ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART.
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--Chaldæan 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 Chaldæan--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--Chaldæan
Art--De Sarzec's Find at Sirgalla--Statues and Works of
Art--Imply long use of Bronze--Whence came the Copper and
Tin--Phoenician 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 Chaldæa, 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 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 Chaldæa. 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 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, Chaldæa, 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 Chaldæa, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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.
[Illustration: PYRAMID]
The tunnel A B C is bored for a distance of 350 feet underground
through the solid rock, and is inclined 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.
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. 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 Chaldæa and Egypt, in the labours
of Hercules, in the 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 Chaldæa, 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 Chaldæa 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 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 [Greek: pi] 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, 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 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 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 Chaldæa 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 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 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.
[Illustration: 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 Chaldæa 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 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 Chaldæan 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 Chaldæan
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 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 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 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.
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 Chaldæa. These tablets are extremely ancient, going
back in many cases to the times of the old Accadians who inhabited
Chaldæa 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 Chaldæans had adopted the duodecimal scale, and counted by
sixes, twelves, and sixties. Now, twenty-four is not divisible by
seven, and, therefore, 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 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 Chaldæans. 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 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
Chaldæan 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE SHEIK, A WOODEN STATUETTE. Boulak
Museum, from Gizeh.--According to the chronological table of
Mariette, this statue is over 6000 years old. From a photograph
by Brugsch Bey.]
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 Chaldæa the evidence for great antiquity is derived less from
architectural monuments and arts, and more from books, than in Egypt,
for the obvious 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 Chaldæa 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 Chaldæa 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 Chaldæan 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 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 Chaldæa, 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 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 Chaldæa during the long interval
between the neolithic stone age and the later adoption of iron.
Evidently then, both the Egyptians and the Chaldæans 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
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 Chaldæa 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
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
Chaldæa 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 Phoenicians 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 Chaldæa 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 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 Chaldæa, 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 necessity for roads, depôts, 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.
[5] This normal alloy does not seem to have been in general use
in Egypt before the eighteenth dynasty, and the bronze of earlier
periods contains less tin. But evidently a very hard alloy of
copper must have been used from the earliest times, to chisel out
statues of granite and diorite, and although tin was too scarce
for common use, the tools for such purposes must have contained a
considerable percentage of it.
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 Phoenicians 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 Rhætian Alps. It is even doubtful whether there was any knowledge
of metals in Europe prior to the Phoenician 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 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 Chaldæa, 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 Chaldæa 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, 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 Chaldæa, 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 Phoenician
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 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 Chaldæan 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
Chaldæa, 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 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, 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 Chaldæa 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 Chaldæa, 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.