THE ASIATIC RACES.
The Old Testament makes us acquainted with the possessors of still another civilization, with a series of races of the same stock as the chosen people. The tenth chapter of Genesis mentions Nim rod as the great-grandson of the patriarch Noah: " He began to be a mighty one in the earth;" "And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel .... in the land of Shinar;" " Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city." The scene of this civilization is Mesopotamia, the plain of the Euphrates and the Tigris, a land constituted similarly to Egypt and similarly favored by nature—a land calculated to attract a nomadic race which desired to become stationary and civilized.
This land did not, indeed, furnish those mighty blocks of stone with which the Egyptians erected their monuments. The eleventh chapter of Genesis says, "And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let ns make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." And so they founded cities—some of which are mentioned in the Book of Genesis—generations before Abra ham, Isaac, and Jacob appeared, and before the chosen people in their wanderings came to Egypt.
We can only vaguely guess at the aspect of the cities founded in that early time, as scarcely any of their remains now exist. Greek tradition names Nineveh or Niuns, a work of a king of the same name, as the oldest city; it tells of his immense constructions, and relates how his widow, Semiramis, founded Babylon and built the Temple of Belus, and it speaks of the enormous walls of the city, the great citadel, the reser voirs, and the hanging-gardens. We have, indeed, reason to believe that these extensive works—which FIerodotos professes to have seen, and which the Greeks classed among the wonders of the world—did not belong to this early age, or, at least, were remodelled at a later time. The exact
date is difficult to fix. The most recent investigations place the culmina tion of Chaldrean culture at about z000–r joo 13. C. ; so these races probably became settled about 2 100 B. c., or about the time when the Hvksos in vaded Egypt and destroyed its ancient civilization. Without doubt the Hyksos issued from this part of Asia, having been driven out by other tribes whose wanderings were connected with those of the ment patriarchs of whom the Book of Genesis gives us so vivid a picture.
The liongolians and these peoples were all related, as may be inferred from the biblical narrative, or were of differ ent stock, as ethnologists assert, the Assyrians being allied to the Mon golians and coining from Central Asia, is for the broader scope of archi tectural history of little importance. But the latter were probably the first of that inland group of tribes to become settled and to develop a stable civilization; without doubt they influenced the culture of the other tribes by the extent and importance of their rule—the more so as, with the exception of a single people, these continued in their nomadic life long afterward.
The the same time that the settled in Mesopotamia, the Phoenicians, a people of Semitic origin, and one of the most restless races of antiquity, endowed with that versatility which, in conjunction with the impetus of an incessant chase after gain, induced other nomads to wander through the land, settled down upon the coast of Syria. These hardy sailors, who soon searched every coast from India to Britain, brought home the natural treasures of different countries and exchanged with their inhabitants the products of an extensive industrial activity. A series of colonies gave to this oldest world-wide commerce a steadfast organization. Ere long the Phoenicians had incorporated the collective artistic ability of all these peoples with that which was of home-growth. Their oldest and most important cities were Tyre and Sidon.