variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed on the
Chaldæan painful exactions, and obliged him to work with an energy of
which the majority of Egyptians would not have felt themselves capable.
And the plague of usury raged with equal violence in city and country.

In proportion, however, as we are able to bring this wonderful
civilisation to light we become more and more conscious that we have
indeed little or nothing in common with it. Its laws, customs, habits
and character, its methods of action and its modes of thought, are so
far apart from those of the present day that they seem to belong to a
humanity utterly different from our own. It thus happens that while we
understand to a shade the classical language of the Greeks and of the
Romans, and can read their works almost without effort, the great
primitive literatures of the world, the Egyptian and Chaldæan, have
nothing to offer us for the most part but a sequence of problems to
solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience.

* * * * *




The Struggle of the Nations


Maspero in this work gives us the second volume of his great
historical trilogy. He shows in parallel views the part played
in the history of the ancient world by the first Chaldæan
Empire, by Syria, by the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, of Egypt,
and by the first Cossæan kings who established the greatness