construct something like a definite chronology; but though marvellous progress has been made in our knowledge of the Early, Middle, and New Empires, a great gap remains between the sixth and the eleventh dynasties, and the period of the Hyksos is still tantalizingly obscure. Egyptian history in the light of the latest discoveries may be best studied in the judicial pages of Breasted, the foremost of American Egyptologists. The revelation of Assyrian civilization through Rawlinson's decipherment of cuneiform and the excavations of Botta and Layard in the middle of the nineteenth century was followed by a concerted attack on Babylonia. It was clear from the Nineveh tablets that most of the literary treasures of Assyria were merely copies of Babylonian originals; and when in 1877 de Sarzec, French Vice-Consul at Basra, bored into the mounds at Tello, the ancient Lagash, in Southern Babylonia, the most eager anticipations were surpassed. Texts had been found which Rawlinson pronounced to be pre-Semitic; but for the purpose of history the Sumerians were discovered at Tello. When de Sarzec died in 1901 he had opened a new chapter of history. The palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib, at which the world had marvelled in the 'forties, appeared relatively modern beside the vast antiquity of the Chaldean city. The chain of human experience lengthened before our eyes when it was realized that as Assyrian culture derived from Babylonia, so a large part of Babylonian culture, including the art of writing, was inherited by the Semites from the Sumerians.