and Thebes, was undisputed master of the whole Nile valley, from near the spot where it receives its last tributary to where it empties itself into the sea.  The making of Egypt was finally accomplished in his time.  The Fourteenth dynasty, however, consists of a line of seventy-five kings, whose mutilated names appear on the Turin Papyrus.  These shadowy Pharaohs followed each other in rapid sequence, some reigning only a few months, others for certainly not more than two and three years.

Meantime, during what appears to have been an era of rivalries between pretenders, mutually jealous of and deposing one another, usurpers in succession seizing the crown without strength to keep it, the feudal lords displayed more than their old restlessness.  The nomad tribes began to show growing hostility on the frontier, and the peoples of the Tigris and Euphrates were already pushing their vanguards into Central Syria.  While Egypt had been bringing the valley of the Nile and the eastern corner of Africa into subjection, Chaldaea had imposed not only language and habits, but also her laws upon the whole of that part of Eastern Asia which separated her from Egypt.  Thus the time was rapidly approaching when these two great civilised powers of the ancient world would meet each other face to face and come into fierce and terrible collision.

VII.—­Ancient Chaldaea

The Chaldaean account of Genesis is contained on fragments of tablets discovered and deciphered in 1875 by George Smith.  These tell legends of the time when “nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when nothing below had as yet received the name of earth.  Apsu, the Ocean, who was their first father, and Chaos-Tiamat, who gave birth to them all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes which bore no fruit.  In the time when the gods were not created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu were the first to appear and waxed great for ages.”

Then came Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom.  Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse whom he had produced from himself.  Other divinities sprang from these fruitful pairs, and, the impulse once given, the world was rapidly peopled by their descendants.  Sin, Samash and Ramman, who presided respectively over the sun, moon and air, were all three of equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, the warrior-goddess, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities who ranged themselves around Anu as around a supreme master.

Discord arose.  The first great battle of the gods was between Tiamat and Merodach.  In this fearful conflict Tiamat was destroyed.  Splitting her body into halves, the conqueror hung up one on high, and this became the heavens; the other he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe as men have known it.  Merodach regulated the movements of the sun and divided the year into twelve months.