The latest fashion is to regard the Babylonian or Chaldean Empire as antedating the Egyptian. Beginning with that, then dwell on the fact that this was a Semitic race. Relate them to the Jews of to-day, and to Abraham, a Semite from “Ur of the Chaldees.” Place Sargon the Elder at 3800 B.C. as marking, so we are told, the earliest verified date of history. Coming down to 2250 B.C., we reach Hammurabi, certainly the most interesting character of his people. Here again is a good occasion for special report. Some of the text-books give extracts from his code. Let one pupil find out from such extracts, or better yet, from the school library, some of the highly moral and kindly edicts. Let another show what trades and businesses these Babylonians had corresponding to our own, making special note of the fact that the commercial and business practices were highly developed. The essential thing about the Assyrian Empire is that it was the first power to reach out broadly for world control and to subjugate its neighbors. The Phœnicians are notable as the great traders of antiquity. Their skill in the arts gave them something to sell, and their location on the Mediterranean developed their powers of navigation. They seem to have been the first over-sea colonizers. Their trade routes and colonies would form a good report topic. By way of anticipation note Carthage, the coming rival of Rome. And our great debt to the Phœnicians is for the phonetic alphabet. Religious prejudice, or the fear of touching in public schools anything bearing on religion should not be allowed to make us neglect the Hebrew people. True or false, right or wrong, religion is one of the prime forces with mankind. And here we have another Semitic race developing as a matter of fact, regardless of any theories as to its origin, the most sublime monotheism and the purest code of morals which the world had yet seen. Why this should have been so is as mysterious as was the flowering of Greece in the Periclean age. But there is the fact, and every young student should be made familiar with it. Suggestions for a Lesson on Egypt.