Evidence of Antiquity—Pyramids and Temples—Arithmetic—Decimal and Duodecimal Scales—Astronomy—Geometry reached in Egypt at earliest Dates—Great Pyramid—Piazzi Smyth and Pyramid-Religion—Pyramids formerly Royal Tombs, but built on Scientific Plans—Exact Orientation on Meridian—Centre in 30° N. Latitude—Tunnel points to Pole—Possible use as an Observatory—Procter—Probably Astrological—Planetary Influences—Signs of the Zodiac—Mathematical Coincidences of Great Pyramid—Chald?an Astronomy—Ziggurats—Tower of Babel—Different Orientation from Egyptian Pyramids—Astronomical Treatise from Library of Sargon I., 3800 b.c.—Eclipses and Phases of Venus—Measures of Time from Old Chald?an—Moon and Sun—Found among so many distant Races—Implies Commerce and Intercourse—Art and Industry—Embankment of Menes—Sphynx—Industrial Arts—Fine Arts—Sculpture and Painting—The Oldest Art the best—Chald?an Art—De Sarzec\'s Find at Sirgalla—Statues and Works of Art—Imply long use of Bronze—Whence came the Copper and Tin—Ph?nician and Etruscan Commerce—Bronze known 200 years earlier—Same Alloy everywhere—Possible Sources of Supply—Age of Copper—Names of Copper and Tin—Domestic Animals—Horse—Ox and Ass—Agriculture—All proves Extreme Antiquity.
The conclusion drawn from the religions of Egypt and Chald?a, as to the existence of a very long period of advanced civilization prior to the historical era, is fully confirmed by the state of the arts and sciences at the commencement of the earliest records. A knowledge of astronomy implies a long series of observations and a certain amount of mathematical calculation. The 135 construction of great works of hydraulic engineering, and of such buildings as temples and pyramids, also proves an advanced state of scientific knowledge. Such a building, for instance, as the Great Pyramid must have required a considerable acquaintance with geometry, and with the effects of strains and pressures; and the same is true of the early temples and ziggurats, or temple observatories of Chald?a. There must have been regular schools of astronomers and architects, and books treating on scientific subjects, before such structures could have been possible.
The knowledge of science possessed by a nation affords a more definite test of its antecedent civilization than its religion. It is always possible to say that advanced religious ideas may have been derived from some supernatural revelation, but in the case of the exact sciences, such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, this is no longer possible, and their progress can be traced step by step by the development of human reason. Thus there are savage races, like the Australians at the present day, who cannot count beyond "one, two, and a great number"; and some philologists tell us that traces of this state can be discovered in the origin of civilized languages, from the prevalence of dual forms which seem to have preceded those of the plural.
The next stage is that of counting by the fingers, which gives rise to a natural system of decimal notation, as shown by such words as ten, which invariably means two hands; twenty, which is twice ten, and so on. Many existing races, who are a little more advanced than the Australians, use their fingers for counting, and can count up to five or ten, and even the chimpanzee 136 Sally could count to five. But when we come to a duodecimal system we may feel certain that a considerable advance has been made, and arithmetic has come into existence as a science; for the number 12 has no natural basis of support like 10, and can only have been adopted because it was exactly divisible into whole numbers by 2, 3, 4, 6. The mere fact therefore of the existence of a duodecimal system shows that the nation which adopts it must have progressed a long way from the primitive "one, two, a great many," and acquired ideas both as to the relation of numbers, and a multitude of other things, such as the division of the circle, of days, months, and years, of weights and measures, and other matters, in which ready division into whole parts without fractions had become desirable. And at the very first in Egypt, Chald?a, and among the Turanian races generally, we find this duodecimal system firmly established. The circle has 360 degrees, the year 360 days, the day 24 single or 12 double hours, and so on. But from this point the journey is a long one to calculations which imply a knowledge of geometry and mathematics, and observations of celestial bodies which imply a long antecedent science of astronomy, and accurate records of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and of eclipses and other memorable events.
The earliest records, both of Egypt and Chald?a, show that such an advanced state of science had been reached at the first dawn of the historical period, and we read of works on astronomy, geometry, medicine, and other sciences, written, or compiled from older treatises, by Egyptian kings of the old empire, and by Sargon I. of Accade from older Accadian works. But 137 the monuments prove still more conclusively that such sciences must have been long known. Especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops affords a very definite proof of the progress which must have been made in geometrical, mechanical, and astronomical science at the time of its erection. If we were to believe Professor Piazzi Smyth, and the little knot of his followers who have founded what may be called a Pyramid-religion, this remarkable structure contains a revelation in stone for future ages, of almost all the material scientific facts which have been discovered since by 6000 years of painful research by the unaided human intellect. Its designers must have known and recorded, with an accuracy surpassing that of modern observation, such facts as the dimensions of the earth, the distance of the sun, the ratio of the area of a circle to its diameter, the precise determination of latitude and of a true meridian line, and the establishment of standards of measure taken, like the metre, from a definite division of the earth\'s circumference. It is argued that such facts as these could not have been discovered so accurately in the infancy of science, and without the aid of the telescope, and therefore that they must have been made known by revelation, and the Great Pyramid is looked upon therefore as a sort of Bible in stone, which is, in some not very intelligible way, to be taken as a confirmation of the inspiration of the Hebrew Bible, and read as a sort of supplement to it.
This is of course absurd. A supernatural revelation to teach a chosen people the worship of the one true God, is at any rate an intelligible proposition, but scarcely that of such a revelation to an idolatrous monarch and people, to teach details of abstruse sciences, 138 which in point of fact were not taught, for the monument on which they were recorded was sealed up by a casing of polished stone almost directly after it was built, and its contents were only discovered by accident, long after the facts and figures which it is supposed to teach had been discovered elsewhere by human reason. The only thing approaching to a revelation of religious import which Piazzi Smyth professed to have discovered in the Pyramid was a prediction, which is now more than ten years overdue, of the advent of the millennium in 1881.
But these extravagances have had the good effect of giving us accurate measurements of nearly all the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, and raising a great deal of discussion as to its aim and origin. In the first place it is quite clear that its primary object was to provide a royal tomb. A tomb of solid masonry with a base larger than Lincoln\'s Inn Fields, and 130 feet higher than St. Paul\'s, seems very incomprehensible to modern ideas, but there can be no doubt as to the fact. When the interior is explored both of this and other pyramids, nothing is found but one or two small sepulchral chambers containing the stone coffins of a king or queen. The Great Pyramid is not an exceptional monument, but one of a series of some seventy pyramid-tombs of kings, beginning with earlier and continued by later dynasties of the Old Empire. The reason of their construction is obvious. It originates from the peculiar ideas, which have been already pointed out, of the existence of a Ka or shadowy double, and a still more ethereal soul or spirit, whose immortality depended on the preservation of a material basis in the form of a mummy or likeness of the deceased person, 139 preferably no doubt by the preservation of the mummy. This led to the enormous outlay, not by kings only, but by private persons, on costly tombs, which, as Herodotus says, were considered to be their permanent habitations. With an absolute monarchy in which the divine right of kings was strained so far that the monarch was considered as an actual god, it was only natural that their tombs should far exceed those of their richest subjects, and that unusual care should be taken to prevent them from being desecrated in future ages by new and foreign dynasties. Suppose a great and powerful monarch to have an unusually long and prosperous reign, it is quite conceivable that he should wish to have a tomb which should not only surpass those of his predecessors, but any probable effort of his successors, and be an unique monument defying the attacks not only of future generations, but of time itself.
This seems, without doubt, to have been the primary motive of the Great Pyramid, and in a lesser degree of all pyramids, sepulchral mounds, and costly tombs. But the pyramids, and especially the Great Pyramid, are not mere piles of masonry heaped together without plan or design. On the contrary, they are all built on a settled plan, which implies an acquaintance with the sciences of geometry and astronomy, and which, in the case of the Great Pyramid, is carried to an extent which shows a very advanced knowledge of those sciences, and goes far to prove that it must have been used, during part of the period of its construction, as a national observatory. The full details of this plan are given by Procter in his work on the Great Pyramid, and although the want of a more accurate knowledge of Egyptology has led him into some erroneous speculations as to the age and object of 140 this pyramid, his authority is undoubted as to the scientific facts and the astronomical and geometrical conclusions which are to be drawn from them.
It appears that the first object of all pyramid builders was to secure a correct orientation; that is, that the four sides should face truly to the north, south, east, and west, or in other words that a line drawn through the centre of the base parallel to the sides should stand on a true meridian line. This would be a comparatively easy task with modern instruments, but before the invention of the telescope it must have required great nicety of observation to obtain such extremely accurate results in all the sides and successive layers of such an enormous building. There are only two ways in which it could be attempted—one by observing the shadow cast by a vertical gnomon when the sun was on the meridian, the other by keeping a standard line constantly directed to the true north pole of the heavens. In the case of the Great Pyramid another object seems to have been in view which required the same class of observations, viz. to place the centre of the base on the thirtieth degree of north latitude, being the latitude in which the pole of the heavens is exactly one-third of the way from the horizon to the zenith.
Both these objects have been attained with wonderful accuracy. The orientation of the Great Pyramid is correct, and the centre of its base corresponds with the thirtieth degree of north latitude within a slight error which was inevitable, if, as is probable, the Egyptian astronomers were unacquainted with the effect of atmospheric refraction in raising the apparent above the true place of celestial bodies, or had formed an insufficient estimate of its amount. The centre of the 141 base is 2328 yards south of the real thirtieth parallel of latitude, which is 944 yards north of the position which would have been deduced from the pole-star method, and 3459 yards south of that from the shadow method, by astronomers ignorant of the effect of refraction. The shadow method could never have been so reliable as the polar method, and it is certain therefore à priori that the latter must have been adopted either wholly or principally, and this conclusion is confirmed by the internal construction of the pyramid itself, which is shown by the subjoined vertical section.
The tunnel A B C is bored for a distance of 350 feet underground through the solid rock, and is inclined 142 at an angle pointing directly to what was then the pole-star, Alpha Draconis, at its lower culmination. As there is no bright star at the true pole, its position is ascertained by taking the point half-way between the highest and lowest positions of the conspicuous star nearest to it, and which therefore revolves in the smallest circle about it. This star is not always the same on account of the precession of the equinoxes, and Alpha Draconis supplied the place of the present pole-star about 3440 b.c., and practically for several centuries before and after that date.
Now the underground tunnel is bored exactly at the angle of 26° 17′ to the horizon, at which Alpha Draconis would shine down it at its lower culmination when 3° 42′ from the pole; and the ascending passage and grand gallery are inclined at the same angle in an opposite direction, so that the image of the star reflected from a plane mirror or from water at B, would be seen on the southern meridian line by an observer in the grand gallery, while another very conspicuous star in the southern hemisphere, Alpha Centauri, would at that period shine directly down it. The passages therefore would have the double effect, 1st, of enabling the builders to orient the base and lower layers of the pyramid up to the king\'s chamber in a perfectly true north and south line; 2nd, of making the grand gallery the equivalent of an equatorially-mounted telescope of a modern observatory, by which the transit of heavenly bodies in a considerable section of the sky comprising the equatorial and zodiacal regions, across the meridian, and therefore at their highest elevations, could be observed by the naked eye with great accuracy.
143 Those who wish to study the evidence in detail should read Procter\'s work on the Problems of the Pyramids, but for the present purpose it may be sufficient to sum up the conclusions of that accomplished astronomer. He says, "The sun\'s annual course round the celestial sphere could be determined much more exactly than by any gnomon by observations made from the great gallery. The moon\'s monthly path and its changes could have been dealt with in the same effective way. The geometric paths, and thence the true paths of the planets, could be determined very accurately. The place of any visible star along the zodiac could be most accurately determined."
If therefore the pyramid had only been completed up to the fiftieth layer, which would leave the southern opening of the great gallery uncovered, the object might have been safely assumed to be the erection of a great national observatory. But this supposition is negatived by the fact that the grand gallery must have been shut up, and the building rendered useless for astronomical purposes in a very short time, by the completion of the pyramid, which was then covered over by a casing of polished stone, evidently with a view of concealing all traces of the passages which led to the tomb. The only possible solution seems to be that suggested by Procter, that the object was astrological rather than astronomical, and that all those minute precautions were taken in order to provide not only a secure tomb but an accurate horoscope for the reigning monarch. Astrology and astronomy were in fact closely identified in the ancient world, and relics of the superstition still linger in the form of Zadkiel almanacs. 144 When the sun, moon, and five planets had been identified as the celestial bodies possessing motion, and therefore, as it was inferred, life, and had been converted into gods, nothing was more natural than to suppose that they exercised an influence on human affairs, and that their configuration affected the destinies both of individuals and of nations. A superstitious people who saw auguries in the flight of birds, the movements of animals, the rustling of leaves, and in almost every natural occurrence, could not fail to be impressed by the higher influences and omens of those majestic orbs, which revolved in such mysterious courses through the stationary stars of the host of heaven. Accordingly in the very earliest traditions of the Accadians and Egyptians we find an astrological significance attached to the first astronomical facts which were observed and recorded. The week of seven days, which was doubtless founded on the first attempts to measure time by the four phases of the lunar month, became associated with the seven planets in the remotest antiquity, and the names of their seven presiding gods, in the same order and with the same meaning, have descended unchanged to our own times, as will be shown more fully in a subsequent chapter.
Observations on the sun\'s annual course led to the fixing of it along a zodiac of twelve signs, corresponding roughly to twelve lunar months, and defined by constellations, or groups of stars, having a fanciful resemblance to animals or deified heroes. Those zodiacal signs are of immense antiquity and world-wide universality. We find them in the earliest mythology of Chald?a and Egypt, in the labours of Hercules, in the 145 traditions of a deluge associated with the sign of Aquarius, and even, though in a somewhat altered form, in such distant countries as China and Mexico. Probably they originated in Chald?a, where the oldest records and universal tradition show the primitive Accadians to have been astronomers, who from time immemorial had made observations on the heavenly bodies, and who remained down to the Roman Empire the most celebrated astrologers, though it is not quite clear whether Egyptian astronomy and astrology were imported from Chald?a or invented independently at an equally remote period.
Even if we admit, however, Procter\'s suggestion that the pyramids had an astrological origin in addition to their primary object as tombs, it is difficult to understand how such enormous structures could have been built. The Great Pyramid must have been built on a plan designed from the first, and not by any haphazard process of adding a layer each year according to the number of years the monarch happened to reign. How could he foresee the exact number of years of an unusually long life and reign, or what security could he have that, if he died early, his successor would complete his pyramid in addition to erecting one of almost equal magnitude for himself? How could three successive kings have devoted such an amount of the nation\'s capital and resources to the building of three such pyramids as those of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, without provoking insurrections?
Herodotus has a piece of gossip, probably picked up from some ignorant guides, which represents Cheops and Chephren as detested tyrants, who shut up the temples of the gods, and confounds the national hatred 146 of the shepherd kings, who conquered Egypt some 2000 years later, with that of these pyramid-builders; but this is confuted by the monuments, which show them as pious builders or restorers of temples of the national gods in other localities, as for instance at Bubastis, where the cartouche of Chephren was lately found by M. Naville on an addition to the Temple of Isis. All the records also of the fourth or pyramid-building dynasty, and of the two next dynasties, show it to have been a period of peace and prosperity.
The pyramids therefore must still remain a subject enveloped in mystery, but enough is certain from the undoubted astronomical facts disclosed in their construction to show the advanced state of this science at this remote period. Nor is this all, for the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, when stripped of the fanciful coincidences and mystical theories of Piazzi Smyth, still show enough to prove a wonderful knowledge of mathematics and geometry. The following may be taken as undoubted facts from the most accurate measurements of their dimensions.
1st. The triangular area of each of the four sloping sides equals the square of the vertical height. This was mentioned by Herodotus, and there can be no doubt that it was a real relation intended by the builders.
2nd. The united length of the four sides of the square base bears to the vertical height the same proportion as that of the circumference of a circle to its radius. In other words it gives the ratio, which under the symbol π plays such an important part in all the higher mathematics. There are other remarkable coincidences which seem to show a still more wonderful advance in science, though they are not quite so certain, 147 as they depend on the assumption that the builders took as their unit of measurement, a pyramid inch and sacred cubit different from those in ordinary use, the former being equal to the 500,000,000th part of the earth\'s diameter, and the latter containing twenty-five of those inches, or about the 20,000,000th part of that diameter. To arrive at such standards it is evident that the priestly astronomers must have measured very accurately an arc of the meridian or length of the line on the earth\'s surface which just raised or lowered the pole of the heavens by 1°; and inferred from it that the earth was a spherical body of given dimensions. Those dimensions would not be quite accurate, for they must have been ignorant of the compression of the earth at its poles and protuberance at the equator, but the measurement of such an arc at or near 30° of north latitude would give a close approximation to the mean value of the earth\'s diameter. Procter thinks that from the scientific knowledge which must have been possessed by the builders of the pyramid, it is quite possible that they may have measured an arc of the meridian with considerable accuracy, and calculated from it the length of the earth\'s diameter, assuming it to be a perfect sphere. And if so they may have intended to make the side of the square base of the pyramid of a length which would bear in inches some relation to the length of this diameter; for it is probable that at this stage of the world\'s science, the mysterious or rather magical value which was attached to certain words would attach equally to the fundamental facts, figures, and important discoveries of the growing sciences. It is quite probable, therefore, that the sacred inch and cubit may have been invented, like the metre, from an aliquot part of the 148 earth\'s supposed diameter, so as to afford an invariable standard. But there is no positive proof of this from the pyramid itself, the dimensions of which may be expressed just as well in the ordinary working cubit, and it must remain open to doubt whether the coincidences prove the pyramid inch, or the inch was invented to prove the coincidences.
Assuming, however, for the moment that these measures were really used, some of the coincidences are very remarkable. The length of each side of the square base is 365-1/4 of these sacred cubits, or equal to the length of the year in days. The height is 5819 inches, and the sun\'s distance from the earth, taken at 91,840,000 miles, which is very nearly correct, is just 5819 thousand millions of such inches. It has been thought, therefore, that this height was intended to symbolize the sun\'s distance. But independently of the fact that this distance could not have been known with any approach to accuracy before the invention of the telescope, it is forgotten that this height had been already determined by a totally unconnected consideration, viz. the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. The coincidence, therefore, of the sun\'s distance must be purely accidental.
A still more startling coincidence has been found in the fact that the two diagonals of the base contain 25,824 pyramid inches, or almost exactly the number of years in the precessional period. This also must be accidental, for the number of inches in the diagonals follows as a matter of course from the sides being taken at 365-1/4 cubits, corresponding to the length of the year; and there can be no connection between this and the precession of the equinoxes, which, moreover, was 149 unknown in the astronomy of the ancient world until it was discovered in the time of the Ptolemies by Hipparchus.
But with all these doubtful coincidences, and the many others which have been discovered by devotees of the pyramid religion, quite enough remains to justify the conclusion that between 5000 and 6000 years ago there were astronomers, mathematicians, and architects in Egypt, who had carried their respective sciences to a high degree of perfection corresponding to that shown by their engineers and artists.
When we turn to Chald?a we find similar evidence as to the advance of science, and especially of astronomical science, in the earliest historical times. Every important city had its temple, and attached to its temple its ziggurat, which was a temple-observatory. The ziggurat is in some respects the counterpart of the pyramid, being a pyramidal structure built up in successive stages or platforms superimposed on one another and narrowing as they rose, so as to leave a small platform on the top, on which was a small shrine or temple, and from which observations could be made. These ziggurats being built entirely of bricks, mostly sun-burnt, have crumbled into shapeless mounds of rubbish, but a fair idea of their size and construction may be obtained from the descriptions and pictures of them preserved in contemporary tablets and slabs, especially from those of the great ziggurat of the seven spheres or planets at Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, which was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar about 500 b.c., on the site of a much more ancient ruined construction. This, which was the largest and most famous of the ziggurats, became identified in after 150 times with the tower of Babel and the legend of the confusion of tongues, but it was in fact an astronomical building in seven stages dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, taken in the order of magnitude of their respective orbits, and each distinguished by their respective colours. Thus the lowest or largest platform was dedicated to Saturn, and coloured black; the second to Jupiter was orange; the third to Mars red; the fourth to the Sun golden; the fifth to Venus pale yellow; the sixth to Mercury an azure blue, obtained by vitrifying the facing bricks; and the seventh to the 151 Moon was probably coated with plates of silver. The height of this ziggurat was 150 feet, and standing as it did on a level alluvial plain, it must have been a very imposing object.
ZIGGURAT RESTORED (Perrot and Chipiez), THE TOWER OF BABEL.
It may be affirmed of all these ziggurats that they were not tombs like the Egyptian pyramids, but were erected exclusively for astronomical and astrological purposes. The number of stages had always reference to some religious or astronomical fact, as three to symbolize the great triad; five for the five planets; or seven for these and the sun and moon; the number of seven being never exceeded, and the order the same as that adopted for the days of the week, viz. according to the magnitudes of their respective orbits. They were oriented with as much care as the pyramids, which is of itself a proof that they were used as observatories, but with this difference, that their angles instead of their faces were directed towards the true north and south. To this rule there are only two exceptions, probably of late date after Egyptian influences had been introduced, but the original and national ziggurats invariably observe the rule of pointing angles and not sides to the four cardinal points. This is a remarkable fact as showing that the astronomies of Egypt and Chald?a were not borrowed one from the other, but evolved independently in prehistoric times. An explanation of it has been found in the fact recorded on a geographical tablet, that the Accadians were accustomed to use the terms north, south, east, and west to denote, not the real cardinal points, but countries which lay to the N.W., S.E., and S.W. of them. It is inconceivable, however, that such skilful astronomers should have supposed that the North Pole was in the 152 north-west, and a more probable explanation is to be found in the meaning of the word ziggurat, which is holy mountain.
It was a cardinal point in their cosmogony that the heavens formed a crystal vault, which revolved round an exceedingly high mountain as an axis, and the ziggurats were miniature representations of this sacred mountain of the gods. The early astronomers must have known that this mountain could be nowhere but in the true north, as the daily revolutions of the heavenly bodies took place round the North Pole. It was natural, therefore, that they should direct the apex or angle of a model of this mountain rather than its side to the position in the true north occupied by the peak of the world\'s pivot.
Be this as it may, the fact that the ziggurats were carefully oriented, and certainly used as observatories at the earliest dates of Chald?an history, is sufficient to prove that the priestly astronomers must have already attained an advanced knowledge of science, and kept an accurate record of long-continued observations. This is fully confirmed by the astronomical and astrological treatise compiled for the royal library of Sargon I., date 3800 b.c., which treats of eclipses, the phases of Venus, and other matters implying a long previous series of accurate and refined astronomical observations.
The most conclusive proof, however, of the antiquity of Chald?an science is afforded by the measures of time which were established prior to the commencement of history, and have come down to the present era in the days of the week and the signs of the zodiac. There can be no doubt that the first attempts to measure time 153 beyond the single day and night, were lunar, and not solar. The phases of the moon occur at short intervals, and are more easily discerned and measured than those of the sun in its annual revolution. The beginning and end of a solar year, and the solstices and equinoxes are not marked by any decided natural phenomena, and it is only by long-continued observations of the sun\'s path among the fixed stars that any tolerably accurate number of days can be assigned to the duration of the year and seasons. But the recurrence of new and full moon, and more especially of the half-moons when dusk and light are divided by a straight line, must have been noted by the first shepherds who watched the sky at night, and have given rise to the idea of the month, and its first approximate division into four weeks of seven days each. Accordingly we find that in all primitive languages and cosmogonies the moon takes its name from a root which signifies "the measurer," while the sun is the bright or shining one.
A relic of this superior importance of the moon as the measurer of time is found in the old Accadian mythology, in which the moon-god is masculine and the sun-god feminine, while with the Semites and other nations of a later and more advanced civilization, the sun is the husband, and the moon his wife. For as observations multiplied and science advanced, it would be found that the lunar month of twenty-eight days was only an approximation, and that the solar year and months defined by the sun\'s progress through the fixed stars afforded a much more accurate chronometer. Thus we find the importance of the moon and of lunar myths gradually superseded by the sun, whose daily risings and settings, death in winter and resurrection 154 in spring, and other myths connected with its passage through the signs of the solar zodiac, assume a preponderating part in ancient religions. Traces, however, of the older period of lunar science and lunar mythology still survived, especially in the week of seven days, and the mysterious importance attached to the number 7. This was doubtless aided by the discovery which could not fail to be made with the earliest accurate observations of the heavens, that there were seven moving bodies, the sun, moon, and five planets, which revolved in settled courses, while all the other stars remained fixed. Scientific astrology, as distinguished from a mere superstitious regard of the flight of birds and other omens, had its origin in this discovery. The first philosophers who pondered on these celestial phenomena were certain to infer that motion implied life, and in the case of such brilliant and remote bodies divine life; and that as the sun and moon exerted such an obvious influence on the seasons and other human affairs, so probably did the other planets or the gods who presided over them. The names and order of the days of the week, which have remained so similar among such a number of ancient and modern nations, show how far these astrological notions must have progressed when they assumed their present form, for the order is a highly artificial one.
Why do we divide time into weeks of seven days, and call the days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and why are these names of special planets, or of the special gods associated with them, identical, and occur in the same order among so many different nations? For whether we say Thor\'s-day or Jove\'s-day, and call it " Thursday" or "Jeudi," the same god is meant, who is identified 155 with the same planet, and so for the others. It is quite clear that the names of the seven days of the week were originally taken from the seven planets—i.e. from the seven celestial bodies which were observed by ancient astronomers to move, and, therefore, be presumably endowed with life, while the rest of the host of heaven remained stationary. These bodies are in order of apparent magnitude:—
1. The Sun.
2. The Moon.
3. Jupiter.
4. Venus.
5. Mars.
6. Saturn.
7. Mercury
And this is the natural order in which we might have expected to find them appropriated to the days of the week. But, obviously, this is not the principle on which the days have been named; for, to give a single instance, the nimble Mercury, the smallest of the visible planets, comes next before the majestic Jupiter, the ruler of the heavens and wielder of the thunderbolt.
Let us try another principle, that of classifying the planets in importance, not by their size and splendour, but by the magnitude of their orbits and length of their revolutions. This will give the following order:—
1. Saturn.
2. Jupiter.
3. Mars.
4. The Sun (i.e. really the earth).
5. Venus.
6. Mercury.
7. The Moon.
156 We are now on the track of the right solution, though there is still apparently hopeless discord between this order and that of the days of the week. The true solution is such an artificial one, that we should never have discovered it if it had not been disclosed to us by the clay tablets exhumed from ancient royal libraries in the temples and palaces of Chald?a. These tablets are extremely ancient, going back in many cases to the times of the old Accadians who inhabited Chald?a prior to the advent of the Semites. Some of them, in fact, are from the royal library of Sargon I., of Accade, whose date is fixed by the best authorities at about 3800 b.c. These Accadians were a civilized and literary people, well versed in astronomy, but extremely superstitious, and addicted beyond measure to astrology. Every city had its ziggurat, or observatory-tower, attached to its temple, from which priests watched the heavens and calculated times and seasons. To some of those ancient priests it occurred that the planets must be gods watching over and influencing human events, and that, as Mars was ruddy, he was probably the god of war; Venus, the lovely evening star, the goddess of love; Jupiter, powerful; Saturn, slow and malignant; and Mercury, quick and nimble. By degrees the idea expanded, and it was thought that each planet exerted its peculiar influence, not only on the days of the week, but on the hours of the day; and the planet which presided over the first hour of the day was thought to preside over the whole of that day. But the day had been already divided into twenty-four hours, because the earliest Chald?ans had adopted the duodecimal scale, and counted by sixes, twelves, and sixties. Now, twenty-four is not divisible by seven, and, therefore, 157 the same planets do not recur in the same order, to preside over the same hours of successive days. If Saturn ruled the first hour, he would rule the twenty-second hour; and, if we refer to the above list of the planets, ranged according to the magnitude of their orbits, we shall find that the Sun would rule the first hour of the succeeding day, and then in succession the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus, round to Saturn again, in the precise order of our days of the week. This order is so artificial that it cannot have been invented separately, and wherever we find it we may feel certain that it has descended from the astrological fancies of Accadian priestly astronomers at least 6000 years ago.
Now for the Sabbath. The same clay tablets, older by some 1000 years than the accepted Biblical date for the creation of the world, mention both the name and the institution. The "Sabbath" was the day ruled over by the gloomy and malignant Saturn, the oldest of the planetary gods, as shown by his wider orbit, but dimmed with age, and morose at having been dethroned by his brilliant son, Jupiter. It was unlucky in the extreme, therefore, to do any work, or begin any undertaking, on the "Sabbath," or Saturday. Hence, long centuries before Jewish Pharisees or English Puritans, rules of Sabbatarian strictness were enforced at Babylon and Nineveh, which remind one of the knight who
"Hanged his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday."
The king was not allowed to ride or walk on the Sabbath; and, even if taken ill, had to wait till the following day before taking medicine. This superstition 158 as to the unluckiness of Saturn\'s day was common to all ancient nations, including the Jews; but when the idea of a local deity, one among many others, expanded, under the influence of the later prophets and the exile, unto that of one universal God, the ruler of the universe and special patron of his chosen people, the compilers of the Old Testament dealt with the Sabbath as they did with the Deluge, the Creation, and other myths borrowed from the Chald?ans. That is to say, they revised them in a monotheistic sense, wrote "God" for "gods," and gave them a religious, rather than an astronomical or astrological, meaning. Thus the origin of the Sabbath, as a day when no work was to be done, was transferred from Saturn to Jehovah, and the reason assigned was that "in six days the Lord created the heaven and the earth, and all that therein is, and rested on the seventh day."
One more step only remains to bring us to our modern Sunday, and this also, like the last, is to be attributed to a religious motive. The early Christian Church wished to wean the masses from Paganism, and very wisely, instead of attacking old-established usages in front, turned their flank by assigning them to different days. Thus the day of rest was shifted from Saturday to Sunday, which was made the Christian Sabbath, and the name changed by the Latin races from the day of the sun to the Lord\'s Day, "Dominica Dies," or "Dimanche." It has remained Saturday, however, with the Jews, and it is quite clear that it was on a Saturday, and not a Sunday, that Jesus walked through the fields with his disciples, plucking ears of corn, and saying, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." It is equally clear that our modern 159 Sabbatarians are much nearer in spirit to the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked, and to the old Accadian astrologers, than to the founder of Christianity.
It is encouraging, however, to those who believe in progress, to observe how in this, as in many other cases, the course of evolution makes for good. The absurd superstitions of Accadian astrologers led to the establishment of one day of rest out of every seven days—an institution which is in harmony with the requirements of human nature, and which has been attended by most beneficial results. The religious sanctions which attached themselves to this institution, first, as the Hebrew Sabbath, and, secondly, as transformed into the Christian Sunday, have been a powerful means of preserving this day of rest through so many social and political revolutions. Let us, therefore, not be too hasty in condemning everything which, on the face of it, appears to be antiquated and absurd. Millions will enjoy a holiday, get a breath of fresh air and glimpse of nature, or go to church or chapel cleanly and respectable in behaviour and attire, because there were Accadian Zadkiels 6000 years ago, who believed in the maleficent influence of the planet Saturn.
When we find that these highly intricate and artificial calculations of advanced astrological and astronomical lore existed at the dawn of Chald?an history, and are found in so many and such widely separated races and regions, it is impossible to avoid two conclusions.
1st. That an immense time must have elapsed since the rude Accadian Highlanders first settled in and reclaimed the alluvial valleys and marshy deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates.
160 2nd. That the intercourse between remote regions, whether by land or sea, and by commerce or otherwise, must have been much closer in prehistoric times than has been generally supposed.
As in the days of the week, so in the festivals of the year, we trace their first origin to astronomical observations. When nations passed from the condition of savages, hunters, or nomads, into the agricultural stage, and developed dense populations, cities, temples, priests, and an organized society, we find the oldest traces of it everywhere in the science of astronomy. They watched the phases of the moon, counted the planets, followed the sun in its annual course, marking it first by seasons, and, as science advanced, by its progress through groups of fixed stars fancifully defined as constellations. Everywhere the moon seems to have been taken as the first standard for measuring time beyond the primary unit of day and night. Its name very generally denotes the "Measurer" in primitive languages, and it appears as the male, and the sun as female, in the oldest mythologies—a distinction of sex which is still maintained in modern German. This is natural, for the monthly changes of the moon come much more frequently, and are more easily measured from day to day, than the annual courses of the sun. But, as observations accumulate and become more accurate, it is found that the sun, and not the moon, regulates the seasons, and that the year repeats on a larger scale the phenomenon presented by the day and night, of a birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death of the sun, followed by a resurrection or new birth, when the same cycle begins anew. Hence the oldest civilized nations have taken from the two phenomena of the day and year the same 161 fundamental ideas and festivals. The ideas are those of a miraculous birth, death, and resurrection, and of an upper and lower world, the one of light and life, the other of darkness and death, through which the sun-god and human souls have to pass to emerge again into life. The festivals are those of the four great divisions of the year: the winter solstice, when the aged sun sinks into the tomb and rises again with a new birth; the spring equinox, when he passes definitively out of the domain of winter into that of summer; the summer solstice, when he is in full manhood, "rejoicing like a giant to run his course," and withering up vegetation as with the hot breath of a raging lion; and, finally, the autumnal equinox, when he sinks once more into the wintry half of the year and fades daily amidst storms and deluges to the tomb from which he started. Of these festivals Christmas and Easter have survived to the present day, and the last traces of the feast of the summer solstice are still lingering in the remote parts of Scotland and Ireland in the Bel fires, which, when I was young, were lighted on Midsummer night on the highest hills of Orkney and Shetland. As a boy, I have rushed, with my playmates, through the smoke of those bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to Baal in the Valley of Hinnom.
When we turn from science to art and industry, the same conclusion of immense antiquity is forcibly impressed on us. In Egypt the reign of Menes, 5000 b.c., was signalized by a great engineering work, which would have been a considerable achievement at the present day. He built a great embankment, which still remains, by which the old course of the Nile close 162 to the Libyan hills was diverted, and a site obtained for the new capital of Memphis on the west side of the river, placing it between the city and any enemy from the east. At the same time this dyke assisted in regulating the flow of the inundation, and it may be compared for magnitude and utility to the modern barrage attempted by Linant Bey and carried out by Sir Colin Moncrieff. Evidently such a work implies great engineering skill, and great resources, and it prepares us for what we have seen a few centuries later in the construction of the Great Pyramids.
Many of the most famous cities and temples also of Egypt date back for their original foundation to a period prior to that of Menes. There is indeed every reason to suppose that one of the most colossal and remarkable monuments, the Sphynx, with the little temple of granite and alabaster between its paws, is older than the accession of Menes. A tablet discovered by Mariette informs us that Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, discovered this temple, which had been buried in the sand, and restored it. If a building of such simplicity and solidity of structure required repairs, it must have existed for a long time and been lost sight of. It is almost certain also that if such a colossal and celebrated monument as the Sphynx had been constructed by any of the historical kings, it would have been mentioned by Manetho, as for instance is that of the step-pyramid of Sakkarah by the fourth king of the first dynasty, and of a temple of Pthah at Memphis, and a treatise on medicine, by the king who succeeded Menes. The name of the Sphynx also, "the great Hor," points to the period of the Horsheshu, or ruler priests of Horus, prior to the 163 foundation of the empire by Menes, and to the time before Osiris superseded Horus, as the favourite personification of the Solar God.
Be this as it may, there is abundant proof that at the dawn of Egyptian history, some 7000 years ago, the arts of architecture, engineering, irrigation, and agriculture had reached a high level corresponding to that shown by the state of religion, science, and letters. A little later the paintings on the tombs of the Old Empire show that all the industrial arts, such as spinning, weaving, working in wood and metals, rearing cattle, and a thousand others, which are the furniture of an old civilized country, were just as well understood and practised in Egypt 6000 or 7000 years ago as they are at the present day.
This being the case, I must refer those who wish to pursue this branch of the subject to professed works on Egyptology. For my present purpose, if the oldest records of monuments prove the existence of a long antecedent civilization, it is superfluous to trace the proofs in detail through the course of later ages.
When we turn to the Fine Arts we find the same evidence. The difficulty is not to trace a golden age up to rude beginnings, but to explain the seeming paradox that the oldest art is the best. A visit to the Museum of Boulak, where Mariette\'s collection of works of the first six dynasties is deposited, will convince any one that the statues, statuettes, wall-pictures, and other works of art of the Ancient Empire from Memphis and its cemetery of Sakkarah, are in point of conception and execution superior to those of a later period. None of the later statues equal the tour de force by which the majestic portrait statue of Chephren, the builder of the 164 Boulak Museum, from Gizeh.—According to the chronological table of Mariette, this statue is over 6000 years old. From a photograph by Brugsch Bey.] second great pyramid, has been chiselled out from a block of diorite, one of the hardest stones known, and hardly assailable by the best modern tools. Nor has portraiture in wood or stone ever surpassed the ease, grace, and life-like expression of such statues as that known as the Village Sheik, from its resemblance to the functionary who filled that office 6000 years later in the village where the statue was discovered; or those of the 165 kneeling scribes, one handing in his accounts, the other writing from dictation. And the pictures on the walls of tombs, of houses, gardens, fishing and musical parties, and animals and birds of all kinds, tame and wild, are equally remarkable for their colouring and drawing, and for the vivacity and accuracy with which attitudes and expressions are rendered. In short Egypt begins where most modern countries seem to be ending, with a very perfect school of realistic art.
THE VILLAGE SHEIK, A WOODEN STATUETTE.
For it is remarkable that this first school of art of the Old Empire is thoroughly naturalistic, and knows very little of the ideal or supernatural. And the tombs tell the same story. The statues and paintings represent natural objects and not theological conventions; the tombs are fac-simile representations of the house in which the deceased lived, with his mummy and those of his family, and pictures of his oxen, geese, and other belongings, but no gods, and few of those quotations from the Todtenbuch which are so universal in later ages. It would seem that at this early period of Egyptian history life was simple and cheerful, and both art and religion less fettered by superstitions and conventions than they were when despotism and priestcraft had been for centuries stereotyped institutions, and originality of any sort was little better than heresy. War also and warlike arms hardly appear on these earliest representations of Egyptian life, and wars were probably confined to frontier skirmishes with Bedouins and Libyans, such as we see commemorated on the tablet of Snefura at Wady Magerah.
In Chald?a the evidence for great antiquity is derived less from architectural monuments and arts, and more from books, than in Egypt, for the obvious 166 reason that stone was wanting and clay abundant in Mesopotamia. Where temples and palaces were built of sun-dried bricks, they rapidly crumbled into mounds of rubbish, and nothing was preserved but the baked clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions. In like manner sculpture and wall-painting never flourished in a country devoid of stone, and the religious ideas of Chald?a never took the Egyptian form of the continuance of ordinary life after death by the Ka or ghost requiring a house, a mummy, and representations of belongings. The bas-relief and fringes sculptured on slabs of alabaster brought home by Layard and others, belong mostly to the later period of the Assyrian Empire.
Accordingly, the oldest works of art from Chald?a consist mainly of books and documents in the form of clay cylinders, and of gems, amulets, and other small articles of precious stones or metals. But the recent discovery of De Sarzec at Sirgalla shows that in the very earliest period of Chald?an history the arts stood at a level which is fairly comparable to that of the Old Empire in Egypt. He found in the ruins of the very ancient Temple of the Sun nine statues of Patesi or priest-kings of Accadian race, who had ruled there prior to the consolidation of Sumir and Accad into one empire by Sargon I., somewhere about 3800 b.c. The remarkable thing about these statues is that they are of diorite, similar to that of the statue of Chephren, which is believed to be only found in the peninsula of Sinai, and is so hard that it must have taken excellent tools and great technical skill to carve it. The statues are much of the same size and in the same seated attitude as that of Chephren, and have the appearance of belonging to the same epoch and school of art. This 167 is confirmed by the discovery along with the statues of a number of statuettes and small objects of art which are also in an excellent style, very similar to that of the Old Egyptian dynasty, and show great proficiency both in taste and in technical execution.
The discovery of these diorite statues at such a very early date both in Egypt and Chald?a, raises a very interesting question as to the tools by which such an intractable material could be so finely wrought. Evidently these tools must have been of the very hardest bronze, and the construction of such works as the dyke of Menes and the Pyramids, shows that the art of masonry must have been long known and extensively practised. But this again implies a large stock of metals and long acquaintance with them since the close of the latest stone period.
Perhaps there is no test which is more conclusive of the state of prehistoric civilization and commerce than that which is afforded by the general knowledge and use of metals. It is true that a knowledge of some of the metals which are found in a native state, or in easily fusible ores, may coexist with very primitive barbarism. Some even of the cannibal tribes of Africa are well acquainted with iron, and know how to smelt its ores and manufacture tools and weapons. Gold also, which is so extensively found in the native state, could not fail to be known from the earliest times; and in certain districts pure copper presents itself as only a peculiar and malleable sort of stone. But when we come to metals which require great knowledge of mining to detect them in their ores, and to produce them in large quantities; and to alloys, which require a long practice of metallurgy to discover, and to mix in the proper 168 proportions, the case is different, and the stone period must be already far behind. Still more is this the case when tools and weapons of such artificial alloys are found in universal use in countries where Nature has provided no metals, and where their presence can only be accounted for by the existence of an international commerce with distant metal-producing countries. Iron was no doubt known at a very early period, but it was extremely scarce, and even as late as Homer\'s time was so valuable that a lump of it constituted one of the principal prizes at the funeral games of Patroclus. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the art of making from it the best steel, which alone could have competed with bronze in cutting granite and diorite, had been discovered. It may be assumed, therefore, that bronze was the material universally used for the finer tools and weapons by the great civilized empires of Egypt and Chald?a during the long interval between the neolithic stone age and the later adoption of iron.
Evidently then, both the Egyptians and the Chald?ans must have been well provided with bronze tools capable of hewing and polishing the hardest rocks. Now bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Copper is a common metal, easily reduced from its ores, and not infrequently occurring in a metallic state, as in the mines of Lake Superior, where the North American Indians hammered out blocks of it from the native metal. And we have proofs that the ancient Egyptians obtained copper at a very early date from the mines of Wady Magerah in the peninsula of Sinai, and probably also from Cyprus. But where did they get their tin, without which there is no bronze? Tin is a metal 169 which is only found in a few localities, and in the form of a black oxide which requires a considerable knowledge of metallurgy to detect and to reduce. The only considerable sources of tin now known are those of Cornwall, Malacca, Banca, and Australia. Of these, the last was of course unknown to the ancient world, and it is hardly probable that its supplies were obtained from such remote sources as those of the extreme East. Not that it is at all impossible that it might have been brought from Malacca by prehistoric sea-routes to India, and thence to Egypt by the Red Sea and to Chald?a by the Persian Gulf, and this is the conjecture of one of the latest authorities in a very interesting work just published on the Dawn of Ancient Art. But it seems highly improbable that, if such routes had been established, they should have been so completely abandoned as they certainly were when the supply of tin for the Eastern world was brought from the West. In fact, when we get the first authoritative information as to the commerce in tin, about 1000 b.c., we find that it was supplied mainly by Tyre, and came from the West beyond the Straits of Gibraltar; and in the Greek Periplus, written in the first century, it is distinctly stated that India was supplied with tin from Britain by way of Alexandria and the Red Sea, which is hardly consistent with the supposition that the tin of Malacca had been long known and worked.
In the celebrated 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which describes the commerce of Tyre when in the height of its glory, tin is only mentioned once as being imported along with silver, iron, and lead from Tarshish, i.e. from the emporium of Gades or Cadiz, to which it had doubtless been brought from Cornwall. The only other 170 reference to tin is, that Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, i.e. the Ionians, and tribes of Asia Minor in the mountainous districts to the south of the Black Sea, traded with slaves and vessels of brass, and if brass meant bronze, this would imply a knowledge of tin. The only other considerable supply of tin which is certainly known came from the Etruscans, who worked extensive tin mines in Northern Italy. But the evidence of these does not go back farther than from 1000 to 1500 b.c., and it leaves untouched the question how Egypt and Chald?a had obtained large stocks of bronze, certainly long before 5000 b.c.; and how they kept up these stocks for certainly more than 2000 years before the Ph?nicians appeared on the scene to supply tin by maritime commerce. It is in some other direction that we must look, for it is certain that neither Egypt nor Chald?a had any native sources of this metal. They must have imported, and that from a distance, either the manufactured bronze, or the tin with which to manufacture it themselves by alloying copper. The latter seems most probable, for the Egyptians worked the copper mines of Sinai from a very early date, and drew supplies of copper from Cyprus, which could only have been made useful by alloying it with tin, while if they imported all the immense quantity of bronze which they must have used, in the manufactured state, the pure copper would have been useless to them.
A remarkable fact is that the bronze found from the earliest monuments downwards, throughout most of the ancient world, including the dolmens, lake villages, and other prehistoric monuments in which metal begins to appear, is almost entirely of uniform composition, consisting of an alloy of 10 to 15 per 171 cent. of tin to 85 or 90 per cent. of copper. That is for tools and weapons where great hardness was required, for objects of art and statuettes were often made of pure copper, or with a smaller alloy of tin, showing that the latter metal was too scarce and valuable to be wasted.[5] Evidently this alloy must have been discovered in some locality where tin and copper were both found, and trials could be made of the proportions which gave the best result, and the secret must have been communicated to other nations along with the tin which was necessary for the manufacture. Where could the sources have been which supplied this tin and this knowledge how to use it, to the two great civilized nations of Egypt and Chald?a, where we can say with certainty that bronze was in common use prior to 5000 b.c.? If we exclude Britain and the extreme East, there are only two localities in which extensive remains of ancient workings for tin have been discovered; one in Georgia on the slopes of the Caucasus, and the other on the northern slope of the Hindoo-Kush in the neighbourhood of Bamian. And the knowledge both of bronze and of other metals, such as iron and gold, seems to have been universally diffused among the Turanian races who were the primitive inhabitants of Northern Asia. How could Egypt have got its tin even from the nearest known source? Consider the length of the caravan route; the number of beasts of burden required; the 172 necessity for roads, dep?ts, and stations; the mountain ranges, rivers, and deserts to be traversed; such a journey is scarcely conceivable either through districts sparsely peopled and without resources, or infested by savage tribes and robbers. And yet if the tin did not come by land, it must have come for the greater part of the way by water, floating down the Euphrates or Tigris, and being shipped from Ur or Eridhu by way of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.
It is difficult to conceive that such an international commerce can have existed at such a remote period, and the difficulty is increased by the fact that in Europe, where we can pretty well trace the passage from the neolithic into the bronze period, bronze does not seem to have been known until some 2000 or 3000 years later, when the Ph?nicians had migrated to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and extended their commerce and navigation far and wide over its northern coasts and islands; and at a still later period, when the Etruscans had established themselves in Italy and exported the products of the Tuscan tin mines by trade routes over the Rh?tian Alps. It is even doubtful whether there was any knowledge of metals in Europe prior to the Ph?nician period, as the Aryan names for gold, silver, copper, tin, and iron are borrowed from foreign sources; and have no common origin in any ancestral language of the Aryan races before they were differentiated into Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavic. Copper seems to have been the first metal known, and there are traces of a copper age prior to that of bronze in some of the older neolithic lake villages of Switzerland and Italy, and in very old tombs and dolmens in Hungary, France, and the south-west 173 of Spain. But these copper implements are very few and far between, they are evidently modelled in the prior forms of polished stone, and must have been superseded after a very short time by the invention or importation of bronze, which, as already stated, implies a supply of tin, and a common knowledge of the art of alloying copper with it in the same uniform proportion which gives the best result.
But in the historic records and remains of Egypt and Chald?a, which go so much further back, bronze had evidently been long known when history commences. The Accadian name for tin, Id-Kasdaru, is the oldest known, and reappears in the Sanscrit Kastira, the Assyrian Kasugeteira, and the Greek Kassiteros. The oldest known name for copper is the Accadian urud or urudu, which singularly enough is preserved in the Basque urraida, while as rauta it reappears as the name for iron in Finnish, and as ruda for metal generally in Old Slavonic. In Semitic Babylonian, copper is eru, which confirms the induction that the metal was unknown to the primitive Semites, and adopted by them from the previously existing Accadian civilization. We are thus driven back by every line of evidence to the conclusion that Egypt and Chald?a were in the full, bronze age, and had left the stone period far behind them, long before the primitive stocks of the more modern Aryan and Semitic populations of Europe and Western Asia had emerged from the neolithic stage, and for an unknown period before the definite date when their history commences, certainly not less than 7000 years ago.
We are also driven to the conclusion that other nations, capable of conducting extensive mining operations, 174 must have been in existence in the Caucasus, the Hindoo-Kush, the Altai, or other remote regions; and that routes of international commerce must have been established by which the scarce but indispensable tin could be transported from these regions to the dense and civilized communities which had grown up in the alluvial valleys and deltas of the Nile and the Euphrates.
It is very singular, however, that if such an intercourse existed, the knowledge of other objects of what may be called the first necessity, should have been so long limited to certain areas and races. For instance, in the case of the domestic animals, the horse was unknown in Egypt and Arabia till after the Hyksos conquest, when in a short time it became common, and these countries supplied the finest breeds and the greatest number of horses for exportation. On the other hand, the horse must have been known at a very early period in Chald?a, for the tablet of Sargon I., b.c. 3800, talks of riding in brazen chariots over rugged mountains. This makes it the more singular that the horse should have remained so long unknown in Egypt and Arabia, for it is such an eminently useful animal, both for peace and war, that one would think it must have been introduced almost from the very first moment when trading caravans arrived. And yet tin must have arrived from regions where in all probability the horse had been long domesticated before the time of Menes. The only explanation I can see is, that the tin must have come by sea, but by what maritime route could it have come prior to the rise of Ph?nician commerce, which was certainly not earlier than about 2000 b.c., or some 3000 years after the date of Menes? Could it have come down the Euphrates or Tigris and been 175 exported from the great sea-ports of Eridhu or Ur by way of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea?
This seems the more probable, as Eridhu was certainly an important maritime port at the early period of Chald?an civilization. The diorite statues found at Tell-loh by M. de Sarzec are stated by an inscription on them to have come from Sinai, and indeed they could have come from no other locality, as this is the only known site of the peculiar greenish-black basalt or diorite of which those statues and the similar one of the Egyptian Chephren of the second pyramid are made. And in this case the transport of such heavy blocks for such a distance could only have been effected by sea. There are traces also of the maritime commerce of Eridhu having extended as far as India. Teak wood, which could only have come from the Malabar coast, has been found in the ruins of Ur; and "Sindhu," which is Indian cloth or muslin, was known from the earliest times. It seems not improbable, therefore, that Eridhu and Ur may have played the part which was subsequently taken by Sidon and Tyre, in the prehistoric stages of the civilizations both of Egypt and of Chald?a, and this is confirmed by the earliest traditions of the primitive Accadians, which represent these cities on the Persian Gulf as maritime ports, whose people were well acquainted with ships, as we see in their version of the Deluge, which, instead of the Hebrew ark of Noah, has a well-equipped ship with sails and a pilot, in the legend of Xisuthros.
The instance of the horse is the more remarkable, as throughout a great part of the stone period the wild horse was the commonest of animals, and afforded the staple food of the savages whose remains are found in all 176 parts of Europe. At one station alone, at Solutre in Burgundy, it is computed that the remains of more than 40,000 horses are found in the vast heap of débris of a village of the stone period. What became of these innumerable horses, and how is it that the existence of the animal seems to have been so long unknown to the great civilized races? It is singular that a similar problem presents itself in America, where the ancestral tree of the horse is most clearly traced through the Eocene and Miocene periods, and where the animal existed in vast numbers both in the Northern and Southern Continent, under conditions eminently favourable for its existence, and yet it became so completely extinct that there was not even a tradition of it remaining at the time of the Spanish conquest. On the other hand, the ass seems to have been known from the earliest times, both to the Egyptians and the Semites of Arabia and Syria, and unknown to the Aryans, whose names for it are all borrowed from the Semitic. Large herds of asses are enumerated among the possessions of great Egyptian landowners as far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties, and no doubt it had been the beast of burden in Egypt for time immemorial.
It is in this respect only, viz. the introduction of the horse, that we can discern any foreign importation calculated to materially affect the native civilization of Egypt, during the immensely long period of its existence. It had no doubt a great deal to do with launching Egypt on a career of foreign wars and conquests under the eighteenth dynasty, and so bringing it into closer contact with other nations, and subjecting it to the vicissitudes of alternate triumphs and disasters, now carrying the Egyptian arms to the Euphrates and Tigris, 177 and now bringing Assyrian and Persian conquerors to Thebes and Memphis. But in the older ages of the First and Middle Empire, the ox, the ass, the sheep, ducks and geese, and the dog, seem to have been the principal domestic animals. Gazelles also were tamed and fed in herds during the Old Empire, and the cat was domesticated from an African species during the Middle Empire.
Agriculture was conducted both in Egypt and Chald?a much as it is in China at the present day, by a very perfect system of irrigation depending on embankments and canals, and by a sort of garden cultivation enabling a large population to live in a limited area. The people also, both in Egypt and Chald?a, seem to have been singularly like the modern Chinese, patient industrious, submissive to authority, unwarlike, practical, and prosaic. Everything, therefore, conspires to prove that an enormous time must have elapsed before the dawn of history 7000 years ago, to convert the aborigines who left their rude stone implements in the sands and gravels of these localities, into the civilized and populous communities which we find existing there long before the reigns of Menes and of Sargon.