the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was erected, and for another two thousand years the ancient Egyptians made their contributions to art, science, literature, and religion.

These ancient Egyptians, a dark-haired and slender people of uncertain racial connections, spoke a language allied to the Semitic and for a long period lived a life somewhat separated from that of their neighbors, developing a civilization highly individual and complex. They were not warlike, nor were they as a whole keenly intellectual; yet their contributions to life and thought were really extraordinary. To establish this fact we need but to recall their pioneer achievements in art, science, and religion. Their moral ideas and their conceptions of life after death deeply influenced other peoples.

Picture-writing, which we term hieroglyphics, was employed by the Egyptians very early, and also an abridged and more flowing form known as hieratic. A still further development, known as demotic, was the more popular type of writing employed later, largely for business purposes. After the second century of our era the Egyptian language came to be written in Greek letters, with the addition of eight signs taken over from demotic.

The literature of Egypt is very considerable in extent and embraces inscriptions, religious charms and extensive religious writings, hymns and lyrics, historical and legal material, proverbs and moral maxims, and many simple tales. We find this literature preserved on mummy cases and on the walls of tombs, passages, and chambers, but mostly on papyrus,—that is, strips of the papyrus reed skillfully put together,-wonderfully preserved in the dry climate of Egypt these many centuries.

The so-called Pyramid Texts, first discovered in 1880 in galleries and chambers in the pyramids, are probably the oldest written records that have come down to us of man's long intellectual history. Their hieroglyphic characters date from the twenty-seventh century B.C. and later. But they embody material belonging to a much earlier time, and taken as a whole they probably represent a period of a thousand years, closing about 2600 B.C. These texts, consisting of charms, hymns, myths, prayers, and ritualistic ma

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terial, were designed to insure the happiness of the king in the hereafter, and they were intended for his exclusive use and benefit. Yet they cover a wide range, and they give many glimpses of life and thought in that bygone age.

Of great interest in the religious literature of Egypt is the Book of the Dead, portions of which, in the nature of religious formulas for the well-being of the dead in the future world, may date from a period three to four thousand years before Christ. Hundreds of copies have been preserved, some quite fragmentary and others on papyrus over one hundred feet in length. The Book of the Dead consists in all of one hundred and sixty-five chapters or more, though no one copy contains all this material. It is a body of mortuary literature intended for the use of the soul after death and giving the magical texts to be repeated for its protection. Some copies have been beautifully decorated with figures and symbols. But the Egyptian writers were careless in transcribing, and their manuscripts are hopelessly corrupt, one copy of a document differing greatly from another. Furthermore, the literature of Egypt, however fascinating it may be in the picture it gives of the life of a gifted people of early times, is not commonly artistic. Its creators were not ordinarily interested in beauty of form or perfection of detail.

Egyptian poetry had no rime or rhythm, though it possessed a parallelism like that used later by Hebrews (see Chapter III). There exist historical poems; for example, an epic1 describing a victory over the Hittites. The poetry includes also love songs. Most interesting are the hymns, particularly the one addressed to King Sesostris (or Usertesen) III, preserved in a papyrus now thousands of years old. Four stanzas of this hymn have been translated by F. L. Griffith. The following lines are taken from the beginning of the second stanza (as translated by Griffith):

"Twice jubilant are the gods: thou hast established their offerings. Twice jubilant are thy children: thou hast made their boundaries.

1 The epic as a form of literature will be discussed in the chapter on Greek literature.

Twice jubilant are thy forefathers: thou hast increased their portions. Twice jubilant is Egypt in thy strong arm: thou hast guarded the ancient order."

Of the remaining literature the most attractive portion consists of tales, the originals of which must have come from the Egyptian story-tellers of antiquity. They date from the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom (roughly 3000 to 700 B. C.), and are sometimes realistic, sometimes imaginative with miraculous elements. We have a curious tale of a shipwrecked sailor, strongly suggestive of Sindbad; the story of the doomed prince whose violent death was prophesied at his birth; the story of two brothers, written very simply and presenting a picture of agricultural life; and a number of others.

The early literature of Egypt shows clearly that the Egyptian writers had developed a strong moral sense. They felt keenly for those who were afflicted unjustly. They frequently used the story as a form of social gospel, an aid in the crusade for social justice. The similar use of moral tales and parables by writers of the Old and New Testaments will at once recur to the mind of the reader.1

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE

The very ancient civilization in Mesopotamia, possibly antedating that of Egypt, has been partially made known to us through the work of oriental scholars and archæologists. The mastership of that region was for a long period in the hands of the non-Semitic Sumerians, but these peoples were gradually absorbed by the Semites. Sargon was the first of the Semitic leaders (about 2750 B.C.). The Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean empires that followed dominated Western Asia for many centuries, to be succeeded in turn by the Medo-Persian (Persian Empire founded 538 B.C.) and ultimately by the Græco-Roman civilization.

1 Over one hundred pages of Egyptian literature are given in the Warner Library, a very fine exhibit of a varied and representative character. The Breasted and Maspero volumes mentioned in the bibliography are of great value.

A good deal is now known regarding the Sumerians and their culture. They dwelt in cities; they drained the marshes; they were skilled in the arts; they wrote in a simplified hieroglyphicthe cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, style of writing; they possessed a highly developed religion. Their civilization, their laws, their literature, and their religion were taken over by the Semitic peoples who succeeded them. We do not know as yet the full extent to which Babylonians and Hebrews were indebted to the culture of these non-Semitic peoples of little-understood racial origin, who seem to have passed out of history at least two thousand years before Christ.

The Babylonian-Assyrian literature has come down to us in clay tablets. During the long history of these warlike and progressive peoples clay was utilized for writing of every description. Some of the poetry that has been preserved goes back to a very remote period; the earliest petty rulers were producing written records as early as 3800 B. C.; a great variety of chronological tables, legal codes, historical inscriptions, and personal and business letters date from the comparatively well-known historic period. Here is a portion of a letter from a traveler in a far country written to the lady Kadasu, presumably of his family: "Why hath news of thee to me been delayed, and why have I not seen a single answer to all the letters I wrote thee? For I wrote unto thee thus: 'From the day that I start, send unto me whatever taketh place in my house.' Why, then, have I heard no news of thee?" The clay tablet employed for such a letter would be one inch thick, two to three inches wide, and three to four inches long. It would be inclosed carefully in an envelope of clay for preservation and privacy, after having been powdered with dry clay to prevent sticking.

In the great library of Assurbanipal (seventh century B.C.) at Nineveh have been discovered twenty-two thousand clay tablets, an orderly collection of the scientific, religious, and literary material of these Mesopotamian peoples. This ancient library included some of the oldest poetry that has come down to us from any source.

Of the prose literature of the Babylonian-Assyrians perhaps the most interesting is the Code of Hammurapi (about 2100 B.C.). It