different states whereby these caravans were protected and given safe
passage through the countries traversed. Three thousand years before
Christ the Phoenicians sent out ships from Tyre that had intercourse
with the cities of the Mediterranean and later with England and sailed
around Africa and traded on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Egypt
sent sea expeditions to South Africa in the sixteenth century before
Christ. All of this suggests how much more of geography these ancients
knew than we are accustomed to think.

Language and Literature. It is impossible to say what was the original
language. But that men once spoke the same language and that the
varieties of human tongues arose from some remarkable cause is in some
degree confirmed by the research of modern scholarship. The Bible
alone states clearly what that cause was. All existing languages
belong to three great families: the Aryan, the Semitic, and the
Turanian. These correspond roughly to three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham
and Japheth.

In the time of Abraham and long before, and on to the time of Moses
there was great literary culture. Letters passed between kingdoms and
cities. There were schools and colleges, great dictionaries and many
books on many subjects. The Babylonian language was almost universally
employed, so that the scribes could read without difficulty a letter
sent anywhere in Egypt, Babylon, Canaan, or Arabia. This unity makes
the translation of inscriptions on the monuments comparatively easy.

We know nothing of the origin of writing. As far back as we go into
their history we find, already developed, a most complex system of
writing and large libraries both in the royal cities and in small
towns.