We quote from the New International Encyclopedia: “The Sumerian language is probably the oldest known language in the world. From the Sumerian vocabulary, it is evident that the people who spoke this language had reached a comparatively high civilization.” The monuments show that in early historical times, man was in a state of civilization. There are no monuments of man’s civilization prior to historical time. Higher critics have said that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because writing was unknown in his day. Yet Prof. A. H. Sayce, D.D., LL.D., of Oxford University, one of the greatest archaeologists the world ever knew, writes: “Egypt was the first to deliver up its dead. Under an almost rainless sky, where frost is unknown, and the sand seals up all that is entrusted to its keeping, nothing perishes except by the hand of man. The fragile papyrus, inscribed it may be 5,000 years ago, is as fresh and legible as when its first possessor died. “In Egypt, as far back as the monuments carry us, we find a highly-developed art, a highly organized government, and a highly-educated people. Books were multiplied, and if we can trust the translation of the Proverbs of Ptah-hotep, the oldest existing book in the world, there were competitive examinations, [civil service!] already in the age of the sixth Egyptian Dynasty.... We have long known that the use of writing for literary purposes is immensely old in both Egypt and Babylonia. Egypt was emphatically a land of scribes and readers. Already in the days of the Old Empire, the Egyptian hieroglyphs had developed into a cursive hand.” From the Tel el-Amarna tablets, discovered in Upper Egypt, we know that for 100 years people were corresponding with each other, in the language of Babylonia in cuneiform characters. Libraries existed then, and “Canaan in the Mosaic age, was fully as literary as was Europe in the time of the Renaissance.” Ancient Babylonian monuments testify to the existence of an ancient literary culture. The results of the excavations by the American Expedition, published by Prof. Hilprecht, of the U. of Pa., show that in the time of King Sargon of Accad, art and literature flourished in Chaldea. The region of the garden of Eden was the pivot of the civilization of the world. From this region radiated the early civilization of Babylonia, Assyria and Egypt. And the advanced degree implies centuries of prior civilization. The origin of man and the earliest civilization occurred in the same region. Ur explorations (1927) show high art, 3000 B.C.