time of its greatness had any important foreign relations. Africa had no great civilization but the Egyptian; and the Euphrates region was shut off from India and China by vast deserts and lofty mountains. Thus this Syrian district, intermediate between the Asiatic and the African states, became their battle ground and trade exchange. At times, too, it comes into prominence itself as an independent, third center of civilization.

A more detailed survey of Egyptian boundaries will make clearer the significance of this intermediate land. To the west of the Nile state lay Libya, stretching across the continent,an immense but inhospitable tract. The portion bordering Egypt was particularly barren, forming a wide abatis against attack by the scattered tribes of the desert. To the south, at a distance, was a more powerful neighbor. Ethiopia, including Nubia and fertile Abyssinia, exceeded Egypt in size, and its brave and warlike people possessed some civilization, probably drawn from Egypt. However, a desert, extremely difficult for an army to traverse, extended a twelve-day march between the two states, and communication by the river was absolutely shut off by long series of rocky gorges above the cataracts of Egypt; so that, in the days of her power, Egypt had little to fear from the . less advanced country. On the other sides, the line of defense formed by the Mediterranean and the broad moat of the Red Sea was broken only at the extreme north by the isthmus.

Thus, with sides and rear protected, Egypt faced Asia across this narrow bridge. Here, too, the immediate district was largely desert; but, after all, Arabia numbered a large population of nomad tribes, always harassing the Egyptian frontier, and sometimes constituting a formidable danger; while directly north of the isthmus the narrow strip of habitable land between the desert and the sea was a nursery of warlike peoples. Here dwelt the Phoenicians, Philistines, Canaanites, Hebrews, and Hittites. Usually they were all tributary to Egypt or Chaldea, from whom, too, their civilization was derived; but at times, when both these powers were weak, there

arose independent Syrian kingdoms, like that of the Jews under David and Solomon. Indeed, this district might have escaped the fatal consequences of its position on the road from Africa to Asia if its peoples could have united against their common foes; but ranges of mountains and rivers broke it into five or six unequal states, all small and mutually hostile. Two of them - those of the Jews and the Phoenicians - will have special notice in Chapter IV.

13. The Periods. In each of the two greater centers there is a long period of development in isolation. Then, with extension of power, comes a period of intercourse, hostile or friendly, through the intermediate region. Finally follows a period of union at first by the dominance of one or the other, and then by the subjection of all this Eastern world to the new power of Persia. This Persian Empire almost at once comes in conflict with the Greeks, and so introduces us to European history.

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT.

I. GEOGRAPHY.

Egypt as a geographical expression is two things- the Desert and the Nile. As a habitable country, it is only one thing the Nile.

14. Territory. The Egypt of a map includes about as much land as Colorado or Italy; but seven eighths of it is only a wide sandy border to the real Egypt. This latter is the valley and delta of the Nile- from the cataracts to the sea. It is smaller than Maryland, and falls into two natural parts. Upper Egypt is the valley proper; it is a strip of vegetable mold about six hundred miles long and usually about ten miles wide a slim oasis between parallel lines of rugged, desolate hills. Then, for the remaining hundred miles, the valley broadens suddenly into the delta; this Lower Egypt is a squat triangle of rich, level plain resting on a three-hundredmile base of curving coast, where shifting, marshy lakes meet the sea.

15. The Significance of the Nile. Rain rarely falls anywhere in the country a heavy shower not oftener than once in ten or fifteen years. Egypt, therefore, as the Greeks said, is "the gift of the Nile." Except for that river, Upper Egypt would be part of the Sahara, and Lower Egypt would have remained a sandy bottom beneath the Mediterranean

waves.

And what the river has made, it sustains. Toward the close of the eight cloudless months before the annual overflow, there is a brief period when the land seems gasping for

The rise

moisture, "only half alive, waiting the new Nile." and the withdrawal of the inundation are gradual, lasting from July to November; but during the days while the flood is at its height, Egypt is a sheet of turbid water, between two lines of rock and sand, marked off into compartments by the

in making Egypt. In prehistoric times, the inhabitants had learned to control and distribute the overflow, by a complicated network of dikes, reservoirs, and canals. This system was so complete that under the ancient monarchy the peasantry

cultivated more soil and produced more wealth than in modern times, until English control was recently established.

16. Political Geography; Growth of a Kingdom. - Civilization in Egypt appears well advanced with its first records, about 4500 or 5000 B.C. We cannot know how many thousands of years it had taken for this culture to develop from the savagery of the surrounding tribes. Certainly the earliest dwellers in the valley were in a most primitive stage, using the rudest of stone implements and practicing savage and barbarous customs. Gradually centers of culture appearedperhaps as a result of conquest from Asia-and contending principalities arose. These were united by centuries of conflict into the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. The former principalities remained, however, as "nomes," or administrative units. The more important nomes seem to have been ruled by hereditary princes under the supreme monarch; and, throughout Egyptian history, at intervals rival. cities renewed their struggle for headship.

The Nile, which had made physical Egypt, played its part, too, in making political Egypt. The regulation of the annual inundation must have been the earliest common interest of the people. No doubt neighboring villages waged countless bloody, semi-aquatic wars before they learned the costly lesson of coöperation; but the waste and the danger from separate or hostile action must have helped, from early periods, to force home the need of concert and union.

II. POLITICAL HISTORY.1

17. The Memphite Period. The later Egyptians classified their native kings into some thirty "dynasties." These may be grouped further into four periods, according to the location of the center of power, - Memphite, Theban, Saïte, and Alex

1 The following three-page skeleton of forty-five hundred years of history is designed for reading and reference, not for close study.