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, Chaldæa 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 Chaldæa_


The Chaldæan 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,