Civilization arose about 5,000 years before Christ, when over a wide arc of land between the Caucasus and the Red Sea men began to till the soil; and because they tilled the soil their permanent villages slowly increased to cities. To a primitive mind agriculture is obviously a divine activity. The god makes the seedcorn grow in the ground; he also controls the seasons, and you must plant and weed, or in a more advanced culture plough the field, at the time arranged by the divine calendar. So these early cities were ruled by their gods, through human intermediaries. Sometimes the human intermediary was himself a god, like the Pharaoh of Egypt; sometimes, as in the Sumerian cities, he was the high priest, who alone could communicate with heaven. But in either case the source of his power was supernatural; it had nothing to do with his prowess in war. Probably the last remaining representative of these divine rulers is the Emperor of Japan.
