But how far does this conclusion agree with actual facts? M. Georges Perrot, in his important work on the “History of Art,” says that the ancient Oriental world has seen the birth of three great civilisations, that of Egypt, that of Chaldea, and that of China, all of which have features in common, although each preserves its own proper character. Chaldea was the _Sennaar_ of the author of the Book of Genesis, the land in which were built the ancient cities of Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. The mighty hunter or warrior Nimrod, to whom the erection of those cities is ascribed, was the son of Kush and the grandson of Cham, and he is thus placed by the sacred writer in the same family as the Egyptians, Aithiopians, and the Libyans, as also the Canaanites and Phœnicians. The Kushites, of whom Nimrod is the representative in Genesis, were located by the poets and classical historians in Susiana rather than in Chaldea. Both of these countries, however, adjoin the Valley of the Tigris, and the name Aithiopians applied by those writers to the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf and the sea of Oman agrees with the relationship which, according to the genealogists of the Hebrew Scriptures, subsisted between the Kushites of Asia and those of Africa. It is to the shores of the Persian Gulf that the development, if not the origin, of the Chaldean civilisation has been traced. M. Perrot calls Egypt “the ancestor of civilised nations,” and he affirms that, in grouping the great peoples of antiquity to determine the part taken by each in the work of progress, it is necessary to commence with Egypt as the point of departure of all the forces which operate to that end. The Egyptians were not, however, indigenous to the Valley of the Nile. It is now almost universally acknowledged that they belonged to the white or Caucasian stock of Europe and Western Asia, from which they reached Egypt by the isthmus of Suez. Their Caucasian origin is confirmed by their language, which, with the other Hamitic idioms, had, as M. Lenormant shows, a relationship to the Semitic languages, the two families having a common mother language, the native country of which was in Asia at the east of the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. We are thus taken to the region where the old Chaldean civilisation flourished for the place of origin of the Egyptians; but did they belong to the same Kushite stock? In endeavouring to answer this question, it is necessary to remember that before the foundation of the Empire by Menes Egypt had comprised two kingdoms, that of Lower Egypt or the country of the north, and that of Upper Egypt or the country of the south. These kingdoms must have existed a considerable period, judging from the fact that the later Monarchs carried two crowns to indicate the dominion exercised over the two great divisions of the Empire, and probably it represented some race difference in their inhabitants. The Aryan character described by M. L.