Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1884. The first volume embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian Empire.
Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_, 1903.
Hilprecht, _Old Babylonian Inscriptions_ chiefly from Nippur, 1893.
_Records of the Past_, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.
Tiele, _Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten_.
Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, 1898. The most complete account of the whole subject.
Jastrow, "Religion of Babylonia," in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v.
Jastrow, "On the Religion of the Semites," in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. i. p. 225, _sqq._
F. Jeremias in De la Saussaye, pp. 246-347.
E. H. W. Johns, _The Oldest Code of Laws in the World_, 1903.
"On the Code of Hammurabi." E. H. W. Johns, in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v.
The Chinese have always been a world in themselves, remote from other races of men; yet they developed a civilisation which is in many respects worthy to be compared with that of India or of the West. The people who made gunpowder and paper and who printed books, long before any of these things were done in Europe, might naturally think themselves the foremost nation of the earth. Their civilisation, however, has exercised no influence on the world outside of China, nor has it advanced to the higher achievements of the human mind. As their great wall secludes them from other nations, so do their mental habits prevent them from a free interchange of ideas with foreigners. The Mongolian race, indeed, from which, like the Hungarians and the Finns, they are descended, is so different from other races in many respects that some anthropologists suppose it to have a separate origin. Phlegmatic and matter-of-fact by nature, exact and careful in practical matters, and to a high degree imitative and industrious, the Chinese are singularly devoid of imagination and indisposed to philosophy. Their monosyllabic and uninflected language, belonging to one of the earliest strata of human speech, and ill fitted to express abstract or poetical ideas, is an index to their whole nature. If an awakening, as various signs appear to indicate, is now at hand for them, no one can tell how fast it will proceed, or what the final issue of it may be.