He must have worked his way up into civilization. The records, as far
back as they go, prove that the original condition of man was a state
of civilization, not savagery. Man fell down, not up.

The recent explorations in the tomb of Tutankhamen, in Egypt, and the
more recent explorations of the tomb of a still more ancient Egyptian
monarch, show that a high degree of civilization prevailed from 2000
to 1300 B.C. The art displayed in the carvings and paintings, and the
skill of the artisans are beyond praise. They had knowledge even of
what are now lost arts. They had a written language 300 years before
Homer wrote his immortal Iliad. Yet many higher critics claim that
writing was unknown in the days of Moses and Homer. They declare that
the Iliad, a poem in 24 books, was committed to memory, and handed
down from generation to generation, 400 years with all its fine poetic
touches. Monstrous alternative! Indeed we are even told that "Many
men must have served as authors and improvers." The mob of reciters
improved the great epic of Homer! Scarcely less brilliant is the
suggestion of another higher critic that, "Homer's Iliad was not
composed by Homer, but by another man of the same name"!

The laws of Hammurabi, who is identified as the Amraphel of Scripture,
Gen. 14:1, and who was contemporary with Abraham, were in existence
many hundred years before Moses, and showed a high state of
civilization, which began many hundred years before Abraham. The
literature of China goes back to 2000 B. C. The earliest civilization
of China, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, reaching to 2500 B.C., or
earlier, points to a still earlier civilization, which likely reaches
back to the origin of the human race.

It is admitted that the earliest (Sumerian) civilization began on the