Now it has in this way been found out that all inflected languages belong to one of two families, called the Semitic and the Aryan. Let us begin with the Semitic. This word, which is only a Latinized way of saying Shemite, is given to the nations who are supposed to be descended from Shem, the second son of Noah. The nations who have spoken languages belonging to this Semitic family have been those who appear so much in Old Testament history, and who played a mighty part in the world while our own ancestors were still wandering tribes, and at an age when darkness still obscured the doings of the Greeks and Romans. Foremost among all in point of age and fame stand the Egyptians, who are believed to have migrated in far pre-historic ages to the land in which they rose to fame. They found there a people of a lower, a negro or half-negro race, and mingled with them, so that their language ceased to be a pure Semitic tongue. In its foundation, however, it was Semitic. The earliest of the recorded kings of Egypt, Menes, is believed to date back as far as 5000 B.C. Next in antiquity come the Chaldæans, who have left behind them great monuments in the ancient cities Erech and Ur, and their successors the Assyrians and Babylonians. Abraham, himself, we know, was a Chaldæan, and from him descended the Hebrew nation, who were destined to shed the highest honour on the Semitic race. Yet, so great may be the degeneration of some races and the rise of others, so great may be the divisions which thus spring up between peoples who were once akin, it is also true that all those peoples whom the Children of Israel were specially commanded to fight against and even to exterminate--the Canaanites, the Moabites, and the Edomites--were likewise of Semitic family. The Phœnicians are another race from the same stock who have made their mark in the world. We know how, coming first from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, they led the way in the art of navigation, sent colonies to various parts of the world, and foremost among these founded Carthage, the rival and almost the destroyer of Rome. Our list of celebrated Semitic races must close with the Arabs, the founders of Mohammedanism, the conquerors at whose name all Europe used to tremble, whose kingdoms once extended in an unbroken line from Spain to the banks of the Indus. [Sidenote: The Aryan races.]