model of Dár-Wadái, &c.; and means the abode, region, home (_Dár_) of
the For tribe. My lamented friend General Purdy (Pasha) formerly of the
United Slates Army, admirably surveyed it, and died at Cairo in 1881.
[423] _Vulgo_ Kattywár; described in 1842 by Captain (the late Sir G.
Le Grand) Jacob in his _Report on Guzerat_ (Gujarát).
[424] The sticks correspond with the strings on the bellows of the
Egyptian monuments.
[425] _Iron_, Jan. 8, 1876.
[426] I observe that M. Terrien de la Couperie has lately derived the
oldest civilisation of China from Chaldæo-Babylonia of the Akkadian
Ages, B.C. 2400–2300.
[427] Major Jähns (p. 416) would derive _Schwert_ (= _das Sausende_,
_Schwirrende_, i.e. whizzing) from the Sansk. _svar_, noise; and
considers it originally a missile pure and simple. He quotes Isidore,
who explains _rhomphæa_ by _wafan_; _Schwert_ and _framea_ = _asta vel
gladius_; _ensis_ = _hevas_, _hevassa_; _mucro_ = _swert_, _gladius_
= _wafan_; _culter_ = _wafansahs_, _sahse_. In the hebraising days
_Sword_ was derived from Sharat, to scratch, and _Sabre_ from Shabar,
to shiver.
[428] Of the Flamberge and the ‘flamboyant,’ or wavy blade, more
hereafter.
[429] Muratori (_Antiq._ ii. 487) notes, ‘_Spatam sive spontonem_, and
_sponto_, _spunto_, i.e. _pugio_’ (Adelung). Of _spatha_ more to come.
[430] Or ‘_die Schneide_,’ the older forms being _ekke_, _egge_; while
‘_valz_’ was the middle section of the two-handed Sword.
[431] ‘Chape,’ derived from _capa_, and a congener of ‘cap’ and ‘cape,’
is differently used by authors. Some apply it to the mouthpiece or ring
at the top of the sheath; others to the metal crampet, bouterolle,
or ferule at the scabbard-tip, and others to the guard-plate. In
Durfey (_The Marriage-Hater Matched_) we find ‘the hilt, the knot, the
scabbard, the _chape_, the belt, and the buckles’ (of a Sword). Skinner
explains it as _vaginæ mucro ferreus_. Mr. Fairholt defines _chape_
to be the guard-plate or cross-bar at the junction of grip and hilt.
Shakespeare, who knew the Sword, speaks of the ‘_chape_ of his dagger’
(_All’s Well &c._ iv. 3) and ‘an old rusty Sword with a broken hilt
and _chapelesse_’ (_Taming of the Shrew_, iii. 2). Commentators mostly
explain this by ‘without a catch to hold it.’ Dr. Evans (_Bronze, &c._
chap. viii.) has exhaustively described the bronze chapes (bouterolles)
in the British Islands.
[432] A congener of our ‘quill,’ from the Lat. _caulis_, a stalk.
Littré is not satisfactory: ‘Quillon (_ki-llon_, ll mouillées), s.m.
Partie de la monture du sabre ou de l’épée, située du côté opposé aux
branches, et dont l’extrémité est arrondie. Dérivé de quille’ (cone)
‘par assimilation de forme’ (in fact, incrementative of) ‘quille.
Etym. Génev. _quille_; de l’anc. haut-allem. _Kegil_; allem. _Kegel_,
objet allongé en forme conique, _quille_.’ Burn translates _quillon_
‘cross-bar of the hilt of an infantry or light-cavalry Sword.’
[433] This must not be written, as by some English authors, _pas
d’ane_. ‘_Pas d’âne_, instrument avec lequel on maintient ouverte
la bouche du cheval pour l’examiner.’ Littré has: ‘_Pas d’âne_, nom
donné, dans les épées du xvi^{ème} siècle, à des pièces de la garde
qui sont en forme d’anneau, et qui vont des quillons à la lame. “Le
Seigneur le prit et mit un pied sur la lame ... alors Collinet s’écria:
Venez voir, messieurs, le grand miracle que l’on fait à mon épée; je
l’ai apportée ici avec une simple poignée et sans garde défensive, et
voilà maintenant que l’on y met le plus beau pas d’âne du monde.”’
_Francion_, vi. p. 237: ‘Pas d’âne, nom vulgaire du tussilage, à cause
de la feuille.’
[434] The Scottish basket-hilt, however, requires improvement, as it
does not allow free play to hand or wrist.
[435] The word is originally the Persian _Shamshír_ (شمشير); but as
the Greeks have no _sh_ sound, it made its way into Europe curiously
disguised. Jean Chartier (temp. Charles VII.) says, ‘_Sauveterres ou
cimeterres qui sont manière d’espée à la Turque_.’ _Sauveterre_ became
in Italian _salvaterra_; and in England _scymitar_ was further degraded
to _semitarge_. I have no objection to _scimitar_, but _scymitar_ is
the older form.
[436] See note at the end of this chapter.
[437] As usual, the diagram is an exaggeration. It directs the
thrusting weapon too low, at the antagonist’s breast, not his eye; nor
is it necessary to raise the hand so high in order to deliver the cut.
[438] Quoted from Mr. John Latham by Colonel A. Lane Fox, _Anthrop.
Coll._ p. 171. Concerning the drawing cut and its reverse, the
thrusting cut, I shall have more to say when treating of the ‘Damascus’
blade in Part II.
[439] The section of the modern weapon shows that the _baïonnette Gras_
is fit only for the thrust; and, as it stops its own cut, it is useless
for the menial and servile offices in which the Yataghan-bayonet,
like the old _coupe-choux_ Sword, did yeoman’s service. I can see no
improvement upon the old-fashioned triangular bayonet, which amongst us
has been superseded by the short Enfield Sword-bayonet. To the latter
I should prefer even the bowie-knife bayonet, of which the Washington
Arsenal was once full, and which has been used even lately in the
United States. None but practical soldiers realise the fact that the
bayonet is meant to be a bayonet, not a Sword, nor a dagger, nor a
chopper, nor a saw.
[440] Mr. Wareing Faulder (Exhibition of Industrial Art, Manchester,
June and July, 1881, _Catalogue_, p. 24) suggests that the Colichemarde
‘fell into disuse probably in consequence of its costliness, combined
with its inelegant appearance when sheathed.’
[441] Captain George Chapman, in his _Foil Practice, &c._, a book which
will appear in the ‘Bibliography’ (Part III.), rightly distinguishes
between the triangular small-Sword, used only for thrusting, and the
bi-convex cut-and-thrust ‘rapier,’ a term applied by the Germans
to the _Schläger_, which has no point. In England most people use
‘small-Sword’ only in opposition to ‘broadsword’; but, as the Art of
Fencing may be considered a general foundation for swordsmanship, all
men-at-arms should understand and preserve the difference. The writer,
however, observes (Notes, pp. 4, 5), that, among the various actions
which may conveniently be executed with the triangular ‘Biscayan,’
there are many which cannot be so easily managed with a flat blade,
or with the usual weapon of modern combat, however light and handy.
Hence ‘fencers among military men should be cautioned against
_indiscriminately_ attempting with the Sword performances usually
taught in lessons with the foil.’
[442] It was also a proper name applied to the Paladin Renaud’s Sword.
The flamberge of the seventeenth century became a rapier-blade, and no
longer ‘flamboyant,’ and the difference is in the hilt, and especially
the guards. The latter were shallower and simpler than the rapier form,
and were more easily changed from hand to hand, as was the practice of
early fencers.
[443] There is another Dáo in the Eastern regions, a large, square,
double-edged blade, with a handle attached to the centre. The Dah of
Burma is originally the same weapon as the Nágá Dáo.
[444] In the _Bulletin de l’Institut Egyptien_ (deuxième série, No.
1, année 1880) there is an admirable paper on Eastern heraldry, ‘Le
blason chez les Princes musulmans,’ by E. T. Rogers Bey. He proves that
a heraldic scutcheon is known to the Arabs as _rank_, plur. _runúk_,
and that the word is the Persian _rang_, colour, from which he would
derive our (man of) ‘rank,’ a word hitherto unsatisfactorily explained.
As regards the tints, ‘azure’ is evidently the Persian _lájawardi_; and
‘gules’ is better derived from _gul_, a rose, than from Fr. _gueules_
(jaw), which is L. Lat. _gula_, reddened skin. These three words
suggest that for the origin of heraldry in its present form we must go
back to Persia. Of the Sword in European heraldry I shall have more to
say in Part II.
[445] Strange to say, these Sword-names are carefully omitted from
Liddell and Scott, 1869.
[446] The information was kindly forwarded to me by Captain F. M.
Hunter, Assistant Political Resident, Aden. Along the blade runs the
inscription, which will be quoted in Part II., and the characters
appear modern. My informant thinks that this Chelidonian does not
represent the original Zú’l-Fikár, which was two-edged.
[447] This trophy hangs against the staircase wall of the fine armoury
belonging to the Museo del Arsenale (Naval Arsenal), Venice. Here,
however, it has become a complicated affair with Koranic inscription
(ch. xl. vol. i.); open-jawed dragons’ heads at the hilt, and below the
handle a rosette with various complications of ‘Yá’ (Allah!).
[448] It is figured in the illustrations following the _Antiquities of
Orissa_, by Rajendra Lala Mitra.
[449] Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good
King Blay of Attábo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological
Institute of London.
[450] The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean
altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double
that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt).
[451] He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt—but
where? when? how? The ‘Asiatic Æthiopians’ of Herodotus lie between
the Germanii (Persian _Kerman_) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The
bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam
tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble
the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was _the_ Buddha one of these Cushite
Ethiopians?
[452] _Monumental History, &c._
[453] The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its
population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian.
To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and
Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah,
and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye.
[454] The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of
Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake.
I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact
of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply
defined. The mummy of King Mer en Rá (Sixth Dynasty), found near the
Sakkarah pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks
impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years.
He can hardly be dated later than B.C. 3000; and, reckoning from that
period to A.D. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of
embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers.
[455] The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The
Nilotes are οὐλότριχοι and ἐριόκομοι, with woolly locks, slightly flat
like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp.
It is also a mistake to make the Nubians λισσότριχοι: none of the Nile
Valley races are lank-haired like Hindús, Chinese, and Australians.
[456] The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59)
is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the ‘high antiquity
theory’; and appears astonished to find ‘anything placed centuries
previous to the Noahitic Deluge.’ Of this more presently.
[457] Each generation contained a ‘Piromis, son of a Piromis.’
The word, made equivalent to _Kalos k’ agathos_ (= _galantuomo_),
_Pe-Rome_, the man, opposed to _Pe-Neter_, the god.
[458] Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without
understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point
where it now rises (‘solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur’), he probably
means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which
presided at its rising.
[459] The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief.
Wilkinson’s day derived it from _Phra_ (_pa-Ra_), the sun; now it is
explained _Per-áo_, the Great House, in the sense of ‘Sublime Porte.’
[460] _Antiquité des Races Humaines._ Paris, 1862.
[461] The ‘black land,’ opposed to _Tesher_, the ‘red land’ (Edom,
Idumæa, Erythræa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also
called on the monuments _A’in_ (_Æan_ in Pliny) and _Ta-mera_ (_Mera_,
_Tomera_), the ‘inundation region.’ Another old name, _Aeria_, is
from יאר, _Yior_, the Nile. _Kemi_ must not be confounded with
_Khem_, _Chemmis_, universal nature, the generative and reproductive
principle—_Pan_. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis ‘_umbraculo_
maxime similis est habitus,’ I would change the first word to
‘umbilico.’ The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains
the latter.
[462] Hecatæus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (_Ereb_,
_Gharb_, the West) and Asia (_Asiyeh_, the East). Their successors
added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and
the Father of History a most insufficient fourth—the Nilotic Delta. The
latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor
Asia, but a land _per se_.
[463] In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (_Od._ xiv. 268).
Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero
proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the
god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptah-land (_Ezek._ xxix.
14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces
generally, may have named the πάταικοι (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene
dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh.
[464] Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then
synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the
subject of Aria’s enormous development.
[465] As a specimen of the roots—which are most remarkable when they
consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest
words—take ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’ The former is from the Egyptian _pa-pa_
(root _p_), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the
latter is _ma-ma_ (root _m_), to carry, be pregnant, bear. _Mut_
becomes _mátá_, μήτηρ, _mater_, mother: _Mer_ (_a-mor_), love; _meran_
(_morior_), die, and _more_ (_mare_), the sea. In ‘Semitic’ we have
_má_, Heb. and Arab. _má_, water; and a long array of other words (as
_ia_, yes, yea; and _na_, nay) too extensive for notice.
[466] Characterised chiefly by post- instead of pre-positions, by
additions to the verb which make it causal, reflective, and so forth,
and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar
and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient
_Sakas_ = Scythians.
[467] To Aryan I much prefer the older term ‘Iranian’; Iran (Persia),
which once extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean, being one
of the great centres where the ‘Aryo’-Egyptian element of language
developed itself, and where a typical race is still found. Nor is there
much objection to ‘Turanian,’ Turan being the non-Iranian regions to
the east, Tartary and China. But ‘Semitic,’ which contains a myth and
a theory, should be changed into ‘Arabian.’ Egypto-Arabic attained its
purest and highest development in the Peninsula; Hebrew is a northern
and somewhat barbarous dialect; Syriac is a north-western offspring;
Galla, a western; and so forth.
[468] For whose erection every ‘authority’ gives his or her own date.
Mr. Proctor’s calculation, based upon the precession of the equinoxes,
is B.C. 3350. It appears to me that we also obtain the date from the
position of the polar star (α Draconis), which looked down the axis of
the great entrance-passage before this long tube was blocked up. We may
thus assume between B.C. 3440 and B.C. 3350.
[469] _Records of the Past_, ii. 120; and _Trans. Bibl. Soc._ i. ii.
383–85.
[470] Brugsch, vol. ii. chap. xiv.
[471] One nome (_Tanis_) carried a crescent and one star, others had
two and three of the latter. The emblem passed over to the Byzantine
Empire, and now we see upon the Egyptian flag the crescent and Seb, the
five-rayed star. It is thus distinguished from the Turkish, which has
seven rays.
[472] See chap. viii.
[473] The popular conception of the Noachian Deluge is a study. There
have been millions of local and partial floods; but wherever and
whenever a traveller finds the legend of an inundation he incontinently
applies it to ‘the Flood.’ Dr. Livingstone could not refrain from
so doing at the petty Lake Dilolo. And it is to be noted that the
Egyptians, accustomed to annual freshets, utterly ignored one general
cataclysm as held by the Greeks.
[474] ‘Nuhu’ is found in the Nahrai tomb, Beni Hasan (Osburn, i. 239);
other names are Noum, Nouf, and Nef.
[475] Amun Ra (Hephæstus, Vulcan), the veiled Osiris, the ‘Hidden One
of Thebes,’ is thus addressed in a papyrus:—
He is One only, alone sans equal,
Dwelling above in the Holy of Holies.
Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the
beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first
to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’
[476] Mr. Froude _metaphysicises_ when he tells us that the religion
of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship
abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man.
[477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes
are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her
ideograph is the ell-measure.
[478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them.
[479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so φύσις from φύω, and _natura_
from _nascor_. Mystically, _Ya_ is the past, _Ha_ the present, and
_Vah_ the future.
[480] My fellow-traveller, the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, has neglected
the derivation of the ‘Prophet’ grade by Jewry from Egypt; his
interesting volume (_The Old Testament, &c._) wants more Egyptianism.
The Prophets of Nile-land had their merits; they foretold that Pharaoh
Necho’s Suez Canal would be more useful to strangers than to natives.
[481] The High Priest’s robe in Jewry had 366 bells, symbolising the
days of the Sothic-sidereal year. In the times of the early Pharaohs,
the ‘Queen of the New Year’ appeared in coincidence with the beginning
of the solar year. The Sothic æra had been fixed from observations
before Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty, circ. B.C. 1580).
[482] Yet the end of chap. xix. is distinctly teleological. Were there
two Jobs?
[483] Abraham, the legendary forefather of the Hebrews, was a Chaldæan
from Ur of the Chaldees. On the east bank of the Euphrates lies Uru-ki,
Erech, or Warká, fronted by Ur, Uru, or Mughayr: the Bedawin still
call the latter ‘Urhha’ in memory of ‘Ur.’ Thus Abraham was a hill-man
from the harsh and rugged regions fringing Southern Armenia. Hence the
‘Jewish face,’ with its strongly marked features and its wealth of hair
and beard, appears everywhere in the sculptures of ancient Babylonia
and Persia. Hence, too, the superficial observation that the Afghans
and hill-tribes west of the Indus are Jews because they have the
typical Jewish look. The reason is that all are derived from the same
ethnic centre, a great watershed of race.
[484] In this section of the nineteenth century three popular crazes
are producing a literature of vigorous growth. The first is the
Shakespearian; not Shakespeare, but Bacon, or some other Palmerstonian
pet, wrote Shakespeare. The second, apparently a by-blow of the Book of
Mormon, is the descent of John Bull from the ‘Lost Tribes,’ who were
never lost. The third is the Pyramid craze; and the rough common sense
of the public has embodied it in ‘the Inspired British Inch’: these
Pyramidists mostly forget that _the_ Pyramid is one of three greater
and some seventy lesser items which form the cemetery of Memphis.
[485] Yet it is remarkable, observes Brugsch (i. 212), that from
the earliest ages the curse of the Typhonic gods clings to gold.
So Plutarch (_Isis and Osiris_) tells us that the worshippers were
directed not to wear the noble metal; and this still is a general rule
in El-Islam.
[486] Silver, the ‘next folly of mankind,’ says Pliny (_Nat. Hist._
xxxiii. 31), showing his own, and rivalling Horace’s ‘aurum irrepertum
et sic melius situm.’ Strange to say, neither old Egypt nor Assyria
had a coinage, which Herodotus (i. 94) and a host of other writers
attribute to the Lydians, the forefathers of the Etruscans. Its
representative in the Nile Valley was the ring-money, which extended
to ancient Britain, and which is still preserved in many parts of
Africa. The golden ‘manillas’ discovered at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus,
where the breaks of the circle are adorned with the heads of animals,
lions and asps, show what the now meaningless thickening of these parts
originally meant.
[487] ‘Lead is also united by the aid of white lead (tin); white lead
with white lead by the agency of oil’ (Pliny, xxxiii. 30).
[488] _The Captivity of Hans Stade_, p. 145.
[489] Properly speaking, to ‘damascene’ is confined to ‘grit’ or
inlaid iron or steel, the word evidently deriving from Damascus, once
so famous for Swords. Johnson (_Dict._, Longmans, 1805) explains the
word ‘damask,’ ‘linen or silk woven in a manner invented at Damascus,
by which part, by a various direction of the threads, exhibits flowers
or other forms.’ Percy (_Metal._ p. 185) inclines towards ‘Damascus’;
but he suggests that the ‘word “damask” applied to steel may have
been derived, not from the place of manufacture but from a fancied
resemblance between the markings in question and the damask patterns on
textile fabrics.’
[490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest
composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (_Metallurgy_, p.
23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, _alias_
Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert
Hendrick (London, 1847).
[491] Plutarch relates (_De Isid._ 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty),
who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be
made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a
Sword.
[492] _Ḳrsha_, _Krasher_, or _Krershra_. The determinative is a
squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i.
51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the
Sword.
[493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive
from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, _Hemitybion_ is
Egyptian, evidently corrupted.
[494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis,
was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (_Primer of Homer_, p. 97:
Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper
Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first
illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, _temp._
Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, B.C. 1500.
[495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade
varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal
ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club
in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on
the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe.
[496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa
(chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic
without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that
the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows.
[497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’
Mr. Gerald Massey, author of _A Book of the Beginnings_, favoured me
with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the
hinder thigh ([Hieroglyphs], _Shepsh_, or [Hieroglyphs], _Khepsh_),
of the ‘old Genitrix’ of the Typhonian type, _Kfa_ or _Kefa_ (force,
power, might); the Goddess of the Great Bear and the place of birth.
Hence the [Hieroglyphs] (_Ru_) or ‘mouth’ of the Sword came to be
synonymous with the ‘edge’ of the Sword (Genesis xxxiv. 36). In the
Denderah zodiac, the central figure, the ‘old Genitrix,’ holds the
Khopsh-chopper or falchion with the right hand. The ‘thigh of Khepsh’
is also the Egyptian rudder-oar. The Great Bear Khepsh is one of
the earliest measures of the Seasons: the Chinese still say that at
nightfall the ‘handle of the northern bushel’ (tail of Ursa Major)
points east in spring, south in summer, west in autumn, and north in
winter.
Mr. Gerald Massey’s two fine volumes have secured him, and will secure
him, much bitter and hostile criticism from the many-headed who are
lynx-eyed as to details while they overlook the general scheme. His
object has been to show that religion and literature, science and art,
originated in Egypt; and here he is undoubtedly right. Relying upon
the self-evident fact that the language of the hieroglyphs contains
‘Semitic’ as well as ‘Aryan’ roots and derivative forms, he traces
these throughout the languages of the world. Whether we judge his work
conclusive or not, we cannot but admire and applaud the vast reading
and research which he has brought to bear upon the most interesting
subject.
And in another way Mr. Massey has done good. He has uttered a lively
and emphatic protest against the Sanskritists and their over-weening
pretensions. In vol. ii. (p. 56) he shows how shallow is the conclusion
that Ophir was in India because the produce brought back by Solomon’s
fleets had, according to Professor Max Müller, Sanskrit or Dravidian
names. ‘_Koph_’ the ape is _Kapi_ in Sansk.; but it is pure Egyptian,
_Kapi_, whence the Gr. κῆπ-ος or κῆβ-ος. ‘_Tukkiyim_’ (peacocks)
resembles the Toki of Tamil and the Togei of Malabar; but the root is
evidently the Egyptian _Tekh_ or _Tekai_, a symbolical bird. ‘_Shen
habim_’ (teeth of elephant = tusks) may derive from the Sansk. _Ibau_,
an elephant, but the latter is originally _Ab_ in Egyptian. These
erroneous views, coming from an authoritative source, are at once
accepted, copied into popular books, and find their way round the
world, to the confusion of true knowledge. They make it our hapless
fate to learn, unlearn, and relearn. See ‘ape’ in Smith’s _Dict. of
the Bible_, and, to quote one in dozens, the _Trans. Anthrop. Soc._ p.
435, May 1882,—‘the name for ape in “Kings” and in Greek authors, both
adopted from Sanskrit.’
Mr. Massey unfortunately has not studied Arabic, hence many views which
will hardly find acceptance. In interpreting the hieroglyphics he has
wisely preferred the ideographic symbolism and the determinatives
which, countless ages ago, preceded the phonetic and alphabetic forms.
[498] For further notice of the Kopis, see chap. xi.
[499] Also _v._ to decapitate: the Coptic form is _Sebi_ or _Sefi_.
[500] Bunsen, v. 758.
[501] Bunsen’s _Egypt_, v. 429. According to Castor, the two Swords
pointed at the throat of a kneeling man was the priest’s stamp denoting
pure beasts, fit for sacrifice. He has noted that this survival points
distinctly to human sacrifice in older days.
[502] Yet the tombs at Beni Hasan date 900 years before the popular era
of the Trojan war.
[503] _Monum._ 262 fol., plates 11, 15.
[504] Rosellini shows a long tapering blade with a mid-rib, apparently
sunken, and a raised surface on each side. The length is divided into
five parts, smooth and hatched (?).
[505] The Somal have retained three other notable peculiarities
of ancient Egypt; the wig (worn by the old Nilotes); the _Uts_
([Hieroglyphs]) or wooden head-stool acting pillow, which further north
was a half-cylinder of alabaster finely carved; and the ostrich-feather
head-gear The latter was a symbol of Truth among the old Egyptians,
because, says Hor Apollo, the wing-feathers are of equal length. The
Romans adopted it as a military decoration. ‘Your courage has not yet
given your helmet wherewithal to shade your face from the burning
sun,’ say the Kurds, who add to the crest a new feather for every foe
slain in fight. The Somal, after victory or murder, stick the white
variety in the mop-head. We still use the phrase ‘a feather in his
cap.’ The ‘Prince of Wales’ feather’ is an Egyptian ideograph of Truth.
Mr. Gerald Massey seems to think that Wilkinson’s ‘_Thmei_’ (II. chap.
viii.) is ‘only a backward rendering of the Greek “_Themis_”‘; that the
feathers are ‘_Shu_’ ([Hieroglyphs]), and that the goddess is ‘_Ma_’
([Hieroglyphs]), or ‘_Mati_.’ But surely the root of _Themis_ would be
in ‘_Ta-Ma_,’ _the_ Goddess (of Truth)?
[506] Compare _Raa_, Heb. and Ar., ‘he saw’; Gr. ὁράω, and Lat.
_Ra-dius_.
[507] Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks that the groove which is constant
in these Caucasian blades is a little out of the central line, and
does not correspond on each side, an alternation showing that it is
derived from the ogee form. I have suggested that the idea arose from
the arrow-head ‘bellied on a twist,’ and have figured the weapon in the
next page (fig. 170).
[508] _Bronze, &c._ p. 298.
[509] Chap. v.
[510] Returning from the exploration of Harar (1853), I sent a small
collection of Somali weapons to the United Service Institution.
[511] The form is accurately preserved in the formidable Afghan
‘Charay’ or one-edged knife.
[512] _A Critical Inquiry_, &c.
[513] I have shown that the heraldic Sword in the East preserves this
double sword-knot (chap. vii.).
[514] The Baghirmi, according to Denham, adore a long lance of peculiar
construction: this spear-worship is also practised by the Marghi and
the Musghu. It extended from ancient Rome to certain of the Pacific
Isles; while the Fijians worship the war-club. At Baroda in Gujarát
superstitious honours are paid to the Gaekhwar’s golden cannons with
silver wheels.
[515] English and Styrian razors are also largely imported.
[516] Chap. viii.
[517] Athenæus (i. 27) speaks of the Thracian dance in arms, ‘men
jumping up very high with light springs, and using Swords.’ At last one
of them strikes another, so that it seemed to everyone that the man was
wounded.
[518] _Marocco_, page 66 (Milano, Treves, 1876).
[519] Hence the ardent desire of the Abyssinians, when first visited
by Europeans, to obtain civilised Swords. Father F. Alvarez (_Hakluyt
Soc._ 1881), who lived in Abyssinia between 1520 and 1527, shows
the Barnagais (_Bahr-Negush_, or sea-ruler) begging the Portuguese
ambassador for his rich Sword and ornaments, ‘as the great lords
have few Swords’ (chap. xxx.). Prester John (the Negush or Emperor)
displays ‘five bundles of short Swords with silver hilts,’ taken from
the Moslems (chap. cxiii.). The King of Portugal sends as a present to
Prester John ‘first a gold Sword with a rich hilt,’ and a good fencer,
Estevam Pallarte.
[520] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 184.
[521] _Gorilla-land_, p. 227.
[522] Quenching in oil or grease instead of water is a common practice.
The workman still ‘adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours
over it hot oil, through which the steel must pass before it enters the
water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and
flaws.’ (Beckmann, _loc. cit._ ii. 330.)
[523] Specimens of all these weapons are in the Lane-Fox Collection,
Nos. 1088 to 1100.
[524] _The Cataracts of the Congo_, p. 234.
[525] I have noticed that arrant humbug, the celebrated ‘golden axe’
which, in 1880–81, caused the last ‘Ashantee scare’ (_To the Gold
Coast for Gold_, ii.). The thing sent to England was certainly not
the great fetish which is held to be the national Palladium. Another
memento of the last Ashantee war, ‘King Koffee’s umbrella, an article
of prodigious proportions, and of gaudy material,’ only returned to
where it was made. The type of the latter may be seen in most Italian
market-places, shading the old women’s fruits and vegetables; and
Manchester, I believe, had the honour of building it.
[526] _Through the Dark Continent_, i. 21.
[527] Described in my _Mission to Dahome_, _passim_.
[528] _Across Africa_, vol. i. pp. 121, 139; vol. ii. 104.
[529] The famous copper mines of the Congo region, whose yield, says
Barbot, was mistaken for gold, are noticed in _The Cataracts of the
Congo_, pp. 45, 46.
[530] Captain Cameron has brought home specimens.
[531] From _O Muata Cazembe_, which also contains a long and valuable
description of the copper mines in South-Eastern Africa, worked by the
people since olden time.
[532] According to Marco Polo (lib. iii. cap. 34), the men of Zanghibar
(Zanzibar) are ‘both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to
their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they
would be absolutely like giants; and they are so strong that they will
carry for four men and eat for five.’
[533] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 135.
[534] The _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ (August 1883) has printed an
excellent paper ‘On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians.’
Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie believes that they cut diorite with lathes
and jewel graving-points (diamond? or corundum abundant in Midian?);
and that the diamond was the ‘piercing-stone’ of early Babylonian
Inscriptions.
[535] Gen. xxiii. 18. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ‘Aretz tahtim-hodshi’ should
be read, ‘Aretz ha-Hittim Kadesh,’ ‘the land of the Hittites of (city)
Kadesh.’
[536] _Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vol. v. part 2, p. 354. They were
then the paramount nation in Syria, from the Euphrates to the Libanus;
and the Assyrians knew the region as Mat-Khatte.
[537] Wild work has been made with this word. Some render it ‘large’
(i.e. whale-like); the scholiast calls the Cetians a people of Mysia;
others confound them with the Kittaians (Chittim = Cypriots) of
Menander in Josephus (_A. J._ ix. 14; Cory’s _Frag._, p. 30; London,
Reeves & Turner, 1876); others with the people of Kiti (the circle),
the Heb. Galil or Galilee.
[538] ‘Two-river’ (land) is mostly applied to the great Interamnian
plain, Mesopotamia. Here it must mean Syria proper; and Aram Naharayn
(Highlands of the Two Streams) admirably describes Palestine, which is
composed of a double anticlinal river-valley formed by the Iarunata
(Jordan) and the Arunata (Orontes). The whole length and breadth of the
country is distributed between the two, with the exception of the small
Litani watershed.
[539] The ‘Aram wine from Halybon’ was produced at Helbún (Halbáún,
the inhabitants call it), a gorge-village near Damascus. Being
Moslems, they no longer ferment their grape-juice; but the fruit is
still famous. The Helbún people speak the broadest dialect, and are a
perpetual laughing-stock to the Damascus citizens. The Aleppites derive
their ‘Halab’ (Aleppo) because Abraham there milked (_halaba_) a cow;
but the place is older than the Genesitic flood, _the_ Flood.
[540] This word is corruptly written Jerablus, Jorablus, Jirabis, &c.
[541] In Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_ (i. 463) we find that the Southern
Hittites numbered twelve kings.
[542] The decisive action is shown on an Egyptian tomb (Brugsch, i.
291).
[543] Ramses left as memorials of his invasion three hieroglyphic
tablets cut upon the rocks on the south side of the embouchure of
the Nahr el-Kalb (Dog or Wolf River, the Lycus), a few miles north
of the Venerable Bayrut (Berytus, &c.). They mark the ancient road
which ascended the rough torrent-gorge to its origin in Cælesyria
(El-Buká’a). Even since these pages have been written the coffins and
mummies of Ramses II. and his daughter have been found at Dayr el-Bahri
in Upper Egypt, and conveyed from Thebes to Bulak by Dr. Emil Brugsch.
The same collector has been equally lucky with the remains of Seti I.,
although Belzoni, who discovered the tomb, sent the sarcophagus to the
Sloane Museum.
[544] Sesostris derives from _Ses_, _Setesu_, _Sestesu_, or _Sestura_,
i.e. ‘Sethosis, also called Ramses’ (Seti-son?). The Greek Sesostris
combines, I have said, the lives of Seti and his son Ramses. According
to Brugsch, he is the ‘Pharaoh of the Oppression,’ and the son of
the unnamed Princess (Merris? Thermutis?) who ‘found Moses in the
bull-rushes.’
The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from _mo_
(_má_ = water) and _uses_, those who are saved out of it (_ses_ = to
reach land). Possibly it is _Mu-su_ = water-son. Josephus was sorely
offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote
under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the
Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt,
were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of
underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers
driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at
250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number
also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing
the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’
(Tacitus).
[545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or
B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited
by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land
of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no
importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in A.D. 1200
the geographer Yakut (_Geogr. Dict._ edit. Wüstenfeld) had noticed the
water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that
time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat
of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the
highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left
bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city
disappears from history after the thirteenth century B.C., but local
legend has preserved its memory.
[546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of
Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine
aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte.
[547] This original and instinctive way to revive the drowned endures
to the present day, despite the wrath of the Faculty.
[548] Brugsch (ii. 68) gives the terms of the treaty as translated by
Mr. Goodwin (_Records of the Past_, iv. 25); and adds instances to
prove that it was acted upon. Thus he explains the hitherto mysterious
countermarch, the turning back of the Hebrew exodus, at the time when
the emigrants were advancing straight upon their objective. His strong
point is the identification of ‘Baal-Zephon,’ about which all the
commentators have made such hopeless guesses. He explains it by ‘Baal
of the North’ (Typhon, Sutekh or Khepsh), the ‘Mount Kasion’ of Jupiter
Kasios, a name derived from the Egyptian Hazian or Hazina.
[549] So called from an old Coptic town, long ruined.
[550] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, vol. i., Essay VII., and reference to
Black Obelisk in British Museum. _Synchronous History of Assyria and
Judæa_, pp. 1–82, vol. iii. pt. i.; _Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, 1874.
[551] A Keltic word, _bot_ = foot.
[552] In popular Hebrew use, ‘Canaanite’ meant a trader.
[553] Possibly the ‘pure’ (Hebr. _Tohar_), in which case the word is
‘Semitic.’
[554] Brugsch, ii. chap. xiv. As a rule, slingers were the least
esteemed of fighting men.
[555] The Rev. William Wright, missionary at Damascus, first suggested
that the Hamath inscriptions were Hittite. The study was begun in
1872 by the late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann at Constantinople, where is the
original of the silver Hittite dish represented in the British Museum.
[556] _Trans. Soc. Biblical Archæol._ vol. iv. pt. 2, 1876.
[557] Described by M. Clermont-Ganneau in the _Revue Archéologique_,
Dec. 1879; and figured in the _Palestine Exploration Fund_, July 1881.
[558] In Egypt the king rests his feet upon war-captives; and making a
foot-stool of the enemy is a Biblical phrase (Psalm cx. 1) which had a
literal signification.
[559] For the two-headed eagle in Moslem heraldry (A.D. 1190 and 1217),
see p. 108 of Rogers Bey’s valuable paper before quoted (chap. vii.).
[560] His chief argument for their Northern origin seems to be founded
upon their boots; he forgets, however, that the Arabs of Mahommed’s
day wore ‘Khuff;’ and that legal ablutions were modified to suit them.
It is the _cothurnus calceatus_ of Pliny (vii. 19) which, as we see
on statues and vases, covered the foot and ankle to the calf. The
Assyriologist Prof. P. Schrader, followed by Prof. G. Ebers, considers
the Khita to be Aramæans.
[561] And Carchemish. ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. _Soc.
Bibl. Archæol._ vol. i. pt. 1, 1876, and vii. 298–443, on Tarrik-timmun.
[562] Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published
in the _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ May 1880. The figures at Ibríz having
suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and
found three Aramæan suffixes, _t-na_, _t-kun_, and _t-hun_. These gave
an immense probability that he had hit upon the _t_, _n_, _k_, and _h_.
Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our
‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the
ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he
had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the
silver boss of Tarkodemos as a _point de départ_, suggested to him that
the stirrup-shape ([Hittite]) marks the nom. sing. of proper names, and
this in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments ends in _s_. He assumes
that adjectives agree with their substantives, which they follow by
taking the same suffixes. He was at first disposed to make the broken
_k_ ([Hittite] or [Hittite]), which curiously resembles an old Egyptian
sign, signify ‘and’ (cop. conjunct.); but the incised inscription
found by Mr. Ramsey at Bór (old Tyana) proved it the determinative of
an individual. The goat’s head seems from the bilingual boss to have
the phonetic value ‘tarku,’ and is interchanged with [Hittite] (_ku_),
[Hittite] (_s_), [Hittite], and [Hittite]. The two spear-heads with the
stirrup ([Hittite]) appear to represent a patronymic—_Kus_. The second
sign (= _ku_), which seems to be the first pers. sing. of the Aor.,
can be followed in the same group of characters by [Hittite]; whence
Mr. Sayce inferred the latter to be an adjectival participial affix =
_u_. Similarly [Hittite] = _e_, the acc. plur.; thus [Hittite] = _ue_.
The bilingual boss also shows [Hittite] or [Hittite] = _mi_, the third
pers. sing. present tense, and we find indifferently [Hittite] and
[Hittite]. The gen. plur. is [Hittite], but the pronunciation is not
determined. The same is the case with the sock or low boot ([Hittite]),
suggested to be the third pers. plur. of the Aorist. Lastly, the
ideograph of plurality attached to nouns and verbs is [Hittite].
[563] Dr. Guyther, visiting the Merash citadel, has found several new
characters in a long inscription on a lion, and fragments of stone with
other hieroglyphs have been forwarded from Carchemish to the British
Museum.
[564] Under Shishonk (Shishak), the contemporary of Solomon, the
conquered tribes of Edom and Judah are termed the ‘Fenekh and the Aamu
(Syro-Aramæans) of a far land.’ Brugsch (ii. 210) ‘has a presentiment’
that these Fenekh are intimately related to the Jews; and he notes the
similarity of Aamu with ‘Am,’ the well-known Hebrew term.
[565] Some have suspected Punt to be the far later Pándya, or Madura
kingdom, in Southern India. Mariette’s Punt extended from Bab el-Mandeb
to Cape Guardafui (‘I was a Guard’).
[566] Prof. Rugge of Christiania, however, connects Baldur with
Achilles. We can hardly accept his scheme until the details shall have
been better worked out.
[567] ‘Bak,’ from Beki in Coptic = city, town.
[568] ‘In Judæâ rivus Sabbatis omnibus siccatur’ (Pliny, xxxi. 18). The
idea doubtless arose from the intermittent springs (Siloam, &c.) about
Jerusalem. Josephus (_B. J._ viii. 5, § 1) makes his Sabbatic R. break
the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) by flowing only on that day and resting
during the other six. Hence the fabled Sabbation, whose flood of huge
rocks and sand-waves, sixty to two hundred cubits high, issued from
the ‘Garden of Eden.’ It still hems in the ten ‘Lost Tribes,’ and is
believed by the Druzes.
[569] I quote from _Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. Dunbar I.
Heath, not from the far more poetical version of the Duc de Luynes.
[570] My friend Prof. Socin holds that St. Meklar of Tyre conserves the
cultus of Melkarth.
[571] Perhaps from the Egyptian _Ur_, old, ancient, original.
[572] The modern Persians, and, indeed, Persian history and legend,
know nothing of this wild legend.
[573] A terra-cotta relief in the British Museum shows Chrysaor
(Χρυσάωρ) springing from Medusa’s neck.
[574] Joppa, according to tradition (Pliny, v. 14), was built by
Kepheus, king of the Æthiopians, and was his capital before ‘the
Deluge.’ The same author tells us that Andromeda’s chains were there
shown, and that the monster’s skeleton (some fish cast ashore upon the
harbour reef?) was brought to Rome by the Curule Ædile M. Æmil. Scaurus
the younger, who held office in Syria (ix. 4). The bones were upwards
of forty feet long, the backbone one foot and a half thick, and the
ribs higher than those of the Indian elephant (a cachelot?). Ajasson
declared that the remains should have been sent to those who show in
their collections the weapon with which Cain slew Abel. Pausanias
(second century) saw the Lydda streamlet red with blood, where Perseus
had bathed after killing the ‘Ketos.’ At Joppa St. Jerome was shown the
traditional rock in which holes had been worn by Andromeda’s fetters.
The spot is now clean forgotten—at least, all my inquiries failed to
find it. The testimony is of the highest character; unfortunately it
testifies to impossibilities—all monsters are ‘contradictory beings.’
The Ketos, whale or shark (_Canis Carcharias_), is evidently the same
that swallowed Hercules and Jonah.
[575] Mgr. Bianchini very improperly translates _Harpé_ by ‘glaive,’
and other writers absurdly use ‘scymitar.’ They could hardly better
describe what it was _not_.
[576] The bronze Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini in the Loggie dell’
Orgagna of Florence holds a falx-Sword or falchion.
[577] Hence possibly the town Arsúf; and (the Isle of) Seripho, where
Perseus was worshipped.
[578] There seem to be three of the name: Palladius, the first
missionary to Ireland; Sen Patrick, who studied under St. Germanus and
died A.D. 458–61; and Patrick M‘Calphurn, also a pupil of St. Germanus,
who missionarised about A.D. 440–42.
[579] _Horus et Saint-Georges_, &c. See also a kind of sentimental
study æsthetically baptised ‘Saint Mark’s Rest: the Place of Dragons,’
by J. R. Anderson.
[580] From דג (_dag_), a fish, a Ketos, the Phœnician דגון (_Dajun_,
_Dagon_); Dagan is the male, Dalas the female. Simply a fish-god.
Sardanapalus was ‘he who knows Anu (the god) and Dagon.’
[581] Others found at Cannæ resemble the copper Swords of Ireland,
according to the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_.
[582] The ‘tariff of masses,’ from the temple of Baal at Marseille,
speaks of Chaltzibah the Sufet. Other inscriptions inform us that
the Carthaginians had a triad, Baal Hammon (Ammon); the Lady Tanith
Pen Baal (Tanis or Neith, the πρόσωπον, or face, of Baal), and
Iolaus.—_Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. D. I. Heath.
[583] Ezekiel (xxxii. 27). ‘And they shall not lie with the mighty that
are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell [Sheol =
Shuala, the ghost-land of Babylon] with their weapons of war: _and they
have laid their Swords under their heads_, but their iniquities shall
be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the
land of the living.’
[584] The Hebrews were probably included under the ‘miserable
foreigners,’ who, at that time, numbered about one-third of the
Egyptian people. It was the fashion to find ‘Hebrew’ in the ’Aper,
’Apura, ’Aperiu, and ’Apiurui of the monuments; but Brugsch has shown
that these were the original ‘Erythræans,’ equestrian Arabs of the
barrens extending from Heliopolis onward to modern Suez.
[585] _Trattato di Scherma_, &c. di Alberto Marchionni (Firenze:
Bencini, 1547).
[586] This word will be noticed in chapter xi. I cannot wholly agree
with Colonel Lane-Fox (_Anthrop. Coll._ p. 99) when he speaks of a
‘leaf-shaped Sword-blade attached to the end of the spear, like the
Thracian _romphea_ and the European _partisan_ of mediæval times.’
[587] May not this older form of Jupiter have derived from the
‘Semitic’ root יה, Jah (_Yah_), carried westward by the Phœnicians?
But this is ‘stirring the fire with a Sword,’ against which Pythagoras
warns us.
[588] ‘Les Figures de l’Histoire d’après la Bible,’ &c. (the
_Athenæum_, Feb. 31, 1880). ‘Lahat’ (the Germ. _lohe_, our ‘low’
or ‘lowe’) is in the singular a ‘flame’; in the plural ‘spells,
enchantments by drugs,’ &c.
[589] Mr. Gerald Massey would identify the Jewish Chereb, like the
Phœnician Hereba and the Greek Harpé, with the Egyptian Kherp,
[Hieroglyphs], the sign of majesty typified by an oar or rather
paddle—[Hieroglyphs]. Thus the Kherp first cut the water like a
propeller, then the grain as a sickle, and at last it became a
Sword—the reaper of men. This is ingenious, but nothing more: the white
arm in Egypt shows no sign of derivation from the oar.
[590] So Jeanne d’Arc’s Sword was taken from a church, as will appear
in Part II.
[591] Tacitus (_Hist._ v. 13) calls them a ‘band of murderers.’ The
ominous word ‘Sicarius’ first occurs in Jewish history during Josephus’
time (_Bell. Jud._ iv. 7; vii. 11). St. Paul was charged by Lysias
with heading four thousand Sicarii, who at great feasts murdered their
victims with concealed daggers. Also forty Sicarii bound themselves by
the Cherem-oath (the original ‘Boycotting’) to slay Paul. The Sica or
Sicca will be noticed in another chapter.
[592] The Machabæan epoch is interesting, because during it the idea of
a ‘resurrection’ was established. The word should be written ‘Makabi’
if derived from Mi Kamo Ka Baalim Yahveh (Ex. xv. 11).
[593] The number is given in Chronicles (1, xxi. 5) at one million
five hundred and seventy thousand without including Levi and Benjamin.
Many attempts have been made to reconcile the little difference of two
hundred and seventy thousand souls.
[594] I shall notice Assyrian Arms in chap. x.
[595] By a curious feat of etymology, this word, or rather the
German ‘Philister’ (confounded with _Balestarius_ or _Balestæus_, a
crossbow-man, the militia of small artisans?) has come to signify in
modern parlance one indifferent to ‘intellectual interest’ and the
‘higher culture.’ As applied to the enemy it is simply Prig writ large.
[596] _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, p. 126, by the Rev. W.
Robertson Smith (Blacks, Edinburgh, 1881).
[597] Napoleon Buonaparte was right in attributing the instability of
the great empires (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) bordered by the Bedawin,
to the destructive action of the Arab race: ‘That most mischievous
nation whom it is never desirable to have either for friends or
enemies’ (Ammian. Marcell. xiv. 4). I have enlarged upon this subject
in _Unexplored Syria_ (i. 210). The first noted outswarming was of
the Hyksos or Shepherd-Kings (B.C. 1480 to 1530?). Another, under the
influence of Mohammed the Apostle of Allah, changed the condition of
the Old World; and in the present day, Turkish dominion in the regions
frontiered by Arabia is being seriously threatened. Hence Ibn Khaldún
of Tunis, who in A.D. 1332 began to write philosophical history,
assigns to empire in the East three generations (= 120 years) and
three several steps. The first, youth, is of growth (campaigning and
annexing); the religion being fanaticism and the form of government a
limited monarchy of a semi-republican type. The second, manhood, is a
period of ‘rest and be thankful,’ of not ‘stirring up things quiet’;
of enjoyment, of easy scepticism, of luxury, of despotism, The third,
age, is decline and fall, the triumph of financiers and capitalists;
of aversion from war and from ‘territorial aggrandisement’; it is
distinguished by employing mercenaries, by religious disbelief, by
tyrannic rule. (_Ibn Chaldun und seine Culturgeschichte_, Baron A. von
Kremer. Wien.)
[598] This has apparently been done by the Rev. Mr. Porter, the author
of that unpraiseworthy _Murray’s Handbook_. His Strabo had told him
that Gaza lay seven stadia or furlongs from the sea; and St. Jerome
that a new town had been built. Yet we are led three miles from the
shore to modern Ghazzah, and are gravely told of Moslem absurdities
concerning the Makám or tomb of Samson. The old port of which the
Ancients speak has evidently been buried by the sands which are
attacking Bayrút, and the only survivor of the past may be the site
of Shaykh Ijlin on the coast, south of the Mínat or present roads.
In noticing Askelon, Mr. Porter tells us all about the old story of
Ascalonia, Scallion, Shalot: nothing about the Egyptian Ac-qa-li-na.
For a third edition the learned author should take the trouble to
consult Brugsch Pasha’s Egypto-Syrian studies.
[599] See chap. iv.
[600] _Cyprus_, before quoted.
[601] Aphrodite or Venus (Urania and Pandemos, Porné and Hetæra), at
once the feminine principle in nature, the original mother and the
idea of womanly beauty, was a universal personage. In Egypt she was
Athor the Goddess of Pleasure, and Ashtar in Nilotic Mendes. Amongst
the Arabs she became Beltis, Baaltis the feminine of Bel or Ba’al, and
Alitta (Al-ilat the goddess); among the Sidonians Ashtoreth (1 Kings
xi. 33); in Phœnicia, Ishtar and Astarte, which Gesenius takes to be a
Semitisation of the Persian Sitáreh, a star (_i.e._ Venus); in Byblos,
Dionæa and Dione; in other parts of Syria, Derceto, Atergatis (Ta-ur-t,
Thoueris), and Nani, the latter still surviving in the Bibi Nani
(Lady Venus) of Afghanistan. In Cyprus she was Anat, Tanat, or Tanith
(Ta-neith = Athene?); in Persia and Armenia Mítra (Herod. i. 131),
Tanata, and Anaitis = Anahid, the planet Venus; and in Carthage, Tarnt
Pen Baal.
[602] In Heb. Kinnúr, a lyre of six to nine strings resembling the
Nubian article. Hence, probably, κιθάρα, Cithara, Chitarra, Guitar,
Zither; but there is a modification by the Persian Sih-tárah or ‘the
three-stringed.’
[603] Thus in Jeremiah (xxiii. 29), ‘Is not my word like as a fire?
saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?’
[604] I see with pleasure that Mr. W. P. Palmer proposes to continue
his exploration of Phrygia; his lecture before the Hellenic Society
(Dec. 14, 1882) promises much. The western half of the great western
plateau of Asia Minor, this land of monotonous grandeur, is directly
connected with the Ægean Sea by a single line of cleavage which extends
from Miletus to Celænæ. Egyptian art and influence found its way to
Greece _viâ_ Phrygia as well as through Phœnicia, especially in the
early days of the Argonauts and the _Iliads_, when Greece began to be
connected with nearer Asia. Hence the wide diffusion of the Midas-myth
(B.C. 670): the long-eared king’s tomb was discovered in 1800. I
have elsewhere noticed how far Phrygia extended to the West, leaving
indelible marks in Spain and Portugal.
[605] The Lycian tongue, as far as we know, resembles Zend; and
the coin with a triquetra (Rawlinson’s _Herod._ i. 212) has three
characters apparently Hittite. The Lycian confederacy of twenty-three
towns (six cities being chief) was strong enough to resist
Crœsus (Herodotus). Their relationship was by the ‘distaff-side’
(_Mutterrecht_), as opposed to the ‘Sword-side’; and we find traces
of the same antique and logical practice among the Greeks: ἀδελφὸς is
evidently derived from δελφύς.
[606] Major di Cesnola _On Phœnician Art in Cyprus_: the proofs are
‘gold and silver ornaments of remarkable beauty and grace,’ which are
said to resemble the produce of Hissarlik.
[607] The Cyprian Venus was worshipped in the form of an Umbilicus or
Meta, according to Servius (ad _Æn._ i. 724). Others compare it with a
pyramid.
[608] _Numismatique et Inscriptions Cypriotes_, Paris, 1832. The Dali
inscription is compared with the Lycian at the end of vol. i. pt. 1,
_Soc. of Bibl. Archæol._ 1872. Discussing the eighty characters, the
Duc de Luynes found twenty-seven Egyptian, twelve Lycian, and seven
Phœnician. This would suggest that the syllabary is a branch of the
picture-writing which grew to be an alphabet proper in the Nile Valley,
and which, modified by the Phœnicians, passed into Greece. Others
hold it to be an imperfect modification of the Assyrian cuneiforms,
introduced about B.C. 700 and lasting till Alexander’s day. I have
already noticed that the cuneiforms were originally pictures of natural
objects; and that the same is evidently the case with the Chinese
syllabary. Some of the Cypriot signs show a faint resemblance to the
Devanagari alphabet, which we know to be a modern offshoot from South
Arabian or Himyaritic. A gold incision from the Curium treasury (Plate
xxxiv. No. 7) consists of two crescents adossed, which may be either
Hittite or a simple ornament. Mr. Sayce, indeed, derives the syllabary
from Khita-land. Of the crescent and the star I have already spoken; no
date can be assigned to it in decorative art.
[609] I have figured a similar but broader blade as the Novacula in
_Etruscan Bologna_, p. 66. The Prague Museum has about a dozen of these
sickles found near Tepl: one (_b_) with a rivet-hole and a kind of
beading. In the collection of Carinthian Klagenfurth I found a sickle
(_c_, No. 1711) fifteen and a half cent. long by four broad, with an
Etruscan inscription [Etruscan]. See Chap. X.
[610] The winged Sphinxes upon this patera with hawks’ heads are
peculiarly Egyptian. _The_ Sphinx, which may be older than the
Pyramids, is a man-headed lion—the ‘union of force and intellect.’
Later types change the human head to that of an asp, a ram, and a hawk;
and supply the latter with wings. The same is the case with the Sphinx
of Troy and Assyria: it is mostly alate. The Grecian Sphinx changed
the bearded human head to that of a woman; the Gyno-Sphinx in Egypt
being later than the Andro-Sphinx. We find the female in the doorway of
the Xanthus frieze and over the sarcophagus at Amathus (_Cyprus_, pp.
264–267). Those who would understand the peculiar beauty, not only of
line but of expression, which the Egyptians threw into the face of the
Sphinx have only to study the statue standing to the proper left of the
main entrance to Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. It came, I believe, from the
great Dromos of the Serapeum, the Apis-tombs of the marvellous Memphis
cemetery.
[611] Meaning Holy Lady or Great Goddess, the Syria Dea. Preceded by
the digamma, the word became Famagosta, and was corrupted to Fama
Augusti and to Ammochosti, a sand-heap.
[612] See his diagram, p. 10, _Troy and its Remains_.
[613] See chapter viii. These assertions are fair specimens of the
harm done to philology, in uncritical England, by the one-sided and
_ad captandum_ views of the ‘Sanskritists.’ Mr. Gerald Massey hardly
exaggerates when he says (i. 135), ‘It looks as if the discovery of
Sanskrit were doomed to be a fatal find for the philologists of our
generation.’ The peculiar mixture of philology, in its specialist
form, with the science of religion and the tenebræ of metaphysics has,
it appears to me, done much harm to all three; but it delighted the
half-educated public. It met with scant appreciation in acute France
and in critical Germany, where the editing, or rather mutilation, of
texts, has been severely chastised. But the Sanskritist, much to the
discredit of Oriental studies and of philology in England, has given us
an indigestion of Sanskritism; during the last great Oriental Congress
in London he almost monopolised time and attention, to the prejudice of
Orientalism in general. Apparently a protest is on the point of being
raised; but, unhappily, Teutonism is still a scourge in Great Britain,
and the typical Solar myth, ‘like Hermann’s a German.’
[614] Except, of course, in the bronze.
[615] Charles Rau (?), an American, by means of a bow, and without
using metal, bored a hole through an axe of diorite: it occupied him
ten hours a day for four months (Jähns, p. 6).
[616] In mediæval Romance ‘Ilios,’ ‘Ilion,’ and ‘Ilium’ were applied to
the Palace of Priam.
[617] _Juventus Mundi_, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, p. 529.
[618] May it not be the black hæmatite used in Cyprus? Compare the
goose’s head, the sacred basket, and the frog, Egyptian symbol of
embryonic man and of Hor-Apollo (Harpocrates), in General Palma
(Appendix, p. 364). But is this able writer sure about his ‘hæmatite’?
[619] I.e. to one looking north and therefore west. The old Egyptians
faced to the south (Hín or Khount), which they called ‘upwards’ or
‘forwards,’ in opposition to the North, which was the lower (Khir)
or hinder part (Pehu). Thus their right was west (Unim) and their
left east (Semah): the right leg of Osiris was the western side of
the Delta. So Pliny (ii. 6) makes his observer front southwards. The
Assyrian and Semites faced east (Kadam or front, opposed to Akhir or
Shalam, the sun’s _resting_-place): hence their right (Yemen) was the
south, and their left (Sham) was north. They introduced this fashion
into Ancient India, where, consequently, Dakshina (_dextra_, the right
hand) became the south, and survives in our ‘Deccan.’ The practice even
extended to Ireland where Eiꞃin or Eꞃin (Erin, Ierne) has been derived
from the Keltic iaꞃ, behind, the west; and in, an island, the isle
lying west of France and Britain.
[620] Travellers who have inspected the excavations deride these
pompous terms: the ruins look well in book-illustrations, but the
reality is mean in the extreme.
[621] Dr. Schliemann shows the human umbilicus adorned with a cross.
The significance of such phrases as ‘omphalos of the earth’ applied
to Delphi and Paphos, is generally misunderstood. Any traveller in
India who has seen a Lingait temple would at once explain it, as well
as the illustration in Wilkinson (vol. i. ch. iv. p. 270) showing the
Lingam-Yoni, whose worshippers are ‘cherubim’ (i.e. winged Thmei).
Similarly the symbol of Chemosh of Moab and of sundry classical gods
was a cone. The Dea Multimamma, Cybele, miscalled ‘Artemis’ (Diana) of
the Ephesians, was a statue, not a cone, but it stood upon an inverted
pyramid. The uninitiated as little understand the Crux Ansata or
Egyptian Cross, the emblem of life and fecundity, which was adopted by
the Coptic Christians. The sacred Tau (Tau of Ezekiel ix. 6) gave rise
to the Maltese Cross in Phœnicia, and in Assyria became the emblem of
Shamas the sun.
[622] I need hardly remind ‘Grecians’ that Tychius is supposed to have
been a personal friend of the arch-Homerid.
[623] Upon this point Dr. Schliemann’s _Mycenæ_ is more explicit.
[624] It is, I need hardly say, still a disputed point whether the
Homeric Greeks could or could not write. See chapter xi.
[625] M. F. Lenormant, the _Academy_, March 21 and 28, 1874.
[626] I must again protest against the use, while compelled by want of
another to use the term ‘Indo-European,’ which, applied to language,
contains an unproved theory. India did not supply Europe either with
speech or with population. The popular belief appears erroneous as
is its appreciation of Darwinism, which did _not_ derive man from
monkey. The original Egyptian roots developed themselves into a host
of dialects which flourished and perished before Pali and Sanskrit,
a professor’s tongue, like mediæval Latin, never understanded of the
people, assumed their present shapes.
[627] _North American Review._
[628] Professor Jebb quotes M. Dumont, _Céramique de la Grèce Propre_.
[629] The _Academy_, Dec. 9, 1882.
[630] I have treated the question popularly in _Etruscan Bologna_
(London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876). The study owed its existence
to the Rev. Isaac Taylor, who, using the Family Pen once too often,
supported the Turanian origin of the Etruscans in a marvellously
uncritical and unscholar-like book, _Etruscan Researches_ (London:
Macmillan & Co., 1874).
[631] The stater of Crœsus was the first gold coin known to the Greeks.
Most of the classical authors declare that silver was first coined at
Ægina by order of Pheidon (circa B.C. 869).
[632] Hamilton (_Asia Minor_, vol. i. pp. 145–6) has carefully
described this most interesting monument.
[633] See the ‘colossal male head’ in General Palma di Cesnola,
_Cyprus_, p. 123.
[634] Preface to _History of Egypt_, p. xvi; and vol. ii. 124, where
a list of racial names is given. Brugsch, it should be noted, is here
entirely opposed to his predecessors, De Rougé, Chabas, &c.
[635] As opposed to the Aqaiuasha or Achæans of the Caucasus (ii. 124).
[636] ‘I have seen it affirmed that in those times (early Roman) the
youth was instructed in the Etruscan learning, as they are now in the
Greek’ (Livy ix. 35).
[637] Described in _Etruscan Bologna_, p. 144. The blade is in Count
Aria’s collection. The Sword of Misanello, _une longue epée de fer_,
also in that museum, is noticed in p. 359, _Transactions of the
Congress of Bologna_ in 1871.
[638] One vol. folio large quarto, with 17 Tables. It was preceded by
‘Di una necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese,’ 1865, large quarto, with
20 Tables. Count Gozzadini is one of the earliest students who followed
in the steps of M. Boucher de Perthes.
[639] A fine specimen of a dagger from Thebes with the rapier-blade,
and a broad flat hilt of ivory, is in the Berlin Museum.
[640] _Di un antico Sepolcro a Ceretolo nel Bolognese_ (Modena:
Vincenzi, 1879), p. 9.
[641] This weapon resembled the bronze forms found at Broilo in Tuscany
and in the great collection discovered in 1875 and called the ‘Fonderia
di Bologna.’ An account of the latter is found in _Note Archeologiche_,
&c. (Bologna: Fava e Garagnani, 1881).
[642] The learned French anthropologist compared these weapons with
those found in the Marne graves. (_Les Gaulois de Marzabotto, Revue
Archéol._ 1870–71, &c.)
[643] Count Gozzadini replied in M. G. de Mortillet’s _Matériaux pour
l’Histoire primitive de l’Homme_; and the paper was entitled by the
Editor (not by the author), ‘L’Élément Étrusque de Marzabotto est sans
mélange avec l’élément gaulois’ (Jan. 1873).
[644] _L’Étrurie et les Etrusques_, vol. i. p. 93. Atlas, p. 2, Pl. II.
[645] Genthe, _Program_, &c. p. 15.
[646] The bronze is in the British Museum; the iron in the possession
of Mr. H. S. Cuming (Meyrick).
[647] XXVIII. cap. 45.
[648] Vol. iv, Pl. XXX.; it is copied by Meyrick.
[649] The writer of this sentence is, curious to say, the learned
Dr. Birch (p. 5, vol. i., _Soc. Bib. Archæology_, 1872). Even Justin
(lib. i.) knew better; he makes Sesostris (ii. 3) 1,500 years older
than Ninus, ‘the most ancient king of Assyria,’ whom he places in B.C.
2196–2144 (Wetzel).
[650] In the LXX Orech; the Cuneiform Uru-ki (City of the Land); in
Talmud, Urikut, City of the Dead for Babylon (_hod._ Warka); and in
Greek Orchóe, whence perhaps ‘Orcus.’ Urukh became among the Classics
of Europe ‘pater Orchamus.’
[651] _Assyrian Discoveries_ (London: Sampson Low & Co., 1876), p. 447.
He gives, as a scheme of Abydenus and Berosus, the Chaldæan:—
Years.
Alorus and 9 kings before the Babylonian Flood 432,000
86 kings after B. Flood to Median conquest
(1st dynasty) 34,080 (33,091)
8 Median kings (2nd dynasty) 224 (160?)
11 other (3rd dynasty ) unknown
49 Chaldæan (4th dynasty) 458
9 Arabian (5th dynasty) 245
Semiramis
45 kings (7th dynasty) 526
Nabonidus, the antiquary king (B.C. 555), according to a Cylinder found
at Sipar (Sepharvaim, Sun-city) and studied by Mr. Pinches, assigns a
date to the deified Sargina of about B.C. 3,800 years. He unburied,
18 cubits below the surface, the Cylinder of Naramsin, son of Sargina
(B.C. 3750?), ‘which no king had seen for 3,200 years.’ Sir Henry C.
Rawlinson (the _Athenæum_, Dec. 9, 1882) is disposed to accept the date
‘within certain limits.’
[652] The word is Har-Minni, or Mountains of the Minni. The oldest
Armenian inscriptions date from the eighth century B.C.
[653] It was in attacking these Khita that Ramses II. (Sesostris) left
his three ‘columns’ or tablets on the rocks near the Nahr el-Kalb of
Bayrut (chap. ix.). Six Assyrian inscriptions were also known there,
bearing the names of Assur-ris-ilîm, Tiglath-pileser, Assurnazirpal,
Shalmanesar, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. No epigraphs were found on
the north side of the river, where an ancient aqueduct, overgrown
with luxuriant verdure, turns a mill. About three years ago, however,
the proprietor, when making a new channel, broke away part of the
rock, and a fragment bearing cuneiforms attracted the attention of
Dr. Hartmann, Chancellor of the German Consulate. No other steps were
taken till October 10, 1881, when M. Julius Loytved, Danish Vice-Consul
for Bayrut, bared the face of the cliff and discovered five cuneiform
inscriptions, one containing 45 lines. They seem to have been hastily
cut, as they follow the shape of the rock whose surface has not been
dressed. According to Professor Sayce, they are Babylonian, not
Assyrian.
[654] Or Asshur, ‘the Arbiter of the Gods,’ represented by the winged
disc of Egypt.
[655] Nineveh, destroyed by the Medes (Manda or Madu) and Persians in
B.C. 583, had thus a life of 1,617 years, assuming its origin at the
middle term, B.C. 2200.
[656] Brugsch, vol. i. chap. xvi., shows that Seshonk (Shishak) and
other Pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty were Assyrians who ruled
‘Mat Muz-ur,’ the people of Egypt.
[657] The great scholar derives from Egypt the Cuneiform Syllabarium,
which was originally pictorial:—drawing everywhere preceded writing.
The astronomy of Mesopotamia is Egyptian (the unit of measure being
the ell of 0·525 mètre); and the architecture, that prime creation of
the human mind, shows by temples, temple-towers, tombs, and especially
pyramids (e.g. that at Birs Namrud), an imperfect imitation of the Nile
Valley. Herodotus attributes to Babylon the discovery of the Pole, the
Sun-dial, and the twelve hours of day, all well known to ancient Egypt.
The ‘Sabbaths’ are Assyrian.
[658] The _Athenæum_, July 24, 1880.
[659] That the Assyrians had books appears plainly from the
inscriptions: ‘In the night-time bind round the sick man’s head a
sentence taken from a good book’ (a soporific!). Parchment was most
probably the first material (_Trans. of Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vols.
ii. 55, and iii. 432); and the language proves that the papyrus-scroll
(Duppu-ga-zu) was known.
[660] We find in Assyria the wild goat standing upon a capital, now the
arms of Istria. The same appears at Palmyra (Prof. Socin’s Collection).
The winged bulls probably suggested, like the Egyptian Cherubs, our
angels’ wings. These motors should now be forbidden in statuary by
Act of Parliament; or the artist should be compelled to supply the
pinions with the muscles necessary for working them. I need hardly say
that the required development would convert the human dorsum to the
appearance of the two-humped camel. The late Gustave Doré’s admirable
illustrations of Dante (_Purgat._ xix. 51) sin greatly in this way.
[661] A goddess in alabaster has in each hand a lotus flower, which she
holds against her breasts. This is characteristic of old Egypt, which
derived the plant from the Equatorial African Lake-region. The same
figure again wears a large Egyptian wig, the hair falling in ringlets
upon the shoulders.
[662] The Soma, a weed in India (_Asclepias gigantea_), is a derivation
from Homa. The Persea, or Egyptian Tree of Life, was probably the
_Balanitis Ægyptiaca_.
[663] The careless confusion of Svastika, the worshipper-sect, with
Svasti, the symbol, was made by me in my Commentary on Camoens (chap.
iv. ‘Geographical’). Burnouf (Emile), in _La Science des Religions_,
made the Svasti the feminine principle; and the Pramantha, or
perpendicular fire-stick, the male. If used on sacrificial altars to
produce the holy fire (_Agni_), the practice was peculiar, and not
derived from every-day-life: as Pliny knew (xvi. 77), the savage uses
two, never three, fire-sticks. The Svasti is apparently the simplest
form of the guilloche. According to Wilkinson (II. chap. ix.), the most
complicated form of the guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upwards
of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svasti
spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and
mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or
crutched cross.
[664] Assyria, like Egypt, cultivated geometry and algebra, which
have been supposed to originate from revenue surveys and altar
measurements. She used the Astrolabe and popularised square roots and
fractions, with a denominator of 60, the sole representative of the
decimal and duodecimal systems. With her fall (B.C. 555) coincides
the birth of literature in Greece, where writing became general about
B.C. 500. The Assyrians were great in magic and in divination, such as
birth-portents, dog-omens, &c. &c.
[665] Again Egyptian. Wilkinson, II. chap. vii.
[666] The nearest site would be the Caucasus, which in early ages
yielded a small supply. Layard (p. 191) supposes the tin to have been
obtained from Phœnicia; and, ‘consequently, that used in the (Assyrian)
bronzes of the British Museum may actually have been exported, nearly
three thousand years ago, from the British Isles.’
[667] A ‘copper instrument from Koyunjik’ (Layard, p. 596) is shaped
exactly like the so-called Etruscan razors. See chap. ix.
[668] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 163.
[669] See chap. vi. He figures one of the latter (_Discoveries in the
Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 195): it measured 3 feet 8 inches
long by 4⅝ inches in breadth.
[670] ‘Assyrians placing a human-headed bull on a car,’ with levers and
ropes (Layard, p. 112), reminds us of the statue of Ramses II., and
shows that the people could move enormous weights. Both societies had
‘unbounded command of naked human strength.’
[671] Demmin, pp. 293–94.
[672] We have still to explain ‘Kakku’ (weapon?) and ‘Gizzin’
(scymitar?).
[673] In the Tablets we read of the ‘Star of the double Sword’ (Kakab
gir-tab) [Cuneiform]. ‘Hammasti,’ also, is the ‘blade of the double
Sword.’
[674] ‘Ashur create a Son,’ B.C. 673. _Assyrian Discoveries_, by G.
Smith (London: Sampson Low, 1876).
[675] For instance, that in the bas-reliefs of Burs Nimrúd, B.C. 1000,
now in the Louvre. The hippopotamus is now never found out of Africa.
[676] With cavalry as well as infantry (Layard, p. 55). Upon this, a
very complicated subject, I shall have much to say.
[677] Whence the French _cravache_.
[678] This abomination popularly derives from Semiramis
(Sa-am-mu-ra-mat) of Assyria, and extended far and wide. Even in the
earlier part of the present century eunuchs were manufactured for
Christian and Catholic Rome. The practice is still kept up in Egypt,
Turkey, and Persia, although strictly forbidden by the Apostle of Allah.
[679] Col. Hanbury exhibited it at the British Museum. Notes by Mr. W.
St. Chad Boscawen, read April 6: _Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vol.
iv. Part II. 1876.
[680] Nebo, in the inscriptions, holds a golden reed or rod, as the
Homeric Hermes is Χρυσόρραπις; he also leads the ghosts to Hades. The
Chaldæan gods were, like the Egyptian, deceased ancestors, and they
were followed by natural objects, _Anu_ (sky), _Bel_ (earth), _Hea_
(sea), personified into a vast and various mythology. Sun, moon, and
æther, were the first Triad of Babylon. Thus the Chthonic gods of
Greece, Uranus (the Egyptian _Urnas_), Gaia and Thalassa (Assyrian),
preceded the Olympic anthropomorphism. Of course they were represented
with human shapes. Presently the priest introduced as godheads
cosmo-poetic causes and effects, which presently peopled the Pantheon
with glorified men. For, I repeat, man worships only one thing—himself.
[681] George Smith, _Chaldæan Genesis_, pp. 62, 95.
[682] _Sibri_ or _Sibirru_. I have noted the probable derivation of
this word from the Egyptian Sf, Sayf, or Seft; and its resemblance to
our ‘sabre.’
[683] Budil (says Mr. Boscawen) succeeded his father in B.C. 1350. He
defended the north-eastern peoples, the Nari and the Guti, Gutium or
Goim; he also built largely, and his son, Vul-nirari (Vul is my hope),
from whose palace the Sword came, was one of the greatest of the early
Assyrian kings. The British Museum has a long inscription recording his
restoration of the causeway leading to the Temple of Ashur.
[684] Layard advocates the theory that the Persians and Hindús
separated from a common centre about B.C. 1500. But of what Hindús does
he speak? Certainly not of the ‘Turanian’ tribes, which peopled the
peninsula before the Brahmin immigration.
[685] The Greeks having no _sh_ sound, turned Kurush into Kyros.
[686] Media was North-Western Persia, from Armenia to Azerbáiján,
south of the Caspian. ‘Great Armenia’ afterwards included Georgia and
Abkhasia. From their racial name Manda or Mada came the Greek Mantiene
and Matiene. (See _Bib. Archæology_, Nov. 9, 1882.)
[687] Herod. i. 136, 138, &c. All writers assure us that the ancient
Egyptians and Persians, the Chinese and Hindús (Marco Polo), were
truth-telling races who abhorred a lie. ‘How sweet a thing is truth!’
exclaimed a Nile-dweller. In the Carpentras Inscription the Lady Ta-Bai
‘spoke no falsehoods against any one.’ In the trilingual Behistun
Inscription (B.C. 516) Darius the king says, ‘Thou who mayest be king
hereafter, the man who may be a liar, and who may be an evil-doer,
destroy them with the destruction of the Sword’ (col. iv. par. 14).
They are now emphatically the reverse. The wild tribes, such as the
Bedawin, the Iliyát, and the outcasts of India, still preserve the
old characteristic. ‘The word of a Korager’ is proverbial on the West
Coast of the Hindu Peninsula. I cannot but attribute the deterioration
to extensive commerce, contact with strangers, and change of faith.
The subject, however, is too vast and important even to glance at in
these pages; but I may note that the Hindú has deteriorated even in my
day. In 1845 the trade-books of a Sahukár (merchant) were received as
evidence in our law courts. In 1883 the idea would be scouted.
[688] The conquests of Alexander the Great had given the civilised
world a unity of language. The Ptolemies, having asserted Greek mastery
in Egypt, established that perfect toleration which is proved by the
Septuagint, Manetho and Berosus.
[689] Famous in the Book of Esther (Amestris), which contains scant
traces of the faith of Israel. This terrible virago (B.C. 474) caused
the massacre of 800 men at Shushan, and 7,500 in the provinces. From
the Pehlevi name of Xerxes (Khshhershe), possibly we may derive the
modern titles, ‘Shah’ and ‘Shahanshah.’
[690] Hence, perhaps, Pukhtu or Pushtu, the Afghan language, an old and
rugged dialect of Persian type.
[691] The South American lasso has been pitted, of course on horseback,
against the Sword. Many a murder has been committed with it in the
Argentine Republic, the victim being ‘thugged’ unawares and dragged
to death. Needless to say, the lasso was well known in Egypt (Wilk.
i. 4), where it was used to catch the gazelle and even the wild ox.
The Pasha or Indian lasso was ten cubits long, with a noose one hand
in circumference. It was composed of very small scales, ornamented
with leaden balls; and was not regarded as a ‘noble weapon.’ The Roman
gladiators, called ‘Laqueatores,’ derived their name from the lasso:
they must not be confounded with the ‘Retiarii.’
[692] _A. J_. xx. 7, sec. 10.
[693] To be noticed in a future chapter (xii.).
[694] Chap. ix.
[695] _Travels in Georgia, Persia, &c._ (1817–20), by Sir Robert Ker
Porter. Other illustrators are Le Bruyn, Chardin, Niebuhr, and Leake
(_Athens_, ii. pp. 22–26).
[696] It may, however, have been treated as a dagger, while the Sword
was worn on the left.
[697] Wilkinson (_Egyptians_, II. chap. v.) remarks, ‘If there is any
connection between the religions of Egypt and India, this must be
ascribed to the period before the two races left Central Asia’; and
Layard, it has been said, would place that period about 1500 B.C. I
again protest against the idea that the Egyptian ever came from, or had
ever anything to do with, ‘Central Asia,’ beyond civilising it.
[698] Chandragupta (Sandracottus?) B.C. 316; his son Bindusara, B.C.
291; and his grandson (Dharm) Asoka or Priyadasi, B.C. 250–241, whose
children divided the empire. The Topes are probably Phallic buildings.
[699] I would explain the fact that India is confounded with East
Africa by the classics and by mediæval geographers as a survival of the
connection of the continents in the Miocene and, perhaps, in even later
ages.
[700] Utilised by Horace Hayman Wilson in his article ‘On the Art of
War as known to the Hindús.’ Dhanu (Sanskr. the bow) came to signify
any missile or weapon; and hence, Dhanúrvidya comprised the knowledge
of all other arms. The bow was also named; for instance, that of Vishnu
was called Shárnga (Oppert, p. 77).
[701] The Commander-in-Chief drew four thousand Varvas (gold coins) per
mensem. Prof. Oppert, with true German _naïveté_, says (p. 8), ‘If this
scale of salaries is correct, and if the salaries were really paid, one
would be inclined to think that an extensive gold currency existed in
ancient India.’ That the country worked its gold mines is proved by the
Wynaad and other diggings, lately reopened, but we may fairly doubt the
coinage;—at least, till a coin be found.
[702] I now borrow from Professor Gustav Oppert, _On the Weapons &c. of
the Ancient Hindus_ (London: Trübner, 1880). Unfortunately the work is
unillustrated. Its capital fault is not adducing proofs, or offering
highly unsatisfactory proofs, of the antiquity to be attributed to its
authorities, the Shukraniti (p. 43); the Naishedha (p. 69), and the
various pagodas showing firearms (p. 76). The Mánavad-harmashástra,
or Institutes of Menu (Halhed, p. 53), speaks of ‘darts blazing with
fire,’ a well-known missile, but not to be confounded with firearms
proper. And the Institutes in their actual form are comparatively
modern.
[703] Prof. Oppert gives the names of all these subdivisions; and, at
the same time, a lesson in Hindú absurdity (p. 11).
[704] Here we have the true Indian imaginativeness. The idea of a
Western anthropomorphising a bow after this fashion!
[705] Prof. Oppert says that Book III. of the Nitípra-kashika is
entirely devoted to the Khadga. In the Shukraniti, as will be seen, the
word denotes a two-handed Sword six feet long. The Professor translates
it ‘broadsword.’
[706] He lived between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and wrote
a notable Ovidian work. A translation is now being printed (not
published) by the Hindoo Káma-Shastra Society of London and Benares.
[707] The Italian word is evidently a diminutive of the Latin _stilus_,
or rather _stylus_ (στῦλος). Dagger (Germ. Dolch) is from the Keltic
_dag_, point. Degen, a larger weapon, originally means a warrior; hence
the Anglo-Sax. Thaegn and our Thane.
[708] Strabo (xv. 1, § 66) makes the Indian Sword three cubits (= four
feet and a half) in length; and the Greeks of the Alexandrine day
notice two-handed Swords and bow-drawing with the feet.
[709] Roteiro, p. 115.
[710] This is evidently inverted. The huge falchion, an exaggeration of
the Kukkri, may be seen in the British Museum, one blade inscribed with
Pali characters. Most of these huge weapons were used in sacrificing;
and the low-caste Mhars still behead with falchions the buffalos
offered to Kali.
[711] He constantly appears in the Mahabhárata, especially in Book I.
[712] Some writers are determined to find chess amongst the Romans, and
quote the Panegyric of Piso, and the game of Latrunculi. But if so,
where are their chessmen? The earliest allusion in any known author is
in Anna Comnena’s Alexias, when the First Crusade had done some good by
mixing the Eastern and the Western worlds.
[713] _Loc. cit._ p. 61.
[714] _Sport in British Burmah_ (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879).
[715] Lib. ii. cap. 53.
[716] The earliest date of the famous siege is B.C. 1370 (Justin,
like the Arundelian marbles, gives B.C. 1184), and the latest is B.C.
724–636. In _Troy and its Remains_, we find (p. 123) that the age
proposed for the founding of the city is B.C. 1400; that the war took
place after the reigns of six kings (p. 27), say two centuries, or in
B.C. 1200; and that Homer lived 200 years after the destruction of the
city (p. 91), or in B.C. 1000. Thus Herodotus and Dr. Schliemann do not
agree; but what possible agreement can there be upon such a subject?
[717] Would it not be more prudent to say ‘not hitherto found’?
[718] Dr. Schliemann, _Ilias_.
[719] The Arab, or rather the Moslem, practice of Koran-reading may
explain that of ancient Greece. There are two distinct ways: the
vulgar, as though it were a profane book; and the learned with peculiar
intonation (_Kirá’at_), of which there are some seventy systems. The
Hindús recite with a similar artful modification. So the Hellenes
would either pronounce their scriptures, Homer and Hesiod, according
to popular accent, or intone by quantity. That men ever wrote accents
without pronouncing them is one of those wild theories which can
commend itself only to a savant. Besides, we know that as late as the
eleventh century there were Greek authors who wrote indifferently
according to accent or quantity.
[720] The tools known to the _Iliad_ were those of Central Africa,
anvil, hammer, and tongs (_Il._ xviii. 477, and _Od._ iii. 434–5).
[721] viii. 14; ix. 41.
[722] xxxv. 12, 43.
[723] E.g. δέσμοι, bands or ties; ἥλοι, studs; περόναι, pins, fibulæ;
and κέντρα, points (_Il._ xviii. 379; xi. 634; Pausanias xi. 16).
[724] iii. 2.
[725] _Il._ viii. 20. The Assyrian Hadi or Bet Edi, ‘House of
Eternity,’ probably Grecised, by an afterthought, to ἀϊδής—invisible.
See the earliest ‘Miracle-play,’ the descent of Ishtar into Hadi; _Soc.
Bib. Archæol._ vol. ii. part i. p. 188.
[726] Eur. _Ion._ 1.
[727] From the copper trumpet comes χαλκεόφωνος, ringing-voiced (_Il._
v. 785). The _Iliad_ applies the epithet to Stentor (_Il._ v. 785), and
Hesiod (_Theog._ 311) to Cerberus.
[728] _Od._ iii. 425.
[729] For instance, Stasinus or Hegesias, author of the _Kypria_ or
Cyprian _Iliad_ (Herod. _Lib._ ii. 117), assigned to the end of the
eighth century B.C., when Kypros may have had her ‘Homeric School.’ It
was in nine books, of which the argument has been preserved by Proclus
in Photius; and it forms a kind of introduction to the _Iliad_. See
Palma’s _Cyprus_, p. 13. ‘Homer’ is said to mention iron thirty times.
[730] Dr. Evans (_Bronze_, p. 15) quotes Dr. Beck’s suggestion that the
-eros of Sideros is a ‘form of the Aryan _ais_ (conf. _æs_, _æris_). In
another place (_Stone_, p. 5), he alludes to the possible connection of
Sideros with ἀστὴρ (a meteor), the Latin Sidera, and the English Star.
[731] _Od._ ix. 391.
[732] This is a fair instance of ‘elegant translation.’ What Homer says
is:
E’en as a blacksmith-wight some weighty hatchet or war-axe
Dippeth in water cold with a mighty hissing and sputt’ring,
Quenching to temper, for such is the strength and steeling of iron.
The reply will be that Homer does not say it in this way; and to this
reply I have no rejoinder.
[733] Hes. _Opera_, 174, sq.
[734] _Ibid._ ix. 366.
[735] xi. 34, 35, &c.
[736] Dr. Schliemann is assuredly singular when translating the Homeric
Cyanus by ‘bronze’ (Preface to _Mycenæ_, p. x.). Millin (_Minéralogie
Homérique_) holds it to be tin. The ‘Cyanus’ of Pliny (xxxvii. 38) is
lapis lazuli.
[737] _Opera_, 149; _Theog._ 161, and _Scut._ 231.
[738] _Erga_, 742–43.
[739] _Il._ xv. 677.
[740] xi. 629.
[741] _Scut._ Ll. 125–132.
[742] _Scut._ 216–224.
[743] _Ibid._ So early was that detestable invention, the metal
scabbard, introduced. Thus we must understand the φάσγανα καλὰ,
μελάνδετα (_Il._ xv. 713). Compare Eurip. _Phœn._ 1091. There is much
more to be said concerning ‘Phasganon.’
[744] _Il._ vii. 220.
[745] _Il._ iii. 292.
[746] _Il._ v. 330.
[747] _Il._ xviii. 474 sq.
[748] _Il._ vi. 236.
[749] x. 1.
[750] _Il._ iv. 242, xiv. 479.
[751] _Il._ xi. 385.
[752] The Romaic _gh_ is, as far as I know, the only modern European
representative of the ‘Semitic’ _ghayn_, which French writers must
transliterate by R: e.g. Razzia for Ghazweh.
[753] Even in the army of Perseus we are told by Livy (xliv. 40), the
Thracians marched first brandishing, from time to time, Swords of
enormous weight.
[754] xiii. 576.
[755] xxiii. 307.
[756] i. 210, 220.
[757] _Il._ i. 190, it is called a Phásganon.
[758] ii. 45.
[759] _Il._ xi. 30.
[760] Studs, flat-headed, like rivets, are still let into the iron
blade by modern Africans.
[761] iii. 334.
[762] _Il._ xvi. 130.
[763] xx. 475.
[764] _Il._ xvi. 335.
[765] xviii. end.
[766] So Aristophanes (_Clouds_, 1065) alludes to the Sword forged
by Hephaistos and presented to Peleus by the gods, as a prize for
resisting the temptations of Atalanta.
[767] _Il._ x. 256.
[768] xv. 712–12.
[769] _Iliad._ xxiii. 824.
[770] Sanskritists hold it to have been originally ἄσορ, and to derive
from असि (asi), a Sword; whence आसिक (ásik), a swordsman (Fick,
_Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Grundsprache_). It is probably
connected with ἀείρω, because ‘carried’ on the shoulder by the bauldric.
[771] _Od._ xi. 24.
[772] _Il._ xvi. 115.
[773] xvi. 473.
[774] _Il._ xiv. 385.
[775] In his illustrations of the _Iliad_, Flaxman rarely arms his
warriors with the Sword, even at the Fight for the Body of Patroclus.
It is to be hoped that artists in future will kindly take warning.
[776] _Il._ xv. 256; also _Hymn to Apollo_, 396.
[777] _El._ 837.
[778] _Odys._ viii. 401–5.
[779] _Odys._ iv. 695.
[780] Line 125.
[781] _Odys._ i. 180.
[782] iv. 83–4.
[783] xi. 520. In Buckley’s translation (Bell, 1878), χαλκός is mostly
translated ‘steel’ (pp. 62, 72, 198). Translators are almost as
misleading as dictionaries.
[784] xxi. 3.
[785] xxi. 10.
[786] v. 230.
[787] xxi. 127.
[788] xvi. 295.
[789] xix. 13.
[790] x. 535, xxi. 34 and 119, xxii. 329 &c.
[791] Line 40.
[792] _Il._ vii. 187.
[793] _Il._ vi. 169.
[794] xiii. 28.
[795] He also mentions writing on leaden plates and on linen cloths as
in ancient India; such, probably, were the books of Numa.
[796] v. 29.
[797] vii. 186.
[798] From _Kshatram_ (crown, reign) and _-pá_ (defender). These
viceroys of Asia Minor, who sometimes held more than one province,
received and despatched embassies, levied armies of mercenaries, and
even engaged in foreign wars without orders of the Great King (Herod,
iv. 165–7; Thucyd. i. 115 &c.).
[799] ix. 62.
[800] vii. 64.
[801] Grote, _History of Greece_, iii. 323.
[802] This word is erroneously translated ‘Scymitar,’ a weapon which,
in its present shape, dates from about the rise of El-Islam.
[803] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, 60. The learned commentator quotes
Müller, _Hist. Græc._ (iv. 429), Amm. Marcellinus (xxxi. 2), Jornandes
(_De Reb. Geticis_, cap. xxxv.), Niebuhr’s _Scythia_ (p. 46, E.
Tr.), &c. In vol. iii. 60, he gives a ground-plan of the tomb, whose
chief place also yielded a gold shield, a whip, a bow, a bow-case,
five statuettes, and an iron Sword. The space by the side contained
a woman’s bones, with a diadem and ornaments in gold and electrum.
Other barrows in Russia and Tartary showed bodies resting upon sheets
of pure gold weighing forty pounds, with bronze weapons and ornaments
set with rubies and emeralds. Herodotus’ description of the scalping
(ἀποσκυθίζειν, iv. 64) would apply to the North American ‘Indians’ of
our day; and the sending a messenger to Zalmoxis, god of the Getæ (iv.
94), is the practice of modern Dahome and Benin.
[804] Rawlinson, iii. 54.
[805] ‘Mongol’ denotes an especial race; the word is much abused by
non-Orientalists.
[806] iv. 70.
[807] This process of ‘mixing bloods,’ as a token of brotherhood, is
familiar to all travellers in pagan Africa.
[808] ii. 2.
[809] _Mycenæ, &c._ (London: Murray, 1878). It is regretable that this
handsome and expensive volume should be printed upon blotting paper.
[810] _Il._ i. 320.
[811] These illustrations are from photographs bought at Athens.
[812] ix. 29–31.
[813] P. 307.
[814] _Troy_, 330–31.
[815] P. 279.
[816] Jähns (pp. 91, 92) cannot but suspect that many of the weapons
which show a marked Oriental cast are not Atreidan but Carian. This
tribe about the thirteenth century B.C. spread itself, under the
mythical king Minos, over the Ægean Archipelago, and colonised even
the seaboard of Greece. Such words as Hymettos, Lykabettos, &c. are
supposed to be Carian. The symbol of their gods was the double-axe, so
common in Mycenæ; and, as Thucydides said, their practice was to bury
weapons with the dead, which was not customary in Greece.
[817] Yet soldering iron was known to Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty.
[818] The position may be seen in life all over India, where the
jugglers teach goats to stand and be hoisted in that position.
[819] The Etruscans, however, like the Jews, disposed the feet of the
corpse eastward, as told in _Etruscan Bologna_ (p. 22). Although the
author should not say so, the public has not done wisely to neglect
this book; its most valuable part, the osteological details of the
Etruscan, deserved a better fate and, perhaps, secured a failure.
Yet it had the prime advantage of angry abuse by a certain critical
journal, whose predilection for the commonplace (_quâ_ commonplace) is
expressed by vituperation of all that is not commonplace. In my case
I may say of it with Diderot: ‘Perhaps they do me more credit than I
deserve; I should feel humiliated if those who speak ill of so many
clever and worthy people took it into their heads to speak well of me.’
[820] See ‘Analysis of Mycenæan Metals’ (pp. 367–376, _Mycenæ_.) But
the book is almost as self-contradictory as _Troy_.
[821] For instance, by Mr. W. J. Stillman, a traveller and a scholar.
In the New York _Nation_ (August 18) he writes on ‘The True Age of the
Mykenæ Finds’; and, after a fresh examination, he declares the objects
post-classical, ‘probably representing the burial-place of a colony
of Celts between the fifth and the second century B.C.’ What chiefly
militates against this theory is the cremation of the human remains.
[822] Dictionaries derive this word from σπάω (to draw). I find it in
the Egyptian ‘Sft.’ It is evidently a congener of Σπάθη (dim. σπάθιον),
also Romaic, and verb σπαθάω = I wield (the weapon). Spáthe means
primarily a broad blade of wood or metal; secondarily a weaver’s spatel
or spaddle, a spatula (Latin _tela_); an oar-blade, a scraper (for
horse-currying), and a broadsword. Scotchmen still apply ‘spathe’ to
the weaver’s lath (_The Past in the Present_, p. 11), which preceded
the ‘pecten.’ It is also used for Carnifex in Tertullian (_De Cult.
Fem._ cap. xiii.), and in botany for a shoot of fructification. In
Anglo-Saxon it became _Spad_; Icelandic _Spadi_, our spade. The Latins
(Tacit. _Ann._ xii. 35; Veget. _De Re Mil._ ii. 15) converted it to
_spatha_; and hence the neo-Latin _espée_ and _épée_, _espada_ and
_spada_, from which we derive our (suit of) ‘spades.’ See the play of
words upon ‘Metal de Espadas’ in Camoens’ ‘Rejected Stanzas’ (canto
iv. vol. ii. p. 437 of my translation). It has been subjected to
other corruptions; and in Chaucer (_Knightes T._ 1662) ‘Sparth’ is a
battle-axe:—
‘He hath a sparth of twenti pound of wighte.’
Even the learned Major Jähns derives ‘Spatha’ from ‘Spatel.’
[823] Quoted by Colonel A. Lane-Fox, _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 174.
[824] I have described it in _Scoperte Antropologiche in Ossero_
(Trieste, 1877). The point is evidently broken off.
[825] See chap. viii.
[826] See chap. iii. The Danísko is the hatchet-yataghan of Demmin, p.
397.
[827] Gen. iii. 24; Zech. xiii. 7; Apocalyp. i.
[828] Here we find St. Michael a heavenly archetype of St. George. In
the vault of the Superga, Turin, Monseigneur carries a rapier instead
of a flamberge.
[829] Xenophon, _De Re Eq._ xii. 11.
[830] A world-wide juggling trick, which seems to have originated in
Egypt. In Apuleius (_Golden Ass_, lib. i.) a _circulator_ or itinerant
juggler swallows a very sharp two-edged cavalry broadsword and buries
in his entrails a horseman’s spear. This ‘Thracian Magic’ is still
practised by the well-known Raf’ai Dervishes.
[831] He figures the blade in his Tour (i. p. 443).
[832] Galatians, Keltic Gauls, who established themselves in Western
Asia Minor after the destruction of their leader Brennus at Delphi
(B.C. 279). Florus (ii. 10) calls the Gallo-Græcians ‘adulterated
relics of Gauls’: Strabo also alludes to the Phrygians and the three
Galatian peoples (iv. 1). As Ammian. Marcell. tells us (xv. cap.
ix.), ‘Galatæ is the Greek translation of the Roman term Galli.’ They
consisted of three tribes, each with its capital: the Tolistobogii (=
Tolosa + Boii) at Pessinus; the Tectosages (of Aquitaine) at Ancyra,
now Angora, famous for wool and cats; and the Trocmi, with Tavium for
principal city, lay to the east bordering on Pontus. This people, like
the Gauls, their kinsmen, was ‘admodum dedita religionibus’ (Cæs. _B.
G._ vi. 16).
[833] x. 32.
[834] Livy, xxxviii. c. 17.
[835] _Il._ i. 190.
[836] _Il._ xvi. 437.
[837] _Il._ xxii. 310–60.
[838] _Il._ xiv. 405.
[839] In the _Iliad_ (iv. 185) we find the ζωστὴρ and the ζῶμα
different. Menelaus wears the former outside, the Sword below it, and
a μίτρα or metal plate on the breast. The ζωστὴρ was probably a broad
girdle strengthened with metal, and considered part of the ὅπλα: thus
ζώννυσθαι, to ‘gird one’s loins,’ is to prepare for battle.
[840] Doubtless Pythagoras and Socrates were monotheists after the
fashion of the Egyptian priests; but the Olympus of the many-headed was
peopled by a charming bevy of _coquins_ and _coquines_.
[841] From the treatise of M. Rodios, ΕΠΙ ΠΟΛΕΜΙΚΗΣ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ (Athens,
1868); the soldier wears an Etruscan helmet, and the pelta shield
resembles an ivy leaf.
[842] _Philip._ i.
[843] To name merely the _sommités_: Alexander the Great, Eumenes, and
Ptolemy; Hannibal; Sulla, Fabius, Marius, Sertorius, Cato, Brutus,
Julius Cæsar, Mark Antony, Pompey, Metellus, Marcellus, Trajan, and
Hadrian. All these commanders were famous swordsmen, concerning whose
personal feats with the weapon we have ample notices.
[844] The Albanians still preserve the four castes which do not
intermarry. These are: Soldiers (or Landowners), Tradesmen, Shepherds,
and Artisans.
[845] Some of the Greek statues were larger than any Egyptian. Olympian
Jove stood 60 feet, Apollo 45 (Pausanias), and the Image of the Sun
(commonly called the Colossus of Rhodes) 105 feet, exceeding everything
in the Nile Valley. I need not refer to Mount Athos and the Charonion
of Antioch. The oldest known Greek statue is a portrait produced at
Miletus in B.C. 550, and inscribed: ‘I am Chares, son of Kleisis,
rider of Teichiousa, an offering to Apollo.’ The style of this and
other archaic works (vases, &c.), which are rare, connects it with
Assyrianism, about the age of Assurnazirpal (B.C. 880).
[846] _Iliad_, ii. 362 and iv. 297 sq.
[847] _De Ages._
[848] But who is to do this under a Republic? And here we foresee
troubles for our neighbours in the next Prusso-Gallic War.
[849] For instance, the ‘Holy City’ of Miletus, with its 300 dependent
towns. When we speak of ancient Greece we must remember that it
extended from Asia Minor to Sicily, Italy, and even Southern France;
and from Egypt to Albania. Modern Greece is a mere mutilated trunk.
[850] Demmin (p. 106, &c.) tells us that ‘the Greeks had not even a
term to denote the action of riding on horseback’; and that ‘even in
French a proper verb does not exist, as the expression _chevaucher_
means rather to stroll (_flâner_) on horseback.’ As his English
translator remarks, the assertion is hardly admissible in the face
of such words as ἱππεύειν (_equitare_), _cavalcare_, to ride the
horse; ἱππεία (riding), ἱππεὺς and ἱππότης (a rider, a knight), and
ἐπιβεβηκώς, mounted (_scil._ on horseback). His interpretation of
_chevaucher_ is equally erroneous. _Chevaucher_, a fine old word, now
only too rare, exactly expresses our ‘to ride’: _Il chevaucha aux
parties d’occident_, is quoted from a French MS. (early fourteenth
century) by Colonel Yule in his preface to Marco Polo; and the word
occurs twice in the same sentence with the same sense.
[851] Lord Denman’s translation.
[852] D. K. Sandford.
[853] ‘Armour’ is from the Lat. _armatura_, through O. French _armeure_
and _armure_; _armoire_ is _armarium_, originally a place for keeping
Arms, and _armamentarium_ is our arsenal. It is not a little curious
that ‘finds’ of Roman weapons are so rare, bearing no proportion to the
wide extension of the rule. We must also beware of the monuments which
are apt to idealise and archaicise: this is notable in the shape of the
helmet, the pilium, and the Sword. Jähns specifies as the best place
for study the Romano-German Central Museum at ‘Mainz,’ under Professor
Dr. Lindenschmit (p. 192).
[854] In our day the only ‘Fecialists’ are the Moslem States.
[855] _Polybii Historiarum quæ supersunt._ The voluminous and luminous
writer, a contemporary of Scipio Africanus, and a captain who witnessed
the destruction of Carthage, was born A.U.C. 552 (B.C. 204), nearly
three centuries after the Latin conquest of Etruria. He was called
‘Auctor bonus in primis,’ and Scipio said of him, ‘Nemo fuit in
requirendis temporibus diligentior’ (Cicero, _De Off._ iii. 12, and _De
Rep._ ii. 14).
[856] _De Linguâ Lat._ iv. 6.
[857] Livy, viii. 8.
[858] Also called Adscriptii, Supernumerarii, and Velati, because
wearing only the _sagum_ or soldier’s cloak, opposed to the officer’s
_paludamentum_. Properly speaking, they were rear-troops, ranged in
battle order behind the Triarii. During certain epochs the Rorarii
stood next to the Triarii, and the Accensi, less trustworthy than
either, formed the extreme rear.
[859] The weapon is well shown in a monumental tablet on the Court wall
of the Aquileja Museum.
[860] The Clypeus, or Clipeus, of favourite Greek use, was also round,
but larger than the Parma. Our ‘buckler’ (_buccularius clypeus_) takes
its name from having on it an open mouth (_bucca_, _buccula_), in
Chinese fashion, instead of the _umbo_.
[861] In Livy’s Phalanx (A.U.C. 415) the Velites were light-armed men,
carrying only a spear and short iron pila (viii. 7).
[862] A congener of the Keltic _Ast_ = branch; whence the Fr. _arme
d’hast_. It was the Greek κοντός, _contus_, or lance, an unbarbed
spear, a royal sceptre: under the Republic it collected the hundreds
(_hastam centumviralem agere_); it noted auctions (_jus hastæ_), it
was the weapon of the light infantry-man (_hasta velitaris_), and it
served to part the bride’s hair (Ovid, _Fast._ ii. 560). _Hastarius_
and _hastatus_, _hasta_ and _quiris_ are synonyms; the _gæsum_ was a
heavier weapon and barbed, and the _jaculum_, with its diminutives,
_spiculum_, _vericulum_, or _verutum_, was a lighter javelin. Virgil
uses _hastile_ poetically.
[863] _Loc. cit._
[864] The number of men greatly varied; the extremes of the Legion are
6,800 including cavalry under Scipio, and 1,500 under Constantine.
In Livy’s Legion there were 5,000 infantry and 300 horse (viii.
8). Perhaps we may assume an average of 4,000 foot—a full Austrian
regiment. Each line of the three numbered 10 cohorts, and each cohort
three maniples. The latter were named from manipulus, a handful (of
grass, &c., _Georg._ i. 400), because this rustic article at the end of
a pole was the standard of Romulus.
[865] The Signa, ensigns, or standards, were different in the legions.
The Vexillum, or colours of cavalry, was a square of cloth, also called
Pannus (πῆνος). The word is a congener of the Gothic _Fana_ and _Fan_;
the Ang. Sax. _Pan_; the Germ. _Fahne_; the French _bannière_ and our
_banner_. Hence, too, _Gonfanon_ = _Gundfano_. When the Eagle became
imperial, and the Vexillum a Labarum with a cross, this standard was
splendidly decorated, and led to the French oriflamme. The latter was
made of the fine red (silk?) stuff called _cendalum_, cendal, or sendel.
[866] These ‘light bobs’ were re-organised and regularly established in
A.U.C. 541, after the battle of Cannæ.
[867] In fact, it formed phalanx, a word originally meaning a block or
a cylinder.
[868] The officer’s was adorned by way of honourable decoration with
three (ostrich?) feathers black and scarlet.
[869] The original kilt was the waistcloth, man’s primitive dress in
the Tropics and the lower Temperates. It became an article of defence
under the Greeks and Romans; and thence it spread over most of Europe.
The Maltese long preserved it, and the _Fustanella_ is still worn in
Greece and Albania. In Ireland it was ancient, as it is modern in
Scotland.
[870] Livy, ix. 35.
[871] Livy, viii. 8.
[872] _Pilum_, like our ‘pile,’ a congener of the Teutonic _Pfeil_,
is not a Roman invention, and was probably borrowed from the Samnites
(Sallust. _Cat._ 51, 38). The _pilum murale_, used for piercing walls
(Cæsar, _B. G._ v. 40), was a round or quadrangular shaft of three
cubits, with an iron of the same length (Polybius, vi. 23, 9). The
_pilum_ was perpetually changing size and proportions; moreover, there
were two kinds, the heavy and the light. The figures in the text are
those of the Mayence _pilum_ (Jähns, p. 201).
[873] Livy, xxi. 8.
[874] Under Trajan and Septimius Severus the cavalry adopted the iron
or bronze _Hamata_, hooked metal chains, forming a kind of mail-coat,
and the _Squamata_, scales sewn on to linen or leather, Demmin (p. 121)
erroneously makes the latter ‘chain-armour,’ and yet his illustration
shows the scales.
[875] _De Re Mil._ i. 16.
[876] _Essais de Montaigne_, l. ii., chap. 24 (Paris: Garnier Frères,
1874).
[877] Or _maître d’armes_, a word borrowed by Rome from Etruria. The
legionary teachers were termed _armidoctores_ and _campidoctores_.
[878] Athenæus (iv. 41) relates from Hermippus and Ephorus that the
Mantineans were the inventors of Gladiatorism proper (μονομαχοῦντες),
suggested by one of their citizens, Demus or Demonax, and that the
Cyreneans followed suit.
[879] Livy, xxviii. 21.
[880] In early Roman days the Gladiator was infamous; even Petronius
Arbiter (_Satyr._ cap. i) uses ‘you obscene gladiator’ as an insult.
[881] _Philip._ ii. 25.
[882] Marius and Pompey the Great both ‘kept up’ their swordsmanship
in these schools and in the Champ de Mars, the latter till the age of
fifty-eight.
[883] Hence his simple medication when _hors de combat_, ‘refreshing
himself with a drink of lye of ashes.’ Can they mean the antiseptic
charcoal, whose use has been revived of late years?
[884] _Nat. Hist._ xxxvi. 24.
[885] _Sub v._ Epicurus.
[886] _Deipn._ vi. 105. Eunus was the slave-leader in the Servile War,
which began B.C. 130.
[887] The first Roman artist who painted gladiators was Terentius
Lucanus (Pliny, _N. H._ xxxv. 34).
[888] The Mirmillo, _alias_ Gallus, is supposed to be derived from a
Keltic word, meaning a fish.
[889] If Nero was the monster represented by the commentaries and the
contemporary Christians, we must wonder how this anti-Christ was loved
in life by Acte, the ‘sweet and pure-minded Christian’; and why the
citizens of Rome sorrowed for his death. And there is much suggestion
in the fact that the greatest persecutors of the earliest Christians
were the best of the Cæsars, for instance, Vespasian, Titus, Diocletian
and Julian.
[890] See the character given to him by Eutropius, viii. 4.
[891] _De Morib. Germ._ xxxiii.
[892] Mariette, _Recueil_, No. 92.
[893] The learned Mr. Tylor is notably in error when he informs Mr.
Herbert Spencer (_Ceremonial Institutions_, pp. 174–75) that the
Japanese two-sworded man (Samurai) wore sword and dagger. The blades
used to be of equal length. Of the Japanese sword I shall treat in Part
II.
[894] Copied by Smith (_Dict. of Ant._ p. 456) from Winckelmann
(_Monumenta Inedita_, Pl. 197): the latter, by the by, was murdered at
Trieste.
[895] The word seems to be a congener of _Sahs_, _Sax_, or _Seax_,
the weapon supposed to have named the Saxons. It was either straight
or curved, the main object being to fit it closely to the body or
under the armpits. Hence it was a favourite with the Sicarius (Ital.
_sicario_), the Assassin. Gregory of Tours has (ix. 19) ‘Caput sicharii
siccâ dividit.’ A fanciful derivation of Sicily is from _sica_, because
Cronos threw one away at Drepanum. From the diminutive form _Sicula_
and _Silicicula_ comes the English ‘sickle.’
[896] This hide-shield, which supplanted the _clypeus_ or _clipeus_,
the large round article of osier-work, was also Sabine.
[897] Petronius Arbiter, chap. i. 7.
[898] _Falx_ is properly a large pruning knife, plain or toothed,
with a coulter or bill projecting from the back of the curved head.
Besides this, there are many forms; one is a simple curve; another is a
leaf-shaped blade with an inner hook, while a third bears, besides the
spike, a crescent on the back. ‘Falx’ is the origin of our ‘falchion,’
an Italian augmentative form, or perhaps the Spanish _facon_. Cæsar
(_Comm._ iii. 14) speaks of _falces præacutæ_.
[899] _Loc. cit._, copied by Smith.
[900] Mentor is mentioned by Pliny (viii. 21). The tale of Androclus is
well known; he was pardoned, and presented with his friend the lion,
whom he used to lead about Rome, doubtless collecting many coppers.
[901] He is called by Captain Godfrey ‘the Atlas of the sword,’ and
Hogarth immortalised this valiant ‘rough’ in the _Rake’s Progress_ and
_Southwark Fair_.
[902] It is regretable to see this unmanly and ignoble ‘sport’
spreading abroad: there was pigeon-shooting at Venice during the
Geographical Carnival, _alias_ Congress, of September 1881. All honour
to the English Princes who are discountenancing the butchery at home.
Fox-hunting is another thing; the chief good done by it seems to be the
circulation of about a million of money per annum.
[903] I have described cock-fighting in the Canary Islands (_To
the Gold Coast for Gold_, i., chap. 9). The celebrated story of
Themistocles and the game-cocks made the pastime classical. Alexander
the Great is said to have crucified a tax-gatherer at Alexandria who
killed and ate a famous fighting-cock. Verdict, S. H. R.
[904] So Μελίη and the O. Germ. _Ask_ (an ash-tree) signify a bow:
there are many instances of such nomenclature.
[905] Quinctilian, _Inst. Orat._ xii. 11. Marchionni (p. 123) makes the
Gladius short and broad for infantry, and the Ensis long and broad for
cavalry, in fact, synonymous with Spatha. This view is not unusual.
[906] In _Claud._ cap. 15.
[907] Florus, ii. 17.
[908] This blade greatly resembles one found in Ostirbotten, Finland,
except that the latter preserves the tang. _Trans. Congress of Bologna
of 1871_, p. 428.
[909] The point was called _cuspis_, which never applies to the
_mucro_, _acies_, or edge. ‘Differt a mucrone quæ est acies gladii,’
says Facciolati.
[910] See chap. vii. In Hugues de Bançoi’s _Battle of Benevento_ we
read: ‘Le Roy Charles’ (brother of St. Louis, and then fighting to take
Sicily from Manfred) ... ‘crioit de sa bouche Royale à ses Chevaliers
de serrer les ennemis, leur disant, _Frappez de la pointe, Frappez de
la pointe, soldats de Jésus Christ_. Et il ne faut pas s’en étonner,
car ce Prince habile avait lu dans le Livre de l’Art Militaire que les
nobles Romains n’avoient pas imaginé de meilleure manière de combattre
que de percer les ennemis avec la pointe de l’épée.’
[911] Livy, xxxv. 12. According to Spanish tradition, Toletum (probably
a Carthaginian-Punic word) was founded B.C. 540 by Hebrews, who called
it Toledoth, in Arab. Tawallud, the ‘mother of cities.’
[912] Properly the South-Danube country from the Wienerwald to the Inn.
The great seat of the iron works was at Lauriacum (Lorch, near Enns).
After B.C. 16 the province was ruled by a Procurator.
[913] See chap. vi.
[914] In Tonini’s _Rimini avanti l’ era volgare_ (p. 31) we read
that the Spatha-blade ‘Come ognuno sa, presso i Greci quanto presso
i Latini, _est genus gladii latioris_; onde Isidoro nelle _Origini_
(xviii. cap. 6) ha che alcuni _spatham latine autumant, eo quod
spatiosa sit, id est lata et ampla_.’ But this is a dictionary
derivation. In chap. viii. I have traced it back to the Egyptian
_Sfet_, and in chap. xiii. I shall show that it is the straight
broadsword as used by the Kelts.
[915] Parazonium = παρά + ζώνη. _Pugio_, our ‘poniard,’ is from
_pugnus_ (πύξ), the fist; others take it from _pungere_ to prick.
[916] Smith (_Dict. of Ant._ p. 809) borrows figs. _a_ and _b_ from
Beger (_Thes. Brand_, v., iii. p. 398, 419).
[917] See end of chap. viii.
[918] Smith (_loc. cit._ p. 195) renders _capulus_ by ‘hilt.’ Pommel,
however, best explains Ovid’s legend of Theseus (_Met._ vii. 423), who,
appearing for the first time before his father Ægeus, was known by
the carving on his ivory _capulus_, and thus escaped Medea’s aconite.
Moreover, a ‘golden hilt set with beryls’ would have been very awkward
to handle.
[919] Virg. _Æn._ xii. 942.
[920] Section Beaumont. The grip has four hollows to fit the fingers.
This indentation-system has been revived of late years, as shown by
the swords of Victor Emmanuel and General Lamarmora in the Municipal
Museum, Turin.
[921] Guard plates, accompanying cross-bars, have been found in Gaul.
[922] These rings appear on the scabbard of Tiberius.
[923] Here I rely upon Ammian. Marcell. (xxiv. 4; xxv. 3, 4, and
_passim_). So great a reformer could not escape detraction in its most
venomous form. His last words (attributed) _Vicisti, Nazarene_, must, I
think, have been pronounced in Syriac-Arabic, _Nasart’ yá Nasráni_.
[924] Jähns, p. 198. He gives an illustration (Pl. xvii. 14) of the
‘Annæus’ monument at Bingen; there is a double balteus worn round the
waist for the Spatha, or long Sword, to the right, and the Pugio to the
left, both being carried perpendicularly. The Roman Parazonium is also
rare in collections.
[925] In this matter we must be careful how we trust to engravings,
especially from vases, &c. The careless artist often reverses the
figure.
[926] _Military Antiq._, vol. ii.; Pl. xli.
[927] Quoting Lyson’s _Woodchester Antiquities_ (Pl. xxxv.).
[928] Pl. i. fig. 10. Quoted in _The British Army_, &c., by Sir Sibbald
David Scott, a well-studied work containing a considerable amount of
information.
[929] _Soc. of Antiq._, June 29, 1876.
[930] During the critical action at Thapsus, Cæsar, according to
Plutarch, was _hors de combat_ with a fit of epilepsy, the _comitialis
morbus_ (Afric. War, chap. 14). I have noticed in my Commentaries on
Camoens (i. 40) the strange fact that some of the greatest men of
antiquity were subject to this ‘falling sickness.’ The Egyptians held
it to be a manifestation of the power of Typhon; hence the ‘divine
disease’ of Apuleius (Defence), and the strange fancies of dæmoniac
possession which prevailed in the earliest ages, and which have not
yet died out. The learned Canon Farrar (_Life, &c. of Saint Paul_,
Appendix, vol. i.) holds that this perhaps was the ‘thorn in the
flesh’ (2 Cor. xii. 7) alluded to by the great Apostle. He quotes from
Hausrath the ‘trances’ of Sokrates, the fits of Mohammed, and the
faintings and ecstasies of Saints Bernard, Francis, and Catherine of
Sienna; and to these he adds George Fox, Jacob Böhme, and Swedenborg.
[931] This is an illustration of genius taking pains and a lesson to
the leader of troops; but how many of the moderns have practised it, or
have been capable of practising it? Suvóroff (Suwarroff), it is true,
taught his men bayonet-exercise, with his coat off and his sleeves
tucked up: Mediocrity shudders at the idea. The Russian had, by the
way, curious ideas concerning the use of the weapon. ‘Brothers! never
gaze into the enemy’s eyes; fix your sight on his breast, and prod your
bayonet there.’ The first rule for the General is to be ever looking
after his men, to live, as it were, in the saddle, and to lead the
attack when requisite. What were the habits of poor Lord Raglan and
of his successor General (Jimmy) Simpson? No wonder that we had the
mortification of the Redan affair.
[932] _Strategemata_, viii. 28. The ‘Macedonian’ flourished about the
middle of the second century (Christian era).
[933] ix. 40.
[934] This word has a universal history of its own, and contains a
lecture on anthropology.
Its form is onomatopoetic, the earliest form of expression, as the
Egyptian _miao_, for a cat; and it admirably conveys the idea of
muttering or stuttering. Again, it is a reduplication of sounds;
another absolutely primitive construction, and the effect is emphasis.
‘Berber-ta’ (Berber-land) was applied by the ancient Egyptians
(Catalogue of Thut-mes III.), whence our modern term Barbary.
The word in Hebr. ‘wild beast feeding in waste’ migrated to India,
and was there corrupted to वर्वर (Varvara), a barbarous land, one who
speaks unintelligibly.
‘Berber’ passed over to Greece from Egypt, and became βάρβαρος, meaning
a foreigner whose language was not Hellenic, and who, therefore,
was little better than a beast. (N.B. Shakespeare would have been a
barbarian in Persia and Hafiz in England.)
‘Barbaros’ broadened its meaning in Rome, where it was applied to all
peoples who could not speak or who mispronounced Greek and Latin. See
Strabo, xiv. 2, on ‘Barbaros’ and to ‘barbarise’; thus unhappy Ovid
could wail:
‘Barbarus hic ego sum quia non intelligor illis.’
Lastly, the ‘proto-Aryan’ term ‘Barbarian’ has now grown to full size,
and is applied generally to the rude, the fierce, the uncivilised, and
those who contumaciously ignore the ‘higher culture.’
[935] This is materialism pure and simple; but all the teaching of
modern science points to the material. The mysterious ‘life’ is no
longer ‘vital power’; it simply represents the sum total of the
energies and protoplasm. ‘Life is a property of protoplasm or bioplasm,
and is the latest product of thought and research.’ And I may add that
Consciousness, like Will, is a property of life in certain of its
forms; a state and condition of cerebral and other atoms; the mere
consequence of hitherto unappreciated antecedents.
[936] Florus, ii. 3.
[937] _Bronze_, &c. p. 297. From _Aarbög. f. Nord. Oldk._ 1879, pl. i.
[938] _Bronze_, &c., p. 298. From Bastian and A. Voss, _Die
Bronze-Schwerter des K. Mus. zu Berlin_, 1878, p. 56.
[939] _Bronze_, &c., p. 299, from Von Sacken and Lindeschmit’s
_Alterthümer_. The first finds by Herr Namsauer in 1846–64 were 6,000
articles from 993 graves.
[940] I have already noticed the copper Ensis and coppered shield
attributed by Virgil (_Æn._ viii. 74) to the people of Abella, an
Italian district under Turnus.
[941] _Bronze_, &c., p. 277. The author also notices the small handles
of bronze Swords, ‘a fact which seems to prove that the men who used
these swords were but of moderate stature’ (_Prehistoric Times_, p.
22). He denies their being very small, and he justly believes that the
expanding part of the hilt was intended to be within the grasp of the
hand. I have already explained that the hand was purposely confined in
order to give more momentum to the cut.
[942] _Bronze_, &c., p. 297; taken from Gastaldi, Pellegrini and
Gozzadini. The author remarks (p. 287) that some of the bronze daggers
from Italy seem also to have had their hilts cast upon the blades
in which the rivets were already fixed. This is not unfrequent with
the Sword, and the object seems mere imitation; like the Hauranic
stone-doors, panelled as if to pass for wood.
[943] _Bronze_, &c., p. 283, we find that the British Museum contains a
specimen. _Catalog. Italy_, p. 28.
[944] _Bronze_, &c., ibid., quoting from _Numm. Vet. Ital. Descript._,
pl. xii.
[945] See chap. vi.
[946] _De Garrul._
[947] _De Ferro_, i. 195.
[948] Lib. xliv. 3. Martial also alludes (i. 49; iii. 12, &c.) to the
metallic wealth of his native province.
[949] Pliny (xxxi. 4, 41) also notices the Salo or River Bilbilis
(Xalon); and the Celtiberian town of the same name, now Bombola, the
birthplace of the poet Martial, is near Calatayud (Kala’at el-Yahúd =
Jew’s Fort), or Job’s Castle. Of the Chalybes I have already spoken.
[950] _Roman Archæology_, by Angelo Maio.
[951] The words Κέλται, Γαλάται, Γάλλο (meaning Armati, pugnaces,
Kämpfer, fighters), evidently derive not from Coille, a word, but from
the old word Gal (battle), Gala (arms). The name suited their natures;
they were never at peace, and their bravery was proverbial: the Greeks
called it Κελτικὸν θράσος = Keltic daring.
[952] Cladibas or Cladias = _gladius_. I have noticed the shape when
speaking of the Hallstadt finds.
[953] Polyænus, _Strategemata_; Dion. Halicar. xiv. chap. 13.
[954] Plutarch (_De Cam._ cap. xxvii.) also arms the Gauls, when
attacking the Capitol, with the Kopis. ‘The first to oppose them was
Manlius.... Meeting two enemies together, he parried the cut of one
who raised a Kopis (κοπίδα) by hacking off his right hand with a
Gladius’ (ξίφος). I presume that ‘Kopis’ is here used for the _pugio_,
dirk, or shorter sword. Borghesi _Œuvres Complètes_, vol. ii. pp.
337–387, says: ‘In use and form, in grip and in breadth of blade,
the Kopis much resembles our _Sciabla_, (Sabre).’ But its comparison
with the falx and pruning hook and a medal of Pub. Carisius suggest a
substantial difference: while the broadsword is edged on the convex
side, the Kopis had a sharpened concave. Count Gozzadini, like General
A. Pitt-Rivers, compares the Kopis with the Khanjar or Yataghan, and
quotes Xenophon (_Cyrop._ ii. 1, 9; vi. 2, 10) to prove that it was
peculiar to Orientals. I have traced the word to the Egyptian Khopsh or
Khepsh, and repeat my belief that it is the old Nilotic sickle-blade
with a flattened curve. But, as might be expected in the case of so old
a word, the weapon to which it was applied may have greatly varied in
size and shape.
[955] Brennus is evidently a congener of the Welsh _brenhin_ (the
king). The Senones have left their name in Illyrian Segna, once a nest
of pirates and corsairs, south of Fiume the Beautiful. I shall notice
them in a future page.
[956] Livy, xxii. 46.
[957] _Bell. Gall._ iii. 13; vii. 22.
[958] Lib. x. cap. 32.
[959] Lib. v. cap. 30.
[960] See chapters viii. and xii. Here the word is evidently applied
generically to a straight two-edged broadsword, about 1 mètre long. In
the Middle Ages the weapon gave rise to many curious varieties, as the
_Spatha pennata_ and the _Spatha in fuste_.
[961] According to Vegetius (ii. 15) the Saunion was the light javelin
of the Samnites, with a shaft 3½ feet long, and an iron head measuring
5 inches. Thus it would resemble the Roman _pilum_. But Diodorus
evidently means another and a heavier weapon which could hardly be
thrown. Meyrick and Jähns (p. 390) do not solve the difficulty.
[962] Lib. iv. 4, § 3.
[963] _De Bell. Pers._
[964] The Northumberland Stone in Montfaucon (vol. iv. part 1, p. 37)
shows a Gaul wearing sword and dagger on either side.
[965] In Athenæus, lib. xiv., the celebrated philosopher called the
Apamæan or the Rhodian, a contemporary of Pompey and Cicero, left,
amongst other works, one called Τέχνη τακτικὴ (_de Acie instruenda_).
[966] Lib. vii. cap. 10. It is evident that the Duello did not, as many
authors suppose, arise with the Kelts. All we can say is that they
may have originated in Europe the sentiment called _pundonor_ and the
practice of defending it with the armed hand. The idea was unknown to
the classics; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the Arabs, it is
still ignored by the civilised Orientals of our day, especially by the
Moslems.
[967] Lib. ii. caps. 28, 30, and 33.
[968] Simply meaning Spearmen. Gaisate = _hastatus_ from Gaisa
(_gæsum_), the Irish _gai_, any spear. Isidore (_Gloss._) translates
‘Gessum’ by ‘hasta vel jaculum Gallicè, βολίς.’ The word survives in
the French _guisarme_, _gisarme_, &c. The Gæsum probably had a kind of
handle and a defence for the hand.
[969] Lib. xxii. cap. 46.
[970] Lib. xxxviii. 21.
[971] The naked bodies and narrow shields are well shown in the
battle-scene on the Triumphal Arch of Orange (Jähns, Plate 29).
[972] Borghesi (Tonini’s _Rimini_, &c., p. 28 and Tables A 3 and B 6)
makes one of these gladii a ‘Kopis.’
[973] Lib. v. cap. 30.
[974] The cavalry was organised in the Trimarkisia (three marka, or
horses) composed of the ‘honestior’ (afterwards the knight), and the
clients (squires). The host that attacked Hellas, under Brennus, had
20,400 horsemen to 752,000 foot.
[975] The pattern is almost universal. Moorcroft found it in the
Himalayas, and I bought ‘shepherd’s plaid’ in Unyamwezi, Central Africa.
[976] The first use of tattooing was to harden the skin, a defence
against weather. The second (and this we still find throughout Africa)
was to distinguish nations, tribes, and families.
[977] ‘Galli bracchas deposuerunt et latum clavum sumpserunt.’ Diodorus
Sic. (v. 30) has βράκας; in Romaic βράχι; in Italian _braghe_, Germ.
_Brüche_. Our word ‘breech-es’ or ‘Breek-s’ is a double plural; ‘breek’
being the plur. of the A. S. _broc_, a brogue. Aldus and other old
writers mistranslate the _bracchæ_ by plaid, or upper garment. Jähns
more justly renders _sagum_ by plaid (p. 431).
[978] Livy, xxxviii. 24.
[979] Italy has declared herself _Una_. But without considering a
multitude of origins, one for almost every province, she is peopled in
our modern day by two races, contrasting greatly with each other. The
Po is the frontier, dividing the Græco-Latin Italians to the south from
the Gallic and Frankish Italians (Milanese, Piedmontese, &c.) to the
north. The latter, originally Barbari, are the backbone of the modern
kingdom: the Southerners are the weak point.
[980] _Bell. Gall._ vi. 24.
[981] Jähns (in his Plates 27–30) unites ‘Kelten und Germanien,
Germanien und Kelten.’
[982] _De Mor. Germ._, cap. 6.
[983] So we find the god Tyr or Tuisco (regent of Tuesday), the
Monthu or Mars of the North, figured in the Runes as a barbed spear ᛏ
(resembling the planetary emblem of Mars). He afterwards became the
Sword-god. From the Tyr-rune is derived ᛠ Er (= hêru, the sword), or
Aer, which resembles the Greek ἄορ, and which Jacob Grimm connects with
Ἄρης, _æs_ and _Eisen_ (Jähns, p. 14).
[984] The older derivation is from _ferrea_. Jähns (p. 407) gives a
host of others—_Bram_ (thorn, bramble); _Pfriem_ (punch, awl); _Brame_
(a border, edging); _ramen_ (to aim, strike), &c., &c.
[985] _Arms_, &c., p. 419.
[986] _Annals_, ii. cap. 14.
[987] _De Mor. G._ cap. 6.
[988] The _steendysser_ of Denmark, dolmens of France, and cromlechs of
England.
[989] P. 416, Pl. xxviii. 4. In p. 417 he gives a list of many
bronze-finds.
[990] Tacit. _Annals_, ii. 14.
[991] Cap. 42 and 6.
[992] So the Longobards may be Long-halberts, and the Franks
Francisca-men.
[993] Vegetius (ii. 15) makes them use ‘gladii majores quas Spathas
vocant,’ and Isidore (68, 6) says that the _gladii_ were ‘utraque parte
acuti.’
[994] In Scandinavian, the noblest of the Germanic tongues, _hjalt_; in
O. Germ, _helza_; Ang. S. _helt_, _hielt_, and in Mid. Germ. _helze_,
_gehilze_ (Jähns, p. 419).
[995] Jähns (p. 419) has three kinds of hilts. The oldest is the
crescent, noticed above (fig. 293); it is adorned with spirals and
various figures. The second, which seems to be more general in the
Sahs, or short weapon, has in the place of pommel a crutch or crescent,
with the horns more or less curved, and either disunited or joined
by a cross-bar. Here again spirals were disposed upon the planes: we
shall see them highly developed in the Scandinavian weapons of a later
date. The third hilt was a kind of tang, continuing the blade, and
fitted with rounded edges for making fast wood, horn, or bone: it had
generally a bulge in mid-handle. The pommel proper is little developed
in these Swords.
[996] ‘Sahs’ seems to have an alliance with the Latin ‘saxum’ (Jähns,
p. 8, quoting Grimm). ‘Hamar’ (hammer) had the same meaning. From
‘sax’ we may probably derive the Zacco-sword of the Emperor Leo
(_Chronicle_): ‘Item fratrem nostrum Ligonem cum zaccone vulneravit.’
The Laws of the Visigoths mention both weapons, long and short:
‘plerosque verò scutis, spatis, scramis’ (battle-axes?) ‘....
instructos habuerit.’ ‘Nimith euere saxes’ (take to your knife-swords),
said Hengist, and the oaths ‘Meiner Six!’ (by my dirk), and
‘Dunner-Saxen’ (thunder sword) in Lower Saxony, are not forgotten.
[997] I have spoken of the Scramasax in chap. v. Demmin (p. 152) and
others deduce ‘scrama’ (broadsword) from ‘scamata,’ the line traced on
the ground between two Greek combatants(!). Hence, too, he would derive
‘scherma’ and ‘escrime’—fencing. Others prefer ‘scaran’ (to shear),
which gave rise to the German ‘schere’ (scissors), and our ‘shears’ and
‘shear-steel.’ The word, however, is evidently a congener of the Germ.
‘schirmen,’ to protect, defend.
Jähns (p. 418) observes that the Sahs varied greatly in size.
Some authorities make it a Mihhili Mezzir (muchel knife), a large
_cultellus_. But the Frisian Asega-buch shows it to be a murderous
weapon, forbidden to be worn in peace. The finds yield at times a dirk,
and at times a broadsword; such, for instance, are the Copenhagen
Scramsahs, 90 centimètres long, and that of Fronstetten, which, though
imperfect, weighed 4·5 lbs. The British Museum contains a fine specimen
of the Scramasax with engraved Runes.
[998] P. 421. Pl. xxviii. 15.
[999] The word is the Ang. Sax. _dolc_, a wound, which thus gave a name
to the weapon that wounded.
[1000] _Bronze_, pp. 261–63. Figs. 329 and 330.
[1001] _Germ._ 6.
[1002] Jähns (p. 439) quotes Asclepiodotus (vii. 3) and Ælian (xviii.
4), who describe the _cuneus_ as Scythian and Thracian, _i.e._
barbarous. Unfortunately Jähns also cites the ‘Boar’s head’ of the Laws
of Menu (Houghton’s _Manava-Dharma Shastra_, vii. 187), _in the eighth
century_ B.C.; Menu being centuries after Tacitus. I have noticed
that the disposal of our chessmen shows the Hindú form of attack, the
infantry in front, the horse and elephants (castles) on either wing,
and the Rajah or Commander-in-chief in the centre and not in front.
[1003] In its purest form the Standard-bearer stood alone at the apex,
as Ingo in King Odo’s battle at Mons Panchei (Montpenssier), A.D. 892.
[1004] ‘Quodque præcipuum fortitudinis incitamentum est, non casus,
nec fortuita conglobatio turmam aut cuneum facit, sed familiæ et
propinquitates’ (Tacit. _Germ._ 7).
[1005] _Nat. Hist._, iv. 14.
[1006] _In Mario_, 23.
[1007] In later times they were carefully cleaned for another object,
to show their Runic inscriptions.
[1008] Malet’s _Introduction to the History of Denmark_.
[1009] Pliny, iv. 14. Procop. _Bell. Vand._ i. 1.
[1010] In O. Germ. Sper = hasta, lancea; Sperilîn = lanceola, sagitta;
Ang. Sax. Sper, Engl. spear; Germ. Speer. The word seems to be a
congener of Sparre, spar. Less commonly used is Spiess = hasta, cuspis;
Scand. Spjot; O. Germ. Speoz, Spioz; Ang. Sax. spietu; Fr. espié,
espiel, espiet, espieu; Ital. spiedo; Engl. spit. It seems to ally with
the Lat. spina, and the Germ. Spitze (Jähns, p. 413).
[1011] The peculiar celts, chisels, spear-points, &c., extended over
all the peninsula of Jutland, and as far south as Mark Brandenburg
(Jähns, p. 6).
[1012] Neither Cæsar nor Tacitus mentions the use of the bow amongst
the ancient Gauls and Germans, although the graves yield arrow-heads of
stone, bone, and iron.
[1013] Dr. Evans, _Bronze_ &c., p. 299.
[1014] I reserve Scandinavian weapons for Part II.
[1015] _Origins of English History_ (London: Quaritch, 1852).
[1016] The Sword amongst the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks will be
described at full length in Part II.
[1017] These are:
No. 1. That Bronze-casting spread from a common centre by conquest
or migration.
No. 2. That each region discovered the art independently, and made
its own implements.
No. 3. That the art was discovered and implements were made in one
spot, whence commerce disseminated them.
No. 4. That the art was diffused from a common centre, but that the
implements were constructed in the countries where they were found.
[1018] _Bronze_, &c., p. 475.
[1019] _Bronze_, p. 473. I would notice that upon the subject of
‘Celts’ the learned author joins issue with the peculiar views of M. de
Mortillet, before noticed. _Bronze_, &c., p. 456.
[1020] The three divisions are:
No. 1. Characterised by flat or slight flanged celts and
knife-daggers, found in barrows with stone implements.
No. 2. Age of heavy dagger-blades, flanged celts and tanged
spear-heads, such as those from Arreton Down. In these two the
Sword is unknown.
No. 3. Palstaves, socketed celts (introduced from abroad); true
socketed spear-heads, Swords, and the variety of tools and weapons
found in the hoards of the old bronze-founders.
And a great peculiarity in Britain is the absence of nearly all traces
of the Later Bronze Period in graves and barrows.
[1021] Dr. Evans, _Bronze_, &c., p. 300, quoting M. Alexandre Bertrand.
For the condition of the Ancient Britons during the Bronze Period, see
_ibid._ p. 487.
[1022] In the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris.
(Dr. Evans, _Bronze_, &c., p. 20).
[1023] ‘On the True Assignation of the Bronze Weapons,’ _Trans. Ethn.
Soc._ N. Ser. iv. p. 7).
[1024] _Bronze_, &c., p. 274. See also Introductory Chapter, p. 20.
[1025] See chap. v.
[1026] _Bronze_, &c., p. 417.
[1027] _Bronze_, &c., p. 421. The list of analyses shows lead chiefly
in the Irish finds.
[1028] _Geog._ vii. 2.
[1029] _Bell. Gall._ v. 12.
[1030] Evans’s _Coins of the Ancient Britons_. I have not yet read the
work.
[1031] Cæsar (iv. 33): ‘Genus hoc est eis essedis pugnæ;’ and he speaks
again (v. 15) of _essedarii_. The scythe-car was known to Assyria,
Jewry (the _Faldat_ of Nahum ii. 3), and Persia, where Xenophon and
Plutarch attribute to it the highest importance; even the pole ended
in a lance. It became a favourite with all Keltic peoples. At Sentinum
(B.C. 296) the Gauls almost defeated the Romans by suddenly throwing
on a force of one thousand ‘esseda currusque.’ The Tectosages, when
engaged with Antiochus Soter in Phrygia (B.C.), ranged in front of
their attack 240 scythe-cars, some with two and others with four
horses. Antiochus the Great armed his chariots not only with two
scythe blades, but also with lances ten cubits long (?), laterally
projecting (Livy, xxxvii. 41). The historian also notices the Arab
dromedary-riders, ‘archers who carried their swords four cubits (= 6
feet) long, that they might be able to reach the enemy from so great
a height.’ When the Gæsatæ crossed the Alps (B.C. 228) they were
accompanied by a vast number of war-cars (Polybius, ii. 4, 5 says
20,000 ἁρμαμάξας καὶ συνωρίδας) which did good service at the battle of
Telamon. Ossian’s _Fingal_ offers a long description of the war-car and
its uses. Many remains of these two-wheeled vehicles have been found in
Keltic Europe (Jähns, pp. 394–96).
[1032] _Geog._ iii. 6.
[1033] I cannot but attribute to Italian blood the high and aquiline
features which distinguish the Briton from the Northern German; the
latter has been intimately mixed with the Slav race, as a glance at the
Berlinese suffices to show. Portraits of the Cavalier period explain
my meaning. In the Hanoverian times the ‘Roundhead’ again came to the
fore, and hence the popular ‘John Bull’ portrayed in the pages of Mr.
_Punch_. He is a good working type, but he has not the face to command
or to impose.
[1034] _Bronze_, &c., pp. 286–87. It was found in the river Cherwell
and it is now in the Museum at Oxford. The first notice was in the
_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, vol. iii. 204.
[1035] _Ibid._ p. 287. The author suggests that it may be foreign.
[1036] _Ibid._ p. 288.
[1037] I have already referred to the bronze dagger from Thebes, now in
the British Museum, with its narrow rapier-like blade and broad flat
hilt of ivory.
[1038] Dr. Thurnam considered the tanged dagger more modern than
that which was attached by rivets in the base of the blade, and his
classification is followed by Dr. Evans, _Bronze_, &c., p. 222.
[1039] The most perfect form of the bronze rapier is found in Ireland;
of this and of the moulds I shall treat in Part II.
[1040] In _Agric._ cap. 36.
[1041] Montfaucon, _Suppl._ iv., p. 16; Smith, _s. v._ ‘Gladius.’
[1042] ‘Pliny’s Ape.’
[1043] Prof. Rhys, of Oxford.
[1044]
‘These men from horrid woods, a hairy band,
Sends far from earth divided Irish-land.’
[1045] The word ‘Pict,’ says Prof. Rhys, is first applied by a writer
of the third century to the people beyond the Northern Wall and on
the Solway. It evidently arose from their tattooing. He opines that
‘Scotti’ is of Brythonic origin having the same signification. This
is better than the old Scjot (Scjot), the dart which named the Scythæ
and the Scoti. The Picts, both of Alban and Ireland, called themselves
Cruithing—‘which an Irish Shanachie has rightly explained to mean a
people who painted the forms (Crotha, Ir. kꞃoꞇ) of beasts, birds, and
fishes on their faces, and not on their faces only, but on the whole of
the body.’ Again we find ourselves in
—‘infinita, arcana Africa orrenda.’
LONDON: PRINTED BY
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AND PARLIAMENT STREET
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by equals is in bold (=bold=).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Silently corrected typographical errors.
- Hyphenation variations are unchanged.
- Sidenotes refer to right page headings, and are relocated to
approximately relevant positions in text.
- Where possible Unicode fractions have been used.
- Fig. 82 measurement corrected, blade width was > length.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Book of the Sword, by Richard Francis Burton