QassJ ,4^t&-\^ irf 7n.,j V. Middle States — Phoenicians and Hebrews . . 74 PART II. THE GREEKS VI. Aegean Civilization, 3500-1200 b.c 82 VII. The Coming of the Achaeans ..... 91 VIII. Greek Civilization in Homeric Days ... 95 IX. From the Trojan to the Persian War, 1000-500 b.c. 103 The Dorians — New Migrations — Revival of Indus- try and Art — The "People" Rule at Athens — Mil- itary Rule at Sparta. X. A Little Geography and Review . ■ . . . 130 XI. The Persian Wars 135 XII. Athenian Leadership, 478-431 b.c. .... 152 XIII. First Period of Strife with Sparta, 461-445 b.c. . 159 XIV. The Athenian Empire in Peace (The Age of Pericles) 163 XV. Life in the Age of Pericles 184 XVI. The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 b.c. . . .195 XVII. From the Fall of Athens to the Fall of Hellas . 202 Spartan Supremacy — TReban Supremacy — Mace- donian Conquest. v VI CONTENTS PART III. THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD CHAPTER XVIII Alexander Joins East and West XIX. Story of the Hellenistic World, 323-220 b.c. XX. The Achaean League ...... XXI. Hellenistic Society (The Alexandrian Age) . PAGE 212 218 223 229 PART IV. ROME XXII. Land and People , 237 XXIII. Rome under the Kings 242 XXIV. The Early Republic — to 367 b.c. . . . 251 Expulsion of the Kings — Class Struggles — Plebeian Gains. XXV. Rome Unites Italy, 367-266 b.c. . . .261 XXVI. United Italy under Roman Rule after 266 b.c. 265 Citizens — Subjects — Roads and Army. XXVII. Government of the Roman Republic . . 273 XXVIII. Roman Society at its Best, 367-200 b.c. . . 277 XXIX. The Winning of the West, 264-146 b.c. . . 282 Rome and Carthage — The War for Sicily — The War for Spain. XXX. The West from 201 to 146 b.c 296 Spain — The War for Africa. XXXI. The Winning of the East, 201-143 b.c. . . 301 XXXII. Class Strife Again, 146-49 b.c 308 XXXIII. The Gracchi, 133-121 b.c 322 XXXIV. Marius and Sulla, 106-78 b.c 329 XXXV. PoMPEY AND Caesar, 78-49 b.c 336 PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE XXXVI. Founding the Empire, 49-31 b.c. . . .343 Caesar's Five Years — From Julius to Octavius XXXVII. The Emperors of the First Two Centuries . 354 Augustus — Remaining Julian Caesars — Flavian Caesars — Antonine Caesars. CONTENTS VU CHAPTER XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. The Early Empire, to 192 a.d. . . ... People and Government — Life and Work — Art and Learning — Defense and Revenue — Morals. The Third Century — "Barrack Emperors" . Rise of Christianity The Fourth Century — "Partnershijp Em- perors" The Empire op the Fourth Century The Christian Church — Daily Life — Decay. PAGE 370 399 404 412 422 PART VI. ROMANO-TEUTONIC EUROPE, 378-800 A.D. XLIII. Merging of Roman and Teuton . . . 432 The Teutons in Their Old Homes — Bursting of the Barriers — The Greek Empire. XLIV. The State of Western Europe from 400 to 800 A.D 441 " The Dark Ages ' ' — Teutonic Law — Everyday Life — Monasteries — The Heritage of Europe. XLV. The Franks and the Papacy .... 451 The Franks to the Mohammedan Invasion — The Mohammedan Peril — Franks and Papacy Join Forces. XLVI. The Empire op Charlemagne . . , .461 PART VII. THE FEUDAL AGE, 800-1300 XLVII. The New Barbarian Attack XLVIII. Britain Becomes England . XLIX. Feudalism, 800-1300 L. The Church in the Feudal Age LI. England in the Feudal Age LII. "The Continent" in the Feudal Age LIII. The Crusades, 1100-1300 . LIV. The Rise of Towns, 1100-1300 . 468 471 476 494 501 522 533 544 Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE LV.. Learning and Art in the Feudal Age . . 554 Schools — ■ Medieval Universities — The School- men — Roger Bacon — ^ Literature and Art — Gothic Architecture. PART VIII. FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE REFORMATION, 1300-1520 LVI. England and France, 1300-1520 . . .565 Hundred Years' War — The Black Death — End of Serfdom in England — Consolidation of French Territory and Power — Wars of the Roses — New Monarchy of the Tudors in England. LVII The Other European States, 1300-1520 . . 578 The Papacy — Holy Roman Empire — Spain — Scandanavia — Switzerland — Netherlands — The New Monarchic States and the Danger of a Uni- versal Monarchy (Charles V). LVIII. The Renaissance, 1300-1520 .... 593 PART IX. THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION, 1520-1648 LIX. The Reformation upon the Continent . . 604 Lutheranism — ■ Calvinism — the Counter- Reformation. LX. England and the Protestant Movement, through Elizabeth's Reign .... 616 LXI. A Century of Religious Wars * . ... 627 Spain and the Netherlands — the Huguenots — The Thirty Years' War — The Invention of Scien- tific Method. PART X. ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LXII. English Industry in 1600 639 LXIII. Puritan England under the First Stuarts . 643 LXIV- The Great Rebellion and the Commonwealth , 657 CONTENTS IX CHAPTER PAGE LXV. The Restoration and the Revolution of 1688 . 662 LXVI. Expansion into New Worlds 669 PART XL LOUIS XIV AND FREDERICK II, 1648-1789 LXVII. French Leadership . . . . . . " 677 LXVIII. The Rise of Russia . . . . . .681 LXIX. Prussia in Europe : England in New Worlds . 685 Appendix — Book Lists for High School Libraries ... 1 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary . . . . . 9 ILLUSTRATIONS 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 2.3. 24. Flint Fist-hatchet, Stone Age 3 Cliff Caves on the Vez^re 4 Mammoth Engraved on Stone 4 Flint Scraper .... 5 Ivory Needles .... 5 Section of "Cave of the Children," showing successive layers of prehistoric remains . 6 Reindeer on stone from Southern France . . 7 Gravers 8 Prehistoric Paint-tubes . 9 New Stone Age Arrow- heads from Britain . 9 Polished Stone Ax, Scotland 10 Primitive Hoe and Plow 11 Stonehenge 12 Pottery from Swiss Lake Dwellers ..... 13 Mortar for Grinding Paint, Old Stone Age 14 Stages in Fire-making . 14 Modern Egyptian l)y Sculptured Head of an Ancient King ... 19 Egyptian Relief — Boat- men Fighting on the Nile 20 Egyptian Shoemakers . 21 Portrait Statue of Amten, 3200 B.C. . . 22 Egyptian Noble Hunt- ing Waterfowl with a "boomerang" ... 24 Levying the Tax — Egyptian Relief . . 25 Sphinx and Pyramids . 27 Section of the Great Pyramid 28 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. PAGE Egyptian Market Scene (barter) 31 Egyptian Sculptors at Work 32 Part of Rosetta Stone Containing Hiero- glyphics First Deci- phered 33 Part of Same on a Larger Scale 33 Egyptian and Roman Numerals .... 35 Hall of Columns, Karnak 36 Sculptm-ed Funeral Couch, Representing the Soul by the Corpse 38 Tomb-Painting Showing Offerings to the Dead 39 Weighing the Soul before the Judges of the Dead 40 Rameses II — a Portrait Statue 42 Thdtmosis III ... . 44 Excavations on Site of Ashur 47 Babylonian Boundary Stone 48 The Oldest Known Arch 49 Obelisk of Shalmaneser II 51 Babylonian Lion ... 53 Laws of Hammurapi . 55 Babylonian Contract Tablet 56 Tablets with Hiero- glyphics and Later Cuneiform Equiva- lents 57 A Babylonian "Book" . 58 Babylonian Cylinder Seals 60 Xll ILLUSTRATIONS 46. Impression from a Royal Seal .... 61 47. Colossal Assyrian Man- beast 61 48. Babylonian "Deluge Tablet" 63 49. A Persian Gold Armlet 66 50. Lions' Frieze from Susa 68 51. Frieze of Archers — from Darius' Palace . 70 52. Capital of a Persian Column 71 53. Detail from the Throne of Xerxes .... 72 54. The Land of Goshen To-day 77 55. Vase from Knossos, 2200 B.c 82 56. Palace Drainage at Knossos 83 57. Vaphio Cups .... 84 58. Scroll from the Vaphio Cups 85 59. "Throne of Minos" . . 86 60. Cretan Writing of 2200 B.c 87 61. Cretan Cooking Utensils of 2200 B.c 88 62. Silver Head of Bull from Mycenae 88 63. Gate of Lions at Mycenae 89 64. Bronze Inlaid Dagger from Mycenae ... 90 65. Ruins of Stadium at Olympia 105 66. Ruins of Stadium at Delphi ..... 100 67. Attic Vase of Sixth Cen- tury B.c 109 68. Plan of Temple of The- seus at Athens . . . 110 69. Columns to Show Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian Orders Ill 70. Doric Capital — from the Parthenon . . . 114 71. The Parthenon To-day . 116 72. Temple of the Winged Victory 117 73. Greek Soldier .... 118 74. Scene in the Vale of Tempe 132 PAGE 75. Marathon To-day . . 139 76. Thermopylae .... 144 77. Bay of Salamis To-day 149 78. Athenian Trireme . . 156 79. Pericles — a Portrait Bust 160 80. The Acropolis Restored 162 81. The Pnyx 165 82. Propylaea of the Acrop- olis 169 83. Figures from the Par- thenon Frieze . . . 170 84. Sophocles — a Portrait Statue 172 85. Theater of Dionysus at Athens 173 86. Thucydides 174 87. The Acropolis To-day . 178 88. Greek Girls at Play . . 179 89. Greek Women at their Music 181 90. Vase Painting — Women at their Toilet 187 91. Vase Painting Showing the Enticing of Helen 189 92. Greek Barber, in Terra Cotta 190 93. School Scenes, from a Bowl Painting ... 192 94. The Wrestlers — Myron 193 95. Greek Women in Vari- ous Employments . . 194 96. "Porch of the Mai- dens" from the Erech- theum 197 97. The Hermes of Praxit- eles ...... 198 98. "Praxiteles' Satyr" ("Marble Faun") . . 199 99. The Disk Thrower — Myron 205 100. Philip II of Macedon, on a Gold Medallion . . 210 101. The Two Sides of a Gold Medallion of Alex- ander 216 102. Pergamos — a Restora- tion 218 103. The Apollo Belvidere . 219 104. The Dying Gaul ... 220 105. Pylon of Ptolemy III . 221 106. Venus of Melos ... 230 ILLUSTRATIONS Xlll PAGE 107. Alexandrian Lighthouse 235 144 108. Etruscan Wall and Arch at Sutri 240 145 109. Etruscan Toml:)S at 146 Orvieto 241 110. Cloaca Maxima . 245 147 HI. An Early Roman Coin . 246 112. " Wall of Servius " 248 148 113. "Etruscan" Wall at Perugia 254 149 114. Bridge over the Anio 255 150 115. A Coin of Pyrrhus . 263 110. The Appian Way 151 To-day 270 117. Iron Head of a .lavelin 271 152 lis. A Coin of Hiero II . 285 153 119. Court of a Roman House 300 154 120. Ruins at Corinth . . 305 155 121. A Pompeian House . . 311 122. Roman Villa near Tivoli 313 123. Theater at Pompeii . 314 156 124. Cicero 338 125. Julius Caesar .... 346 157 126. The Roman Forum, from the North . . 349 158 127. The Roman Forum, from the South . . 352 159 128. The Vatican Statue of Augustus 355 160 129. A Gold Coin of Augustus 356 130. Augustus as a Boy . 356 161 131. Church of the Nativity 162. at Bethlehem . . . 357 132. Ruins of the Claudian 163 Aqueduct .... 359 133. Part of the Claudian Aqueduct Built into a 164 City Wall . . . . 360 165 1.34. A Bronze Coin of Nero 361 135. Arch of Titus and Colos- 166 seum 362 136. Detail from Arch of 167 Titus 363 168 137. A "Colosseum Coin" of Domitian .... 364 169 138. Trajan's Column . . . 365 170 139. Hadrian's Temple to 171 Zeus at Athens . . 366 140. Tomb of Hadrian . . 367 141. Lyons in Roman Times 369 172 142. Nlmes Aqueduct . . . 371 143. Bridge at Rimini, Built 173 by Augustus . . . 375 Trajan's Arch at Bene- ventum 377 Marcus Aurelius . . . 378 Palace of Roman Em- perors at Trier . . . 380 Detail from Trajan's Column 383 A German Bodyguard of Marcus Aurelius . . 386 The Colosseum . . . 390 Interior of the Colos- seum 391 The Way of Tombs, Pompeii 392 The Pantheon To-day . 394 Section of the Pantheon 396 A Roman Chariot-Race 399 Jerusalem : Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives 405 Trajan's Basilica "Re- stored" 408 General Plan of a Basilica 409 Hall of the Baths of Diocletian .... 413 The Milvian Bridge To-day 417 A Gold Coin of Theo- dosius 420 Roman Coins .... 426 Agricultural Serfs in Roman Gaul ... 429 Serfs in Roman Gaul Making Bread . . 430 A Silver Coin of Jus- tinian 438 St. Sophia's, Con- stantinople .... 439 Preliminaries to Trial by Combat .... 444 A Trial by Combat . . 445 Seventh-Century Villa in North Gaul ... 446 The Abbey of Citeaux . 447 Monks in Field Work . 449 Repast in Hall of Prank- ish Chieftain, Seventh Century . . . . . 452 Court of the Lions, Al- hambra 456 Cloisters of St. John Lateran 459 XIV ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 174. Seal of Charlemagne . 461 175. A Silver Coin of Charle- magne 463 176. Remains of a Viking Ship 469 177. St. Martin's, Canter- bm-y 473 178. Anglo-Saxon Plowing . 475 179. Conway Castle ... 476 180. Bedlam Castle ... 478 181. Drawbridge and Port- cuUis 479 182. Knight ia Plate Armor 480 183. A Baron's Court ... 482 184. Reaper's Cart, Foiir- teenth Century . . 487 185. Peasants' May Dance . 488 186. Falconry 489 187. A Court Fool .... 490 188. Jugglers in the Sword Dance 491 189. The Exercise of the Quintain 492 190. Norman William's Ship 502 191. Battle of Hastings (Bay- eux Tapestry) . . . 503 192. Norman Doorway . . 508 193. Facsimile Lines from Magna Carta . . . 516 194. An English Bridge, Fourteenth Century . 521 195. Damascus Gate, Jeru- salem 533 196. Detail from the Mosque of Cordova .... 534 197. A Byzant (Bezant) . . 535 198. Crusader Taking the Vow 537 199. Effigies of Knights Tem- plars 539 200. Siege of a Medieval Town 544 201. Ruins of a Rhine Castle 545 202. Walls of Aigues Mortes 547 203. Old Street in Rouen . . 549 204. Medieval Town Hall, Oudenarde .... 550 205. Torture by Water . . 551 206. Rheims Cathedral . . 561 207. Salisbury Cathedral . . 562 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220. 221. 222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232. 233. 234. 235. 236. 237. 238. Flying Buttresses, Nor- wich Cathedral . . 563 Salisbury Cloisters . . 563 English Family Dinner, Fourteenth Century . 566 A "Bombard". ... 567 John Wyclif .... 568 An English Carriage, Fourteenth Century . 569 The Parliament of 1399 572 Joan of Arc at Orleans 574 Guy's Tower .... 575 A Medieval Battle . . 576 Hall of Clothmakers' Gild, Ypres .... 587 Illustration from a Fif- teenth Century Manuscript Showing Maximilian, etc. . . 589 Ca d'Oro, Venice ... 590 The Ducal Palace, Venice 594 St. Mark's, Venice . . 595 Erasmus 599 Illustration in Thir- teenth Century Manuscript Showing a Monk Teaching the Globe 601 Columbus at the Court of Isabella .... 603 St. Peter's, Rome . . 605 A Village Maypole, Six- teenth Century . . 611 The Ruins of Tintern Abbey 618 Sir Thomas More . . 619 Kenilworth Castle in 1620 622 Kenilworth Castle To-day 623 Charles I (Van Dyck) . 648 Cromwell (Lely) . . . 65S Sir Henry Vane . . . 660 La Salle Taking Posses- sion of the Missis- sippi Valley for France 67 1 Elizabeth Knighting Drake 673 Moscow 683 Crossed Swords . . . 691 MAPS AND PLANS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. Ancient Egypt The First Homes of Civilization ; Colored The Egyptian Empire at Its Greatest Extent Assyrian and Babylonian Empires Lydia, Media, Egypt, Babylonia, about 560 b.c facing Colored facing The Persian Empire ; Colored Syria, showing Solomon's Empire . Greece and Adjoining Coasts ; Colored. . -. after The Greek Peninsula ; Colored The Greek World ; Colored . The Peloponnesian League Plan of Marathon .... Attica, with Reference to Marathon and Salamis Athens and Its Ports, Showing the Long Walls Plan of Athens ...... The Athenian Empire ; Colored .... after The Acropolis of Athens Plan of a Fifth Century Delos House Greece at the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War ; Colored after Plan of the Battle of Leuctra Growth of Macedonia . Empire of Alexander of Macedon ; Colored . . after Achaean and Aetolian Leagues The World According to Eratosthenes Italy (for general reference) ; Colored . . . after The Peoples of Italy . . . Rome and Vicinity .... Rome under the Kings .... Italy about 200 b.c. : Roads and Colonies Rome and Carthage at Opening of Punic Wars Mediterranean Lands at Opening of Second Punic War; Colored ........ after Roman Dominions and Dependencies in 146 a.d. . Vicinity of the Bay of Naples, Showing Pompeii and Vesuvius The Roman Empire, Showing Stages of Growth and Main Roads; Colored ....... after XV PAGE 18 41 43 50 65 67 78 82 90 108 126 138 147 154 157 158 168 185 198 206 209 214 224 234 238 239 242 243 269 284 288 306 364 364 XVI MAPS AND PLANS PAGE 35. Rome under the Empire, Showing Walls of Aurelian . . 402 36. Migrations of the Teutons and Other Barbarians; Colored after ■ 432 37. Teutonic Kingdoms on Roman Soil, 600 a.d. ; Colored " 436 38. Kingdom of the Merovingians ; Colored . . facing 451 39. Europe in 814 a.d. ; Colored . . . , . after 464 40. The Fields of History to 800 a.d 466 41. The Division of Verdun ; Colored. . . . after 468 42. England and the Danelagh, 900 a.d. . . . . .474 43. Ecclesiastical Map of Medieval England .... 499 44. England and France at Four Periods ; Colored . facing 523 45. German Colonization on the.East, 800-1400 ; Colored after 524 46. Germany and Italy, 1254-1273 ; Colored . . facing 531 47. Europe by Rehgions, about 1100 a.d. ; Colored . after 536 48. Dominions of the Hansa and of the Teutonic Knights ; Colored ........ after 550 49. Germany about 1550 ; Colored . . . . . " 580 50. Southeastern Europe at the Entrance of the Turk ; Colored facing 583 51. The Swiss Confederation, 1291-1500 . . . . .585 52. Europe in the Time of Charles V ; Colored . . . after 592 53. Territorial Changes of the Thirty Years' War ; Colored /acwg 635 54. French posts in America in the Seventeenth Century ; Colored facing 670 65. English America, 1660-1690 after 075 56. European Possessions in America at Different Periods to 1763 (three maps) ; Colored .... after 686 57. Europe in the Eighteenth Century . . . after 690 THE STORY OF MAN'S EARLY PROGRESS THE STORY OF MAN^S EARLY PROGRESS Through the ages one increasing -purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. — Tennyson. PART I— THE WORLD BEFORE THE GREEKS CHAPTER I MEN BEFORE WRITING November 11, 1918, at an early morning hour, the representa- tives of Germany accepted the terms of armistice dictated by Marshal Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allies. Within three hours, nearly every steam whistle in America was sounding the glad tidings of Germany's surrender. Only a few miles from General Foch's headquarters where the armistice was signed is the city of Ghent. There, about a hundred years before (Decern- Rapid ber 14, 1814), a peace was signed between England and the ^ • ^^^1. United States. But almost four weeks after the signing of that last century peace, many gallant lives were sacrificed in the Battle of New Orleans because the news of Ghent had not reached America. In- deed the War of 1812 would not have been fought except for misunderstandings which steamships and electric cables would have cleared up promptly. In everyday matters, too, the changes of the last hundred years or so are quite as marked. When George Washington journeyed from Mount Vernon to New York, in 1789, to take up his duties as President, he made the wearisome twelve-day 1 2 MEN BEFORE WRITING trip on horse-back. At Philadelphia he might have taken the slow, jolting stage-coach for the rest of the way ; but both for speed and comfort, he chose to keep to his horse. To-day we make that journey in a night, resting in a cozy compartment of a sleeper or reading at ease by brilliant electric lamps. The tallow candle and the pine-knot fire on the hearth were the best artificial lights in the days of Washington. Abraham Lincoln knew no better light until late in his life, when kerosene lamps came into use. No woman in Lincoln's presidency ever cooked by a gas range, and no woman in Washington's time ever cooked by any sort of iron stove. Washington was one of the leading farmers of his day, but a wooden plow and a clumsy harrow were the only farm machinery drawn by horses that he ever saw. Even the small reapers and threshers of Lincoln's time are now fit only for some museum of curiosities. Carpenters and masons now work eight hours a day ; but until long after. Washington no laborer ever dreamed of working less than fourteen hours in summer — and for a much smaller wage than for our shorter laboring day. The palaces of kings a century ago had fewer actual comforts and conveniences than the modest homes of well-paid laborers to-day. At first it is hard to understand that such changes had been going on for long ages before Lincoln and Washington. Twenty thousand years ago no one traveled even in Washington's way. There were no coaches, for no one had found how to make a wheel ; and, though the wild horse was hunted for food, no one had tamed it. Indeed there was no need to travel. No man could possibly want to go from the Potomac to the Hudson. If two men living a score of miles, apart met at all, the stronger killed and plundered the weaker. History is the stonj of huvian progress from that early sav- agery to our present civilization. To raise regular food crops, instead of living wholly by hunting, was a great step upward. To learn to use oar and sail, to build roads, to exchange products of one region for those of another, to in- THE " CHIPPED STONE " MAN vent the bow, spinning wheel, telephone, dynamo, — all these things were steps. But civilization has to do also with art, literature, home life, religion, laws, education. The civiliza- tion of a people is the sum of its advances in all that ma;kes life better and happier. The first men were more helpless and brutelike than the The first lowest savages in the world to-day. Their only clothing was ™^^ the coarse hair that covered their bodies. They had neither fire nor knife, — no tools or weapons ex- cept their hands and their formidable apelike teeth and chance clubs or stones. The first marked gain was the discovery by some savage that he could chip off flakes from a flint stone by striking it with other stones, so as to give it a sharp edge, a keen point, and a convenient shape for the hand to grasp. This invention lifted man into the first Stone Age. In Europe the Stone Age began at least 100,000 years ago. The mighty rivers of still earlier times had washed out many caverns in their limestone banks. As the waters cut down a deeper bed, such caves were left dry, above ^'the new water level ; and they became the favorite shelter of the early Stone-age man — though he often had to fight for them with the ferocious cave- bear. By digging in these caves to-day, we find stone tools of the "cave-man" where he dropped them on the earth floor - forty feet below the present floor. There too we find remains of great heaps of the bones of the animals he ate. 'Some of these animals are now extinct, like the terrible saber-toothed tiger and the huge mammoth ; and many of the rest, like the reindeer, wolf, hippopotamus, wooly Flint Fist-hatchet from Kent's Cave in Southern Eng- land, found in the lowest of several distinct layers of deposits, some twenty-five feet below the present surface. The im- plement is about six inches long. — From Parkyn's Prehistoric Art. •perhaps thirty or The first Stone Age, 100,000 years ago MEN BEFORE WRITING Cliff Caves on the Vezfere, overlooking the modern village Le Moustier in Southern France. From some of the caves whose dark mouths show in this cut have come the oldest remains pictured in this book. One can make out two terraces in the illustration. The second of these also is rich in remains, because here the ancient hunters had a station, out in the sun, to fashion their flint weapons. — From Osborn's Men of the Old Stone Age. Mammoth engraved by an Old Stone Age artist on a piece of ivory tusk. Found in a cave in Southern France. See p. 8. — From Parkyn'g Prehistoric Art. The student should examine that work, or Mr. Osborn's book referred to above, for Cave-Men drawings of the Saber-Toothed Tiger and of the Cave-Bear, and especially for the colored representa- tions of Stone Age paintings, such as cannot be adequately reproduced in this book. THE CAVE-MAN'S ART rhinoceros, and horse are no longer found wild in central Europe. In one cave in Switzerland, the bones show that generations of cave-men had eaten more than 1000 cave-bears ; and a cave in Sicily held remains of 2000 hippopotamuses. In almost the lowest deposits many pieces of charred bone The fire- and wood, and some soHd layers of ashesj show that men learned "^^'^^''s Flint Scraper, front and back, found in the lower deposits of the cave of Le Moustier in Southern France, one of the oldest homes of man. — From Parkyn's Prehistoric Art. to use fire soon after reaching the Stone Age. With their stone knives, they could shape sticks so as to make fire by friction. With his knife, too, the cave-man could remove the hides from the animals he killed; and while he dozed by the fire after gorging on their flesh, his cave-woman worked on these skins with stone scrapers. Then when they were cleaned and dried and softened, she sewed them into clothing with hone needles ■ — which now and then she lost on the dimly lighted floor. The early deposits contain no spin- dles, with which thread could have been spun from vegetable fiber, and so these needles must have been threaded with finely divided sinew such as the Eskimo woman uses to-day. As we examine the layers of deposits from the bottom upward, Tools of we find better tools and more kinds of them, until we have a ^^^ great variety of shapely fiint knives, spear-heads, daggers, Ivory Needles of the Old Stone Age. Europe had no better needles untU some three hundred years ago. 6 MEN BEFORE WRITING scrapers, chisels, and drills fine enough to make the deHcate eyes in the bone needles. Toward the close of the age, the cave dwellers learned to make clay pots, in which to cook their food in new ways, and to make earihcmoarc lamps, with wicks swim- ming in fat. Next, bone and stone arrow-heads show that the Vertical Section of tfie " CA^^; of the Children," on the south coast of France, so named from the two prehistoric infants whose skeletons were found in layer A. Three others of the eleven distinct layers contained prehistoric skeletons buried by ancient hearths. And the others contain hearth-ashes and other proofs of human habitation, with bones of wild animals, ranging from rhinoceros and lion to recent European animals. Tools in the bottom layers are like those in the Moustier Caves. — From Osborn's Men of the Old Stone Age. bow had been invented, to lengthen man's arm, and soon after- ward we find ingenious bone straighteners, like those used now by many savage peoples, to give the arrow-shaft its proper shape. Man began, too, to make living animals serve him. He tamed the young of wolf or jackal into the first dog; and his drawings show that he taught the reindeer to draw his sled. But through all their tens of thousands of years, the Chipped THE CAVE-MAN'S ART 7 Stone men were hunters merely. They never learned to farm. Hunters, Besides the animals they killed, they had for food only the ^°^ nuts and roots and seeds the women and children gathered. Their homes were littered with loathsome heaps of rotting refuse. Their numbers must have been scanty, and their Reindeer graven on stone by a Stone Age artist. Note the remarkable spirit and accurate detail. The drawing is full life size. From a cave in Southern France — where the reindeer has been extinct for many thousand years. tribal unions very small — if indeed they had advanced far enough to have tribes and chiefs at all. The earliest cave-man, however, must have believed in a life Ideas of a after death; for he buried the bodies of those he loved and ^^^^^ * ® honored under the hearth before which they had rested in life, and in the shallow grave he placed food and precious weapons ready for use when the dead should awake in the spirit world. The cave-man, too, had a keen interest in the world about him, and felt much of its beauty. In stormy seasons he amused Cave-artists himself by carving on the walls of his cavern or on flat bones ; 8 MEN BEFORE WRITING and he reproduced with amazing accuracy the fierce wild-boar in the charge, the mare nourishing her foal, a herd of deer browsing by a peaceful pool, and countless other animal forms. As Kipling writes, — "Later he pictured an aurochs — later he pictured a bear — Pictured the saber-toothed tiger dragging a man to his lair — . Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone — Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone." The cave-artist learned even to 2)aint these forms. For his colors he ground fine the red oxide of iron and similar clays of other colors, and then packed them into hollow horns as "paint tubes," or pressed them into crayons. Finally, some ten thou- sand years ago, some ingenious barbarian dis- covered that he could grind his stone knife with certain stones, and so get keener edge and sharper point than merely by chipping at it. This invention be- gan a new era. The " Old Stone Age," or age of chipped stone, gave way to the "New Stone Age." Gravers used in cutting designs on stone by Old Stone Age men ; found in Southern France. Number 3 is a combined graver and scraper. — From Parkyn's Prehistoric Art. The ground implements are more beautiful in finish than those of the older age, and much more effective. A ground flint ax, even in the hands of a modern workman, unused to it, will, cut down a large tree with fair dis- patch ; and the new flint arrow-heads, after these ten thousand years, are found still embedded in the bones of men and beasts. The "New Stone" men made gains more rapidly than had been possible to their predecessors. They soon became herds- THE NEW STONE AGE 9 men, with cows, asses, sheep, and goats ; and some races among them grew into farmers. Seeds gathered by the women for food The first must often have dropped near the home, and some of these ^'^™®''^ Views of a Prehistoric Paint Tube, made of reindeer bone. Found, with ochre still in it, in a cave of Southern France. — From Parky n. must now and then have grown into plants and produced new seed. The convenience of so gathering seeds at the door, instead of search- ing for them through the forest, would suggest to some thoughtful woman the idea of "planting" seed, and finally of preparing a patch of ground by stirring it with a crooked stick. Such a woman with such a "hoe" was probably the first "farmer." Wheat, barley, and millet were among the grains first cultivated in Europe. Oats and rye came in later. Thousands of farmers, even in a rude stage of agriculture, Arrow-heads of the New Stone Age in Britain. 10 MEN BEFORE WRITING can live in a territory that could furnish food for only a few score of hunters; and so the New Stone "barbarians" dwelt no longer in isolated caves, but in villages and towns of simple one-room huts of clay or wood. With their improved weapons, they conquered widely, especially among the backward tribes that had remained in the "sav- agery" of the Chipped Stone Age ; and so they formed larger societies with some trade be- tween one and another. Stone "whorls" ^ among the deposits show that women now spun flax or wool into thread or yarn ; and no doubt they then wove the yarn into cloth on rude looms such as some Ameri- can Indians used when this hemi- sphere was discovered. Our word tvife (like the German loeib) is from the same root as web and weave, and means the weaver. In all this early society, man was essentially a fighter: woman, first with her bone needle and perhaps with her crooked hoe, and later with her spindle and loom, represents the industrial side of human life — the side that has developed into our industrial civilization. Now that captives could be used to watch herds and till the soil, the vanquished in war were no longer killed or tortured to Polished Stone Ax, c showing side and edges, in Southei'n Scotland. Celt, Found 1 The spinner placed a pile of flax before her, fastened one end of a fiber to her "whorl," drew out a convenient length from the pile, and twisted it by giving the whorl a whirling motion. Then the twisted thread was wound up and another length was drawn out, to be treated in like manner. THE NEW STONE AGE 11 death as formerly, but were merely made slaves. And as the growing populations called for larger grain fields than women could till with their stick "hoes," the hoe handle was enlarged into a "beam" to which cows could be harnessed, and two new handles were added to guide the "plow.'" Primitive Hoe and Plow. — From early Egyptian monuments, showing the evolution of the plow as described in the text above. The best known of the New Stone men in Europe were the The Lake Swiss "Lake Dwellers" — the first men who are known posi- ■"^^^^^''^ tively to have built wooden houses. Each house rested on a platform supported several feet above the water by a group of immense piles, — twenty-foot logs sharpened at one end and driven firmly into the lake bottom. Many a lake contained extensive villages of such houses, far enough from land to be safe from hostile surprise, and built in curving lines to follow the trend of the shore. It is not uncommon for savage peoples to build in like fashion to-day, on a smaller scale, in shallow lakes or in morasses. Some seventy years ago a sudden lowering of the water re- vealed ruins of these ancient villages at various places in Switizer- land, and the sediment of the lake bottoms has yielded up many remains that show how these peculiar people lived. The hun- dred bushels of wheat that had fallen through the floors of one village prove that the villagers must have farmed the neighbor- ing shores industriously. A stone whorl still wound with flax, many fragments of rotting cloth, pieces of tanned leather, wooden shoe-lasts like those our shoemakers use, all tell their story. Bronze tools in the upper sediment, on top of deep layers containing only stone tools, show that these settlements lived on into the beginning of the " Age of Metals " (p. 13 below). 12 MEN BEFORE WRITING Stonehenge and like structures In other parts of Europe, — Denmark, England, France, — the towns of the New Stone men were protected by earth walls or by artificial lakes or moats. In those districts the people also quarried huge blocks of rough, undressed stone, weighing fifty tons or even three hundred tons apiece, moved them long dis- tances, and raised them into .tombs and sometimes into great circles for temples or for religious "games." Near such a ruin Stonehenge. These are four of the sixty such huge pillars, some 30 feet high, forming a circle 100 feet across, on Salisbury Plain in South England. Some of the pillars have fallen, along with most of the slabs reaching from pillar to pillar. Two miles away is the site of a Stone Age town, and, near by, the traces of the ancient race course mentioned in the text. at Stonehenge, there can still be traced a two-mile chariot course, about which, no doubt, shouting multitudes crowded to see the races. Certainly these men had tamed the horse and invented wheeled carriages. iiie Age of The next great advance was begun, not in Europe, but in the !h?NuJ" -^^^^ valley in Africa. Pieces of malachite, a kind of copper yalley ore, are found there in a loose state. No doubt many a camp- fire melted ("reduced") the metal from such scattered stones AN Early copper age 13 into shining copper globules ; and finally some observant hunter found that the bright metal could be worked more easily than stone, and into better tools. So men passed from the Stone Age to the Age of Metals, about seven thousand years ago. Copper implements, it is true, were soft, and soon lost their The Bronze edge ; but before long, perhaps again by happy accident, men ^^ learned to mix a little tin with the copper in the fire. This formed the metal we call bron~e. Bronze is easily worked ; but, after cool- ing, it is much harder than either of its parts. The "Bronze Age" men equipped themselves with weapons of keener and more lasting edge, and more convenient form, than had ever been known. With these they conquered widely among the Stone Age men about them, and also added greatly to their command over nature. The use of bronze entered southeastern Europe some 5000 years ago — about 3000 B.C. — and spread slowly westward to the Atlantic during the next thousand years. Pottery (I size) from the Robenhausen Lake Dwelling in Switzerland. These pieces are remarkable in their simplicity and plainness. Usually the Stone Age pottery is marked by a profusion of ornament — dots, zigzags, curves, in complicated designs. The student must remember that when we speak of a Stone Age followed by an Age of Metals, we refer always to some given part of the world. When Columbus discovered America, Europeans had long been in the Iron Age ; but the American natives were mainly in the Stone Age, though some of them were growing into the Age of Copper. Re- mote tribes in the Philippines and in parts of South America and Australia are still in the Stone Age. Even among the same people the different "ages" overlap. Chiefs and 14 MEN BEFORE WRITING " Prehis- toric " and " historic " man nobles used bronze a long time before the poorer classes could replace their stone implements with better ones. Soon after the Age of Metals began, men came to use sovie method of tvriting. With that invention we enter the "historic" period. All this ear- lier progress is called "prehistoric."^ We are now about to leave Europe for a while, to study the earliest " historic " men in Egypt and in the neighboring parts of Asia ; but first let us sum up four supreme con- tributions made by prehistoric man — contributions upon which all later civiliza- tion rests. Man to-day is "the heir of all the ages," and as we read historv we "take stock" of our inheritance. Views of a Small " Mortar" hollowed out of stone, in which paint was probably ground up. Found in an Old Stone Age deposit in Southern France. — _ iT; ;^ -^^ Some Stages in Fire-making. — From Tylor. 1 . The iLSc of fire made it possible to advance beyond raw food and finally beyond stone tools. All wild animals fear flame ; 1 In late years we have learned so much of early man that this term pre- historic is an unhappy one. But it had come into general use many years ago, when we knew almost nothing of man before he left written records, and scholars have thought best not to abandon it. Properly speaking, however, everything that we know about the past life of man is part of human history. WHAT PREHISTORIC MAN GAVE US 15 but, at some early period of the Old Stone Age, man had come to know it for his truest friend. The old Greeks had a fable that the divine Prometheus stole fire from the gods for the service of man. Modern scholars think it probable that the j&rst source of fire for men was some tree ablaze from lightning — a thing that happens thousands of times every year in our forests to-day. As the "Stone Age" man chipped at his stone knife, or as he worked on his wooden tools, much heat must sometimes have been developed ; and this would suggest friction as a source of fire. The methods of making fire which are pictured on the opposite page were all invented by pre- historic man; and no other way was known, except striking two stones together, down to very recent times. 2. Most of the domestic animals familiar to us in our barn- yards had been tamed by prehistoric man. One reason why the Western Hemisphere remained backward until discovered by Europeans is found in the lack of animals in it suited for domestication. 3. Wheat, barley, rice, and nearly all our other important food grains and garden vegetables, were selected from the myriads of wild plants, and cultivated and developed. Modern science has failed to find one other plant in the Old World so useful to man as these which prehistoric man there selected. Their only rivals are the potato and maize ("corn"), which the "Stone Age" men in America had learned to cultivate. 4. The invention of writing multiplied the value of language. Writing is an " artificial memory," and it also makes it possible for us to speak to those who are far away, and even to those not yet born. Many early peoples used a picture writing such as is common still among North American Indians. In this kind of writing, a picture represents either an object or some idea connected with that object. A drawing of an animal with wings may stand for a bird or for flying; or a character like this O stands for either the sun or for light. At first such pictures are true drawings : later they are simplified, for easier writing, into forms agreed upon. Thus in ancient Chinese, Contribu- tions from prehistoric man The inven- tion of writing 16 THE BRONZE AGE man was represented by /"v, and in modern Chinese by A . Numerals are probably the earliest picture writing ; and even in our Arabic numerals, especially in l,Z,3.5, we can still see the one, two, three, or five lines that stood for numbers. Vastly important is the advance to a rebus stage of writing. Here a symbol has come to have a soimd value wholly apart from the original object, as if the symbol O above were used with D (D O) to make the word delight. So in early Egyptian writing, O, the symbol for "mouth," was pronounced ru. Therefore it was used as the last syllable in writing the word khopiru, which meant "to be," while symbols of other objects in like manner stood for the other syllables. This representation of syllables by pictures of objects is the first stage in sound writing, as distinguished from picture writing proper. Finally, some of these characters are used to represent not whole syllables, but single sounds. Such a character we call a letter. One of Kipling's Just So stories tries to show how such a change might come about. Then, if these letters are kept, and all other characters dropped, we have a true alphabet. Picture writing, such as that of the Chinese, requires many thousand symbols. Several hundred characters are necessary for even simple syllabic writing. But a score or so of letters are enough for an alphabet. No further reading is suggested at this stage in connection with class work on the preceding topics. But students who wish to read for pleasure will enjoy any of the following books : Myres' Dawn of His- tory, 13-28 ; Clodd's Story of Primitive Man, 35-76 ; Clodd's Story of the Alphabet; Holbrook's Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers; Waterloo's Story of Ab (fiction). A very interesting larger book, handsomely illustrated, is Solas' Ancient Hunters. CHAPTER II 'BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT I. LAND AND PEOPLE Egypt is the gift of the Nile. — Herodotus. Ancient Egypt, by the map, is as large as Colorado ; but seven The Nile eighths of it is only a sandy border to the real Egypt. That ^^'^ Egypt real Egypt is smaller than Maryland, and consists of the valley of the Nile and of its delta. The valley proper forms Upper Egypt. It is a strip of rich soil about 600 miles long and 20 miles wide — a slim oasis be- tween parallel ranges of desolate limestone hills which once formed the banks of a mightier Nile. While yet a hundred miles from the sea, the narrow valley broadens suddenly into the delta. This Lower Egypt has been built up out in the sea from the mud carried there by the river. It is a squat triangle resting on a two-hundred mile base of curving, marshy coast. And the Nile keeps Egypt alive. Rain falls rarely in the valley; and toward the close of the eight cloudless months between the annual overflows, there is a short time when the land seems gasping for water. Then the river begins to rise (in July), swollen by tropical rains at its upper course in distant Abyssinia ; and it does not fully recede into its regular channel until November. During the days while the flood is at its height, Egypt is a sheet of turbid water, spreading between two lines of rock and sand. The waters are dotted with towns and villages, and marked off into compartments by raised roads, running from town to town. As the water retires, the rich loam dressing, brought down from the hills of Ethiopia, is 17 18 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT left spread over the fields, renewing their wonderful fertility from year to year; while the long soaking supplies moisture to the soil for the dry months to come. The oldest records yet found in Egypt reach back to about 6000 B.C. The use of bronze was already well advanced, but remains in the soil show that there had been earlier dwellers in the valley using rude stone implements and practicing sav- age customs. Food was abundant there, — not only fish and waterfowl, but also the won- derful date palm and various wild grains. This wealth of food attracted tribes from all the neighboring regions at an early date; and the struggles of these peoples, and the intermingling of the strongest of them, at length produced the vigor- ous Egyptian race of history — a type which has lasted to the present day. The first inhabitants lived by fishing along the streams and hunting fowl in the marshes. When they began to take ad- vantage of their rare opportunity for agriculture, new prob- lems arose. Before that time, each tribe or village could be a AJfCIEJfT EGYPT jy e; T H I o P X-A^^-' Second Cataract SCALE OF MILES 20 40 00 80 100 "THE GIFT OF THE NILE" 19 law to itself. But now it became necessary for whole districts to combine in order to drain marshes, to create systems of ditches for the distribution of the water, and to build reservoirs for the surplus. Thus the Nile, which had made the land, played a part in making Egypt into one state} To control the overflow was the first common interest of all the people. At first, no doubt The Nile makes for union Photograph of a Modern Egyptian Woman Sitting by a Sculptured Head of an Ancient King. — From Maspero's Dawn of Civilization. Notice the likeness of feature. The skulls of the modern peasants and of the ancient nobles are remarkably alike in form. through wasteful centuries, separate villages strove only to get each. its needful share of water, without attention to the needs of others. The engravings on early monuments show neighboring villages waging bloody wars along the dikes, or on the canals, before they learned the costly lesson of coopera- tion. Such hostile action, cutting the dams and destroying 1 The word " state" is commonly used in history not in the sense in which we call Massachusetts a state, but rather in that sense in which we call Eng- land or the whole United States a state. That is, the word means a people, living in some definite place, with a supreme government of its own. 20 BRONZE AGE " MEN IN EGYPT the reservoirs year by year, was ruinous. From an early period, men in the Nile valley must have felt the need of agreement and of political union — as men the world over are beginning to feel it now. Accordingly, before history begins, the multitudes of villages had combined into about forty petty states. Each one ex- tended from side to side of the valley and a few miles up and down the river; and each was ruled by a "king." Then the same forces which had worked to unite villages into states tended to combine the many small states into a few larger ones. After centuries of conflict, Menes, prince of Memphis, united Boatmen Fighting on the Nile. — Egyptian Relief ; i from Maspero. the petty principalities around him into the kingdom of Lower Egypt. In like manner Thebes became the capital of a kingdom of Upper Egypt. About the year 3400 before Christ, the two kingdoms were united into one. The king was worshiped as a god by the mass of the people. His title, Pharaoh, means The Great House, — as the title of the supreme ruler of Turkey in modern, times has been The Sublime Porte (Gate). The title implied that the ruler was to be a refuge for his people. The pharaoh became the absolute owner of the soil, in return for protecting it by dikes and reservoirs. This ownership helped to make him absolute master of the inhabitants also. His authority was limited only by the power of the priests and by 1 A relief is a piece of sculpture in which the figures are only partly cut away from the solid rock. CLASSES OF PEOPLE 21 the necessity of keeping ambitious nobles friendly (Davis' Readings, I, No. 2). Part of the land he kept in his own hands, to be cultivated by peasants under the direction of royal stewards ; but the greater portion he parceled out among the nobles and temples. In return for the land granted to him, a noble was bound to The nobles pay certain amounts of produce, and to lead a certain number of soldiers to war. Within his domain, he was a petty monarch : he executed justice, levied his own taxes, kept up his own army. Like the king, he held part of his land in his own hands, while other parts he let out to smaller nobles. About a third of the land was turned over by the king to the The priests temples to support the worship of the gods. This land became Shoemakers. — Egyptian relief from the monuments ; from Maspero. the property of the priests. The priests were also the scholars of Egypt, and the pharaoh took most of his high officials from them. The peasants tilled the soil, and were not unlike the peasants The of modern Egypt. They rented small "farms," — hardly P^^^^^^ts more than garden plots, — for which they paid at least a third of the produce to the landlord. This left too Httle for a family ; and they eked out a livelihood by day labor on the land of the nobles and priests. For this work they were paid a small part of the produce. In the towns there was an aristocratic middle class, — mer chants, shopkeepers, physicians, builders, artisans, notaries. 1 To draw up business papers, record transfers of property, and so on. Town aris- tocracy and proletariat 22 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT Below these were the unskilled laborers. This class was some- times driven to a strike by hunger. Maspero, a famous French scholar in Egyptian history, describes one as it is shown on the monuments : The workmen turn to the overseer, saying: "We are perishing of hunger, and there are stiU eighteen days before the next month " (when the next wages would be due). The latter makes profuse promises; but, when nothing comes of them, the workmen will not listen to him longer. They leave their work and gather in a public meeting. The overseer hastens after them, with the police, . . . urging upon the leaders a return. But the workmen only say : "We wiU not return. Make it clear to your superiors down below there." The official who reports the matter to the authorities seems to think the complaints weU founded, for he says, "We went to hear them, and they spoke true words to us." The son usually followed the father's occupation ; but there was no law (as in some Oriental countries) to prevent his passing into a different class. Some- times the son of a poor herdsman rose to wealth and power. Such advance This learned profession Portrait Statue of Amten, a "self- made" noble of 3200 B.C. This is on2 of the oldest portrait statues in the world. was most easily open to the scribes was recruited from the brightest boys of the middle and lower classes. Most of the scribes found clerical work only; but from the ablest ones the nobles chose confidential secretaries CLASSES OF PEOPLE 23 and stewards ; and some of these, who showed special abihty, were promoted by the pharaohs to the highest dignities in the land. Such men founded new families and reinforced the ranks of the nobility. The soldiers were an important class with many special Soldiers privileges. Each soldier held a farm of some eight acres, — four or five times the size of an ordinary peasant's farm. He was free from taxes, and he was kept under arms only when his services were needed. Besides this regular soldiery, the peas- antry were called out upon occasion, for war or for garrisons. There was also a large body of officials, organized in many Officials grades. Urdil the seventh century B.C. the Egyptians had no money. Thus the immense royal revenues, as well as all debts between private men, had to be collected "in kind." The tax-collectors and treasurers had to receive geese, ducks, cattle, grain, wine, oil, metals, jewels, — " all that the heavens give, all that the earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its mysterious sources," as one inscription puts it. To do this called for an army of royal officials. For a like reason, the great nobles needed a large class of trustworthy servants. Egyptian society, then, had at the top an aristocracy of several Social elements : (1) the nobles ; (2) the powerful and learned priest- ^arized hood, whose influence almost equaled that of the pharaoh himself ; (3) scribes and physicians ; (4) a privileged soldiery ; and (5) a mass of privileged officials of many grades, from the greatest rulers next to the pharaoh, down to petty tax collectors and the stewards of private estates. Some of these belonged to a middle class. Next below there was a "lower middle class," of shopkeepers and artisans, whose life ranged from comfort to a grinding misery. Then, at the base of society, was a large mass of toilers on the land, weighted down by all the other classes. For the well-to-do, life was a very delightful thing, filled with Life of the active employment and varied with many pleasures. Their ^®^ ^ homes were roomy houses with a wooden frame plastered over with sun-dried clay. Light and air entered at the many latticed 24 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT windows, where, however, curtains of brilliant hues shut out the occasional sand storms from the desert. About the house stretched a large high-walled garden with artificial fish-ponds gleaming among the palm trees. The position of women was better than in modern Oriental countries. The poor man's wife spim and wove, and ground Egyptian Noble Hunting Waterfowl with a "throw-stick" or boomer- ang. The wife accompanies her husband, and the boat contains also a "decoy" bird. The wild birds rise from a mass of papyrus reeds. — From an Egyptian tomb painting. grain into meal in a stone bowl with another stone. Among the upper classes, the wife was the companion of the man. She was not shut up in a harem or confined strictly to house- hold duties ; she appeared in company and at public ceremonies. She possessed equal rights at law ; and sometimes great queens ruled upon the throne. In no other country, until modern times, do pictures of happy home life play so large a part. MISERY OF THE POOR 25 There were few slaves in Egypt ; but the condition of the great Life of the mass of the people fell little short of practical slavery. Toilers ^°°^ on the canals, and on the pyramids and other vast works that have made Egypt famous, were kept to their labor by the whip. "Man has a back," was a favorite proverb. The monuments always picture the overseers with a stick, and often show it in use. The people thought of a beating as a natural incident in their daily work. The peasants did not live in the country, as our farmers do. They were crowded into the villages and the squalid quarters of the towns, with the other poorer classes. The house of a poor Levying the Tax. — An Egyptian relief from the monuments ; from Maspero. man was a mud hovel of only one room. Such huts were separated from one another merely by one mud partition, and were built in long rows, facing upon narrow crooked alleys filled with filth. A "plague of flies," like that described in the Old Testament, was natural enough; and only the extremely dry air kept down that and worse pestilences. Hours of toil were from dawn to dark. Usually the peasants were careless and gay, petting the cattle and singing at their work. Probably they were quite as well off as the like class has been in Egypt or Russia during the past century. Their chief fear was of the royal taxes, which were exacted harshly. The peasant was held responsible for them with all that he owned, even with his body. An Egyptian writer of about 1400 b.c. exclaims in pity : 26 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT "Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when the tenth of his grain is levied ? . . . There are swarms of rats in the fields ; the grasshoppers ahght there; the cattle devour; the httle birds pilfer; and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers. The thongs, moreover, which bind the plowshare and the beam are worn out, and the team [of cows] has died at the plow. It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at the landing place to levy the tithe, and there come the keepers of the doors of the granary with cudgels and the Negroes with ribs of palm-leaf [very effective whips], crying: 'Come now, corn!' There' is none, and they throw the cultivator full length upon the ground ; bound, dragged to the canal, they fling him in, head first." [This is probably a figurative way of saying that he was forced to work out his tax on the canals.] II. ART, INDUSTRY, CHARACTER For a thousand years (3400 to 2400 B.C.), the capital remained at Memphis. This period is known as that of the "Old King- dom.'^ Its kings are remembered best for ihe pyramids, which they built for their tombs. The pyramids are merely exag- gerated developments, in stone, of earth burial mounds such as some American Indians and many other Stone Age men have erected for their chieftains' graves. But the immense size of these buildings In Egypt, and the skill shown in constructing them, has always placed them among the wonders of the world. The largest is known as the Great Pyramid. It was built by King Khufu, known till lately as Cheops, more than 3000 years B.C., and it is far the most massive building in the world. Its base covers thirteen acres, and it rises 481 feet from the plain. More than two million huge stone blocks went to make it, — more stone than has gone into any other building in the world. Some single blocks weigh over fifty tons ; but the edges of the blocks that form the faces are so polished, and so nicely fitted, that the joints can hardly be detected ; while the interior chambers, and long, sloping passages between them, are built with such skill that, notwithstanding the immense weight above them, there has been no perceptible settling of the walls in the lapse of five thousand years. PYRAMIDS AND IRRIGATION 27 Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., traveled in Egypt and learned all that the priests of his day could tell him regarding these wonders. He tells us that it took thirty years to build the Great Pyramid, — ten of those years going to piling the vast mounds of earth, up which the mighty stones were to be dragged into place, — which mounds had afterwards Sphinx and Pyramids. — From a photograph. (The human head of the sphinx is supposed to have the magnified features of some pharaoh. It is set upon the body of a Hon, as a symbol of power.) to be removed. During those thirty years, relays of a hundred thousand men were kept at the toil, each relay for three months at a stretch. Other thousands, of course, had to toil through a lifetime of labor to feed these workers on a monument to a monarch's vanity. All the labor was performed by mere human strength : the Egyptians of that day had no beasts of burden, and no machinery, such as we have, for moving great weights with ease. The vain and cruel pyramid builders were finally overthrown 28 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT by a rebellion of Upper Egypt ; and the new line of kings took Thebes for their capital. The next 400 years (2400-2000 B.C.), known as the Middle Kingdom, is the greatest age of Egypt. Its chief glory was a vast elaboration of the remarkable irriga- tion system. The pharaohs continued, of course, to care for the old dykes and embankments that kept the floods from the And the irrigation system -■UeaitSatXev^^- SCALE OF FEET — ^I&an Sea Iieuel- Vertical Section of the Great Pyramid, Looking West, showing passages. A Entrance passage. F Queen's chamber. K King's chamber. B A later opening. • G G Grand Gallery. M N Ventilating chambers. D First ascending passage. H Antechamber. O Subterranean chamber. E Horizontal passage. I Coffer. P Well, so called. R R R Probable extent to which the native rock is employed to assist the masonry of the building. towns and gardens ; and they now added a wonderful system of reservoirs — of which Lake Moeris is the great example. On the one hand, tens of thousands of acres of marsh were drained and made fit for rich cultivation; on the other hand, artificial lakes were built at various places, to collect and hold the surplus water of the yearly inundation. Then, by an in- LIFE AND WORK 29 tricate network of ditches and "gates" (much Hke the irrigation ditches of some of our western States to-day), the water was distributed during the dry months as it was needed. The government opened and closed the main ditches, as seemed best to it; and its officers saw that each farm was given its share of water in its "farm ditch." From this main ditch of his farm, the farmer himself then carried the water in smaller water courses to one part or another of his acres, — these small ditches gradually growing smaller and smaller, until, by moving a little mud with the foot, he could turn the water one way or another at his will. Ground so cultivated was divided into square beds, surrounded by raised borders of earth, so that the water could be kept in or out of each bed. So extensive were these irrigation works in very early times that more soil was cultivated, and a larger population main- tained, than in any modern period until English control was established in the country a short time ago. The main industry was farming. The leading grains were wheat, barley, and sesame. Other food crops were beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, melons, cucumbers, and onions. Grapes, too, were grown in great quantities, and made into a light wine. Clover was raised for the cattle, and flax for the linen cloth, which was the main material for clothing. A little cotton, also, was cultivated ; and large flocks of sheep furnished wool. Herodotus says that seed was merely scattered broadcast on the moist soil as the water receded each November, and then trampled in by cattle and goats and pigs. But the pictures on the monuments show that, in parts of Egypt anyway, a Hght wooden plow, drawn by cows, was used to stir the ground (cut on p. 11). Even the large farms were treated almost like gardens ; and the yield was enormous, — reaching the rate of a hundredfold for grain. Long after her greatness had de- parted, Egypt remained "the granary of the Mediterranean lands." Besides the plow, the farmer's only tools were a short, crooked hoe (the use of which bent him almost double) and the sickle. '30 ANCIENT EGYPT The grain was cut with this last implement ; then carried in baskets to a threshing floor, — and trodden out by cattle, which were driven round and round, while the drivers sang, — "Tread, tread, tread out the grain. Tread for yourselves, for yourselves. Measures for the master; measures for yourselves." An Egyptian barnyard contained many animals familiar to us (cows, sheep, goats, scrawny pigs much like the wild hog, geese, ducks, and pigeons), and also a number of others like antelopes, gazelles, and storks. Some of these it proved im- possible to tame profitably. We must remember that men had to learn by careful experiment, through many generations of animal life, which animals it paid best to domesticate. The hen was not known. The horse was introduced from Asia about 1600 B.C., but he was never common enough to use in agriculture or as a draft animal. During the flood periods cattle were fed in stalls upon clover and wheat straw. The monuments picture some exciting scenes when a rapid rise of the Nile forced the peasants to remove their flocks and herds hurriedly, through the surging waters, from usual grazing grounds. Veal, mutton, and antelope flesh were the common meats of the rich. The poor lived mainly on vege- tables and goats' milk. During most of Egypt's three thousand years of greatness, exchange in her market places ivas by barter. A peasant with wheat or onions to sell squatted by his basket, while would-be customers offeredhim earthenware, vases, fans, or other objects with which they had come to buy, but which perhaps he did not want. In the closing periods of Egyptian history, the people came to use rings of gold and silver a little, somewhat as we use money ; but such rings had to be weighed each time they changed hands. In spite of this handicap, the Egyptians carried on extensive trade. Especially did the great Theban pharaohs of the " Middle Kingdom" encourage commerce, explore distant regions, de- TRADE AND INDUSTRY 31 velop copper mines in the Sinai peninsula of Arabia, and build roads. One of them even opened a canal from the eastern mouth of the Nile to the Red Sea, so establishing a continuous water route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In that day, Egyptian merchants sailed to Crete on the north and to distant parts of Ethiopia on the south, while an inscrip- tion of about 2000 B.C. describes a ship bringing from the coast of Arabia "fragrant woods, heaps of myrrh, ebony and pure ivory, green gold, cinnamon, incense, cosmetics, apes, monkeys, A Market Scene. — An Egyptian Relief. The admirable description of Egyptian markets in Davis' Readings (I, No. 7) is based in part upon this sculpture. dogs, and panther skins." Some of these things must have been gathered from distant parts of Eastern Asia. So far as we know, the Egyptians were the first men to go down to the sea in ships, the first, indeed, to build sea-going ships at all. To pay for these precious products of distant countries, the Manufac- Egyptian merchant exported the surplus products of the skilled *"^®® artisans at home. This class included weavers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, cabinet-makers, upholsterers, glass blowers, potters, shoemakers, tailors, armorers, and almost as many other trades as are to be found among us to-day. In many of these occupations, the workers possessed a marvelous dex- 32 ANCIENT EGYPT terity, and were masters of processes that are now unknown. The weavers in. particular produced dehcate and exquisite linen, almost as fine as silk, and the workers in glass and gold were famous for their skill. Jewels were imitated in colored glass so artfully that only an expert to-day can detect the fraud by the appearance. Modern workers in stone, even with our steel drills driven by steam, cannot excel the nicety and precision of the Egyptian stoneworkers with their hand tools of bronze. Beautiful bowls and vases, and other sorts of pottery, were worked, no longer by hand, but on the potter's :ii^fe"W .Ji Sculptors at work on colossal figures. — From an Egyptian relief. wheel — another Egyptian invention — and burned, not by an open fire, but evenly in closed brick ovens. The Egyptians wrote religious books, poems, histories, travels, novels, orations, treatises on morals, scientific works, geographies, cook-books, catalogues, and collections of fairy stories — among the last a tale of an Egyptian Cinderella with her fairy glass slipper. On the oldest monuments, writ- ing had advanced from mere pictures to a rebus stage (p. 16). This early writing was used mainly by the priests, and so the strange characters are called hieroglyphs ("priests' writing"). They are " a delightful assemblage of birds, snakes, men, tools, stars, and beasts," used, not for objects merely, but rather as sound symbols, each for a syllable. Some of these signs grew into real "letters," or signs of single sounds. If the Egyptians LEARNING AND ART 33 had kept these last, and dropped all the rest, they would have had a true alphabet. But they never took this final step. To the last their writing remained a curious mixture of hun- dreds of signs of things and ideas and syllables, and of a few single sounds. The oldest inscriptions were cut in stone. But very soon the The papyrus Egyptians invented "paper." They took papyrus reeds, which Lii:«3gi=mgi*ikiSu;M?o",4iyffr^=siltrrr;ia*M^5b^Tils5:Tii Part of the Rosetta Stone (page 34), containing hieroglyphs first deciphered. The stone is now in the British Museum. grew abundantly in the Nile? split the stems down the middle, laid the slices, flat side up, in two layers, one crossing the other, and pressed them into a firm yellowish sheet, somewhat as we make our "paper" from wood pulp. On such sheets, they wrote with a pointed reed in black or red ink. The dry air Part op Above Inscription (last line) on a large scale. That part within the curved line ("cartouch") was known, by Egyptian custom, to be the name of a pharaoh, and became the starting point for study. of Egyptian tombs has preserved great numbers of buried papyrus rolls to our time. In the rapid writing on this " paper," strokes were run together, and so the stiff hieroglyphs of the monuments were gradually modified into a running script, differing from the older characters somewhat as our script differs from print. 34 ANCIENT EGYPT Many Egyptian inscriptions and papyrus rolls had long been known to European scholars ; but until a century ago no one could read them. About 1800 a.d. some French soldiers, while digging trenches near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, found a curious slab of black rock covered with three inscrip- tions, each in its own kind of writing. The top one was in the ancient hieroglyphics of the pyramids ; then came one in the later Egyptian script (likewise unknown) ; and at the bottom was an inscription in Greek. A French scholar, ChampoUion, who had been working for years, with small success, in trying to decipher the hieroglyphics, guessed shrewdly that these three inscriptions told the same story. In 1822 he proved this true. Then, by means of the Greek, he found the mean- ing of the other characters, and so had a key to the language and writing of old Egypt. The famous "Rosetta stone" made dumb ages speak once more. Egyptian science, too, was "the gift of the Nile." After an inundation, it was often needful to survey the land, and this led to the skill of the early Egyptians in geometry. And the need of fixing in advance the exact time of the inundation directed attention to the true "year," and so to astronomy. Great advance was made in both these studies. We, who learn glibly from books and diagrams the results of this early labor, can hardly understand how hard was the task of those first scientists. Uncivilized peoples count time by "moons" or by "winters." To fix the exact length of the year (the time in which the sun apparently passes from a given point in the heavens, through its path, back again to that point) requires long and patient and skillful observation, and no little knowl- edge. Indeed, to find out that there is such a thing as a "year" is no simple matter. Go out into the night, and lo6k upon the heavens, with its myriads of twinkling points of Hght, and then try to imagine how the first scientists, without being told by any one else, learned to map out the paths of the heavenly bodies. The Egyptians understood the revolution of the earth and planets around the sun, and adopted a "calendar" with a year art LEARNING, ART, RELIGION 35 of 365 days/ divided into twelve months (moons) of 30 days each, with five added feast-days. This is the direct source of. our calendar. They also divided the day into twelve double hours, and invented both a water-clock and a shadow-clock (or dial) to measure the passage of the hours. In arithmetic the Egyptians dealt in numbers to millions, with a notation like that used later by the Romans. Thus, 3423 was represented by the Romans : M M M C ' C C C XX III and by the Egyptians: ZXZ (®(5©6FI1' Amazing skill was shown in architecture, sculpture, and Egyptian painting. Aside from the pyramids, the most famous buildings were the gigantic temples of the gods. In these we find the first use of columns, arranged often in long colonnades. The Egyptians understood the principle of the arch, and they used it sometimes in their private mansions ; but in the huge temples the roofs and ceilings were formed always by laying immense flat slabs of rock across from column to column (or from square pier to pier). The result is an impression of stupendous power, but not of surpassing beauty. On the walls and columns, and within the pyramid tombs, we find long bands of pictures ("reliefs") cut into the stone (cf. note on p. 20). Often these represent historical scenes, the story of which is told in detail by inscriptions above or below the band of sculpture. The Egyptians did not understand "perspective," and so in such carving and drawing they could not represent one figure behind another, or give the sense of varying distances. All the figures appear on one plane, and are drawn on one scale. (Compare the reliefs on pp. 20-40 with the Roman relief on p. 383.) In other respects the Egyptian work is exceedingly lifelike. In carving complete statues, the ignorance of perspective did not injure the effect. The Egyptians, accordingly, excelled here, especially in portrait statues, small or life size. They 1 Later they found that their year was too short by nearly a quarter of a day ; but the leap-year arrangement which their scholars then invented never came into general use in ancient Egypt. 36 ANCIENT EGYPT Ruins of the "Hall of Columns" in the Temple of Karnak ,(1500 B.C.). This temple was a maze of huge halls and courts joined by iotty corridors. This one hall had 134 columns, the central ones being bb feet high. The "capitals" do not show clearly in this cut, but many of them are exceedingly beautiful, shaped like vast inverted bells and ornamented with carvings of the lotus in full bloom. A full company of soldiers might stand upon one of those capitals. (Compare these ruins with Stonehenge, p. 12.) RELIGION AND MORALS 37 were fond, too, of making colossal statues, like the Sphinx, which, however unnatural, have a gloomy and overwhelming grandeur — in keeping with the melancholy desert that stretches about them. The scenes carved on temple walls, and the walls themselves, within and without, were painted skillfully in brilliant hues faithful to nature. Inside the rock-tombs, such painting has lasted with perfect freshness. Elsewhere all trace of color has long faded away — as the rock paintings soon do on exposure to the air. There was a curious mixture of religions. Each family wor- Religion shiped its ancestors. Such ancestor worship is found, indeed, among all primitive peoples, along with a belief in evil spirits and malicious ghosts. There was also a worship of animals. Cats, dogs, bulls, crocodiles, and many other animals were sacred. To injure one of these "gods," even by accident, was to incur the murderous fury of the people. Probably this wor- ship was a degraded kind of ancestor worship known as totemism, which is found among many peoples. North American Indians of a wolf clan or a bear clan — with a fabled wolf or bear for an ancestor — must on no account injure the ancestral animal or "totem." i In Egypt, however, the worship of animals became more widely spread, and took on grosser features, than has ever been the case elsewhere. Above all this, there was a nature worship with countless deities and demigods representing sun, moon, river, wind, storm, trees, and stones. Each village and town had its special nature god to protect it ; and the gods of the great capitals became national deities. With the better classes this nature worship mounted some- times to a lo/ty and pure worship of one God. "God," say some of the inscriptions, " is a spirit : no man knoweth his form," and again, — "He is the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is therein." These lofty thoughts never spread far among the people ; but a few thinkers in Egypt rose ^ Students who know Cooper's Last of the Mohicans will recall an illustra- tion of totemism. 38 ANCIENT EGYPT to them earlier than the Hebrew prophets did. The following hymn to Aten (the Sun-disk), symbol of Light and Life, was written by a king of the fifteenth century B.C., and it shows that he thought of the creator as a tender father of all creatures. "Thy appearing is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Uving Aten, the beginning of Ufe ! . . . Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. Thy beams encompass all lands which thou hast made. Thou bindest them with thy love. . . . The birds fly in their marshes — Lifting their wings to adore thee. . . . The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell — Thou givest it breath within the egg. . . . How many are the things which thou hast made ! Thou Greatest the land by thy will, thou alone. With peoples, herds, and flocks. . . . Thou givest to every vian his place, thou framest his life." Sculptured Funeral Couch, representing the soul crouching by the corpse. The idea of a future life was held in two or three forms. Nearly all savage peoples believe that after death the body remains the home of the soul, or at least that the soul lives on in a pale, shadowy existence near the tomb. If the body be not pre- served, or if it be not given proper burial, then, it is thought, the soul becomes a wandering ghost, restless and harmful to men. RELIGION AND MORALS 39 The early Egyptians held such a belief, and their practice of embalming ^ the body before burial was connected with it. They wished to preserve the body as the home for the soul. In the early tombs, too, there are always found dishes in which had been placed food and drink for the ghost.^ Later, the offerings were sometimes represented by pictures ! These practices continued through all ancient Egyptian history. But upon some such basis as this there finally grew up, among the better classes, a belief in a truer immortality. According to these more advanced thinkers, the dead lived in a distant Elysium, where they had all the pleasures of life without its pains. This haven, however, was only for those ghosts who, on ar- rival, should be declared worthy — because of their good lives — by the "Judges of the Dead." Other souls were thought to perish. The following noble extract comes from the "Repudiation Moral of Sins." This was a statement which the Egyptian believed standards he ought to be able to say truthfully before the "Judges of the Dead." It shows a keen sense of duty to one's fellow men. A Tomb Painting : i )!i crings to the dead. 1 "Embalming" is a process of preparing a dead body with drugs and spices, so as to prevent decay. The corpses of the wealthy, so preserved, were also swathed in many layers of linen clothes before being laid away. A corpse so preserved and wrapped is called a mummy. 2 After these 6000 years of different faiths, the Egyptian peasant still buries food and drink with his dead. Such customs last long after the ideas on which they were based have faded ; hut there must always have been, some live idea in them at first. 40 ANCIENT EGYPT which would be highly honorable to any religion, and it is the first record of the idea that a good life ought to win reward hereafter. "Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of Truth and Justice ! . . . I have not committed iniquity against men ! I have not oppressed the poor ! . . . I have not laid labor upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself ! . . . I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master ! I have not starved any man, I have not made any to weep, ... / have not pulled down i ! w 1 ^^B Hk^"* Z""*"^ IH ^SP^^Tsf ■H ^R^P •*iV!t' ' ™ liniiiiaiiMS -•||C , V !• 1^1^ £iS~ .'m^ J fcll ■ 1 &.,iVi'^^}^^ H vfeSi 1 Ell U^iHh 1 1 1 Weighing the Soul in the scales of truth before the gods of the dead. — Egyptian reUef ; after Maspero. (The figures with animal heads are gods and their messengers. The human forms represent the dead who are being led to judgment.) the scale of the balance ! I have not falsified the beam of the balance ! I have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings. . . . "Grant that he may come unto you — he that hath not lied or borne false witness, . . . he that hath given bread to the hungry and drink to him that was athirst, and that hath clothed the naked with gar- ments." Some other declarations in this statement run : " I have not blasphemed"; "I have not stolen"; "I have not slain any man treacherously"; "I have not made false accusation"; "I have not eaten my heart with envy." These five contain EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 41 the substance of half of the Ten Commandments, — hundreds of years before Moses brought the tables of stone to the Children of Israel. Like ideas of duty appear in many other inscrip- tions. (Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 9 and 10.) Such inscriptions show that the Egyptians were a kindly, A kindly moral, conscientious people. Says Professor Petrie, the great P®°P^® English authority, "The Egyptian . . . sought out a fa,ir and noble life. . . . His aim was to be an easy, good-natured, quiet gentleman, and to make life as agreeable as he could to all about him." III. EGYPT AND OTHER LANDS Egypt was so difficult to get into that, when a large state had Protected once been formed there, it was almost safe from attack. To the . ^"7 ' vasion by south were the Abyssinians, a brave and warlike people ; but geography they were cut off from Egypt by a twelve-day march through a desert and by impassable cataracts in the Nile. Trade cara- vans and small bands might travel from, one country to the other ; but armies could do so only with the greatest difficulty. To the west lay the Sahara — an immense inhospitable tract, peopled by small tribes roaming from oasis to oasis. On the north and east lay the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Thus with sides and rear protected, Egypt faced Asia across Egypt and the narrow Isthmus of Suez. And here, too, the region border- ^"^ ing Egypt was mainly desert. . But a little to the north, between the mountains and the sea, lay Syria, ^ a narrow strip of habitable ground and a nursery of warlike peoples. Here dwelt the Phoenicians, Philistines, Canaanites, Hebrews, Moabites, and Hittites, whom we read of in the Bible. Mountain ranges and rivers divided these peoples into many small, mutually hostile states ; and so Syria offered a tempting field to Egyptian military ambition. The Theban pharaohs of 2400-2000 B.C. (p. 28) laid the region waste in long wars, and 1 The term "Syria" is used with a varying meaning. In a narrow sense, as in this passage, it means only the coast region. In a broader use, it applies to all the country between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. 42 ANCIENT EGYPT The " New Empire " finally made themselves its masters. Then, about 1700 B.C., Egypt was itself invaded and conquered by a strange race of nomads from the neighboring Arabian desert. From the name of their rulers we know these invaders as Hyksos (Shepherds). They introduced the horse into Egypt. This animal was re- served for war (p. 30). Thenceforward pharaohs and nobles no longer marched to war, as in the earlier reliefs, but are pic- tured in chariots. A century later, the Hyksos were expelled by a new line of native pha- raohs at Thebes. These are known as the monarchs of the "New Empire." The long struggle with the invading Hyksos had fastened militarism disas-^ trously upon the industrial Egyptians, and the New Empire is known chiefly for its conquests in war (map opposite). At its extreme north, the fertile Syrian strip bends south again in a sharp crescent around the Arabian desert down the course of the Euphrates and Tigris. On these rivers, so much like their own Nile, the Egyptian conquerors found a civilization not much inferior to their own, and almost as old. The two first homes of civilization, the valleys of the Nile and of the Euphrates, were only some 800 miles apart in a straight line ; but along the two legs of the Rame«i;s II. A portrait statue, now in the Turin Museum of Antiquities. Rameses was one of the two most famous conquering pharaohs of the New Empire. EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 43 triangle — the only practicable route — the distance was much greater. That whole district was soon covered by a network of roads. These were garrisoned here and there by Egyptian fortresses ; and along them, for centuries, there passed hurrying streams of officials, couriers, and merchants. But history teaches that " he who takes the sword shall perish The fall of by the sword." The ■population of Egypt was drained of its „^l^^^^^ manhood by long wars, and impoverished by heavy war taxation. Finally the pharaohs could no longer defend their distant fron- tiers, and withdrew within the old borders of Egypt. In particular, they found it impossible to war longer with the 44 ANCIENT EGYPT A brief revival, 600 B.C. Hittites, who, armed with iron weapons, descended from the slopes of the Taurus mountains and overthrew Egyptian power in Syria. Even at home, the government was noW weak and troubled by various invasions ; and, in 672, Egypt became subject to Assyria (p. 50). Twenty years later, Psammetichus restored Egyptian inde- pendence, and became the first of the final line of native pharaohs. He had been a military adventurer, and he won his throne largely through the aid of mercenary Greek troops. During all her earlier greatness, however much her traders visited foreign lands, Egypt had kept herself jealousl}^ closed against strangers. But Psammet- ichus threw open the door to foreigners, especially to the Greeks, who were just coming into notice. Greek travelers visited Egypt ; large numbers of Greek soldiers served! in the army ; and a Greek colony at Naucratis was given special privileges. Indeed, Sais, the new capital of Psammetichus and his son, thronged with Greek adventurers. This was the time when Egypt "ful- filled her mission among the nations." She "had lit the torch of civilization" ages before: now she passed it on to the Western world through this vigorous new race. Neco, son of Psammetichus, is remembered for his fine attempt to reopen the ancient canal from the Nile to the Red Sea (p. 31). This failed ; but Neco did find another sea route from the Red to the Mediterranean. One of his ships sailed around Africa, down the east coast, returning three years later through the Mediterranean. Herodotus (p. 27), who tells us the story, adds : Sculptured Head of Thutmosis III (about 1470 B.C.), who in twelve great campaigns carried Egyptian arms from the Isthmus to Nineveh. EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 45 "On their return the sailors reported (others may beheve them Voyage but I will not) that in sailing from east to west around Africa ^^°^^^ they had the sun on their right hand." This report is good proof to us that the story of the sailors was true.' This voyage closes Egyptian history. In 525 the land be- came subject to Persia (p. 67), and native rule has never been restored. " Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, HaK-sunk, a shattered visage lies. And on the pedestal, these words appear : ' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair ! ' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away." — Shelley. Exercises. — 1. Make and compare lists of the things we owe to Egypt. 2. What can you learn from those extracts upon Egypt in Davis' Readings, which have not been referred to in this chapter? (If the class have enough of those valuable little books in their hands, this topic may make aU or part of a day's lesson ; if only a copy or two is in the library, one student may well make a short report to the class, with brief readings.) 3. Do you regard the Great Pyramid or Lake Moeris or the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea or the conquest of Syria as the truest proof of Egyptian greatness? 4. Can you see any connection between the cheap food of the Nile valley and its place as an early home of civihzation? Could you suggest a more just division of the leisure that resulted from that cheap food? 5. Students who wish to read further upon ancient Egypt will find the titles of three or four of the best books for their purpose in the Appendix, — Baikie, Breasted, Hommel, or Myers. If the school has a stereopticon for use in history classes, and can afford the expense, the Underwood and Underwood series of Egyptian views will be found very instructive ; edited by Breasted, Egypt through the Stereoscope. The following numbers are especiaUy good : 27, 29, 31, 42, 45, 48, 52, 53, 57, 69, 89. 1 If the student does not see why, let him trace the route on a globe, and see whether he can understand the story. CHAPTER III THE MEN OF THE EUPHRATES AND TIGRIS The land of the two rivers The three divisions Chaldeans and Assyrians I. LAND, PEOPLE, AND STATES Between the sands of Arabia and the rugged plateaus of central Asia, there lies a patch of luxuriant vegetation stretch- ing from the Persian Gulf to the Armenian mountains. This oasis is the work of the Euphrates ("great" river) and the Tigris ("swift" river). Rising on opposite slopes of snow- capped mountains, these streams approach each other in ma- jestic sweeps until they form a common valley ; then they flow in parallel channels for most of their course, uniting just before they reach the Persian Gulf. The valley had three parts. (1) Like the delta of the Nile, the lower part had been built up out of alluvial soil carried out, in the course of ages, into the sea. This district was about as large as Egypt and is known as Babylonia, or Chaldea. To the north, the rich Chaldean plain rises into a broad table-land. (2) The fertile half of this, on the Tigris side, is ancient Assyria. (3) The western part of the upper valley (Mesopotamia) is more rugged, and is important mainly because it makes part of the great curved road, around the Arabian desert, from Chaldea to Egypt (p. 42). The Tigris district is not suited for irrigation, but it has a reasonable amount of rainfall. Chaldea' s fertility loas kept up by the annual overflow of the Euphrates, regulated, like the Nile's, by dikes, reservoirs, and canals. The people of Chaldea and of Assyria differed widely. The first civilization in the southern district was built up by a race whom scholars call Sumerians. By 4000 B.C., they reached the Copper Age and a hieroglyphic stage of writing. Successive 46 CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 47 waves of conquering invaders from the Arabian desert finally established a Semitic language in Chaldea, but the bulk of the inhabitants there did not become Semites in blood. They Recent Excavation at the Site of Ashur, one of the most ancient cities of the district. — From Jastrow's Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria. kept mainly the character of the older race, though their old speech had become a "dead" language. Before 2000 B.C. they had learned the use of Bronze — probably from Egyptian traders. 48 CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS Sumerian civilization, however, had not taken so firm a hold on the Tigris district ; and the Assyrians did become mainly Semitic, — allied to the Arabs in blood. The men of the south — Chaldeans, or Babyloni- ans — were quick-witted, indus- trious, gentle, pleasure-loving, fond of literature and of peace- ful pursuits. The men of the north — the hook-nosed, larger- framed, fiercer Assyrians — de- lighted in blood and gore, and had only such arts and learning as they could borrow from their neighbors. The languages of the Arabs, Jews, Assyrians, and of some other neighboring peoples, such as the ancient Phoenicians (p. 74), are closely related. The whole group of such languages is called Semitic, and the peoples who speak them are called Semites (descendants of Shem). Similarity of languages does not neces- sarily prove that the peoples are related in blood: more commonly it means only that their civilizations have been derived one from an- other. But these Semitic races do seem to have had a close blood relationship. A BABYLONIAlSr BOUNDARY StONE of about 2000 B.C. — From Jas- trow's Babylonia and Assyria. Such stones were placed at each corner of a grant of land. The inscription records the title, and the gods are invoked to witness the grant or sale and to punish transgressors upon the owner's rights. FIRST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE 49 Just as in early Egypt, so in this double valley, many cities waged long wars with one another from an early date. Each such city, with its surrounding hamlets and farms, was a little "city-state." First Accad and then Ur (both of which we read of in the Bible) won control over all Chaldea. Later, Babylon in Chaldea and Nineveh in Assyria became the capitals of mighty em- pires, i About 2150 B.C., a new Semitic conqueror, Ham- murapi, established himself at Babylon, and soon ex- tended his rule over the whole valley and westward even to the Mediterranean. This was the First Baby- lonian Empire. For hun- dreds of years Chaldean fashions were copied, Chal- dean manufactures were used, and Chaldean books were read, all over Syria; and, ever since, the name Babylon has remained a symbol for magnificence and power. After five or six centuries, however, Egypt for a time seized most of this Babylonian empire (p. 42). In 745 B.C., Nineveh, long subject to Babylon, became her- self the seat of an Assyrian Empire, larger and mightier than any that had gone before it. The king Sargon carried away the 1 An empire is properly a state containing many sub-states. Egypt was called a kingdom while it was confined to the Nile valley, but an empire when its sway extended over Ethiopia and Syria (p. 42). City-states give way to an empire "" ^i ^ iLs ^^ r ^H^'. t feC^« m fe^ ^