5. The other two great families of related languages, and therefore of common stock or race, are the Semitic and the Aryan. But previous to the appearance of either of these on this buried stage of history is a family, apparently related, distantly, to the Semites, but who might have separated from the common stock of both before them, called Hamites, who founded the very ancient and mysterious Egyptian monarchy. A section of this race conquered the Turanians of Babylon, and established the largest dominion then known to men. The Chedor-Laomer of Abraham’s day was one of its mightiest sovereigns, and ruled over a thickly-settled region a thousand miles in length by five hundred in breadth. Faint traces of it are found in profane history, and the Bible narrative is sustained and largely amplified by inscriptions on ancient ruins. A second Hamite empire in Babylon is believed to have followed this, continuing four hundred years, carrying agriculture and the peaceful arts to a high state of development. 6. Egypt was peopled by the Hamitic race, who founded two kingdoms, afterwards united. Here, social, political, and industrial institutions developed very early in great strength. Their language, the pictorial representation of their social, political, and religious affairs, and the grand and gloomy majesty of their works of art, imply a long period of growth before they reached the maturity in which we find them when written history commences. Their institutions, even in the earliest historic times, showed signs of the decrepitude and decay of age. The vastness and the grim maturity of their monuments and language seem to lend much support to their claim of an immense antiquity. The future study of their remains of art and literature will settle some important problems in the chronology of the human race. The children of Ham were clearly the first to lead off in the march of civilization. The Semitic family, deriving its name from Shem, or Sem, the eldest son of Noah, is not as large nor as widely spread as the Turanian and Aryan, but has exerted an even greater influence on human destiny. It never strayed much from Asia, except to people small portions of Africa. They early appear in Western Asia as the successors of the second Hamitic empire in Babylon and Assyria. Settled in Phenicia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea, they became the first maritime and commercial people, and, with their colony established in Carthage, in the north of Africa, exerted a powerful influence in promoting the civilization of the ancient world. The Semites early peopled the Arabian peninsula, and established a state in Ethiopia, as some believe, before Egypt had attained its full development. The Ethiopians established a flourishing commerce on the Red Sea, with the eastern coasts of Africa, and with India, and contributed greatly to the resources of ancient Egypt.