its valley, branches,
and delta--Ancient irrigation systems--The Suez Canal, its inception and
completion--The great dam at Aswan--Ancient search for the sources of
the Nile--Modern discoveries in Central Africa--The Hieroglyphs--Origin
of the alphabet--Egyptian literature--Mariettas discoveries--The
German Egyptologists--Jeremiah verified--Maspero, Naville, and
Petrie--Palaeolithic man--Egyptian record of Israel--Egypt Exploration
Fund--The royal tombs at Abydos--Chronology of the early kings--Steles,
pottery, and jewelry-The temples of Abydos--Seals, statuettes, and
ceramics._

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CHAPTER I--THE CRUSADERS IN EGYPT

_The Ideal of the Crusader: Saladin's Campaign: Richard I. in Palestine:
Siege of Damietta: St. Louis in Egypt: The Mamluks: Beybars' Policy._

The traditional history of the Christian Church has generally maintained
that the Crusades were due solely to religious influence and sprang from
ideal and moral motives: those hundreds of thousands of warriors who
went out to the East were religious enthusiasts, prompted by the pious
longings of their hearts, and Peter the Hermit, it was claimed, had
received a divine message to call Christendom to arms, to preach
a Crusade against the unbelievers and take possession of the Holy
Sepulchre. That such ideal reasons should be attributed to a war like
the Crusades, of a wide and far-reaching influence on the political and
intellectual development of mediaeval Europe, is not at all surprising.
In the history of humanity there have been few wars in which the
combatants on both sides were not convinced that they had drawn their
swords for some noble purpose, for the cause of right and justice. That
the motives prompting the vast display of arms witnessed during the
Crusades, that the wanderings of those crowds to the East during two
centuries, and the cruelties committed by the saintly warriors on their
way to the Holy Sepulchre, should be attributed exclusively to ideal
and religious sources is therefore quite natural. It is not to be
denied that there was a religious factor in the Crusades; but that the
religious motive was not the sole incentive has now been agreed upon
by impartial historians; and in so far as the motives animating the
Crusaders were religious motives, we are to look to powerful influences
which gradually made themselves felt from without the ecclesiastical
organisations. It was by no means a movement