ANCIENT MAN 
 
 hif Hendrik Wlllem Van Loon 
 
 WITH 
 
 20 FOUR COLOR 
 PLATES AND 
 16 ANIMATED 
 MAPS 
 
 Boni f Liveridhi 
 
 Publishers 
 New Yorkp 
 
 THE IDEAL GIFT BOOK 
 
 A WONDERFULLY DELIGHTFUL 
 HISTORY IN STORY FORM 
 FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 
 OF UNDERSTANDING 
 PARENTS 
 
O o O O ^ 
 
 
__ Cornell University Library 
 
 DS 62.V26 
 
 Ancient man: 
 
 3 1924 028 577 082 
 
ANCIENT MAN 
 
XI 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028577082 
 
J>tT> you K'A/o uj TH l^_ ? 
 
 T^A \/ e.M G A* T 
 
 tTT"**"""*'* 
 
 X/z^uurAu^ ^m(^U4j.-^j/(i^ 
 
 . ^ — ™^" 1 1ll Yjk" 
 
 6o> 000 Y ^-^'^-^ 0CJ> 
 
 Part of T+<t 3irx,Lu oi= carcv, T»J?e^»oToft.c /v.cxv 
 
 ^=5^</ o O <!=>> ^^»i?p'=^ 
 
 
 ETo/vi OP EyT/AiCT FiSH- 
 
 T^OCtV.^ ^00 .00 0.0 V1£/^Rs OLJ^ 
 
ANCIENT MAN 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATIONS 
 
 Written and Draum and Done into Color 
 HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON, A.B, Ph.D. 
 
 MEMBERUTRECHTHISTORICALSOCIETY ■;;;.: r :- 
 
 FORMERLY LECTURER ON MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Fall of the Dutch Republic," "The Rise of th& Dutch Kingdom" 
 
 "The Golden Boo\of the Dutch 7<lavigators" 
 
 "A Short History of Discovery" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BONI 5? LIVERIGHT 
 1920 
 
WHAT OUR HISTORIES WILL TELL 
 
 Volume One. ANCIENT MAN describes the earliest development of civilization along the banks 
 of the Nile and the Mediterranean and in the fertile valley of Mesopotamia. 
 
 VOLUME TWO— explains the origin and growth of the CLASSICAL WORLD of Greece (which 
 organised our ideas and systematised our science), and of Rome (which gave us the founda- 
 tions for all our future experiments in state-craft). 
 
 VOLUME THREE — entitled THE MIDDLE AGES is the story of the invasion of Europe by savage 
 tribes from Central Asia. It shows their wanderings across the western part of the old con- 
 tinent and tells you how they settled down amidst the ruins of that selfsame Roman Empire 
 which they had just destroyed and how they used the Roman civilization as the foundation 
 for their own culture. 
 
 VOLUME FOUR— the REBIRTH OF CIVILIZATION gives an account of those enthusiastic 
 centuries which followed the turmoil of the Middle Ages when man suddenly discovered the 
 literary, artistic and scientific inheritance of Greece and Rome which lay buried beneath the 
 wreckage of the great migrations and awaited only the hand of the intellectual pioneer to 
 be brought back to life. 
 
 VOLUME FIVE. THE CONQUEST OF NEW WORLDS shows the people of Europe, outgrowing 
 the narrow boundaries of the medieval state, and venturing forth to discover what might 
 be hiding from their curious gaze behind the distant horizon. 
 
 VOLUME SIX. THE CONQUEST OF KNOWLEDGE, tells of the even more perilous voyage 
 which man undertook into the uncharted realm of knowledge. 
 
 VOLUME SEVEN — called THE BEGINNING OF FREEDOM, shows the new type of man who 
 believes himself master of the visible world and who now insists that he must be allowed to 
 direct his own affairs in his own way and for his own benefit. 
 
 This is followed by VOLUME EIGHT— THE AGE OF INVENTION— when man makes a fierce 
 onslaught upon the hidden laws of nature and forces his old enemy to work for him as an 
 obedient and faithful slave. 
 
 Finally, in VOLUME NINE— THE WORLD OF TODAY, we take stock of everything that has 
 happened during the last five thousand years and try to show where the human race has 
 lived up to its highest possible achievements and wherein it has failed to rise above the 
 status of the earliest cave-man. 
 
 Copyright 1920, by Boni & Liveright 
 
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 some times lose ourselves in a sudden and 
 dense fog of ignorance. 
 
 Wherever we go we must carry our warm cloak of human sympathy and under- 
 standing 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. 
 
 7 
 
I shall not pretend to be an infallible guide. Whenever you have a chance, take 
 counsel with other travellers who have passed along the same route before. Com- 
 pare 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 tirhes 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. 
 
 8 Barrow Street, 
 New York City. 
 May 8, xx. 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 Chapter i. Prehistoric Man. 
 
 Chapter 2. The World Grows Cold. 
 
 Chapter 3. End of the Stone Age. 
 
 Chapter 4. The Earliest School of the Human Race. 
 
 Chapter 5. The Key of Stone. 
 
 Chapter 6. The Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. 
 
 Chapter 7. The Making of a State. 
 
 Chapter 8. The Rise and Fall of Egypt. 
 
 Chapter 9. Mesopotamia — the Country Between the Rivers. 
 
 Chapter id. The Sumerian Nail-writers. 
 
 Chapter ii. Assyria and Babylonia — the Great Semitic Melting-pot. 
 
 Chapter 12. The Story of Moses. 
 
 Chapter 13. Jerusalem — the City of the Law. 
 
 Chapter 14. Damascus — the City of Trade. 
 
 Chapter 15. The Phoenicians Who Sailed Beyond the Horizon. 
 
 Chapter 16. The Alphabet Follows the Trade. 
 
 Chapter 17. The End of the Ancient World. 
 
ANCIENT MAN 
 
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. 
 
 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. 
 
 15 
 
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. .5-. 
 
 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 ap- 
 proaches. 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 ho 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. 
 
 16 
 
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. 
 
 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 in- 
 habitants 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 
 
 .. When they tried to stay more than a few days there was a terrible 
 newcomers, vv j 
 
 17 
 
f 
 
 
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 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 mountainridge. 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. 
 
 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 diff^erence 
 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 sur- 
 vivors 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 heav}- 
 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 
 
 19 
 
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 
 
 21 
 
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. 
 
 22 
 
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 impos- 
 sible 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— 
 
 23 
 

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 towards 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 un- 
 occupied 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. 
 
 25 
 
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 abun- 
 dance 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. 
 
 26 
 
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. 
 
 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. 
 
 27 
 
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? 
 
 29 
 

 //U p A tJ ^ S*-^ 
 
 O/VJ ALU ilT>EJ -PHB UA«.L. 
 
 Thi= -SE/^ OR ft t<? ft A A) t>, )0v 
 
 U-TTi- 
 
 A/ / 1_& ;/j 
 
 3u &ITH&R T>E:iEftTS^ 
 
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 sunimer 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 achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 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. 
 
 31 
 
The third one which you will find along the shore of the Mediterrean, was in- 
 habited 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 thou- 
 sand 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. 
 
 32 
 
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 re- 
 garded 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 tight rope 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 opera- 
 tions 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. 
 
 33 
 
r 
 
 XM fe ICBY OF -JTOA* 
 
But they did and it was the main reason why they made such slow progress 
 during the first milhon 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 envelop 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 curlicues 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 we 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." 
 
 35 
 
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. 
 
 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 indif- 
 ference 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. 
 
 36 
 
Then the mysterious door was opened and the ancient treasure house of Egypt 
 was forced to surrender its secrets. 
 
 The man who gave his Hfe to the task of deciphering this language was Jean 
 Frangois ChampolUon — 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 ap- 
 pointed 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 hiero- 
 glyphics 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." 
 
 37 
 
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 ChampoUion's difficulties. Then you will understand, and under- 
 standing, 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 I Z I river Nile. 
 
 Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw. A3 
 
 "Very well," you said, "that means, of course, that the fai-mer ^ M went out 
 and cut a tree down." Most likely you had guessed correctly. I 
 
 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. 
 
 38 
 
What could he have meant? 
 
 That was the riddle which ChampoUion 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 
 
 =n mean. 
 
 means either these two round objects in your head which allow you 
 or it means "I," the person who is talking or writing, 
 is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks you in the fin- 
 when you try to catch it, or it represents the verb "to be," which is 
 
 nounced 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 | „ || which represents the sound which we find in the word 
 
 Put your "bee" and your "leaf" together and you have the 
 make the verb "beeleave" or "believe" as we write it 
 
 pro- 
 
 "leave" or "leaf." 
 two sounds which 
 nowadays. 
 
 39 
 
The "eye" you know all about. 
 
 Finally you get a picture which looks like a giraffe. I j» "jj It is a giraffe, and it 
 is part of the old sign language, which has been con- Vk tinued wherever it 
 seemed most convenient. I' '^1 
 
 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 difificulty. 
 
 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. 
 
 40 
 
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. 
 
 41 
 
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. 
 
 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 of 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 Egyp- 
 tians 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. 
 
 ; 43 ■.-... ^ 
 
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 accom- 
 panied 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 — some- 
 where — 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 45 
 
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 some one 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. 
 
 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 
 
 47 
 
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 peace- 
 ful 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 any- 
 thing 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. 
 
 48 
 
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 tnousand 
 years old. 
 
 Of course the Egyptians took their guests into the desert to see these wondrous 
 sights just as we take foreigners to gaze at the Woolworth 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. 
 
 49 
 
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. Some- 
 times 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 are 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. 
 
 A single man or a single family or even a small tribe could not construct a river- 
 dam without the help of others. 
 
 51 
 
Th e you N c NILE 
 
However much a farmer might dislike his neighbors he disHked 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 law- 
 less 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 singlehandedly. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 53 
 
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 every day 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? 
 
 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. 
 
 55 
 
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 house- 
 hold, 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. 
 
 56 
 
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 ^,s 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 Fish's home- 
 stead 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 
 
 57 
 
crossing the lands over which Fish held sway. Besides, Sickle was not very ener- 
 getic 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 Reve- 
 nue 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. 
 
 58 
 
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 an- 
 cestors 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 into 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. 
 
 59 
 
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. 
 
 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 
 
 60 
 
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 ex- 
 pected. 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 are 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 
 
 61 
 
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 defence 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 stfong 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 or 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 inde- 
 pendence. 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. 
 
 63 
 
After the Greeks came the Persians, who conquered all of northern Africa. 
 
 Two centuries later, Alexander the Great turned the ancient land of the Pharaohs 
 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 Ptolemy's, 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. 
 
 64 
 
IAM'pOING to take you to the top of the highest pyramid. 
 It is a good deal of a dimb. 
 
 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 oflf, 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 ha^k) see something shimmering and green. 
 
 It is a valley situated between two big rivers. 
 
 It is the ifiost 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 Hippopotamos, 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. 
 
 65 
 
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 sparrow returns, 
 we know that summer is about to smile upon us. 
 
 Man is no exception to this rule. He likes the warm stove mucn 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 new- 
 comers, 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. 
 
 67 
 
The Sumerian 7<lail Writers 
 
 IN THE YEAR 1472, a short time before Columbus discovered America, a 
 certain Venetian, by the name of Josaphat Barbaro, travelling 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, Barbaro 
 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. Tnerefore 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 1 76 1, lasted six years. During this period all of the members died except one, by 
 
 69 
 
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 
 stufify 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 inhabi- 
 tants of Mesopotamia had been forced to carve their words into the hard rock of a 
 mountain side or into a soft brick of clay. 
 
 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. N/ 
 
 But after a time the star shape was discarded as being too cumbersome and the 
 
 figure was given this shape. %jk 
 
 After a while the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of "star," and the picture 
 was simplified in this way p^f which made it still more of a puzzle. 
 
 In the same way an ox changed from ^\j into H*** 
 
 71 
 
A fish changed from h into jjf^ 
 
 The sun which was originally a plain circle became ^* and if we were using the 
 Sumerian script today we would make an <s4g look like this /CS 
 
 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, Rawlin- 
 son 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 "dwelling place 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. 
 
 73 
 
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 Ger- 
 man 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. 
 
 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 top 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 cen- 
 turies 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. 
 
 75 
 

 irmtiinTf^i^j^joSpcTA 5>.E 
 MoOA)TA t/03 
 
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. 
 
 11 
 
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. 
 
 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 
 
 79 
 
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 Babylou 
 but after a first success on the part of their King, Tiglath Pileser, they were defeated 
 and forced to return to their own country. 
 
 80 
 
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. 
 
 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 hot 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 
 some one, 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 despribes 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. 
 
 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. 
 
NINEVEH 
 
 Mk^dffmMW^^ 
 
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 Chaldanes 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 ppilaces 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. 
 
 83 
 
NINEVEH T)EiTKOy£J) 
 
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 c ver been able to improve upon this old Babylonian inven- 
 tion. 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." 
 
 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 fcentury 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. 
 
 85 
 
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. 
 
 87 
 
This is The Story of Moses 
 
 HIGH above the thin Hne 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. 
 
 89 
 
^^^^ -THE cTHAUl^ex^^JS 
 
 Le.ARA/EJ> A3"" 
 
 x;^ 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 3-iLxn ^tL 
 
 
 "ii^. 
 
 sp- 
 
 ^ 
 
 He 
 
 ■fir 
 
 XS- 
 
 The DipfER 
 
 <£x' 
 
 
 ARcTu Ru5 
 
 
 
 .,'^->.'.< 
 
 
 . '.^I*^ ■*• 
 
 ?' Q AAA«5 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 X'* 
 
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. 
 
 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 out- 
 lying 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. 
 
 91 
 
Now it occurred one day that Moses v/as 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 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 sub- 
 jects. 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. 
 
 93 
 
1+1 e»- ^\ ■^='~ri-t 
 
 /MA p 
 
 J 
 
 EK) i . 
 
 
 .L*s^a/o<\/ 
 
 /joR}>^ 
 
 A/yJ « 
 
 "Ttttj II Tne t-«'!f> 
 OP "me 
 
 / 
 
J'he 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 trem- 
 bling 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 suflfered great hardships and almost perished from lack of food and water. 
 
 95 
 
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 the 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 inde- 
 pendent life. 
 
 He had united them and he had made them the first of all nations to worship 
 a single God. 
 
 96 
 
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 im- 
 memorial, 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 Ijeen a desert folk. But when the Jews entered 
 Palestine, the Canaanites lived in towns and villages. They were no longer shep- 
 herds 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. 
 
 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 
 
 97 
 
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 hbme. 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, harrassed 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. 
 
 99 
 
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 by-gone 
 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 signifi- 
 cance. 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. 
 
 100 
 
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. 
 
 101 
 
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 Hittities 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. Tt 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. 
 
 103 
 
The spoken language of the Aramaeans followed their business correspondence. 
 
 Aramaean became the English of the ancient world. In most parts of Meso- 
 potamia it was understood as readily as the native tongue. In some countries it 
 actiially 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. 
 
 104 
 
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 indif- 
 ferent 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?" 
 
 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 re- 
 mained 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. 
 
 105 
 
One was called Tyre and the other was called Sidon. They were built upon high 
 cliflfs 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-oflf SciUy Islands where the valuable tin was found. 
 
 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 com- 
 mercial world of Asia. They had never encouraged art or science. They had 
 
 107 
 
.•■'■Route "To T«e 
 
 .•■' AM3ER.- CAMS ''^KoM 
 50' 
 
 
 The RHo'>'e i^rwEf^ 
 
 ., fie«E T+ieKE WEft& ^.„=s 
 
 
 w 
 
 >uO' 
 
 ^R/^ 
 
 CAR7 
 
 /MAl_TA 
 
 Co«si<:a 
 
 llUlill '"" 
 
 ,- .-•■ TiS/^5^ Route 
 Mere «TP^ "^ y<^'^ •' 
 
 lffAl>e. Route 
 
 * * • _ • 
 
known how to explore the seven seas and turn their ventures into profitable invest- 
 ments. 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. 
 
 109 
 
The Alphabet Follows the Trade 
 
 I HAVE told you how the Egyptians preserved speech by means of Httle figures. 
 I have described the wedge-shaped signs which served the people of Meso- 
 potamia 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 Ara- 
 maic 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 com- 
 munication. 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
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. 
 
 113 
 
>| e ^ E V E. A> "TH H A p 
 
 — VAiT i^oRi-D OP "The -Pe s^5 ^ a /^'S 
 
 ^-^' '°';!««'>^*" 
 
 ^wD 
 
 ^ aJ 
 
 e 5^ 
 
 
 
 ^BHISTwM 
 
 ^-4:^^ 
 
 ^ r**-*^ 
 
 L 
 
We often omit the vowels in advertisements and in announcements which are 
 printed in our newspapers. JournaUsts 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. 
 
 115 
 
IHE. EiC+f-r^ /VIA jD . 
 
 /^ a; i> "T^i e ~S e M I Tj_ 
 
 Ai I /A - Itre^ 
 
 A-«.i "THE. -poo GR^^T 
 
 /4nt> Ai=R>cv» 
 
The End of The Ancient World 
 
 SO FAR, the story of ancient man has been the record of a wonderful achieve- 
 ment. 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 ancestor's 
 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. 
 
 117 
 
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 ap- 
 pearance 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. 
 
 Soon therefore they passed beyond those boundaries which the ancient world 
 had accepted as impassible 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 must give you a detailed 
 account, and this I shall do in my next volume, which will tell you the story of the 
 Greeks and the Romans. 
 
 ii8 
 
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 eariiest civihzation 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. 
 
 119 
 
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. 
 
 Q50 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 
 
 1 500-1 200 B.C. The city of Sidon is the chief Phoenician center of trade. 
 
 120 
 
ilod-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. 
 
 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. 
 650-500 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 B.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 sur- 
 passed 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. 
 
 121 
 
The, <=IReE'=^- 
 How ~o ^^^ 
 
 TS 
 
 C/17-J 
 
 ALL 
 
 OF The J 6 
 
 A/WwutMl-S 
 
 Kjere 3Roo«*c 
 
 ;- To Europe 
 
 B^ 
 
 IHE^ /A-)I>0- 
 
 EluRoPEA-^JS 
 
 %^^>^l/^'/((( 
 
 The 
 
 <A 
 
 Mf 
 
 OK 
 
 CHEii 
 
 CAME 
 
 To 
 
 »Ji 
 
 Pf^QM 
 
 IWDiA 
 
 3^ 
 
 lOA Y OT 
 
 
 Peft i 
 
 ft 
 
 1 
 
 
 #' 
 
 OoR FiRJT MoRAL 
 
 COAj CE )iTl O/SiS AMi> 
 OuK FiRiT 'i>eA3 
 
 Ca me F R O nA