Of the beginning of the Egyptian empire, the other great center of civilization, we have no certain knowledge.  So far as the records of the scriptures or of the earliest records to which the monuments bear witness, Egypt comes before us full grown.  The further back we go the more perfect and developed do we find the organization of the country.  The activity and industry of the Egyptians, their power of erecting great buildings and of executing other laborious tasks at this early period is a marvel to all ages.  It has been shown by Prof.  Petrie that some of the blocks in at least one of the great pyramids were cut by tubular drills fitted with diamond points or something similar.  This to us is a very modern invention.

At least thirty dynasties of kings (according to Manetho) ruled Egypt in succession.  At least twelve of these must have reigned in Egypt before Jacob and his sons settled within their borders.  Many of the great monuments and some of the largest of the pyramids were already to be seen before Abraham visited that country.  There had been constant progress in all kinds of learning and art, and a highly advanced society and government had been attained when the Bible history first came in contact with it.

Commerce was carried on extensively on both land and sea.  Long before the time of Moses a stream of caravans were on the road between Egypt and Babylon, passing through Canaan.  Treaties were made between different states whereby these caravans were protected and given safe passage through the countries traversed.  Three thousand years before Christ the Phoenicians sent out ships from Tyre that had intercourse with the cities of the Mediterranean and later with England and sailed around Africa and traded on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.  Egypt sent sea expeditions to South Africa in the sixteenth century before Christ.  All of this suggests how much more of geography these ancients knew than we are accustomed to think.

Language and Literature.  It is impossible to say what was the original language.  But that men once spoke the same language and that the varieties of human tongues arose from some remarkable cause is in some degree confirmed by the research of modern scholarship.  The Bible alone states clearly what that cause was.  All existing languages belong to three great families:  the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Turanian.  These correspond roughly to three sons of Noah:  Shem, Ham and Japheth.

In the time of Abraham and long before, and on to the time of Moses there was great literary culture.  Letters passed between kingdoms and cities.  There were schools and colleges, great dictionaries and many books on many subjects.  The Babylonian language was almost universally employed, so that the scribes could read without difficulty a letter sent anywhere in Egypt, Babylon, Canaan, or Arabia.  This unity makes the translation of inscriptions on the monuments comparatively easy.