155 “Death no Bane,” translation by Robert Black, M. A., Sampson Low,
Marston & Co., London, 1889, p. 121, note.
156 Merely as affording a glimpse of the troublous period during which
Plotinus lived, I recall the fact that Caracalla, visiting Egypt,
caused a large number of young men to be massacred at Alexandria
(A.D. 211). Between A.D. 248 and 268, Alexandria was the seat of
civil war for twelve years, and through war, famine and pestilence,
in a few years, about half of the population, not only of
Alexandria, but of Rome, perished. A general persecution of
Christians was also carried on at this period, and in A.D. 268
Zenobia invaded Egypt.
157 To those of my fellow-workers who have made a special study of the
most ancient forms of cursive and ikonomatic writings of the Old
World, I should like to submit some facts concerning the ancient
Mexican method, which may carry a fresh suggestion and be an aid to
future research.
When the first Spanish missionaries who reached Mexico found
themselves confronted by the barrier of language and wished to teach
the native converts the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, they adopted the
method of picture writing employed by the aborigines. By painting a
banner=pantli, a stone=tetl, a cactus=nochtli and another
stone=tetl, they conveyed the words Pa-te-noch-te, which,
approximately, represented paternoster. The consequence was that the
Indians were able to memorize prayers in a language unknown to them,
by referring to pictures of objects and naming these in their own
tongue. A number of curious documents exist, which exhibit a great
difference and variety in execution and are more or less cursive,
according to the artistic sense and ability of the missionary or
converted Indian who drew them. The fact that Spaniards, possessing
our mode of writing, should have found picture-writing the most
effective means of teaching primitive people speaking an alien
tongue has always appeared to me as most instructive and suggestive.
As the natives suggested this method to their instructors, it is
obvious that it was their habitual mode of memorizing a foreign
language. The possibility that words recorded in native pictography
may belong to an alien tongue, opens out a new field for future
research. A curious result is obtained when Tenoch-Titlan, one of
the ancient names of the capital of Mexico is studied from this
point of view. In the well-known rebus now employed as the arms of
Mexico, the syllables Te and Noch only are actually expressed in
picture-writing by the stone=tetl, from which a cactus=nochtli is
growing. This group is, however, surmounted by an eagle holding a
serpent in its talons and the meaning of this animal group appears
symbolical merely. It may be a curious coincidence that the eagle
holding a serpent in its talons was employed by Mediterranean people
as an emblem of victory and occurs on ancient Greek coins with this
significance, and that the recorded name, Tenochtitlan or “the land
of Tenoch,” curiously resembles Tenos, the name of a Greek
heptarchy, founded by seven tribes just as the adjacent town of
Chalco, in Mexico, resembles Chalcis, the town in Eubœa, where
Aristoteles died.
On p. 418 and in my discussion of Egyptian hieratic script, I have
pointed out that some signs employed express the sounds of words in
another tongue, that the syllables am and an, for instance, seem
indissolubly and universally linked to pole-star worship and
symbolism. It does not seem unreasonable to endeavor to explain this
by imagining that individuals, wishing, in each case, to teach the
word _Sama_=the revolving heaven _i. e._ the North, to people
speaking different languages, should make a picture of a tree or
boat named am in one tongue, and in another country, draw a spider,
named am, by its inhabitants. In the first country the tree, or
boat, and in the second, the spider, would, in time, become the
symbols of the north, and though different, signify the same thing.
In time, each sign might be employed to express the syllable am in
general and in this way isolated systems of ikonomatic writing would
evolve and, in course of time, native artists would more or less
skilfully produce conventionalized and distinctly characteristic
forms and methods.
At the same time the colonizing race might be employing and
perfecting a totally different form of cursive writing for their own
purposes of registration, etc. For instance: in Athens, where Euclid
held an archonship in 403 B.C. and, during centuries, Pythagorean
philosophers identified “earth with a cube, fire with a pyramid, air
with an octahedron, water with an icosahedron, and _the Sphere of
the Universe_ with a dodecahedron,” and also taught that a point
corresponds with the monad, both being indivisible; a line with the
duad, etc., it is obvious that points, lines and geometrical figures
must have been employed for the cursive registration of ideas. In a
state, firmly established on fixed principles of numbers, the
cursive registration of its subdivisions, by means of numbers only,
was rendered possible and in such a community the necessity for
cursive writing would be limited and perhaps be confined to the
registration and identification of individuals, the reports of
quantities of produce, etc.
The facts that the letters of the Greek alphabet possess fixed
numerical values, and that the initial letters only of their tribal
names were inscribed on the shields of Lacedæmonian, Sicyonian and
Messenian warriors, for instance, appear to indicate that, at one
time, each Greek tribal division possessed its cursive mark, a
letter, which may have indicated, at the same time, a numerical
division of the confederacy. To understand such cursive records it
is evident that a knowledge of the numerical basis of the state
would be indispensable and imperative and that this would be
confined to the rulers only. My opinion that the Maya calculiform
hieroglyphs constitute cursive notation relating entirely to the
calendrical and governmental cyclical system and absolutely
unintelligible without a knowledge of this, has already been
partially referred to on pp. 242 and 244. From Mexican manuscripts,
where individuals, by means of a number and a calendar sign, are
linked to a division of the state, I hope yet to be able to clearly
demonstrate the practical harmonious working of a machinery of
state, established on a perfected numerical scheme, the cursive
notation of which was extremely simple.
Meanwhile I offer the foregoing remarks as suggestions for future
research and as an expression of my opinion that people, using
geometrical and numerical cursive methods of notation in their own
country, may have systematically employed the pictographic method in
teaching their language to strangers and in establishing their
civilization in foreign lands.
158 It is particularly interesting to learn from Professor Sayce (_op.
cit._ p. 188), not only that Phœnician culture had been introduced
among the rude tribes of Israel, but that the temple of Jerusalem
was built by Phœnician artists after the model of a Phœnician one,
the main features of which were the two columns or cones at the
entrance and the brazen sea or basin, which rested on _twelve_
bulls, this number agreeing with the number of Israelitic tribes and
with tribal or caste divisions in other ancient centres of
civilization. It is thus certainly suggestive to find the number
twelve associated with the Phœnicians, to whom the spread of
civilization in the Old World is attributed and whose predecessors,
at the period of Babylonian culture, were, according to Professor
Sayce, “solitary traders, who trafficked in slaves, in purple-fish
... and whose voyages were intermittent and private.”
... “Diodorus Siculus assigns to the Carthaginians the knowledge of
an island in the ocean, the secret of which they reserved for
themselves as a refuge to which they could withdraw should fate ever
compel them to desert their African home. It is far from improbable
that we may identify this obscure island with one of the Azores,
which lies 800 miles from the coast of Portugal. Neither Greek nor
Roman writers make any reference to them, but the discovery of
numerous Carthaginian coins at Carvo, the northwesterly island of
the group, leaves little room to doubt that they were visited by
Punic voyagers.”—Sir Daniel Wilson. The lost Atlantis and other
ethnographic studies. New York, 1892.
159 Address of the retiring President of the A. A. A. S., Columbus
meeting, 1899. Proceedings of the A. A. A. S., vol. XLVIII, to which
the reader is referred for valuable data.
160 “Professor Perry, F. R. S., in his admirable monograph on Spinning
Tops, (Romance of Science: Spinning Tops, by Professor John Perry,
M. E., D.Sc., F. R. S., 1890, pp. 107-110, 12-13, cited by O’Neil,
_op. cit._, p. 540.) shows how a spinning gyrostat whose spinning
axis is compelled by the experimenter into a horizontal plane is
then constrained by the earth’s motion alone to direct its spinning
axis due north and south and so to indicate mathematically the lie
of the true meridian of its spot. If the spinning gyrostat be next
shut off from all other motion except a vertical one in the plane of
this meridian, its spinning axis will point its north end up to, and
continue to point truly up to, the celestial pole.” Then, adds
Professor Perry, in terms strangely suitable to my purposes: “It is
with a curious mixture of feelings that one first recognizes the
fact that all rotating bodies, fly-wheels of steam-engines and the
like, are always tending to turn themselves towards the Polestar;
gently and vainly tugging at their foundations, all the time they
are in motion, to get round towards the object of their adoration.”
161 The Incas claimed to have descended from three windows. See Rites
and Laws of the Incas, p. 77.
162 It is noteworthy that the Zuñi name for village in general is
ti´-na-kwin-ne. Tina=many sitting around and kwin-ne=place of.
163 The accuracy and value of the above article are vouched for, in an
interesting way by the Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer, F. R. G. S. (a
missionary who spent ten years in Arabia), who refers to it as
follows, and quotes it in his recent publication: “Arabia, the
cradle of Islam. New York, 1900,” p. 289. “An anonymous article in
the London Standard, Oct. 19, 1894, entitled, ‘A prayer-meeting of
the Star-worshippers,’ curiously gave me the key to open the lock of
their silence. Whoever wrote it must have been perfectly acquainted
with their religious ceremonies, for when I translated it to a
company of Sabeans at Amara, they were dumfounded. Knowing that I
knew _something_, made it easy for them to tell me more.”
164 I point out the remarkable fact that the Chinese name for jade=yu,
is homonymous with the word for source or origin, hence, perhaps,
its sacredness and employment as a secret symbol of the hidden
source of all things. See p. 277 for Chinese choice of symbols
influenced by sound of name.
165 The Hindu Yama and Yami were twin brother and sister, and have been
respectively identified by Prof. Max Müller as night and day. Yama,
the inseparable duality, is entitled law and justice, etc. and was
represented with four arms, riding a buffalo, with a crown on his
head, accompanied by “two four-eyed watch dogs, which are probably
the eight or twice-four regions of the compass”... (Chambers’
Encyclopædia). Of the originally cosmical character of Yama there
can be no doubt. It is curious to find, at the epic and Puranic
period, the account of “Yama” marrying the thirteen daughters of
Daksha (north-people, white), becoming the regent of the south and
residing in Yamapura, a town in the lower regions; details which
appear to indicate the actual establishment of a kingdom on the
familiar plan by an earthly representative of the cosmical deity.
166 This was the first god of the divine triad of whom it is recorded
that “they hid their persons;” see Translation of the Ko-ji-ki or
Records of Ancient Matters, Basil Hall Chamberlain, vol. X,
supplement, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Sections I
and II from which this and the following names of gods are taken.
167 The Akkadian Sumerian Cosmos is thus described: “Above the earth
extended the sky, ana, spangled with its fixed stars (mul) revolving
around the mountain of the east (Kharsak Kurra) the column which
joins the heaven and the earth and serves as an axis to the
celestial vault. The culminating point in the heaven, the zenith
(Paku), was not this axis or pole; on the contrary, it was situated
immediately above the country of Akkadia [Kalama] which was regarded
as the centre of the inhabited lands, while the mountain which acted
as a pivot to the starry heavens was to the northeast of this
country. Beyond the mountain, also to the northeast, extended the
land of Aralli, which was very rich in gold and was inhabited by the
gods and blessed spirits” (Lenormant, quoted by Warren _op. cit._ p.
166).
168 This is the Ka of Egyptian theology ... he is the Sek-Nag, the god
of the Rāj, or royal race of Gonds, born (ja) of Rā, that is, the
sons of Ra-Hu, the begetting (Hu) creating fire-god (Ra). His
festival is held every seven years and is attended only by males who
are bound to secrecy as to its rites.... This god, the great Nag, is
the soul of life in the rain cloud, the heavenly snake ... the other
being the Ahi or Echis, the snake of earth. “To the present day the
Jains, who are the great trading race of India, call themselves
Ka-ya=the sons of Ka. This name they must have brought with them to
the holy island (Dilmun), from thence it must have travelled to
Egypt with the race who established the Kushite rule there”
(Hewitt).
169 The titles “Middle king,” “Great Middle princess,” are cited by
Chamberlain, _op. cit._ pp. 265 and 267.
170 Madhu=the inspiring intoxicating honey mead used in the sacred
ritual, substituted by a Northern people for the barley liquor
offered in the manthin or creating, churning cup. The names given to
the drinkers of madhu=“madhuya,” madhu-pā and Madhvi; also
madhu-varna, the men of Madhu’s caste, are curiously homonymous with
the word for Middle Madhyias and appear to designate them as the
“Middle caste,” naturally associated with the North.
171 Quoted by O’Neil from Satow and Hawes’ Hdbk. of Japan, 2nd ed. p.
39.
It is interesting to compare the following Japanese words with
Miyauken:
MIYO=wonderful, admirable, secret, mysterious, holy.
MIYA=Shinto temple where the kami are worshipped. Japan.
MIYUKI=travelling, going, only applied to circuit of provinces
performed by Mikado.
KEN=imperial domain, or that territory which is under the direct
government of the Mikado, _cf._ Chinese k’an=land.