CHAPTER VII.
RELIGION

CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY AND CHRONOLOGY




PREFACE TO FIVE GREAT MONARCHIES.

The history of Antiquity requires from time to time to be rewritten.
Historical knowledge continually extends, in part from the advance of
critical science, which teaches us little by little the true value of
ancient authors, but also, and more especially, from the new discoveries
which the enterprise of travellers and the patient toil of students are
continually bringing to light, whereby the stock of our information as to
the condition of the ancient world receives constant augmentation. The
extremest scepticism cannot deny that recent researches in Mesopotamia
and the adjacent countries have recovered a series of "monuments"
belonging to very early times, capable of throwing considerable light on
the Antiquities of the nations which produced them. The author of these
volumes believes that, together with these remains, the languages of the
ancient nations have been to a large extent recovered, and that a vast
mass of written historical matter of a very high value is thereby added
to the materials at the Historian's disposal. This is, clearly, not the
place where so difficult and complicated a subject can be properly
argued. The author is himself content with the judgment of "experts,"
and believes it would be as difficult to impose a fabricated language on
Professor Lassen of Bonn and Professor Max Miller of Oxford, as to palm