The history will be found under Assyria and Babylonia. The great landmarks are the reign of Sargon, the Charlemagne of the an cient world, who founded a huge west-Asiatic 'empire" from north Arabia to Armenia and west to the Mediterranean; the second great Semitic invasion from Arabia about 2500 n.c., overrunning south Babylonia, and the Elamite invasion from the Karun valley in Persia about 2300 ac., subjugating the remainder; the expulsion of the Elamites about 2250 by Ham murabi (oAmrapheP), and the founding of Babylon, which became for 17 centuries the Rome of the Asiatic world, the political and religious centre at once; the first emergence of Assyria, on the Accadian highlands, about 1800; the Kassite invasion from the Persian highlands 1782 tic., founding a dynasty which ruled Babylonia till 1207; their expulsion; the great double invasion of Semites from the south and Aryans from the north, which broke up the Hittite empire and overwhelmed Baby lonia and Assyria in a common wreck; the collapse of the Old World civilization; the re emergence of Assyria and its domination over Babylonia, from about 900; its eclipse by the growth of Armenia in the 8th century; its new and enormous power under Tiglath-Pileser II who annexes B,abylonik; the destruction of Babylonia by Sennacherib, 689 B.C., and its re building by his son Esarhaddon; the rebirth of Babylonia under Nabopolassar, the Chaldean, who extinguished Assyria, 610 or 609 ac., and, after a short, brilliant career, the end of the Babylonian-Assyrian power forever through its conquest by Cyrus. The relation of the As syrian rower to the Babylonian was much like that of Rome to Greece; though on a lower scale, for the Assyrians, though great warriors, had 'none of the organizing and assimilating power 'of Rome. Assyria copied laboriously, and on the whole clumsily, the literature and art of its intellectual' masters, and produced no literature proper of its own. But its libraries, copied from the Babylonian tablets with minute textual and critical accuracy, give it an im perishable claim to our gratitude.
Emit.— The archeological history of pre historic civilizations was studied in Egypt' ear lier, and has been studied there more fully, than elsewhere, from the accessibility' of relics and safety of work, the involution of Egyptian pol itics and history with records in a classic lan guage through the existence of anEgyptian state under classic rulers, and the survi4a1 of a descendant of the Egyptian language to our own day. It was the latter which furnished the key to the decipherment of the hiero glyphic records. The Rosetta Stone (q.v.), discovered by the French in 1799, bearing a proclamation in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, invited a textual comparison. An Eng lishman, Young, devised a correct principle, but had neither knowledge nor interest to apply it in full; Sir William Gell utilized his knowl edge of Coptic, and identified three-fourths of the signs; Champollion, the Frenchman, was a thorough Coptic student, and in 1821-32 worked out the entire system for use. This first made it possible to rescue Egyptian history 'in pre classic times from the fog of distorted Greek legends, scraps of priestly record and 'misap plied Biblical comparisons, while the excava tions at Thebes in 1820-30 opened up the Ramesside and neighboring periods 1500-1000 B.C. Later, Lepsius and Mariette were fore most in revealing the period of the Pyramid Builders, carrying us back to far past 3000 B.C. ; and still later Dr. Flinders Petrie has not only turned the First Dynasty and others still farther back, from myth into solid history, but has recreated the prehistoric world prior to the organization of the monarchy, about 4800 ac.,
with a surety as great as that of written rec ord. In the historic periods, the total lack of any chronological sense in the Egyptians, who in this respect were very different from the Assyrians, and the catastrophe of the Hyksos invasion, make its history- in large portions less clear than the Babylonian; but we know its general outline at worst, and the synchronism and variations of arts and industries often sup ply the lack of dated chronology.
The oldest inhabitants of upper Egypt known were of the same race as the Algerian Kabyles of to-day— a white-skinned, blond, blue-eyed, narrow-headed race, with a negro strain, allied to the south European races. They had acquired by 5000 B.C. the highest grade of Neolithic civilization ever reached in the world, so far as evidenced by tools and implements— the finish of the flint-knives and lances being incomparable — and were using copper ones also. They built brick towns and carried on an active Mediterranean commerce in large rowed galleys; they made leather and woven linen clothes, beautiful and varied pottery with out the wheel, perfect vases of the hardest stone without the lathe, applied colored glares even to great rock carvings, manufactured or naments of precious stones, metals and ivory, ivory spoons and combs, games, etc. Their art, however, was very crude, and they had no system of writing whatever, though using marks. About 5000 ac a much more developed race invaded Egypt—probably 'from Arabia, whence the Hyksos and the Hebrews and the other Semites came:, a race which used metals more freely, had a system of writing, a better government organization and higher artistic taste. Here, as in Assyria, the blending of two able but diverse strains made the great tian type and civilization of the Old Kingdom which we know from their monuments and achievements. They were a grand people in every way: active warriors and administrators, firm in policy, fine mechanicians, adepts in or ganizing combined labor; strong artists with ' lofty conceptions; withal a sensitive, lcindly, sympathetic, folk, with the least strain of fero cious savagery of any great people in history. This long era has left us the pyramids and magnificent monumental tombs, masses of grand and accurate architecture and noble sculpture. This great age could not last for ever, and for some centuries after about 2500 ac, it was in decline, to revive only less bril liantly in the 12th dynasty about 2000 s.c., con sidered by Egyptian writers their Golden Age of art and literature. The tremendous trophe of the Hyksos invasion, already men tioned, took place probably about 1780 s.c., and the °Shepherd Kings° remained till about 1600. Their final expulsion opened a hew and bril liant era, of expansion into and domination over west Asia, of the closest relations with the Mediterranean countries, of a general spread of luxury through the people. tgypt for the first time threw off its exclusion, and became part of the current of the world's progress. In this period (about 1600-1200) we find, near the beginning, the great Thothmes III, whose exploits were exaggerated into the Sesostris of Greek tradition; near the end the , rather braggart King Rameses II, commonly identified with Joseph's Pharaoh, and his son Meneptah, often accredited as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. But the empire had the doom of all states which live on the tribute of foreign districts:, the outside revenue stopped, the hab its of luxury remained and the nation declined.' In the thousand years to follow before it was absorbed in Rome, it had much prosperity and some periods of brief glory, but the vital spirit had gone.