ought that these unseen
creatures called gods possessed all knowledge and wisdom, which was
used to befriend and protect. Especially would they look to the spirit
of earth as their particular protector, who had power to break the
spell of the spirits, compel obedience, and bring terror into the
hearts of the wicked ones. Such, in brief, was the religious system
which these people created for themselves. Later, after the Semitic
invasion, a system of religion developed more colossal in its
imagination and yet not less cruel in its final decrees regarding human
life and destiny. It passed into the purely imaginative religion, and
the worship of the sun and moon and the stars gave man's imagination a
broader vision, even if it did not lift him to a higher standard of
moral conduct.

It is not known at what date these early civilizations began, {157} but
there is some evidence that the Akkadians appeared in the valley not
less than four thousand years before Christ, and that subsequently they
were conquered by the Elamites in the east, who obtained the supremacy
for a season, and then were reinforced by the Semitic peoples, who
ranged northeast, and, from northern Africa through Arabia, eastward to
the Euphrates.[1]

_Egypt Becomes a Centre of Civilization_.--The men of Egypt are
supposed to be related racially to the Caucasian people who dwelt in
the northern part of Africa, from whom they separated at a very early
period, and went into the Nile valley to settle. Their present racial
connection makes them related to the well-known Berber type, which has
a wide range in northern Africa. Some time after the departure of the
Hamitic branch of the Caucasian race into Egypt, it is supposed that
another people passed on beyond, entering Arabia, later spreading over
Assyria, Babylon, Palestine, and Phoenicia. These were called the
Semites. Doubtless, this passage was long continued and irregular, and
there are many intermixtures of the races now distinctly Berber and
Arabic, so that in some parts of Egypt, and north of Egypt, we find an
Arab-Berber mongrel type. Doubtless, when the Egyptian stock of the
Berber type came into Egypt they found other races whose life dates
back to the early Paleolithic, as the stone implements found in the
hills and caves and graves showed not only Neolithic but Paleolithic
culture. Also, the wavering line of Sudan negro types extended across
Africa from east to west and came in contact