The earliest historical seats of society in its shape of Oriental monarchical civilisation appear to have been the plains, to the south-west of the Paropamisan and Iranian mountains, traversed by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and fringing the Persian Gulf; with the vale of the Nile, constituting the empire of Egypt. The "overspreading" of the earth by the descendants of Noah carried the children of Japhet towards the north-west of their original seats to the countries round the Ægean and Euxine shores in Europe and Asia; the Semitic tribes are found in southern and south-western Asia to the head of the Mediterranean sea; and Ham's posterity spread into Africa, usurping also some of the allotted seats of the families of Shem in Assyria, Arabia, and Africa.1 This latter fact is supposed to be indicated in the signification of the name of Nimrod, (rebel,) the alleged builder of Babel and founder of the Assyrian empire. These migrations and revolutions extend over the three or five centuries succeeding the flood. Some of the migrating tribes retained long their nomad condition, others grouped into cities, or gradually coalesced into the institutions of such monarchies as Assyria and Egypt. It is interesting to notice, that as, in the antediluvian world, the arts of metallurgy, music, and others originated with the Cainites, while the children of Seth, "the Sons of God," who "walked with God," and "called upon the name of the Lord," retained the simpler agricultural life of the primitive father; so, in postdiluvian history, governments, empires, cities, sprung from the descendants of the "accursed" Ham: and as, among the primitive race, their very civilisation became the source of their corruption, “violence," and probably idolatry,—so, among their successors, where enterprise, and intellect, and civilisation seemed most developed, there also was most distorted the image of revealed truth, and there the development of "polytheism, pantheism, atheism, with their baneful consequences," most conspicuously proved that "the imagination of man's heart is only evil continually." On the one side the Sethite Enoch is the

1 It has been supposed that the "division" of the earth was arranged according to an allotment by Noah at the dictate of Divine inspiration; and hence the usurpation of Palestine, one of the allotted seats of Shem's descendants, by the Canaanite posterity of Ham, became a justifiable political argument for the occupation of that territory by the Semitic posterity of Abraham. It must be remembered that the enumeration of nations in Genesis x. would convey to the Israelites far more full and distinct notions of territory and right than they do to us. We may here remind the reader of the doubtful locality of the Scripture Ararat. It has sometimes been placed much farther to the east than the Armenian mountain which bears the name.

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type of his race, walking with God, and he was not, for God took him:" on the other the Cainite Lamech exults in his murders and in his tenfold wickedness compared with that of Cain. So, in the postdiluvian period, we perceive the chosen father of the type family of the Semitic nations called from amidst the "strange gods" of his own degenerated race, and from the multiform idolatry and corruption of the tribes surrounding "Ur of the Chaldees," to be the exemplar and depositary of the living oracles of God. During the four centuries that followed the deluge, and the subsequent dispersion at Babel, arose gradually the complicated systems of Asiatic and Egyptian idolatry—unless they may be conceived to be perpetuations of antediluvian ideas—the worship of the antagonistic principles of good and evil-the adoration of the heavenly host and of fire-ideas which impressed deeply the habits and character of the western Asiatic nations, and spread the germs of the mythology and religions of the people of Southern Europe.

ASSYRIA AND BABYLON.

Nimrod, identified with Baal, Bel, Belus, the appellation of the western Asiatic idols, is regarded as the author of the Assyrian Empire. He is thought to be the founder of Babylon and of Nineveh, whence he is supposed to have driven the tribe of Assur the son of Shem. He is succeeded by his son Ninus, whose queen, Semiramis, is represented as the consolidator and extender of the Ninevite monarchy, till it reached from the borders of India to the confines of the Canaanite tribes. The empire was constructed of a cluster of dependent satrapies, but its history and revolutions are unknown. To reconcile the contradictions entailed by absence of documents, the hypothesis of a first and a second Assyrian Empire has been formed, and each is represented as overthrown by revolts of the united Medes and Babylonians. The monarchy had assumed the usual form of Asiatic despotisms; the monarch luxurious, secluded in his extensive palace, amidst a numerous seraglio; the provinces ruled by lieutenants, whose growing power made the territory the scene of perpetual revolt, revolution, and oppression; lastly, the maxims of government intimately enwreathed with the religion of the State and the authority of the priesthood.

1 See Candlish's Contributions towards an Exposition of the Book of Genesis.

Sardanapalus, the last descendant of Semiramis, perishes voluntarily in the flames of his Ninevite palace, with his seraglio and treasures, 888 B. C.; and the victorious rebels, Arbaces, satrap of the northern provinces of Media, and Belesis, governor or priest of the southern province of Babylon, share the empire. Another theory carries the destruction of the first Assyrian monarchy into the succeeding century, and identifies Arbaces with Tiglath-pilezer, (2 Kings xvi.,) and Belesis with Nabon-asser, whose period, 747 B.C.,2 is the commencement of the Babylonian astronomical era designated from his name.3 Assyria and Babylon are intimately connected with portions of Scripture history. The kings who defeated the revolted cities of the plain of Jordan, in the days of Abraham, (Gen. xiv.,) are by some supposed to have been lieutenants or feudatories of the Assyrian monarchy. Pul, reckoned by some systems to be the father of Sardanapalus, is the first Assyrian prince who is distinctly mentioned as interfering with the politics of the Israelitish kingdom, (2 Kings xv. 19:) he has been regarded as the king who repented at the preaching of Jonah. The Assyrian emperors of the supposed second dynasty, connected with Scripture history, are Tiglath-pilezer, (called also Ninus II.,) Shalmanezer, Sennacherib,4 Ezarhaddon, (677.) From this monarch's reign the rulers of Babylon seem to be again dependents of the Assyrian Nineveh. Media also had been again subjected, and the solid empire apparently reconstructed from Bactria to Palestine. But the Medes recovered their independence, and a new combination between their monarch Cyaxares and the Babylonians, under their satrap or sovereign, Nabopolassar, finally subverts the Assyrian Ninevite empire, (606.) From this period the "Great King" of the East is no longer distinguished in Scripture by the appellation Melek Assur, but by that of Melek Babel. The Median dominion extended along the provinces of the Caspian towards the Euxine; the Babylonian empire, from the region of the Euphrates stretched its conquests over Syria, Pales

1 These Greek shapes of Oriental names differ of course widely from the originals.

2 Attention has been directed by historians to the 8th century B.C., as containing several important epochs, as the Greek Olympic era, 776; the alleged foundation of Rome, 753; the Nabonasserian era, 747; the fall of the Israelitish kingdom, 721.

3" This era is important in chronology, as by it all other epochs are connected and adjusted."-Sir Harris Nicholas.

4 This monarch's name is said to have been read by Dr. Layard on some of the monuments of the Ninevite excavations, though the accuracy of his interpretation of the Assyrian characters has been disputed.

tine, and Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar, Nabopolassar's son, elevated the Babylonian monarchy to its highest pitch of grandeur and power: it declines from the period of his death, and expires with Belshazzar, (the fourth in descent from the builder of "this great Babylon,") before the fatal arms of the Medes and Persians. This empire is the first of the four prophetic monarchies in the celebrated vision of Daniel. Its fall, after a brief splendour of nearly seventy years, exhibits the usual results of the seraglio-governments of the ancient East, in the rapid dissolution of ill-cemented and worse governed provinces, before the irruption of a foreign enemy. The Medo-Persian army, under Cyrus, captured Babylon, 538. The city was subsequently partially dismantled by the Persian kings. Alexander the Great had intended to re-edify its splendour, but a higher decree had doomed it to the desolation in which it has for ages been buried.

EGYPT.

Farthest in the dimness of historical antiquity gleams the civilisation of Egypt. In the era of Abraham it was a regularly constituted monarchy, whose people had not apparently lost all traces of the original divine revelations, in the symbolic mythology of a political priesthood. The philosophy, science, and arts of Egypt, whether original or derived from earlier Asiatic sources, formed the chief spring of the ideas and beliefs of historical Greece; and much of Egyptian idea and practice entered into the merely social arrangements of the Mosaic economy. The Mizraim, the Scripture name of the Egyptian people, were the descendants of one of the sons of Ham.2 Men-ei, or, as written in Greek, Menes, is the mythic form of the name "of the most venerable ancestor of all the Theban Pharaohs." The dominion of the early monarchs was in the central and upper parts of the Nile valley, with Thebes as the capital; and Memphis was the capital of a refined and civilized monarchy in the period of

1 Nebuchadnezzar, or Nabuchodonosor, is a general name of the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs, as Pharaoh is of the Egyptian. Terms which appear as names are often epithets, and sometimes express the office of the bearer.

2 His name, if we can be permitted to derive Mizraim from a patriarchal appellative, was probably Mizr, im being the Hebrew plural termination. Gen. x. 6. Nations often connect their foundation with some heroic name. Scripture furnishes numberless instances. Pelasgus, Hellen. Romulus, &c., are examples in ancient history. Modern nations are equally partial to this idea: the Danes have their Danus, the Saxons their Saxo, the Britons their Brutus. See D'Israeli's Amenities of Literature.

Joseph, about eighteen centuries B. C. In the succeeding three centuries of the residence of the Israelites in Egypt occur the irruption and usurpation of the Hyksos or shepherd kings from Arabia, Phenicia, or Scythia. They occupied Lower Egypt for upwards of 200 years, and some have supposed that under them happened the bondage and exodus of the Israelites. During this period also chronology would date the Egyptian colonization of Greece by Danaus and Cecrops. The expulsion of the Hyksos by the native dynasty was followed by a period of splendour and conquest, during the reign of Sesostris or Rhamses the Great, whose monuments of victory the Greeks found scattered over Syria and Asia Minor. As the history descends we find the monarchs of Egypt included still more closely in connexion with the nations east of the Mediterranean, until Syria became the theatre of conquest for the Egyptian and Assyrian kings. The fall of the Ninevite dominion under the resistless power of Nabopolassar and his son, hastened the repulse of the Egyptian arms from the plains of Syria and Palestine. (2 Kings xxiii. 29.) Nebuchadnezzar attacked and defeated Pharaoh-Necho (Necos2) in his own dominion: he a second time ravaged Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh-Hophra, (Apries; Oua-phre,) the grandson of Necho. (Jerem. xliv. 30; Ezek. xxix.) After the fall of the Babylonian monarchy, Egypt, it is supposed, was invaded and conquered by Cyrus. The second Persian sovereign, Cambyses, completed the subjugation by the destruction of Psammenitus, the last of the Pharaohs. (B. C. 525.) Since that conquest Egypt has seen no native independent king; she vainly, though frequently,

Modern discoveries have greatly disturbed the formerly received ideas of Egyptian history and chronology. Menes has been assigned to a period that would carry him back to 3600 F.C.; the shepherd usurpation beyond 1800 B.C. Sesostris and his conquests by some systems precede, by others succeed the usurpation of the Hyksos: some chronologers have identified Sesostris even with Shishak, the plunderer of the temple in the reign of Rehoboam. The stone-written monuments of Egypt, in the progress of their interpretation, and lights derived from other sources in Asia, present every prospect of much aid in the elucidation of the perplexities and contradictions, not only of Egyptian, but of all Asiatic history. The ruin in which early records have descended to us has opened to theorists numberless schemes of multiform shapes, until scholars begin to doubt if anything in ancient chronology can be relied upon as certain in its date before the age of Solomon. In particular, there has been a tendency to lengthen the 4000 years of the pre-Christian age of the world to a much higher number; to remove backward the assigned date of the deluge, so as to leave verge enough for the development of nations, as they are exhibited in the historical periods. The Indian and the Chinese peoples, the gigantic works of Etruria and Pelasgic Greece, form arguments for this tendency, as well as Egypt, whose twenty or more dynasties of kings, authenticated by monuments, can scarcely be compressed into the received systems of chronology; for the Theban temples and palaces of Luxor, Karnak, and Dendera, as well as the later glories of Memphis, are long antecedent to authentic historical periods.

The prince to whom Herodotus ascribes the earliest circumnavigation of Africa.