Page 452 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

King Ch eng agreed, and a site was cuusai uh mu xvhu..
River some hundred and fifty miles southwest of the millet fields
that now covered the ruins of Shang. In the peaceful years that

followed, the duke spent much of his time superintending the
building of this new city of Lo-yang and the raising of the
massive wall of beaten earth around it. But most of his time he

spent on his estates south of the river Wei, hunting and working
on his philosophy of Right Conduct. From there, looking across
the valley to the plateau beyond, he could see the great mounds

that covered the graves of his father King Wen and his brother
King Wu. There, when the time came, his own tumulus would

rise.

In these years the Duke of Chou is laying the foundation of a

realm which already stretches to the sea and which, with the
favor of the spirits of his ancestors, may well one day extend

from the South China Sea to the steppelands of Asia and the Roof
of the World; and in barbarian Europe the warriors of the Celtic
confederacy are dreaming of an empire covering the valleys of

the Rhine and the Danube, and who knows how far beyond.
But in the lands between, where once the great empires had
stretched, chaos is come again, small kings fight for small stakes,

and the farmers plow with sword at belt and one eye on the
nearest horizon.

In Egypt the last Rameses, the eleventh of the name, had
died sixty-five years ago, and at his death the high priest of
Amon in Thebes, who for so long had held the real power in the

south, had officially assumed the title of pharaoh. But at Tanis in
the delta a rival line of pharaohs continued. War between the
two centers of power had been avoided, largely because neither

could trust his mercenary armies, and it almost seemed at times
as though there was a tacit agreement that the title of King of

e Two Lands should be held alternately in the south and in the
north. Now, in 1020 b.c., Menkheperre ruled in Thebes as high
priest with royal powers, but recognized the title of pharaoh as-
umed by Amenemopet of Tanis. The people of Egypt were well

content that weak and rival pharaohs should court their sup­
port, while the lands beyond their frontier breathed easily,