 Section 1 of the Great Events, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 1. The Great Events by Famous Historians is the answer to a problem which has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from its present oblivion on the dusty shore? And made welcome to the homes of the people. The National Alumni, an association of college men, having given this question long and earnest discussion among themselves, sought finally the views of a carefully elaborated list of authorities throughout America and Europe. They consulted the foremost living historians and professors of history, successful writers in other fields, statesmen, university and college presidents, and prominent businessmen. From this widely gathered consensus of opinions, after much comparison and sifting of ideas, was evolved the following practical, and it would seem incontrovertible, series of plain facts. And these all pointed toward the Great Events. In the first place, the entire American public, from top to bottom of the social ladder, are at this moment anxious to read history. Its predominant importance among the varied forms of literature is fully recognized. To understand the past is to understand the future. The successful men in every line of life are those who look ahead, whose keen foresight enables them to probe into the future. Not by magic, but by patiently acquired knowledge. To see clearly what the world has done and why, is to see at least vaguely what the world will do, and when. Moreover, no man can understand himself unless he understands others, and he cannot do that without some idea of the past, which has produced both him and them. To know his neighbors, he must know something of the country from which they came, the conditions under which they formerly lived. He cannot do his own simple duty by his own country if he does not know through what tribulations the country has passed. He cannot be a good citizen, he cannot even vote honestly, much less intelligently, unless he has read history. Fortunately, the point needs little urging, it is almost an impertinence to refer to it. We are all anxious, more than anxious, to learn, if only the path of study be made easy. Can this be accomplished? Can the vanishing pictures of the past be made as simply obvious as mathematics? As fascinating as a breezy novel of adventure? Genius has already answered, yes. Hand to a mere boy, Macaulay's sketch of Warren Hastings in India and the lad will see as easily as if laid out upon a map the host of interwoven and elaborate problems that perplexed the great administrator. Offer to the youngest lass, the tale told by Guizot of King Robert of France and his struggle to retain his beloved wife Bertha. Its vivid reality will draw from the girl's heart far deeper and truer tears than the most pathetic romance. We begin to realize that, in very truth, history has been one vast, stupendous drama, world embracing in its splendor, majestic, awful, irresistible in the insistence of its pointing finger of fate. It has indeed its comic interludes, a Prussian thing befuddling ambassadors in his tobacco parliament, its pauses of intense and cumulative suspense, Queen Louise pleading to Napoleon for her country's life, but it has also its magnificent pageants, its gorgeous culminating spectacles of wonder. Kings and emperors are but the supernumeraries upon its boards, its hero is the common man, its plot his triumph over ignorance, his struggle upward out of the slime of earth. Yet the great historians are not being widely read, the ablest and most convincing stories of his own development seen closed against the ordinary man. Why? In the first place, the works of the masters are too voluminous. Grotes' unrivaled history of Greece fills ten large and forbidding volumes. Guizot takes thirty-one to tell a portion of the story of France. Freeman won credit in the professional world by devoting five to the detailing of a single episode, The Norman Conquest. Surely no busy man can gather a general historic knowledge if he must read such works as these. We are told that the great library of Paris contains over four hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets on French history alone. The output of historic works in all languages approaches ten thousand volumes every year. No scholar even can peruse more than the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. Herodotus is forgotten. Lively remains to most of us but a recollection of our school days. Anthucidides has become an exercise in Greek. There is yet another difficulty. Even the honest man who tries, who takes down his growth, your Freeman, heroically resolved to struggle through it at all speed, fails often in his purpose. He discovers that the greatest masters nod. Sometimes in their slow advance they come upon a point that rouses their enthusiasm. They become vigorous, passionate, sarcastic, fascinating. They are masters indeed. But the fire soon dies. The inspiration flags. No man can be always on the heights. And the unhappy reader drowses in the company of his guide. This leads us then to one clear point. From these justly famous works the selection should be made. Their length should be avoided. Their prosy passages eliminated. The one picture, or perhaps the many pictures, which each master has painted better than any rival before or since. That and that alone should be preserved. Read in this way history may be sought with genuine pleasure. It is only pedantry has made it dreary. Only blindness has left it dull. The story of man is the most wonderful ever conceived. It can be made the most fascinating ever written. With this idea firmly established in mind we seek another line of thought. The world grows smaller every day. Russia fights huge battles 5000 miles from her capital. England governs India. Spain and the United States contend for empire and the antipodes. Our rapidly improving means of communication, electric trains and it may be flying machines, cables and wireless telegraphy. Link lands so close together that no man lives today the subject of an isolated state. Rather indeed to all the kingdoms seem to shrink to become but districts in one world including Commonwealth. To tell the story of one nation by itself is thus no longer possible. Great movements of the human race do not stop for imaginary boundary lines thrown across a map. It was not the German students nor the Parisian mob nor the Italian peasants who rebelled in 1848. It was the people of Europe who arose against their oppressors. To read the history of one's own country only is to get distorted views, to exaggerate our own importance, to remain often in densest ignorance of the real meaning of what we read. The ideas American schoolboys get of the revolution are in many cases simply absurd until they have been mollified by wider reading. From this becomes very evident that a good history now must be not a local but a world history. The idea of such a work is not new. Diodorus penned one 200 years before Christ. But even then the tale took 40 books and we have been making history rather rapidly since Diodorus's time. Of the many who have more recently attempted this task few have improved upon his methods. The best of these works only shows upon a larger scale the same dreariness that we have found in other masters. Let us then be frank and admit that no one man can make a thoroughly good world history. No one man could be possessed of the almost infinite learning required. None could have the infinite enthusiasm to delight equally in each separate event to dwell on all impartially and yet ecstatically. So once more we are forced back upon the same conclusion. We will take what we already have. We will appeal to each master for the event in which he did delight. The one in which we find him at his best. This also has been attempted before but perhaps in a manner too lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular. The aim has been to get in everything. Everything great or small has been narrated and so the real points of value have been lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts. About which no ordinary reader cares or needs to care. After all what we want to know and remember are the great events. The ones which have really changed and influenced humanity. How many of us do really know about them? Or even know what they are? Or one twentieth part of them? And until we know it is not a waste of time to pour over the lesser happenings between. Yet the connection between these events must somehow be shown. They must not stand as separate unrelated fragments. If the story of the world is indeed one it must be shown as one. Not even broken by arbitrary division into countries. Those temporary political constructions. Often separating the single race. Lines of imaginary demarcation varying with the centuries invisible in Earth's yesterday. Sure to change if not to perish in her tomorrow. Moreover such a system of division necessitates endless repetition. Each really important occurrence influences many countries and so is told of again and again with monotonous iteration. An extravagant waste of space. It may however be fairly urged that the story should vary according to the country for which it is designed. To our individual lives the events happening nearest prove most important. Great though others be their influence diminishes with their increasing distance in space and time. For the people of North America the story of the world should have the part taken by America written large across the pages. From all these lines of reasoning arose the present work which the national alumni believe has solved the problem. It tells the story of the world. Tells it in the most famous words of the most famous writers. Makes of it a single continued story giving the results of the most recent research. Yet all dry detail has been deliberately eliminated. The tale runs rapidly and brightly. Whatever else may happen the reader shall not yawn. Only important points are dwelt on and their relative value is made clear. Each volume of the great events opens with a brief survey of the period with which it deals. The broad world movements of the time are pointed out their importance is emphasized their mutual relationship made clear. If the reader finds his interest specially roused in one of these events and he would learn more of it. He is aided by a directing note which in each case tells him where in the body of the volume the subject is further treated. Turning thither he may plunge at once into the fuller account which he desires. I am sure that it will be both vivid and authoritative in short the best known treatment of the subject. Meanwhile the general survey being thus relieved from the necessity of constant explanation, expansion and digression is enabled to flow straight onward with its story rapidly, simply, indeed these opening sketches, written especially for this series, and in a popular style may be read on from volume to volume, forming a book in themselves, presenting a bird's eye view of the whole course of earth, an ideal world history which leaves the details to be filled in by the reader at his pleasure. It is thus we believe, and thus only, that world history can be made plain and popular. The great lessons of history can thus be clearly grasped, and by their light all life takes on a deeper meaning. The body of each volume then, contains the great events of the period, ranged in chronological order. Of each event there are given one, perhaps two, or even three, complete accounts, not chosen half-hazardly, but selected after conference with many scholars. Accounts the most accurate and most celebrated in existence, gathered from all languages and all times, where the event itself is under dispute the editors do not presume to judge for the reader. They present the authorities upon both sides. The Reformation is thus portrayed from the Catholic as well as the Protestant standpoint. The American Revolution is shown in part as England saw it, and in the American Civil War, and the causes which produced it, North and South speak for themselves in the words of their best historians. To each of these accounts is prefixed a brief introduction, prepared for this work by a specialist in the field of history of which it treats. The introduction serves a double purpose. In the first place it explains whatever is necessary for the understanding and appreciation of the story that follows. Unfortunately many a striking bit of historic writing has become antiquated in the present day. Scholars have discovered that it blunders here and there, perhaps as prejudiced, perhaps extravagant. Newer writers therefore base a new book upon the old one, not changing it much, but paraphrasing it into deadly dullness by their efforts after accuracy. Thanks to our introduction we can revive the more spirited account, and while pointing out its value to the reader can warn him of its errors. Thus he secures in briefest form the results of the most recent research. Another purpose of the introduction is to link each event with the preceding ones, in whatever countries it affects. Thus if one chooses he may read by countries after all, and get a complete story of a single nation. That is he may peruse the account of the battle of Hastings and then turn onward to the making of the Domesday book, where he will find a few brief lines to cover the intervening space in England's history. From the struggles of Stefan and Matilda he has led to the quarrel of her son King Henry with Thomas Beckett. And so onward, step by step. Starting with this ground plan of the design in mind, the reader will see that its compilation was a work of enormous labour. This has been undertaken seriously, patiently, and with earnest purpose. The first problem to be confronted was, what were the great events that should be told? Almost every writer and teacher of history, every well-known authority was appealed to. Many lists of events were compiled, revised, collated, and compared. And so at last our final list was evolved, fitted to bear the brunt of every criticism. Then came the heavier problem of what authorities to quote for each event. And here also the editors owe much to the capable aid of many generous, unremunerated advisors. Thus for instance they sought and obtained from the honourable Joseph Chamberlain his advice is to the authorities to be used for the Jameson raid and the Boer War. The account presented may therefore be fairly regarded as England's own authoritative presentment of those events. Several little-known and wholly unused Russian sources were pointed out by Professor Rambo, the French academician. But this is mentioned only to illustrate the impartiality with which the editors have endeavored to cover all fields. If under the plea of expressing gratitude to all those who have lent us courteous assistance, we were to spread across the pages the long roll of their distinguished names, it would sound too much like boasting of their condescension. The work of selecting the accounts has been one of time and careful thought. Many thousands of books have been read and read again. The cardinal points of consideration and the choice have been one, interest, that is vividness of narration. Two, simplicity, for we aim to reach the people, to make a book fit even for a child. Three, the fame of the author, for everyone is pleased to be thus easily introduced to some long herd of celebrity, distantly revered but dreaded, and four, accuracy. A point set last because its defects could be so easily remedied by the specialist's introduction to each event. These considerations have led occasionally to the selection of very ancient documents, the original sources of history themselves, as for instance, Columbus's own story of his voyage, rather than any later account built up on this. Pliny's picture of the destruction of Pompeii, for Pliny was there, and saw the heavens rain down fire, and told of it as no man has done since. So too we give a literal translation of the earliest known code of laws, and to dating those of Moses by more than a thousand years, rather than some modern commentary on them. At other times the same principles have led to the other extreme, and on modern events where there seems no wholly satisfactory or standard accounts, we have had them written for us by the specialists best acquainted with the field. As the work thus grew in hand, it became manifest that it would be in truth far more than a mere story of events, with each event was connected the man who embodied it. Often his life was handled quite as fully as the event, and so we had a biography. Lands had to be described, geography, peoples and customs, sociology, laws and the arguments concerning them, political economy. In short our history proved a universal cyclopedia as well. To give it its full value, therefore, an index became obviously necessary. And no ordinary index. Its aim must be to anticipate every possible question with which a reader might approach the past and direct him to the answer. Even it might be he would want details more elaborate than we give. If so, we must direct him where to find them. Professional index makers were therefore summoned to our help. A complete and readable chronology was appended to each volume, and the final volume of the series was turned over to the indexers entirely. We believe their work will prove not the least valuable feature of the whole. Briefly, the index volume contains 1. A complete list of the great events of the world's history. Opposite each event are given the date, the knee of the author, and standard work from which our account is selected, and a number of references to other works, and to a short discussion of these in our bibliography. Thus the reader may pursue an extended course of study on each particular event. 2. A bibliography of the best general histories of ancient, medieval, and modern times, and of important political, religious, and educational movements. Also a bibliography of the best historical works dealing with each nation and arranged under the following subdivisions. A. The general history of the nation. B. Special periods in its career. C. The descriptions of the people, their civilization, and institutions. On each work, thus mentioned, there is a critical comment with suggestions to readers. This bibliography is designed chiefly for those who desire to pursue more extended courses of reading, and it offers them an experience and guidance of those who have preceded them on their special field. 3. A classified index of famous historic characters. The names are grouped under such headings as rulers, statesmen, patriots, famous women, military and naval commanders, philosophers and teachers, religious leaders, etc. Under each person's name is given a biographical chronology of his career, showing every important event in which he played a part, together with the date of the event and the volume and page of this series where a full account of it may be found. This plan provides a new and very valuable means of reading the biography of any noted personage, one of the great advantages being that the accounts of the various events in his life are not all in the language of the same author, not written by a man anxious to bring out the importance of his special hero. The writers are mainly interested in the event and show the hero only in his true and unexaggerated relation to it. Under each name will also be found references to such further authorities on the biography of the personage, as may be consulted with profit by those students and scholars who wish to pursue an exhaustive study of his career. 4. A biographical index of the authors represented in the series. This consists of brief sketches of the many writers whose work has been drawn upon for the narratives of great events. It is intended for ready reference and gives only the essential facts. This index serves a double purpose. Suppose for instance that a reader is familiar with the name of John Lothrop Motley, but happens not to know whether he is still living, whether he had other occupation than writing or what offices he held. This index will answer these questions. On the other hand, an admirer of Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt may wish to know whether we have taken anything, and if so what, from their writings. This index will answer at once. 5. A general index covering every reference in the series to dates, events, persons, and places of historic importance. These are made easily accessible by a careful and elaborate system of cross references. 6. A separate and complete chronology of each nation, of ancient, medieval, and modern times, with references to the volume and page where each item is treated, either as an entire article or as part of one, so that the history of any one nation may be read in its logical order and in the language of its best historians. Such as the national alumni regarded, are the general character, wide scope, and earnest purpose of the great events by famous historians. Let us end by saying, in the friendly fashion of the old days, bookmakers and their readers were more intimate than now. Kind reader, if this, our performance, doth and ought fall short of promise, blame not our good intent, but our unperfect wit. The National Alumni. End of Section 1. Section 2 of the great events, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 1. Edited by Charles F. Horn, Roseter Johnson, and John Rudd. An outline narrative, tracing briefly the causes, connections, and consequences of the great events. From the beginning to the overthrow of the Persians, Charles F. Horn. History, if we define it as the mere transcription of the written records of former generations, can go no further back than the time such records were first made, no farther than the art of writing. But now that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a storybook, as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day. For unmeasured and immeasurable centuries, man lived on earth, a creature so little removed from the beasts that die, so little superior to them, that he has left no clearer record than they of his presence here. From the dry bones of an extinct mammoth or a plesosaur, Cuvier reconstructed the entire animal and described its habits and its home. So, too, looking on an ancient, strange, scarce human skull, dug from the deeper strata beneath our feet, anatomists tell us that the owner was a man indeed, but one little better than an ape. A few eons later, this creature leaves among his bones chipped flints that narrow to a point, and the archaeologist, taking up the tale, explains that man has become tool-using. He has become intelligent beyond all the other animals of earth. Physically, he is but a mite amid the beast monsters that surround him, but by value of his brain he conquers them. He has begun his career of mastery. If we delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still, he has discovered how to melt the harder and more useful iron. We say roughly, therefore, that man passed through a stone age, a bronze age, and then an iron age. Somewhere, perhaps in the earliest of these, he began to build rude houses. In the next, he drew pictures. During the latest, his pictures grew into an alphabet of signs. His structures developed into vast and enduring piles of brick or stone. Buildings and inscriptions became his relics more like to our own, more fully understandable, giving us a sense of closer kinship with his race. Sources of Early Knowledge There are three different lines along which we have succeeded in securing some knowledge of these, our distant ancestors. Three telephones from the past, over which they send to us confused and feeble murmurings, whose fascination makes only more maddening the vagueness of their speech. First, we have the picture writings, whether of Central America or Egypt or Babylonia or of other lands. These, when translatable, bring us nearest of all to the heart of the great past. It is the mind, the thought, the spoken word of man that is most intimately he, not his face, nor his figure, nor his clothes. Unfortunately, the translations of these writings is no easy task. Those of Central America are still an unsolved riddle. Those of Babylon have been slowly pieced together like a puzzle, a puzzle to which the learned world is given its most able thought, yet they are not fully understood. In Egypt, we have had the luck to stumble on a clue, the Rosetta Stone, which makes the ancient writing fairly clear. Where this mode of communication fails, we turn to another, which carries us even farther into the past. The records which have been less intentionally preserved, not only the buildings themselves but their decorations, the personal ornaments of men, idols, coins, and every imaginable fragment, chance escaped from the maw of time. Has its own story for our reading. In Egypt, we have found deep hidden secret tombs, and intruding on their many centuries of silence have reaped rich harvests of knowledge, from the garnered wealth. In Babylonia, the rank vegetation had covered whole cities, underneath green hillocks, and preserved them till our modern curiosity delved them out. Today, he who wills may walk amid the halls of Sinashereep, may tread the streets when Abraham fled. Aye, he may gaze upon the handiwork of men who lived perhaps as far before Abraham as we ourselves do after him. Nor are our means of penetrating the past even thus exhausted. A third chain, yet more subtle and more marvelous, has been found to link us to an ancestry immeasurably remote. This unbroken chain consists of the words from our own mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke, and they did but follow the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten, but some basal sounds of names, some root thoughts of the heart, have proved as immutable as the superficial elegancies are changeful. Father and mother mean what they have meant for uncounted ages. Comparative philology, the science which compares one language with another to note the points of similarity between them, has discovered that many of these root sounds are alike in almost all the very tongues of Europe. The resemblance is too common to be the result of coincidence. Too deep-seated to be accounted for by mere communication between the nations. We have gotten far beyond the possibility of such explanations, and science says now with positive confidence that there must have been a time when all these nations were but one, that their languages are all but variations of the tongue their distant ancestors once held in common. Study has progressed beyond this point, can tell us far more intricate and fainter facts. It argues that one by one the various tribes left their common home and became completely separated, and that each root sound still used by all the nations represents an idea, an object they already possessed before their dispersal. Thus we can vaguely reconstruct that ancient aboriginal civilization. We can even guess which tribes first broke away and where again these wanderers subdivided and at what stages of progress. Surely a fascinating science this is, and in its infancy. If its leader development shall justify present promise it has still strange tales to tell us in the future. Footnote on the Rosetta Stone. See page one for an engraving and account of this famous stone. It was found over a century ago and its value was instantly recognized, but many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. It contains an inscription repeated in three forms of writing the early Egyptian of the hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian, the Demotic, and Greek. End of footnote. The races of man. Turn now from this tracing of our means of knowledge to speak of the facts they tell us. When our humankind first became clearly visible, they are already divided into races, which for convenience we speak of as white, yellow, and black. Of these the whites had apparently advanced furthest on the road to civilization, and the white race itself had become divided into at least three varieties, so clearly marked as to have persisted through all the modern centuries of communication and intermarriage. Science is not even able to say positively that these varieties or families had a common origin. She inclines to think so, but when all these later ages have failed to obliterate the marks of difference, what far longer period of separation must have been required to establish them. These three clearly outlined families of the whites are the Hamites, of whom the Egyptians are the best known type. The Semites is represented by ancient Babylonians and modern Jews and Arabs, and the great Aryan, or Indo-European family, once called the Japhites, and including Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Slatans, the modern Celtic and Germanic races, and even the Slavs, or Russians. The Egyptians, when we first see them, are already well advanced toward civilization. To say that they were the first people to emerge from barbarism is going much further than we dare. Their records are the most ancient that have come clearly down to us, but there may easily have been other social organisms, other races to whom the chances of time in nature have been less gentle. Cataclysms may have engulfed more than one Atlantis, and few climates are so fitted for their preservation of man's buildings as is the rainless valley of the Nile. Moreover, the Egyptians may not have been the earliest inhabitants, even of their own rich valley. We find hints that they were wanderers, invaders coming from the east, and that with the land they appropriated, also the ideas, the inventions of an earlier Negroid race. But whatever they took, they added too. They improved on. The idea of futurity of man's existence beyond the grave became prominent among them, and in the absence of clearer knowledge we may well take this idea as the groundwork, the starting point of all man's later and more striking progress. Since the Egyptians believed in a future life, they strove to preserve the body for it, and built ever stronger and more gigantic tombs. They strove to fit the mind for it, and cultivated virtues, not wholly animal, such as physical strength, nor wholly commercial, such as cunning. They even carved around the subculture of the departed a record of his doings, lest they and perhaps he too in that next life forget. There were elements of intellectual growth in all of this, conditions to stimulate the mind beyond the body, and the Egyptians did develop. If one reads the tales, the romances that have survived from their remoter periods, he finds few emotions higher than childish curiosity or mere animal rage and fear. Amid their latest stories, on the contrary, we encounter touches of sentiment, of pity, of self-sacrifice, such as would even now be not unworthy of praise. But alas, the improvement seems most marked where it was most distant. Perhaps the material prosperity of the land was too great, the conditions of life too easy, there was no stimulus to effort, to endeavor. By about the year 2200 BC, we find Egypt fallen into the grip of a cold and lifeless formalism. Everything was fixed by law. Even pictures must be drawn in a certain way. Thoughts must be expressed by stated and unvariable symbols. Advance became well-nigh impossible. Everything lay in the hands of a priestly caste. The completeness of whose dominion has perhaps never been matched in history. The leaders lived lives of luxurious pleasure enlightened by scientific study, but the people scarce existed except as automatons. The race was dead. Its true life, the vigor of its masses, was exhausted, and the land soon fell in easy prey to every spirited invader. Meanwhile, a rougher, stronger civilization was growing in the river valleys eastward from the Nile. The Semitic tribes, who seem to have had their early seat in the center of dispersion somewhere in this region, were coalescing into nations. Babylonians along the lower Tigris and Euphrates, Assyrians later along the upper rivers, Hebrews under David and Solomon by the Jordan, Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast, the early Babylonian civilization may antedate even the Egyptian, but its monuments were less permanent, its rulers less anxious for the future. The appeal to posterity, the desire for a posthumous fame, seems with them to have been slower of conception. True, the first Babylonian monarchs of whom we have any record in an era perhaps of 5000 years before Christianity stamped the royal signet on every brick of their walls and temples. But common sense suggests that this was less to preserve their fame than to preserve their bricks. Theft is no modern innovation. They were a mathematical race, these Babylonians. In fact, Semite and mathematician are names that have been closely allied through all the course of history, and one cannot help but wish our Arian race had somewhere lived through an experience which would produce in them the exactitude in balance and measurements of facts that has distinguished the Arabs and the Jews. The Babylonians founded astronomy and chronology. They recorded the movement of the stars and divided their year according to the sun and moon. They built a vast and intricate network of canals to fertilize their land, and they arranged the earliest system of legal government, the earliest code of laws that has come down to us. The sciences then arise more truly here than with the Egyptians. Man here began to take notice, to record and to classify the facts of nature. We may count this the second visible step in his great progress. Never again shall we find him in a childish attitude of idle wonder. Always is his brain alert, striving to understand, self-conscious of its own power over nature. It may have been wealth and luxury that enfeebled the Babylonians as it did the Egyptians. At any rate, their empire was overturned by a border colony of their own, the Assyrians, a rough and hardy folk who had maintained themselves for centuries battling against tribes from the surrounding mountains. It was like a return to barbarism when about B.C. 880, the Assyrians swept over the various semi-lands. Loud were the laments of the Hebrews, terrible the tales of cruelty, deep the scorn with which the Babylonians visited to the rude conquerors. We approach here a clearer historic period. We can trace with plainness the devastating track of war. We can read the boastful triumph of the Assyrian chiefs. We can watch them step by step as they adopt the culture and the vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and more enfeebled, who are overthrown by a new and hardier race, the Persians, and Aryan folk. Before turning to this last and most prominent family of humankind, let us look for a moment at the other, darker races, seen vaguely as they come in contact with the Whites. The Negroes set sharply by themselves in Africa. Never seemed to have created a progressive civilization of their own. Never seemed to have advanced further than we find the wild tribes in the interior of the country today. But the yellow, or Turanian races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, did not linger so helplessly behind. The Chinese at least established a social world of their own, widely different from that of the Whites. In some respects, perhaps superior to it. But the fatal weakness of the yellow civilization was that it was not ennobling, like the Egyptian, not scientific, like the Babylonian, not adventurous and progressive, as we shall find the Aryan. This, of course, is speaking in general terms. Something somewhat ennobling there may be in the contemplations of Confucius, but we will probably compare the Chinese character today with the European, whether we regard either intensity of feeling or variety, range, subtlety, and beauty of emotion. So also the Chinese made scientific discoveries, but knew not how to apply them or improve them. So also they made conquests and abandoned them, toiled, and sank back into inertia. The Japanese present a separate problem, as yet little understood in its earlier stages. As to the Tartars, wild and hardy horsemen roaming over northern Asia, they kept for ages their independent animal strength and fierceness. They appear and disappear like flashes. They seem to seek no civilization of their own. They threaten, again and again, to destroy that of all the other races of the globe. Fitly indeed was their leader, Attila, once termed the Scourge of God. The Aryans of our own progressive Aryan race, we have no monuments nor inscriptions so old as those of the Hamites and the Semites. What comparative philology tells is this. In early, if not the original home of the Aryans was in Asia, to the eastward of the Semites, probably the mountain district back of modern Persia, that is they were not, like the other whites, a people of the marshlands and river valleys. They lived in a higher, hardier and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it was here that their minds took a freer bent. Their spirits caught a bolder tone. Wherever they moved they came as conquerors among other races. In their primeval home and probably before the year B.C. 3000 they had already acquired a fair degree of civilization. They built houses, plowed the land and ground grain into flour for their baking. The family relations were established among them. They had social organization and simple form of government. They had learned to worship a God and to see in him a counterpart of their tribal ruler. From their upland farms they must have looked eastward upon yet higher mountains, rising and penetrable above the snowline. But to north and south and west they might turn to lower regions and by degrees perhaps as they grew too numerous for comfort a few families wandered off along the more inviting routes. Whichever way they started their spirit led them on. We find no trace of a single case where hearts failed or strength grew weary and the movement became retrograde back toward the ancient home. Spreading out radiating in all directions it is they who have explored the earth who have measured it and marked its bounds and penetrated almost to its every corner. It is they who still pant to complete the work so long ago begun. Before BC 2000 one of these exuded swarms had penetrated India probably by way of the Indus river. In the course of a thousand years or so the intruders expanded and fought their way slowly from the Indus to the Ganges. The earlier and duskier inhabitants gave way before them or became incorporated in the strong race. A mighty Aryan or Hindu Empire was formed in India and endured there until well within historic times. Yet its power faded. Life in the hot and languid tropics tends to weaken not invigorate the signuse of a race. Then too a formal religion a system of castes arbitrary as among the Egyptians laid its paralyzing grip upon the land. About BC 600 Buddhism a new and beautiful religion sought to revive the despairing people but they were beyond its help. Their slothful anger had become too deep from having been perhaps the first and foremost and most civilized of the Aryan tribes in the Indus sank to be degenerate members of the race. We shall turn to look on them again in a later period but they will be seen in no favorable light. Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear to the north and west. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an Aryan race much altered from long dwelling among the yellow peoples. One tribe the Persians moved directly west and became neighbors of the already noted Semitic group. After long wars backward and forward bringing us well within the range of history the Persians proved too powerful for the whole Semite group. They helped destroy Assyria. They overthrew the second Babylonian empire which Nubukh Agnetzer had built up and then pressing on to the conquest of Egypt they swept the Hamites too from their place of sovereignty. How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on each new savage horde of invaders from the hardy north? It is not done in a generation not in a century perhaps but drop by drop the vigorous, tingling arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose pleasure of the South land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors. As we watch the Persians we see their kings go mad or become effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them. We see the whole race visibly degenerate until one questions Marathon were after all so marvelous victory and suspects that at whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe they would have been easily hurled back. It was in Europe only that the Arrian wanderers found a temperate climate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recent speculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home from which they had strayed toward Asia and to which they now returned. Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop. Earliest of these Arrian waves to take possession of their modern heritage were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the European continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came the Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a single migration that spread westward along the islands and peninsulas of the Mediterranean. The Tutans may have left Asia before BC 1000, for they seem to have reached their German forests by three centuries beyond that time, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. The latest Arrian wave, that of the Slavs, came well within historic times. We almost fancy we can see its movement. Russian statesmen, indeed have hopes that this is not yet completed. They dream that they, the youngest of the peoples are yet to dominate the whole. The Greeks and Latins. Of these European Arrians the only branches that come within the limits of our present period that become noteworthy before BC 480 are the Greeks and Latins. Their languages tell us that they formed but a single tribe long after they became separated from the other peoples of their race. Finally however the Latins, journeying onward, lost sight of their friends, and it must have taken many centuries of separation for the two tongues to grow so different as they were when Greeks and Romans each risen to a mighty nation met again. The Greeks, or Hellenies as they call themselves seems to have been only one of a number of kindred tribes who occupied not only the shores of the Aegean but Thrace, Macedonia a considerable part of Asia Minor and other neighboring regions. The Greeks developed an intellect more rapidly than their neighbors. Outdistance them in the race for civilization forgot these poor relations and grouped them with the rest of outside mankind under the scornful name Barbarians. Why it was that the Greeks were thus especially stimulated beyond their brethren, we do not know. It has long been one of the common places of history to declare them the result of their environment. It is pointed out that in Greece they lived amid precipitous mountains where as hunters they became strong and adventuresome, independent and self-reliant. A sea of islands lay all around and while an open ocean might only have awed and intimidated them their ever-loring prospect beyond shore rising in turn on the horizon made them sailors made them friendly traffickers among themselves always meeting new faces driving new bargains they became alert, quick-witted progressive the foremost race of all the ancient world. They do not seem to have been a creative folk. They only adapted and carried point what they learned from the older nations with whom they now came in contact. Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet and they began the writing of books. Egypt showed them her records and improving on her idea they became historians. So far as we know the earliest real histories were written in Greece that is the earliest accounts of a whole people an entire series of events as opposed to the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments the personal boastful clamor of some king. Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks had long been civilized, their own legends scarce reach back farther than the first founding of Athens which they place about BC 1500 yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the scenes of a civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries. But we grope in darkness the most ancient Greek book that has come down to us is the Iliad with its tale of the great war against Troy. Critics will not permit us to call the Iliad a history because it was not composed or at least not written down until some centuries after the events of which it tells. Moreover it poetizes its theme doubtless enlarges its pictures brings gods and goddesses before our eyes instead of severally excluding everything except what the blind bard Prachans could personally vouch for still both the Iliad and the Odyssey are good enough history for most of us in that they give a full outline of Grecian life and society as Homer knew it. We see the little petty states with their chiefs all powerful and the people quite ignored. We see the heroes driving to battle in their chariots guarded by shield and helmet flourishing sword and spear. We learn what Ulysses did not know of foreign lands. We hear Achilles famed lament amid the dead and note the vague glimmering idea of a future life which the Greeks had caught perhaps the Egyptians perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams. With the year B.C. 776 we come in contact with a clear-market chronology. The Greeks themselves reckoned from that date by means of Olympiads or intervals between the Olympic Games. The story becomes clear the autocratic little city kings governing almost as they pleased have everywhere been displaced by oligarchies. The few leading nobles may name one of themselves to bear rule, but the real power lies divided among the class. Then with the growing prominence of the Pythian Games we come upon a new stage of national development. The various cities began to form alliances to recognize the fact that they may be safer and happier by a larger national life. The sense of brotherhood begins to extend beyond the circle of personal acquaintance. This period was one of lawmaking of experimenting. The traditions, the simple customs of the old kingly days were no longer sufficient for the guidance of the larger cities. The more complicated circles of society which were growing up. It was no longer possible for a man who did not like his tribe to abandon it and wander elsewhere with his family and herds. The land was too fully peopled for that. The dissatisfied could only endure and grumble and rebel. One system of law after another was tried and thrown aside. The class on whom in practice a rule bore most hard to refuse no longer assent to it. There were uprisings, tumults, bloody frays. Sparta at this time, the most prominent of the Greek cities evolved a code which made her in some ways the wonder of ancient days. The state was made all powerful. It took entire possession of the citizen with the purpose of making him a fighter, a strong defender of himself and of his country. His home life was almost obliterated or if you like the whole city made one huge family. All men, eight in common youth was severely restrained. Its training was all for physical hardyhood. Modern socialism communism have seldom ventured further in theory than the Spartans went in practice. The result seems to have been the production of a race possessed of tremendous bodily power and courage but of stunted intellectual growth. The great individual minds of Greece the thinkers, the creators did not come from Sparta. In Athens a different regime was meanwhile developing Hellenus of another type a realization of how superior the Greeks were to earlier races of what vast strides man was making in intelligence and social organization can in no way be better gained than by comparing the law of the Babylonian Hammurabi with that of Solon in Athens. A period of perhaps 1600 years separates the two but the difference in their mental power is wider still. While the Greeks were thus forging rapidly ahead of ancient kindred the Latins were also progressing though at a rate less dazzling. The true date of Rome's founding we do not know her legends give BC 753 but recent excavations of the Palatine hill show that it was already fortified at a much earlier period. Rome we believe was originally a frontier fortress erected by the Latins to protect them from the attacks of the non-Aryan races among whom they had intruded. This stronghold became ever more numerously peopled until it grew into an individual state separate from the other Latin cities. The Romans passed through the vicissitudes which we have already noted in Greece as characteristic of the Aryan development. The early war leader became an absolute king. His power tended to become hereditary but its abuse roused the more powerful citizens to rebellion and the kingdom vanished in an oligarchy. This last change occurred in Rome about BC 510 and it was attended by such disasters that the city sank back into a condition that was almost barbarous when compared with her opulence under the Tarkin kings. It was soon after this that the Persians ignorant of their own decadence and dreaming still of a world power resolved to conquer the remaining little states lying scarce known along the boundaries of their empire. They attacked the Greeks and at Marathon BC 490 and Salamis BC 480 were hurled back and their power broken. This was a world event one of the great turning points a decision that could not have been otherwise if man was really to progress. The degenerate and feebled half semitized Aryans of Asia were not permitted to crush the higher type which was developing in Europe. The more vigorous bodies and far abler brains of the Greeks enabled them to triumph over all the hordes of their opponents. The few conquered the many and the following era became one of European progress not of Asiatic stagnation. End of section 2 Section 3 of the great events Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording The LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Great Events by Famous Historians Volume 1 Edited by Charles F. Horn Roseto Johnson and John Rudd Dawn of Civilization BC 5867 Gaston Camille Shaw's Mass Perot It is a far cry to hark back to 11,000 years before Christ. Yet, borings in the valley of the Nile, whence comes the first recorded history of the human race, have unveiled to the light, pottery and other relics of civilization that at the rate of deposits of the Nile must have taken at least that number of years to cover. Nature takes countless thousands of years to form and build up her limestone hills. But buried deep in these we find evidences of stone age, wherein man devised and made himself edged tools and weapons of rudely chipped stone. These shaped, edged implements we have learned were made by white-heating a suitable flint or stone and tracing thereon with cold water the pattern desired, just as practiced by the Indians of the American continent and in our day by the masters of ancient arrows, spear and axe heads. This shows a civilization that has learned the method of artificially producing fire and its uses. Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monumental people of history. The first human monarch to reign over all Egypt was Menes, the founder of Memphis. As the gate of Africa, Egypt had always held an important position in world politics. Its ancient wealth and power were enormous. Inclusive of the Sudan its population is now more than 8 millions. Its present importance is indicated by its relations to England. Historians vary in their compilations of Egyptian chronology. The epic of Menes is fixed by Bunsen at BC-3643, Bilepseus at BC-3892 and Bipool at BC-2717. Before Menes Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms. It has always been a country of mysteries with the mighty Nile and its inundations so little understood by the ancients. Its camels and caravans its tombs and temples its obelisks and pyramids its groups of gods Rah Osiris Isis Epis Horus, Hathor The very names breathe suggestions of mystery cruelty pump and power. In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style being without lofty ideas or charms. In art however Egypt may be placed next to Greece particularly in architecture. The age of the pyramid builders was a brilliant one they proved the magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at their disposal. The regal power at the time was very strong. The reign of Khufu or chaos is marked by the building of the great pyramid. The pyramids were the tombs of kings built in the necropolis of Memphis ten miles above the modern Cairo. Security was the object of Egypt's splendor. As remarked by a great Egyptologist the whole life of the Egyptian was spent in the contemplation of death. Thus the tomb became the concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long as his body remained intact so was his immortality. Whence arose the embalming of the great and hence the immense to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch. The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite Egypt under the rule of one man. We can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief focus in the north from which civilization radiated over the wet plain and the marshes of the delta. Its colleges of priests had collected condensed and arranged the principal myths of the local regions. The Eniad to which it gave conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had. If its princes had not exercised for at least some period an actual suzerainty over the neighboring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the kingdom of lower Egypt was organized. Everything there bore traces of Heliopolitan theories the protocol of the kings their supposed descent from Ra and the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. The delta owing to its compact and restricted area was aptly suited for government from one center. The Nile valley proper narrow, torturous and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river did not lend itself to so complete a unity. It too represented a single kingdom having the reed and the lotus for its emblems. But its component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less systematized and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political and sacri-dotal center. Hermopolis contained schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the development of myths and dogmas but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt. In the south Seod disputed their supremacy and Heracliopolis stopped their road to the north. These three cities thwarted and neutralized one another and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a lasting authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government which gave to it a particular character and stamped it as it were with a distinct personality down to its latest days. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more powerful, richer better populated and it was governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. It is to one of the latter Mene or Manis of Finis that tradition ascribes the honor of having fused the two egypts into a single empire and of having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. Finis, figured in the historic period is one of the least of egyptian cities. It barely maintained an existence on the left bank of the Nile if not on the exact spot now occupied by Girga at least only a short distance from it. The principality of the Osirian reliquary of which it was the Metropolis occupied the valley from one mountain to the other and gradually extended across the desert as far as the great Theban Oasis. Its inhabitants worshiped a sky god Anhuri or rather two twin gods Anhuri Shu who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and became a war-like personification of Ra Anhuri Shu like all other solar manifestations came to be associated with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness a Sokit who took for the occasion the epithet of Nihit the northern one Some of the dead from this city are buried on the other side of the Nile near the modern village of Meshik at the foot of the Arabian chain whose deep cliffs here approach somewhat near the river The principal necropolis was at some distance to the east near the sacred town of Abidos It would appear that at the outset Abidos was the capital of the country for the entire gnome wore the same name as the city and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed In very early times Abidos fell into decay and resigned its political rank to Theanis but its religious importance remained unimpaired The city occupied a long and narrow strip between the canal and the most slopes of the Libyan mountains A brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls Here Anhuri having passed from life to death was worshipped under the name of Khon Tamanthit the chief of that western region with her soul's repair on quitting this earth and lending of doctrines or by what political combinations this sun of the night came to be identified with Osiris of Mendes since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity It had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books were compiled Osiris Khon Tamanthit grew rapidly in popular favor and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims The great oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise wither the dead went in search of peace and happiness It was called Uit the Sepulcher This name came to it after it became an actual Egyptian province and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people so that the cleft the gorge and the mountain through which the doubles journey toward it never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world at the time of the New Year festivals spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley they there awaited the coming of the dying sun in order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of Khon Tamanthit Abidos even before the historic period was the only town and its god the only god whose worship practiced by all Egyptians inspired them all with an equal devotion did this sort of moral conquest give rise later on to a belief in a material conquest by the princes of Tinas and Abidos or is there a historical foundation for the tradition which ascribes to them the establishment of a single monarchy it is the thinite menis whom the Taban analysts point out as the ancestor of the glorious pharaohs of the 17th dynasty it is he also who is inscribed in the memphite chronicles followed by Maneto at the head of their lists of human kings and all Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal ruler it is true that a chief of Tinas may well have born and it may have accomplished feats which rendered him famous but on closer examination his pretensions to reality disappear and his personality is reduced to a cipher this menis according to the priests surrounded memphis with dykes for the river formally followed the sand hills for some distance on the Libyan side menis having dammed up the reach 100 stadia to the south of memphis caused the old bed to dry up and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges then menis the first who was king having enclosed a space of ground with dykes founded the town which is still called memphis he then made a lake around it to the north and west fed by the river surrounded on the east by the Nile the history of memphis such as it can be gathered from the monuments differs considerably from the tradition current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus it appears indeed that at the outset the site on which it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress Anbu Hazu the white wall which was dependent on Heliopolis and in which Ftah possessed a sanctuary after the white wall was separated from the heliopolitan principality to form a gnome by itself it assumed a certain importance and furnished, so it was said the dynasties which succeeded the thinnite its prosperity dates only however from the time when the sovereigns of the fifth and sixth dynasties fixed on it for their residence one of them Papi the first there founded for himself and for his double after him a new town which he called Minofiru from his tomb Minofiru which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of memphis probably signified the good refuge the haven of the good the burying place where the blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris the people soon forgot the true interpretation or probably it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales they rather despised as a rule to discover in the beginnings of history individuals for whom the countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names if no tradition supplied them with us to experience any scruples in inventing one the Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them attributed the patron ship of their city to a princess memphis a daughter of its founder the fabulous Okorius those of preceding ages before the name had become altered thought to find in minifuru mininofer the reputed founder of the capital of the delta minis the good divested of his epithet is none other than minis the first king of all Egypt and he owes his existence to a popular attempt at etymology the legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of the city must have originated at a time when memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government the latest about the end of the memphite period it must have been an old tradition at the time of the thaban dynasties since they admitted unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country when the hero was once created and firmly established in his position there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him as a paragon and an ideal sovereign he was represented in turn as architect, warrior and statesman he had founded memphis he had begun the temple of tha written laws and regulated the worship of the gods particularly that of the hapies and he had conducted expeditions against the libians when he lost his only son in the flower of his age the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him the maneros both the words and the tune of which were handed down from generation to generation he did not or over disdain the luxuries of the table for he invented the art of serving a dinner and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture one day while hunting his dogs excited by something or other fell upon him to devour him he escaped with difficulty and pursued by them fled to the shore of lake morris and was there brought to bay he was on the point of succumbing to them when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across the other side in gratitude he built a new town which he called crocodileopolis and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him then he erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb other traditions show him in a less favorable light they accuse him of having by horrible crimes excited against him the anger of the gods and alleged that after a reign of 62 years he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile they also relate that the sati of tafnakti returning from an expedition against the Arabs during which he had been obliged to renounce the pump and luxuries of life had solemnly cursed him and had caused his implications to be inscribed upon a steel set up in the temple of Amos atibes footnote the burned tile showing the impression of the stylus made on the clay while plastic editor and a footnote nevertheless in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first pharaoh the good outweighed the evil he was worshipped in Memphis side by side with ta and ramsies the second his name figured at the head of the royal lists and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies his immediate successors have only a semblance of reality such as he had the lists give the order of succession it is true with the years of the reigns almost to a day sometimes the length of their lives but we may well ask whence the chroniclers procured so much precise information they were in the same position as ourselves with regard to these ancient kings and to them by a tradition of a later age by a fragment peperous fortuitously preserved in a temple by accidentally coming across some monument bearing their name and were reduced as it were to put together the few facts which they possessed or to supply such as were wanting by conjectures often in a very improbable manner it is quite possible that they were unable to gather from the memory of the past the names of those individuals of which they made up the first two dynasties the forms of these names are curt and rugged and indicative of a rude and savage state harmonizing with the semi-barbaric period to which they are relegated atti the wrestler teti the runner crinconi the crusher are suitable rulers for a people the first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle and to strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight the inscriptions supply us with proofs that some of these princes lived and reigned Sondi whose class in the second dynasty received a continuous worship toward the end of the third dynasty but that all those who preceded him and those who follow him exist as he did and if they existed do the order in relation agree with the actual truth the different lists do not contain the same names in the same position certain pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason where Maneto inscribes Kenkenes or Oenophies the table of the time of Seti the first give us atti and atah Maneto reckons nine kings to the second dynasty while they register only five the monuments indeed show us that Egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her analysts were unable to classify for instance they associated with Sondi a piercing who is not mentioned in the annals we must therefore take the record of all this opening period of history for what it is namely the system invented at a much later date by means of various artifices and combinations to be partially accepted in default of a better but without according to it that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received the two Thynite dynasties in direct descent from the fabulous Menes furnish like this hero himself only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history a double-headed stork which had appeared in the first year of teti, son of Menes had foreshadowed to Egypt a long prosperity but a famine under Oenophies and a terrible plague on her semenpses had depopulated the country the laws had been relaxed great crimes had been committed and revolts had broken out during the reign of the Bothos a gulf had opened near Bubastis and swallowed up many people then the Nile had flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of Nefer Cherries and Cessochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature a few details about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodigies teti had laid the foundation of the great palace of Memphis Oenophies had built the pyramids of Kokomi near Sakara several of the ancient pharaohs had published books on theology or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine several had made laws called Kako the male of males or the bull of bulls they explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about the sacred animals he had proclaimed as gods Hapis of Memphis Meneves of Heliopolis and the goat of Mendes for him, Binothris had conferred the right of succession upon all women of the blood royal the accession of the third dynasty a memphite one according to Meneto did not at first change the miraculous character of this history the Libyans had revolted against Nekarophies and the two armies were encamped before each other when one night the disc of the moon became immeasurably enlarged to the great alarm of the rebels who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven and yielded without fighting Tosothros the successor of Nekarophies brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone cutting to perfection he composed as Tety did Books of Medicine a fact which caused him to be identified with the healing god Imhotpu the priests related these things seriously and the Greek writers took them down from their lips with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the wise men of Egypt what they related to the human kings was not more detailed as we see than their accounts of the gods whether the legends dealt with deities or kings all that we know took its origin not in popular imagination but in sacrodotal dogma they were invented long after the times they dealt with in the recesses of the temples with an intention and a method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances of the monuments toward the middle of the third century before our era the Greek troops stationed on the southern frontier in the forts at the first cataract developed a particular veneration for Isis Aphile their devotion spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them then to the whole population of the Thebade and finally reached the court of the Macedonian kings the latter carried away by force of example gave every encouragement to a movement which attracted worshipers to a common sanctuary and united in one cult of Isis over which they ruled they pulled down the meager building of the Sate Period which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of Isis constructed at great cost the temple which still remains almost intact and designed to it considerable possessions in Nubia which in addition to gifts for private individuals made the goddess the richest landowner in southern Egypt Kanumu and his two wives Anukit and Satid who before Isis had been the undisputed susurans of the cataract perceived with jealousy their neighbors' prosperity the civil wars and invasions of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their temples and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the newcomer the priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before King Ptolemy to represent to him the services which they had rendered and still continued to render to Egypt and above all to remind him of the generosity of the ancient pharaohs whose example owing to the poverty of the times the recent pharaohs had been unable to follow doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support their pretensions they therefore inscribed upon a rock in the island of Sehal a long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the third dynasty this sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for greatness as early as the twelfth dynasty Usutas in the third had claimed him as his father his ancestor and had erected a statue to him the priests knew that by invoking him they had a chance of obtaining a hearing the inscription which they fabricated set forth that in the eighteenth year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madeir Lord of Elephantine a message couched in these terms quote I am overcome with sorrow from the throne and for those who reside in the palace and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in my time for the space of eight years corn is scarce there is a lack of herbage and nothing is left to eat when anyone calls upon his neighbors for help they take pains not to go the child weeps the young man is uneasy the hearts of the old men are in despair their limbs are bent they crouch on the earth they fold their hands the courtiers have no further resources the shops formally furnished with rich wares are now filled only with air all that was within them has disappeared my spirit also mindful of the beginning of things seeks to call upon the Saviour who was here where I am during the centuries of the gods upon Thot Ibis that great wise one upon Imhotpu son of Thot of Memphis where is this place in which the Nile is born who is the god or goddess is concealed there what is his likeness unquote the Lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person he described to the king who was evidently ignorant of it the situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract the phenomenon of the inundation the gods who presided over it and who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous plight so Siri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the prescribed sacrifices the god arose opened his eyes panted and cried aloud I am Kanumu who created thee and promised him a speedy return of a high Nile and the cessation of the famine Pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown him he forthwith made a decree by which he seated to the temple all his rites of Suzerainty over the neighboring gnomes within a radius of 20 miles hence forward the entire population tillers and vine dressers fishermen and hunters had to yield the tithe of their income to the priests the quarries could not be worked without the consent of Kanumu and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers finally metals and precious woods shipped thence for Egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple did the Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce from this romantic tale and did the god regain possession of the domains and do's which they had declared had been his rite the steel shows us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents when the exigencies of daily life forced the necessity upon them it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers every prodigy every fact related by Minato was taken from some document analogous to the supposed inscription of Zosiri the real history of the early centuries therefore eludes our researchers and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom under the rule of one man many names apparently of powerful and illustrious princes had survived in the memory of the people these were collected classified and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties but the people were ignorant the exact facts connected with the names and the historians on their own account were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives the monuments of these remote ages however cannot have entirely disappeared they existed in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick and chance excavations will someday most certainly bring them to light the few which we do possess barely go back beyond the third dynasty namely the hypogeum of Shiri priest of Sondi and Piersonu possibly the tomb of Kuitaptu at Sakara the great Sphinx of Giza a short inscription on the rocks of Wedi Magara which represents Zosiri the same king of whom the priest of Kanumu in the Greek period made a precedent working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai and finally the steppe pyramid where there's pharaoh rests it forms a rectangular mass incorrectly oriented with a variation from the true north of 4 degrees 35 minutes 393 feet 8 inches long from east to west and 352 feet deep with a height of 159 feet 9 inches it is composed of 6 cubes with sloping sides being about 13 feet less in width than the one below it that nearest to the ground measures 37 feet 8 inches in height and the uppermost one 29 feet 2 inches it was entirely constructed of limestone from neighboring mountains the blocks are small and badly cut the stone courses being concave to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake when breaches in the masonry are examined it can be seen that the external surface of the steppes has as it were a double stone facing each facing being carefully dressed the body of the pyramid is solid the chambers being cut in the rock beneath these chambers have often been enlarged, restored and reworked in the course of centuries and the passages which connect them are a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide the columned porch the galleries and halls all lead to a sort of enormous shaft at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding place destined, no doubt to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture until the beginning of the century the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed pottery three quarters of the wall surface was covered with green tiles oblong and lightly convex on the outer side but flat on the inner a square projection pierced with a hole served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the farrow the hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green or yellow on a fawn colored ground the towns, palaces, temples all the buildings which princes and kings had constructed to be witnesses of their power or piety to future generations have disappeared in the course of ages under the feet and before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts the pyramid alone has survived and the most ancient of the historic monuments of Egypt is a tomb End of section 3