Elements of General History Ancient And Modern

as history becomes useful and important, its cer lainty increases, and its materials are more abundant. Various notions have been formed with respect to the population of the antediluvian world and its physical appearance; but as these are rather matters of theory than of fact, ihey scarcely full within the province of history ; and they are of the less consequence, because we are certain that the state of those antediluvian ages could have had no material influence on the timas which succeeded them. The books of Moses afford the earliest authentic history of the ages immediately following the deluge. About 150 years after that event, Nimrod (the Belus of profane historians) Iwiit Babylon, and Assur built Nineveh, which became the capital of the Assyrian empire. Ninus the son of Belus, and his queen Semiramis, are said to have raised the empire of Assyria to a higher degree of splendour. From the death of Nmias the son of Ninus, down to the revolt of the Medes under Sardanapalus, a period of 800 years, there is a chasm in the history of Assyria and Babylon. This is to be supplied only from conjecture. The earliest periods of the Egyptian history are equally uncertain with those of the Assyrian. Menes is supposed the first king of Egypt; probably the Misraim of the Holy Scriptures, the grandson ot Xoah, or, as others conjecture, the Oziris of Egypt, the inventor of arts, and the civilizer of a great part of the eastern world. After Menes or...