this time on, we are on certain and firm historical grounds, and with the founding of the great library at Alexandria, by Ptolemy Philadelphus, Egypt received her last great literary impulse, and since the fourth century of this era the part which she has played in the struggle of humanity has been inconsiderable. From other data gathered by Horner, who sunk numerous shafts across the Nile Valley at Memphis, and who brought up copper knives and pottery from depths approximately of sixty feet, it has been calculated, from the rate of deposition in that valley to-day, that these remains are upward of twenty-five thousand years old. In other places, Paleoliths have been found that are undoubtedly very much older than the oldest temples and tombs. Furthermore, we know that in all the traditions of this country, the first inhabitants are represented as being autochthonous, which, if correct, must mean a very great state of antiquity, so far as man is concerned; if it be granted that this Egyptian civilization, which is known to have existed at Memphis, had to develop of its own accord in the Valley of the Nile, abundantly fertile though it always has been.

In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, we have further evidence of the existence of a high state of civilization, as taken from the cylinder of Sargon I, which reads, “Sharrukin the mighty king am I, who knew not his father, but whose mother was a royal princess, who, to conceal my birth, placed me in a basket of rushes closed with pitch, and cast me into the river, from which I was saved by Akki, the water-carrier, who brought me up as his own child.” The date of this king is generally accepted as about four thousand years before Christ, and his exploits have been found pictured and described on the relics taken from Cyprus, Syria, and Babylonia. He did for Mesopotamia what Menes did for Egypt, and the prestige of his arms, and the renown of his civilization, spread over all Asia Minor. As a patron of literature, he founded some of the most famous libraries in Babylonia, and compiled a work of seventy-two volumes on Astronomy and Astrology, which was even translated into Greek. From recent researches, which have resulted in the finding of a great many clay tablets from the libraries of Mesopotamia, it seems certain that this Sargon I, upon his ascension to the throne, found the Accadian people (he was a Semite) already enjoying a high civilization, with sacred temples, a sacred and profane literature, and one who had a large and well-ordered knowledge of astronomy, as well as of agriculture and the industrial arts. From the archæological remains which have been discovered, and, in particular, the marble statue of a king by the name of David, which was recently found at Bisinya, and whose antiquity is probably greater than 4,500 B. C., it is entirely conservative to assume that Chaldean civilization was as old, if not older, than that of Egypt; while no figure can be set upon the length of time which was required in these fertile valleys for this state of affairs to develop from a condition of barbarism.

In China, strangely enough, where the oldest historical records would be expected, we can find nothing to compare with the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldean clay-cylinders, and competent authorities are well agreed that there is great reason to suppose that much of the early civilization was brought from Accadia. In any case, at the dawn of history, we find China just as she is to-day:—an overpopulated, agricultural country, where blind imitation of predecessors ruled, and, consequently, progress, unless brought in by conquest, is extremely slow. If the empire was founded, as has been supposed, by an Accadian invasion or immigration, which must have occurred about 5,000 B. C., or at least before the time of Sargon I, then these wanderers drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, the Mioutse, who have been crowded at last into the mountains of the western provinces. Certain it is that no greater date can be assigned to the civilization of this country, at the beginning of its historical record, than about 2,750 B. C., which time is known in Chinese tradition as the “Age of the Five Rulers.”

Perhaps next in order of antiquity, comes the small country known as Elam, lying between the Tigris River and the Lagros Mountains, and extending to the south along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. As in both Egypt and Chaldea, this country was brought into prominence by an aggressive and warlike king,—the famous Cyrus of history,—and, fortunately, his clay-cylinder; from one of the magnificent libraries of Susa, or Shushan; was recently found by Mr. Rassam, amid the débris composing the mound, which is now the only mark left to show where these great centers of population once were, in the fertile valleys and coast plains of this part of Asia; and this cylinder is now kept, with hundreds from like sources, in the British Museum at London. On this memorial cylinder, Cyrus gives his genealogy and an account of his exploits, and we find that he came from a line of kings, and held to the popular faith of his country, thanking and petitioning the whole Elamite Hierarchy of gods. Cyrus carried the Elamite arms into southern Syria and Palestine, and overthrew Mesopotamia about 2,300 B. C. It was the reaction from this conquest that caused some of the most gigantic struggles of antiquity.

Of the Phœnician cities of Tyre and Sidon, no definite historical record can be found earlier than from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before Christ. The Hittite civilization and influence we find at their height at about the same time, but here we can get no inkling of a greater antiquity for man than that given in the Middle Egyptian Empire. In the cities of Troy and Mycenæ, we find civilization at its crest some five hundred years later, and it is not until we come to Arabia that we again find evidence of such high antiquity as we find in Chaldea and Egypt. The old kingdom of Saba was built upon the ruins of a still older, known as Ma’in, and the former was in its decline as an empire at the beginning of the eighth century, B. C. Now, contemporary history shows that this country has gone through all the transformations which Egypt and Chaldea had, and if this is also true of the Ma’in kingdom, then a date of great antiquity must be given to it. But these are not certainties, while in the cases of Chaldea and Egypt there can be no mistake. The Israelite civilization was at its height under David and Solomon, about contemporaneously with that of Troy and Mycenæ, and even the Hebrew tradition does not attempt to antedate the year 2,000 B. C., so that we can obtain no information from this source. Greece flourished but five hundred years before the present era, and even if we regard Homer as authentic, no more remote date can be given to their earliest civilization than that of the attack by the Hellenes upon Troy, which was about 1,000 B. C.

In the Western Hemisphere archeologists are every year making valuable discoveries in Mexico and Peru which will probably give a remote date for the civilizations which flourished in these countries long before the conquests of the Spaniards. The great pyramids of the Sun and Moon on the Mexican plateau and the similarity of their design and orientation with the Egyptian all point to an interchange of ideas between the East and the West in prehistoric time.

The geological table given at the close of this chapter may be of interest, as a careful consideration of it, and the foregoing facts, will show the real value of man in nature. That man is ascendent now, does not, in the light of