Read "The Greatest Story in the World, Period 1" by Horace G. Hutchinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Those, then, were the two great powers on land in the very old days / of the story of mankind. There was Egypt along the Nile, and / Babylonia -- for a thousand and more years, rather to be called / Assyria -- along the Euphrates and Tigris.
But there was also yet a third power, very great, very ancient, and / highly civilised, a sea-power, with its capital in the big island, / which you will sec on the map, lying to the south of Greece, Crete.