The East, in fine, remained the East. It was so little affected after all by the West that in due time its religiosity would be pregnant with yet another religion, antithetical to Hellenism, and it was so little weakened that it would win back again all it had lost and more, and keep Hither Asia in political and cultural independence of the West until our own day. If modern Europe has taken some parts of the gorgeous East in fee which were never held by Macedonian or Roman, let us remember in our pride of race that almost all that the Macedonians and the Romans did hold in Asia has been lost to the West ever since. Europe may and probably will prevail there again; but since it must be by virtue of a civilization in whose making a religion born of Asia has been the paramount indispensable factor, will the West even then be more creditor than debtor of the East? NOTE ON BOOKS The authorities cited at the end of Prof. J. L. Myres' _Dawn of History_ (itself an authority), in the Home University Library, are to a great extent suitable for those who wish to read more widely round the theme of the present volume, since those (e.g. the geographical works given in _Dawn of History_, p. 253, paragraph 2) which are not more or less essential preliminaries to a study of the Ancient East at any period, mostly deal with the historic as well as the prehistoric age. To spare readers reference to another volume, however, I will repeat here the most useful books in Prof. Myres' list, adding at the same time certain others, some of which have appeared since the issue of his volume. For the history of the whole region in the period covered by my volume, E. Meyer's _Geschichte Alterthums_, of a new edition of which a French translation is in progress and has already been partly issued, is the most authoritative. Sir G. Maspero's _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique_ (English translation in 3 vols. under the titles _The Dawn of Civilization_ (Egypt and Chaldaea); _The Struggle of the Nations_ (Egypt, Syria, and Assyria); _The Passing of the Empires_) is still valuable, but rather out of date. There has appeared recently a more modern and handy book than either, Mr. H. R. Hall's _The Ancient History of the Near East_ (1913), which gathers up, not only what was in the books by Mr. Hall and Mr. King cited by Prof. Myres, but also the contents of Meyer's and Maspero's books, and others, and the results of more recent research, in some of which the author has taken part. This book includes in its scope both Egypt and the Aegean area, besides Western Asia.