eal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men.
It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think,
of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and
Assyria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of
Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world
of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in more than
one country to a higher religion than that of these deities.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

The Histories of Antiquity, viz.--

Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient_.

Duncker, _The History of Antiquity_, from the German, by Evelyn
Abbott.

Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World:
Chaldea, Assyria, Babylonia, Media, and Persia_.

Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1884. The first volume
embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian
Empire.

Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_, 1903.

Hilprecht, _Old Babylonian Inscriptions_ chiefly from Nippur, 1893.

_Records of the Past_, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.

Sayce's _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887.

Tiele, _Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten_.

Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, 1898. The most
complete account of the whole subject.

Jastrow, "Religion of Babylonia," in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol.
v.

Jastrow, "On the Religion of the Semites," in _Oxford Proceedings_,
vol. i. p. 225, _sqq._

F. Jeremias in De la Saussaye, pp. 246-347.

Bezold, _Niniva and Babylon_, 1903.

E. H. W. Johns, _The Oldest Code of Laws in the World_, 1903.

"On the Code of Hammurabi." E. H. W. Johns, in _Dictionary of the
Bible_, vol. v.

CHAPTER VIII
CHINA

The Chinese have always been a world in themselves, remote from other
races of men; yet they developed a civilisation which is in many
respects worthy to be compared with that of India or of the West. The
people who made gunpowder and paper and who printed books, long
before any of these things were done in Europe, might naturally think
themselves the foremost nation of the earth. Their civilisation,
however, has exercised no influence on the world outside of China,
nor has it advanced to the higher achievements of the human mind. As
their great wall secludes them from other nations, so do their mental
habits prevent them from a free interchange of ideas with foreigners.
The Mongolian race, indeed, from which, like the Hungarian