ey of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having
the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed
navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more
advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of
expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right
of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting.
The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile shores was the appointed field
of expansion. The land route from Egypt lay, not to the dreary west in
Africa, but along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Syria
and Asia Minor. The land route from Babylon lay across northern
Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route had Crete for its first and most
conspicuous station. Hence the gradual appearance of civilisation in
Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the Greek islands is a normal and
natural outcome of the geographical conditions.

But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains are
fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less part
in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we have
discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we
see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay
about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a
great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites, on the other
hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region was Cappadocia,
where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so
characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions are
almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia Minor.
Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots of the
fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably a small and
unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until a few centuries
before the Christian Era. They then assimilated the culture of the
more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their territory. The
Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly
advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of
dying Babylon.

The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of these
older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete, but it
spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its script are
so distinctive that we must recognise