The date of the founding of this, the eighteenth, dynasty was 1580 B.C.; and with this period begins what is called the New Empire. The word "empire," taking the place of that of kingdom, seems to show that the Egyptians were claiming to extend their power beyond their own country. And we know that they actually did so. I do not want, for the moment, to follow down the story of Egypt any further than this, because it is time that we turned our eyes eastward, to see what was going on along that other great river-fed region, where the Euphrates and the Tigris flow down together. The point which we have now come to in the Egyptian {24} story is a point at or about which new and great things began to happen. The two great world forces--that of Egypt on the one side and that of Babylonia, which is the name given to the empire established in the east, on the other--began to clash together as they had not clashed before. Their rivalry, and the wars between them, and the catching up into these wars and the squeezing between them of the unfortunate smaller peoples that lived in the country by which the two big empires were divided--these are the principal things in the story of the world for a thousand years and more after the time of the founding of the eighteenth dynasty. So we must now try to make out something of the story of that other great power along those more eastern rivers. But before we go to that eastern story I want to put in a chapter, the chapter that I spoke of a few pages back, to tell you something about the religion of the old Egyptians, the strange gods that they worshipped, the burial of their dead, their tombs, their language, and their sacred writing or hieroglyphic. I think, however, before we begin the new chapter, I should like you to take a look at the map again and observe the position of the two great river-courses--the western, which we have been talking about, and the eastern, to which we are soon to come--because these are the real big facts which matter in the world's story. The Egyptian religion and all connected with it are most interesting, but the clash of the big empires was what made the early history of the world. [Sidenote: The two empires]