test of human
+intelligence.
+
+[Illustration: A COLONY.]
+
+Soon therefore they passed beyond those boundaries which the ancient
+world had accepted as impassable barriers--a sort of spiritual Mountains
+of the Moon. Then they turned against their former masters and within a
+short time a new and vigorous civilization replaced the out-worn
+structure of the ancient Asiatic world.
+
+But of these Indo-Europeans and their adventures I give you a detailed
+account in "The Story of Mankind," which tells you about the Greeks and
+the Romans and all the other races in the world.
+
+
+
+A FEW DATES CONNECTED WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
+
+I can not give you any positive dates connected with Prehistoric Man.
+The early Europeans who appear in the first chapters of this book began
+their career about fifty thousand years ago.
+
+
+THE EGYPTIANS
+
+The earliest civilization in the Nile Valley
+developed forty centuries before the birth of
+Christ.
+
+3400 B.C.    The Old Egyptian Empire is
+             founded. Memphis is the capital.
+
+2800--2700   B.C. The Pyramids are built.
+
+2000 B.C.    The Old Empire is destroyed by
+             the Arab shepherds, called the "Hyksos."
+
+1800 B.C.    Thebes delivers Egypt from the
+             Hyksos and becomes the center
+             of the New Egyptian Empire.
+
+1350 B.C.    King Rameses conquers Eastern Asia.
+
+1300 B.C.    The Jews leave Egypt.
+
+1000 B.C.    Egypt begins to decline.
+
+700 B.C.     Egypt becomes an Assyrian province.
+
+650 B.C.     Egypt regains her independence
+             and a new State is founded with
+             Sais in the Delta as its capital.
+             Foreigners, especially Greeks,
+             begin to dominate the country.
+
+525 B.C.     Egypt becomes a Persian province.
+
+300 B.C.     Egypt becomes an independent
+             Kingdom ruled by one of Alexander
+             the Great's generals, called Ptolemy.
+
+30 B.C.      Cleopatra, the last princess of the
+             Ptolemy dynasty, kills herself and
+             Egypt becomes part of the Roman Empire.
+
+
+THE JEWS
+
+
+2000         B.C. Abraham moves away from the
+             land of Ur in eastern Babylonia
+             and looks for a new home in the
+             western part of Asia.
+
+1550 B.C.    The Jews occupy the land of
+             Goshen in Egypt.
+
+1300 B.C.    Moses leads the Jews out of
+             Egypt and gives them the Law.
+
+1250 B.C.    The Jews have crossed the river
+             Jordan and have occupied Palestine.
+
+1055 B.C.    Saul is King of the Jews.
+
+1025 B.C.    David is King of a powerful Jewish state.
+
+1000 B.C.    Solomon builds the Great Temple
+             of Jerusalem.
+
+950 B.C.     The Jewish state divided into two
+             Kingdoms, that of Judah and that of Israel.
+
+900-600 B.C. The age of the great Prophets.
+
+722 B.C.     The Assyrians conquer Palestine.
+
+586 B.C.     Nebuchadnezzar conquers Palestine.
+             The Babylonian captivity.
+
+537 B.C.     Cyrus, King of the Persians, allows
+             the Jews to return to Palestine.
+
+167-130 B.C. Last period of Jewish independence
+             under the Maccabees.
+
+63 B.C.      Pompeius makes Palestine part
+             of the Roman Empire.
+
+40 B.C.      Herod King of the Jews.
+
+70 A.D.      The Emperor Titus destroys Jerusalem.
+
+
+MESOPOTAMIA
+
+4000 B.C.    The Sumerians take possession of
+             the land between the Tigris and
+             the Euphrates.
+
+2200 B.C.    Hammurapi, King of Babylon, gives
+             his people a famous code of law.
+
+1900 B.C.    Beginning of the Assyrian State,
+             with Nineveh as its capital.
+
+950-650 B.C. Assyria becomes the master of
+             western Asia.
+
+700 B.C.     Sargon, the ruler of the Assyrians,
+             conquers Palestine, Egypt and Arabia.
+
+640 B.C.     The Medes revolt against the
+             Assyrian rule.
+
+530 B.C.     The Scythians attack Assyria.
+             There are revolutions all over
+             the Kingdom.
+
+608 B.C.     Nineveh is destroyed. Assyria
+             disappears from the map.
+
+608-538 B.C. The Chaldeans reestablish the
+             Babylonian Kingdom.
+
+604-561 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem,
+             takes Phoenicia and makes
+             Babylon the center of civilization.
+
+538 B.C.     Mesopotamia becomes a Persian province.
+
+330 B.C.     Alexander the Great conquers Mesopotamia.
+
+
+THE PHOENICIANS
+
+
+1500-1200 B.C. The city of Sklon is the chief
+               Phoenician center of trade.
+
+1100-950 B.C.  Tyre becomes the commercial
+               center of Phoenicia.
+
+1000-600 B.C.  Development of the Phoenician
+               colonial Empire.
+
+850 B.C.       Carthage is founded.
+
+586-573 B.C.   Siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar.
+               The city is captured and destroyed.
+
+538 B.C.       Phoenicia becomes a Persian province.
+
+60 B.C.        Phoenicia becomes part of the Roman Empire.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Persian altar]
+
+THE PERSIANS
+
+
+At an unknown date the Indo-European
+people began their march into Europe and
+into India.
+
+The year 1000 B.C. is usually given for
+Zarathustra, the great teacher of the Persians,
+who gave an excellent moral law.
+650-B.C. The Indo-European Medes found
+a state along the eastern boundaries
+of Babylonia.
+
+550-330 B.C.   The Kingdom of the Persians.
+               Beginning of the struggle
+               between Indo-Europeans and Semites.
+
+525-8.C.       Cambyses, King of the Persians, takes Egypt.
+
+520-485 B.C.   Rule of Darius, King of the
+               Persians, who conquers Babylon
+               and attacks Greece.
+
+485-465 B.C.   Rule of King Xerxes, who tries to establish
+               himself in eastern Europe but fails.
+
+330 B.C.       The Greek, Alexander the Great,
+               conquers all of western Asia and
+               Egypt and Persia becomes a
+               Greek Province.
+
+The ancient world which was dominated by Semitic peoples lasted almost
+forty centuries. In the fourth century before the birth of Christ it
+died of old age.
+
+Western Asia and Egypt had been the teachers of the Indo-Europeans who
+had occupied Europe at an unknown date.
+
+In the fourth century before Christ, the Indo-European pupils had so far
+surpassed their teachers that they could begin their conquest of
+the world.
+
+The famous expedition of Alexander the Great in 330 B.C. made an end to
+the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia and established the supremacy
+of Greek (that is European) culture.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Man, by Hendrik Willem van Loon
+
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