_Phoenicia_--Great Influence on Western Civilization--but Date comparatively late--Traditions of Origin--First distinct Mention in Egyptian Monuments 1600 B.C.--Great Movements of Maritime Nations--Invasions of Egypt by Sea and Land, under Menepthah, 1330 B.C., and Ramses III., 1250 B.C.--Lists of Nations--Show Advanced Civilization and Intercourse--but nothing beyond 2000 or 2500 B.C. _Hittites_--Great Empire in Asia Minor and Syria--Turanian Race--Origin Cappadocia--Great Wars with Egypt--Battle of Kadesh--Treaty with Ramses II.--Power rapidly declined--but only finally destroyed 717 B.C. by Sargon II.--Capital Carchemish--Great Commercial Emporium--Hittite Hieroglyphic Inscriptions and Monuments--Only recently and partially deciphered--Results. _Arabia_--Recent Discoveries--Inscriptions--Sabæa--Minæans--Thirty-two Kings known--Ancient Commerce and Trade-routes--Incense and Spices--Literature--Old Traditions--Oannes--Punt--Seat of Semites--Arabian Alphabet--Older than Phoenician--- Bearing on Old Testament Histories. _Troy and Mycenæ_--Dr. Schliemann's Excavations--Hissarlik--Buried Fortifications, Palaces, and Treasures of Ancient Troy--Mycenæ and Tiryns--Proof of Civilization and Commerce--Tombs--Absence of Inscriptions and Religious Symbols--Date of Mycenæan Civilization--School of Art--Pictures on Vases--Type of Race. CHINA. The first country to which we might naturally look for independent annals approaching in antiquity those of Egypt and Chaldæa is China. Chinese civilization is in one respect the oldest in the world; that is, it is the one which has come down to the present day from a remote antiquity with the fewest changes. What China is to-day it was more than 4000 years ago; a populous empire with a peaceful and industrial population devoted to agriculture and skilled in the arts of irrigation; a literary people acquainted with reading and writing; orderly and obedient, organized under an emperor and official hierarchy; paying divine honours to ancestors, and a religious veneration to the moral and ceremonial precepts of sages and philosophers. Addicted to childish superstitions, and yet eminently prosaic, practical, and utilitarian. Unlike other nations they have no traditions attributing the origin of arts and sciences to foreign importation, as in the Chaldæan legend of Oannes, or, as in Egypt, to native gods; that is, to development on the soil from an unknown antiquity. The Chinese annals begin with human emperors, who are only divine in the sense of being wise and virtuous ancestors, and who are represented as uttering long discourses on the whole duty of man, in a high moral and philosophical tone.