Ebook The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East

IN this volume we turn from the great books of the Semitic races to trace the earliest literature and the expanding thought of the Aryan peoples, the ancestors of the Europeans of to — day. The Aryans first stepped forth as political leaders of the world in the year 539 when, as noted in our earliest volume, Cyrus, the great Persian conqueror, seized posses sion of Babylon. Ancient Babylon had been for thousands of years the center of Semitic thought and culture and power. Since then, for other thousands of years, the Aryan peoples, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and modern Europeans, have held control of the earth.