Chapter XIV: {515} (2)

The thought of the present-day commentator and critic as to the ancient learning, is limited to and runs round the _exoterism_ of the temples; his insight is either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the solemn adyta of old, where the hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard the public worship in its true light. No ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of creation, and that the starry heaven and our mother earth were created for his sake. He, who doubts the assertion, may turn to the _Magical and Philosophical Precepts_ of Zoroaster, and find its corroboration in the following:[805]

“Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will of the Father, _not for your
sake_,
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon;
For she runs always by work of necessity.
The progression of the stars _was not generated for your sake_.”

A rather strange teaching to come from those who are universally believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the starry host, as gods. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being _beyond_ the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldean philosophers are accused, together with the ignorant masses, of Sabianism and sun-worship.

There was a vast difference between the _true_ worship taught to those who showed themselves worthy, and the state religions. The magians are accused of all kinds of superstition, but this is what a _Chaldean Oracle_ says:

“The wide aërial flight of birds _is not true_,
Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys,
The _basis of mercenary fraud_; flee from these
If you would open the sacred paradise of piety
Where virtue, wisdom, and equity, are assembled.”[806]

Surely, it is not those who warn people against “mercenary fraud” who can be accused of it; and if they accomplished acts which seem {536} miraculous, who can with fairness presume to deny that it was done merely because they possessed a knowledge of natural philosophy and psychological science to a degree unknown to our schools?

What did they not know? It is a well-demonstrated fact that the true meridian was correctly ascertained before the first pyramid was built. They had clocks and dials to measure time; their cubit was the established unit of linear measure, being 1,707 feet of English measure; according to Herodotus the unit of weight was also known; as money, they had gold and silver rings valued by weight; they had the decimal and duodecimal modes of calculation from the earliest times, and were proficient in algebra. “How could they otherwise,” says an unknown author, “bring into operation such immense mechanical powers, if they had not thoroughly understood the philosophy of what we term the mechanical powers?”

The art of making linen and fine fabrics is also proved to have been one of their branches of knowledge, for the _Bible_ speaks of it. Joseph was presented by Pharaoh with a vesture of fine linen, a golden chain, and many more things. The linen of Egypt was famous throughout the world. The mummies are all wrapped in it and the linen is beautifully preserved. Pliny speaks of a certain garment sent 600 years B. C., by King Amasis to Lindus, every single thread of which was composed of 360 minor threads twisted together. Herodotus gives us (book i.), in his account of Isis and the Mysteries performed in her honor, an idea of the beauty and “admirable softness of the linen worn by the priests.” The latter wore shoes made of papyrus and garments of _fine linen_, because this goddess first taught the use of it; and thus, besides being called _Isiaci_, or priests of Isis, they were also known as _Linigera_, or the “linen-wearing.” This linen was spun and dyed in those brilliant and gorgeous colors, the secret of which is likewise now among the lost arts. On the mummies we often find the most beautiful embroidery and bead-work ornamenting their shirts; several of such can be seen in the museum of Bulak (Cairo), and are unsurpassable in beauty; the designs are exquisite, and the labor seems immense. The elaborate and so much vaunted Gobelins tapestry, is but a gross production when compared with some of the embroidery of the ancient Egyptians. We have but to refer to _Exodus_ to discover how skilful was the workmanship of the Israelitish pupils of the Egyptians upon their tabernacle and sacred ark. The sacerdotal vestments, with their decorations of “pomegranates and golden bells,” and the thummim, or jewelled breastplate of the high priest, are described by Josephus as being of unparalleled beauty and of wonderful workmanship; and yet we find beyond doubt that the Jews adopted their rites and ceremonies, and {537} even the special dress of their Levites, from the Egyptians. Clemens Alexandrinus acknowledges it very reluctantly, and so does Origen and other Fathers of the Church, some of whom, as a matter of course, attribute the coincidence to a clever trick of Satan in anticipation of events. Proctor, the astronomer, says in one of his books, “The remarkable breastplate worn by the Jewish high priest was derived directly from the Egyptians.” The word _thummim_ itself is evidently of Egyptian origin, borrowed by Moses, like the rest; for further on the same page, Mr. Proctor says that, “In the often-repeated picture of judgment the deceased Egyptian is seen conducted by the god Horus (?), while Anubis places on one of the balances a vase supposed to contain his good actions, and in the other is the emblem of truth, a representation of Thmèi, the goddess of truth, which was also worn on the judicial breastplate.” Wilkinson, in his _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, shows that the Hebrew _thummim_ is a plural form of the word Thmèi.[807]

All the ornamental arts seem to have been known to the Egyptians. Their jewelry of gold, silver, and precious stones are beautifully wrought; so was the cutting, polishing, and setting of them executed by their lapidaries in the finest style. The finger-ring of an Egyptian mummy—if we remember aright—was pronounced the most artistic piece of jewelry in the London Exhibition of 1851. Their imitation of precious stones in glass is far above anything done at the present day; and the emerald may be said to have been imitated to perfection.

In Pompeii, says Wendell Phillips, they discovered a room full of glass; there was ground-glass, window-glass, cut-glass, and colored-glass of every variety. Catholic priests who broke into China 200 years ago, were shown a glass, transparent and colorless, which was filled with liquor made by the Chinese, and which appeared to be colorless like water. “This liquor was poured into the glass, and then looking through, it seemed to be filled with fishes. They turned it out and repeated the experiment and again it was filled with fishes.” In Rome they show a bit of glass, a transparent glass, which they light up so as to show you that there is nothing concealed, but in the centre of the glass is a drop of colored glass, perhaps as large as a pea, mottled like a duck, and which even a miniature pencil could not do more perfectly. “It is manifest that this drop of liquid glass must have been poured, because there is no joint. This must have been done by a greater heat than the annealing process, because that process shows breaks.” In relation to their wonderful art of imitating precious stones, the lecturer speaks of the “celebrated vase of the Genoa {538} Cathedral,” which was considered for long centuries “a solid emerald.” “The Roman Catholic legend of it was that it was one of the treasures that the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, and that it was the identical cup out of which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper.” Subsequently it was found not to be an emerald, but an imitation; and when Napoleon brought it to Paris and gave it to the Institute, the scientists were obliged to confess that it _was not a stone_, and that they could not tell what it was.

Further, speaking of the skill of the ancients in metal works, the same lecturer narrates that “when the English plundered the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China, the European artists were surprised at seeing the curiously-wrought metal vessels of every kind, far exceeding all the boasted skill of the workmen of Europe.” African tribes in the interior of the country gave travellers _better razors_ than they had. “George Thompson told me,” he adds, “he saw a man in Calcutta throw a handful of floss silk into the air, and a Hindu sever it into pieces with his sabre of native steel.” He concludes by the apt remark that “the steel is the greatest triumph of metallurgy, and metallurgy is the glory of chemistry.” So with the ancient Egyptians and Semitic races. They dug gold and separated it with the utmost skill. Copper, lead, and iron were found in abundance near the Red Sea.

In a lecture delivered in 1873, on the _Cave-Men of Devonshire_, Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., stated on the authority of some Egyptologists that the first iron used in Egypt was _meteoric_ iron, as the earliest mention of this metal is found in an Egyptian document, in which it is called the “stone from heaven.” This would imply the idea that the only iron which was in use in days of old was meteorite. This may have been the case at the commencement of the period embraced in our present geological explorations, but till we can compute with at least approximate accuracy the age of our excavated relics, who can tell but that we are making a blunder of possibly several hundred thousand years? The injudiciousness of dogmatizing upon what the ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians did _not_ know about mining and metallurgy is at least partially shown by the discoveries of Colonel Howard Vyse. Moreover, many of such precious stones as are only found at a great depth in mines are mentioned in Homer and the Hebrew Scriptures. Have scientists ascertained the precise time when mining-shafts were first sunk by mankind? According to Dr. A. C. Hamlin, in India, the arts of the goldsmith and lapidary have been practiced from an “unknown antiquity.” That the Egyptians either knew from the remotest ages how to temper steel, or possessed something still better and more perfect than the implement necessary in our days for chiselling, is an alternative from which the archæologists cannot escape. How else could they have produced such artistic chiselling, or wrought such sculpture {539} as they did? The critics may take their choice of either; according to them, steel tools of the most exquisite temper, or some other means of cutting sienite, granite, and basalt; which, in the latter case, must be added to the long catalogue of lost arts.

Professor Albrecht Müller says: “We may ascribe the introduction of bronze manufacture into Europe to a great race immigrant from Asia some 6,000 years ago, called Aryas or Aryans.... Civilization of the East preceded that of the West by many centuries.... There are many proofs that a considerable degree of culture existed at its very beginning. Bronze was yet in use, _but iron as well_. Pottery was not only shaped on the lathe, but burned a good red. Manufactures in glass, gold, and silver, are found for the first time. In lonely mountain places are yet found dross, and the remains of iron-furnaces.... To be sure, this dross is sometimes ascribed to volcanic action, but it is met with where volcanoes never could have existed.”

But it is in the process of preparing mummies that the skill of this wonderful people is exemplified in the highest degree. None but those who have made special study of the subject, can estimate the amount of skill, patience, and knowledge exacted for the accomplishment of this indestructible work, which occupied several months. Both chemistry and surgery were called into requisition. The mummies, if left in the dry climate of Egypt, seem to be practicably imperishable; and even when removed after a repose of several thousand years, show no signs of change. “The body,” says the anonymous writer, “was filled with myrrh, cassia, and other gums, and after that, saturated with natron.... Then followed the marvellous swathing of the embalmed body, so artistically executed, that professional modern bandagists are lost in admiration at its excellency.” Says Dr. Grandville: “ ... there is not a single form of bandage known to modern surgery, of which _far better and cleverer examples_ are not seen in the swathings of the Egyptian mummies. The strips of linen are found without one single joint, extending to 1,000 _yards_ in length.” Rossellini, in Kenrick’s _Ancient Egypt_, gives a similar testimony to the wonderful variety and skill with which the bandages have been applied and interlaced. There was not a fracture in the human body that could not be repaired successfully by the sacerdotal physician of those remote days.

Who but well remembers the excitement produced some twenty-five years ago by the discovery of anæsthesia? The nitrous oxide gas, sulphuric and chloric ether, chloroform, “laughing gas,” besides various other combinations of these, were welcomed as so many heavenly blessings to the suffering portion of humanity. Poor Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, in 1844, was the discoverer, and Drs. Morton and Jackson reaped the {540} honors and benefits in 1846, as is usual in such cases. The anæsthetics were proclaimed “the greatest discovery ever made.” And, though the famous _Letheon_ of Morton and Jackson (a compound of sulphuric ether), the chloroform of Sir James Y. Simpson, and the nitrous oxide gas, introduced by Colton, in 1843, and by Dunham and Smith, were occasionally checked by fatal cases, it still did not prevent these gentlemen from being considered public benefactors. The patients successfully put to sleep sometimes awoke no more; what matters that, so long as others were relieved? Physicians assure us that accidents are now but rarely apprehended. Perhaps it is because the beneficent anæsthetic agents are so parsimoniously applied as to fail in their effects one-half of the time, leaving the sufferer paralyzed for a few seconds in his external movements, but feeling the pain as acutely as ever. On the whole, however, chloroform and laughing gas are beneficent discoveries. But, are they the first anæsthetics ever discovered, strictly speaking? Dioscorides speaks of the stone of Memphis (_lapis Memphiticus_), and describes it as a small pebble—round, polished, and very sparkling. When ground into powder, and applied as an ointment to that part of the body on which the surgeon was about to operate, either with his scalpel or fire, it preserved that part, and _only that part_ from any pain of the operation. In the meantime, it was perfectly harmless to the constitution of the patient, who retained his consciousness throughout, in no way dangerous from its effects, and acted so long as it was kept on the affected part. When taken in a mixture of wine or water, all feeling of suffering was perfectly deadened.[808] Pliny gives also a full description of it.[809]

From time immemorial, the Brahmans have had in their possession secrets quite as valuable. The widow, bent on the self-sacrifice of con-cremation, called _Sahamaranya_, has no dread of suffering the least pain, for the fiercest flames will consume her, without one pang of agony being experienced by her. The holy plants which crown her brow, as she is conducted in ceremony to the funeral pile; the sacred root culled at the midnight hour on the spot where the Ganges and the Yumna mingle their waters; and the process of anointing the body of the self-appointed victim with ghee and sacred oils, after she has bathed in all her clothes and finery, are so many _magical_ anæsthetics. Supported by those she is going to part with in body, she walks thrice around her fiery couch, and, after bidding them farewell, is cast on the dead body of her husband, and leaves this world without a single moment of suffering. “The semi-fluid,” says a missionary writer, an {541} eye-witness of several such ceremonies—“the ghee, is poured upon the pile; it is instantly inflamed, and the _drugged_ widow dies quickly of _suffocation_ before the fire reaches her body.”[810]

No such thing, if the sacred ceremony is only conducted strictly after the prescribed rites. The widows are never drugged in the sense we are accustomed to understand the word. Only precautionary measures are taken against a useless physical martyrdom—the atrocious agony of burning. Her mind is as free and clear as ever, and even more so. Firmly believing in the promises of a future life, her whole mind is absorbed in the contemplation of the approaching bliss—the beatitude of “freedom,” which she is about to attain. She generally dies with the smile of heavenly rapture on her countenance; and if some one is to suffer at the hour of retribution, it is not the earnest devotee of her faith, but the crafty Brahmans who know well enough that no such ferocious rite was ever prescribed.[811] As to the victim, after having been consumed, she becomes a _sati_—transcendent purity—and is canonized after death.

Egypt is the birthplace and the cradle of chemistry. Kenrick shows the root of the word to be _chemi_ or chem, which was the name of the country (_Psalms_ cv. 27). The chemistry of colors seems to have been thoroughly well known in that country. Facts are facts. Where among our painters are we to search for the artist who can decorate our walls with imperishable colors? Ages after our pigmy buildings will have crumbled into dust, and the cities enclosing them will themselves have become shapeless heaps of brick and mortar, with forgotten names—long after that will the halls of Karnak and Luxor (El-Uxor) be still standing; and the gorgeous mural paintings of the latter will doubtless be as bright and vivid 4,000 years hence, as they were 4,000 years ago, and are to-day. “Embalming and fresco-painting,” says our author, “was not a chance discovery with the Egyptians, but brought out from definitions and maxims like any induction of Faraday.”

Our modern Italians boast of their Etruscan vases and paintings; the {542} decorative borders found on Greek vases provoke the admiration of the lovers of antiquity, and are ascribed to the Greeks, while in fact “they were but copies from the Egyptian vases.” Their figures can be found any day on the walls of a tomb of the age of Amunoph I., a period at which Greece was not even in existence.

Where, in our age, can we point to anything comparable to the rock-temples of Ipsambul in Lower Nubia? There may be seen sitting figures seventy feet high, carved out of the living rock. The torso of the statue of Rameses II., at Thebes, measures sixty feet around the shoulders, and elsewhere in proportion. Beside such titanic sculpture our own seems that of pigmies. Iron was known to the Egyptians at least long before the construction of the first pyramid, which is over 20,000 years ago, according to Bunsen. The proof of this had remained hidden for many thousands of years in the pyramid of Cheops, until _Colonel Howard Vyse found it in the shape of a piece of iron, in one of the joints, where it had evidently been placed at the time this pyramid was first built_. Egyptologists adduce many indications that the ancients were perfectly well acquainted with metallurgy in prehistoric times. “To this day we can find at Sinai large heaps of scoriæ, produced by smelting.”[812] Metallurgy and chemistry, as practiced in those days, were known as _alchemy_, and were at the bottom of prehistoric magic. Moreover, Moses proved his knowledge of alchemical chemistry by pulverizing the golden calf, and strewing the powder upon the water.

If now we turn to navigation, we will find ourselves able to prove, on good authorities, that Necho II. fitted out a fleet on the Red Sea and despatched it for exploration. The fleet was absent above two years and instead of returning through the Straits of Babelmandel, as was wont, sailed back through the Straits of Gibraltar. Herodotus was not at all swift to concede to the Egyptians a maritime achievement so vast as this. They had, he says, been spreading the report that “returning homewards, they had the sunrise on their right hands; a thing which to me is incredible.” “And yet,” remarks the author of the heretofore-mentioned article, “this incredible assertion is now proved _incontestable_, as may well be understood by any one who has doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Thus it is proved that the most ancient of these people performed a feat which was attributed to Columbus many ages later. They say they anchored twice on their way; sowed corn, reaped it and, sailing away, steered in triumph through the Pillars of Hercules and eastward along the Mediterranean. “There was a people,” he {543} adds, “much more deserving of the term ‘_veteres_’ than the Romans and Greeks. The Greeks, young in their knowledge, sounded a trumpet before these and called upon all the world to admire their ability. Old Egypt, grown gray in her wisdom, was so secure of her acquirements that, she did not invite admiration and cared no more for the opinion of the flippant Greek than we do to-day for that of a Feejee islander.”

“O Solon, Solon,” said the oldest Egyptian priest to that sage. “You Greeks are ever childish, having no ancient opinion, no discipline of any long standing!” And very much surprised, indeed, was the great Solon, when he was told by the priests of Egypt that so many gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon were but the disguised gods of Egypt. Truly spoke Zonaras: “All these things came to us from Chaldea to Egypt; and from thence were derived to the Greeks.”

Sir David Brewster gives a glowing description of several automata; and the eighteenth century takes pride in that masterpiece of mechanical art, the “flute-player of Vaucanson.” The little we can glean of positive information on that subject, from ancient writers, warrants the belief that the learned mechanicians in the days of Archimedes, and some of them much anterior to the great Syracusan, were in no wise more ignorant or less ingenious than our modern inventors. Archytas, a native of Tarentum, in Italy, the instructor of Plato, a philosopher distinguished for his mathematical achievements and wonderful discoveries in practical mechanics, constructed a wooden dove. It must have been an extraordinarily ingenious mechanism, as it flew, fluttered its wings, and sustained itself for a considerable time in the air. This skilful man, who lived 400 years B.C., invented besides the wooden dove, the screw, the crane, and various hydraulic machines.[813]

Egypt pressed her own grapes and made wine. Nothing remarkable in that, so far, but she brewed her own beer, and in great quantity—our Egyptologist goes on to say. The Ebers manuscript proves now, beyond doubt, that the Egyptians used beer 2,000 years B.C. Their beer must have been strong and excellent—like everything they did. Glass was manufactured in all its varieties. In many of the Egyptian sculptures we find scenes of glass-blowing and bottles; occasionally, during archæological researches, glasses and glassware are found, and very beautiful they seem to have been. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that the Egyptians cut, ground, and engraved glass, and possessed the art of introducing gold between the two surfaces of the substance. They imitated with glass, pearls, emeralds, and all the precious stones to a great perfection.

Likewise, the most ancient Egyptians cultivated the musical arts, and {544} understood well the effect of musical harmony and its influence on the human spirit. We can find on the oldest sculptures and carvings scenes in which musicians play on various instruments. Music was used in the Healing Department of the temples for the cure of nervous disorders. We discover on many monuments men playing in bands in concert; the leader beating time by clapping his hands. Thus far we can prove that they understood the laws of harmony. They had their sacred music, domestic and military. The lyre, harp, and flute were used for the sacred concerts; for festive occasions they had the guitar, the single and double pipes, and castanets; for troops, and during military service, they had trumpets, tambourines, drums, and cymbals. Various kinds of harps were invented by them, such as the lyre, _sambuc_, _ashur_; some of these had upward of twenty strings. The superiority of the Egyptian lyre over the Grecian is an admitted fact. The material out of which were made such instruments was often of very costly and rare wood, and they were beautifully carved; they imported it sometimes from very distant countries; some were painted, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and ornamented with colored leather. They used catgut for strings as we do. Pythagoras learned music in Egypt and made a regular science of it in Italy. But the Egyptians were generally considered in antiquity as the best music-teachers in Greece. They understood thoroughly well how to extract harmonious sounds out of an instrument by adding strings to it, as well as the multiplication of notes by shortening the strings upon its neck; which knowledge shows a great progress in the musical art. Speaking of harps, in a tomb at Thebes, Bruce remarks that, “they overturn all the accounts hitherto given of the earliest state of music and musical instruments in the East, and are altogether, in their form, ornaments and compass, an incontestable proof, _stronger than a thousand Greek quotations_, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and music were at the greatest perfection when these instruments were made; and that the period from which we date the invention of these arts was only _the beginning of the era of their restoration_.”

On the walls of the palace of Amenoph II. at Thebes, the king is represented as playing chess with the queen. This monarch reigned long before the Trojan war. In India the game is known to have been played at least 5,000 years ago.

As to their knowledge in medicine, now that one of the lost _Books of Hermes_ has been found and translated by Ebers, the Egyptians can speak for themselves. That they understood about the circulation of the blood, appears certain from the _healing manipulations_ of the priests, who knew how to draw blood downward, stop its circulation for {545} awhile, etc. A more careful study of their _bas-reliefs_ representing scenes taking place in the healing hall of various temples will easily demonstrate it. They had their dentists and oculists, and no doctor was allowed to practice more than one specialty; which certainly warrants the belief that they lost fewer patients in those days than our physicians do now. It is also asserted by some authorities that the Egyptians were the first people in the world who introduced trial by jury; although we doubt this ourselves.

But the Egyptians were not the only people of remote epochs whose achievements place them in so commanding a position before the view of posterity. Besides others whose history is at present shut in behind the mists of antiquity—such as the prehistoric races of the two Americas, of Crete, of the Troäd, of the Lacustrians, of the submerged continent of the fabled Atlantis, now classed with myths—the deeds of the Phœnicians stamp them with almost the character of demi-gods.

The writer in the _National Quarterly Review_, previously quoted, says that the Phœnicians were the earliest navigators of the world, founded most of the colonies of the Mediterranean, and voyaged to whatever other regions were inhabited. They visited the Arctic regions, whence they brought accounts of eternal days without a night, which Homer has preserved for us in the _Odyssey_. From the British Isles they imported tin into Africa, and Spain was a favorite site for their colonies. The description of Charybdis so completely answers to the maëlstrom that, as this writer says: “It is difficult to imagine it to have had any other prototype.” Their explorations, it seems, extended in every direction, their sails whitening the Indian Ocean, as well as the Norwegian fiords. Different writers have accorded to them the settlement of remote localities; while the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean was occupied by their cities. A large portion of the African territory is asserted to have been peopled by the races expelled by Joshua and the children of Israel. At the time when Procopius wrote, columns stood in Mauritania Tingitana, which bore the inscription, in Phœnician characters, “We are those who fled before the brigand Joshua, the son of Nun or Navè.”

Some suppose these hardy navigators of Arctic and Antarctic waters have been the progenitors of the races which built the temples and palaces of Palenque and Uxmal, of Copan and Arica.[814] Brasseur de Bourbourg gives us much information about the manners and customs, architecture and arts, and especially of the magic and magicians of the ancient Mexicans. He tells us that Votan, their fabulous hero {546} and the greatest of their magicians, returning from a long voyage, visited King Solomon at the time of the building of the temple. This Votan appears to be identical with the dreaded Quetzo-Cohuatl who appears in all the Mexican legends; and curiously enough these legends bear a striking resemblance, insomuch as they relate to the voyages and exploits of the Hittim, with the Hebrew _Bible_ accounts of the Hivites, the descendants of Heth, son of Chanaan. The record tells us that Votan “furnished to Solomon the most valuable particulars as to the men, animals, and plants, the gold and precious woods of the Occident,” but refused point-blank to afford any clew to the route he sailed, or the manner of reaching the mysterious continent. Solomon himself gives an account of this interview in his _History of the Wonders of the Universe_, the chief Votan figuring under the allegory of the _Navigating Serpent_. Stephens, indulging in the anticipation “that a key surer than that of the Rosetta-stone will be discovered,” by which the American hieroglyphs may be read,[815] says that the descendants of the Caciques and the Aztec subjects are believed to survive still in the inaccessible fastnesses of the Cordilleras—“wildernesses, which have never yet been penetrated by a white man, ... living as their fathers did, erecting the same buildings ... with ornaments of sculpture and plastered; large courts, and lofty towers with high ranges of steps, and still carving on tablets of stone the same mysterious hieroglyphics.” He adds, “I turn to that vast and unknown region, untraversed by a single road, wherein fancy pictures that mysterious city seen from the topmost range of the Cordilleras of unconquered, unvisited, and unsought aboriginal inhabitants.”

Apart from the fact that this mysterious city has been seen from a great distance by daring travellers, there is no intrinsic improbability of its existence, for who can tell what became of the primitive people who fled before the rapacious brigands of Cortez and Pizarro? Dr. Tschuddi, in his work on Peru, tells us of an Indian legend that a train of 10,000 llamas, laden with gold to complete the unfortunate Inca’s ransom, was arrested in the Andes by the tidings of his death, and the enormous treasure was so effectually concealed that not a trace of it has ever been found. He, as well as Prescott and other writers, informs us that the Indians to this day preserve their ancient traditions and sacerdotal caste, and obey implicitly the orders of rulers chosen among themselves, while at the same time nominally Catholics and actually subject to the Peruvian authorities. Magical ceremonies practiced by their forefathers still prevail among them, and magical phenomena occur. So persistent are they in their loyalty to the {547} past, that it seems impossible but that they should be in relations with some central source of authority which constantly supports and strengthens their faith, keeping it alive. May it not be that the sources of this undying faith lie in this mysterious city, with which they are in secret communication? Or must we think that all of the above is again but a “curious coincidence?”

The story of this mysterious city was told to Stephens by a Spanish Padre, in 1838-9. The priest swore to him that he had seen it with his own eyes, and gave Stephens the following details, which the traveller firmly believed to be true. “The Padre of the little village near the ruins of Santa Cruz del Quichè, had heard of the unknown city at the village of Chajul.... He was then young, and climbed with much labor to the naked summit of the topmost ridge of the sierra of the Cordillera. When arrived at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and saw, at a great distance, a large city spread over a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun. Tradition says that no white man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya language, know that strangers have conquered their whole land, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory.... They have no coin; no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals except fowls, and the cocks they keep underground to prevent their crowing being heard.”

Nearly the same was given us personally about twenty years ago, by an old native priest, whom we met in Peru, and with whom we happened to have business relations. He had passed all his life vainly trying to conceal his hatred toward the conquerors—“brigands,” he termed them; and, as he confessed, kept friends with them and the Catholic religion for the sake of his people, but he was as truly a sun-worshipper in his heart as ever he was. He had travelled in his capacity of a _converted_ native missionary, and had been at Santa Cruz and, as he solemnly affirmed, had been also to see some of his people by a “subterranean passage” leading into the mysterious city. We believe his account; for a man who is about to die, will rarely stop to invent idle stories; and this one we have found corroborated in Stephen’s _Travels_. Besides, we know of two other cities utterly unknown to European travellers; not that the inhabitants particularly desire to hide themselves; for people from Buddhistic countries come occasionally to visit them. But their towns are not set down on the European or Asiatic maps; and, on account of the too zealous and enterprising Christian missionaries, and perhaps for more mysterious reasons of their own, the few natives of other countries who are aware of the existence of these two cities never mention them. Nature has provided strange nooks and hiding-places {548} for her favorites; and unfortunately it is but far away from so-called civilized countries that man is free to worship the Deity in the way that his fathers did.

Even the erudite and sober Max Müller is somehow unable to get rid of _coincidences_. To him they come in the shape of the most unexpected discoveries. These Mexicans, for instance, whose obscure origin, according to the laws of probability, has no connection with the Aryans of India, nevertheless, like the Hindus, represent an eclipse of the moon as “the moon being devoured by a dragon.”[816] And though Professor Müller admits that an historical intercourse between the two people was suspected by Alexander von Humboldt, and he himself considers it possible, still the occurrence of such a fact he adds, “need not be the result of any historical intercourse. As we have stated above, the origin of the aborigines of America is a very vexed question for those interested in tracing out the affiliation and migrations of peoples.” Notwithstanding the labor of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and his elaborate translation of the famous _Popol-Vuh_, alleged to be written by Ixtlilxochitl, after weighing its contents, the antiquarian remains as much in the dark as ever. We have read the _Popol-Vuh_ in its original translation, and the review of the same by Max Müller, and out of the former find shining a light of such brightness, that it is no wonder that the matter-of-fact, skeptical scientists should be blinded by it. But so far as an author can be judged by his writings, Professor Max Müller is no unfair skeptic; and, moreover, very little of importance escapes his attention. How is it then that a man of such immense and rare erudition, accustomed as he is to embrace at one eagle glance the traditions, religious customs, and superstitions of a people, detecting the slightest similarity, and taking in the smallest details, failed to give any importance or perhaps even suspect what the humble author of the present volume, who has neither scientific training nor erudition, to any extent, apprehended at first view? Fallacious and unwarranted as to many may seem this remark, it appears to us that science loses more than she gains by neglecting the ancient and even mediæval esoteric literature, or rather what remains of it. To one who devotes himself to such study many a coincidence is transformed into a natural result of demonstrable antecedent causes. We think we can see how it is that Professor Müller confesses that “now and then ... one imagines one sees certain periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again.”[817] May it not be barely possible that this chaos is intensified by the fact that most of the scientists, directing the whole of their attention to history, skip that which they treat as “vague, contradictory, {549} miraculous, absurd.” Notwithstanding the feeling that there was “a groundwork of noble conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of fantastic nonsense,” Professor Müller cannot help comparing this nonsense to the tales of the _Arabian Nights_.

Far be from us the ridiculous pretension of criticising a scientist so worthy of admiration for his learning as Max Müller. But we cannot help saying that even among the fantastic nonsense of the _Arabian Nights’ Entertainments_ anything would be worthy of attention, if it should help toward the evolving of some historical truth. Homer’s _Odyssey_ surpasses in fantastic nonsense all the tales of the _Arabian Nights_ combined; and notwithstanding that, many of his myths are now proved to be something else besides the creation of the old poet’s fancy. The Læstrygonians, who devoured the companions of Ulysses, are traced to the huge cannibal[818] race, said in primitive days to inhabit the caves of Norway. Geology verified through her discoveries some of the assertions of Homer, supposed for so many ages to have been but poetical hallucinations. The perpetual daylight enjoyed by this race of Læstrygonians indicates that they were inhabitants of the North Cape, where, during the whole summer, there is perpetual daylight. The Norwegian fiords are perfectly described by Homer in his _Odyssey_, x. 110; and the gigantic stature of the Læstrygonians is demonstrated by human bones of unusual size found in caves situated near this region, and which the geologists suppose to have belonged to a race extinct long before the Aryan immigration. Charybdis, as we have seen, has been recognized in the maëlstrom; and the Wandering Rocks[819] in the enormous icebergs of the Arctic seas.

If the consecutive attempts at the creation of man described in the _Quichè Cosmogony_ suggests no comparison with some Apocrypha, with the Jewish sacred books, and the kabalistic theories of creation, it is indeed strange. Even the _Book of Jasher_, condemned as a gross forgery of the twelfth century, may furnish more than one clew to trace a relation between the population of Ur of the Kasdeans, where Magism flourished before the days of Abraham, and those of Central and North America. The divine beings, “brought down to the level of human nature,” perform no feats or tricks more strange or incredible than the miraculous performances of Moses and of Pharaoh’s magicians, while many of these are exactly similar in their nature. And when, moreover, in addition to this latter fact, we find so great a resemblance between certain kabalistic terms common to both hemispheres, there must be something else than mere accident to account for the circumstance. {550} Many of such feats have clearly a common parentage. The story of the two brothers of Central America, who, before starting on their journey to Xibalba, “plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother’s house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead,”[820] finds its analogy in the beliefs of many other countries. In the _Popular Tales and Traditions_, by Sacharoff (Russia), one can find a similar narrative, and trace this belief in various other legends. And yet these fairy tales were current in Russia many centuries before America was discovered.

In recognizing in the gods of Stonehenge the divinities of Delphos and Babylon, one need feel little surprised. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names, and have travelled far and wide. The Both-al of Ireland points directly to its first parent, the Batylos of the Greeks and the Beth-el of Chanaan. “History,” says H. de la Villemarque, “which took no notes at those distant ages, can plead ignorance, but the science of languages affirms. Philology, with a daily-increasing probability, has again linked together the chain hardly broken between the Orient and the Occident.”[821]

No more remarkable is the discovery of a like resemblance between the Oriental myths and ancient Russian tales and traditions, for it is entirely natural to look for a similarity between the beliefs of the Semitic and Aryan families. But when we discover an almost perfect identity between the character of Zarevna Militrissa, with a _moon_ in her forehead, who is in constant danger of being devoured by _Zmeÿ Gorenetch_ (the Serpent or Dragon), who plays such a prominent part in all popular Russian tales, and similar characters in the Mexican legends—extending to the minutest details—we may well pause and ask ourselves whether there be not here more than a simple coincidence.

This tradition of the Dragon and the Sun—occasionally replaced by the Moon—has awakened echoes in the remotest parts of the world. It may be accounted for with perfect readiness by the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when Asia, Europe, Africa, and America were covered with the temples sacred to the sun and the dragons. The priests assumed the names of their deities, and thus the tradition of these spread like a net-work all over the globe: “Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his god.”[822] But still, “if the {551} original conception is natural and intelligible ... and its occurrence need not be the result of any historical intercourse,” as Professor Müller tells us, the details are so strikingly similar that we cannot feel satisfied that the riddle is entirely solved. The origin of this universal symbolical worship being concealed in the night of time, we would have far more chance to arrive at the truth by tracing these traditions to their very source. And where is this source? Kircher places the origin of the Ophite and heliolatrous worship, the shape of conical monuments and the obelisks, with the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus.[823] Where, then, except in Hermetic books, are we to seek for the desired information? Is it likely that modern authors can know more, or as much, of ancient myths and cults as the men who taught them to their contemporaries? Clearly two things are necessary: first, to find the missing books of Hermes; and second, the key by which to _understand_ them, for reading is not sufficient. Failing in this, our savants are abandoned to unfruitful speculations, as for a like reason geographers waste their energies in a vain quest of the sources of the Nile. Truly the land of Egypt is another abode of mystery!

Without stopping to discuss whether Hermes was the “Prince of postdiluvian magic,” as des Mousseaux calls him, or the antediluvian, which is much more likely, one thing is certain: The authenticity, reliability, and usefulness of the _Books of Hermes_—or rather of what remains of the thirty-six works attributed to the Egyptian magician—are fully recognized by Champollion, junior, and corroborated by Champollion-Figeac, who mentions it. Now, if by carefully looking over the kabalistical works, which are all derived from that universal storehouse of esoteric knowledge, we find the fac-similes of many so-called miracles wrought by magical art, equally reproduced by the Quichès; and if even in the fragments left of the original _Popol-Vuh_, there is sufficient evidence that the religious customs of the Mexicans, Peruvians, and other American races are nearly identical with those of the ancient Phœnicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians; and if, moreover, we discover that many of their religious terms have etymologically the same origin; how are we to avoid believing that they are the descendants of those whose forefathers “fled before the brigand, Joshua, the son of Nun?” “Nuñez de la Vega says that Nin, or Imos, of the Tzendales, was the Ninus of the Babylonians.”[824]

It is possible that, so far, it may be a coincidence; as the identification of one with the other rests but upon a poor argument. “But it is known,” adds de Bourbourg, “that this prince, and according {552} to others, his father, Bel, or Baal, received, like the Nin of the Tzendales, the homages of his subjects under the shape of a serpent.” The latter assertion, besides being fantastic, is nowhere corroborated in the Babylonian records. It is very true that the Phœnicians represented the sun under the image of a dragon; but so did all the other people who symbolized their sun-gods. Belus, the first king of the Assyrian dynasty was, according to Castor, and Eusebius who quotes him, deified, _i. e._, he was ranked among the gods “after his death” only. Thus, neither himself nor his son, Ninus, or Nin, could have received their subjects under the shape of a serpent, whatever the Tzendales did. Bel, according to Christians, is Baal; and Baal is the Devil, since the Bible prophets began so designating every deity of their neighbors; therefore Belus, Ninus, and the Mexican Nin are serpents and devils; and, as the Devil, or father of evil, is one under many forms, therefore, under whatever name the serpent appears, it is the Devil. Strange logic! Why not say that Ninus the Assyrian, represented as husband and victim of the ambitious Semiramis, was high priest as well as king of his country? That as such he wore on his tiara the sacred emblems of the dragon and the sun? Moreover, as the priest generally assumed the name of his god, Ninus was said to receive his subject as the representative of this serpent-god. The idea is preëminently Roman Catholic, and amounts to very little, as all their inventions do. If Nuñez de la Vega was so anxious to establish an affiliation between the Mexicans and the biblical sun-and serpent-worshippers, why did he not show another and a better similarity between them without tracing in the Ninevites and the Tzendales the hoof and horn of the Christian Devil?

And to begin with, he might have pointed to the _Chronicles_ of Fuentes, of the kingdom of Guatemala, and to the _Manuscript_ of Don Juan Torres, the grandson of the last king of the Quichès. This document, which is said to have been in the possession of the lieutenant-general appointed by Pedro de Alvarado, states that the Toltecas themselves descended from the house of Israel, who were released by Moses, and who, after crossing the Red Sea, fell into idolatry. After that, having separated themselves from their companions, and under the guidance of a chief named Tanub, they set out wandering, and from one continent to another they came to a place named the Seven Caverns, in the Kingdom of Mexico, where they founded the famous town of Tula, etc.[825]

If this statement has never obtained more credit than it has, it is simply due to the fact that it passed through the hands of Father Francis Vasques, historian of the Order of San Francis, and this {553} circumstance, to use the expression employed by des Mousseaux in connection with the work of the poor, unfrocked Abbé Huc, “is not calculated to strengthen our confidence.” But there is another point as important, if not more so, as it seems to have escaped falsification by the zealous Catholic padres, and rests chiefly on Indian tradition. A famous Toltecan king, whose name is mixed up in the weird legends of Utatlan, the ruined capital of the great Indian kingdom, bore the biblical appellation of Balam Acan; the first name being preëminently Chaldean, and reminding one immediately of Balaam and his human-voiced ass. Besides the statement of Lord Kingsborough, who found such a striking similarity between the language of the Aztecs (the mother tongue) and the Hebrew, many of the figures on the bas-reliefs of Palenque and idols in _terra cotta_, exhumed in Santa Cruz del Quichè, have on their heads bandelets with a square protuberance on them, in front of the forehead, very similar to the phylacteries worn by the Hebrew Pharisees of old, while at prayers, and even by devotees of the present day, particularly the Jews of Poland and Russia. But as this may be but a fancy of ours, after all, we will not insist on the details.

Upon the testimony of the ancients, corroborated by modern discoveries, we know that there were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended toward the Libyan desert, and were known as the _Serpent’s_ catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the sacred mysteries of the _kúklos ànágkés_, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “circle of necessity;” the inexorable doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and when it had been judged in the Amenthian region.

In de Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican demi god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage, which ran underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a snake’s hole, “_un ahugero de colubra_;” and that he was admitted to it because he was himself “a son of the snakes,” or a serpent.[826]

This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the _snake’s hole_ is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of Babylon, generally styled themselves the “Sons of the Serpent-god,” or “Sons of the Dragon;” not because—as des Mousseaux would have his readers believe—they were the progeny of Satan-incubus, the old serpent of Eden, but because, in the Mysteries, the serpent was the symbol of WISDOM and immortality. “The {554} Assyrian priest bore always the name of his god,” says Movers.[827] The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid!” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin-brother to the Carnac of Bretagné, the latter Carnac meaning the serpent’s mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the dragon, only because it was the symbol of the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the highest god—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.[828] Besides the surname of serpents, they were called the “builders,” the “architects;” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such, that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” says Taliesin.[829]

De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”[830] And des Mousseaux, rejoicing because he believes himself fairly on the serpent’s, or rather, devil’s trail, hurries to explain: “According to the most learned commentators of our sacred books, the Chivim or Hivim, or _Hevites_, descend from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham ... _the accursed_!”[831]