We have hitherto completely ignored the seats of higher civilisation which were to be found in ancient times in the peninsula of Arabia. As early as the second millennium B.C. southwest Arabia, the Yemen, the country of the Sabæans and Himyars, which was well adapted for agriculture on account of the regular rains of its tropical summer, had developed a civilisation which has left, in the ruins of huge buildings and numerous inscriptions, monuments which still excite our admiration. The Greeks and Romans were not without justification when they spoke of a εὐδαίμων Ἀραβία, Arabia Felix, though their ideas of the character and extent of this “rich”[12] country were for the most part tolerably vague.[13] But several passages in the Old Testament bear witness to the high repute of the glory and splendour of the Sabæans. This is particularly evident in the legend of the queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon (1 Kings x, 1-10). Not the least part of the wealth of the Sabæans was due to their monopoly of the trade in certain fragrant substances, especially in the incense which in old times was used in immense quantities at sacrifices. These perfumes, especially incense, are mentioned in various passages of the Old Testament, together with gold and precious stones, as amongst the treasures of the Sabæans (1 Kings x, 2, 10; Jeremiah vi, 20; Ezekiel xxvii, 22; Isaiah lx, 6). These and other products were carried to the north by Sabæan caravans (cf. Isaiah lx, 6; Tobit vi, 16). In the inscriptions of northern Hijaz we now have documentary evidence to prove that the Sabæans established permanent trading-stations at a distance from their own country. At the height of their prosperity they must have exercised a civilising influence of no mean importance upon the rest of Arabia, especially upon those parts of the west which they traversed in their regular journeys. To them the Thamudæans, with whose buildings (known before only by the report of Arab writers) the labours of Doughty and Euting have made us acquainted, and the Nabatæans, who were closely connected with the Thamudæans, probably owed the first elements of their culture. Written characters, which came to the Sabæans from the north in very early days, were by them disseminated in every kind of transmutation over large portions of Arabia, as far as the neighbourhood of Damascus on the one hand and Abyssinia on the other. Nevertheless, take it all in all, the civilisation of the ancient Yemen bore little fruit for the world beyond. The countries about the Mediterranean received no intellectual stimulus worth speaking of from this remote region, nor did the old Semitic civilisation, nor Iran, receive more. And since the glory of the land of the Sabæans has departed its influence on other Arabs has become insignificant.