ANCIENT ‘EGYPT, ASIA MINOR, AND" CRERE 
different family, gradually died out of everyday use, being 
employed in later times mainly for religious purposes, 
somewhat as the Church in medieval Europe employed 
Latin. 
The amalgamated peoples continued their progress in 
the civilized arts, and in time certain of their kings con- 
quered the first “world empires” of which history tells. 
But these were rather small affairs, although their found- 
ers gave themselves such lofty titles as “King of the Four 
Quarters of the World.”” At the most they only occupied 
the valleys of the Two Rivers, occasionally extending 
from the Persian Gulf as far as the Mediterranean. And 
rarely did these early empires display any permanence, 
almost always falling to pieces soon after the death of their 
founders. 
Man had not yet found out how to organize wide terr1- 
tories occupied by different peoples into a harmonious 
whole on a basis of common interest. Usually ancient 
peoples very naturally met this need of something in 
common to weld subject races together by extending 
among them the worship of the conquering king, whom 
his own subjects had all along adored as divine. This was 
done not out of pride or vainglory, but for the very prac- 
tical purpose of making the head of the state a symbol of 
imperial unity. The various conquered peoples naturally 
had their own gods, to whom they continued to pay honor 
as of yore, but to the worship of these was added that of 
the ruler, as something in which all the peoples of the 
empire could unite. 
At some unknown epoch in the prehistoric past another 
important domestic animal, the donkey, was introduced 
into Babylonia, apparently from the valley of the Nile. 
But not until much later, about the year 2000 B. c., do we 
first find mentioned that other even more useful animal, 
the horse. It seems to have reached Babylonia from 
the mountainous regions to the east. In the course of two 
or three centuries it revolutionized the whole conduct of 
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