organisations, wholly or partially renouncing their separate positions.
Thus nations will be replaced by a federal state, and a multitude of
unifying ideas which would otherwise be accomplished with difficulty
will come to easy realisation. Federal states were already in existence
during the times of patriarchal communities: an especially striking
example is that of the admirably constituted federation of the Iroquois
nations.
[Sidenote: Universal Transmission of Culture]
The vision of no man may pierce through to the ultimate end of
the processes of history, and to advance hypotheses is a vain
endeavour--quite as vain as it would be to expect Plato to have
foretold the life of modern civilisation or the imperial idea of
mediæval times, or Dante to have foreseen modern industrialism or the
character of industrial peoples. To-day we are more certain than ever
that no process of development, however simple it may have been, has
ever taken place according to a fixed model; all developments have had
their own individualities according to place and to time. Thus we must
forego discussion of the future.
However, there is another point of view. Development of nations as well
as of individuals leads either to progress or to decay. No people may
hope to live eternally; and how many acquisitions already gained will
be lost in the future it is impossible to say. If a nation declines,
it either becomes extinct or is annihilated by another state; it
becomes identified with the newer nation, and disappears with its own
character; thus its civilisation may also disappear. This is a serious
possibility. It is the Medusa head of the world’s history which we must
face--and without stiffening to stone.
[Sidenote: Influence of Peoples on One Another]
There is one truth, however, the knowledge of which fills us with hope
for the future: it is the fact that the results of development and
civilisation are often transfused from one people to another, so that
a given development need not start again from the very beginning. This
is owing to the capacity which races have for absorbing or borrowing
civilisations. Absorption of culture is by no means universal; it
does not prevent the occasional disappearance of civilisation,
for every civilisation has before it at least the possibility of
death. Nevertheless the transmission and assimilation of culture is
constantly taking place. There are various ways in which it may be
brought about. A conquering nation may bring its own civilisation
with it to the conquered; culture is often forced upon the latter
by coercive measures. The conquerors may acquire culture from the
vanquished; or assimilation of culture may come about without the
subjection of a people, through the unconscious adoption of external
customs and internal modes of thought. Finally, culture may be
borrowed consciously from one nation by another, the one state becoming
convinced of the outward advantages and inner significance of the
foreign civilisation.
In this way the problem of development becomes very complicated; many
institutions of vanished races thus continue to live on. Certainly the
race that acquires a foreign civilisation must, among other things,
be so constituted in its motives and aspirations as to lose the very
nerves of its being, its very stability, in order that, intoxicated
with the joy of a new life, all traces of its past existence may be
allowed to break up and disappear. On the other hand, many a promising
germ of culture possessed by a vigorous people may come to grief, owing
to the influence of acquisitions from without. But, in return, a race
that knows how to assimilate foreign culture may obtain a civilisation
of such efficiency as it would never before have been capable of
attaining, by reason of the fact that its power is established on a
recently acquired basis, and because it has been spared a multitude of
faltering experiments.
[Sidenote: Progress Goes on For Ever]
Civilisation may be mutually obtained from reciprocal action, nations
both giving and taking. Such a relation naturally arises when states
enter into intercourse with one another, when they have become
acquainted with one another’s various institutions and are able to
recognise the great merits of foreign organisations and the defects
of their own. Especially the world’s commerce, in which every nation
wishes to remain a competitor, compels towards mutual acceptance of
custom and law; no nation desires to be left behind; and each discovers
that it will fall to the rear unless it borrow certain things from the
others. Such reciprocal action will be the more effective the more like
nations are to one another, the better they understand each other, and
the more often they succeed not only in adopting the outward forms,
but in absorbing the principles of foreign institutions into their own
beings.
Thus we may hope that even if the nations of to-day decay and
disappear, the labour of the world’s progress will not be lost; it will
constantly reappear in new communities which may rejoice in that for
which we have striven, and which we have acquired by the exertion of
our own powers.
JOSEPH KOHLER
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
From the French of Victor Hugo
By HAROLD BEGBIE
=The Temple of Diana at Ephesus speaks:=
The sun standeth in the high places of the mountains,
Full of brightness and mirth is the dawn.
But my loveliness is not shamed by him,
Neither is it dimmed;
For, behold and consider well, the sun is not more than thought.
That which yesterday I was, to-morrow I shall be:
I live: I wear upon my brow the moving ages and the spirit of man,
And genius, and art:
These things are more wonderful than the sun.
Senseless is the stone in the earth,
And the granite is not more than the formless night;
The alabaster knoweth not the dayspring,
Porphyry is blind,
And marble is without understanding;
But let Ctesiphon pass,
Or Dædalus, or Chresiphon,
And fix his eyes, full of the divine flash,
Upon the ground where the rocks slumber,
And lo, they awake, they tremble, they are stricken with
understanding;
The granite, lifting some vague and troubled eyelid,
Struggleth to behold his master:
The rock feeleth within himself the breathing of the unhewn statue,
The marble stirs in the midnight of his darkness,
Because that he is aware of the soul of a man.
The buried alabaster desireth to rise up from the grave,
Earth shudders, it trembleth violently,
It feels upon it the will of a man;
And behold, beneath the gaze of him who passeth with creation in
his eyes,
From the deeps of the sacred earth
The sublime palace comes forth and mounts upward.
=When she has made an end, the Gardens of Babylon sing their laud of
Semiramis:=
Glory to Semiramis,
Who reared us up on the arches of the great bridges
Whose span outraceth time.
This great queen was wont to delight herself beneath our floating
branches;
In the midst of the ruin of two empires
She laughed in our groves,
She was happy in our green places;
She conquered the kings of far countries,
And when the man had humbled himself before her,
Lo, she would go upon her way,
She would come hither,
She would sigh gleefully under our branches,
Very pleasantly would she lie down on the skins of panthers.
=And after the Gardens have sung, there is heard the voice of the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus:=
I am the monument of a heart that knew itself infinite;
Death is not death beneath my dome of blue,
Beneath my dome, death is victory,
Death is life.
Here hath death so much of gold and of precious stone
That he boasteth himself thereof;
Behold, I am the burial which is a pageant,
And the sepulchre which is a palace.
=Then, like a great thunder, the voice of Jupiter:=
I am the Olympian,
The lord of the muses;
All that which hath life, or breath, or love, or thought, or growth.
Groweth, thinketh, liveth, loveth, and breatheth in me.
The incense of supplication which rises to my feet
Trembles with terror and affright;
The slope of my brow doth touch the axis of the world;
The tempest speaketh with me before he troubles the waters;
I endure without age;
I exist without pang;
Unto me one thing only is impossible--
To die.
=After Jupiter, from the island of Pharos sounds the voice of the
great Lighthouse:=
In the midst of the mighty waters
I tarry for the ceasing of the centuries.
Sostratus the Cnidian built me,
He built me that there might be thrown
Across the rolling waters,
And through the darkness where lurketh destruction,
A rebuke to the lovely vanity of the stars.
=After the Lighthouse, the Colossus at Rhodes:=
I am the true Lighthouse.
Rhodes lies at my threshold.
Before the steadfast gaze of my unsleeping eyes
Winter maketh white the mountains.
I behold the deep waters in their cavernous mists;
I am the sentinel whom none cometh to relieve;
I look forth upon the coming of the night,
And upon the coming of the dawn
I behold the lifting of the mists,
I behold the terror of the sea,
With the immense dreaming of Colossus.
=And last speaks the Pyramid of Cheops:=
The desert, spread like a table, lieth beneath my foundations.
Lo, from some mysterious gateway of the night
I lift unto heaven my stair of terror,
And out of the darkness itself seemeth it that I am builded.
The sphinxes dropped their broods in the caverns;
The centuries went by; the winds passed sighing;
And Cheops said again: I am eternal!
=Then, after a profound silence, the creeping worm of the sepulchre
lifteth up his voice:=
I say unto you Buildings that ye rise, and arise still more!
Set ye up a stone above a stone,
Above cities lift yourselves up, O temples!
Lift up yourselves, like Babel!
Column above column;
Higher and yet higher;
Let palaces arise upon the hollow places
And let nothingness be fastened upon the foundations of night!
Ye are like smoke,
Therefore exalt yourselves with the clouds!
Set not an end to your boasting!
Mount up, mount up, for ever!
Lo, in the dust beneath your feet I crawl and wait.
Small am I, O mighty ones,
And yet I say unto you,
From the going down of the sun to his rising up,
From all the corners of the earth,
Everything which hath substance and which hath being,
The thing which is sorrowful,
And the thing which is glad,
Descend unto me.
And I only have strength, and I only endure for ever,
For behold, I am death.
[Illustration: THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON
The Hanging Gardens have been attributed to Semiramis, although
Nebuchadnezzar is also said to have built them to please one of his
wives, who, coming from a hilly country to Babylon, in the midst
of a vast and barren plain, sighed for some reminder of the leafy
beauty of her old home. The gardens, built in the form of a square
extending some 700 feet on each side, rose to a great height in
terrace upon terrace supported by massive pillars. A remarkable
hydraulic system kept their multitudinous plants and trees in
almost perpetual verdure.
]
[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT
For six thousand years the Pyramids have thrown their shadow across
the sands of Egypt. The stone of which they are built would make a
great wall from Cairo to New York; the white marble which covered
them would have built more king’s palaces than Egypt has had need
of. The building of the Great Pyramid employed 100,000 slaves for
30 years, and the geometrical perfection of it is a marvel to this
day. Khufu, or Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid--probably as his
tomb--reigned about 4700 B.C., so that the pyramid is more than
three times as old as the Roman Empire.
]
[Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS
This famous monument of antiquity was erected in the year 354 B.C.
to the memory of King Mausolus of Caria by his widow Artemisia,
at Halicarnassus, the beautiful Greek city-colony on the shores
of the Ægean Sea. Some idea of its size will be gathered from the
fact that it was surrounded by an esplanade which measured over
three hundred feet on each side, while its total height was nearly
a hundred and fifty feet. The statue existed almost intact until
the fourth century of our own era, and was finally destroyed in the
Middle Ages by the Turks.
]
[Illustration: THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES
This short-lived achievement of ancient art dated from about 300
B.C. It was the largest of a hundred statues to the sun-god raised
in the island of Rhodes, any one of which, said Pliny, would have
made famous the place where it stood. Dedicated to Apollo, who was
thought to have delivered Rhodes from Demetrius Poliorcetes, it was
made from the engines of war which that besieger left behind. One
finger of it was larger than an ordinary statue. An earthquake in
224 B.C. destroyed it, but even in its broken and fallen state it
was long the wonder of Rhodes.
]
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPHESUS
“Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” Her temple was burned down in
356 B.C., and subsequent to that year the great temple famed in
history was erected by the Ionians. It is said to have taken 220
years to construct, and measured about 400 feet in length and 200
feet in width, while it contained no fewer than 127 Ionic columns
nearly 65 feet high. The temple was despoiled by Nero and destroyed
by the Goths in 262 A.D., but some of its ruins still remain.
]
[Illustration: THE STATUE OF JUPITER ON OLYMPUS
The world-famous statue of Jupiter was the work of the great
sculptor Phidias. It measured 43 feet in height above the base.
The body of the god was carved from ivory, and the drapery was of
solid gold. No other statue of such magnitude, of such artistic
perfection, or of such precious material, has been known to
history. Among the ruins of the temple are still to be seen the
remains of the black marble mosaic on which the statue stood.
]
[Illustration: THE LIGHTHOUSE OF ALEXANDRIA
On the island of Pharos, close to Alexandria, stood the famous
lighthouse erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus about 280 B.C.
Constructed of white marble, in a series of vast stages of vaulted
masonry, it reached the height of 520 feet, and in its summit
burned night and day, an immense beacon fire of wood, which could
be seen 30 miles at sea. The lighthouse was gradually destroyed
by earthquakes and the action of the sea, but existed in some
condition to the end of the 13th century.
]
[Illustration: BIRTH OF CIVILISATION AND THE GROWTH OF RACES]
THE RISE OF CIVILISATION IN EGYPT
BY PROFESSOR FLINDERS PETRIE
In looking back to the beginning of civilisation in any country, we
have to deal with the physical changes which the land has undergone,
and to consider the conditions which promoted or hindered the advance
of its inhabitants. The nature of a country largely rules the nature of
its people, both bodily and mentally; and it may even be true that, if
sufficient time be given, the same character and structure will always
be produced by equal conditions.
[Sidenote: Civilisation 10,000 Years ago]
[Sidenote: How we can Fix the Date]
From historical records, and the cemeteries that have been examined, it
appears that the beginning of a continuous civilisation in Egypt must
be set as far back as about 10,000 years ago, or 8000 B.C.
The question then is how far the condition of the country at that
age was similar to that now seen? The present state is quite new,
geographically speaking, as the deposit of mud by the Nile, providing
a suitable soil, is only a matter of a few thousand years. The
accumulation of deposit is about 5 in. in a century (4·7 at Naukratis,
5·1 at Abusir, 5·5 at Cairo); and the depth of it is not less than
26 ft., and varies in different places down to 62 ft. The lower
depths are, however, often mixed with sand beds, and do not show the
continuous mud deposit; hence the average depth of 39 ft. is too large,
and if we accept 35 ft., it will certainly be a full estimate. At the
average rate of deposit, this would be formed in 6,000 years. But, on
the other hand, the deposit may have been slower at the beginning, and
hence the age would be earlier. Also, the full depth may be greater,
owing to some borings hitting on ground which was originally above the
river. Hence the extreme limits of age of Nile deposit in different
positions are perhaps 7,000 to 15,000 years, and probably about 10,000
years may be a likely age for the beginning of continuous Nile mud
stratification. Hence it is clear that the start of the civilisation
was about contemporary with the first cultivable ground.
[Sidenote: Stone Age in Egypt]
[Sidenote: The First Dwellers in the Land]
Earlier than the Nile deposits there must have been some rainfall,
enough to keep up the volume of the river, and to prevent its
slackening, so as to deposit its burden. We must picture, then, the
country as having enough rainfall for a scanty vegetation in the
valleys, while the Nile flowed down a mighty stream, filling the whole
bed as it now does in flood, and bearing its mud out to the sea, except
in some backwaters which were shoaling up. Such a land would support a
small population of hunters, who followed the desert game and snared
hippopotami in the marshes. The Nile had been in course of recession
for a long period before it began to rise again by filling its bed.
The gravels high above the present Nile contain flints flaked by human
work; much as in Sinai such flakes are found, deep in the filling of
the valleys which belong to a pluvial period. Yet after the Nile had
retreated down to the present level, man appears to have been still
in the Palæolithic stage, as freshly flaked, unrolled flints have
been found at the lowest surface level of the desert. As the country,
while drying up, and before mud deposits were laid down, would have
only been suited for occupation by hunters, it seems probable that
Palæolithic Man had continued in Egypt until the beginning of the
Nile deposits--that is to say, till the beginning of the continuous
civilisation as discovered in the cemeteries.
BUSHMAN TYPE. On turning to the remains of the earliest
burials, we find that in many cases female figures of the Bushman--or
more precisely Koranna--type, were placed in the graves; while at
the same time long, slender figures of the European type are also
found. The inference is that the Palæolithic race of the Koranna
type was known to the earliest civilised race in Egypt, and that
they were being expelled and exterminated, as only female figures
are found--representing captive slave women--and even these soon
disappear. Thus it would seem that Egypt, as an almost desert region,
before the formation of the cultivable mud flats, was the last home
on the Mediterranean of the hunters who continued in the Palæolithic
stage. The physical type of the figures which we can attribute to this
earliest population has the Bushman characteristics of fatness of the
thighs and hips, with a deep lumbar curve; and a line of whisker covers
the jaws of the female figures, akin to the fur on the bodies of women
on the Brassempouy and Laugerie-Basse ivory carvings. This indicates
that they belonged to a cold climate, and had not been developed in
Egypt. As, however, man had certainly dwelt in the Nile valley for
long ages, this northern indication points to a comparatively recent
invasion from a colder to a warmer climate, such as has been the rule
throughout historical times.
[Sidenote: Time Without Dates]
PREHISTORIC PERIOD. The beginning of the continuous
civilisation of the country must be placed at about 8000 B.C.
The written history extends back to the first dynasty, and places that
at 5500 B.C., and this is checked at the sixth, twelfth, and
eighteenth dynasties by records of the rising of Sirius, and of the
seasons in the shifting year, which agree to this dating in general.
For the length of the prehistoric age before these written records
there is no exact dating. But, as in a given district of Egypt, where
all the desert has been searched, the prehistoric graves are about as
numerous as those made during the six thousand years of the historic
time, at least 2,000 or 3,000 years must be allowed. The amount of
change in every kind of production during this age is considerable; and
as we can trace two cycles of civilisation, which usually occupy about
1,500 years each in the later times, it is likely that 2,500 years
is too little rather than too long a period. As no definite scale of
years can be used, the dating of the graves of this age is treated as a
matter of sequence. From a careful statistical classing of the pottery,
it is practicable to put about a thousand of the fullest graves into
their original order; this series is then divided into 50 equal parts,
and these are numbered from 30 to 80. Thus, sequence date 30 is the
earliest type of graves yet found, and S.D. 80 is of the age
of Mena, the founder of the first dynasty. The sequence dates are given
below for each stage of the prehistoric times.
[Illustration: THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF EGYPT
As female figures of the Bushman type are found in the very
earliest Egyptian graves, it is thought that this race was native
to the country and was gradually expelled by the first civilised
people. The photograph illustrates one of the figures taken from a
grave.
]
EARLIEST BURIALS. The earliest graves found are shallow
circular hollows on the desert, about 30 in. across, and a foot deep.
The body lies closely doubled up, wrapped in goat-skins. There are very
few objects placed with these burials; a single cup of pottery, red,
with black top; rarely, a slate palette for grinding face-paint; and,
in one grave, a copper pin to fasten the goat-skin. Pottery was in a
simple stage, and weaving was quite unknown. These graves are classed
as sequence date 30.
[Illustration: POTTERY OF FIRST EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION
The pottery of the first period of Egyptian civilisation is
characterised by raised white lines on a red body, and from the
fact that it closely resembles the pottery of the Kabyle people,
who live in North Africa to-day, it is thought the first Egyptian
civilisation may have come from the west. These examples are before
7000 B.C.
]
[Sidenote: Civilisation Emerging from the Mists]
FIRST CIVILISATION. The next period is that of the white patterns on
red (S.D. 31 to 34). This use of lines of raised white slip is the
same as on the present Kabyle pottery, and the patterns are so closely
alike on the ancient and modern that this forms a strong evidence for
a Western connection of the people. In this period the main lines
of the civilisation become clearly marked. The fine flint chipping
with delicate serrated edges; the polished red pottery, of circular
and of fancy forms; the tall round-bottomed stone vases; the slate
palettes for face-paint, of animal forms and of rhombic shape; the
use of sandals; the ivory combs with animal figures; the disc-shaped
mace-head--all of these were in use with the white cross-lined pottery,
and stamp the general type of the beginning of the civilisation. We
have before us a settled population, with strong artistic taste in
handicraft, but not in copying Nature; with patience for very long
and skilful work, and probably organised, therefore, under chiefs who
commissioned such labour; yet with sufficient general demand for fine
things to have raised hand pottery to its highest level; with strong
beliefs about a future life, as shown by the uniform detail of the
position of the body and the nature of the offerings in the grave; with
the arts of spinning and weaving; fairly clothed, as shown by the use
of sandals; fighters, with finely-made and treasured weapons; with the
use of personal marks for property--altogether much in the stage which
we now see in the highest races of the Pacific or Central Africa.