_Persians_, the Aryan race comes forward into conspicuity and control. One branch of the Iranians of Bactria, entering _India_, through the agency of climate and other physical influences converted their religion into a mystical and speculative pantheism, and their social organization into a caste-system under the rule of a priesthood. The Medes and Persians, under other circumstances, in contact with tribes about them, turned their religion into a dualism, yet with a monotheistic drift that was not wholly extinguished. The conquest of Babylon by _Cyrus_ annihilated Semitic power. The fall of _Lydia_, the conquest of _Egypt_ by _Cambyses_, and the victories of _Darius_, brought the world into subjection to Persian rule. The dates of some of the most important historical events in this Section are as follow Menes, the first historic king of Egypt....... about 4000 B.C. Accession of Ramses II. to the Egyptian throne...... 1340 B.C. Rise of the Babylonian kingdom................ about 4000 B.C. Reign of Hiram at Tyre, and of Solomon........ about 950 B.C. Assyrian captivity: downfall of Israel............... 722 B.C. Fall of Nineveh...................................... 606 B.C. Babylonian captivity: downfall of Judah.............. 586 B.C. Reign of Cyrus begins................................ 559 B.C. Fall of Lydia: capture of Sardis..................... 546 B.C. Fall of Babylon...................................... 538 B.C. Reign of Darius begins............................... 521 B.C. BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION.--In the history of _Western Asia_ we discern the beginnings of civilization and of the true religion. In the room of useless and destructive tribal warfare, great numbers are banded together under despotic rule. CITIES were built, where property and life could be protected, and within whose massive walls of vast circumference the useful arts and the rudiments of science could spring up. Trade and commerce, by land and sea, naturally followed. Thus nations came to know one another. Aggressive war and subjugation had a part in the same result. The power of the peoples of western Asia, the guardians of infant civilization, availed to keep back the hordes of barbarians on the north, or, as in the case of the great Scythian invasion (p. 47), to drive them back to their own abodes.