Identifier: cyclopediauniver1950ridp (find matches)
Title: Cyclopedia universal history : embracing the most complete and recent presentation of the subject in two principal parts or divisions of more than six thousand pages
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology World history
Publisher: Boston : Balch Bros.
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
es of men, andare of little value to modern scholarshipexcept as illustrative of a striking andpersistent feature of organization andbelief existing in tlie earliest ages ofhuman development. All the ancient nations strenuouslyinsisted that they were respectively themost ancient of all. Pri- strife of theority seems to have been JfgttTof prior-an idea which sufficed to ty-establish right, and make all thingslegitimate in primeval society. Wewere here first, and therefore possessthis region, and are greater than you,was the language of every primitivepeople to its neighbors. As a result ofthis disposition, claims to extravagantantiquity were advanced by all, andwere attested by long lines of successivemonarchs, in successive dynasties, ex-tending through fabulous ages. One ofthe principal devices to make good suchclaims was to extend the lives of theirrulers to hundreds and thousands ofyears. The Berosian scheme presentedabove of the Noachite dynasty inChaldsea down to the epoch of the
Text Appearing After Image:
DISTRIBUTION OF THE RACES.—NOACHITE DISPERSION. 447 Deluge is a sample of the plan whichthe ancients adopted to make good theirclaim of primogeniture and prescriptiveright. The Egyptians, not satisfiedwith even the fanciful expansion of theirdynasty, were wont to abandon terres-trial criteria and appeal to the planets fortheir antiquity. It was a common boastamong the Egyptian priests that theirpeople were Prosclenoi, that is, pre-Moonites, older than the moon in theiroccupancy and possession of Mizraim. In the discussion of the Mesopotamiandevelopment of the different branches ofChronology at the Noachite races, no at-th^e NoaThTtf tempt has been made to es-■3-ces. tablish the chronological relations of the several ethnic divisionsin the dispersion, or even to date thegeneral epoch to which they all be-longed. In fact, chronology is whollyat fault in considering such primitivemovements of the race. As to the timewhen the Noachites may be said to havebeen deflected to the west, an

Note About Images