And they deserve our grateful respect as long as our planet continues to race through the wide space of the high heavens. These ancient people of whom I shall now tell you lived in three definite spots. Two of these were found along the banks of vast rivers. The third was situated on the shores of the Mediterranean. The oldest center of civilization developed in the valley of the Nile, in a country which was called Egypt. The second was located in the fertile plains between two big rivers of western Asia, to which the ancients gave the name of Mesopotamia. The third one which you will find along the shore of the Mediterranean, was inhabited by the Phoenicians, the earliest of all colonizers and by the Jews who bestowed upon the rest of the world the main principles of their moral laws. This third center of civilization is known by its ancient Babylonian name of Suri, or as we pronounce it, Syria. The history of the people who lived in these regions covers more than five thousand years. It is a very, very complicated story. I can not give you many details. I shall try and weave their adventures into a single fabric, which will look like one of those marvelous rugs of which you read in the tales which Scheherazade told to Harun the Just. THE KEY OF STONE Fifty years before the birth of Christ, the Romans conquered the land along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and among this newly acquired territory was a country called Egypt. The Romans, who are to play such a great role in our history, were a race of practical men. They built bridges, they constructed roads, and with a small but highly trained army of soldiers and civil officers, they managed to rule the greater part of Europe, of eastern Africa and western Asia. As for art and the sciences, these did not interest them very much. They regarded with suspicion a man who could play the lute or who could write a poem about Spring and only thought him little better than the clever fellow who could walk the tightrope or who had trained his poodle dog to stand on its hind legs. They left such things to the Greeks and to the Orientals, both of whom they despised, while they themselves spent their days and nights keeping order among the thousand and one nations of their vast empire. When they first set foot in Egypt that country was already terribly old. More than six thousand and five hundred years had gone by since the history of the Egyptian people had begun. Long before any one had dreamed of building a city amidst the swamps of the river Tiber, the kings of Egypt had ruled far and wide and had made their court the center of all civilization. While the Romans were still savages who chased wolves and bears with clumsy stone axes, the Egyptians were writing books, performing intricate medical operations and teaching their children the tables of multiplication.