India did not remain entirely isolated from the rest of Asia. The Punjab was twice conquered by invaders from the West; by the Persians in the sixth century B.C.,1 and India and the about two hundred years later by the Greeks. West After the end of foreign rule India continued to be of importance through its commerce, which introduced such luxuries as precious stones, spices, and ivory among the western peoples. Nearer, or Western Asia, the smaller of the two grand divisions of the Asiatic continent, is bounded by the Black and Caspian seas on the north, by the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Nearer Asia and Indian Ocean on the south, eastward by the Indus River, and westward by the Mediterranean and the Nile. Almost all the countries within this area played a part in the ancient history of the Orient. The lofty plateaus of central Asia decline on the west into the lower but still elevated region of Iran. The western part of Iran was occupied in antiquity by the kindred Countries of people known as Medes and Persians. Armenia, Nearer Asia a wild and mountainous region, is an extension to the northwest of the Iranian table-land. Beyond Armenia we cross into the peninsula of Asia Minor, a natural link between Asia and Europe. Southward from Asia Minor we pass along the Mediterranean coast through Syria to Arabia. The Arabian peninsula may be regarded as the link between Asia and Africa. conditions These five countries of Nearer Asia were not well fitted to become centers of early civilization. They possessed no great rivers which help to bring people together, and no Influence of broad, fertile plains which support a large popu- geographical lation. Armenia, Asia Minor, and Syria were broken up into small districts by chains of mountains. Iran and Arabia were chiefly barren deserts. But two other divisions of Nearer Asia resembled distant India and China in the possession of a warm climate, a fruitful soil, and an extensive river system. These lands were Babylonia and Egypt, the first homes of civilized man. The Tigris and the Euphrates 8. Babylonia and Egypt Two famous rivers rise in the remote fastnesses of Armenia the Tigris and the Euphrates. As they flow southward, the twin streams approach each other to form a common valley, and then proceed in parallel channels for the greater part of their course. In antiquity each river emptied into the Persian Gulf by a separate mouth. This Tigris-Euphrates valley was called by the Greeks Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers." Babylonia is a remarkably productive country. The annual inundation of the rivers has covered its once rocky bottom with Productions deposits of rich silt. Crops planted in such a soil, of Babylonia under the influence of a blazing sun, ripen with great rapidity and yield abundant harvests. "Of all the countries that we know," says an old Greek traveler, "there is no other so fruitful in grain." Wheat and barley were perhaps. first domesticated in this part of the world.? Wheat still grows wild there. Though Babylonia possessed no forests, it had the date palm, which needed scarcely any cultivation. If the alluvial soil yielded little stone, clay, on the other hand, was everywhere. Molded into brick and afterwards dried in the sun, the clay became adobe, the cheapest building material imaginable. early center In Babylonia Nature seems to have done her utmost to make Babylonia an it easy for people to gain a living. We can understand, therefore, why from prehistoric times men have been attracted to this region, and why it is here that we must look for one of the earliest seats of civilization.3 of civilization Egypt may be described as the valley of the Nile. Rising in the Nyanza lakes of central Africa, that mighty stream, before Upper and entering Egypt, receives the waters of the Blue Lower Egypt Nile near the modern town of Khartum. From this point the course of the river is broken by a series of five 1 Herodotus, i, 193. 2 See page 8. It is interesting to note that Hebrew tradition (Genesis, ii, 8-15) places Paradise, the garden of God and original home of man, in southern Babylonia. The ancient name for this district was Edin (Eden). rocky rapids, misnamed cataracts, which can be shot by boats. The cataracts cease near the island of Philæ, and Upper Egypt begins. This is a strip of fertile territory, about five hundred miles in length but averaging only eight miles in width. Not far from modern Cairo the hills inclosing the valley fall away, the Nile divides into numerous branches, and Lower Egypt, or The island was originally only a heap of granite bowlders. Retaining walls were built around it, and the space within, when filled with rich Nile mud, became beautiful with groves of palms and mimosas. As the result of the construction of the Assuan dam, Philæ and its exquisite temples are now submerged during the winter months, when the reservoir is full. the Delta, begins. The sluggish stream passes through a region of mingled swamp and plain, and at length by three principal mouths empties its waters into the Mediterranean. Egypt the Egypt owes her existence to the Nile. All Lower Egypt is a creation of the river by the gradual accumulation of sediment at its mouths. Upper Egypt has been dug out of the desert sand and underlying rock by a process of erosion centuries long. Once the Nile filled all the space between the hills that line its sides. through a thick layer of alluvial mud deposited by the yearly inundation. Nile" Now it flows The Nile begins to rise in June, when the snow melts on the Abyssinian mountains. High-water mark, some thirty feet above |