sive cruelty towards the Egyptian priests, rancorous persecution of the national religion, the destruction and pillage of the temples, are attributed to Cambyses; but these accounts are probably exaggerated, for they are all derived from the testimony of his enemies. A critical examination of his history renders it probable that the hostility of the Persians was directed not so much against religious opinions and usages, as against the aristocratic corporation of the Egyptian priesthood; although it is impossible to separate one entirely from the other.* The influence of the sacerdotal caste under the latter Pharaohs was, indeed, no longer what it had been, but though weakened it had not been destroyed. They still possessed many exclusive privileges; they were the ruling caste, and both Psammetichus and Amasis had been forced to treat them with great consideration. Their interests, therefore, naturally clashed with those of a foreign conqueror; they stimulated the Egyptians to resist the invasion inch by inch, and the profanation of the temples and deities was the consequence of this political animosity. It was for the same reason that the Saracens refused quarter to the Greek monastics, in the provinces which they wrested from the Syrian empire.

*This is Heeren's opinion, and it is certainly the view most consistent with the national character, both of the Persians and the Egyptians. It must, however, be observed, that the religious system of the Medes and Persians was more rigid and exclusive than any other form of ancient idolatry. They boasted that their laws changed not; the friendship of the Darawesh, or reigning monarch, could not save Daniel from being thrown into the den of lions for adhering to the religion of his fathers,—the rage of Xerxes was principally directed against the temples when he invaded Greece,-and one of the earliest acts of Ardeshir Babegan, who founded the Sassanid dynasty, and restored the ancient royalty and religion of Persia, was to issue an edict prohibiting the exercise of any forms of worship save those authorized by the Magi.

VOL. II.

4

In all the subsequent revolts of the Assyrians against the Persians, the priests were the principal fomenters of insurrection, and on them vengeance fell most heavily when the rebellions were suppressed. But as they had the monopoly of whatever science ancient Egypt possessed, their records were dispersed and lost in every successive persecution, their traditional knowledge became vague and obscure, so that in the time of Alexander the boasted wisdom of the Egyptians had become nothing more than a reminiscence and a name. Science, indeed, was revived by the Ptolemies, but it was the science of a different system of civilization, and it never connected itself with a Theocracy.

The cause of the ruin of Egyptian civilization appears, from the foregoing considerations, to have been the immutability which theocracy and the system of caste inflicted on the system. The priests, acting upon a belief in the continuance of unvarying opinion, defined every social relation, and dove-tailed the parts so nicely together, that any derangement threatened to dislocate the entire machine. Foreign invasion, intercourse with strangers, the extension of maritime commerce, combined with the ordinary progress of society, introduced new elements, for which there was no room in the ancient constitution; and hence a contest arose between the new and the old elements of socie

ty, in which the latter were weakened even by victory; the authority of the priesthood declined, and the troops withheld their obedience. Either of these circumstances must be fatal to a theocracy; both happened in Egypt, and "neither the swords of the mercenaries, nor the treasures of the people, could uphold the throne of the Pharaohs.*

* Heeren.

CHAPTER II.

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION.

NEXT to Egypt, Babylonia and the banks of the Euphrates offer objects of most interest to the historian of civilization. Nowhere did the cultivation of the earth make more rapid progress from well-directed labour, and nowhere did human industry reap richer harvests. Though frequently devastated by barbarous hordes, its cities seemed to realize the fable of the Phoenix, by the rapidity with which they rose from the ashes of their own destruction. "In the earliest records of the human race, the name of Babylon appears as the primeval seat of political society and the cradle of civilization. And this name endured, great and renowned, for a long succession of ages. At last, when Babylon declined-just at the time when, according to the projects of the Macedonian conqueror, it was destined to form the capital of Asia and the central point of his new monarchy-Seleucia sprung up and flourished near it on the Tigris ere this city fell, it was eclipsed by Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian empire; when both these were destroyed by the conquering Arabs, the royal cities of Bagdad and Ormuz arose in their place; and the last glimmer, as it were, of the ancient splendour of Babylon seems still to hover over the half-ruined Bussorah."*

Great difficulties beset the investigation of the system * Heeren's Asiatic Nations, vol. ii. p. 130.

of civilization which was established in this highly favoured region the notices of Babylon in Scripture are very scanty during the important interval between the Dispersion and the accession of Nebuchadnezzar; the accounts given by the Greek historians are loose and contradictory, and the few oriental records which we have, are so disguised by fable as scarcely to afford a statement on which reliance can be placed. Adulation and exaggeration have been the bane of oriental history; the poet-laureat was usually the historiographer of every eastern sovereign, and he took more than a poet's license in distorting facts by fancies. The monarch of the universe frequently meant the sovereign of a territory not larger than the county of Middlesex; an army of countless myriads was, in truth, not larger than a regiment of militia; and the splendour of a court, represented as surpassing even the fictions of fairy tales, was merely the barbaric pomp of a half-savage chieftain, who hoped to impose on his still more savage subjects by show and tinsel. A more amusing contrast could scarcely be conceived, than a description of the Persian court by a native writer and by a European traveller.

It is indeed easy to account for one monstrous exaggeration in eastern writers, the number of their armies. An oriental despot levies soldiers en masse; as he advances he compels all the male population, to join his ranks, and as he never dreams of providing pay or provision, the number of deserters generally keeps a pretty even pace with that of the recruits. But though the soldiers disappear from the ranks, they hold their place in the muster-rolls of the army. By a convenient fiction, it is held impossible that any one who has been offered an opportunity of exhibiting his devotedness to an imperial or royal master, should be so regardless of the honour as to return home; the leader

who announced so disagreeable a truth, would run the peril of losing his head; hence one-tenth, or even one-twentieth, is very often the proportion of available force which can be safely deduced from the official records of an eastern army. If Herodotus, as is probable, derived his estimate of the forces of Xerxes from a Persian source, it is not at all surprising that he has given a statement surpassing the bounds, not only of probability, but of possibility; the only wonder is, that he did not make them fifty millions instead of five.

Similar reasoning will not account for the enormous size attributed to ancient cities of the East, such as Nineveh and Babylon. But in this case the improbability arises from our transferring our notions of a modern city to those ancient capitals. Neither was a city of continuous streets and houses, such as those with which we are acquainted; they were an aggregation of villages, with their fields, farms and pasturage, enclosed by a common wall of defence. The prophet Jonah describes Nineveh, as "that, Great City, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle." In this passage the mention of cattle clearly intimates that pastures were enclosed within the city walls. A similar account is given of Babylon by Quintus Curtius: "The buildings of this city," he says, "do not reach to the walls, but are at the distance of an acre from them. Neither is the whole city covered with houses, but only ninety furlongs; nor do the houses stand in rows by each other, but the intervals which separate them are sown and cultivated, that they may furnish subsistence in case of siege.”

Although sacred and profane history unite in describing Babylon as a flourishing city in the most ancient times,

Timbud