V. M. Hillyer

“ At that time, and even to-day when ignorant people see an eclipse of the sun, they think that something dreadful is going to happen—the end of the world, perhaps, just because they have never seen such a strange sight before and do not know that it is a thing that happens regularly and that no harm comes from it. ”

“ The real stars in the sky have no points. They are huge burning coals of fire—coals of fire. Each star, however, is so huge that there is nothing in the world now anywhere nearly as big. One little bit, one little scrap of a star is bigger than our whole world—than our whole world. ”

“ Mars or Ares is the terrible god of war, who is only happy when a war is going on—so that he is happy most of the time.
Mercury or Hermes is the messenger of the gods. He has wings on his cap and on his sandals, and he carries in his hand a wonderful winged stick or wand, which, if placed between two people who are quarreling, will immediately make them friends. ”

“ Minerva’s Greek name is Athene, and she founded a great city in Greece and named it after herself, Athens. She is supposed to look out for this city as a mother does for her child.
Venus or Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. She is the most beautiful of the goddesses as Apollo is the most beautiful of the gods. She is said to have been born from the sea-foam. Cupid, her son, is a little chubby boy with a quiver of arrows on his back. ”

“ Egypt, without water, would be like the great Sahara Desert, which is not far away. It is the Nile, therefore, that makes the land so rich and Egypt such an easy and cheap country to live in, for food grows with little or no labor and costs almost nothing. Besides this, the climate is so warm that people need little clothing and do not have to buy coal or make fires to heat their houses. So it was to this country that the Hamites at last came, finally settled down, and were thereafter called Egyptians.
The first Egyptian king whose name we know was Menes, but we do not know much about him. ”

“ It is necessary to hear something interesting about each one before you can begin to recall names and faces. Likewise an introduction to World History, the characters and places in which are utterly unknown strangers to the child, must be something more than a mere name introduction, and there must be very few introductions given at a time or both names and faces will be instantly forgotten. It is also necessary to repeat new names constantly in order that the pupil may gradually become familiarized with them, for so many strange people and places are bewildering. ”

“ Men who study the stars and other heavenly bodies are called astronomers, and the Babylonians, therefore, were famous astronomers.
The Egyptians worshiped animals; but it was quite natural that the Babylonians should worship these wonderful heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars, and they did.
The first king of Babylonia whom we know much about—and that much is very little—was Sargon I, who may have lived about the same time that the pyramids were built in Egypt. ”

“ Well, there was a time long, long, long ago when there were no men or women or children, NO PEOPLE of any kind in the whole world. Of course there were no houses, for there was no one to build them or to live in them, no towns or cities—nothing that people make. ”

“ If you have a spare wall, either in the play-room, attic, or barn such a Staircase of Time on a large scale may be drawn upon it from floor to reaching height and made a feature if elaborated with pictures or drawings of people and events. If the wall faces the child’s bed so much the better, for when lying awake in the morning or at any other time, instead of imagining fantastic designs on the wall-paper, he may picture the crowded events on the Staircase of Time. ”

“ Then, after that, they found out that tin when mixed with copper made a still harder and better metal than either alone. This metal, made of tin and copper together, we now call bronze; and for two or three thousand years people made their tools and weapons out of bronze. And so we call the time when men used bronze tools, and bronze weapons for hunting and fighting, the Bronze Age.
At last some man discovered iron, and he soon saw that iron was better for most useful things than either copper or bronze. The Iron Age started with the discovery of iron, and we are still in the Iron Age. ”

“ Solomon was the last great king the Jews ever had. After he died the Jewish nation gradually broke up and went to pieces, and the great Jewish people are to-day without a king, without a capital, and without a country of their own, but are found in every other country of the world. ”

“ About the same time the Jews were leaving Egypt, about the time when people were beginning to use iron instead of bronze, that is, about 1300 B.C., we first begin to hear of Hellas and the Hellenes, of Greece and the Greeks.
The Greeks believed in many gods, not in one God as we do and as the Jews did, and their gods were more like people in fairy-tales than like divine beings. Many beautiful statues have been made of their different gods, and poems and stories have been written about them. ”

“ Babylonia was a very rich country, for the two rivers brought down and dropped great quantities of earth just as the Nile did in Egypt, and this made very rich soil. Wheat, from which we make bread, is called the staff of life. It is the most valuable of all foods which grow. It is supposed that wheat first grew in Babylonia. Dates in that part of the world are almost as important a food as wheat. Dates, too, grow there very plentifully. Now, you may think dates are something to be eaten almost like candy but in Babylonia dates took the place of oatmeal. ”

“ That is a long time for any one to spend in trying to solve a puzzle, isn’t it? But after this “key” to the puzzle was found, men were able to read all of the hieroglyphics in Egypt and so to find out what happened in that country long before Christ was born.
This stone is called the Rosetta Stone, from the Rosetta Mouth of the Nile where it was found. It is now in the great British Museum in London and is very famous, because from it we were able to learn so much history which we otherwise would not have known.
Egypt was ruled over by a king who was called a Pharaoh. ”

“ So at last the Greeks decided to try a trick to get into the city. They built a huge horse of wood, and inside this wooden horse they put soldiers. They placed the horse in front of the city walls and then sailed away as if at last they were giving up the war. The Trojans were told by a spy that the horse was a gift of the gods and that they ought to take it into the city. A Trojan priest named La-oc-o-on, however, told his people not to have anything to do with the horse, for he suspected a trick. But people seldom take advice when told not to do what they want to do. ”

“ The Egyptians did not worship one God as we do. They believed in hundreds of gods and goddesses, and they had a special god for every sort of thing, who ruled over and had charge of that thing—a god of the farm, a god of the home, and so on. Some of their gods were good and some were bad, but the Egyptians prayed to them all. ”

“ The pyramids therefore were tombs of the kings who built them while they were alive to be monuments to themselves when they were dead. In fact a king was much more interested in building a home for his dead body than he was in a home for his live body. So, instead of palaces, kings built pyramids. There are many of these pyramids built along the bank of the Nile, and most of them were built, we think, just after 3000 B.C.
When a building is being put up nowadays, men use derricks and cranes and engines to haul and raise heavy stones and beams. ”

“ Yet, if there had been no such country as Phenicia, you might now be learning at school to read and write in hieroglyphics or in cuneiform.
Up to this time, you know, people had very clumsy ways of writing. The Egyptians had to draw pictures, and the Babylonians made writing like chicken-tracks. The alphabet that the Phenicians invented had twenty-two letters, and from it we get the alphabet we use to-day. ”

“ The attitude, however, usually assumed by teachers, that “even if the pupil forgets it all, there will be left a valuable impression,” is too often an apology for superficial teaching and superficial learning. History may be made just as much a “mental discipline” as some other studies, but only if difficulties of dates and other abstractions are squarely met and overcome by hard study and learned to be remembered, not merely to be forgotten after the recitation. ”

“ They were supposed to live on Mount Olympus, which was the highest mountain in Greece. These gods were not always good, but often quarreled and cheated and did even worse things. The gods lived on a kind of food that was much more delicious than what we eat. It was called nectar and ambrosia, and the Greeks thought it made those who ate it immortal; that is, so that they would never die.
Let me introduce you to the family of the gods. I know you will be pleased to meet them. Most of them have two names.
Jupiter or Zeus is the father of the gods and the the king who rules over all human beings. ”

“ We have also found the bones of the people themselves, who must have died thousands upon thousands of years ago, long before any one began to write down history. So we know that the people who were living on the earth then were working and playing, eating and fighting—doing many of the same things we are to-day—especially the fighting. ”

“ The blind beggar Homer sang of his fairy-tale gods. The great King David sang of his one God.
These songs are the Psalms, which you hear read and sung in church.
Nowadays even a popular song is popular for only a few months, but the songs which David wrote almost three thousand years ago are still popular to-day! The Twenty-third Psalm, which starts, “The Lord is my shepherd,” is one of the most beautiful and a good one to learn by heart. David likens himself to a sheep and his Lord to a good shepherd who tenderly looks out for the comfort and safety of his sheep. ”

“ Well, in nineteen hundred years only nineteen men each a hundred years old might have lived one after the other—nineteen men one after the other since the time of Christ—and that doesn’t seem so long after all! ”

“ There are many other less important gods and goddesses as well as some gods that are half human, such as the three Fates and three Graces and the nine Muses.
Some of the planets in the sky which look like stars are still called by the names of these Greek gods. Jupiter is the name of the largest planet. Mars is the name of one that is reddish—the color of blood. Venus is the name of one that is very beautiful. There is also a Mercury and a Neptune.
It is hard for us to understand how the Greeks could have prayed to such gods as these, but they did. ”

“ Their only rule of life was hurt and kill what you can, and run from what you can’t. This is what we call the first law of nature—every man for himself. They knew if they didn’t kill they would be killed, for there were no laws nor police to protect them. ”

“ So men, women, and children of this time were called Cave People.
They spent their days hunting some animals and running and hiding from others. They caught animals by trapping them in a pit covered over with bushes, or they killed them with a club or a rock if they had a chance, or with stone-headed arrows or hatchets. They even drew pictures of these animals on the walls of their caves, scratching the picture with a pointed stone, and some of these pictures we can still see to-day. ”

“ Along the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates were the only civilized nations living in the Bronze Age. The rest of the World people knew nothing about. There may have been Cave Men living in other parts of the World, but it is only of the people in these two places that we have any written history until after the Iron Age began. ”

“ Menes, First Egyptian king . . 3400 B.C.
6 The Puzzle-Writers
People of the Stone Age had learned how to talk to each other, but they could not write, for there was no such thing as an alphabet or written words, and so they could not send notes or messages to one another or write stories. The Egyptians were the first people to think of a way to write what they wanted to say.
The Egyptians did not write with letters like ours, however, but with signs that looked like little pictures, a lion, a spear, a bird, a whip. ”