Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 3/Number 5/Ancient History

ANCIENT HISTORY.

We understand by history a record of events that are past, and that it embraces chronology, biography, manners and customs, statistics, governments, and the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations and empires. It is divided and subdivided into as many different heads as we have mentioned, but the two grand divisions are into ancient and modern.

Ancient history embraces that period of time which elapsed from the creation to the fall of the western empire of the Romans, and the final subjugation of Italy by the Lombards, a period of 4480 years. Little authentic accounts can be had of the antediluvians other than what we gather from the Pentateuch. All seems left to conjecture or imagination. What the state of society was, what its improvements were before the flood, we know not, but nearly all we do know is that it embraced a period of about 1656 years. The most authentic history we have of events that transpired immediately subsequent to the deluge is also that recorded by Moses. That gives us the manners, customs, laws and regulations distinctly, of but one nation.-Others are mentioned incidentally or introduced partially and collaterally as seemed necessary to delineate the character, describe the manners and customs and portray the events that occurred among the Hebrews, as they were called.

About 150 years after the deluge, Nimrod (Belus of profane history) built Babylon, which became the capital of the Babylonish empire; and Assur built Ninevah, which became the capital of the Assyrian empire.

Ninus the son of Belus and his queen, Semiramis are said to have raised the Assyrian empire to a high degree of splendor. But there is a chasm in the history of this empire from the death of Ninias, the son of Ninus, of about 800 years. The history of this empire during this period can only be supplied by conjecture. The governments of these nations were monarchies, but that of the Hebrews in the earliest periods of their history, was patriarchal.

The idea of conquest appears to have grown out of the conflicting interests of the shepherd kings: and from what we learn of them, we ought not to associate in our minds with any of them an extent of territory beyond that of a large plantation or a few thousand acres. The occupants and residents upon this were the subjects of the king and constituted his defence in war and his property in peace. These kings may have been elective, but the greater probability is, their government was more or less absolute according to the temper and disposition of the reigning monarch, and was hereditary. Polygamy and concubinage were allowable, but adultery was discountenanced.

The arts and sciences flourished in but a limited degree; the knowledge of building was more or less perfect, from necessity, even before the flood, and Tubal-Cain, the great grandson of Adam was an instructor of artificers in brass and iron.

We shall now notice some of the larger kingdoms; governments and nations as we pass, and as their history is more or less interwoven and identified with that of the Hebrews, to whom God gave revelations, laws and rulers.

Egypt being the first considerable and powerful government will deserve a passing notice in our next. Ed.