PERMANENCE OF HIGH INTELLECT
Accompanying this fine literature and moral teaching in Ancient
India was a civilisation equal to that of early classical races, in
grand temples, forts and palaces, weapons and implements, jewelry
and exquisite fabrics. Their architecture was highly decorative and
peculiar, and has continued to quite recent times. Owing perhaps to the
tropical or sub-tropical climate, with marked wet and dry seasons, the
oldest buildings that have survived, even as ruins, are less ancient
than those of Greece or Rome—but those corresponding in age to the
period of our Gothic cathedrals are immensely numerous, and show an
originality of design, a wealth of ornament, and a perfection of
workmanship equal to those of any other buildings in the world.
Two other great civilisations of which we have authentic records are
those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, both of which appear to have been
much older than those of India or Greece. But whereas Egypt has left
us the most continuous series of tombs, temples, and palaces in the
world, abundant works of art in statues and sculptures, together with
characteristic reliefs and wall paintings, showing the whole public
and domestic life of the people, Mesopotamia is represented only by
vast masses of ruins on the sites of the ancient cities of Nineveh
and Babylon, from which have been disinterred many fine statues and
reliefs, exhibiting a very distinct style of art. For more than 2,000
years the history and remains of this once greatest of civilisations
was absolutely unknown, except by a few doubtful facts and names in
Greek and Hebrew writings. But during the latter half of the nineteenth
century a band of explorers and students, such as Layard and Rawlinson,
made known, first the works of art, and, latterly, an enormous quantity
of small bricks and stone slabs, thickly covered with a peculiar
kind of writing known as the cuneiform inscriptions, which, after
an enormous amount of labour, have at length been translated. Whole
libraries of these brick-books have been discovered, and as the reading
and translating goes on, we obtain a knowledge of the history, laws,
customs, and daily life of this ancient people almost equal to that we
now possess of the ancient Indians and Egyptians.
For our present purpose, however, Egyptian civilisation is the most
important, because it presents us with the most definite proof of the
attainment of a high degree of what is specially scientific attainment
at the very dawn of historical knowledge. This is well exhibited by
that most wonderful work of constructive art—the Great Pyramid of
Gizeh—which, though not quite the earliest, is the largest and most
remarkable of about seventy pyramids in various parts of Egypt, and has
been more thoroughly explored and studied, both as to its proportions,
construction and uses, than any of the others.
This pyramid is known historically to have been built by the order of
King Cheops (or Khufu), and the date of its design and erection can be
pretty accurately fixed as about 3700 B.C., or nearly 2,000
years earlier than that of the civilisation depicted in the Indian
and Greek epics. The internal structure of this pyramid is its most
interesting feature, because it shows clearly that it was designed
to be not only the tomb of the king who built it, but also a true
astronomical observatory during his life. This has been denied by some
modern historians. In Harmsworth's _History of the World_ (p. 2034)
it is said: "For the pyramids are nothing but tombs. They have no
astronomical meaning or intention whatever." And then, after referring
to the ideas of Piazzi Smyth and others as "vain imaginings," it is
added: "There is nothing marvellous about these great tombs, except
their size and the accuracy of their building." An almost exactly
similar statement is made in the great _Historian's History of the
World_, and in "Chambers's Encyclopædia."
If the writers of these histories had read Mr. R. A. Proctor's book,
_The Great Pyramid: Observatory, Tomb and Temple_, they would have
known that this statement is entirely erroneous. The size, shape,
and angles of the internal passages have been described and measured
by many competent students, among the most careful and exact of whom
was Piazzi Smyth, then Astronomer Royal of Scotland. It is true he
had many "vain imaginings," but his measurements were among the most
trustworthy. The "pyramid religion," which he helped to establish by
a series of "coincidences" in the dimensions of various parts of the
pyramid with astronomical dimensions, of which the pyramid builders
could have had no knowledge whatever (such as the distance of the
sun, the precession of the equinoxes, etc.), was no doubt a "vain
imagining," but he frankly claimed it as a divine inspiration. All
these are rejected by Mr. Proctor, who clearly explains the purpose
of the greater part of the internal structure as only an experienced
practical astronomer could do. I will now state as briefly as possible
what are the well-established facts, as well as the conclusions at
which Mr. Proctor arrives.
The Great Pyramid and the two smaller ones near it, forming the
pyramids of Gizeh, are placed on a small rocky plateau near the apex
of the delta of the Nile. The largest of these is situated so that its
northern face rises from the very edge of this plateau. The reason of
this seems to have been that the builders wished to place it as nearly
as possible on the 30th parallel of latitude. It is really about a
mile and a third south of that parallel, and it is shown that such an
error is a small one for that early period, and would matter but very
little for the purpose required. The next feature is that it is truly
oriented; that is, the four sides run north and south, east and west.
It is also a true square, the four sides being of equal length, and the
four corners are on a truly level plane.
The first thing the builders had to do was to get a true meridian
line, and they could have done this in two ways—by observations of
the sun or of the pole star, the latter being much the more accurate,
though more laborious and costly. At the time the pyramid was built
the pole star was Alpha Draconis, which was farther from the pole than
our pole star and revolved around the true pole in a circle of 7° 24′
in diameter. In order to observe the direction of this star at its
lowest point, the builders excavated in the solid rock a tunnel about
4 feet in diameter, so as to keep this star visible each day at the
lowest point of its circuit. This tunnel extended 350 feet through the
rock to a point nearly under the centre of the pyramid, where, by a
small vertical boring, a plumb-line could have been dropped so as to
obtain the exact line of the meridian on the surface, and afterwards
on each successive step of the pyramid as it was built up. While the
building went on the sloping tunnel was continued backwards to its
northern face; and a tunnel ascending to the south was formed of the
same size and making the same angle with the horizon. This had puzzled
all previous explorers of the pyramid till Mr. Proctor showed that, by
stopping up the downward passage at the angle and filling the hollow
with water the pole star could be observed by reflexion and thus give
the exact direction of the meridian on the upper surface of the pyramid
with extreme accuracy, as it was built up slowly year by year.
But at a distance of 127 feet a new feature appears. The ascending
tunnel is changed into what is called the Great Gallery, which, while
continuing exactly the same floor line as the tunnel, is suddenly
raised to a height of 28 feet, with a width of 7 feet on the floor
and 3½ feet at the top. Along each side there is a ledge or seat,
20 inches broad and 21 inches high. The sides do not slope inwards,
but are formed of seven courses of stone, each one overlapping the
one below by about 3 inches. The whole of this gallery, or inclined
corridor, is formed of limestone beautifully smooth, or even polished.
The length of this gallery is 156 feet, and its floor terminated at
the platform of the pyramid, upon the central line from east to west,
when it had reached two-thirds of its total height. This is on the
level of the King's Chamber; and it was probably only after the king
was dead and his body embalmed and placed in his sarcophagus that the
pyramid was completed, the openings of the passages carefully closed
up, and the whole exterior covered with a smooth casing of stone, very
small portions of which now remain. There are two other features of
this gallery which have puzzled the merely antiquarian explorers. These
are square holes cut in the sloping benches close to the side walls,
and about 5½ feet apart, there being eighteen on each side exactly
opposite each other. On each side of the gallery, about half-way
up, is a longitudinal groove, which would serve to carry transverse
screens which could be slid up or down, and easily wedged in position
in order to mark exactly the central line, like the cross hairs in an
astronomical telescope. The holes on the benches would serve to carry
cross seats on which the observer could be firmly and comfortably
seated while observing a transit of sun, star, or planet.
Being open to the south, the Great Gallery would give a magnificent
view of the southern sky, and enable observers to determine the
altitudes and azimuths of many stars, and of the superior planets
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The star Alpha Centauri, which was at that
period of the first magnitude though now much diminished in brightness,
would, when crossing the meridian, have been situated about the centre
of the field of view as seen from this remarkable feature of the
pyramid which, Mr. Proctor considers, was the finest transit-instrument
ever constructed for naked-eye observations. Tycho Brahé, with his
celebrated Quadrant at Uranienburg, did not attain such a degree of
accuracy as did these Eastern astronomers nearly 6,000 years ago. One
great superiority of the subterranean observatory over any open-air
observations that can be made without telescopes is, that by closing up
the end, except for the small aperture required to see the object, the
brighter stars could be well observed in the daytime.
When we remember that the Great Pyramid covers 13½ acres of ground,
that it is truly square and on a truly horizontal base, that each side
is accurately directed to a point of the compass, that the angle of its
slope is such that the area of each of the four triangular faces is
equal to that of a square whose sides are equal to the height of the
pyramid; and, further, that the slope of the long descending tunnel is
precisely such as to point accurately to the pole star of the epoch
at the lowest part of its circuit round the true pole; and, lastly,
that all this could only be done, as accurately as it has been done,
by the system of subterranean tunnels and galleries that actually
exists, while almost all the details of their construction are shown to
be adapted for astronomical observations of the nature required, the
conclusion becomes irresistible that they were designed and used for
such observations, and that by no other means could the same amount of
accuracy have been attained.
I have given a rather full account of what the Pyramid builders really
did, because it forms a very important part of the argument I am
developing as to the stationary condition of the human intellect during
the historical period.
The great majority of educated persons hold the opinion that our
wonderful discoveries and inventions in every department of art and
science prove that we are really more intellectual and wiser than
the men of past ages—that our mental faculties have increased in
power. But this idea is totally unfounded. We are the inheritors of
the accumulated knowledge of all the ages; and it is quite possible
and even probable, that the earliest steps taken in the accumulation
of this vast mental treasury required even more thought and a higher
intellectual power than any of those taken in our own era.
We can perhaps best understand this by supposing any one of our great
men of science to have been born and educated in one of the earliest
of the civilisations. If Newton had been born in Egypt in the era of
the Pyramid builders, when there were no such sciences as mathematics,
perhaps even no decimal notation which makes arithmetic so easy to
us, he could probably have done nothing more than they have actually
done. In building up the sciences each of the early steps was the work
of a genius. But now that there has been nearly a hundred centuries of
discovery and specialisation by thousands or even millions of workers,
that by means of writing and of the printing press every discovery is
quickly made known, and that ever larger and larger numbers devote
their lives to study, the rate of progress becomes quicker and quicker,
till the total result is amazingly great. But that does not prove
any superiority of the later over the earlier discoveries. There is,
therefore, no proof of continuously increasing intellectual power.
But we have now evidence of another kind, which adds to the force of
this argument.
Quite recently, papyri have been discovered which give us information
as to the ideas, the beliefs, and the aspirations of a period even
earlier than that of the Great Pyramid. The result of the study of
these and other records of early Egypt is thus stated by Professor
Adolf Erman in _The Historian's History of the World_:
"But when one considers the ancient resident of the valley
of the Nile as a human being, with desires, emotions, and
aspirations almost precisely like our own; a man struggling
to solve the same problems of practical Socialism that we are
struggling for to-day—then, and then only, can the lessons of
ancient Egyptian history be brought home to us in their true
meaning, and with their true significance. And clearest of all
will that significance be, perhaps, if we constantly bear in
mind the possibility that the whole sweep of Egyptian history,
during the three or four thousand years that separated the
Pyramid builders from the contemporaries of Alexander, was a
time of national decay—a dark age, if you will—in Egyptian
history."
That a great historian, from a study of the ideas and social
aspirations of the earliest known civilisations, should have arrived at
similar views as to the identity of their mental capacity with our own
as I have deduced from their scientific attainments, must be held to be
a very strong argument in support of the accuracy of our independent
conclusions.