Chapter XXIV: Conclusion (5)

[453] The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian. To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah, and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye.

[454] The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake. I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply defined. The mummy of King Mer en Rá (Sixth Dynasty), found near the Sakkarah pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years. He can hardly be dated later than B.C. 3000; and, reckoning from that period to A.D. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers.

[455] The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The Nilotes are οὐλότριχοι and ἐριόκομοι, with woolly locks, slightly flat like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp. It is also a mistake to make the Nubians λισσότριχοι: none of the Nile Valley races are lank-haired like Hindús, Chinese, and Australians.

[456] The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59) is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the ‘high antiquity theory’; and appears astonished to find ‘anything placed centuries previous to the Noahitic Deluge.’ Of this more presently.

[457] Each generation contained a ‘Piromis, son of a Piromis.’ The word, made equivalent to _Kalos k’ agathos_ (= _galantuomo_), _Pe-Rome_, the man, opposed to _Pe-Neter_, the god.

[458] Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point where it now rises (‘solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur’), he probably means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which presided at its rising.

[459] The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief. Wilkinson’s day derived it from _Phra_ (_pa-Ra_), the sun; now it is explained _Per-áo_, the Great House, in the sense of ‘Sublime Porte.’

[460] _Antiquité des Races Humaines._ Paris, 1862.

[461] The ‘black land,’ opposed to _Tesher_, the ‘red land’ (Edom, Idumæa, Erythræa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also called on the monuments _A’in_ (_Æan_ in Pliny) and _Ta-mera_ (_Mera_, _Tomera_), the ‘inundation region.’ Another old name, _Aeria_, is from יאר, _Yior_, the Nile. _Kemi_ must not be confounded with _Khem_, _Chemmis_, universal nature, the generative and reproductive principle—_Pan_. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis ‘_umbraculo_ maxime similis est habitus,’ I would change the first word to ‘umbilico.’ The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains the latter.

[462] Hecatæus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (_Ereb_, _Gharb_, the West) and Asia (_Asiyeh_, the East). Their successors added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and the Father of History a most insufficient fourth—the Nilotic Delta. The latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor Asia, but a land _per se_.

[463] In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (_Od._ xiv. 268). Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptah-land (_Ezek._ xxix. 14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces generally, may have named the πάταικοι (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh.

[464] Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the subject of Aria’s enormous development.

[465] As a specimen of the roots—which are most remarkable when they consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest words—take ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’ The former is from the Egyptian _pa-pa_ (root _p_), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the latter is _ma-ma_ (root _m_), to carry, be pregnant, bear. _Mut_ becomes _mátá_, μήτηρ, _mater_, mother: _Mer_ (_a-mor_), love; _meran_ (_morior_), die, and _more_ (_mare_), the sea. In ‘Semitic’ we have _má_, Heb. and Arab. _má_, water; and a long array of other words (as _ia_, yes, yea; and _na_, nay) too extensive for notice.

[466] Characterised chiefly by post- instead of pre-positions, by additions to the verb which make it causal, reflective, and so forth, and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient _Sakas_ = Scythians.

[467] To Aryan I much prefer the older term ‘Iranian’; Iran (Persia), which once extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean, being one of the great centres where the ‘Aryo’-Egyptian element of language developed itself, and where a typical race is still found. Nor is there much objection to ‘Turanian,’ Turan being the non-Iranian regions to the east, Tartary and China. But ‘Semitic,’ which contains a myth and a theory, should be changed into ‘Arabian.’ Egypto-Arabic attained its purest and highest development in the Peninsula; Hebrew is a northern and somewhat barbarous dialect; Syriac is a north-western offspring; Galla, a western; and so forth.

[468] For whose erection every ‘authority’ gives his or her own date. Mr. Proctor’s calculation, based upon the precession of the equinoxes, is B.C. 3350. It appears to me that we also obtain the date from the position of the polar star (α Draconis), which looked down the axis of the great entrance-passage before this long tube was blocked up. We may thus assume between B.C. 3440 and B.C. 3350.

[469] _Records of the Past_, ii. 120; and _Trans. Bibl. Soc._ i. ii. 383–85.

[470] Brugsch, vol. ii. chap. xiv.

[471] One nome (_Tanis_) carried a crescent and one star, others had two and three of the latter. The emblem passed over to the Byzantine Empire, and now we see upon the Egyptian flag the crescent and Seb, the five-rayed star. It is thus distinguished from the Turkish, which has seven rays.

[472] See chap. viii.

[473] The popular conception of the Noachian Deluge is a study. There have been millions of local and partial floods; but wherever and whenever a traveller finds the legend of an inundation he incontinently applies it to ‘the Flood.’ Dr. Livingstone could not refrain from so doing at the petty Lake Dilolo. And it is to be noted that the Egyptians, accustomed to annual freshets, utterly ignored one general cataclysm as held by the Greeks.

[474] ‘Nuhu’ is found in the Nahrai tomb, Beni Hasan (Osburn, i. 239); other names are Noum, Nouf, and Nef.

[475] Amun Ra (Hephæstus, Vulcan), the veiled Osiris, the ‘Hidden One of Thebes,’ is thus addressed in a papyrus:—

He is One only, alone sans equal,
Dwelling above in the Holy of Holies.

Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’

[476] Mr. Froude _metaphysicises_ when he tells us that the religion of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man.

[477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her ideograph is the ell-measure.

[478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them.

[479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so φύσις from φύω, and _natura_ from _nascor_. Mystically, _Ya_ is the past, _Ha_ the present, and _Vah_ the future.

[480] My fellow-traveller, the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, has neglected the derivation of the ‘Prophet’ grade by Jewry from Egypt; his interesting volume (_The Old Testament, &c._) wants more Egyptianism. The Prophets of Nile-land had their merits; they foretold that Pharaoh Necho’s Suez Canal would be more useful to strangers than to natives.

[481] The High Priest’s robe in Jewry had 366 bells, symbolising the days of the Sothic-sidereal year. In the times of the early Pharaohs, the ‘Queen of the New Year’ appeared in coincidence with the beginning of the solar year. The Sothic æra had been fixed from observations before Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty, circ. B.C. 1580).

[482] Yet the end of chap. xix. is distinctly teleological. Were there two Jobs?

[483] Abraham, the legendary forefather of the Hebrews, was a Chaldæan from Ur of the Chaldees. On the east bank of the Euphrates lies Uru-ki, Erech, or Warká, fronted by Ur, Uru, or Mughayr: the Bedawin still call the latter ‘Urhha’ in memory of ‘Ur.’ Thus Abraham was a hill-man from the harsh and rugged regions fringing Southern Armenia. Hence the ‘Jewish face,’ with its strongly marked features and its wealth of hair and beard, appears everywhere in the sculptures of ancient Babylonia and Persia. Hence, too, the superficial observation that the Afghans and hill-tribes west of the Indus are Jews because they have the typical Jewish look. The reason is that all are derived from the same ethnic centre, a great watershed of race.

[484] In this section of the nineteenth century three popular crazes are producing a literature of vigorous growth. The first is the Shakespearian; not Shakespeare, but Bacon, or some other Palmerstonian pet, wrote Shakespeare. The second, apparently a by-blow of the Book of Mormon, is the descent of John Bull from the ‘Lost Tribes,’ who were never lost. The third is the Pyramid craze; and the rough common sense of the public has embodied it in ‘the Inspired British Inch’: these Pyramidists mostly forget that _the_ Pyramid is one of three greater and some seventy lesser items which form the cemetery of Memphis.

[485] Yet it is remarkable, observes Brugsch (i. 212), that from the earliest ages the curse of the Typhonic gods clings to gold. So Plutarch (_Isis and Osiris_) tells us that the worshippers were directed not to wear the noble metal; and this still is a general rule in El-Islam.

[486] Silver, the ‘next folly of mankind,’ says Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 31), showing his own, and rivalling Horace’s ‘aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm.’ Strange to say, neither old Egypt nor Assyria had a coinage, which Herodotus (i. 94) and a host of other writers attribute to the Lydians, the forefathers of the Etruscans. Its representative in the Nile Valley was the ring-money, which extended to ancient Britain, and which is still preserved in many parts of Africa. The golden ‘manillas’ discovered at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus, where the breaks of the circle are adorned with the heads of animals, lions and asps, show what the now meaningless thickening of these parts originally meant.

[487] ‘Lead is also united by the aid of white lead (tin); white lead with white lead by the agency of oil’ (Pliny, xxxiii. 30).

[488] _The Captivity of Hans Stade_, p. 145.

[489] Properly speaking, to ‘damascene’ is confined to ‘grit’ or inlaid iron or steel, the word evidently deriving from Damascus, once so famous for Swords. Johnson (_Dict._, Longmans, 1805) explains the word ‘damask,’ ‘linen or silk woven in a manner invented at Damascus, by which part, by a various direction of the threads, exhibits flowers or other forms.’ Percy (_Metal._ p. 185) inclines towards ‘Damascus’; but he suggests that the ‘word “damask” applied to steel may have been derived, not from the place of manufacture but from a fancied resemblance between the markings in question and the damask patterns on textile fabrics.’

[490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (_Metallurgy_, p. 23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, _alias_ Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert Hendrick (London, 1847).

[491] Plutarch relates (_De Isid._ 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty), who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a Sword.

[492] _Ḳrsha_, _Krasher_, or _Krershra_. The determinative is a squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i. 51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the Sword.

[493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, _Hemitybion_ is Egyptian, evidently corrupted.

[494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis, was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (_Primer of Homer_, p. 97: Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, _temp._ Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, B.C. 1500.

[495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe.

[496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa (chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows.

[497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’ Mr. Gerald Massey, author of _A Book of the Beginnings_, favoured me with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the hinder thigh ([Hieroglyphs], _Shepsh_, or [Hieroglyphs], _Khepsh_), of the ‘old Genitrix’ of the Typhonian type, _Kfa_ or _Kefa_ (force, power, might); the Goddess of the Great Bear and the place of birth. Hence the [Hieroglyphs] (_Ru_) or ‘mouth’ of the Sword came to be synonymous with the ‘edge’ of the Sword (Genesis xxxiv. 36). In the Denderah zodiac, the central figure, the ‘old Genitrix,’ holds the Khopsh-chopper or falchion with the right hand. The ‘thigh of Khepsh’ is also the Egyptian rudder-oar. The Great Bear Khepsh is one of the earliest measures of the Seasons: the Chinese still say that at nightfall the ‘handle of the northern bushel’ (tail of Ursa Major) points east in spring, south in summer, west in autumn, and north in winter.

Mr. Gerald Massey’s two fine volumes have secured him, and will secure him, much bitter and hostile criticism from the many-headed who are lynx-eyed as to details while they overlook the general scheme. His object has been to show that religion and literature, science and art, originated in Egypt; and here he is undoubtedly right. Relying upon the self-evident fact that the language of the hieroglyphs contains ‘Semitic’ as well as ‘Aryan’ roots and derivative forms, he traces these throughout the languages of the world. Whether we judge his work conclusive or not, we cannot but admire and applaud the vast reading and research which he has brought to bear upon the most interesting subject.

And in another way Mr. Massey has done good. He has uttered a lively and emphatic protest against the Sanskritists and their over-weening pretensions. In vol. ii. (p. 56) he shows how shallow is the conclusion that Ophir was in India because the produce brought back by Solomon’s fleets had, according to Professor Max Müller, Sanskrit or Dravidian names. ‘_Koph_’ the ape is _Kapi_ in Sansk.; but it is pure Egyptian, _Kapi_, whence the Gr. κῆπ-ος or κῆβ-ος. ‘_Tukkiyim_’ (peacocks) resembles the Toki of Tamil and the Togei of Malabar; but the root is evidently the Egyptian _Tekh_ or _Tekai_, a symbolical bird. ‘_Shen habim_’ (teeth of elephant = tusks) may derive from the Sansk. _Ibau_, an elephant, but the latter is originally _Ab_ in Egyptian. These erroneous views, coming from an authoritative source, are at once accepted, copied into popular books, and find their way round the world, to the confusion of true knowledge. They make it our hapless fate to learn, unlearn, and relearn. See ‘ape’ in Smith’s _Dict. of the Bible_, and, to quote one in dozens, the _Trans. Anthrop. Soc._ p. 435, May 1882,—‘the name for ape in “Kings” and in Greek authors, both adopted from Sanskrit.’

Mr. Massey unfortunately has not studied Arabic, hence many views which will hardly find acceptance. In interpreting the hieroglyphics he has wisely preferred the ideographic symbolism and the determinatives which, countless ages ago, preceded the phonetic and alphabetic forms.

[498] For further notice of the Kopis, see chap. xi.

[499] Also _v._ to decapitate: the Coptic form is _Sebi_ or _Sefi_.

[500] Bunsen, v. 758.

[501] Bunsen’s _Egypt_, v. 429. According to Castor, the two Swords pointed at the throat of a kneeling man was the priest’s stamp denoting pure beasts, fit for sacrifice. He has noted that this survival points distinctly to human sacrifice in older days.

[502] Yet the tombs at Beni Hasan date 900 years before the popular era of the Trojan war.

[503] _Monum._ 262 fol., plates 11, 15.

[504] Rosellini shows a long tapering blade with a mid-rib, apparently sunken, and a raised surface on each side. The length is divided into five parts, smooth and hatched (?).

[505] The Somal have retained three other notable peculiarities of ancient Egypt; the wig (worn by the old Nilotes); the _Uts_ ([Hieroglyphs]) or wooden head-stool acting pillow, which further north was a half-cylinder of alabaster finely carved; and the ostrich-feather head-gear The latter was a symbol of Truth among the old Egyptians, because, says Hor Apollo, the wing-feathers are of equal length. The Romans adopted it as a military decoration. ‘Your courage has not yet given your helmet wherewithal to shade your face from the burning sun,’ say the Kurds, who add to the crest a new feather for every foe slain in fight. The Somal, after victory or murder, stick the white variety in the mop-head. We still use the phrase ‘a feather in his cap.’ The ‘Prince of Wales’ feather’ is an Egyptian ideograph of Truth. Mr. Gerald Massey seems to think that Wilkinson’s ‘_Thmei_’ (II. chap. viii.) is ‘only a backward rendering of the Greek “_Themis_”‘; that the feathers are ‘_Shu_’ ([Hieroglyphs]), and that the goddess is ‘_Ma_’ ([Hieroglyphs]), or ‘_Mati_.’ But surely the root of _Themis_ would be in ‘_Ta-Ma_,’ _the_ Goddess (of Truth)?

[506] Compare _Raa_, Heb. and Ar., ‘he saw’; Gr. ὁράω, and Lat. _Ra-dius_.

[507] Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks that the groove which is constant in these Caucasian blades is a little out of the central line, and does not correspond on each side, an alternation showing that it is derived from the ogee form. I have suggested that the idea arose from the arrow-head ‘bellied on a twist,’ and have figured the weapon in the next page (fig. 170).

[508] _Bronze, &c._ p. 298.

[509] Chap. v.

[510] Returning from the exploration of Harar (1853), I sent a small collection of Somali weapons to the United Service Institution.

[511] The form is accurately preserved in the formidable Afghan ‘Charay’ or one-edged knife.

[512] _A Critical Inquiry_, &c.

[513] I have shown that the heraldic Sword in the East preserves this double sword-knot (chap. vii.).

[514] The Baghirmi, according to Denham, adore a long lance of peculiar construction: this spear-worship is also practised by the Marghi and the Musghu. It extended from ancient Rome to certain of the Pacific Isles; while the Fijians worship the war-club. At Baroda in Gujarát superstitious honours are paid to the Gaekhwar’s golden cannons with silver wheels.

[515] English and Styrian razors are also largely imported.

[516] Chap. viii.

[517] Athenæus (i. 27) speaks of the Thracian dance in arms, ‘men jumping up very high with light springs, and using Swords.’ At last one of them strikes another, so that it seemed to everyone that the man was wounded.

[518] _Marocco_, page 66 (Milano, Treves, 1876).

[519] Hence the ardent desire of the Abyssinians, when first visited by Europeans, to obtain civilised Swords. Father F. Alvarez (_Hakluyt Soc._ 1881), who lived in Abyssinia between 1520 and 1527, shows the Barnagais (_Bahr-Negush_, or sea-ruler) begging the Portuguese ambassador for his rich Sword and ornaments, ‘as the great lords have few Swords’ (chap. xxx.). Prester John (the Negush or Emperor) displays ‘five bundles of short Swords with silver hilts,’ taken from the Moslems (chap. cxiii.). The King of Portugal sends as a present to Prester John ‘first a gold Sword with a rich hilt,’ and a good fencer, Estevam Pallarte.

[520] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 184.

[521] _Gorilla-land_, p. 227.

[522] Quenching in oil or grease instead of water is a common practice. The workman still ‘adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours over it hot oil, through which the steel must pass before it enters the water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and flaws.’ (Beckmann, _loc. cit._ ii. 330.)

[523] Specimens of all these weapons are in the Lane-Fox Collection, Nos. 1088 to 1100.

[524] _The Cataracts of the Congo_, p. 234.

[525] I have noticed that arrant humbug, the celebrated ‘golden axe’ which, in 1880–81, caused the last ‘Ashantee scare’ (_To the Gold Coast for Gold_, ii.). The thing sent to England was certainly not the great fetish which is held to be the national Palladium. Another memento of the last Ashantee war, ‘King Koffee’s umbrella, an article of prodigious proportions, and of gaudy material,’ only returned to where it was made. The type of the latter may be seen in most Italian market-places, shading the old women’s fruits and vegetables; and Manchester, I believe, had the honour of building it.

[526] _Through the Dark Continent_, i. 21.

[527] Described in my _Mission to Dahome_, _passim_.

[528] _Across Africa_, vol. i. pp. 121, 139; vol. ii. 104.

[529] The famous copper mines of the Congo region, whose yield, says Barbot, was mistaken for gold, are noticed in _The Cataracts of the Congo_, pp. 45, 46.

[530] Captain Cameron has brought home specimens.

[531] From _O Muata Cazembe_, which also contains a long and valuable description of the copper mines in South-Eastern Africa, worked by the people since olden time.

[532] According to Marco Polo (lib. iii. cap. 34), the men of Zanghibar (Zanzibar) are ‘both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants; and they are so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.’

[533] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 135.

[534] The _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ (August 1883) has printed an excellent paper ‘On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians.’ Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie believes that they cut diorite with lathes and jewel graving-points (diamond? or corundum abundant in Midian?); and that the diamond was the ‘piercing-stone’ of early Babylonian Inscriptions.

[535] Gen. xxiii. 18. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ‘Aretz tahtim-hodshi’ should be read, ‘Aretz ha-Hittim Kadesh,’ ‘the land of the Hittites of (city) Kadesh.’

[536] _Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vol. v. part 2, p. 354. They were then the paramount nation in Syria, from the Euphrates to the Libanus; and the Assyrians knew the region as Mat-Khatte.

[537] Wild work has been made with this word. Some render it ‘large’ (i.e. whale-like); the scholiast calls the Cetians a people of Mysia; others confound them with the Kittaians (Chittim = Cypriots) of Menander in Josephus (_A. J._ ix. 14; Cory’s _Frag._, p. 30; London, Reeves & Turner, 1876); others with the people of Kiti (the circle), the Heb. Galil or Galilee.

[538] ‘Two-river’ (land) is mostly applied to the great Interamnian plain, Mesopotamia. Here it must mean Syria proper; and Aram Naharayn (Highlands of the Two Streams) admirably describes Palestine, which is composed of a double anticlinal river-valley formed by the Iarunata (Jordan) and the Arunata (Orontes). The whole length and breadth of the country is distributed between the two, with the exception of the small Litani watershed.

[539] The ‘Aram wine from Halybon’ was produced at Helbún (Halbáún, the inhabitants call it), a gorge-village near Damascus. Being Moslems, they no longer ferment their grape-juice; but the fruit is still famous. The Helbún people speak the broadest dialect, and are a perpetual laughing-stock to the Damascus citizens. The Aleppites derive their ‘Halab’ (Aleppo) because Abraham there milked (_halaba_) a cow; but the place is older than the Genesitic flood, _the_ Flood.

[540] This word is corruptly written Jerablus, Jorablus, Jirabis, &c.

[541] In Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_ (i. 463) we find that the Southern Hittites numbered twelve kings.

[542] The decisive action is shown on an Egyptian tomb (Brugsch, i. 291).

[543] Ramses left as memorials of his invasion three hieroglyphic tablets cut upon the rocks on the south side of the embouchure of the Nahr el-Kalb (Dog or Wolf River, the Lycus), a few miles north of the Venerable Bayrut (Berytus, &c.). They mark the ancient road which ascended the rough torrent-gorge to its origin in Cælesyria (El-Buká’a). Even since these pages have been written the coffins and mummies of Ramses II. and his daughter have been found at Dayr el-Bahri in Upper Egypt, and conveyed from Thebes to Bulak by Dr. Emil Brugsch. The same collector has been equally lucky with the remains of Seti I., although Belzoni, who discovered the tomb, sent the sarcophagus to the Sloane Museum.

[544] Sesostris derives from _Ses_, _Setesu_, _Sestesu_, or _Sestura_, i.e. ‘Sethosis, also called Ramses’ (Seti-son?). The Greek Sesostris combines, I have said, the lives of Seti and his son Ramses. According to Brugsch, he is the ‘Pharaoh of the Oppression,’ and the son of the unnamed Princess (Merris? Thermutis?) who ‘found Moses in the bull-rushes.’

The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from _mo_ (_má_ = water) and _uses_, those who are saved out of it (_ses_ = to reach land). Possibly it is _Mu-su_ = water-son. Josephus was sorely offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt, were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at 250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’ (Tacitus).

[545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in A.D. 1200 the geographer Yakut (_Geogr. Dict._ edit. Wüstenfeld) had noticed the water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city disappears from history after the thirteenth century B.C., but local legend has preserved its memory.

[546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte.

[547] This original and instinctive way to revive the drowned endures to the present day, despite the wrath of the Faculty.

[548] Brugsch (ii. 68) gives the terms of the treaty as translated by Mr. Goodwin (_Records of the Past_, iv. 25); and adds instances to prove that it was acted upon. Thus he explains the hitherto mysterious countermarch, the turning back of the Hebrew exodus, at the time when the emigrants were advancing straight upon their objective. His strong point is the identification of ‘Baal-Zephon,’ about which all the commentators have made such hopeless guesses. He explains it by ‘Baal of the North’ (Typhon, Sutekh or Khepsh), the ‘Mount Kasion’ of Jupiter Kasios, a name derived from the Egyptian Hazian or Hazina.

[549] So called from an old Coptic town, long ruined.

[550] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, vol. i., Essay VII., and reference to Black Obelisk in British Museum. _Synchronous History of Assyria and Judæa_, pp. 1–82, vol. iii. pt. i.; _Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, 1874.

[551] A Keltic word, _bot_ = foot.

[552] In popular Hebrew use, ‘Canaanite’ meant a trader.

[553] Possibly the ‘pure’ (Hebr. _Tohar_), in which case the word is ‘Semitic.’

[554] Brugsch, ii. chap. xiv. As a rule, slingers were the least esteemed of fighting men.

[555] The Rev. William Wright, missionary at Damascus, first suggested that the Hamath inscriptions were Hittite. The study was begun in 1872 by the late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann at Constantinople, where is the original of the silver Hittite dish represented in the British Museum.

[556] _Trans. Soc. Biblical Archæol._ vol. iv. pt. 2, 1876.

[557] Described by M. Clermont-Ganneau in the _Revue Archéologique_, Dec. 1879; and figured in the _Palestine Exploration Fund_, July 1881.

[558] In Egypt the king rests his feet upon war-captives; and making a foot-stool of the enemy is a Biblical phrase (Psalm cx. 1) which had a literal signification.

[559] For the two-headed eagle in Moslem heraldry (A.D. 1190 and 1217), see p. 108 of Rogers Bey’s valuable paper before quoted (chap. vii.).

[560] His chief argument for their Northern origin seems to be founded upon their boots; he forgets, however, that the Arabs of Mahommed’s day wore ‘Khuff;’ and that legal ablutions were modified to suit them. It is the _cothurnus calceatus_ of Pliny (vii. 19) which, as we see on statues and vases, covered the foot and ankle to the calf. The Assyriologist Prof. P. Schrader, followed by Prof. G. Ebers, considers the Khita to be Aramæans.

[561] And Carchemish. ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. _Soc. Bibl. Archæol._ vol. i. pt. 1, 1876, and vii. 298–443, on Tarrik-timmun.

[562] Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published in the _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ May 1880. The figures at Ibríz having suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and found three Aramæan suffixes, _t-na_, _t-kun_, and _t-hun_. These gave an immense probability that he had hit upon the _t_, _n_, _k_, and _h_. Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our ‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the silver boss of Tarkodemos as a _point de départ_, suggested to him that the stirrup-shape ([Hittite]) marks the nom. sing. of proper names, and this in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments ends in _s_. He assumes that adjectives agree with their substantives, which they follow by taking the same suffixes. He was at first disposed to make the broken _k_ ([Hittite] or [Hittite]), which curiously resembles an old Egyptian sign, signify ‘and’ (cop. conjunct.); but the incised inscription found by Mr. Ramsey at Bór (old Tyana) proved it the determinative of an individual. The goat’s head seems from the bilingual boss to have the phonetic value ‘tarku,’ and is interchanged with [Hittite] (_ku_), [Hittite] (_s_), [Hittite], and [Hittite]. The two spear-heads with the stirrup ([Hittite]) appear to represent a patronymic—_Kus_. The second sign (= _ku_), which seems to be the first pers. sing. of the Aor., can be followed in the same group of characters by [Hittite]; whence Mr. Sayce inferred the latter to be an adjectival participial affix = _u_. Similarly [Hittite] = _e_, the acc. plur.; thus [Hittite] = _ue_. The bilingual boss also shows [Hittite] or [Hittite] = _mi_, the third pers. sing. present tense, and we find indifferently [Hittite] and [Hittite]. The gen. plur. is [Hittite], but the pronunciation is not determined. The same is the case with the sock or low boot ([Hittite]), suggested to be the third pers. plur. of the Aorist. Lastly, the ideograph of plurality attached to nouns and verbs is [Hittite].

[563] Dr. Guyther, visiting the Merash citadel, has found several new characters in a long inscription on a lion, and fragments of stone with other hieroglyphs have been forwarded from Carchemish to the British Museum.

[564] Under Shishonk (Shishak), the contemporary of Solomon, the conquered tribes of Edom and Judah are termed the ‘Fenekh and the Aamu (Syro-Aramæans) of a far land.’ Brugsch (ii. 210) ‘has a presentiment’ that these Fenekh are intimately related to the Jews; and he notes the similarity of Aamu with ‘Am,’ the well-known Hebrew term.

[565] Some have suspected Punt to be the far later Pándya, or Madura kingdom, in Southern India. Mariette’s Punt extended from Bab el-Mandeb to Cape Guardafui (‘I was a Guard’).

[566] Prof. Rugge of Christiania, however, connects Baldur with Achilles. We can hardly accept his scheme until the details shall have been better worked out.

[567] ‘Bak,’ from Beki in Coptic = city, town.

[568] ‘In Judæâ rivus Sabbatis omnibus siccatur’ (Pliny, xxxi. 18). The idea doubtless arose from the intermittent springs (Siloam, &c.) about Jerusalem. Josephus (_B. J._ viii. 5, § 1) makes his Sabbatic R. break the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) by flowing only on that day and resting during the other six. Hence the fabled Sabbation, whose flood of huge rocks and sand-waves, sixty to two hundred cubits high, issued from the ‘Garden of Eden.’ It still hems in the ten ‘Lost Tribes,’ and is believed by the Druzes.

[569] I quote from _Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. Dunbar I. Heath, not from the far more poetical version of the Duc de Luynes.

[570] My friend Prof. Socin holds that St. Meklar of Tyre conserves the cultus of Melkarth.

[571] Perhaps from the Egyptian _Ur_, old, ancient, original.

[572] The modern Persians, and, indeed, Persian history and legend, know nothing of this wild legend.

[573] A terra-cotta relief in the British Museum shows Chrysaor (Χρυσάωρ) springing from Medusa’s neck.

[574] Joppa, according to tradition (Pliny, v. 14), was built by Kepheus, king of the Æthiopians, and was his capital before ‘the Deluge.’ The same author tells us that Andromeda’s chains were there shown, and that the monster’s skeleton (some fish cast ashore upon the harbour reef?) was brought to Rome by the Curule Ædile M. Æmil. Scaurus the younger, who held office in Syria (ix. 4). The bones were upwards of forty feet long, the backbone one foot and a half thick, and the ribs higher than those of the Indian elephant (a cachelot?). Ajasson declared that the remains should have been sent to those who show in their collections the weapon with which Cain slew Abel. Pausanias (second century) saw the Lydda streamlet red with blood, where Perseus had bathed after killing the ‘Ketos.’ At Joppa St. Jerome was shown the traditional rock in which holes had been worn by Andromeda’s fetters. The spot is now clean forgotten—at least, all my inquiries failed to find it. The testimony is of the highest character; unfortunately it testifies to impossibilities—all monsters are ‘contradictory beings.’ The Ketos, whale or shark (_Canis Carcharias_), is evidently the same that swallowed Hercules and Jonah.

[575] Mgr. Bianchini very improperly translates _Harpé_ by ‘glaive,’ and other writers absurdly use ‘scymitar.’ They could hardly better describe what it was _not_.

[576] The bronze Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini in the Loggie dell’ Orgagna of Florence holds a falx-Sword or falchion.

[577] Hence possibly the town Arsúf; and (the Isle of) Seripho, where Perseus was worshipped.

[578] There seem to be three of the name: Palladius, the first missionary to Ireland; Sen Patrick, who studied under St. Germanus and died A.D. 458–61; and Patrick M‘Calphurn, also a pupil of St. Germanus, who missionarised about A.D. 440–42.

[579] _Horus et Saint-Georges_, &c. See also a kind of sentimental study æsthetically baptised ‘Saint Mark’s Rest: the Place of Dragons,’ by J. R. Anderson.

[580] From דג (_dag_), a fish, a Ketos, the Phœnician דגון (_Dajun_, _Dagon_); Dagan is the male, Dalas the female. Simply a fish-god. Sardanapalus was ‘he who knows Anu (the god) and Dagon.’

[581] Others found at Cannæ resemble the copper Swords of Ireland, according to the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_.

[582] The ‘tariff of masses,’ from the temple of Baal at Marseille, speaks of Chaltzibah the Sufet. Other inscriptions inform us that the Carthaginians had a triad, Baal Hammon (Ammon); the Lady Tanith Pen Baal (Tanis or Neith, the πρόσωπον, or face, of Baal), and Iolaus.—_Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. D. I. Heath.

[583] Ezekiel (xxxii. 27). ‘And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell [Sheol = Shuala, the ghost-land of Babylon] with their weapons of war: _and they have laid their Swords under their heads_, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.’

[584] The Hebrews were probably included under the ‘miserable foreigners,’ who, at that time, numbered about one-third of the Egyptian people. It was the fashion to find ‘Hebrew’ in the ’Aper, ’Apura, ’Aperiu, and ’Apiurui of the monuments; but Brugsch has shown that these were the original ‘Erythræans,’ equestrian Arabs of the barrens extending from Heliopolis onward to modern Suez.

[585] _Trattato di Scherma_, &c. di Alberto Marchionni (Firenze: Bencini, 1547).

[586] This word will be noticed in chapter xi. I cannot wholly agree with Colonel Lane-Fox (_Anthrop. Coll._ p. 99) when he speaks of a ‘leaf-shaped Sword-blade attached to the end of the spear, like the Thracian _romphea_ and the European _partisan_ of mediæval times.’

[587] May not this older form of Jupiter have derived from the ‘Semitic’ root יה, Jah (_Yah_), carried westward by the Phœnicians? But this is ‘stirring the fire with a Sword,’ against which Pythagoras warns us.

[588] ‘Les Figures de l’Histoire d’après la Bible,’ &c. (the _Athenæum_, Feb. 31, 1880). ‘Lahat’ (the Germ. _lohe_, our ‘low’ or ‘lowe’) is in the singular a ‘flame’; in the plural ‘spells, enchantments by drugs,’ &c.

[589] Mr. Gerald Massey would identify the Jewish Chereb, like the Phœnician Hereba and the Greek Harpé, with the Egyptian Kherp, [Hieroglyphs], the sign of majesty typified by an oar or rather paddle—[Hieroglyphs]. Thus the Kherp first cut the water like a propeller, then the grain as a sickle, and at last it became a Sword—the reaper of men. This is ingenious, but nothing more: the white arm in Egypt shows no sign of derivation from the oar.

[590] So Jeanne d’Arc’s Sword was taken from a church, as will appear in Part II.

[591] Tacitus (_Hist._ v. 13) calls them a ‘band of murderers.’ The ominous word ‘Sicarius’ first occurs in Jewish history during Josephus’ time (_Bell. Jud._ iv. 7; vii. 11). St. Paul was charged by Lysias with heading four thousand Sicarii, who at great feasts murdered their victims with concealed daggers. Also forty Sicarii bound themselves by the Cherem-oath (the original ‘Boycotting’) to slay Paul. The Sica or Sicca will be noticed in another chapter.

[592] The Machabæan epoch is interesting, because during it the idea of a ‘resurrection’ was established. The word should be written ‘Makabi’ if derived from Mi Kamo Ka Baalim Yahveh (Ex. xv. 11).

[593] The number is given in Chronicles (1, xxi. 5) at one million five hundred and seventy thousand without including Levi and Benjamin. Many attempts have been made to reconcile the little difference of two hundred and seventy thousand souls.

[594] I shall notice Assyrian Arms in chap. x.

[595] By a curious feat of etymology, this word, or rather the German ‘Philister’ (confounded with _Balestarius_ or _Balestæus_, a crossbow-man, the militia of small artisans?) has come to signify in modern parlance one indifferent to ‘intellectual interest’ and the ‘higher culture.’ As applied to the enemy it is simply Prig writ large.

[596] _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, p. 126, by the Rev. W. Robertson Smith (Blacks, Edinburgh, 1881).

[597] Napoleon Buonaparte was right in attributing the instability of the great empires (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) bordered by the Bedawin, to the destructive action of the Arab race: ‘That most mischievous nation whom it is never desirable to have either for friends or enemies’ (Ammian. Marcell. xiv. 4). I have enlarged upon this subject in _Unexplored Syria_ (i. 210). The first noted outswarming was of the Hyksos or Shepherd-Kings (B.C. 1480 to 1530?). Another, under the influence of Mohammed the Apostle of Allah, changed the condition of the Old World; and in the present day, Turkish dominion in the regions frontiered by Arabia is being seriously threatened. Hence Ibn Khaldún of Tunis, who in A.D. 1332 began to write philosophical history, assigns to empire in the East three generations (= 120 years) and three several steps. The first, youth, is of growth (campaigning and annexing); the religion being fanaticism and the form of government a limited monarchy of a semi-republican type. The second, manhood, is a period of ‘rest and be thankful,’ of not ‘stirring up things quiet’; of enjoyment, of easy scepticism, of luxury, of despotism, The third, age, is decline and fall, the triumph of financiers and capitalists; of aversion from war and from ‘territorial aggrandisement’; it is distinguished by employing mercenaries, by religious disbelief, by tyrannic rule. (_Ibn Chaldun und seine Culturgeschichte_, Baron A. von Kremer. Wien.)

[598] This has apparently been done by the Rev. Mr. Porter, the author of that unpraiseworthy _Murray’s Handbook_. His Strabo had told him that Gaza lay seven stadia or furlongs from the sea; and St. Jerome that a new town had been built. Yet we are led three miles from the shore to modern Ghazzah, and are gravely told of Moslem absurdities concerning the Makám or tomb of Samson. The old port of which the Ancients speak has evidently been buried by the sands which are attacking Bayrút, and the only survivor of the past may be the site of Shaykh Ijlin on the coast, south of the Mínat or present roads. In noticing Askelon, Mr. Porter tells us all about the old story of Ascalonia, Scallion, Shalot: nothing about the Egyptian Ac-qa-li-na. For a third edition the learned author should take the trouble to consult Brugsch Pasha’s Egypto-Syrian studies.

[599] See chap. iv.

[600] _Cyprus_, before quoted.

[601] Aphrodite or Venus (Urania and Pandemos, Porné and Hetæra), at once the feminine principle in nature, the original mother and the idea of womanly beauty, was a universal personage. In Egypt she was Athor the Goddess of Pleasure, and Ashtar in Nilotic Mendes. Amongst the Arabs she became Beltis, Baaltis the feminine of Bel or Ba’al, and Alitta (Al-ilat the goddess); among the Sidonians Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 33); in Phœnicia, Ishtar and Astarte, which Gesenius takes to be a Semitisation of the Persian Sitáreh, a star (_i.e._ Venus); in Byblos, Dionæa and Dione; in other parts of Syria, Derceto, Atergatis (Ta-ur-t, Thoueris), and Nani, the latter still surviving in the Bibi Nani (Lady Venus) of Afghanistan. In Cyprus she was Anat, Tanat, or Tanith (Ta-neith = Athene?); in Persia and Armenia Mítra (Herod. i. 131), Tanata, and Anaitis = Anahid, the planet Venus; and in Carthage, Tarnt Pen Baal.

[602] In Heb. Kinnúr, a lyre of six to nine strings resembling the Nubian article. Hence, probably, κιθάρα, Cithara, Chitarra, Guitar, Zither; but there is a modification by the Persian Sih-tárah or ‘the three-stringed.’

[603] Thus in Jeremiah (xxiii. 29), ‘Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?’

[604] I see with pleasure that Mr. W. P. Palmer proposes to continue his exploration of Phrygia; his lecture before the Hellenic Society (Dec. 14, 1882) promises much. The western half of the great western plateau of Asia Minor, this land of monotonous grandeur, is directly connected with the Ægean Sea by a single line of cleavage which extends from Miletus to Celænæ. Egyptian art and influence found its way to Greece _viâ_ Phrygia as well as through Phœnicia, especially in the early days of the Argonauts and the _Iliads_, when Greece began to be connected with nearer Asia. Hence the wide diffusion of the Midas-myth (B.C. 670): the long-eared king’s tomb was discovered in 1800. I have elsewhere noticed how far Phrygia extended to the West, leaving indelible marks in Spain and Portugal.

[605] The Lycian tongue, as far as we know, resembles Zend; and the coin with a triquetra (Rawlinson’s _Herod._ i. 212) has three characters apparently Hittite. The Lycian confederacy of twenty-three towns (six cities being chief) was strong enough to resist Crœsus (Herodotus). Their relationship was by the ‘distaff-side’ (_Mutterrecht_), as opposed to the ‘Sword-side’; and we find traces of the same antique and logical practice among the Greeks: ἀδελφὸς is evidently derived from δελφύς.

[606] Major di Cesnola _On Phœnician Art in Cyprus_: the proofs are ‘gold and silver ornaments of remarkable beauty and grace,’ which are said to resemble the produce of Hissarlik.

[607] The Cyprian Venus was worshipped in the form of an Umbilicus or Meta, according to Servius (ad _Æn._ i. 724). Others compare it with a pyramid.

[608] _Numismatique et Inscriptions Cypriotes_, Paris, 1832. The Dali inscription is compared with the Lycian at the end of vol. i. pt. 1, _Soc. of Bibl. Archæol._ 1872. Discussing the eighty characters, the Duc de Luynes found twenty-seven Egyptian, twelve Lycian, and seven Phœnician. This would suggest that the syllabary is a branch of the picture-writing which grew to be an alphabet proper in the Nile Valley, and which, modified by the Phœnicians, passed into Greece. Others hold it to be an imperfect modification of the Assyrian cuneiforms, introduced about B.C. 700 and lasting till Alexander’s day. I have already noticed that the cuneiforms were originally pictures of natural objects; and that the same is evidently the case with the Chinese syllabary. Some of the Cypriot signs show a faint resemblance to the Devanagari alphabet, which we know to be a modern offshoot from South Arabian or Himyaritic. A gold incision from the Curium treasury (Plate xxxiv. No. 7) consists of two crescents adossed, which may be either Hittite or a simple ornament. Mr. Sayce, indeed, derives the syllabary from Khita-land. Of the crescent and the star I have already spoken; no date can be assigned to it in decorative art.

[609] I have figured a similar but broader blade as the Novacula in _Etruscan Bologna_, p. 66. The Prague Museum has about a dozen of these sickles found near Tepl: one (_b_) with a rivet-hole and a kind of beading. In the collection of Carinthian Klagenfurth I found a sickle (_c_, No. 1711) fifteen and a half cent. long by four broad, with an Etruscan inscription [Etruscan]. See Chap. X.

[610] The winged Sphinxes upon this patera with hawks’ heads are peculiarly Egyptian. _The_ Sphinx, which may be older than the Pyramids, is a man-headed lion—the ‘union of force and intellect.’ Later types change the human head to that of an asp, a ram, and a hawk; and supply the latter with wings. The same is the case with the Sphinx of Troy and Assyria: it is mostly alate. The Grecian Sphinx changed the bearded human head to that of a woman; the Gyno-Sphinx in Egypt being later than the Andro-Sphinx. We find the female in the doorway of the Xanthus frieze and over the sarcophagus at Amathus (_Cyprus_, pp. 264–267). Those who would understand the peculiar beauty, not only of line but of expression, which the Egyptians threw into the face of the Sphinx have only to study the statue standing to the proper left of the main entrance to Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. It came, I believe, from the great Dromos of the Serapeum, the Apis-tombs of the marvellous Memphis cemetery.

[611] Meaning Holy Lady or Great Goddess, the Syria Dea. Preceded by the digamma, the word became Famagosta, and was corrupted to Fama Augusti and to Ammochosti, a sand-heap.

[612] See his diagram, p. 10, _Troy and its Remains_.

[613] See chapter viii. These assertions are fair specimens of the harm done to philology, in uncritical England, by the one-sided and _ad captandum_ views of the ‘Sanskritists.’ Mr. Gerald Massey hardly exaggerates when he says (i. 135), ‘It looks as if the discovery of Sanskrit were doomed to be a fatal find for the philologists of our generation.’ The peculiar mixture of philology, in its specialist form, with the science of religion and the tenebræ of metaphysics has, it appears to me, done much harm to all three; but it delighted the half-educated public. It met with scant appreciation in acute France and in critical Germany, where the editing, or rather mutilation, of texts, has been severely chastised. But the Sanskritist, much to the discredit of Oriental studies and of philology in England, has given us an indigestion of Sanskritism; during the last great Oriental Congress in London he almost monopolised time and attention, to the prejudice of Orientalism in general. Apparently a protest is on the point of being raised; but, unhappily, Teutonism is still a scourge in Great Britain, and the typical Solar myth, ‘like Hermann’s a German.’

[614] Except, of course, in the bronze.

[615] Charles Rau (?), an American, by means of a bow, and without using metal, bored a hole through an axe of diorite: it occupied him ten hours a day for four months (Jähns, p. 6).

[616] In mediæval Romance ‘Ilios,’ ‘Ilion,’ and ‘Ilium’ were applied to the Palace of Priam.

[617] _Juventus Mundi_, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, p. 529.

[618] May it not be the black hæmatite used in Cyprus? Compare the goose’s head, the sacred basket, and the frog, Egyptian symbol of embryonic man and of Hor-Apollo (Harpocrates), in General Palma (Appendix, p. 364). But is this able writer sure about his ‘hæmatite’?

[619] I.e. to one looking north and therefore west. The old Egyptians faced to the south (Hín or Khount), which they called ‘upwards’ or ‘forwards,’ in opposition to the North, which was the lower (Khir) or hinder part (Pehu). Thus their right was west (Unim) and their left east (Semah): the right leg of Osiris was the western side of the Delta. So Pliny (ii. 6) makes his observer front southwards. The Assyrian and Semites faced east (Kadam or front, opposed to Akhir or Shalam, the sun’s _resting_-place): hence their right (Yemen) was the south, and their left (Sham) was north. They introduced this fashion into Ancient India, where, consequently, Dakshina (_dextra_, the right hand) became the south, and survives in our ‘Deccan.’ The practice even extended to Ireland where Eiꞃin or Eꞃin (Erin, Ierne) has been derived from the Keltic iaꞃ, behind, the west; and in, an island, the isle lying west of France and Britain.

[620] Travellers who have inspected the excavations deride these pompous terms: the ruins look well in book-illustrations, but the reality is mean in the extreme.

[621] Dr. Schliemann shows the human umbilicus adorned with a cross. The significance of such phrases as ‘omphalos of the earth’ applied to Delphi and Paphos, is generally misunderstood. Any traveller in India who has seen a Lingait temple would at once explain it, as well as the illustration in Wilkinson (vol. i. ch. iv. p. 270) showing the Lingam-Yoni, whose worshippers are ‘cherubim’ (i.e. winged Thmei). Similarly the symbol of Chemosh of Moab and of sundry classical gods was a cone. The Dea Multimamma, Cybele, miscalled ‘Artemis’ (Diana) of the Ephesians, was a statue, not a cone, but it stood upon an inverted pyramid. The uninitiated as little understand the Crux Ansata or Egyptian Cross, the emblem of life and fecundity, which was adopted by the Coptic Christians. The sacred Tau (Tau of Ezekiel ix. 6) gave rise to the Maltese Cross in Phœnicia, and in Assyria became the emblem of Shamas the sun.

[622] I need hardly remind ‘Grecians’ that Tychius is supposed to have been a personal friend of the arch-Homerid.

[623] Upon this point Dr. Schliemann’s _Mycenæ_ is more explicit.

[624] It is, I need hardly say, still a disputed point whether the Homeric Greeks could or could not write. See chapter xi.

[625] M. F. Lenormant, the _Academy_, March 21 and 28, 1874.

[626] I must again protest against the use, while compelled by want of another to use the term ‘Indo-European,’ which, applied to language, contains an unproved theory. India did not supply Europe either with speech or with population. The popular belief appears erroneous as is its appreciation of Darwinism, which did _not_ derive man from monkey. The original Egyptian roots developed themselves into a host of dialects which flourished and perished before Pali and Sanskrit, a professor’s tongue, like mediæval Latin, never understanded of the people, assumed their present shapes.

[627] _North American Review._

[628] Professor Jebb quotes M. Dumont, _Céramique de la Grèce Propre_.

[629] The _Academy_, Dec. 9, 1882.

[630] I have treated the question popularly in _Etruscan Bologna_ (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876). The study owed its existence to the Rev. Isaac Taylor, who, using the Family Pen once too often, supported the Turanian origin of the Etruscans in a marvellously uncritical and unscholar-like book, _Etruscan Researches_ (London: Macmillan & Co., 1874).