The Fundamental Principles Of Old And New World Civilizations (part 3)

The simultaneous development of the ideas suggested by Polaris would inevitably lead to a comparison and association of the terrestrial centre of communal activity with the polar axis, and to [pg 274] the conception of an earthly government in which human affairs were adjusted so as to be in seeming harmony with the movements of celestial bodies. The blending of the conclusions attained by the astronomer-priests, and the practical system adopted by the master builders, could not fail ultimately to cause the pyramid to appear as the sacred visible sign or image of the single, central power and quadruple government which extended its rule throughout heaven and earth. I venture to point out that, if carefully analyzed, the pyramid seems to be but a later development of precisely the same ideas which are expressed by the swastika.

Pausing now to review preceding data we find it demonstrated that the geographical position of Tullan Cholollan and its pyramid designates it as an ancient seat of civilization where the native scheme of organization may have evolved itself, and the source whence the native traditions concerning successive destructive cataclysms and convulsions of nature may have spread.

What is more, the peculiar conditions existing at Tullan Cholollan, situated in the heart of a volcanic region, would amply explain the traditional destruction and abandonment of the most ancient centre of native civilization and the spread throughout the continent of the identical scheme of government, etc., it being most natural that each band of fugitives, on finding what appeared to be a favorably situated region, should settle there and carry out the inherited plan of organization, etc., which would naturally become slightly modified under altered conditions. Fresh colonies on the pattern of the ruined metropolis and integral state would successively be founded far and wide and as examples of such I venture to designate Tulantzinco, literally the title Tullan, and possibly Teotihuacan, where the native civilization seems to have undergone its more advanced stages of evolution, and to have risen in power, developed divergent cults with separate languages (the Maya and the Nahuatl) and instituted the two religions and dual rulership which eventually led to dissension and the dissolution of the integral state at a period anterior to historical times.

The assumption that the most ancient centre of native civilization lay in a volcanic region affords a plausible explanation of how an inordinate value would naturally be placed on stability, per se, and the feelings of veneration for Polaris and a passionate [pg 275] longing for a place of terrestrial and celestial rest would become strongly developed. Indeed, it is only possible to understand the reason why various American tribes wandered about in ardent and earnest search for the stable middle of the earth, when it is assumed that they must have been driven from their former place of residence by volcanic disturbances which made a firm piece of ground under foot seem to be the most desirable of all earthly benefits. I venture to assert that this search and the ideal of stability would not have been suggested so forcibly to people who had never experienced a long succession of more or less terrible earthquakes.

Although widely different opinions concerning the identification of the ancient Tullan are held by American archæologists they will all doubtlessly admit that at Cholollan we have, in the first case, a locality to which the natives assign the name of Tollan, and a pyramid, the largest on the American continent, which testifies that, in prehistoric times, this place was inhabited for a prolonged period, by a numerous and organized community.

The fertility of the surrounding plains now known as the Campiña de Puebla and the ancient name of Tlaxcalla yield evidence that, from time immemorial, this district was associated with maize cultivation.

The vicinity of the giant volcanoes of Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl and Orizaba sufficiently demonstrate that they must repeatedly have been the scene of violent disturbances which would fully account for the tradition of successive cataclysms which destroyed a vast state and almost annihilated the native race.

The foregoing unassailable facts undoubtedly justify the conclusion that the giant pyramid of Cholula marks the site of the great and ancient Tollan whose destruction was the theme of the plaintive native songs of lamentation even at the time of the Spanish Conquest. That the natives have ever regarded Cholula as a place of particular sanctity is shown by the following statement by Fray Geronimo Roman y Zamorra (1569-1575) (Republicas de Indias, ed. Suarez, Madrid, 1888): “It was Colola or Cholola, which was the ancient metropolis or head of all the native religion, so much so that all the great chiefs or lords had their own [pg 276] chapels and dwelling houses there because they used to perform pilgrimages to its great temple this being the most revered [in the land].”

It is also reasonable to infer that the region of the high plateau and valley of Mexico, possibly before the formation of the great lagoons, was the cradle of ancient American civilization, where, during countless centuries, the native race literally and figuratively cultivated its own maize and simultaneously developed the set of ideas which formed the basis of its intellectual evolution.

In this connection it is interesting to reflect that, as clearly shown by ceremonial usages which existed throughout our continent and survive to the present day amongst the Pueblo Indians, it is to the fostering care, forethought and labor of countless generations of women, the “Corn Maidens and Mothers,” that America owes the priceless legacy of a food-plant which has already sustained untold millions of lives. Thus, whilst the ancient “Daughters of the Earth” have given their country a gift which will last for all time, the pyramids, temples and cities, reared by the “Sons of Heaven,” have fallen into ruin, and the great edifice of human thought that they reared, their complex social organization, government and calendar now lie superseded under the dust of time.

At this point of investigation the question naturally arises, Whence came the founders of the native civilization, who established themselves and peopled the central region of Mexico and doubtlessly dwelt there for a prolonged period prior to the first of the traditional cataclysms which nearly proved destructive to their race?

It is obvious that, before this interesting question can be satisfactorily discussed, a minute analysis and investigation should be made of all other ancient civilizations of the world in which the swastika was employed as a sacred symbol. A comparative research on such a scale could only be effectively carried out with the active coöperation of orientalists, archæologists and philologists in all departments of research. Taking, as an index, the presence in old centres of civilization of the most ancient sacred symbol of the world, the swastika, the aim of the joint investigation should be to trace how far it was accompanied, in each country, by pole-star worship and the set of ideas, symbols and words to which it is so indissolubly linked in ancient America and China. By this means [pg 277] only can a final conclusion be reached as to whether this symbol spread over the earth from one original centre of civilization, or whether it suggested itself to primitive observers of Septentriones in various localities and at different times, as the natural outcome of star-observation. If the swastika and the septentrional set of ideas spread from one centre then we should expect to find them accompanied by traces of a common language. I shall have contributed my share to the joint investigation when, in addition to the preceding data, I present the following list of Maya and Mexican names intimately associated with the native symbols and set of ideas. In presenting them I once more draw attention to the resemblance of sound in words which obviously influenced the choice of certain symbols just as, for instance, loose-skinned oranges are now given as presents at New Year in China, because their native name has exactly the same sound as the word meaning “good fortune.” The use, especially on porcelain, of the bat=fuh, to signify “happiness,” also fuh, and of the sonorous stone “King” to emblematize “prosperity,” are other instances which shed much light upon the origin of primitive symbolism in China and elsewhere.

Symbols And Names Connected With Middle Or Centre.

Maya.

Ho, or Ti-hoo=name of ancient capital of Yucatan.

Ho-m, or ho-mul=artificial mound or pyramid.

Ho-mtanil=belly.

Ho-bnel=entrails.

Ho=five, symbolized by hand=kab, also by five-dot group.

Ci-hom=sacred tree, the leaves of which were scattered in the temple court-yard at the baptism of children (Landa).

Ho-l=head (symbol).

Ho-och=vase in general.

Cuxabel=heart or life, cf. ah-cuch-cab=heart of the state, title of lord or chieftain.

Nic, or nic-té=flower, usually represented as consisting of five parts, i. e., the centre and four petals.

Tem=the square altar.

[pg 278]

Names Of Symbols Connected With Four Quarters, Above And Below.

Maya.

Can=four, serpent.

{Caan=sky, cord.

{Canalil=adj. grandeur, elevation.

{Canal=on top of, on; also yellow.

{Canal-cun-zaal=to exalt, elevate, aggrandize, praise.

{Cananil=necessity, need.

{Canaan=adj. necessary, needed.

Ché=tree.

Zin-ché=cross, literally tree of life or of power.

Zin-il=powerful, cf. zihnal=original, primitive.

Zihzabal=creation.

Zian=the beginning, origin, generation.

Zihil=to commence, or be born.

Zinan=scorpion, symbol.

Name And Symbol Of North.

Maya.

Am=spider.

Aman=the north.

Star-Names.

Maya.

Ek=star, black.

Ek-chuah=name of the patron divinity of travellers and traders, i. e., the pole-star.

cf. Ikal, native word adopted by Spanish missionaries to denote “a spirit.”

I have already pointed out how a minute comparison of the equivalent Mexican symbols and their names shows that the latter often seem to be mere translations from the Maya and that the same identity of sound does not always exist between the Nahuatl symbol, its name and true significance. On the other hand in the much-used Mexican symbol for the centre and four quarters, the flower, pronounced ho-chitl, but written xo-chitl, the archaic Maya syllable ho, so intimately connected with the centre, recurs. It also appears in the name of the constellation Ursa Minor, xo-necuilli, [pg 279] in the word xoch-ayotl=tortoise, employed as a symbol, and in the name xolotl=something double or dual, sometimes employed as a synonym of coatl=twin, serpent. The hand=maitl was employed to express the numeral five=macuilli. It is particularly interesting to note that in order to express the word tlachi-ual-tepetl or “artificial mound” (the Maya hom) in Nahuatl, the scribes had to paint a mountain surmounted by an eye, a symbol also employed to designate stars=the eyes of night. The Nahuatl for tree=quahuitl is almost homonymous with quaitl=head and both were employed as symbols of the centre.

The following Nahuatl words claim special attention. The first is teotl, which was adopted as the equivalent of the Greek Theos by the Spanish missionaries, but which appears to have been originally used in the sense of a “Divinity,” or “divine lord,” and was also applied to all lords or rulers. The second is the verb yoli or yolinia=to live and yollotl=heart. A special interest attaches itself, however, to the noun yauatl=circle and the verb yaualoa=to go around in a circle many times, because there is good ground for identifying, as the Ursa Major, the star-god mentioned as Youal-tecuhtli by Sahagun. As youalli means night, the title literally signifies “the lord of the night,” while yaual=tecuhtli would mean the lord of the circle or wheel, the most appropriate name for Ursa Major. The actual representation, in the “Lyfe of the Indians,” of the “Lord of Night,” within a wheel or circle composed of his own footsteps, so strikingly corroborates this view, that further comment appears unnecessary (fig. ).

Figure 59.

In conclusion the exact meaning of the most important native symbols is here recapitulated so as to facilitate comparative research.

THE SWASTIKA OR CROSS

the most ancient of primitive symbols was primarily a graphic [pg 280] representation of the annual rotation of the Septentriones around Polaris. It thus constituted not only an image of the most impressive of celestial phenomena but also a year-symbol. The most highly-developed forms of the swastika found in Mexico are associated with calendar-signs. In Mexico and in the Ohio Valley it is linked with the serpent, to the symbolism of which reference should be made. In Copan the cross symbol is associated with the image of a figure in repose, occupying the Middle, and four puffs of breath or air, laden with life-seeds, emanating from this.

Considering that the cross ultimately became the symbol of the union of the four elements or two principles of nature in one and that the production of life-producing rain was attributed to the union of heaven and earth, it is evident why the Cozumel cross was described to its Spanish discoverers, by the natives, as a symbol of the “rain-god.”

THE SACRED FIRE

which was kept perpetually burning on the summit of the pyramid was the graphic and appropriate image of the central light of heaven that most naturally suggested itself to the native mind. Its origin was attributed to supernatural agency and it was under the special care of the priesthood. A deeply symbolical meaning was obviously attached to the ceremonial kindling of the sacred fire by means of the reed fire-drill which was held perpendicularly and inserted into a horizontally-placed piece of dry wood. A noteworthy resemblance to a tau-shaped figure was thus formed, which is interesting in connection with the fact that the ceremony of kindling the sacred fire was undoubtedly regarded by the ancient Mexicans as emblematical of the productive and life-giving union of the dual principles of nature. The acatl or reedstalk, inserted into the vase-like symbol of the earth, such as is carved on the centre of the upper edge of the calendar-stone, is but another hieratic form of the same symbolism.

The annual re-distribution of the sacred fire to the entire population, a fresh gift from heaven obtained by the mediation of the high-priest, was particularly impressive and emphasized the idea of all fire and light and life proceeding from a common centre.

It is noticeable that the reed or acatl is also intimately associated with the east, the masculine or life-giving region. The [pg 281] Maya name for tortoise=ac, is a curious homonym of the Nahuatl word ac-atl.

THE SERPENT

emblematizes and expresses the sound of quadruple power in Maya and duality in Nahuatl. It was employed as an image or embodiment in a single form of the two principles of nature or the four elements. It was usually accompanied by the adjective heavenly or divine and symbolized reproduction, being the union of the masculine or heavenly and feminine or earthly principles. In this connection it should be noted that the numeral two in Nahuatl is ome, and in Maya, ca. A native mode of expressing duality, by means of two horn-like projections on the heads of allegorical personages, is exemplified in fig. , p. 92.

THE TREE

was the emblem of life, of hidden and visible growth which extended downward into the earth and upward into heaven and sent forth its four branches towards the cardinal points. It typified tribal life because its various parts were identified with the different members of the community and, metaphorically, the lord was spoken of as the trunk or main stem; the minor chiefs as branches and twigs; the men or vassals as leaves; the maidens as flowers, and the women as fruit, etc. The name “atlapalli” was, for instance, the current Nahuatl appellation for vassals.

As the conventionalized trees in the native picture-writings are usually figured with four equal branches they formed an appropriate image of the living state, and of all directions in space. The “tree of life” thus formed a swastika or cross and both symbols were indissolubly linked together. The names of two trees, considered particularly sacred by the Mayas, were the ci-hom and the yax-ché, a sort of ceiba which was termed “the tree of celestial life” (Landa).

THE HUMAN FACE

was an image of the duality and unity of nature. The upper half of the face symbolized heaven with its two eyes, the sun and moon. The mouth and teeth, the Nahuatl name for which=tlan-tli was homonymous with the affix tlan=land or earth=tlalli, emblematized earth, darkness and the Below. The nose with its [pg 282] two nostrils emblematized inhalation and exhalation. The sanctity attached to this mystic union of two streams of breath led to the consecration of the nose by the wearing of a symbolical ornament attached to it.

THE HUMAN FORM

expressed “a complete count” and was employed as an image of the entire constitution, and of the calendar system; each part of the government administration and calendar sign being identified with one of the twenty digits, four limbs, body and head of the human form.

THE QUADRUPED

usually the ocelot, or puma, was the symbol of the government of the Below and nocturnal cult of the earth as opposed to

THE BIRD OR EAGLE

which typified the upper state and diurnal cult of Heaven. Chiefs, who united dual powers in their persons, wore, as an emblem, the serpent, or a combination of ocelot-skin and feather ornaments.

THE HAND

expressed per se, in Maya, the numeral ho=five, which was also the name of a state which invariably consisted of the central capital and four provinces. As such it was carried as an emblem of power by the central ruler, as may be seen in the native codices. The thumb being regarded as the principal or ruling finger, the chief lord was metaphorically spoken of as the thumb, whilst the minor lords were entitled fingers=pilli.

THE PYRAMID AND SACRED MOUNTAIN

was primarily an artificial elevation destined to be a place of refuge in times of inundation; the pyramid ultimately symbolized: (1) the sacred stable centre of the world and the Four Quarters; (2) central power and its four manifestations or elements. The great pyramid of the ancient City of Mexico which was crowned by two chapels, respectively containing symbolical images of the two principles of nature, is a striking illustration of the employment of the pyramid to express the dual centre (the Above and Below, etc.) and the quadruple organization of all things which was expressed not only by the four sides of the structure but by its four superposed terraces. The fact recorded by Friar Duran, that [pg 283] the flight of steps which led to the summit of the pyramid on its eastern side consisted of 365 steps, and that the annual ceremony of ascending these, performed by a consecrated individual, “signified the course of the sun in a year,” indicates that the pyramid was also associated with the idea of the quadruplicate division of time which pervaded the entire calendar system.

It should also be borne in mind that in ancient Mexico the summits of high mountains were regarded as sacred, “because it was there that Heaven and Earth met and generated fructifying showers.” As religious cult developed, the rites performed on the summit of the pyramid or artificial mound were for the purpose of evoking rain and the renewal of life upon earth, and symbolized the union of heaven and earth. To the native mind the pyramid thus represented the consecrated meeting-place of heaven and earth, the Above and Below, the masculine and feminine elements, the “divine twins,” as well as universal, all-pervading, quadruplicate organization. The massive pyramid likewise typified, in an impressive manner, the main idea connected with the Middle: that of stability, immutability, quietude and repose, combined with power.

In some localities a remarkable rock or massive block of stone was adopted as the mark of the sacred centre and became the altar on which offerings or sacrifices were made, or the throne on which the terrestrial central ruler seated himself on ceremonial occasions and assumed an attitude of absolute repose. It is interesting to collate the Nahuatl words Te-otl, divinity or divine lord, with te-tl=stone and the Maya te-m=stone seat or altar, of which many carved examples exist in the ruined Central American cities, and to observe that principal personages, such as are represented on the carved altars and in the middle of the Copan swastika, are represented as seated cross-legged, as though this attitude were specially indicative of repose on the stable centre of the four quarters. As the natives usually squat or sit on their heels, the cross-legged attitude is particularly noteworthy in connection with the omnipresent set of ideas.

THE BOWL OR VASE

was the emblem of earth, the receptacle of fructifying showers, and of the terrestrial centre. Filled with rain-water, on the surface of which the radiance of a star—the pole-star—reflected itself, the bowl was supposed to typify the union of heaven and earth by [pg 284] means of the divine essence of light and life, proceeding from the “Heart of Heaven.”

THE FLOWER

was another symbol of the earth and of the state and its divisions. It occurs as a composite flower consisting of a yellow centre surrounded by multicolored petals. The usual form is of a flower with four equal petals, bearing a circle or dot in the centre and one on each petal, the Middle and Four Quarters being thus expressed.

A closing allusion should be briefly made to the native association of the square with the earth and the circle with the heaven and to the influence exerted by these ideas combined with those of light and darkness upon primitive architecture and symbolical ornamental designs.

Pointing out that all of the above symbols are but variations on the fundamental theme of the “Middle, Four Quarters, Above and Below,” I also emphasize the fact that, in ancient America, language powerfully influenced the choice of symbols, as may be particularly seen in the case of the serpent, the Nahuatl and Maya names for which are homonymous with duality and quadruplicity.

The origin and meaning of the ancient American symbols of the cross, the serpent, the tree, etc., are clearly apparent. It remains to be seen how far this is the case in other countries where the identical symbols were or are employed, and it is to my fellow archæologists that I look for final authoritative statements on this important subject, in their special lines of research.

Meanwhile I shall present some facts which are accessible to the general reader and suffice for the purpose of my present investigation.

CHINA.

Pole-star worship and determination of time by Ursa Major existed in China from remote antiquity. The Chinese name for the pole-star is Teen-hwang-ta-tee, literally the great imperial ruler of the Heaven. In China “the pole-star, round which the entire firmament appears to turn, ought to be considered as the Sovereign of the Heavens, and as the most venerated divinity” (G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise, p. 524). The sacred central forbidden enclosure, at Peking, contains a temple of the North Star God. In the description of the imperial worship held at the winter and summer [pg 285] solstices, in James Edkins' Religion in China (London, 1878, p. 24) it is stated: “On the second terrace of the east side, the tablet of the Sun is placed, and also that of the Great Bear, the five of the 28 constellations and one for all the other stars.” The following passage shows the origin of the Chinese year:

1. “The months and seasons are determined by the revolution of Ursa Major (the Chinese name for which is Pek-tao the ‘Seven Directors’). The tail of the constellation pointing to the east at nightfall announces the arrival of spring; pointing to the south the arrival of summer; pointing to the west the arrival of autumn and pointing to the north the arrival of winter. This means of calculating the seasons becomes more intelligible when it is remembered that in ancient times the Bear was much nearer the north pole than now and revolved around it like the hand of a clock” (Prof. Rob. K. Douglass, China. London, 1887, p. 418). The Chinese zodiac is represented with the pole-star and circumpolar constellations in the centre (Astronomy of the Chinese, Ancient China, W. H. Medhurst, Shanghae, 1846).

2. The determination and designation of six directions in space. In Chinese the six ho or ki designate the limits of space, the zenith, nadir and four quarters (Mayer's Manual, pp. 306, 312 and 321). “The term Liu-ho also applies to the six pairs of cyclical signs and means ‘Universe,’ that is, Heaven and Earth [being Above and Below] and the Four Quarters.”

The syllable ho also occurs in the following words which deserve to be collated with the Maya list: Hô=river, hu=lake. C-hó-o=master, cf. Maya hol=head. Hó-o=resident, cf. Maya ho=capital. Shó-o=tree, cf. Maya ci-hom=tree. Pih-shó-o=cypress. Kwó=country, cf. mouth, symbol for land or below. Kòw=mouth, etc. Chow=name of ancient metropolis.

3. The conception of the Above and Below=duality. The zenith is naturally associated with heaven and the nadir with earth. Heaven is father and earth is mother. Heaven is figured by a circle and earth by a square. “The marriage of Heaven and Earth produces all things.” The association of heaven with the male and earth with the female principles is shown by (1) the injunction: “Thou shalt honor thy father as the heaven and thy mother as the earth.” (2) In Pekin, the Emperor, termed “the [pg 286] Son of Heaven,” inhabits the “Palace of Heaven” whilst the Empress inhabits the “Palace of Earth's repose.” The sun is male and the “Temple of the Sun” is situated to the east. The moon is female and the “Temple of the Moon” is situated to the west in the sacred enclosure at Pekin. The emblematic color of the heaven is naturally azure; of the sun, red; of the earth, yellow; and of the moon, white. It is thus evident that the cult of heaven and earth is indissolubly linked to that of the Yang and Yin, the male and the female principle, and that in China the following chains of association concerning duality were formed:

Zenith. Nadir.

Above. Below.

Tien=Heaven. Tec=Earth.

Father. Mother.

Yang. Yin.

Color: Azure. Yellow.

Emblem: Sun. Moon.

East=place of rising. West, place of setting.

Light. Darkness.

Day. Night.

Personification: the Shang-ti= The Earth-Mother.

Emperor=Above, The Lord of Heaven or Universe. The Empress=Below?

Earthly representative: the Light Emperor. The Empress? or Sombre Emperor?

An interesting addition to this dual list is the view of a modern Chinaman, that the Yang and Yin principles refer to positive and negative electricity! (Legge). A striking result of the association of woman with the nadir and earth is the fact that in Thibet, according to Rockhill, woman is designated as Smanba or Manba: “low creature.”

THE MIDDLE AND FOUR QUARTERS.

It is well known that the Chinese designate their empire as the “Middle Kingdom.” Another native name for China is “Chung-ho-a,” which I find translated as “the Flower of the Middle.” The empire is likewise designated as “the Four Seas”=ssu-hai and “the Four Mountains,” and it was actually divided by the emperor Yaou or Yāo (B.C. 2357) into four provinces converging at the capital, the central enclosure of which was considered as the centre of heaven and earth. It is extremely significant that, in this central enclosure there is a temple, consecrated to the god of the [pg 287] north star=The Imperial Ruler of Heaven, whereas altars only are dedicated to the sun and moon respectively. The existence in the central enclosure, or the “Carnation prohibited city,” of the Temple of Earth's Repose, reveals that the idea of stability was associated with this terrestrial centre. The fact that the Empress and the female portion of the Imperial family resided in the “Palace of Earth's Repose” affords an explanation of the possible origin of deforming the feet of noble women, this being a means of enforcing comparative repose upon them, in keeping with the symbolism of their surroundings.

The most striking structure in this sacred enclosure is “an artificial mound, nearly one hundred and fifty feet high, having five summits, crowned with as many temples. Its height allows the spectator to overlook the whole city, whilst, too, it is itself a conspicuous object from every direction.” This sacred mound or pyramid actually marks the centre of the empire. From the surrounding walls of the sacred city four roads diverge towards the cardinal points, dividing the capital into four quarters. Each province was ruled by an official and both province and ruler seem to have been anciently designated by the term Mountain=Yo or Kan. A superior official, entitled the “President of the Four Mountains” is mentioned as the counsellor of Emperor Yaou in the Shu King. One name for mountain is yo, another is kan, a word which resembles k'an=water and kwăn=earth, which forms the name of the earth mother=Kwan-yin. Without drawing any hasty conclusions, I merely note the curious fact that the title “the President of the Four Mountains,” must sometimes have been rendered as Kan and as Yo, and that a variant the name of “four seas” may well have been “four ho” or lakes or rivers. The title kan, meaning mountain or eminence, and the idea of four rivers flowing from a common centre or spring, may well have developed themselves among Chinese-speaking people. It may be an odd coincidence only that the word kan=mountain, should be so intimately connected with the numeral four in the Chinese title; while it is a synonym for four in the Maya, it is also found employed in the honorific Maya title Kukul-kan=the divine Kan, and as a synonym for mountain in certain names of localities in the valley of Mexico. An interesting but little known fact is that the peak of the mighty Kulkun mountain in China is designated as the “King of Mountains, the summit of the earth, the supporter of [pg 288] heaven and the axis which touches the pole” (Meyer's Conversations-Lexikon).

I should much like to know whether the name kul-kun is a variant of kul-kan, and literally signifies “divine mountain.” In this case it would strangely resemble the Maya Kukulkan and the Nahuatl Cul-hua-can, the name of the fabulous recurved mountain of Aztec tradition. Feeling that I am here treading upon extremely dangerous ground I shall abandon further comparisons and conclusions to philologists and Chinese scholars and merely conclude by stating the certain facts, that in Chinese and Maya alike the syllable ho seems to be associated with the Middle; while can is connected with four-fold division. I may perhaps venture to add that, in Chinese, Maya and Nahuatl alike, the particles te and ti seem closely connected with Heaven; while the Chinese kwan=earth, offers a certain resemblance to the Nahuatl affix tlan, meaning land, and kan, sometimes used for mountain.

Since the Chow Dynasty, the empire was spoken of as having five instead of four mountains, which leads to the inference that reference was thus made to the central metropolis also, the most sacred feature of which was its central artificial mountain or pyramid. It is obvious that the empire was governed from the central chief capital and from minor capitals situated in the four provinces and built on the pattern of Peking. In an extremely interesting and clever paper Mr. James Wickersham has recently remarked that “the arrangement of cities after the cardinal-points plan was the rule not only in America but in China” and gives the following quotations: “Mukden, the metropolis and ancient capital of Manchuria, was a walled city like Peking. Main streets ran across the city from gate to gate, with narrow roads, called Hu-ting, intersecting them. The palace of the early Manchu sovereigns occupies the centre” (The Middle Kingdom, Williams, vol. I, pp. 192-198). The Manchurian city of Kirin is also divided into four quarters: “Two great streets cross each [pg 289] other at right angles, one of them running far out into the river on the west supported by piles.” Peune, another large city, is similarly divided. “It consists of two main streets with the chief market [place] at their crossing. This plan is the rule in the cities of northern China; the large cities are walled and divided by cross streets emerging from the city gates at the cardinal points” (Coxe's Russia, pp. 316-17). The relation of the central seat of government to its provinces is thus recorded in the Canon of Shun. “In five years there was one tour of inspection (performed by the emperor) and four appearances at court of the nobles. They set forth a report of their government in words. This was clearly tested by their works. They received chariots and robes according to their services.”

The order of rotation in which the emperor visited in one year the capital of each quarter, returning after each absence to the metropolis, is given as follows: “In the second month the tour was to the east. In the fifth month ... to the south. In the eighth month ... to the west. In the eleventh month ... to the north.” During the next year the nobles of the eastern province made their appearance at court, and the south, west and north provinces followed in turn, it being noticeable that, in each case, the circle started at the east, the place of rising.

The institution of the calendar by the Emperor Yaou is described at length in the Shu King. Confucius said of this remarkable personage, “Heaven alone is great, but Yaou is able to imitate Heaven.”

The Emperor Yaou “... harmonized the various states of the empire and the black-haired people, oh! how they were reformed by this cordial agreement. He commanded He and Ho (officers superintending the calendar and astronomical instruments) in reverent accordance with the motions of the expansive heavens, to arrange by numbers and represent the revolutions of the sun and moon and stars with the lunar mansions and then respectfully communicate to the people the seasons adapted for labor. He then separately directed He's younger brother to reside at Yu-e (the modern Tang-chow in Shan-tung), called the Orient Valley, where [pg 290] he might respectfully hail the rising sun, adjust and arrange the eastern (and vernal) undertakings and notice the equalization of days and whether the star (culminating at nightfall) was the middle constellation of the bird, in order to hit the centre of mid-spring; he might also observe whether the people began to disperse abroad and whether birds and beasts were beginning to pair. He commanded He's third brother to reside at the southern border (the region of Cochin-China) and adjust and arrange the southern or summer transformation and respectfully notice the extreme limit of the shadow when the days attain their utmost length and the star in the zenith that is denominated Fire (heart of Scorpio, culminated on eve of summer solstice), in order to fix the exact period of mid-summer, when the people disperse themselves more widely and the birds and beasts begin to moult and cast their skins. He then distinctly commanded Ho's youngest brother to dwell in the west, at a place called the Dark Valley, where he might respectfully attend the setting sun and equalize and adjust the western (or autumnal) completions, notice the equalizations of the nights and see whether the culminating star was Emptiness (Beta in Aquarius, which culminated at autumnal equinox which was the period at the centre of the dark principle in nature) in order to adjust the mid-autumn, when the people would be more at ease and the birds and beasts would be sleek and plump. He further directed Ho's third brother to dwell at the northern region, called the dismal city, where he might properly examine the reiterations and alterations and see whether, when the days were shortest, the culminating star was Pleiades (this culminates in the evening at winter solstice, which is the extreme of dark principle in nature and midnight seat of that principle) in order to adjust midwinter, when the people would remain at home and the birds and beasts get their down and hair. Thus careful was the sage in reverently observing heaven and labouring diligently for the people, in order that his plans might not contradict the designs of heaven nor the government miss the proper season for human labour.” It is further said that “the bright influence (of Yaou's qualities) was felt through the four quarters (of the land) and reached to (heaven) above and (earth) beneath” (Shu King, book i, p. 32). Legge cites Pritchard's (Savilian Professor, Oxford University) chart as a proof of the correctness of the chronology which places Yâou in the 24th century B.C. The precession of the equinoxes [pg 291] was not known in China until more than 2,500 years after the time assigned to Yaou.

Pausing to renew the foregoing data, it is with particular satisfaction that I point out how clearly they reveal the basis and origin of the “Quadriform Constitution” and idea of central government. In China the pole star is designated as the Imperial Ruler of Heaven and a temple to the God of the North Star stands in the sacred enclosure which marks the centre of the empire. The opposite positions assumed by Ursa Major at nightfall divide the year into four quarters and this quadruplicate division caused by rotation, assuming absolute dominion over the native mind, is applied to heaven and earth and pervades every detail of civil and religious government, as in ancient America.

Forced to recognize that the primitive inhabitants of China and America derived their first principles of organization from the identical light-giving source, a fact which also indicates a community of race and of place of origin, let us now review some data which prove that the two civilizations must have been separated and isolated from each other at an extremely remote period of time.

Certain conceptions, common to all primitive people, were shared by the Chinese and Mexicans, one of these being the belief that the earth was flat and square. The name for a year in ancient Mexican was xiuitl, literally, grass, and this was represented in the picture writings by a bunch of young blades of some sort of grass, possibly maize-shoots. “The earliest written Chinese character for a year represented a stalk of wheat.... In the ancient work entitled the San Fun, part of which was probably written in the 23d century B.C., there is evidence that among some of the aboriginal tribes of China the year, as among the Egyptians and some of the people of India, was divided into three periods, known as the grass-springing, tree-reigning and tree-decaying periods. Under the higher culture of the Chinese these divisions disappeared and the twelve months became the recognized parts of the year” (Douglas, China, pp. 269 and 310). Amongst the Mexican month-names there are also some which allude to such regularly recurring and impressive natural phenomena as the sprouting of trees and the appearance of verdure or springing of the maize, etc.

An indication as to what was the most ancient and primitive method of rotation employed seems afforded by the Chinese description how, for governmental purposes, the five-year period was [pg 292] adopted, one year pertaining to the emperor or central ruler and the following four to the quarters of the empire. An analogous employment of a quinary period as a means of obtaining a rotation of contribution from the four quarters of the empire to its metropolis, identified with the first day, is discernible in the Mexican institution of the macuil-tianquiztli, or five-day market, by which means the entire year was divided into five-day groups.

A study of the ancient Chinese calendar furnishes, moreover, an indication of the way in which the numeral 12 came to be recognized and adopted by primitive people. It is obvious that the early astronomers, having determined the length of the year by observing Ursa Major at nightfall, recognized that, during the period required for its annual complete revolution around the pole star, there regularly appeared twelve new moons. In China, at a remote period, a division of the year into “months was adopted, the early names of which have, according to the author of the earliest Chinese dictionary, the Urhye, been lost.” “The modern Chinese year is lunar in its divisions, though regulated by the sun in so far that New Year's day is made to fall on the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius and varies between 21st January and 19th of February” (Douglas, op. cit. p. 258). It would seem as though some fresh impulse, or institution of moon-cult, had influenced Shun, Yaou's successor, to reorganize the empire, which had been simply divided into quarters, and subdivide it into 4×3=12 districts.

Another interesting evolution of a numerical system, the origin of which can be traced to the four positions and seven stars of Ursa Major, is discernible in the Chinese zodiac. This, the earliest division of the ecliptic in China, consists of “28 lunar mansions, which are grouped together in four classes of seven each, assigned to the four quarters of heaven” (Legge, vol. iii, p. 24, Introduction to Shu-King). It is to the observation of precisely the same impressive phenomena that the universal adoption of the numbers 12, 4 and 7 may safely be attributed. The further division, by Emperor Yu, of the Chinese Empire into five domains or zones, finds an interesting parallelism in Mexico and Central America.

Mr. Wickersham describes Yu's division in the following concise manner: “The Imperial domain extended five hundred le in every direction from the capital, north, south, east and west, and was therefore one thousand le square, with its sides facing the cardinal [pg 293] points; the domain of the Nobles was an additional territory five hundred le broad on each of the four sides; the Peace-securing domain was then added, beyond which came the domain of Restraint, and at the greatest extremity the Wild domain. By this arrangement, the sacred center, the capital where the ‘Son of Heaven’ resided, was completely surrounded by loyal officials and subjects; the most loyal were nearest the center while at the farthest extremity were the wild and dangerous tribes and criminals undergoing the greater banishment. By this square method of disposing of the population, the quiet and orderly members of society were required to reside near the capital, while the turbulent were placed toward the outer limits, serving to free the center from turmoil and to act as a barrier to the inroads of outside barbarians.”

Among the Zuñis and Mexicans the spider's web is met with as an image of the division of their territory into quarters, half-quarters and concentric circles.

In Peru a record exists of a system of irrigation by which means the territory surrounding the capital was divided into alternate zones of land and water. Mexico and Central America furnish records too scattered to be compiled here, showing that somewhat as in China, the territory of the state was divided into the domains of the rulers, the lords, the people, and the territory of war.

After having duly considered some salient points of fundamental agreement which are to be found underlying the widely different later growths of the Chinese and ancient American systems, let us now examine and analyze some of the most remarkable points of divergence.

The following tables, placed in juxtaposition, afford an opportunity of recognizing the striking and significant fact that, whereas the Mexicans and Zuñis classified air, water, fire and earth as “elements,” the Chinese ignored air and identified wood and metal as their fourth and fifth elements.

Mexico. Zuni. China.

North. Red, Fire. Yellow, Air. Black, Water.

West. Yellow, Earth. Blue, Water. White, Metal.

South. Blue, Air. Red, Fire. Red, Fire.

East. Green, Water. White, Earth. Blue, Wood.

Middle. Many colors. Middle, All colors. Yellow, Earth.

[pg 294]

A deep-seated analogy may, however, be traced between the Chinese assignment of “wood” to the Middle and the Maya-Mexican employment of the tree as a symbol of life proceeding from the centre, stretching above and below and spreading its branches to the four quarters. It remains to be seen how far the Chinese assignment of “wood” to the Middle approached the American tree-symbolism.

The marked differentiation in the assignment of colors to the cardinal points in the above comparative table leads to the conclusion that their choice had been arbitrary and was possibly influenced by local environment, the possibility of obtaining certain pigments in given directions, or by language, the names of certain colors or elements resembling in sound those of the cardinal points, etc.

After studying the above comparative lists it becomes clear that, whilst the fundamental principle of the system was identical, the mode of carrying it out was different in China and America, a fact which indicates independence and isolation at the period when elements and colors, etc., were chosen and assigned to the directions in space. An analogous instance of divergence is shown in the following assignment of parts of the body to the cardinal points:

CHINESE.

North Kidneys.

West Lungs.

South Heart.

East Liver.

Middle Stomach.

Zenith ——

Nadir ——

[pg 295]

Although it differs in detail, an analogous association of various parts of the body with the directions in space and the twenty calendar-signs, may be seen in a Mexican Codex. In this case, however, it is clear that the origin of this assignment was the natural association between the “complete finger-and-toe count=a complete man=20=with the 20 or complete count of the day signs.” I have already produced evidences showing that the human figure was employed in primitive times to represent “a complete count, or 20 years.” When chieftains were elected for a term of twenty years and their names were given to their period of office, the full-length portrait of the chief was sculptured on a stela and he thus represented, primarily, “a complete count,” an epoch (see p. ). Portraiture and accompanying inscriptions were obviously later developments, but the primitive employment of the human form as a means of expressing a fixed number, is one that claims consideration and will undoubtedly lead to a wider comprehension of the significance of the human form in aboriginal archaic sculpture. The curious conventionalized representations of Mictlantecuhtli, in which the body and limbs almost simulate a swastika, have already been discussed, as well as the inference that they symbolized Polaris and the four positions of Ursa Major=the Middle and Four Quarters.

The most striking confirmation of this inference is furnished by Mr. Cushing's account that the Zuñis associated the directions in space with the imaginary form of a quadruped as follows:

ZUNI.

North Right fore foot.

West Left fore foot.

South Right hind leg.

East Left hind leg.

Middle Heart.

Zenith Head.

Nadir Tail.

It is obvious from this that, to a Zuñi, the State and its subdivisions appear under the allegorical form of a quadruped and I have traced the identical mode of thought in Mexico and Central [pg 296] America where, owing to linguistic associations, an ocelot is in some instances employed as a symbol for a State whilst in others the form of an eagle was adopted for the same purpose (see Appendix I).

To sum up: in ancient America the human form was employed to represent quadripartite division and the complete finger-and-toe count=20, and as such became emblematic of the quadriform plan of universal application. Owing to a variety of circumstances and suggestions arising from language, the figure of a quadruped=ocelot was adopted as a symbol of the State by some tribes and the form of an eagle by others, the inference being that the ocelot was identified with the cult of the earth and night and the eagle with the cult of heaven and day. While the ocelot and eagle occur in the codices as representative of two distinct classes or divisions of the State, there are some interesting and suggestive representations, to which I shall revert, of figures combining the form and claws of an ocelot with the wings and head of a bird, evidently symbolical of a union of the Above and Below, or Heaven and Earth.

Having furnished the explanation that ancient America affords of the origin of the primitive employment of the human body, the quadruped and bird in allegory and the assignment of their various parts to points in space, it is to Chinese scholars that I appeal for enlightenment as to the origin and development of the same idea in China. To me one point of difference between the Chinese and American list is very striking. In America although the navel was also regarded as a symbol, the heart, associated with the Middle, had obviously been recognized as the centre or seat of life, and the tearing out of the heart had become the salient feature in human sacrifices. In China the stomach is assigned to the Middle, and death by disembowelling was customary.

An analysis of the Chinese and Mexican numerical systems likewise proves that their ultimate development was strikingly [pg 297] different, although it is easy to recognize how both might have arisen from the same source. Thus whilst the Mexican and Central American calendar (and social organization) is based on the combination of 20 characters with 13 numerals, the Chinese “took two sets of 12 and 10 characters respectively and combined them.” The outcome of the combination of 20 with 13 affords a marked contrast to that of 12 with 10. In the Mexican calendar, as I have shown, there were fixed periods of 5 days (associated with the Middle and Four Quarters) and of 20 days, the latter being “one complete count” of days, based on the primitive finger-and-toe count. In the Mexican social organization there were 4 principal and 16 minor clans of people, known by 20 signs. Each of these in turn was subdivided into 13 categories associated with the directions in space. By mentioning a sign and a numeral, up to 13, the exact subdivision of a clan was clearly designated while the direction of its residence, as regards the capital, was likewise conveyed. A day was associated with each of these 20 clans and their respective 13 subdivisions, and the unit of time produced by the combination of the 20 day-signs and 13 numerals was the period of 260 days, which held 4×65 days and was approximately equivalent to nine lunations and to the period of human gestation. The 260-day period, as will be more clearly shown in my monograph on the Mexican Calendar System, constituted the religious year of the “Sons or Lords of Night” in their cult of the Moon, the Nocturnal Heaven, Earth and the Female principle.

Simultaneously with this lunar calendar, in which each moon had a different name, a civil or solar calendar was employed consisting of 365 days, divided into 17 periods of 20 and 1 period of 25 days. These years bore the names of four different signs in rotation combined with 13 numerals. The cycles, thus produced, consisted of 4×13=52 years, 20, or a “complete count” of which, produced the great cycle of 1040 years.

Totally different from this numerical system is that of the Chinese, who “divided the year into 12 months of 29 and 30 days each and [pg 298] as these periods represent with sufficient exactness the lunar month, it follows that the new moon falls on the 1st of every month and that on the 15th the moon is at its full. The month is thus associated with the moon and is called by the same name and written with the same hieroglyphic.... The Chinese also divide the year by seasons and recognize 8 main divisions and 16 subsidiary ones, which correspond to the days on which the sun enters the 1st and 15th degrees of a zodiacal sign ...” (Douglas, China, p. 269). Whilst it is customary in China for years to be designated at times by the Neen-haou or title of an emperor and an event to be alluded to as having occurred in such or such a year of a certain ruler's reign, the mode of computing years is by reckoning by sexagenary cycles. According to native historians this system was introduced by the emperor Hwang-te in the year 2637 B.C. which was the first year of the first cycle, and it has continued in use until the present day. In this system a group of ten characters, termed the “celestial stems” and associated with the male principle, is combined with a group of twelve characters, named the “terrestrial branches” and associated with the female principle. An unbroken series of sixty-year cycles have thus been formed, in the seventy-sixth of which the Chinese are now living. According to Biot, the calendar instituted by Hwang-te was a day-count only, and year-cycles were not in use until after the Christian era, having been introduced from India.

There are indications which will be more fully discussed further on, showing that the primitive day-count consisted of the seven-day period, each day being consecrated to one of the seven bright stars of Ursa Major, called the “Seven Regulators.”

It is well known that Taouism was founded by Laou-tsze, who was a contemporary of Confucius and thus “lived in the sixth century before Christ, a hundred years later than Buddha and a hundred years earlier than Socrates. A mystery hangs over Laou-tsze's history ... and there is the possibility that he was a foreigner, or perhaps a member of an aboriginal frontier tribe” (Legge).

The Shoo-king, the national book of history edited by Confucius, enables us to follow the development of the state religion and government, the basis of which was Heaven and its imperial ruler, the pole-star. The almost mythical emperor Yaou, whose reign began in B.C. 2357, “imitated Heaven, harmonized the various states of [pg 299] the empire and divided it into four quarters.” His successor, Shun, extended its organization, but it was Yü, the third ruler, in the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 1121), who, acknowledging his ignorance of them “went to inquire of Kê-tsze” about “the great plan of the 9 classifications and the arrangement of the invariable principles.” It is also stated in the Shoo-King, that it was “Heaven [who] gave to Yü the great plan and the 9 classifications, so that the invariable principles were arranged, consisting of the 5 elements, the 8 regulations, and the 5 arrangers.”

In China the day is divided into periods equivalent to 120 minutes=2 hours. “In speaking of these periods, however, the practice which was originally introduced into China by the Mongols, of substituting for the twelve stems, the names of the twelve animals which are supposed to be symbolical of them, is commonly adopted. Thus the 1st period, that between 11 p. m. and 1 a. m., is known as the Rat, period 2 as the Ox, 3 Tiger, 4 Hare, 5 Dragon, 6 Serpent, 7 Horse, 8 Sheep, 9 Monkey, 10 Cock, 11 Dog, 12 Boar. The night is divided into five watches, each of two hours duration....” (Douglas, China, p. 296).

The ancient Mexican priest-astronomers marked three divisions of the night by burning incense in honor of certain stars, after dusk, at midnight and at break of day.

The mention of the introduction into China of the Mongolian hour-computation leads to a consideration of the origin of what is known as the Chinese civilization. It is, of course, impossible to do more here than touch upon the various and opposite views held on this important question by leading European and Chinese scholars. On the one hand, “the existence of the Chinese civilization in the east of Asia, separated from early centres by the whole width of Asia and intervening trackless deserts, has seemed a problem to many students and led to the conclusion of its sporadic growth, an idea which is fostered by Chinese historians.” (See Douglas on Chinese Culture and Civilization, 1890.) On the other hand, it is maintained that the Chinese entered China from Tartary and were emigrants from Babylonia who abandoned their country when Nakhunte, king of Susiana, conquered Babylon in 2295 B.C.

According to Legge, the Chinese came through central Asia about 2200 B.C. and founded colonies on the banks of the Yellow river and its tributaries. These colonists founded a Middle Kingdom in China, a federation of states with a chief supreme ruler, on the [pg 300] pattern of Babylonia. They introduced the art of writing and established a calendar with a year of 360 days and an intercalary month.

It is stated that the names of the five planets of the Chinese, besides the Sun and Moon, were called by the same names as in Babylon. (See Edkins op. cit., also The old Babylonian characters and their derivatives, Terrien de Lacouperie, Babylonian and Oriental Record, March, 1888.) Some authorities are inclined to consider Chinese astronomy as derived from the Chaldean; whilst others have instituted comparisons between it and the Hindoo system. The results of the latter line of investigation are set forth by J. F. Davis in the following passage of his work on the Chinese (London, 1836, vol. ii., p. 304): “A comparison between the ancient system of the Chinese and of Hindoo astronomy is rendered somewhat perplexing by the fact that, while there are some points of resemblance there are others in which they essentially differ. Both of them have twenty-eight lunar mansions and a cycle of sixty years, but a careful observation detects some important distinctions: the Hindoo cycle is a cycle of Jupiter while that of the Chinese is a solar cycle, and the twenty-eight constellations of the Hindoos are nearly all of them equal divisions of the great circle, consisting of about 13° each, while the Chinese constellations are extremely unequal, varying from 30° to less than 1°. The author's father, in conjunction with Sir William Jones and Messrs. Colebrook and Bentley, proved that the Hindoo astronomy did not go farther than the calculation of eclipses and some other changes with the rules and tables for performing the same. Besides their lunar zodiac of twenty-eight mansions, the Hindoos (unlike the Chinese) have the solar, including twelve signs perfectly identical with ours, and demonstrating, in that respect, a common origin.”

As we know from Herodotus, the Egyptians had a week of seven days and it is remarkable that the Hindoos had anciently the same, the planetary names being given to the days in exactly the same order as among ourselves, except that Friday was the first. The Chinese reckon five planets to the exclusion of the sun and moon, but they give the name of one of their twenty-eight lunar mansions successively to each day of the year in a perpetual rotation, without regard to the moon's changes; so that the same four out of the twenty-eight invariably fall on our Sundays and [pg 301] constitute, as it were, perpetual Sunday letters. A native Chinese first remarked this odd fact to the author, and on examination it proved perfectly correct.

To the above it may be well to add the following comparison between the Chinese, Tibetan and Indian systems: “The Tibetans received astronomical science from India and China ... the Chinese taught them the science of divination. Both systems are based upon a unit of sixty years, differing, however, in modes of denominating years. In these cycles of sixty years, when numbered according to the Indian principle, each year has a particular name; but in the Chinese method the names used in the Chinese duodecimal cycle are used five times, coupled with the five elements or their respective colors, each of the latter introduced in the series twice in immediate succession” (Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Thibet, p. 27). According to Humboldt, “the Tzihichen, or public calculators of Lhassa take pride in the fact that years of the same name only return about every two centuries. They combine 15 signs: five masculine, five feminine and five neuter, with twelve signs of the zodiac” (Monuments des peuples de l'Amérique i, p. 386).

With regard to the ancient connection between China and India it is well to recall the well-known fact that Buddhism did not enter China from India until the first century of the Christian era and had a prolonged struggle for existence and influence in the country during several centuries.

The Buddhist missionaries introduced the mode of calculating cycles of years into China, according to Biot, who states that the primitive calendar of the Chinese, instituted by Hwang-te, the first king of the “Flowery land,” was a day-count only.

Let us briefly enumerate some bare facts bearing upon the age and development of the state, religion and government of ancient China. In 2697 B.C. Hwang-te (the Babylonian?) erected a temple to the honor of Shang-te, the deity associated with the earliest traditions of the Chinese race. Upon the authority of a Chinaman of the present day it is stated that “the word Shang-te means supreme ruler; but, as it is not lawful to use this name lightly, Chinamen usually name the supreme ruler by his residence, which is Tien=heaven” (Edkins, op. cit. p. 71).

An extremely instructive light is thrown upon the Taouist conception of a supreme being or ruler, by the following episode [pg 302] related by Mr. Edkins in his “Religion in China” (p. 109). “I met [in 1872] on one occasion a schoolmaster from the neighborhood of Chapoo.... The inquiry was put to him, Who is the Lord of heaven and earth? He replied that he knew none but the pole-star, called in the Chinese language Teen-hwang-ta-te, the great imperial ruler of heaven. It was stated to him that it was a matter very much to be regretted that he should hold such views as this of the Supreme Being.”

In this connection and with special reference to the title Tien=heaven, employed by the Chinese in addressing the supreme ruler, I must quote T. de Lacouperie's opinion that the Akkadian name=Din-gira and symbol for God, the eight-pointed star, was the origin of Ti, a Chinese character with the same meaning and sound. Mr. C. J. Ball (The New Akkadian Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology) explains the Akkadian Din-gira as composed of di=to shine and gira=heaven and that thus the Accadian name for God is “the shining one of heaven,” which explains why the ideogram is a star. According to Mr. K. Douglas (p. 171) “Mr. Ball has practically demonstrated that the Chinese and Akkadian are the same tongue and that everywhere in China we are reminded of that great centre of civilization in Babylonia.”

An investigation of the Taouist religion reveals that it consists chiefly of star-worship, stars being deemed “divine.” “Among the liturgical works used by the priests of Taou, one of the commonest consists of prayers to Tow-moo, a female divinity supposed to reside in the Great Bear. A part of the same constellation is worshipped as a male spirit under the name of Kwei-sing” (Edkins).

A name closely resembling the latter in sound, Tseih-ching, and meaning the “Seven Regulators” is now applied to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In ancient times, however, according to native authorities, “this term was used to designate the seven bright stars of Ursa Major which subsequently, by an astrological device, were associated with the seven planets; so, that, by metonymy, the latter became the established meaning.”

[pg 303]

The association of the term “Regulators” with Septentriones is particularly interesting because the seven-day period has been employed in China from time immemorial, the seventh day being invariably marked by the ancient character mih, which means “quiet, secret or silent.” In the modern Chinese almanacs and astrological works “the mih days are marked by the four constellations which correspond among the seven planets to the principal one among them, the Sun” (cf. Wylie, On the Knowledge of a weekly Sabbath in China, op. cit. p. 86). I am strongly tempted to refer the origin of the Chinese mih or quiet day, on which rest was generally observed, to that remote period of time when, to primitive observers, one of the stars in Ursa Major would have appeared more closely associated with immovability and nearer the polar axis than its companions (see pp. 20 and 21).

If we pause here to review the preceding data we are particularly struck at the unanimity of evidence establishing that even the most ancient form of civilization and religion was not indigenous to China, but was carried there by colonists from distant parts, presumably from Babylonia. The latter conclusion finds a strong support in the undeniable fact that during subsequent centuries a steady stream of emigration has carried colonists of different nationalities into the heart of China.

Buddhism entered China from India in the first century of the Christian era. Alexander Wylie tells us that “according to the testimony of one of the stone tablets in the synagogue at Kai-fung foo, the Israelites first entered China during the Han dynasty” and we are further told in the letters of the Jesuits that “they came during the reign of Ming-ti (A.D. 58-75) from Si-yih, i. e. the western regions. It appears by all that can be gathered from them that this western country is Persia and that they came by Khorasan and Samarcand. They have many Persian words in their language and they long preserved a great intercourse with that country” (The Israelites in China, Wylie's Chinese Researches, Shanghai, 1897).

Some other interesting facts related by Wylie deserve mention here. In translating the name of Jehovah into Chinese, the Israelites [pg 304] in China, to the present day, say Teen, “just as the scholars of China do when they explain their term Shang-te.” We thus observe a growing practice in western Asia, among the Hebrews, of designating Jehovah as the God of Heaven and sometimes as Heaven. In Chinese history distinct mention is made of a foreign sect distinguished as the “worshippers of Heaven,” spoken of as existing in China at the beginning of the sixth century. Wylie has surmised that the Hebrews were thus designated and remarks “that this name, as the designation of a foreign sect, is the more remarkable inasmuch as the state ritual of China has designated the Supreme by the name of Heaven, from the earliest times down to the present day.”

It is a curious reflection that it may possibly have been due to a gross misconception of the Hebrew religion on the part of the Chinese and a supposed identity of worship that caused the Israelites to be treated with such tolerance and hospitality in China that their colony situated in the heart of the country still exists to the present day. It is, in fact, related of the Dowager Empress Ling, in the first half of the sixth century, that she “abolished the various corrupt systems of religious worship, excepting that of the foreign tien-spirit.” A strange insight into the Chinese view of the Christian religion is likewise afforded by the following native documents cited by Wylie: “Now Jesus, the Lord of Heaven, is worshipped by the Europeans. They say that this is the ancient religion of Ta-tsin (Syria).”

The following remarkable passages occur on the famous Nestorian tablet, dated A.D. 781, which eulogizes the propagation of the “Illustrious [Christian] Religion” in China. This tablet was discovered by the Jesuit fathers in 1625 and, after its authenticity had been violently assailed, Wylie's painstaking researches have now vindicated its genuineness. The following extracts are from the preface engraved upon it and composed by King-tsing, a priest of the Syrian Church: “... Our eternal, true lord God.... He appointed the cross as the means of determining the four cardinal points, he moved the original spirit and produced the two principles of nature; the sombre void was changed and heaven and earth were opened out; the sun and moon revolved and day and night commenced; having perfected all inferior objects, he then made the first man ... the illustrious and honorable Messiah, [pg 305] veiling his true dignity, appeared in the world as a man ... a bright star announced the felicitous event [of his birth] ... he fixed the extent of the eight boundaries.... As a seal [his disciples] hold the cross, whose influence is reflected in every direction uniting all without distinction. As they strike the wood the fame of their benevolence is diffused abroad; worshipping towards the east they hasten on the way to life and glory ... they do not keep slaves, but put noble and mean all on an equality; they do not amass wealth but cast all their property into the common stock.”

Referring the matter to oriental scholars for further discussion I merely note here the astonishing fact that in China, in the seventh century of our era, the supreme God of the Hebrews and Christians was spoken of as the God of Heaven, or Heaven, that He is credited with having created the two principles of nature besides heaven and earth and instituted the cross as “a means of determining the cardinal points.”

It is likewise strange to find the “Heen or Toen foreigners” credited in a sixteenth-century native cyclopædia, with having introduced into China a system of astronomy denominated the “Four Heavens,” and obviously based on a quadruplicate division of the Heaven similar to the division of the empire instituted by Yaou (Wylie, Israelites in China, op. cit. p. 19).

The current Chinese name for Christians has been “Cross-worshippers,” and it is odd to note that the ancient Chinese seem to have regarded the symbolism of the Christian cross as closely identical with that of their swastika, and to have concluded that the foreign “Heaven” religion rested on the same basis as theirs.

Referring the reader to Wylie's valuable researches and Edkins' Religion in China for information concerning the establishment of colonies of Manicheans, Mohammedans and of successive Christian missions, etc., in China, I shall but quote the following passage from Marco Polo's travels (pp. 167 and 168) because it shows how the doctrine of the quadruplicate division of all things, celestial and terrestrial, led to a broad tolerance of opinion in the famous Tartar prince, Kubla Khan, who, in 1260, at Kanbalu=Peking, honored the Christian festivals. “And he observed the same at the festivals of the Saracens, Jews and idolaters. Upon being asked his motive for this conduct, he said: ‘There are four great Prophets who are reverenced and worshipped by the different [pg 306] classes of mankind. The Christians regard Jesus Christ as their divinity; the Saracens, Mahomet; the Jews, Moses; and the idolaters Sagomombarkan (Buddha) the most eminent amongst their idols. I do honor and show respect to all of the four, and invoke to my aid whichever of them is in truth supreme in heaven.’ ” This attitude of mind and that of the Chinese towards the Christian Cross can only be fully understood and appreciated when it is realized that their “imperial ruler of Heaven” was the pole-star and that the Ursa Major described each year the sign of a cross in the heaven which ever impressed upon them quadruplicate division and differentiation and the union of four in one. It is doubtlessly owing to the same reason that the Chinaman of today finds it possible to believe in, at once, the three great national religions which exist in China. Edkins has explained that, whereas “Confucianism speaks to the moral nature, Taouism is materialistic and Buddhism is metaphysical; thus, they are supplemental to each other and are able to co-exist without being mutually destructive” (op. cit. p. 60). Somewhat apart from these three state religions and embodying the most ancient ideas and traditions of the race, exists the elaborate and solemn “Imperial worship,” the study of which Edkins designates as “specially interesting because it takes us back to the early history of the Chinese people and introduces us to many striking points of comparison with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament and with the worship of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon and Egypt.” The same authority states that “the account given by Herodotus of the religion of the ancient Persians shows that it consisted in much the same usages as those now found in Chinese Imperial worship” (op. cit. pp. 6, 22, 18 and 30). In the preceding pages it has been shown that the fundamental principles of the primitive religions of China and America were identical, but that their subsequent stages of development or evolution were strikingly divergent. The following study of certain details connected with the “Imperial worship” brings out a marked differentiation in the Chinese and Mexican cult of heaven and earth.

The altar of Heaven at Peking consists of three circular marble terraces, the uppermost of which is paved with eighty-one stones arranged in circles. It is on a round stone in the centre of these circles that the Emperor kneels and is considered to occupy the centre of the earth. In the worship of Heaven, offerings are made [pg 307] to the heavenly bodies, the Sun, Moon, the Pole-star, Great Bear, five planets and twenty-eight constellations. The worship at the altar of Earth consists of offerings to the mountains, rivers and seas.

This arrangement is strikingly unlike that of the ancient Mexicans, who associated the sun only with the Above, the male principle and the blue heaven, and worshipped the nocturnal heaven, the moon and stars, with the earth, darkness and the female principle.

It is interesting to note the marked effect, produced by the two different modes of classification, upon the subsequent development of the state religions of China and Mexico. In the latter country where the contrast of light and darkness and of the duality of nature seems to have been most powerfully felt, the gradual institution, on a footing of equality of a diurnal masculine and nocturnal feminine cult or of a separate sun and moon worship, led to the formation of two equally powerful castes of priest-astronomers who devised their respective calendars and cults and ultimately stood in open rivalry and antagonism towards each other, as children of heaven and light: sun worshippers; and children of earth and darkness: moon worshippers. In China, as the cult of earth was subordinate from the first and all heavenly bodies were included in the worship of Heaven, there was no opportunity for any rivalry to develop in the superior caste of astronomers who jointly ruled, instituted their calendar and altered it under influences emanating from India.

Heaven and Earth were jointly worshipped at the same altar until A.D. 1531, when it was decreed that there should be separate altars and that the worship of Earth should be separately conducted (Edkins). At the same time, while the Emperor acts as the high-priest of Heaven, we find associated with him, from remote antiquity, the Empress, the representative of the Earth-mother.

The fact that the roll of Chinese emperors records heavenly and earthly, light and sombre, emperors, and that empresses have repeatedly occupied the throne, seems to indicate that, in remote antiquity, a male and a female line of rulers, personifying the dual principles of nature, alternately assumed prominence in power. This natural outgrowth of the cult of heaven and earth, which has its parallel in Mexico, seems to afford an explanation of the usurpation and retention of power exercised by the present Empress [pg 308] of China, who is probably ruling in her own right, as the representative of the earth or dark principle. As such she is the exact equivalent to the ancient Mexican Cihua-coatl, or “Woman-serpent;” and modern China supplies us with an episode in the development of the fundamental set of ideas it holds in common with ancient America, closely resembling the historical dissension which led in ancient Mexico to a separation of the two cults and the establishment of two separate governments, under their respective male and female rulers.

Although the difference in primitive Chinese and Mexican definitions of heaven and earth worship is evidently accountable for this fact, it is nevertheless interesting to note that it was in A.D. 1531 only that the Chinese cult of heaven and earth separated and the process of disintegration began to be set into activity. From an evolutionary point of view, the imperial religion of China stands to-day at a far less advanced stage of development than the prehistoric Mexican state religion. This circumstance might be passed over without comment did it not strikingly coincide with the undeniable fact that the essentially inorganic and monosyllabic Chinese language stands far lower in the scale of linguistic development than the incorporative and polysynthetic American languages, the most perfected types of which are the Maya and the beautiful and refined Nahuatl which abounds in delicate metaphors and formulas of exquisite politeness, indicative of the high degree of culture and antiquity of the native race.

If the preceding comparative study of the Chinese and ancient Mexican civilizations be briefly summarized, the result is as follows: Both civilizations alike rest on a foundation of pole-star worship and the set of ideas which naturally proceed from this i. e., central impartial power extending in constant rotation to the four quarters, figured by the swastika, and the recognition of the all-pervading duality of nature. These primitive concepts and their inevitable outgrowths, which might naturally occur to human beings of the same grade of intellect in similar conditions and circumstances and be most powerfully impressed upon the mind of man in circumpolar latitudes beside a few resemblances in names, which I shall proceed to point out, are nearly all that the Chinese and ancient Mexicans may be safely said to have had in common. At a date obviously anterior to 2356 B.C., when they were formulated, the Chinese had made definitions [pg 309] of heaven and earth and of the five elements which radically differ from those of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas.

The Chinese numerical system or calendar, though equally based on rotation, and known to have been modified by contact with India, is essentially different from the American. When carefully compared it must be acknowledged that the Mexican is by far the more complex and highly developed, and the same may be said of the social organization, which was controlled by the calendar. A comparison between the Chinese and American languages in general proves, moreover, that they differ not only in sound, but in form and in grade of development, the Chinese being the lower in the scale. To the above divergences we must add the fact that each people evolved distinct national customs and costumes, foods and drinks, industries, arts and forms of architecture, so markedly characteristic as to be clearly distinguishable.

In conclusion a few words about the swastika in China (ouan). Its Chinese name is wan, which signifies “ten thousand,” or “all,” also “many,” a great number. At the time of the Empress Wu (A.D. 684-704) the swastika in a circle signified “the sun;” half a swastika in the circle “the moon,” and the plain circle “the star.” Deferring comment I emphasize here the fact that the word wan resembles kwan=equal earth or land, and that it signifies an entity composed of ten thousand parts. A proof that the wan was also associated with the idea of time is given by the modern use of the Chinese swastika to signify “long life,” “many years,” i. e., a complete life, a complete cycle of years.

A prolonged study of the most ancient civilization of America, which centred in Mexico and Central America and thence spread northward and southward, has so deeply convinced me of its great antiquity, isolation and prolonged period of independent evolution that, when Asiatic origin and influence are discussed, I am tempted to take the national food-plant of America, the maize, and, placing it beside the rice-plant of China, invite comparisons to be made between them.

JAPAN.

It is a curious fact that, although it is recognized that the junks which have been repeatedly driven by storms upon the Pacific coast have generally been Japanese, no searching comparison between the culture of ancient America and that of Japan [pg 310] has as yet been published; although it is believed by many that it may have been to the occupants of the wrecked junks that the American race owed its civilization. The curious idea seems to prevail among some writers, that purely Chinese influence was conveyed by Japanese fishermen and sailors to the dwellers on American soil. It does not seem to be sufficiently recognized that the differences between Japanese and Chinese civilizations are as great as that between their different languages and writings, and that direct influence derived from Japan, for many centuries back would have left traces so characteristic as to be easily distinguished from the effects of direct influence from China.

In the third century of the Christian era the Japanese empire was founded on a plan derived from Corea and soon became known to the Chinese and dwellers on the main land as Dschi-Poennkwo, or Zipanco, the “land of the east, or of the rising sun.” The Japanese themselves, however, regarded their empire as the “great centre of the world,” i. e. a “Middle Kingdom.” The mythical birthplace of the Japanese race and the cradle of its civilization is said to have been the island of the Congealed Drop, which was formerly at the North Pole, but subsequently removed to its present position. How this happened is not told.

The most superficial examination shows that the fundamental scheme of the Japanese empire was the same as that of China and other Asiatic countries. Its centre was the island Hon-shiu, Hondo or Nippon, on which was situated the ancient Fu or capital, named Yedo; the modern Tokio in the vicinity of Fusiyama, the sacred mountain and reputed centre of the world. The entire land or Han was originally divided into five provinces collectively named the Go-kinai (the word go like the Maya ho, signifying five), the territorial divisions and presumably consisting of four quarters and the capital. Light is thrown upon the extent of this quinary organization by the fact that, in ancient Japan, time was divided into five-day periods, by official days of rest, which fell on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, and 26th days of each month. The [pg 311] computation of time by cycles, which will be treated further in a separate monograph, also prevailed in Japan, as might be expected, since this method was a main feature of the definite scheme on which the entire empire was founded.

In accord with this plan the population was divided into four classes, consisting of the Haimin=the people; the warriors or Samurai, the Kazoku, literally the flower of families, the nobility. All members of the imperial family formed a fourth caste and above all stood the Emperor, the central ruler, the divine descendant of the sun-goddess Amaterasu. Evidences that an extension and fresh territorial division of the empire took place at one time seem preserved in the ancient Japanese name for Japan: Oya-shima=the eight islands. It is likewise related that the Japanese creators, Izanajo and Izanami, built, in the centre of the world, an octagonal palace around a central pillar, the octagonal form having reference to the eight holy corners or points, the “Hak-kaku,” or the cardinal points and half cardinal points. It is impossible to overlook the fact that by a similar method, but by means of four larger and four smaller rays, the field of the Mexican calendar star is divided into eight equal portions. It is a well-known fact that, in 1854, Japan was practically governed by two rulers: the Mikado or Tenno, of divine or “heavenly” descent, who led so secluded an existence that he was becoming a shadowy and invisible ruler, and the Shogun, the civil governor, who had become the terrestrial ruler par excellence, and whose power was in the ascendant. This state of affairs affords a most interesting object lesson, teaching how ancient empires gradually become divided and disintegrated under dual government and under the influence of rival cults. The ancient state religion or “Imperial worship” of Japan, the Shinto, was becoming as obsolete as the worldly power of its high-priest the Mikado, next to the growing ascendancy of Buddhism, supported by the Shogunate. The original meaning of the Shinto sacred symbols appears to be lost. The mirror, placed on the altar, usually constituted the only visible sacred emblem. Another was the sword. It is claimed that the swastika came into Japan with Buddhism, but this is a point which demands a serious investigation of competent specialists. The above data, which are absurdly inadequate to the interest and importance of Japan, the seat of the most intellectual and progressive culture of Asia, are sufficient to show that in Japan, where the [pg 312] swastika is found, the quadruplicate state organization and fundamental plan were also carried out. My full purpose will only be fulfilled when the present deficient notes shall have stimulated the enquiry and research of students and Japanese scholars and led to the publication of all traces extant of the most ancient scheme of organization, government and calendar, as compared with those of ancient America.

As it is maintained that the Chinese and other eastern Asiatic people did not originate, but received their civilization from Babylonia, or another ancient centre, situated in western Asia, it obviously becomes an imperative necessity to carry the present investigation across the Asiatic continent into the heart of the Euphratean valley.

INDIA.

Being one of the ancient centres of civilization from which the Chinese are said to have derived theirs, India, the country where the swastika abounds, first arrests our attention. In support of the assertion I have already advanced, that the primitive symbol is always found accompanied by a set of ideas almost as ancient as itself, I have pleasure in transcribing the following detached but instructive and suggestive extracts from my note-book.

The fair Arya or Aryans, after about 2,000 B.C., penetrated India from the northwest. Arya means “those who command” or “the venerable.” The name Hindu or Sindu was given to the Indian Aryans. Our knowledge of Hindu art begins in the third century B.C. and none of the present popular forms of Hindu religion are presumed to be earlier than the ninth century A.D. “It is well known that the Brahman system and faith were not developed by the Hindus till they had conquered the Ganges, Western and Southern India and there is no trace of this tradition or even of Brahma as a deity in the Vedas.”...

“The supreme god of antiquity was Indra ... next to and above whom was the mysterious god Varuna, the creator, who gave eternal laws which god and men were obliged to follow. He showed the stars their paths and gave each creature his qualities.... He is the sun by day and the stars at night”.... From these statements the duality of the creator and his power over both light and darkness alike, stand out clearly.

Another form of the supreme being was the sun god Surya, who [pg 313] was also named Savitri, the generator, Pushan=the feeder and Mithra=the light-god, who is called the watcher and ruler of the world and was associated with the wheel, which is termed “the most ancient symbol of divine power and dominion.”

“In India the wheel was, moreover, connected with the title of a chakrayartin (from chakra=a wheel), the title meaning a supreme ruler or universal monarch, who ruled the four quarters of the world and on his coronation he had to drive his chariot or wheel to the four cardinal points to signify his conquest of them” (Wm. Simpson, Quarterly statement of Palestine Expl. Fund, 1895, p. 84). It is significant that “Mithra,” the god of the wheel, who was, as I shall show later on, likewise associated with the serpent, is represented with a chariot pulled by seven horses and thus to find the idea of centrifugal power, combined with the numeral seven and the conception of central rulership extending to the four quarters.

While the above passages afford an interesting insight into the ancient significance and symbolism of the chariot, the use of which, with that of the throne was, originally, exclusively confined to the central supreme ruler, they also furnish a curious parallelism to the Chinese tours of inspection performed, by the emperor, to the four provinces in rotation.

The general application of the quadruplicate system is moreover shown by the fact that, from time immemorial, the population of India has been divided into four great castes, and these are associated with distinctive colors, the Sanscrit word for color, varna, signifying also caste. According to the native myth, Brahma created the Brahmin or ruling caste from his mouth, the warrior caste from his arms and hands, the merchant and agricultural caste from his hips and the artisan or lowest caste from the [pg 314] soles of his feet. The warrior caste was named Kschatria; the people the yellow, or Vaicya; the original, conquered inhabitants of India were named the black, or Sudra. The Brahman caste was above all these.

Concerning the origin of the Brahmans, it is related that “Manu was created ... he, in turn created ten great sages, the ancestors of the Brahmans. These created seven other Manus or spiritual princes, the preservers of moral orders in the world” (Goodyear). Pointing out that the seven Manus evidently constituted a septarchy, let us now study the Brahmanistic conception of a supreme divinity. From various authorities we learn that, in later times “the Brahmans invented a new god, the impersonal Brahma, who only appears in the youngest portion of the Vedas.” He is described as “the supreme One who alone exists really and absolutely,” and is represented with four heads and four arms, the idea of four-fold power and rule being thus expressed. The proof that, at the same time, the idea of duality existed, is furnished by the invention of a female counterpart of Brahma, namely, his consort Sarawati and the later development of the rival religions which now exist side by side and divide the population of India into halves. The cult of Vishnu, associated with the male principle, though curiously blended with the principle of preservation, is obviously a parallel form of the American and Chinese cult of the Above or Heaven; while that of Siva, or the female principle, strongly mingled with the idea of destruction, forms a parallel to the cult of the Earth-mother and of darkness and the nocturnal heaven. Brahma was born of an egg and is also figured as springing from a lotus which, in turn rises from the navel of Vishnu or Narayana, “the Spirit moving on the waters.”...

In modern Buddhism the identical fundamental ideas continue to exist in a slightly different form; the six directions in space are known and elaborately worshipped. The embodiment of central power is Buddha, seated cross-legged on a lotus flower. According to Birdwood, cited by Mr. Goodyear, “In the Hindu cosmogony [pg 315] the world is likened to a lotus flower, floating in the centre of a shallow circular vessel, which has for its stalk an elephant and for its pedestal a tortoise. The seven petals of the lotus flower represent the seven divisions of the world as known to the ancient Hindus and the tabular torus (Nelumbium speciosum) which rises from their centre represents Mount Meru, the Hindu Olympus.”

In the statues of Buddha, thus associated with the centre of the world, we have what may be termed the highest development of the idea of stability, quietude and absolute repose which impressed itself upon the human mind by the observation of Polaris. The abstract conception of Nirvana, “the state in which all individuality and consciousness are lost, and life and death, good and evil, and every other possible antithesis disappear in absolute unity,” appears to me to be the natural ultimate outgrowth of the primitive appreciation of stability and repose as the most desirable of conditions.

An ancient American priest-astronomer, imbued with the native ideas, would doubtlessly see in the modern figures of Buddha a more perfect artistic rendition of the same conception which was expressed in the Copan swastika. He might remark that, in the statues of Buddha, the human form is intended to convey the idea of quadruple organization and that in certain images the primitive symbols of the centre, “the belly and navel,” are obviously emphasized. In the fakirs, who cultivate immobility, he might see people who are under the absolute dominion of the ideal of stability and detect the origin of this suggestion from the fact that the swastika position of either arms or legs is a favorite one among Hindoo fanatics, just as, out of devotion, many persons have swastikas painted or tattooed upon their limbs.

It is interesting to note the peculiar result attained by the Buddhists in their development of the twin idea of permanence, i. e. immutability or immortality, as shown in the following quotation: “There is a remarkable distinction between the Buddhism of China and of Tibet. In regard to philosophy there is little or no difference, but in Tibet there is a hierarchy which exercises political power. In China this could not be. The Grand Lama and many other lamas in Mongolia and Tibet assume the title of ‘Living Buddha.’ In him, most of all, Buddha is incarnate, as the people are taught to think. He never dies. When the body, in which Buddha is for the time incarnate, ceases to perform its functions, [pg 316] some infant is chosen by the priests, who are intrusted with the duty of selecting, to become the residence of Buddha until, in turn, it grows up to manhood and dies. No Buddhist priest in China pretends to be a ‘living Buddha’ or to have a right to the exercise of political power. In Tibet, on the other hand, the Grand Lama, as chief of the ‘living Buddhas,’ not only holds the place of the historical Buddha long since dead, acting as a sort of high-priest, but he also exercises sovereignty over the country of Tibet ruling the laity as well as the clergy and being only subordinate to the lord paramount, the Emperor of China” (Edkins, Religion in China, p. 8).

“The form of the Buddhist temples exemplifies in a striking manner the relative positions of Buddha and the gods. Four kings of the gods are represented in the vestibule. Their office is to guard the door by which entrance is obtained to the presence of Buddha.... The central position is that of Buddha, who is seated on the lotus flower in the attitude of a teacher....” (Edkins). In this attitude an ancient American high-priest would see the graphic representation of one of the titles of the star-god Polaris, “the teacher of the world.”

The association of Buddha with the north and with the number seven is curiously shown in the mythical account that “when Buddha was born a lotus blossomed where he touched the ground; he stepped seven steps northward and a lotus marked each footfall.”

Distinct evidence of the ancient cult of Polaris is yielded by the Hindu marriage custom, which I have found described thus in Meyer's conversations Lexikon: “In the evening the bride and bridegroom seat themselves on the hide of a red ox, after making the usual offerings.... Then the bridegroom points out the pole-star to the bride and says: ‘the heaven is firm, also the earth; the universe is stedfast, so mayest thou be stedfast in our family’....” The symbolism of the act of sharing the ox-hide as a seat becomes apparent when it is realized that the name for cow or ox=go, also signifies possessions and riches, a conception which is traceable to a period when cattle constituted the chief and most valued possession of pastoral tribes. The veneration accorded in India to the cow is well known and travellers have frequently described the sacred statue of a cow, which is seven feet in height and stands next to the sacred well of the temple at Benares.

[pg 317]

In connection with the reference to the pole-star made by the Hindu bridegroom, it is noteworthy that the Sanscrit for star is stri, tara, for stara; Hindu sitara, tara and Bengal stara and that variants of the same word constitute the name for star in Latin, Greek, Gothic, Old and Anglo Saxon, Welsh, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Basque, in which language it appears as izarra, recalling the Hindu sitara and, if I may venture to say so, the Nahuatl word for star, citlallin.

The supreme veneration and importance accorded in India to the North, from time immemorial, are shown by passages of the book of Manu, which prescribe the severe penances which were to be performed by the Brahmans who attained advanced age. He “is to inflict all sorts of tortures upon himself and when he falls ill in consequence, he is to set out to walk to the northwest, towards the holy mountain Meru, until his mortal frame breaks down and he unites himself with Brahma.” It is likewise stated that when a Brahman king grew old and ill he was obliged to abdicate in favor of his son and voluntarily seek death in battle or by starvation, whilst wandering towards the holy mountain Meru, in the northwest. I point out the curious parallelism of this custom, which was carried out during countless centuries and determined a periodical migration towards the northwest of venerable sages, presumably accompanied by faithful followers, and the search for the stable centre of the world which caused the wanderings of American tribes under their chiefs.

According to various encyclopædias and general works of reference, Brahma is said to have made the world in two parts, i. e., heaven and earth; placed air between both and made the eight regions, fire and the eternal waters. The mythical mountain Meru, on the summit of which the supreme power is said to be enthroned in eternal majesty, is the traditional paradise and is supposed to lie somewhere in the northwest of the Himalayas. It is situated in the centre of the seven zones in which the earth is divided, thence its name Meru=the Middle. The association of the central mountain with divinity and eternal stability is further shown by the statement that the sun, moon and stars circled about it and that it supported the heaven.

As the natural complement to the above, I can cite the following evidences of an all-pervading quadruplicate division and organization, as set forth in an ancient manuscript which was brought [pg 318] from India by Count Angelo de Gubernatis and exhibited in Florence in 1898, by Mr. Pullé, in an extremely instructive series of native maps of India: 1. In the oldest maps, the empire of India was represented as a disk, divided into a number of concentric zones, in the centre of which arose the sacred mountain. 2. These representations were, in several cases, accompanied by representations of the swastika obviously representing quadruplicate territorial division.

On Mount Meru itself there were four lakes respectively filled with milk, butter, coagulated milk and sugar. Four great rivers flowed from the mountain towards the cardinal points, namely, the Ganges, issuing from the mouth of a cow, the Sita from the head of the elephant; the Bhadra from a tiger or lion and the Chaksu from a horse. According to Buddhistic mythology, the sacred mountain Meru, which constitutes the centre of the world, is guarded by four hero “kings of demons.” Their names are as follows: 1. Kubera or Vaisrānana, the god of wealth, who lives in the north, whose attributes are the lance and banner, the rat which throws forth jewels from its mouth. 2. Virūdhaka, who rules the south, and whose attributes are the helmet in the form of an elephant's head, and a long sword. 3. Virūpāksha, the guardian of the west: attributes, the jewel and the serpent. 4 Dhrtarāshtra, the ruler of the east: attribute, the mandoline.

An interesting parallelism is brought out by a comparison between the ancient Mexican mode of producing the sacred fire by means of a reed and a piece of wood and its symbolism of the mystic union of the two principles of nature, to the origin of fire as told in the Veda and the ceremonial mode employed in India to produce the sacred fire by means of the mystic arani and the pramantha. The difference between the ancient American and Indian apparatus should be noticed. The two arani, made of the wood of Ficus religiosa, were placed crosswise. “At their junction was a fossette or cup-like hole and there they placed a piece of wood upright, in the form of a lance (the pramantha), violent rotation of which by means of whipping, produced fire, as did Prometheus, the bearer of fire in Greece” (Bournouf, Des Sciences et Religions and Prof. Thomas Wilson, The Swastika, p. 777). A remarkable relation unquestionably exists between the two mystic arani, which, crossed, form a four-branched cross from the centre of which fire is produced by rotation and the almost universal identification of [pg 319] Polaris and Ursa Major, as the central source of life, power extending to four directions, rotation and duality underlying quadruplicity. In my opinion no more graphic presentation of the rotation of Ursa Major around Polaris, the central ruler of heaven, could have been devised than the cross figure from the centre of which fire was perpetually obtained.

It is all the more significant, therefore, to find it stated that the ancient Aryan light-god, Mithra, was worshipped under the form of fire. I point out that, in a representation published by Layard in his Culte de Mithra and reproduced here (fig. , 1) from Mr. Goodyear's work, a man and a woman are represented as worshipping a star, the scene so strongly recalling the portion of the Hindu marriage ceremony where the pole-star is pointed out, that an identity of scene suggests itself. Returning to the swastika: its meaning in India appears to be forgotten; but, according to Professor Thomas Wilson, a follower of the Jain religion expressed the opinion that “the original idea was very high, but later on some persons thought the swastika represented only the combination of the male and female principles” (Thomas Wilson, On the Swastika, p. 803).

To the Hindu, holding this view and also accustomed to associate the pole-star with the marriage rite, there must exist a curious band of union and identity between Polaris and the swastika, both connected with the combination of the male and female principles.

To treat of the Hindu calendar and division of time would be to transgress beyond the limits of the present investigation which has already assumed unforeseen dimensions. As I shall discuss it in detail in my monograph on the ancient Mexican Calendar system, it will suffice to recall here that Humboldt pointed out the resemblance between the latter and the Hindu system, and that this has been further dwelt upon for instance in the article on the subject in the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the same work of reference it is also stated that, “according to the conclusions of Delambre, the Hindoo knowledge of astronomy was greatly inferior to that of the Greeks, and it has been argued by Laplace, in opposition to the previous opinions of Bailly, that the Indian astronomy is not of the highest antiquity, but must have been imperfectly borrowed from the Greeks.” I may as well state here, however, that, in India as in Mexico, the divisions of time were in accordance with the general scheme, and enabled human activity and labor to [pg 320] be controlled and carried out by means of rotation, and with strict impartial law, order and harmony.

Pausing here and with a clear realization of probable omissions and deficiencies of material, I venture to believe that the foregoing data suffice to establish beyond a doubt the point which is the main object of the present essay, namely, that in India the swastika is found accompanied by the primordial set of ideas which also form the basis of the Chinese and ancient American civilizations. The Middle is, moreover, associated in India with the idea of immovability, repose and centrifugal power and rule, incorporated in the supreme divinity whose symbol is the wheel and who is represented as dual and quadruple in nature, i. e. with four hands (as two persons), and with four heads (four persons), the six persons thus symbolized being united in the person of the seventh, the synopsis of them all. The seven-day period; the seven zones of the earth; the seven divine footsteps towards the north; the seven councillors of the Brahmin king, etc., all prove that, whereas six directions in space were worshipped in India, they were inseparable from the sacred seventh which united all of them. The mythical sacred mountain Meru, the throne of the supreme eternal power, constituted the fixed centre of the world and strikingly exemplified quadruplicate division and organization, being associated with four lakes and four rivers; four mythical animals and four guardians. In consonance with this plan Brahma was endowed with four heads and four hands; the empire was divided into four quarters and seven zones, and the population into four castes identified with four colors, and governed by a king and seven councillors. The wheel, associated in the case of Mithra with the serpent, constituted the emblem of supreme dominion and rule which was connected with the idea of an extension to the four quarters. The swastika was but another expression of the same idea and represented also an image of the universal scheme. This sign and the pole-star were both associated, in the native mind, with the life-producing union of the male and female principles of nature and the sacred element fire, under which form the supreme god was anciently worshipped. The lotus flower symbolized the universe, its unity and complexity; the number of petals represented usually agreeing with the number of the cosmical divisions. Two points should further be briefly referred to: The division of time into seven-day periods [pg 321] coincides with the septenary scheme of organization resting upon the seven directions in space. The sacred soma tree, the hom, was an object of cult in India. The custom of planting a Bodhi tree wherever Buddhist missionaries established their doctrine indicates its association with the idea of an established centre. The employment of wooden sticks for the production of the sacred fire under which form the supreme central god was anciently worshipped, also connected wood and the tree with the sacred Centre. Deferring a discussion of the different and yet analogous way in which the fundamental set of ideas was worked out in America and India, I shall but mention here how clearly, in each case, the ultimate results can be traced back to a common primitive and natural origin.

MESOPOTAMIA.

Let us now carry our research into that region whence civilization spread through western Asia, and is said to have been carried to Egypt, Greece and Rome. It may be a surprise to many to learn that, at the present day, on the banks of the Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, pole-star worship, pure and simple, is openly professed by the Mandaïtes who are reputed to be the descendants of the famous Magi of ancient Chaldea, and are termed Sabba or Sabans by the Moslems. It will be seen that these star-watchers have preserved intact an extremely ancient form of the archaic cult which contains the living germ of all primitive religions and represents an evolutionary stage which they must all have undergone.

It is to the kindness of a friend that I owe the knowledge of an article on a Mandaïte New Year festival which appeared in the “Standard” some years ago and which I reproduce in full as Appendix II. As might be expected, the Euphratean star-gazers, like the Chinese, determined midnight by the position of the Great Bear. It is interesting to find, moreover, that the spiritual head of the sect is entitled Gan-zivro, and is closely escorted by four young deacons, named sh-kan-dos, as well as by four priests=tarmidos, and four sub-deacons. The circumstance that the consecrated group of officiants consists of 12+1=13 individuals is particularly suggestive. Not less so are the employment of the tau-shaped cross and the sacrifice of a quadruped to the lord of the underworld and his companion (the lord of the upper world?). The ceremonial immersion in the starlit river is a curious parallel [pg 322] to the midnight bathing in the sacred pool attached to the ancient Mexican temple.

The formulas employed in addressing the pole-star deserve special consideration. In the designation of the stable centre of heaven as “the abode of the pious hereafter and the paradise of the elect,” the natural longings of the human race for stability, i. e. safety and repose, find an expression and in this we can detect the germ of thought whose extreme development, in India, produced the comparatively philosophical doctrine of Nirvana. The title of “Primitive Sun” enlightens us as to the original use of the word sun and the supreme importance accorded by the ancient star-gazers to the “Imperial ruler of heaven,” as the Chinese term the pole-star. This application of the word sun will be found particularly interesting to those who, having found the swastika termed a “sun-symbol,” have naturally been led to associate it with the diurnal sun, although they found it difficult to understand its connection with the rotatory motion so clearly discernible in the form of the primitive symbol.

Having ascertained that the Mandaïte pole-star worship of the present day embodies the cult of the sacred centre and of dual principles (one of which is designated as the lord of the underworld) and is associated with quadruple organization and a form of cross, let us now make a great stride backwards and note some details concerning ancient Sabæan star-worship.

ARABIA.

In remote antiquity, star-worship prevailed throughout Arabia and one of its great centres was the flourishing land of Saba or Sheba, whose queen visited Solomon at Jerusalem. The star-cult of the Sabæans is acknowledged to have resembled that of the ancient inhabitants of Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia and India. We are told that a certain sect amongst them “believed in a great cycle of time in which certain epochs of the world's history recurred”—an idea akin to ancient Mexican speculative philosophy. It is also stated that one of the chief centres of Sabæism was the town of Harran in Mesopotamia and that, although surrounded by Christianity, this ancient form of star-worship maintained itself here until the Middle Ages. The possibility that the Mandaïtes of to-day may be the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Harran is naturally suggested by this historical fact. [pg 323] A curious detail concerning monarchical succession in Sheba has been preserved to us. The king was kept in an enforced seclusion in his palace and incurred the penalty of death if he left it. His office was not hereditary but fell to the first son who was born amongst the nobility, after a king's accession to the throne. In this custom, a curious parallel of which is furnished by the Thibetan mode of electing the “living Buddha,” some readers may be inclined to find an explanation for the massacre of the babes ordered by Herod when he learned that the wise men of the East, guided by a star, had designated “a young child” as the future “King of the Jews.” It is an interesting reflection that, to many of his contemporaries, the establishment of the “Kingdom of Heaven,” announced by the Messiah, may have appeared as a movement to revive the most ancient form of government and to reinstate Jerusalem as the central metropolis of an empire, the organization of which would have resembled the Chinese and ancient American forms of “Middle Kingdoms,” or “Celestial Empires.”

The ideal of many of these descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers may well have been the reversion to the primitive, pure type of single central, celestial and terrestrial rule which had been superseded in western Asia by the pernicious growth of the utterly abasing and demoralizing separate cults of the dual principles of nature.

A curious remnant of the worship of the Earth-mother and of the stable centre of the world, recalling ancient American symbolism, exists in Arabia and merits a passing notice. “The great holy place of Jiddah, the principal landing place of the pilgrims to Mecca, on the eastern coast of the Red sea, is the singular tomb of ‘our mother Eve’ surrounded by the principal cemetery. The tomb is a walled enclosure said to represent the dimensions of the body about 200 paces long and 15 feet wide. At the head is a small erection where gifts are deposited and rather more than half way down a whitewashed dome encloses a small, dark chapel, within which is the black stone known as el-surrah=the navel. The grave of Eve is mentioned by Edrisi but, except the black stone, nothing bears any aspect of antiquity” (Encycl. Brit., article Jiddah).

The fact that the Arabian appellation for Mecca is om-el-kora=“the mother of cities” deserves special attention. Exactly in the centre of the city is the mosque enclosing the kaaba, a structure [pg 324] the only door of which opens to the north. It contains the celebrated black sacred stone and a trough, reputed to be of pure gold, which conducts freshly fallen rain water to the interior of the building and pours it upon its floor of dark earth. The following details are given in a recently published account by an anonymous visitor:

“The Moslems believe that the original Kaaba was built in heaven two thousand years before the creation of the world and that, at the command of the Almighty, angels walked around it in adoration. Furthermore, they said that Adam built the first Kaaba on earth on its present site, directly under the one in heaven.... Long before the time of Mahomet, the Kaaba was a place of worship for the idolatrous Arabs and in it they had no less than 360 idols, one for each day of the Arabian year. These were destroyed by Mahomet....” Beside the pilgrimages to the Kaaba pious Mussulmans also visit the sacred granite mountains the “Arafat where Adam is supposed to have met Eve after a long separation.”

Summarized, the preceding facts clearly show that, from a remote antiquity, the Arabians have preserved the conception of (1) a divine, celestial, stable sanctuary around which “angels” walked in a circle. (2) A terrestrial sanctuary built by man directly beneath the heavenly one and associated with the period of a year, i. e. 360 days. (3) In the sacred terrestrial kaaba the mystic union of rain and earth is made to take place, while (4) Mount Arafat is connected with the traditional reunion of Adam and Eve.

It is unnecessary to point out the significant association of an annual count of days with the stable centre and its importance as an indication that the ancient Arabian star-gazers originally associated the year period with circumpolar rotation. The analogy between the Arabian ideas concerning the dual principles of nature and those of other nations is also too marked to be easily overlooked.

Nor need I emphasize how strikingly the imagery of the celestial kaaba suits Polaris and the circumpolar constellations. But I shall now proceed to point out that the word kaaba itself curiously resembles star-names which are given by Mr. Robert Brown in his recent valuable publication to which I shall revert, namely, the Akkadian name for constellation in general=kakkab and the Babylonian and Assyrian name for the pole-star=Kakkabu. In this connection and upon Professor Sayce's authority I cite the significant [pg 325] fact that the word for north and for the empire and capital of northern Babylonia was Akkad, and that we thus find in North Babylonia a great centre of government the name of which contains the syllables ak-ka which recur in the appellations for north and for Polaris.

The following star-names, given by Mr. Robert Brown, are of utmost interest considering that a star in Draconis was the pole-star of 2170 B.C. and that in general the serpent was indissolubly connected with the pole-star. “The constellation Drakon is Phœnician=Kanaanite in origin and represented primarily the nâkkâsch qodmun (old serpent)=the guardian of the stars (golden apples) which hang from the pole tree. It is called the crooked serpent=nakkasch in Job xxvi:13 ...” (op. cit., p. 29). I further cite Mr. Brown's authority for the fact that in Phœnicia A.D., 1200, the name for Ursa Major was Dubkabir and for Ursa Minor, Dub.

Before returning to the Euphratean valley let us note some facts concerning the ancient religion of

PERSIA.

The swastika is found in Persia as well as a sacred mountain, the Elburl. The supreme divinity was the invisible Ahuramazda, the “creator of heaven and earth,” who was associated with “eternal light” and appears to be identical with the ancient Aryan god of light, Mithra, the watcher and ruler of the world, who was worshipped under the form of fire.

Mithra and Ahuramazda alike are associated with six spirits named the Amesha-zpenta, who are said, in the first case, to be personifications of the sun, moon, fire, earth, water and air, and in the second, of certain qualities of the supreme power, namely, law, power, goodness, piety, health and immortality, abstract conceptions which evidently pertain to a more advanced intellectual stage. The septarchy thus formed by Mithra and his Amesha appears to assign the Middle to him and to associate the sun with the day, heaven, light and the Above, the moon with the night and darkness and the Below, and the elements with the Four Quarters. It is suggestive of four-fold rule and power to find, on a bas-relief found at the ancient holy city Pasargada, the Persian king Cyrus represented with four wings and a diadem with two uræus serpents like that of Egyptian kings.

[pg 326]

The most ancient Persian monarch is said to have been Haha-manis or Akhamanis, who was termed “the king of Anshan.” Subsequent kings bore the title of Hakhamanisija, as for instance, Cyrus and Darius I (520-486 B.C.). At the present day, the title Charkan is that employed to designate the Shah, whereas goda or khoda signifies lord, master, prince or ruler.

In a bas-relief published by Spamer, whose work of reference will be referred to again later on, Darius is represented as standing under the image of Ahuramazda, the supreme deity, who, like the Assyrian god Assur, is figured as a king wearing the royal cap, and issuing from the centre of a winged ring or circlet. In Persia the god holds another ring in his hand (fig. , 1). It seems impossible to emphasize more strongly or express more clearly the idea that Ahuramazda was the lord of the circle and of the Above, the wings being emblematic of air or heaven and of motion.

The signification of the symbolical representation of the supreme power and the adoption of fire by the founders of the ancient Parsee religion as the most appropriate image of their highest god, become clear when interpreted as the outcome of pole-star worship. Resisting the temptation to prolong the study of ancient Persia, let us now hasten to the reputed cradle of the civilization of Western Asia.

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

“The Babylonians were from the first a nation of star gazers.... The cuneiform character which denotes a god is the picture of a star” (Sayce op. cit.). “The Babylonian and Assyrian-name for Ursa Minor was Kakkabu; the Hebrew, Kokhâbh; and the Euphratean, Kochab, which means, ‘the star present,’ a title which reminds us of its former supreme importance as the pole-star.... In various Babylonian tablets we meet a star-god called Imina-bi=the seven-fold one.” Although Mr. Brown has reached no definite conclusion as to the identity of this star-god, I venture to maintain that the original “seven-fold one” could have been no other than Ursa Major and that this and “the ever-present star” are identical with what the Chinese termed “the Imperial Ruler of Heaven” and the “Seven Regulators.” The following passages furnish ample evidence of the suggestive [pg 327] influence that “the seven-fold one” exerted upon the minds of the ancient Babylonian star-gazers.

“The institution of the sabbath went back to the Sumerian days of Chaldea—the name itself is Babylonian” (Sayce, op. cit.). “The seventh month (=Sept.-Oct.) in Akkadian is named Tul-ku=the holy altar.... The seventh month of Tasritutisri was also connected with the building of the tower of Babel, said to have been the special work of the ‘King of the Holy Mound,’ Sar-tuli-elli, and its erection placed in the seventh month at the autumnal equinox. It was a zikkurâtú with seven steps, a circumstance connected with planetary [? stellar] symbolism. This style of building is reduplicated in the oldest Egyptian pyramids, e. g. the pyramid of Sakkârah, which had seven steps like the Babylonian towers. This circumstance, one amongst many such, supplies a most interesting illustration of the fact that the Egyptian civilization was mainly Euphratean in origin” (Robert Brown, op. cit.).

The following facts contained in Prof. Morris Jastrow's admirable hand book on the “Religion of Babylonia and Assyria,” further establish the pervading influence of the number seven. “The two most famous zikkurats of seven stages were those in Babylon and Borsippa, opposite Babylon. The latter bears the significant name E-ur-imin-an-ki, i. e., ‘the house of seven divisions of heaven and earth.’ Two much older towers than those of Babylon and Borsippa bear names in which ‘seven’ is introduced. One of these is the zikkurat to Nin-girsu at Lagash, which Gudea describes as ‘the house of seven divisions of the world,’ the other the tower at Uruk, which bore the name ‘house of seven zones.’ The reference in both cases is, as Jensen has shown, to the seven concentric zones into which the earth was divided by the Babylonians.”

In a standard German book of reference (Spamer's Illustrierte Weltgeschichte I Theil, Alterthum, I Theil, s. 371), I find the statement that the zikkurat of the temple I-zidda at Borsippa, was called “the temple of the seven lights of heaven and earth,” which seem to have been symbolized also by the seven-branched candlestick of the Hebrews. Considering that other sacred symbols which were employed in Solomon's temple are believed by Professor Jastrow to be “imitations of Babylonian models,” it seems justifiable to endeavor to trace to the same source the origin of the Hebrew “seven-branched candlestick,” to which I shall revert later [pg 328] on. Prof. Morris Jastrow offers the suggestion that the name “seven directions of heaven and earth” may point to a conception of seven zones dividing the heavens as well as the earth, and states that the “seven divisions” and “seven zones” are merely terms equivalent to universe. He explains that the seven directions were interpreted by the Babylonian theologians as a reference to the seven great celestial bodies, the sun and moon, Ishtar, Marduk, Ninib, Nergal and Nabu. To each of these one story was supposed to be dedicated and the tower thus became a cosmological symbol. Moreover, from Herodotus' description of the seven concentric walls of Ecbatana, in which each wall was distinguished by a certain color, the conclusion has been drawn that the same colors—white, black, scarlet, blue, orange, silver and gold—were employed by the Babylonians for the stages of their towers.

Professor Jastrow draws attention to the fact that the division of the earth into seven zones is a “conception that we encounter in India and Persia, and that survives in the seven ‘climates’ into which the world was divided by Greek and Arabic geographers. It seems clear that this interpretation of the number seven is older than the one that identified each story with one of the planets. Both interpretations have a scholastic aspect, however, and the very fact that there are two interpretations justifies the suspicion that neither furnishes the real explanation why the number seven was chosen ... it is because seven was popularly sacred that the world was divided into seven zones and that the planets were fixed at seven, not vice versa” (p. 620).

The preceding statements lead to the conclusion that, among Assyriologists there is no current, generally-accepted view as to the origin of the “sacred seven” of the Babylonians. The following details concerning the zikkurat and the sanctuaries of Babylon will be found to furnish evidence that their builders were imbued with the identical primitive set of ideas or seven-fold division of the cosmos that is now so familiar to the reader and is traceable to the observation of Polaris and Septentriones.

The astronomical association and cosmological symbolism of the zikkurat become more and more evident when all evidence concerning it is carefully sifted. According to the cosmogony of the Babylonians the earth was pictured as a huge mountain. Khar-sag-gal-kurkura=the mountain of all lands, is a designation for the earth. E-kur=mountain house, another name for the earth, [pg 329] became one of the names for temple and, by extension, for the sacred precinct which enclosed the zikkurat and sacred edifices.

A plural formed of the word E-kur,=Ekurrati, was used for divinities, and this association of the word mountain with the name for a god is particularly interesting when it is also remembered that the cuneiform character for god is a star and that therefore either a mountain, or a star, signified a god in Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions. Bel, the supreme star god of the Babylonians, whose name literally signifies merely “lord or king,” and under the form Ah-baal became current throughout Asia Minor, was, as Professor Jastrow states (op. cit. p. 435), actually identified with the polar star, and sometimes addressed as the “great mountain.”

The famous temple, the E-kur of Babylonian history, is described by Herodotus, Strabo and other pagan authorities, as consisting of seven stories and being surmounted by a sanctuary which was under the charge of a virgin priestess and contained a couch (resting-place) for the god. It is amply demonstrated, moreover, that the central zikkurat was regarded as the permanent resting and dwelling place of the lord or god, par excellence, and in this connection it is significant that among the names of sanctuaries [pg 330] enumerated by Professor Jastrow there occur such as “the true or fixed house,” the house of the established seat, the sacred dwelling, the permanent dwelling, etc.

The Babylonian ideas connected with the supreme god and his temple are, moreover, sufficiently apparent in the prayers to Marduk, from which I extract the following detached passages: “Marduk, king of heaven and earth.... Look favorably upon the city, O lord of rest!... May the gods of heaven and earth speak to thee O lord of rest!... A resting-place for the lord of E-sagila is thy house, E-sagila, the house of thy sovereignty, is thy house....”

The sanctuary surmounting the zikkurat, is also termed “the high place par excellence, or the lofty house, the high edifice, the tower of the great dwelling, the great palace, the house of the glorious mountain [or god] the house of him who gives the sceptre of the world; also the house of light, the house of great splendor, the house without rival, the gate of widespread splendor, the light of Shamash, the heart of Shamash, the life of the world.”

The idea that the “mountain house” or “high place” was the consecrated centre where the union of heaven and earth took place, is apparent from the following names: “the house of heavenly construction, the heavenly house, the house reaching to heaven, the point of heaven and earth, the link of heaven and earth, the foundation stone of heaven and earth.”

“Complementing,” as Professor Jastrow says, “the cosmological associations that have been noted in connection with the zikkurat,” we find the inner room or sanctuary of the Babylonian and Assyrian temple named Papakhu, from the verb pakhu=to close. It was also known as the parakhu, from parâku=to shut off, to lock. “Gudea describes the papakhu as ‘the dark chamber.’ Professor Jastrow states that it was regarded as an imitation of a cosmical ‘sacred chamber,’ and from his book we learn that it was employed as an assembly room, or council chamber by the priesthood. It was indeed termed ‘the assembly room’ the ‘place of [pg 331] fates,’ ‘the court of the world,’ ‘the house of oracle,’ also as the ‘sacred room where the gods assembled in solemn council’ and ‘the chamber of fates’ where the chief god sits on New Year's day and decides the fate of mankind for the ensuing year” (Jastrow, op. cit. p. 423).

The Babylonian and Assyrian kings were the living representatives of the chief god and Professor Jastrow states that “it was into the papakhu that the priests retired when they desired to obtain an oracle direct from the god.... It is particularly interesting to collate the statements ‘that the New Year's day was the occasion of a symbolical marriage between a god and goddess,’ and that ‘the New Year's festival came to be the season most appropriate for approaching the oracular chamber.’ ” It thus appears that the papakhu was the sacred and secret chamber where the ancient kings and their councillors united to confer upon the government of the nation and decreed the irrevocable laws which decided the fate of individuals.

“The ‘decision of fates’ is, in Babylonian theology, one of the chief functions of the gods. It constitutes the mainspring of their power. To decide fates is to control the arrangement of the universe—to establish order.” The “tablets of fate” are repeatedly mentioned in the Assyrian epics where it is described how one god addressing another, “gives him the tablets of fate, hangs them on his breast and dismisses him,” with the words: “thy command be invincible, thy order authoritative” (Jastrow, pp. 420 and 424). It is evident that these words were supposed to convey the power to establish order and issue irrevocable laws.

The temple of Shamash (who, like Marduk, was evidently identical with Bel), situated in Babylon, was termed “the house of the universal judge,” and it is extremely interesting to find this “god” represented on a stone tablet found at Sippar, as seated on a low throne in the sanctuary or papakkhu, of the temple El-bab-bara, while in front of him on an altar rests what Professor Jastrow describes as “a wheel with radiant spokes.”

A fine illustration of this tablet which bears an inscription by the [pg 332] king Nabupaliddin (879-855 B.C.) being published in Spamer's standard work already cited, I have been able to note the interesting fact that the “wheel with radiant spokes” exhibits four pointed rays, directed outwards and forming a cruciform figure, which, by the way, it is interesting to compare with the Mexican Calendar stone and its four rays. Each of the spaces between these pointed rays is filled by a group of wavy lines which appears to simulate some fluid flowing from the centre, which is formed by a series of concentric circles. The quadruplicate peculiar partition of the disk assumes special importance when it is realized that, in the niche above the head of Shamash, a miniature production of the disk recurs between the familiar conventional images of the moon and a disk containing eight rays or spokes. According to Dr. Felix von Luschan (Mitth. aus der vorderasiat. Abth. der Kgl. Museen, Heft xi, p. 24), the inscription opens with the invocation to “ilu Sin, ilu Shamash u ilu Ishtar,” a fact of double interest, because Ishtar is termed the “twin-sister of Shamash” in an Assyrian hymn, and because the inscription obviously identifies the moon as the symbol of Sin, the four-spoked wheel as that of Shamash and the eight-spoked wheel as that of Ishtar. As the king, in his inscriptions expressly states that he has restored on the tablet the image of Shamash according to an ancient model, for the guidance of future artists, it is evident that departures from the original cult of Shamash had taken place in his time and that he was making an attempt to reëstablish it. The extreme antiquity of the cult of Shamash may, indeed, be inferred from the fact that about B.C. 1850, the king, Shamsi-ramann, bore the god's name as a divine title. About B.C. 1350, moreover, a temple was built to Shamash in Ashur.

I shall treat, further on, of the evidences showing that the cult of Polaris gradually became a secret one known to the initiated only, while popular worship was directed to the sun, moon, and morning and evening stars, etc. Meanwhile the following passages from Professor Jastrow's hand-book will elucidate the Babylonian Assyrian cult of the Four Quarters.

“The zikkurat was quadrangular in shape. The orientation of the four corners towards the four cardinal points was approximate. Inasmuch as the rulers of Babylon from a very early period call themselves ‘king of the four regions,’ it has been supposed that [pg 333] the quadrangular shape was chosen designedly.”... “The title ‘king of the four regions’ was an old one that pertained to the kings of Agade.... The city of Arbela, at one time the seat of the cult of Ishtar, was named ‘the four-god city.’ ” This name is particularly interesting when it is remembered that the Babylonian and Assyrian word for god and mountain was identical and that this identity may account for the Chinese employment of the term “four mountains,” to express also the four provinces and their chiefs. Professor Jastrow informs us, in a note, that the name Arbela is, more precisely, Arba-ilu, signifying “city of the four-fold divinity” or “four-god” city and invites comparison to the Palestinian form Kiryath-arba, “four-city.” He suggests that this name may perhaps likewise signify a city of four gods, but adds that it has commonly been explained as meaning four roads or four quarters (op. cit. 203).

The ancient pagan authorities inform us that the ancient city of Babylon was laid out in the form of a perfect square, the sides of which were oriented to the cardinal points. A massive wall enclosed the entire city and the river Euphrates divided it into halves, united by a bridge, each half being again subdivided by the main street leading to the bridge. A series of streets ran parallel to the river through the city and were crossed at right angles by others, the result being that 625 blocks or squares of building were thus formed.

There is positive evidence that the capital city of Lagash or Shir-pur-la was divided into four sections, the separate names of which were Girsu, Uru-alaga, Ninâ and Gish-Galla or Erim, the reading of the latter name being doubtful. The circumstance that each of these quarters had its “divinity” and was ruled by its earthly representative, explains the term “four-god city” or “four city” found associated with other capitals of Babylonia.

The existence of a central ruler who exercised supreme authority over the four quarters of the capital, and by extension over the “four provinces” is amply proven by the title of the Babylonian kings, i. e., the “king of the four regions.” An interesting oracle, addressed to king Esar-Haddon is found to contain the statement that “Ashur has given him the four ends of the earth” (Jastrow, op. cit. 345).

Evidence that while the capital and entire state consisted of four quarters, the whole was also divided theoretically and practically [pg 334] into halves, is furnished by the significant fact that, from remote antiquity, the rulers of Babylonia also bore the title of “lord of Akkad and Sumer”=North and South, this term being, like that of “Four Regions,” a general designation for the whole of Babylonia and the first being obviously analogous to the Egyptian royal title: “King of upper and lower Egypt.”

I can but briefly indicate here some facts which prove that this ancient Babylonian centre of civilization underwent precisely the same evolution as that I have traced in America and India.

Assyriologists agree in stating that, at the beginning of Babylonian history, about 4,000 B.C., Akkad and Sumer, or North and South Babylonia, already existed and were inhabited by two distinct races of people: the non-Semitic Sumerians and the Semitic Akkadians or later Babylonians. In later times we find the region embraced by the Euphrates and Tigris inhabited by descendants of both races and forming the Babylonian empire in the south, the Assyrian empire to the northeast, while in the northwestern part of Mesopotamia, was the seat of various empires that were alternately the rivals and subjects of either Babylonia or Assyria (Jastrow, op. cit. 26).

Three distinct and rival cults are indeed found associated with these three centres of government, and when examined by the light of our knowledge of a parallel process of evolution elsewhere, their origin can be traced back to elementary pole-star heaven and earth worship, and what is termed the establishment of the districts of Anu, Bel and Ea. That at one period these separate cults peacefully existed alongside of each other is indicated by the joint worship of pairs and triads of divinities who were personifications of central powers, of the upper and of the lower regions. In order to demonstrate this statement I shall briefly cite some references to such divinities from Professor Jastrow's hand-book, taking them in the order in which they are enumerated in the famous Babylonian version of the creation of the world, contained in the fragment known as the “Creation epic” which begins thus:

“There was a time where Above, the heaven, was not named. Below, the earth, bore no name. Apsu was there from the first, the source of both (i. e., heaven and earth). And raging Tiamat, the mother of both (i. e., heaven and earth).” Apsu and Tiamat are synonymous and are personifications of the watery deep or abyss. “Apsu represents the male and Tiamat the female principle of the [pg 335] primæval universe ... the embrace of Apsu and Tiamat became a symbol of ‘sexual’ union.”

Tiamat was popularly pictured as a huge serpent-like monster, a fact of utmost interest when connected with the name Nakkash, i. e., crooked serpent, bestowed upon the constellation Draconis which contained the pole-star of 2170 B.C. Abstaining from comment I merely establish here the interesting point that in ancient Babylonia the serpent is found distinctly associated with Polaris as well as with the dual creative principle. The divine pairs Lakhmu and Lakhamu and Anshar and Kishar were then created. By an arbitrary division of his name into An and shar, the deity becomes the “one that embraces all that is above.” The element An is the same that we have in Anu and is the ideographic form for “high” and “heaven.” Ki is the ideographic form for earth and the natural consort to an all-embracing upper power is a power that “embraces all that is below.”

It is interesting thus to ascertain that on another tablet by the side of these personifications of heaven and earth are enumerated a series of names which certainly appear to be merely variations on the names or titles of the divine pairs. Lakhumu and Lakhamu occur on the list, and Anshar and Kishar recur as Anshar-gal, “great totality of what is on high,” and Kishar-gal, “great totality of what is below.” Then there are En-shar and Nin-shar, “lord and mistress” and a “Father-Mother of Anu,” titles which furnish an interesting comparison with the list printed on page 42 of this investigation.

Pagan authorities, cited by Professor Jastrow, relate that the first result of the union of Apsu and Tiamat was the production of “strange monsters, human beings with wings, beings with two heads, male and female, hybrid formations, half man, half animal, with horns of rams and horses' hoofs, bulls with human faces, dogs with four-fold bodies ending in fish tails.” Seen in the light of the present investigation these accounts and the sculptured images of such monstrosities, many of which have been preserved to the present day, may be accounted for in a very simple and natural manner. It is obvious that, once the Babylonian theologians had definitely adopted the theory and creed that the universe had been created by the union of the Above and Below, Male and Female principle, Heaven and Earth, or Upper and Lower Firmament, the production of allegorical images personifying or symbolizing this [pg 336] union would inevitably follow in course of time. The somewhat naïve but expressive combination of the form of a quadruped or serpent with that of a bird, and the adoption of winged bulls, lions and serpents, would have seemed a most appropriate rendering of the current idea of the dual, creative power, which might also be conveyed by two heads, or two horns. From Professor Jastrow's description of the case of a single monster, with four bodies and with attributes of the elements earth and water, we learn that not only the union of heaven and earth but also of earth and water was at times the task imposed upon the native artists by the fancy and imagination of minds dwelling upon the subject of the creative first cause. Postponing further discussion of the Babylonian and Assyrian symbolism of the Middle, Above and Below and Four Quarters or the “seven directions of Heaven and Earth,” I shall now direct attention to the most famous triad of Babylonian cosmology which figures at the end of the Creation epic. It consisted of Anu, Ea and Bel and obviously personified the Above and Below and the link or central meeting place of these, the earth named Esharra, “the house of fertility” or E-kur “the mountain house.” We learn from Professor Jastrow's handbook that whereas Bel=the polar star (the secret god) and Nibir=the planet Jupiter (the later popular personification of Bel) were associated with the North, Ea was identified with the South (p. 435). Elsewhere we are told that Anu was identified with the North, Bel with the equator and Ea with the South (p. 460), a fact to which I shall again recur in treating of the territorial divisions of the state, which corresponded to the three divisions of the universe, the Above, Middle and Below.

The following detached statements concerning Babylonian divinities drawn from Professor Jastrow's handbook, show with what activity the fundamental set of ideas was developed by the native theologians and philosophers. Bel-arduk became the chief god of Babylon, the title “Belu-rabu” i. e., “great lord,” becoming identified with Marduk. As such he is termed “the king of heaven and earth” and the “lord of the four regions.” His dwelling was on the sacred “mountain-house,” the zikkurat, and is represented “with a crown with high horns, a symbol of dual rulership. [pg 337] As the supreme ruler, life and death are in his hands and he guides the decrees of the deities of the Above and Below.” “The first part of the name Marduk is also used to designate the ‘young bullock,’ and it is possible that the god was pictured in this way.” It should be remembered here, however, that on page 89 Professor Jastrow tells us how Nannar=the one who furnishes light=the moon, was invoked as “the powerful bull of Anu,” i. e., heaven. In this connection it is interesting to learn that in Canaan, Astarte, the goddess of night, was also worshipped under the form of a cow, and that in Phœnicia she was sometimes figured with horns, symbolizing the moon. In Assyria, four horns, denoting four-fold rulership, usually encircle the high conical cap of sovereignty, which also crowns the human heads of the winged bulls. It may be permissible to point out here what an appropriate and expressive embodiment of symbolism the winged bull appears to be; the form of the quadruped, combined with wings, clearly symbolizes a union of the Above and Below; the control over both being expressed by the human head which completes the allegorical figure. The high cap, with which the head was crowned, exhibits the form of a mound, and combined or partly encircled by two or sometimes four horns, obviously symbolizes dual or quadruple rulership. It thus appears evident that the winged bull of Assyria expressed, almost as clearly as the seven-staged towers of Babylon, the “seven directions of heaven and earth,” and was as appropriate an allegorical image of Assur the god, as of Assur the state, and of the royal power which conferred upon the supreme lords of Babylonia and Assyria the titles: “lord of the holy mound,” “lord of Akkad and Sumer,” and “lord of the four regions.”

The idea that some of the Assyrian kings actually embodied seven-fold power, or ruled the “seven divisions,” is further conveyed by curious groups of seven symbols, accompanied by the numeral seven, expressed by seven dots, which occur above their portraits on tablets which will be described further on. Whilst analyzing the royal titles and insignia represented on the stelæ of Assyrian kings, I shall likewise show how these complete the foregoing evidence and indicate that in Babylonia and Assyria, the seven-fold division was applied not only to the Cosmos, but to the territory of the State, to its social organization, to its calendar; and that the seven-storied zikkurat, the winged bulls, etc., and indeed, [pg 338] the seven-branched candlestick, were apparently designed as expressive of the general seven-fold scheme of organization.

Let us now examine some data which shed light upon the various and curious phases of evolution undergone by the growing and diverging cults of Heaven and Earth in Babylonia and Assyria. Going back to the dawn of astronomy in Babylonia let us note some facts which show that, as elsewhere, in remotest antiquity the periodical disappearance and reappearance of the Pleiades produced a deep impression upon the primitive star-gazers. These phenomena marked natural divisions of the year and the constellation appeared to belong alternately to the visible or upper world and to the invisible or lower region. A recognition that the Pleaid was the constellation at that remote period when Taurus led the year, may be established by the common Euphratean name by which it is said to have been designated: Kakkab-mul=the constellation or star. The Akkadian and Assyrian names which had probably also originally designated Polaris signified that it and the Hyades were the foundation stars or constellations. In the Ptolemy star charts, the Pleiades are designated by the name Ki mah (see Robert Brown, op. cit. p. 57). While it appears that whereas the Pleiades long exerted its influence and, with Polaris and the circumpolar constellations, regulated and marked the primitive year, its cult was gradually superseded by that of morning and evening stars and of the sun and moon which became the emblems of the rapidly developing divergent cults of the diurnal and nocturnal heavens, of light and darkness, of the Above and Below.

[pg 339]

In connection with the cult of the Pleiades I draw attention to R. G. Haliburton's interesting investigations on this particular subject, and to his publication in the Proceedings of the A. A. A. S. 1895, on “Dwarf survivals and traditions as to pigmy races,” which contains the following statements: “We find that the Atlas dwarfs and the Nanos predict the future by watching the reflection of the ‘Seven Stars’ in a bowl. The famous cup of Nestor, supposed to have been a divining cup, had two groups of Pleiades on its handle....” On examining the archaic designs engraved in the centre of the fine collection of Phœnician and Assyrian bronze bowls, which were found in the S. E. Palace, Nimroud, and are exhibited at the British Museum, I recently ascertained that they appear to be mostly variations on the theme of the centre and four or seven-fold division, some exhibiting a marked quadruplicate division, others a seven-pointed star surrounded by seven smaller stars. In one case a face is repeated four times, in opposite positions, on the central design which is surrounded by four large and four lesser conventionally drawn mountains. The head-dress with lappets which encloses each face recalls the familiar Egyptian form, and on two bowls images of scarabs are engraved. On one of these the beetle is drawn in such a way that its four legs, two of which turn upwards and two downwards, suggest the form of a swastika.

The peculiarities of these designs and the knowledge that star-worship prevailed in Assyria and Phœnicia suggest the inference that the Nimroud Palace bowls were employed for the observation of the positions of certain stars which marked the seasons and regulated the calendar, by means of which the priest-kings controlled the working of the system of state. Doubtlessly the constellations originally and principally observed besides Polaris were the three great “seven-fold ones,” i. e. the Ursa Major which marked the Four Quarters; the Pleiades which pertained to the Above and Below and marked the division of the year into halves, and Orion which also may well have appeared to be a composite image of the sacred, equal Four, and the central triad composed of the Above, Middle and Below.

It is interesting to note that in the Euphratean and other myths the antagonism between sun and moon, etc., coincides with traditions of actual warfare between their earthly representatives and that it is the record of a combat between the followers of light and of [pg 340] darkness that seems to have been thus preserved. The Babylonian Creation epic teaches us that, in remotest antiquity, the association of light and life with the male, and darkness and death with the female principle had become current. A mighty war takes place between the female serpent Tiamat, associated with evil, and the male god Marduk, the champion of the gods of the upper realm, which ends in her overthrow. It was then that Marduk “established the districts or cities of Anu, Bel and Ea,” identified with the North, Middle and South. It is remarkable that this mythical establishment of three cities exactly coincides with the conclusions reached by recent investigators as to the existence during centuries, of three rival states, i. e. Babylonia in the south and Assyria in the northeast, who, during centuries, were in continual warfare with each other and with a third disintegrated power inhabiting the northwest which was alternately rival or vassal. This condition of affairs, and the facts enumerated in Professor Jastrow's handbook, chapter II, are precisely what would naturally develop from the formation and adoption of three distinct cults and their ultimate separate establishment in as many centres of government. The following data will suffice to reveal some of the curious results obtained by the logical working out of certain associations of ideas and these results are the more interesting and intelligible because they are analogous to those I have traced elsewhere.

One point deserves special note: directly opposite views, not only as to the relative supremacy of the Middle, Above and Below, but also as to the relation of the sexes to the upper and lower worlds, seem to have been held at different times and in different places; and this particular division of opinion appears to have given rise to endless dissension, strife and warfare, to the separation of sectarians from the main state and the foundation of numberless minor centres of government on the old plan, but with fresh forms of cult embodying a new artificial combination of ideas.

The shifting of supremacy from one “god” to another explains moreover the transference of the title “Bel”=Lord, or Chief of Gods, from the personification of one region to another. “In remotest antiquity we find En-lil designated as the ‘lord of the lower world’ and bearing the title Bel. En-lil represents the unification of the various forces whose seat or sphere of action is among the inhabited parts of the globe, both on the surface and [pg 341] beneath, for the term ‘lower world’ is here used in contrast to the upper or heavenly world.... As ‘lord of the lower world,’ En-lil is contrasted to a god, Anu, who presides over heavenly bodies. The age of Sargon (3800 B.C.), in whose inscriptions En-lil already occurs, is one of considerable culture and there can, therefore, be no objection against the assumption that at this early period a theological system should have been evolved which gave rise to beliefs in great powers whose dominion embraces the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ worlds” (Jastrow, op. cit. pp. 52-55).

A consort, Nin-lil, a “mistress of the lower world,” was assigned to En-lil and was known also as Belit, the feminine form of Bel, i. e. the lady par excellence. She too had her temple at Nippur, the age of which goes back, at least, to the first dynasty of Ur. She was also known as Nin-khar-sag, the “lady of the high or great mountain,” as the “mother of the gods.” The assignment by Sargon, of the northern gates of his palace to Bel, who lays foundations, and Belit, who brings fertility, affords evidence that the goddess was the feminine form of Polaris. In Assyria, Belit appears, either as the wife of Bel, as the consort of Ashur, as the consort of Ea, or simply as a designation for Ishtar, i. e. “the goddess,” the “mistress of countries, or of mountains,” in which connection it is interesting to note that the ideographs for country and mountain are identical in Assyrian.

If the attributes of the goddesses of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon be carefully examined, they will be found to associate the female principle with fertility, abundance and with water, the source of plant life. Two divergent views appear to have influenced the artificial formation of personifications of the female principle in nature. According to one the goddess is termed the “lady of the deep, the mistress of the place where the fish dwell” (Sarpanitam-erua) and in other cases is linked to the lower firmament to subterraneous regions, to darkness, death, destructiveness and hence to evil, thus representing the complement to the male personification of the upper realm of daylight and the preservative and beneficent life-giving principles. The other tendency, which almost appears as a reaction or protest against the previous view, led to the ultimate adoption of an ideal goddess of the nocturnal heaven, who was “bountiful, offspring-producing, silvery bright” and was in one instance addressed as “the lady of shining waters,” of “purification” and of “incantations.” In the period of Hammurabi, [pg 342] devotion went so far as to cause the goddess Gula, termed the “bride of the earth,” to be invoked as the “creator of mankind,” the “great physician” and “life-giver” and “the one who leads the dead to a new life” (Jastrow, op. cit. p. 175).

As an interesting outcome of an adjustment of both trains of thought stands Ishtar-Belit=the lady par excellence and consequently, the feminine personification of Polaris, the supreme goddess whom Tiglath-pileser termed “the first among the gods.” She is the mild and gracious mother of creation, “loves the king and his priesthood,” but is also the mighty commanding goddess of war who clothes herself in fiery flame, appears as a violent destroyer and sends down streams of fire upon her enemies. “The distinguishing position of both the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar is her independent position. Though at times brought into close contact with Ashur she is not regarded as the mere consort to any god—no mere reflection of a male deity, but ruling in her own right on a perfect par with the great gods of the pantheon. She is coequal in rank and splendor with Ashur. Her name becomes synonymous for goddess as Marduk becomes the synonym for god. The female deities, both foreign and native, came to be regarded as so many forms of Ishtar.”

A curious fact connected with Ishtar, which proves that she had developed from an original divinity, conceived as dual or bi-sexual, is that among Semites Ishtar appears both as a male and female deity. This seems to show that at a certain stage of thought Ishtar was also a centralization of attributes, a fact which undoubtedly explains the supreme position accorded to this divinity at one time as the feminine form of Polaris. The most striking illustration of this supremacy is furnished by the famous bas-relief figured by Layard (“Ninive and its remains” i, 238), which represents Ishtar, the mother-goddess, the female form of Assur, as seated on a throne which is borne on the back of a lion in the procession formed by the seven chief divinities of the Assyrian pantheon, six of whom are figured as bearded men standing on different animals. On the fine stela of Esarhaddon, discovered by Dr. von Luschan at Sendschirli, the goddess, accompanied in this case by three standing gods, is likewise represented as seated on a throne holding a large ring or circle in her left hand.

The fact that the “All-mother, the female creator of mankind,” is represented as the only occupant of the throne, reveals a distinct [pg 343] phase in the evolution of the Babylonian state religion, which curiously concurs with the supremacy of female sovereignty at Babylon, at the period of its greatest power under Semiramis. It may be safely assumed that it was at this time, when the queen represented the goddess, that the cult of the female principle of nature reached its highest development.

At Nippur the clay images chiefly represent Bel and Belit either separately or in combination, but figurines of Ishtar have also been found, in some cases representing her as nursing a child (Jastrow, op. cit. p. 674). It is probable that the symbols of duality connected with Ishtar had some reference to the mystic unity and duality of the mother and unborn child, and suggested the installation of the goddess as the most appropriate personification of creative and life-giving central power.

It is as interesting to follow the complex train of thought which created an Ishtar as it is to realize that curious fact that, contrary to views held elsewhere, it was the male principle that was at one time most distinctly associated with earth in Babylonia-Assyria, while femininity was linked to the nocturnal heaven. It is probable that priesthood encouraged the popular adoption of Bel, the masculine Polaris, as an earth, sun and morning-star god, while his consort Belit became a heaven, moon and evening-star goddess. Doubtlessly at an early period the cult of Polaris and the registration of circumpolar rotation was guarded in secrecy by the astronomer-priests. Tempting as it is to linger among the gods and goddesses of the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon and to follow the spread of their influence, I shall limit myself to pointing out the change of [pg 344] government that accompanied the development and establishment of various divergent cults.

Indications that, as in China at the present day, a combined heaven and earth cult was practised in Babylonia-Assyria by male and female representatives of heaven and earth, are furnished by various detached pieces of information gleaned from Professor Jastrow's work. The priest-king was the “child” of Bel, and his living representative. As such he bore the divine titles of supreme lord, ruled the four regions of the earth, and became the representative of earth. Pagan authorities state that a virgin priestess officiated at times in the sanctuary of Bel and that there were three classes of priestesses devoted to the cult of Ishtar. They were called “the sacred ones” and carried out a mysterious ritual which had, however, originated “from naïve conceptions connected with the worship of the goddess of fertility.”

The use of sacred water and of fermented intoxicating wine entered into the cult of the life-giving principle and Babylonia ultimately becomes associated with “Mystery” and “the golden cup full of abominations” (Revelations xvii). Large terra cotta vases or jars have been found at Nippur and elsewhere, standing in front of the altar, and “the depth at which they were found is an indication of the antiquity and stability of the forms of worship in Babylonian temples. It may be proper to recall that, in the Solomonic temple likewise, there were a series of jars that stood near the great altar in the court” (Jastrow, p. 653). One of the oldest sacred basins found in the ruins of a Babylonian temple “has a frieze of female figures in it, holding in their outstretched hands flagons from which they pour water,” a fact which establishes the ritualistic association of female priestesses with water.

The later association of Ishtar with the moon and with the evening star, “the leader of the heavenly procession of stars,” naturally exerted an influence over the ceremonial rites performed by the high priestess or queen, the living image of the goddess. “Mythological associations appear to have played a part in identifying the planet Venus with the goddess.... A widely spread nature myth, symbolizing the change of seasons, represents Ishtar the personification of fertility, the great mother of all that manifests life, as proceeding to the region of darkness and remaining there for some time. The disappearance of the planet Venus at [pg 345] certain seasons ... [and re-appearance] ... suggested the identification of this planet with Ishtar.” The foregoing affords an explanation why Ishtar should have become identified with the west and also naturally suggests the probability that the cult of Ishtar gradually imposed upon its priestesses and its votaries of the female sex, the ceremonial observance of periods of retirement and seclusion, coinciding with the disappearance of the moon and evening star.

A critical examination of the accounts preserved of the Phœnician or Canaanite religion reveals that it consisted of an idealistic development of the Ishtar cult of Assyria. The fact that, ultimately, in Phœnicia, the cult of the female Astarte almost superseded that of the male Baal and that their joint cult, introduced into Palestine, seriously rivalled the monotheism of the Israelites, furnishes another indication that we have to deal here with the same marked divergence of cults which we have seen to result from a common basis in ancient America. In studying the Phœnician conception of Astarte as recorded by various authors, one is struck by its comparative refinement and ideality although, as in ancient America, the cult of the female principle of nature was also accompanied by secret licentious ceremonials.

In the Astarte cult of Phœnicia we have precisely what might be expected to have been evolved by the descendants of an ancient race of star-watchers who, powerfully impressed by the antithesis of light and darkness and having become a nation of traders and seafarers, naturally adopted the nocturnal heaven and guiding stars as their chief object of worship. It does not seem improbable that it was to the less degrading association of the female principle with the nocturnal heaven that woman owed, in lapse of time, the higher position she was accorded in the countries directly influenced by the Phœnician civilization, and notably in Greece and Rome.

[pg 346]

In Phœnicia, Astarte-Ishtar became the goddess of love and marriage. In Babylonia-Assyria the high-priestess, the living representative of the goddess, who, like the planet-goddess, periodically retired into darkness and seclusion and led a shadowy existence, appears to have originally shared equal honors with the “lord of earth” and to have delivered oracular utterances in subterraneous chambers. Throughout Babylonia, New Year's Day, which coincided with the beginning of the rainy season, was the occasion of “the marriage of the god and the goddess” par excellence, a rite which symbolized the “meeting of Heaven and Earth.” Circumstantial evidence seems to prove, moreover, that, as in Peru, the annual consecrated union of the male and female personification of heaven and earth was followed by the marriage of young persons throughout the land, a custom which furnishes another indication of the original existence of an annual mating season for the human race. As it was at this period also that the priesthood approached the papakhu, the inner sanctuary, also termed the “assembly-room,” “chamber of the oracle” and “of fates,” and transmitted to the people the irrevocable decrees of Marduk, it seems as though these ancient rulers practised a similar “abundance of lying and deceit for the advantage of the governed” as that advocated by Plato in his Republic; exerted a stern control over the alliances formed and the number of marriages celebrated and endeavored to make these, as far as possible, sacred. The mere record that the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal claims to be the offspring of a pair of divinities personifying heaven and earth, appears to show that he was the offspring of the sacred divine union of the high priest and priestess, i. e. of divine birth. It is interesting to collate a few disconnected facts which appear to illustrate the natural and inevitable result of the institution of two cults ruled by separate representatives.

Sin-Gashid, of the dynasty of Uruk, mentions a temple built for the god and his consort, as “the seat of their joy.” At Babylon, the “mother of great gods” dwelt within the precincts of the temple on the east side of the Euphrates known as Esagila, “the lofty house.” When the city of Babylon extended as far as to include Borsippa, the temple known as Ezida, “the true house,” was built for Marduk=Bel. At Lagash the temple of the “good lady” and mother stood in one quarter known as the “brilliant [pg 347] town” while the temple of her consort stood in the other of the two most ancient quarters of the town. The above facts acquire double significance when collated with the well-known fact that the palace of Semiramis, the great queen of Babylon, was built on the west bank of the Euphrates, opposite to the ancient palace of the king. A bridge united these royal residences which were otherwise separated by the river.

Under Semiramis, Babylonia was a nation under a single female ruler and this usurpation of power by a woman, accompanied as it was by the predominance of the originally naïve cult which had unconsciously fostered and ministered to perversion and depravity, preceded the decadence, disintegration and ultimate downfall of the empire. Many centuries previous, the instalment of a female sovereign preceded the ruin of another empire in what we may assume to have been precisely the same way.

Professor Sayce informs us that, “about 3800 B.C., in northern Babylonia and in the city of Agadê or Akkad, arose the empire of Sargani-sarali=Sargon, and that Sargon's son, Naram-Sin, succeeded him in 3750 B.C. and continued the conquests of his grandfather.... Naram-Sin's son was Bingam-sar-ali. A queen, Ellat-gula, seems to have sat upon the throne not much later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end. At any rate the empire of Akkad is heard of no more. But it left behind it a profound impression in western Asia, whose art and culture became Babylonian” (op. cit.).

The process of disintegration, which caused the Babylonian empire to crumble away, was doubtlessly hastened by its division into four regions, each of which in latter times possessed its capital and became the centre of various independent forms of rival cults. During many centuries Babylonia was closely associated with the cult of Marduk-Bel, the “lord of rest;” while Shamash, another form of the central supreme lord, was the deity of Larsa and Sippar.

At one time Ur became the headquarters for the cult of the moon-god Sin or Nannar. As, according to Babylonian notions, the sun does not properly belong to the heavens and plays an insignificant part in the calendrical system in comparison with the moon, sun-worship proper does not seem to have existed in Babylonia. At the same time it would seem as though when the “primitive sun”=Polaris became the hidden, secret god of the priest-astronomers, [pg 348] who determined the seasons by Ursa Major, the populace was taught to regard Bel as the personification of the diurnal sun and of the herald of day, the morning star.

When it is borne in mind how, as the empire spread, new cities were founded on the plan of the metropolis, that each of these must therefore have been, in turn, governed by a pair of minor rulers, and had its own minor zikkurat, we can understand the various indications that exist showing how the ancient sacred capital of the state became the place of reunion for the minor “gods,” who assembled there annually in the main sanctuary, and the fact that each minor chief necessarily required his dwelling place and tribal council-chamber, would account for the “references to zikkurats ... or special sanctuaries of some kind, which were erected within the sacred precinct of the main capital ...” (Jastrow, p. 637).

When it is realized that each zikkurat was an artificial “mountain” the description of Babylon in Revelations xviii becomes clearly intelligible and is seen to apply to the seven-fold organization of the ancient empire which had become the centre of the debasing earth-worship ultimately identified with a female goddess. “And the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.... I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast ... having seven heads.... The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth ... and there are seven kings”....

Future investigation will doubtlessly furnish us with exact knowledge concerning the original relation of the governors of the “four regions” to the central ruler and of the “seven divisions” of the state to each other. It would be desirable to establish whether each territorial division and tribe bore the name of its tribal ancestor and whether these names agree with those of the seven chief “gods” of the pantheon, each of whom is associated with a celestial body, a day of the seven-day period and, as shown in the bas-relief already cited, with a different animal. I am strongly tempted to see in the latter traces of tribal totems and to connect the days of the week with the seven divisions of the population and some established form of rotation, employed for the government of the state, analogous to that I have found out in Ancient Mexico. With regard to the regulation of the calendar by certain officials, the following facts are important: Professor Sayce tells us that, [pg 349] “in Assyria, the high-priest was the equal of the king and the king himself was a priest and the adopted child of Bel.” Under him were a number of grades of officials and officers. The land was divided into provinces whose “governors were selected from the highest aristocracy and who alone had the privilege of sharing with the king the office of limmu or eponymous archon after whom the year was named.” This office, which finds its analogy in China and Central America, is more clearly explained in the following passage: “The Assyrians were endowed with a keen sense of history and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called limmi, who gave their names to the year” (Sayce, op. cit. p. 255).

Venturing to make a general statement, as a suggestion for future investigation, I should say that the ultimate result of the institution of two cults which were bound to grow in opposite directions, was the fall of the Babylonian empire under the degrading growth of perversion and depravity, linked to the cult of earth and night and bi-sexuality, and the rise of the Assyrian empire with a cult in which the ideas of light and darkness, night and day preponderated over those of sex. It may possibly have been as a reaction and protest against the prevailing rites of Babylonia that influenced the Assyrians in their adoption of two male rulers, the high-priest and the king. On the other hand, there are indications showing that possibly, in order to evade the ceremonial obligations of their position as the representative of the principle of fertility, several “goddesses” or female rulers of Babylonia transferred their seat of government, or placed the reins of government into the hands of a king. Thus Hammurabi tells us that he has restored the temple of the “lady” or “great lady” of Hallabi, a town near Sippar and that she had conferred upon him supreme authority over the Babylonian states, then engaged in fighting with each other. It is obvious that, as soon as concealment and mystery increasingly surrounded the cult of the female principle, and warfare became habitual, the power and rôle of the female ruler must have become more and more “shadowy” and finally dwindled to the utterance of sacred oracles in dark concealed places of retirement and safety. Ultimately the cult of Ishtar appears to have become absolutely secret and hidden and shrouded in mystery and darkness. Its priestesses became the most famous oracle-givers of Assyria who imparted “divine knowledge concealed from men.” In the eighth century B.C., Arbela became the centre of the cult of Ishtar and “developed [pg 350] a special school of theology marked by the attempt to accord a superior position to the goddess. In a series of eight oracles addressed to Esarhaddon six are given forth by women” (Jastrow, p. 342).

Inevitable as was the disintegration of the original state and religion, continual efforts appear to have been made even in Babylonia itself, to check the growth of a debasing ritual and the constant increase of the gods and goddesses which were installed as the rulers of each new town that was founded on the plan of the metropolis. Professor Jastrow tells us that “whenever the kings in their inscriptions mention the regular sacrifices, it is in almost all cases with reference to their re-institution of an old custom that had been allowed to fall into neglect (owing to the political disturbances which always affected the temples) and not as an innovation” ... (op. cit. p. 667). The tablet of Sippara, on which the image of Shamash is restored by the king on an ancient model, has already been described and on it appears the four-spoked wheel, the expressive symbol of a “primitive Sun.” The primeval conception of a single, stable, changeless and central celestial power was evidently adhered to in ancient Babylonia by a small but faithful minority, and the constant growth of debasing practices and the manufacture of symbolical images to which reverence was paid and which were ultimately worshipped, awakened its constant disapproval and abhorrence. At a remote period we find the adherents to a stern monotheism establishing the Babylonian province of

CANAAN.

The following account of the Hebrew religion, translated from Spamer's work (p. 297) already cited, will be found instructive:

“Originally there was no difference between the religion of the Hebrews and that of the neighboring tribes. The lord=Baal of Moab was named Kamosh, that of the Hebrews Yahwe. Yahwe was the national god, above all the god of battle.... Altars made of earth or unhewn stone were erected for him on mountains, hills or under green trees; next to the altar stood either a stone column (Masseba) or a sacred tree (Ashera). In the temple the image of Yahwe represented him in human form or, as in Dan or Bethel, in that of a bull. Next to Yahwe were other gods: first, Baal, the supreme lord of the world, who had a special temple in Jerusalem; secondly, Astarte, to whom Solomon built an altar near Jerusalem.

[pg 351]

“Solomon had also built altars to Kamosh, the god of the Moabites, to Milkom, the god of the Ammonites and in his temple other gods beside Yahwe were worshipped; amongst them a demi-god and a serpent of brass (Neshushtan) which was abolished later on by Hiskia. All of these gods, who were also worshipped by the neighbors of the enemies of Israel, became secondary to the tribal god to whom Israel owed its greatness.

“Yahwe becomes the first and mightiest, and is identified with El, the supreme god of the Semites, whose individuality is vague. On the other hand ‘the Baal,’ the principal god of all neighboring people, especially of the Phœnicians, possesses a marked individuality which excludes his identification with other gods. He is worshipped in separate centres of cult and becomes the rival of Yahwe....” The rivalry and the struggle for religious and political supremacy between the priests, prophets and followers of Yahwe, the god of heaven, and Baal, the lord of earth, culminated in about B.C. 837, when the temple of the latter was destroyed and his priesthood killed.

“It was not until about 750 B.C., however, that the national god Yahwe became the acknowledged sole god of the universe next to whom all other gods were as mere phantoms.... A remarkable transformation took place about this time in the conception of a divinity and of morality; the moral precepts of religion were developed and clearly formulated and the ten commandments promulgated. As time progressed the voices of prophets and priesthood became more and more loud in condemnation of the use of idols and symbols of divinity. Hosea especially denounced the cult of Yahwe under the form of a bull; Jeremias went so far as to disapprove of the holy ark itself which stood in the temple of Jerusalem.

“Later on, when, about B.C. 621, one of the most important events in the history of mankind had taken place and the book of the law, the Sepher Hathora, was discovered by the high priest in the temple of Jerusalem, during its restoration, the Hebrew religion was reformed, reorganized and reëstablished on lines which favored the development of more refined and elevated religious teachings. All idols and symbols were abolished. Naught could destroy, however, the deeply rooted idea that it was in Jerusalem alone, or Mount Sion, that Yahwe was to be worshipped. This [pg 352] was the chosen site to which offerings and tithes were to be carried. As the chosen people of Yahwe, Israel was also to be a holy nation which was to distinguish itself by its superior religion and morality and, in order to do so, was to keep itself rigidly apart and aloof from other people.

“Thus this little nation cultivated and perfected the religious capabilities of the human race and laid the foundation for Christianity and the Islam.”

Jerusalem, the ancient capital, occupied almost the centre of Canaan and was founded on Mount Zion, the highest elevation in the district. From time immemorial Jerusalem has indeed contained a spot reputed to mark the centre of the world and a sacred stone is also venerated there to this day and is now associated, in a curious way, with the biblical account of Jacob's dream of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven.

It was obviously as a result of their deeply ingrained ideal of central power that the Israelites who migrated from Ur, the seat of moon-worship, and wandered into Palestine, engaged in a long struggle which ended in their successful capture, in 1050 B.C., of Jerusalem, the sacred city, situated in the centre of the land. The importance of this conquest to the Israelites can only be rightly estimated when it is realized that, during countless centuries, this single branch of the Semitic race had adhered to the cult of the central, changeless, ever-present and light-giving guiding star, and gradually developed the higher conception of an invisible, omnipotent and omniscient God. It will be seen that, while other branches of their race gradually developed separate cults of the dual principles of nature, they had remained faithful to the primeval recognition of a single pole-star and, rising to a loftier conception, constituted themselves the champions of a pure monotheism, disconnected from the cult of heaven and earth or sun and moon which, associated with dual reproductive principles, justly became the horror and abomination of the Israelites. It is interesting to recall the fact that, about 908 B.C., Jezebel, the wife of Ahab and daughter of the king of Tyre, set up the cult of the dual principles of nature in Israel and, destroying the priests and prophets of Jehovah, built a temple to Baal and Astarte and appointed 450 priests and 500 prophets to the respective service of these divinities. This historical incident furnishes a striking instance of the united cult of [pg 353] the Above and Below in direct antagonism to that of the Centre which had already developed into a definite and pure monotheism.

ASSYRIA.

A study of the Assyrian symbols of royalty, which I recently had an opportunity of making at the British Museum, has led me to the conclusion that, in Assyria, during many centuries, a perfect equilibrium was maintained throughout the state which, by a strict coördination of all its parts, represented a harmonious entity.

An observation I have made, which may be worth noting, is that Assyria seems to occupy, in relation to Babylonia, somewhat the same position as Peru to the more ancient and greater centres of culture in Mexico and Central America. In the latter the original ground-plan of the archaic civilization seems to be lost and hidden under the ruin and devastation caused by the growth of diverging cults. In Peru and Assyria alike we seem to have examples of organizations starting afresh on the old plan or reversions to the primitive type of civil and religious government in which simplicity, order, balance and harmony were again restored and maintained. If I may venture to hazard a general observation about the ancient civilizations of Western Asia I should say that, whereas the primeval centre of primitive pole-star worship in Babylonia had, in course of time, brought forth as its highest development the monotheism of the Israelites, and as its lowest the cults of Ishtar and [pg 354] Bel, it also appears to have given birth to a reproduction of its former self, to the Assyrian empire, in which the most ancient form of culture was preserved intact, and in time spread its influence not only to other nations but also back to Babylonia itself.

As in Peru, it appears to have been the policy of the kings of Assyria, who had before them the results of an opposite course pursued at Babylonia, to discountenance the manufacture of symbolical images and the establishment of minor centres of government, the leading motive being to maintain the ideal of an absolute centralization of temporal and spiritual government and power. It is the opinion of leading Assyriologists that Assyria was a colony founded by Semitic Babylonians and this conclusion is corroborated by the view I have advanced, namely, that, as Babylonia degenerated and abandoned the primeval ideas which nourished the germ of monotheism, those who adhered to this ideal after prolonged struggles separated themselves from their ancient mother, and founded new colonies, the administration and religion of which they established according to their wider experience and more advanced intellectual and moral development. A characteristic of Assyria seems to have been the institution of two male rulers, the high-priest and the king and the cult of the diurnal and nocturnal heaven, of day and night. As these features are in marked contrast to the Babylonian male and female rulers and the cult of heaven and earth and the reproductive principles, it would seem as though they had developed themselves from a prolonged cult of heaven alone by the inhabitants of Northern Babylonia, or that they were the result of a reform led about by the abuses to which the Babylonian cult had led. A curious development worth mentioning, even out of its chronological order, was when the Assyrian king Esarhaddon placed his two sons as single rulers upon the thrones of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known that these two brothers ruled in peace during twenty years and that then a great rebellion against the Assyrian rule took place, which ended in the conquest and destruction of Babylonia and the death of its king, whose half-brother, the Assyrian ruler Asurbanipal, thus became the sole ruler of Assyria and Babylonia.

Professor Jastrow tells us that, “as compared with Babylonia, Assyria was poor in the number of her temples.... The Assyrian rulers were much more concerned in rearing grand edifices for themselves. While the gods were not neglected in [pg 355] Assyria, one hears much more of the magnificent palaces erected by the kings than of temples and shrines.”

The above data suffice to show that the tendency of the Assyrian monarchs was to indulge in self-glorification and to forget what some of his subjects never could: that his position had originally been that of an earthly representative only of a higher central, celestial power. As among some branches of the Semitic race, the conception of a divinity became more and more elevated until it reached the ideal of the Yahwe, “the only true god who was jealous of other gods and could brook none beside him.” To these uncompromising adherents of pure monotheism the royal titles of the Assyrian kings who styled themselves the rulers of the centre, of the four quarters of the earth and of the heavens, must indeed have appeared as a sacrilege.

The existence of such opposite views clearly explains the ultimate outbreak of hatred and war between monotheistic Israel and Juda and the ancient empires of Western Asia which shared, with them, a remote but common origin.

Returning to Assyria we find that this empire also, as it extended its four-fold capital Assur into four provinces and developed the cult of the high central power and the Heaven and Earth, gradually prepared in turn its own downfall by an inevitable process of disintegration. In time two great capitals grew up, situated to the northeast and northwest of the ancient metropolis of Assur, the original seat of the “kings of the four regions.” These capitals were Ninive, divided into four cities, and Arbela, also a “four-city.” The fact that the latter capital was the seat of Ishtar worship, further proves that, at one time, a definite separation of cults had also supervened in Assyria and that Assur and Ninive may at one time have been respectively centres of Polaris and sun worship. It is well known that when about B.C. 606 the great Assyrian empire was destroyed, it had four royal residences: Ninive, Dûr-Sarrukîn, Kalash and Assur, which were then burnt and levelled to the ground, never to be rebuilt.

Let us now examine the emblems of “divine royalty” exhibited on the famous portrait stelæ of Assyrian kings preserved at the British Museum which strikingly confirm the view I advanced that the four-spoked wheel of Shamash on the Sippara tablet was the ancient restored image of the “primitive sun” Polaris and of circumpolar rotation.

[pg 356]

The Assyrian kings on the British Museum stelæ are represented as wearing the cross, between the signs for the moon and planet Venus, that occurs on the Sippara tablet. The four-spoked wheel thus explains itself as a “wheel-cross” and is found to have been employed in Assyria alternately with the plain cross; for the portrait statue of Asurnasirpal (about B.C. 880) represents the king wearing a chain about his neck from which hangs a cross between the Ishtar and moon emblems, and next to a symbol representing the lightning bolt of Ramman. In the background, next to the king's head, five emblems are sculptured, three of which are identical with those hanging from the chain, i. e. the eight-rayed “sun” of Ishtar, the moon Sin and the lightning bolt of Ramman. The fifth emblem consists of the royal conical cap with four horns and is represented separately to the right while the other four symbols form a compact group.

In the text Assur, Ramman, Sin, Shamash and Ishtar are invoked. As the symbols of Ishtar and Sin can be identified by the Sippara tablet, and the winged disk unquestionably pertains to Assur and the lightning bolt to Ramman, we find that the cap, simulating the central “holy mound” with four horns, must be the symbol of the remaining god Shamash. This inference appears to be corroborated by the circumstance that the seventh month was sacred to Shamash and that it was in this month that the lord of the holy mound built the seven-staged tower of Babylon. These facts authorize us to formulate the conclusion that the four-spoked wheel of the Sippara tablet, the cross hanging to the king's chain and the four-horned cap which, like the “square altar with four horns,” simulated the “holy mound,” were alike symbols of Shamash, the “primitive Sun.”

On his portrait-stela king Shamsi-Rammanu the younger (B.C. 825-812), the grandson of Asurnasirpal, wears the cross only, hanging from his neck-chain and in the text invokes, according to Dr. von Luschan, only Nindar, who has been proven to be Shamash under another name or title. Nindar is identified in Professor Jastrow's hand-book with Ninsia, “a god of considerable importance, imported perhaps from some ancient site of Lagash” ... who “disappeared from the later pantheon.” ... (op. cit. pp. 90 and 91). It is interesting to find that the king, who like his ancient predecessor the Patesi or religious chief Shamsi-Ramman (B.C. 1850) bears the name of the god Shamash, wears as his only ornament [pg 357] the cross which so obviously expresses the royal title, “lord of the four regions.”

From Professor Jastrow (p. 107), we learn that it was customary for the early rulers of Babylon, at the beginning or the close of their dedicatory inscriptions, to parade a list of the divinities associated with the districts that they controlled. Gudea, for instance, enumerates eighteen deities, and these may be taken as indicative of the territorial extent of Gudea's jurisdiction. This custom affords an interesting explanation of the sculptured emblems of divinities and the invocations of their names on the above stelæ and shows that Asurnasirpal and his grandson ruled four districts from a fifth situated in the centre, whose emblem was the mound with four horns or the cross, both emblems of the royal “lord of the four regions.”

Bearing this custom in mind, we next note that, on his stela at the British Museum, Shalmaneser II, the son of Asurnasirpal, invokes not only three different divinities, but also one more than his father or son. His invocation is to Ashur, Shamash and Ishtar and to the Babylonian triad Anu, Bel and Ea. The emblems of the first three divinities are the same as on the stelæ of his father and son, i. e. the winged disk, the mound-shaped, horned cap and the eight-rayed star. To Anu, Bel and Ea pertain the emblematic lightning bolt and moon which are clearly visible; and a third, almost effaced, group which, upon examination by Mr. Pinches, revealed the presence of six stars or circles. Dr. von Luschan infers that originally the group consisted of seven circles and was the same as that sculptured on the stelæ of Sargon (at Berlin), the bas-reliefs at Nahr-el-Kelb and at Bavian. On each of these the circles are grouped in two horizontal rows of three circles while the seventh circle stands to the right, in front and midway between both rows.

If we assume that the lightning bolt pertained to Anu, the upper, and the moon, the emblem of Night, to Ea, the lower firmament, we find that the seven-fold group falls to the lot of Bel and seems to coincide exactly with the recorded fact that the famous zikkurat of Bel at Babylon, for instance, consisted of seven stories; and that it was known as “the house of the seven divisions [regions] of the world,” and that Babylon actually was at one time a seven-fold state, with seven “mountains”=gods=earthly rulers.

[pg 358]

Final, positive proof that Assyria, under Sargon II and Esarhaddon, like ancient Babylon, was organized into seven “districts,” seems to be furnished by the seven symbols carved on their stelæ, accompanied by the group of seven circles which obviously expresses the same as the cuneiform character in the inscribed invocation, namely, the word “seven-fold-one” or “seven in one,” which was obviously an appropriate designation for the empire as a whole, consisting as it did of seven tribal districts, associated with the seven directions in space to each of which was assigned a god, a mountain house, a color, an animal, a celestial body, a day and a symbol.

An extremely suggestive juxtaposition of the numeral seven and a circle containing a group of five circles, resembling a flower with four petals, occurs on the Bavian tablet already cited, on which are also carved two emblems: the moon and winged disk; one compact detached group consisting of four altars (three surrounded by horns and one surmounted by a ram's head) and a second detached group consisting of a base into which four staffs or sceptres are inserted. These recur on the fine Sendschirli stela of Esarhaddon about which a few words remain to be said. It exhibits the numeral seven=the “seven in one” sign before the king, accompanied by four divinities mounted on animals, the first two being the god riding a double monster, and the seated goddess, both wearing the cone on the high royal cap. Carved close to the king's hand is the group of four staffs or sceptres, inserted in a horizontal base, which appear to be the emblems of his lordship over the four regions. Three of these are the same as on the Bavian relief: the first surmounted by a cone-shaped object beneath which are two hanging ends of ribbons; the second consisting of a plain single staff, split so as to form two; the third surmounted by two animal heads, each with a single horn. The fourth [pg 359] sceptre on Esarhaddon's stela is like that represented as inserted into one of the altars on the Bavian stela, and terminates in a recurved ram's head. The fourth in the Bavian group of sceptres somewhat resembles the trident tripartite emblem which occurs on the Sargon stela and the Esarhaddon stela of Nahr-el-Kelb (figured by Dr. Luschan, op. cit. p. 20).

A fresh examination of the bas-relief of Maltaya, described by Layard and already alluded to, reveals a suggestive differentiation in the representations of the seven divinities in a row, at each end of which, facing the procession, stands a king. Considering that in Assyria there were governors, the limmi, who held offices of limited duration and gave their names to their years of office, the query naturally suggests itself whether the two “kings” may not also have ruled for fixed periods of seven years, each one of which bore the name of one of the seven divisions.

It being an accepted fact that the institution of the Sabbath was of Chaldean and Babylonian origin, it is permissible to assign to the same source the institution of the seven-year period described in Leviticus xxv: “But the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land.... And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty-nine years.... And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year”....

Addressing to Assyriologists an appeal for fuller knowledge concerning the ancient calendar periods of Babylonia-Assyria, I now revert to the Maltaya bas-relief and point out that, of the seven divinities, the two principal ones, a god and goddess, wear a form of cap encircled by horns and surmounted by a cone. One of these two deities is distinguished from all others by his larger size and by the fact that he stands on a double animal and heads the procession holding a recurved sceptre in his hand. Behind him follows the goddess Ishtar, holding a large ring in her right hand. Her throne, as on the Sendschirli stela, exhibits a ring surmounting its high back, to the side of which a group of four circles or disks are attached. As several centres of Ishtar cult, already mentioned, have been designated as fourfold cities it seems possible that the four disks alluded to this fact, while the ring crowning the top of the throne, and that she holds, constitutes one of her emblems.... However this may be, both monuments exhibit kings associated with the number seven and Ishtar, the seated goddess, associated [pg 360] with the number four; facts which claim further investigation and may lead to interesting verifications of the numerical systems of the Assyrians. It should be mentioned here that the heads of the five remaining divinities, on the Maltaya bas-relief, are surmounted by a wheel with spokes and that one holds a recurved sceptre, like that of the first, another bears the lightning bolt of Ramman, while three carry the same peculiar double symbol also held by Shamash on the Sippara tablet. It consists of a large ring like that held by Ishtar and a short staff possibly a fire-stick. In each case the fingers of the right hand of the deity clasp the middle of the staff and the ring and the appearance of the combined rod and circle closely resembles the upper portion of the Egyptian crux ansata. Professor von Luschan has, indeed, expressed the opinion that the ring or circle (of Ishtar) the rod and circle (of Shamash) and the crux ansata must have analogous meanings, a view I fully share and shall further support in dealing with the Egyptian symbol.

The following data will be found to substantiate further the evidence produced concerning the seven-fold organization of Babylonia-Assyria. One of the finest bas-relief tablets at the British Museum excavated by Layard from the ruins of Asurnasirpal's palace at Nimroud represents in its centre the sacred conventionalized ashera=tree, above which is the winged circle, from the centre of which issues the half figure of the god Assur (cf. fig. , 1). To its right stand two winged figures wearing the conical crown with four horns, and necklaces from which hang its reproduction in miniature, also the cross, the symbol of Ishtar and the moon. To the left of the tree stand two personages, wearing the high cap with a flat top, central cone and hanging ends, such as are frequently represented as worn by the kings. The natural inference would be that the winged figures wearing the cap with horns represent high-priests and that a double hierarchy corresponding to the dual monarchy probably existed at one time, the result being “four lords,” two celestial and two terrestrial, corresponding to the “four regions,” two of which pertained to the Above or the heaven and two to the Below or earth. A curious indication that at one time there were four separate rulers of the four regions is furnished by the cap with four horns and the altar whose four corners terminated in horns, when they are connected with the passage in Revelations xvii, which refers to Babylonian symbolism and [pg 361] states: “And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings.” Professor Jastrow states that “similar horns existed on the Hebrew and Phœnician altars,” and that “if we may believe Herodotus, the great altars at Babylon were made of gold” (p. 652).

Doubtlessly, Assyrian texts contain a fund of information yet inaccessible to students, concerning the constitution of the state and the modifications it may have undergone in course of time. An exhaustive study of the symbols connected with Assyrian kings at different dates, in connection with the text relating his conquests and foundations of temples, may yet reveal the occasional assumption or usurpation by a single individual of different degrees of power and, possibly, the ultimate separation and antagonism of hierarchy and monarchy.

The employment in Assyria and Babylonia of the tree, as a sacred symbol, should next be considered, first, in relation to the other symbols to which great religious importance was attached. The significance of the zikkurat, or seven-staged tower, has already been discussed. Another feature was “the great basin known as ‘Apsu,’ the name, it will be recalled, for ‘the deep’ [i. e. the lower firmament]. The name indicates that it was a symbolical representation of the domain of Ea. The zikkurat itself being an attempt to reproduce the shape of the earth, the representation of the ‘apsu’ would suggest itself as a natural accessory to the temple. The zikkurat and the basin together would thus become the living symbols of the current cosmological conceptions. The comparison with the great 'sea' that stood in the court of Solomon's temple, naturally suggests itself, and there can be little doubt that the latter is an imitation of a Babylonian model” (Jastrow, op. cit. 653). It is evident from the above that the adoption of the sacred basin as the symbol of Ea would naturally be simultaneous with that of miniature “basins” and water bowls and jars, employed for holding the sacred water used in the cult of the Below. Reflection shows that, in the zikkurat, the seat of Bel=the image of the earth, and in the “Apsu” the watery deep and lower firmament of Ea, we have the sacred emblems of two deities of the Babylonian triad only. The emblem of Anu, the Heaven or upper firmament, is missing and it is naturally in the cult of Anshar=Ashur that it must be sought for. The following data will sufficiently show that it was the tree or pole and, in all probability, the fire-stick that were connected with the cult of An-shar=“all that [pg 362] is above,” or “on high.” The resemblance of the name Ashur to the word for tree or pole, the “Ashera” of the Phœnicians and Hebrews, suggests, moreover, the probability of their common origin.

An interesting question on which I have not, as yet, been able to obtain information, relates to the mode of producing fire, resorted to by the Babylonian-Assyrians. The element was, of course, associated with heaven, and the fire-god under the name of Gibil or Nusku was termed the “son of Anu.” Shamash himself also figures as a personification of fire and it seems probable that, in the Babylonian temples in the centre of the square altar, a fire was originally kept perpetually burning as an image of Polaris. As great stress is laid upon the purifying effect of fire as on that of water in Babylonian literature, it is easy to trace the origin of the offering of burnt sacrifices to the idea that, cast into the sacred fire, they became purified and absorbed into its essence, i. e. accepted by the sacred living image of the central star-god. It seems extremely probable that the primitive employment of a fire-stick by the priesthood, for the production of “celestial fire,” may have played an important rôle in causing the stick, and thence the pole and tree, to have become the adopted symbol of Anu. So little is known even about the origin of “tree-worship” itself in ancient Babylonia-Assyria that Professor Jastrow advances the following statement (p. 689).

“On the seal cylinders there is frequently represented a pole or a conventionalized form of a tree, generally in connection with a design illustrating the worship of a deity. This symbol is clearly a survival of some tree worship that was once popular. The comparison with the ashera and pole worship among Phœnicians and Hebrews is fully justified and is a proof of the great antiquity of the symbols which, without becoming a formal part of the later cult, retained in some measure a hold upon the popular mind.

“ ‘Ashur’ became the god of Assyria as the rulers of the city of Ashur grew in power ... in the various changes of official residences that took place in the course of Assyrian history ... the god took part and his central seat of worship depended upon the place that the kings chose for their official residence ... there was always one place—the official residence—which formed the central spot of worship. There the god was supposed to dwell for the time being. One factor, perhaps, that ought to be taken [pg 363] into consideration, in accounting for this movable disposition of the god was that he was not symbolized exclusively by a statue.... His chief symbol was a standard that could be carried from place to place.... The standard consisted of a pole surrounded by a disk enclosed within two wings, while above the disk stood the figure of a warrior in the act of shooting an arrow (cf. fig. , 5).... The standard ... which was so made that it could be carried into the thick of the fray in order to assure the army of the god's presence ... followed the camp everywhere and when the kings chose to fix upon a new place for their military encampment ... the standard would repose in the place selected” (Jastrow, op. cit. p. 194). To one who like myself has devoted years to the study of the symbolism of primitive people and is familiar with the ancient Mexican image of the “lord of the North” standing in the centre of a horizontally-placed cross-figure, and with the Chichimecan custom, on taking possession of new territory, to shoot arrows towards the cardinal points, the Ashur standard suggests a single explanation, namely, that it was the symbol of celestial, central rulership and that the god, standing on a staff which could be turned and aiming his arrow towards the four directions in succession, was an expressive image of Polaris and Septentriones.

Further ideas associated with the tree by the Babylonian-Assyrians are clear since Professor E. B. Tylor has so conclusively shown that certain bas-reliefs represent the act of artificially fertilizing the palm tree by scattering the male blossom from its cone-shaped bunch, over the female palm. In each case this rite is being performed by figures with human bodies and large wings, i. e. high priests of heaven, and it seems evident that it symbolized the mystic life-producing union of heaven and earth or of the male and female principles of nature which marked the Babylonian-Assyrian [pg 364] New Year's Day. Given these associations of thought, it is easy to see how the New Year became the festival of New Life and how the fertilized tree became the “tree of life,” and its sculptured image a memorial of a new year, possibly recording some record of the actual marriages which took place in the state on that day. The decipherment and comparison of the inscriptions on such tablets, by skilled Assyriologists, can alone enlighten us on this point, but enough appears apparent to explain how the tree could have become associated in Assyria not only with life, but with the life and growth of the state. Moreover the tree or pole itself, named ashera, may well have appeared to some Euphratean people, to express the name Ashur sufficiently clear to become its symbol and “canting arms.”

The adoption of the shaft or pole, as a symbol of the Celestial Centre, may easily be explained by the fact that, stuck into the ground and watched from a certain position, its upper end would seem to touch Polaris and it thus supplied wandering star-observers with a point of fixity in space which, being transportable, facilitated the registration of circumpolar rotation. During many centuries the image of the “crooked serpent,” Nakkasch, the constellation which could be seen each night winding its way around the pole, must have deeply impressed itself upon the minds of the primitive star gazers of the Euphratean valley, and conveyed suggestions of imagery, one of which may have created the Phœnician caduceus. At a later period when Ursa Major became circumpolar, the “seven lights of heaven” became in turn associated with the stable centre and suggested, in time, the seven-branched candlestick of the Hebrews which is to this day constructed with a central or principal holder, associated with stability. It is remarkable to note the same ancient fundamental association in the elevated and beautiful imagery employed by the descendant of ancient Euphratean star-worshippers, in Revelation iv, in describing his vision: “... And, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.... And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne.... And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts....”

The idea cited by Mr. Robert Brown, of the sacred pole-tree with golden apples guarded by the constellation Nakkasch, has already been mentioned and to this ancient image should be added [pg 365] the celestial tree of life set in the midst of the garden of Paradise, whence “went out a river to water the garden and from thence it was parted and became four heads.”... It is as easy to see how the standard of Assur, which always marked the central place of worship, should have been evolved, as it is to realize why the fire-stick, rod or sceptre should have been adopted by monarchs as an emblem of central rulership, and why, finally, each centre of government should have adopted some specific symbol which, mounted on the staff, became its tribal or national emblem. It does not appear hazardous to designate as such the ornamented staffs already described, which are represented on the bas-reliefs, in groups of four, a number agreeing with that of the “four regions.” It has already been pointed out that a group of four sceptres, corresponding to the royal title “lord of four regions,” is carved close to the hand of Esarhaddon on the fine Sendschirli tablet at Berlin.

In Babylonia, the local deity of Girsu was entitled “the lord of the true sceptre,” “the lord of the right-hand sceptre,” a name which implies that, where dual rulership prevailed, a distinction was made between right-hand and left-hand sceptres, a point to which I shall revert later on in dealing with Egypt. In Northern Assyria when the cult of Nabu superseded that of Marduk, his temple was named “the house of the sceptre of the world” and Nebuchadnezzar declares that it is he “who gives the sceptre of sovereignty to kings to rule over the land” (Jastrow, op. cit. 129).

Simultaneously with the staff, the cross and wheel also became emblems of sovereignty. It has already been shown that the cross and four-spoked wheel of Shamash were synonymous signs. It remains to be shown how the wheel was employed in Babylonia and Assyria as an emblem of royalty. The representation of Shamash at Sippar exhibits his wheel resting, in a perpendicular position, on a table. Attached to the wheel are two cords which are held by a “god” and his consort, who appear to be directing the course of the wheel. We thus see that, whereas the disk or wheel of Assur, the central god, revolved on its own axis, and was provided with wings, signifying aërial and celestial motion, the wheel of Shamash was associated with a “lord and lady,” and the symbolism appears to express that they were the directors of the “wheel of the law” of terrestrial government. It is well known that, beside the throne, [pg 366] the emblem of permanent repose, the Assyrian monarchs also used the chariot as a royal prerogative.

In the Gilgamesh epic the goddess Ishtar, on conferring sovereignty upon Gilgamesh, says: “I will place thee on a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold, with wheels of gold....” On studying the Nimroud bas-reliefs in the British Museum I noted the fact that the trappings of the horse driven by king Asurnasirpal, who is represented as standing in his two-wheeled chariot, are decorated with crosses. It is impossible not to recognize the affinity of the “wheel of the law” and the “lord of the wheel” of India with the Assyrian symbols of Polaris and of central rulership and to appreciate the naïve ingenuity of the idea of making the driving of the chariot by the king represent his control of the rotating wheels of state and government of the four quarters from a stable centre.

As another example of the Assyrian employment of the cross-symbol, the bas-relief at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, should be mentioned, as it displays a winged bird-headed human figure, whose garments are embroidered with crosses.

King Asurnasirpal, who is alternately figured on his throne or in his chariot, is frequently represented as wearing on his garments and bracelets another familiar and expressive emblem of centralization and unity in diversity, the composite flower or rosette.

The sacred ship or ark of the Babylonian temple remains to be discussed. Diodorus Seculus says that, according to Babylonian notions, “the world is ‘a boat turned upside down’ and resting on the waters. The appearance in outline of this image presented the three divisions of the universe: the heavens=Anu upheld by the serpent body of Tiamat; the earth, the dwelling of Bel-Marduk, the ‘chief of gods;’ and the watery deep or ‘Apsu’ beneath, the dwelling of Ea” (Jastrow). This imagery authorizes the inference that the sacred ship or ark was associated with this conception of the earth as a boat resting on the line dividing the sky from the watery deep. It can readily be seen how a maritime people would be inclined to fancy that the celestial bodies floated in the sky on invisible boats and that a single one among them was apparently resting on a stable rock or mountain around which other [pg 367] stars circled perpetually. That an analogous train of thought should have caused the ultimate consecration of a tabernacle in the form of a ship, to the central deity, entitled “the great mountain,” appears as inevitable as the idea that all life proceeded from this source. Professor Jastrow tells us that the early significance of the custom of carrying the gods in consecrated ships became lost, but that it survived in Babylonia and Egypt and that the ark of the Hebrews appears, similarly, to have been originally a ship of some kind. I am indebted to Dr. Wallis Budge for the interesting information that each day, in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, an image of the god Seker was dragged around the altar by the priests.

Bringing the preceding tentative study of the ancient civilization of Babylonia-Assyria to a close, I venture to affirm that, imperfect as it is, it clearly establishes certain important points connected with the present investigation. It demonstrates that a primitive pole-star worship existed and still exists in the Euphratean valley, accompanied by the employment of the swastika or cross-symbol and by the identical fundamental set of ideas which form the basis not only of other Asiatic, but also of the American civilizations. The Middle is associated with special sanctity, fixity and supremacy of power and rule, extending in rotation over the Above and Below and Four Quarters. This seven-fold division of the universe extended throughout the entire organization of the state and gave rise to certain logical developments of thought and symbolism, analogous to those which have been traced elsewhere.

Postponing further comment, investigation will next be transferred to the valley of the Nile, whose inhabitants, at various periods of their history, came closely into contact with the people of Asia Minor.

EGYPT.

Pausing at the entrance to a much explored domain with a fitting realization of being a novice and an intruder therein, I find myself encouraged to advance by the frank admission recently made by one of the leading authorities in Egyptology. In his “Notes for travellers in Egypt,” Dr. Wallis Budge, the Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, of the British Museum, openly states that “the religion of the ancient Egyptians is one of the most difficult problems of Egyptology and though a [pg 368] great deal has been written about it during the last few years and many difficulties have been satisfactorily explained, there still remain unanswered a large number of questions connected with it. In all religious texts the reader is always assumed to have a knowledge of the subject treated of by the writer, and no definite statement is made on the subject concerning which very little, comparatively, is known by students of to-day” (The Nile, London, 1890, p. 71).

After having traced, as I have done, throughout ancient America, China, India and Babylonia-Assyria, one and the same fundamental, artificial scheme of state organization, it was with keenest interest and a new sense of comprehension of the ancient Egyptian civilization that I noted certain facts which I shall now proceed to present.

They will be found to show that ancient Egypt supplies us with the instance of a civilization in which the fundamental set of ideas, developed from primitive pole-star worship, prevailed during thousands of years and had reached a high stage of evolution at a period anterior to about B.C. 4000.

TERRITORIAL DIVISIONS OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

According to Dr. Wallis Budge, the ancient Egyptians called their land Bak or Baket, Ta-Mera and Khem or Kamt, also Ta-Nehat, “the land of the sycamore” and the land of “the eye of Horus.” It was divided into two parts: Upper Egypt, Ta-res or Ta-kema=“the southern land,” symbolized by the vulture; and Lower Egypt, Ta-Meh, Mah-Ti or Meh-Ta, literally, “North-land,” symbolized by the serpent. Two great ancient cities or capitals were respectively known as Annu Meht, “Annu of the North,” and Annu Qemat, “Annu of the South.” The kings of Egypt styled themselves Suten-Net, “King of the North and South” and Nebtaui, “lord of the two earths.” As such the king wore the double crown made up of the tesher or net, the red crown of Northern or Lower Egypt and the hetet or het, the white crown of Southern or Upper Egypt (The Nile, p. 27).

It will be shown further on that the high white and low red crowns were respectively worn by the king and the queen at a certain period of Egyptian history. It is well known that, in numerous pictorial representations, the Egyptian men are painted with red, but the women with white skins. The above facts show that there [pg 369] existed a curious association of red with the north and the male sex, and of white with the south and the female sex.

It is a familiar fact that the Egyptian hieroglyph and determinative sign for town, city or village consisted of a circle with four divisions. The usual form of this sign, the phonetic value of which is nu or nut, is shown as fig. , 1, a. On a bas-relief preserved at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, I noted the variant 1, b. It is interesting to collate these signs with the cross-symbols (2) which express the sound of uu, un, and ur, and to note that the sign for a capital in Egypt contains a division into four=un or ur, and that the latter word is actually the familiar name of the famous centre in Babylonia where cities laid out in the form of a square and “four-god cities” existed, and the kings were termed “lords of the four regions” and “kings of Sumer and Akkad,” the two ancient divisions of the Babylonian state.

It thus appears doubly significant that, in Egyptian, the word ur signifies “great, great one” and is also the name of a god, which is expressed in hieroglyphic writing by the cross, a mouth and a seated god, the determinative for divinity. What is more, ur-u=chiefs, ur-t=the name of a crown and ur-t=those who rest, all of which words show that the Egyptian ur was associated with the idea of divinity, greatness, crowned chieftainship, repose and the cross-symbol which is incorporated in nut, the sign for capital or city.

The fact that the symbols for the two great divisions of ancient Egypt, the red crown of Northern or Lower Egypt, and the white crown of Southern or Upper Egypt, are found surmounting the sign nut (3), sufficiently shows that this symbol also stood for an extended capital, a state, and that both “lands” constituted at one time separate units or reproductions of the identical plan. Returning to the ancient capitals known as the “Annu of [pg 370] the North” and the “Annu of the South:” according to Dr. Wallis Budge the first occupied the site of Heliopolis and was identical with the city of On mentioned in Genesis (xli: 45). The Annu Qemat was Hermonthis, the modern Menth, Armant or Erment, situated on the west bank of the Nile a little to the south of the ruins of Thebes. It is noteworthy that the name for Thebes, given in the cuneiform inscriptions and Hebrew scriptures, No (Ezek. xxx:4) and No-am-on (Nahum iii:8), is in one case the simple inversion of On, the Hebrew name of Heliopolis, the Northern Annu, while in the second instance the name of Thebes incorporates both forms.

The allusion to the “square of the city of Edfu,” and to buildings laid out on a square ground-plan, contained in inscriptions cited by Brugsch, also furnishes an indication, which can doubtless be multiplied, that, as in Babylonia, Egyptian cities were sometimes built in the form of a square. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the square (slightly elongated) is employed to express the consonant p. The sign appears to have been cryptic and to have constituted the symbol of the god Ptah, “The Opener,” considered as the most ancient of Egyptian gods. According to Dr. Wallis Budge, “the sign is the picture of a door made up of a number of boards fastened together by three cross-pieces at the back, and there can be no doubt that the word for door was connected with the verb pth=to open, and that it was pronounced something like ptah (compare the Hebrew pethah). The sound of the first letter of ptah being p, the phonetic value of the door became p” (First steps in Egyptian, p. 5). To the above I add the observation that the plain square or outline of the door, without indications of boards and cross-pieces, is usually employed in the published texts. The association of the square, representing a door with three cross-beams, and expressing the sound ptah is particularly interesting when connected with the word for earth or land=ta, and the method of expressing the word universe=taui, by the threefold repetition of the sign ta, which resembles a cross-beam (fig. , 5). An interesting association of the square with earth or land is seen in one of the signs for province or nome=sept or hesp, which consists of a series of squares, evidently representing theoretical territorial divisions and possibly a system of canal-irrigation. Other suggestive signs for sep consist of a circle containing two [pg 371] strokes; a circle enclosing four dots and a double circle (fig. , 4). It is interesting to find an isosceles triangle employed, with a slight addition, to express the word ta=land, as well as sept=province (fig. , 4 and 5), and to find on analyzing the circular sign for nut=sky, which is likewise the determinative for city, that it contains four triangles. These converge towards the centre, as do the triangular sides of the square pyramid, and thus the sign nut and the pyramid clearly appear to express a whole divided into four parts, the square form being connected with earth and the circle with the sky.

Figure 60.

A proof that the quadriform organization was extensively employed in ancient Egypt, is furnished by Dr. Wallis Budge's statement that each nome or province was divided into four parts, and had its capital or “nut.” The inference is that each nome constituted a miniature reproduction of the state and that the sign nut represented its theoretical plan. On the other hand, the fact that the triangle constitutes one sign for the nome itself, indicates that, originally, the nome was identified as one of four divisions of the state only and that, like Babylon, Egypt must have been theoretically [pg 372] divided, not only into two main divisions, but also into four regions, corresponding to the

North=Meh-ta, literally North land.

West=Amen-ta, literally Hidden land.

South=Resu.

East=Aba.

In the extracts from the Pyramid texts published by Dr. Wallis Budge (Pyramid of Unas, Fifth dynasty), the following invocation occurs: “O gods of the west, O gods of the east, O gods of the south, O gods of the north, four these, who embrace the four quarters of the earth holy.” These four quarters are represented in hieroglyphics by the sign for land=ta, repeated four times, which thus express, literally, “the four lands” or regions. Allusion is also made in the same inscription, to the “four fields of heaven.”

The four gods, termed by Egyptologists the “genii of the dead,” were Amset or Mestha, Hapi, Tuaumutef and Kebhsenuf, and it was the custom to place the canopic vases representing them under the bier. The canopic vases were, however, also supposed to be under the protection of four sky goddesses, identified with the cardinal points, whose names are usually given as Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Serk-t(?). A particularly interesting instance of the employment of the cross-symbol in connection with the four “gods of the horizon,” as they are termed, is to be found in the Book of the Dead, published by Lepsius and reproduced by Dr. Wallis Budge (Dwellers on the Nile, p. 158). The four gods in mummy form, stand in a line behind a table laden with offerings. A large crux decussata (St. Andrew's cross) is painted on the right shoulder of the foremost god, a fact to which I shall revert and discuss further in dealing with the cross-symbol and swastika in Egypt. Having traced quadruplicate territorial divisions and quaternions of gods, let us next present proofs of an organization of the population into four “races.”

Dr. Wallis Budge, referring to Chabas and Naville, states that “the Egyptians of the later empire believed that Ra-Harmachis, attacked [pg 373] his foes, who fled in all directions from before him. Those who came to the south became the Cushites, those who came to the north became the Amu, those who came to the west the Libyans and those who came to the east the Shasu, and thus were the four races of mankind made” (The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 53).

The fact that the Sphinx has been designated as the image of Ra-Harmachis i. e. Heru-em-chut and of his human representative, and that the distribution of people to the cardinal points and the origin of four races of men is assigned to him, are particularly interesting and suggestive, especially in connection with the familiar table of nations given by Moses, who says “and the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim and Phut and Canaan” (Gen. x:6). Dr. Wallis Budge states that Ham or Kham is the same as Khem and is the name Kamt, i. e. black, by which the Egyptians generally called their land. I venture to point out that in the following passages the name Ham seems to be more applicable to a deity such as Amen-Ra or to his human representative a king, than to Egypt itself: “And smote all the firstborn in Egypt and the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham” and again “Wondrous works in the land of Ham.”...

It is well known that Mizraim, the second name given above, was employed by the Hebrews as a designation for Egypt. The inhabitants of the region of Cush are represented on Egyptian monuments and we are told that “at the outset they appear to have had a religion and speech akin to that of the Egyptians. We find Phut most probably, in the Punt of the inscriptions, the land ... situated to the south of Egypt on both sides of the Red sea. The fourth son [of Ham], Canaan, is represented by the original inhabitants of Canaan, who were probably near relations of the Egyptians” (Wallis Budge, The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 52). While tradition and documentary evidence thus associates the four sons of Ham with certain regions and cardinal points, Egyptian monuments exhibit representations of people of four different colors, i. e. red, yellow, black and white.

“The ancient Egyptians ... recognized four races of men. They themselves belonged to the ‘Rot’ or red men; the yellow men they called ‘Namu’—it included the Asiatic races; the black men were called ‘Nahsu,’ and the white men ‘Tam-hu.’ The following figures (fig. ) are copied from Nott and Gliddon's [pg 374] ‘Types of Mankind,’ p. 85, and were taken by them from the great works of Belzoni, Champollion and Lepsius” (Donelly, Atlantis, p. 195).

Pursuing our investigations of the territorial divisions of Egypt, we learn, from Mr. Wallis Budge, that collectively there were 42 nomes in Upper and Lower Egypt. This number is identical with that of the 42 gods represented in the Book of the Dead as being with Osiris in the hall of Two Truths where the dead were judged. The 42 “judges of the dead” are represented as seated figures, with human or animal heads, and are equally divided into two groups. From the “negative confession” which the deceased makes to his judges, we learn that each god was identified with a locality, some amongst them being addressed as “coming out from” such important cities as Heliopolis, Sais, Bubastis, etc. The inference I venture to make is that these 42 judges were the gods of the 42 nomes who, with Osiris, the chief god and the “President,” formed the council of gods, which judged and ordered the affairs of men.

Figure 61. The Races Of Men According To The Egyptians.

It is moreover natural to suppose that terrestrial administrations of justice must also have been executed by a supreme council of men, composed of the king, the living image of Osiris, and the chiefs of the 42 nomes of Upper and Lower Egypt, who personified, [pg 375] as elsewhere, the totemic divinity of tribe or district. Postponing further discussion of the number 42, associated with nomes and gods, let us examine further data concerning the territorial organization of ancient Egypt.

Dr. Wallis Budge tells us that, “during the rule of the Greeks (B.C. 342-332), Egypt was divided into three parts: Upper, Central and Lower Egypt. Central Egypt consisted of seven nomes, and was called Heptanomis” (Nile, p. 28). The seven-storied pyramid of Sâkkarah and the employment of the signs expressing “three regions” and “four regions or lands,” to signify the whole land or universe, prove that, long before Greek rule, the ancient Egyptians, like the Babylonians, employed the heptameredal system. Thus, according to Herodotus, “There are seven classes of Egyptians, and of these some are called priests, others warriors, others herdsmen, others swineherds, others tradesmen, others interpreters and lastly pilots; such are the classes of Egyptians; they take their names from the employments they exercise” (Euterpe ii, 164). Passages from Prof. Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt (Vol. ii, pp. 156 and 185) afford, moreover, instances of the conquest of a heptarchic government by an Egyptian king and the employment, in about B.C. 1500, of the number seven, as a mystic or sacred number, in a letter from a Syrian prince to the Egyptian king.

In the record of the triumphal return of Aa-kheperu-ra, the seventh king of the eighteenth dynasty (B.C. 1449-1423), it is said: “His Majesty returned in joy of heart to his father Amen; his own hand, with his mace, had struck down the seven chiefs, which were of the territory of Pakhsi (near Aleppo)”.... “Six of these enemies were hanged in front of the walls of Thebes; the seventh [probably the chief of chiefs], was brought to Nubin and was hanged on the wall of the town of Napata, to show forth for all time the victories of the king among all people of the negro land, inasmuch as he had taken possession of the nations of the south and he had bound the nations of the north and the ends of the whole extent of the earth on which the sun rises and sets, without finding any opposition, according to the command of his father Amen-ra of Thebes.” A letter from a Syrian prince to Amenhotep III (B.C. 1414-1379), opens thus: “To the king, my master, my god, my sun, this is said: Yatibiri, the servant, [pg 376] the dust of thy feet, at the feet of my king, my master, my god, my sun, seven times, and seven times more, I fall down.”...

While the above data suffice to establish that more than a thousand years before Greek rule was established in Egypt its inhabitants were familiar with the seven-fold scheme of organization, the following extremely interesting portion of Brugsch's monumental work, already cited, indirectly teaches much concerning the divisions of the land of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian astronomers regarded the nocturnal heaven as the exact counterpart of the land of Egypt (i, p. 176). In the inscriptions, the firmament is frequently considered geographically, as a region comprising countries surrounded by seas and traversed by rivers and canals, and covered with cities and houses and divided into nomes which corresponded to those of Egypt, excepting in point of number, there being thirty-six celestial nomes. According to the inscriptions and pictures in the royal tombs at Thebes, there was a celestial eastern sea (uat-ura abti), a western sea (uat-ura amentti) and a northern sea (uat-ura mahtet or mehtat). Special mention is made of “the waters” and land of the “northern place of light above the constellation of the Great Bear.”

The lands of Punet (Punt?), Uthenet, Kenemti and Sa-nutart-mahti, “the northern land of God” are designated, beside other names which correspond to the terrestrial geographical situation of outlying foreign countries known to the Egyptians. There was a celestial city, “Anu or On,” whose eastern and western sides or places of light are frequently mentioned. The mention of a single Anu or On, names which are found applied to the most ancient capitals of the land of Egypt, is particularly noteworthy. It will be shown further on, upon Sir Norman Lockyer's authority, that, in the exact centre of the circular zodiac at Denderah, the jackal, expressing the name Anubis, “is located at the pole of the equator and obviously represents the present Little Bear.” This and other data establish beyond a doubt that the celestial Anu, On or No, was supposed to be situated in Polaris and that the terrestrial capital was intended to be the counterpart of the apparent seat of central rule and government according to fixed laws and order of rotation. The idea that, after death, the human soul lived again in the celestial sphere is shown in the following address to a departed [pg 377] spirit contained in the Bulak papyrus cited by Brugsch: “The images of the gods of the Southern and Northern countries appear to thee in the thirty-six nomes; thou goest where they are as a perfect soul, thou doest what pleases thee in the heaven, thou art amongst the constellations of the thirty-six Beka.”

This word is rendered by Brugsch as the “Dekane” in German and I have been unable to find its exact equivalent in English. The Dekanes are alluded to in an inscription from the Ptolemaic period cited by Brugsch (op. cit. i, p. 135) as follows: “They shine forth after the sun has set. They run in a circle, and continually release each other. They become apparent at sunset at hours varying with the seasons.” The Dekane constellations or stars were those which rose at the beginning of each decade or period of ten days, which constituted the Egyptian “week.” There were thirty-six or 4×9 of these in the Egyptian year, at the end of which an epact of five days was added, each day being consecrated to one of the five chief gods. Deferring the discussion of the Egyptian numerical calendaric system, I merely point out here the obvious agreement between the number of celestial nomes = 36, the number of decades in the year of 360 days to which should be added the familiar fact that each day and decade had its special “god.” Laying stress upon the point that in ancient Egypt we find thirty-six celestial, geographical districts, corresponding to the thirty-six decades of the year and to thirty-six gods, I take pleasure in pointing out how clearly the following passages of Sir Norman Lockyer's “Dawn of Astronomy” show that the thirty-six gods had as many human representatives, priests, who performed certain religious rites and homage in the chief temple in a fixed order of rotation. “Even at Philæ in late times, in the temple of Osiris, there were 360 bowls for sacrifices, which were filled daily with milk by a specified rotation of priests. At Acanthus there was a perforated cask into which one of the 360 priests poured water from the Nile daily;” an enforced act of obedience recalling the punishment of the daughters of Danaë. As Sir Norman Lockyer justly remarks “these temple ceremonials are an evidence of their antiquity and may be regarded as traditions preserved by the conservative priesthood.”

I am inclined to regard the above mentioned acts of empty homage as survivals of conditions strictly analogous to those which existed in ancient America, where each geographical district of the [pg 378] state was associated with a class of people under their representative, and a day of the calendar on which obligations towards the central government, such as the paying of tribute, had to be performed in a fixed order of rotation, corresponding to the annual circuit of the circumpolar constellations around the pole star.

During centuries the most remarkable of these, Ursa Major, like the hand of a great celestial dial, moved by an unseen ruling power apparently located in Polaris, became visible after dusk and pointed towards the four quarters of heaven in succession, at intervals of nine decades of days. As in China and elsewhere at the present day, its position was referred to as a guide in determining time, during the night, and the seasons; and mankind became familiarized with the idea of a changeless inexorable law and order governing the universe and determining human periodical activities, and thus directly influencing individual lives. Added to this the idea of a heavenly kingdom, traversed by the celestial Nile, the Milky Way, and in which each familiar locality in Egypt had its counterpart, it is easy to follow the spread of the belief that there was a close connection between the stars and their terrestrial counterparts and that they directly influenced the destinies of individuals, each of which had its particular star in the sky.

The following portions of the decree inscribed B.C. 238 on the famous trilingual stela of Canopus, preserved at Gizeh, contain what appear to me to be distinct allusions to the ideal of a terrestrial kingdom, laid out and governed in accordance with the system and fixed laws observed as existing in the heavens and governing the movements of celestial bodies. The hieroglyphic text records the establishment of festivals “in accord with the existing fundamental laws upon which the heavens [the movements of heavenly bodies] are established.”... The Greek translation of this passage reads: “according to the now existing order of the world [universe]” and the demotic version is: “in accordance with the scheme, upon which the heaven is established ” (Brugsch, op. cit. i, p. 180). Further facts concerning celestial and terrestrial territorial divisions remain to be examined and discussed.

A number of representations exist in which the figure of the sky-goddess, Nut, appears as though stretched across the vault of heaven, her feet resting on the earth in the east and the tips of her fingers touching the horizon in the west. A study of certain texts cited by Brugsch clearly shows that it was for very practical and [pg 379] sensible reasons that the Egyptian astronomers had adopted the plan of an imaginary human form stretched across the nocturnal heaven, as it enabled the position of constellations and stars to be definitely located. Lepsius has shown that, in a series of inscriptions in the tombs of Ramses VI and Ramses IX, the movements and positions of stars are given in connection with the parts of an imaginary human form in the sky. It is thus said of a star that it was situated: “in the middle of the breast, in the right eye, the left eye, the right ear, the left ear, the right arm, the left arm, the left thigh.”

Brugsch (op. cit. i, p. 187) quotes the opinion of Lepsius that the parts alluded to in the above inscriptions, referred to an imaginary male figure stretched across the firmament and viewed en face, and publishes a theoretical reconstruction of this imaginary figure. It recalls that of a Buddha and suggests the idea that the Egyptian schematical figure must have also been imagined as seated on the stable centre of the heaven. Egyptian astronomical texts, which I shall cite further on, appear to me to show distinctly that the lotus flower (the name for flower being ankh) was employed to express the sound ankh, which means “life” and that it occurs in connection with other symbols of the pole-star god.

Returning to the representations of Nut stretched across the sky, it should be noted that this employment of the human form belongs to the same category as the Sphinx, which appears to have been the terrestrial counterpart of the celestial schematical figure. On the other hand, the sign nut, consisting of a circle with four divisions, like the pyramid, represents the successful attempt to express the same thought in abstract, geometrical form, such as would be intelligible to an initiated, intellectual minority only.

It will be seen further on that I advance the view that the pyramid, being a miniature reproduction of the scheme of the universe, contained a sacred central chamber, representing the sacred Middle, and that this was destined to be the “house of eternal repose” for the dead king, the representative of the universal god.

As Dr. Wallis Budge tells us: “If the deceased succeeds in passing the ordeal [of judgment after death] satisfactorily, he comes forth at once as a god (there is no place of probation), he becomes identified with Osiris, in whose shape his mummy is made” (The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 177).

The following text, from the inscription on an amulet found on [pg 380] the neck of the mummy of a young girl, preserved at the Berlin Museum, is explained in the official catalogue of the museum (p. 343), as signifying that “the mummy was supposed to lie in the centre of the whole world:” “The sky is locked over the earth, the earth is locked over the beyond and the beyond is locked over this strong mummy-case of the departed Osiris-Hathor-tsen-usire....” As the “beyond” in the inscription evidently signifies the “underworld,” the idea that the mummy case, resting on the earth, was being pressed upon from beneath by the underworld, and from above by the sky, is clearly conveyed and is in keeping with the sign for universe, already alluded to, which represents three regions superposed. The “deification” of the mummy, which is named “Osiris-Hathor,” is an interesting instance of the idea that the mummy became the image not only of the goddess Hathor but also of the god Osiris, or Ptah, who is usually represented in the form of a mummy.

A remarkable instance of a king in a pyramid being actually worshipped and bearing the name of Ptah, added to his own, is given by Professor Flinders Petrie (op. cit. ii, p. 257). “... The figure of the king Teta, entitled Teta-mer-en-ptah, is placed in a triangle, which is suggestive of a pyramid (as Men-nefer is written with the same triangle on this naos). Rather than suppose a new king at this period, we should see in this the worship of a pyramid king, Teta, of the sixth dynasty....” The association of Ptah, who is regarded as perhaps the oldest of all gods of Egypt, with the square=ptah and the pyramid and the mummy, is of extreme interest, especially as Egyptian texts contain references to “a single god, who becomes a quaternary of gods” (Brugsch II, 408), and we therefore see that the idea of Four in One was a familiar one. The personification of Ptah usually consists of a mummy holding a sceptre, expressing strength, life and stability. Under the form of Osiris he usually holds the curved sceptre denoting dominion, beside the symbols for life, rule and power, and is entitled the “lord of the holy land, lord of eternity, prince of everlasting, the president of the gods, and the head of the corridor of the tomb.” Considering that in all pyramids hitherto explored, the corridor of the tomb is directed towards Polaris, it appears obvious that the supreme god of “life, strength, eternity, rule and power,” was a personification of Polaris, the stability of which was naïvely expressed by the body in mummy form symbolizing [pg 381] the absolute repose and immobility of death, combined with an animated face and the symbols of living, active power.

As the divine land is expressly designated as the divine land of the north in astronomical texts and that this celestial region had its terrestrial counterpart, it is naturally in Lower Egypt, that the holy land of the north must be sought.

Investigation speedily proves that the most ancient vestiges of civilization are situated in the neighborhood of Memphis which, under the kings of the fourth and the sixth dynasties, reached its height of splendor. It is in the land of the north, Meh-ta, that the extremely ancient seven-storied pyramid of Sakkârah lies, and that there exists the area of about thirty kilometers in which eighty pyramids are concentrated, and which constitutes the great burial ground of countless generations of Egyptians of all periods. A curious detail, to which I shall refer again, is the affinity in sound of the name for “north land,” Meh-ta, and mit=death or the dead, and the undeniable resemblance of both words to the Nahuatl, ancient Mexican mictlan=the North, or underworld, from mic-quiztli=death and tlan=land (cf. Egyptian ta=land).

In Egypt, as elsewhere, the western horizon, below which sun, moon and stars disappeared, was naturally regarded as the entrance to the region of the underworld. The west being therefore designated amen-ta, “the hidden or concealed land or region,” it is all the more significant to find the single entrance and exit corridor of each pyramid directed, not towards the west, the underworld, but towards the stable centre of the northern region of the sky. It would therefore seem as though the intention had been to establish a direct line of communication between the tomb chamber in the centre of the pyramid and the divine “northern land of God,” the sacred mountain Manu and the shining celestial city Anu, lying “between the east and west,” i. e. in the Middle, where the supreme star-god dwelt in eternal repose. An interesting proof that the longing of the souls of the dead tended towards the north is furnished by the common prayer-formula: “may my soul ... inhale the north-wind and drink from the stream.”

Before advancing further, the following authoritative statements, establishing the supremacy of pole-star cult in ancient Egypt, should be presented.

According to Sir Norman Lockyer, “It seems extremely probable that the worship of circumpolar constellations went on in [pg 382] Babylonia as well as in Egypt in the earliest times we can get at” (op. cit. p. 363). “There can be no question that the chief ancient constellation in the North was the Great Bear or, as it was then pictured, the Thigh (Meskhet)” (p. 216). “In the exact centre of the circular zodiac of Denderah we find the jackal [Anubis] located at the pole of the equator: it obviously represents the present Little Bear” (p. 362).

“With regard to Anubis, it is quite certain that the seven stars in Ursa Minor make a very good jackal with pendent tail, as generally represented by the Egyptians and that they form the nearest compact constellation to the pole of the ecliptic....”

Sir Norman Lockyer adds that he is informed by Dr. Wallis Budge that “An was an old name of the sun-god,” but also states, in another page of his work that “the worship of Anubis, as god of the dead or the night god ... was supreme until the time of Men-kau-ra, the builder of the third pyramid of Gizeh” (B.C. 3633, Brugsch; B.C. 4100, Mariette; p. 363).

Pending the production of astronomical texts which amply demonstrate that An was a name of a god of the night sun, Polaris, the following establishes that, at Annu or Heliopolis, in remotest antiquity and amongst the pyramid builders, the cult of a northern star prevailed.

“The first civilization as yet glimpsed, so far as temple building goes, in Northern Egypt, represented by that at Annu, or Heliopolis, was a civilization which combined the cult of a northern star with a non-equinoctial solar worship”.... “I know not whether the similarity in the words Anu, Annu and An results merely from a coincidence, but it is certainly singular that the most ancient temples in Lower Egypt (Heliopolis and Denderah) should be called Annu or An, if there be no connection with the Babylonian god Anu” (Lockyer, op. cit. p. 321).

The well-known fact that the entrance passage to the earliest pyramid known, that of Medum, and of all pyramids hitherto explored, has not only been found on the north face of the structure but is also believed to have oriented towards “Sut-anup,” the pole-star (of the period of its construction), unquestionably proves that the pyramid builders assigned a particular importance to the north. Referring the reader to Sir Norman Lockyer's work for a mass of valuable and interesting information concerning the orientation of Egyptian temples, I merely quote the following statements [pg 383] which not only show that throughout Lower Egypt north-star worship existed, but also establish the interesting and important fact that in Upper Egypt a totally different astronomical cult was carried out during an unknown length of time.

“It is an important fact to bear in mind that in the North of Egypt, in early times, the stellar temples were more particularly directed to the north, while south of Thebes, so far as I know, there is only one temple so directed” (p. 225).... “From the astronomical point of view ... there are distinctly two series [of temples and monuments in general], (leaving out of consideration the great pyramid builders at Gizeh) absolutely dissimilar astronomically; ... there are at least two sets [of temple-builders], one going up the river building temples to the north stars, the other going down the river building temples to the south stars; and the two streams practically met at Thebes, or at all events they were both very fully represented there either together or successively.”

Sir Norman Lockyer proceeds to say: “The double origin of the people thus suggested on astronomical grounds may be the reason of the name of ‘double country,’ used especially in the titles of kings, of the employment of two crowns, and finally of the supposed sovereignty of Set over the north, and of Horus over the south divisions of the kingdom” (op. cit. p. 345). “In short, in Lower Egypt the temples are pointed to rising stars near the north point of the horizon, or setting north of west. In Upper Egypt we deal chiefly with temples directed to stars rising in the southeast, or setting low in the southwest. Here again we are in presence of ... distinct differences of astronomical thought....” (p. 341). “With regard to the northern stars observed rising in high amplitudes, we have found traces of their worship in times so remote that in all probability at Annu and Denderah α Ursæ Majoris was used before it became circumpolar. We deal almost certainly with 5000 B.C.... New temples with nearly similar amplitudes ... were built at later times ... it may be suggested that the stellar observations made in them had ultimately to do with the determination of the hours of the night; this seems probable, for in Nubia at present, time at night is thus told.”

“It is possible that observations of these stars [which are nearest the pole and move most slowly] might have been made in such a [pg 384] way that, at the beginning of the evening the particular position of γ Draconis, for instance, might have been noted with regard to the pole-star; and seeing that the Egyptians thoroughly knew the length of the night and of the day in the different portions of the year, they could at once, the moment they had the starting-point afforded by the position of this star, practically use the circle of the stars round the north pole as the dial of a sort of celestial clock. May not this really have been the clock with which they have been credited? However long or short the night, the star which was at first above the pole-star after it had got round so that it was on a level with it, would have gone through a quarter of its revolution. In low northern latitudes, however, the southern stars would serve better for this purpose, since the circle of northern circumpolar stars would be much restricted. Hence there was a reason in such latitudes for preferring southern stars. With regard both to high north and south stars, then, we may in both cases be in presence of observations made to determine the time at night. So that the worship of Set, the determination of the time at night by means of the northern stars, might have been little popular with those who at Gebel Barkal and elsewhere in the south had used the southern ones for the same purpose ...” (p. 344).

Valuable and suggestive as these observations are, I venture to point out that the following texts appear to indicate very clearly that, as in China and Mesopotamia, in the present day, the ancient Egyptian high-priest and king on important public occasions simply utilized the conspicuous constellation of Ursa Major as a measurer of time.

In the account of the ceremonial used at the laying of the foundation of the temple at Edfû, it is stated that the king's glance was directed to the Ak or “Middle” and to Meskhet=Ursa Major. A part of the full translation of the inscription quoted from Nissen by Sir Norman Lockyer (op. cit., pp. 176 and 179) represents the king as speaking, thus: “Looking to the sky and recognizing the 'ak' of the Bull's Thigh constellation, I establish the corners of the temple of Her Majesty.” It is further said “With his glance directed towards the ‘ak’ of the Bull's Thigh constellation he [the king] establishes the temple house of the mistress of Denderak, as took place there before.”

Having found out, by referring to Egyptian dictionaries, that [pg 385] er-ak means “in the middle,” and em-aka “in the midst or middle,” while Hak was a word employed for “king,” I suggest that these meanings afford a different and much more simple explanation of the “ak” mentioned in the inscription than that given by Sir Norman Lockyer and Dümichen. In dealing, further on, with the astronomical signs and names associated with the pole of the ecliptic, I shall, moreover, point out that the bull=ka, employed as an astronomical symbol of Ursa Major, may have been adopted as a cryptic sign for Polaris, merely because its name contained the letters of the word ak=the Middle. The recurrence of the same letters in Hak=king seems to explain also why the king of Egypt was entitled “the bull.”

Returning to the inscription relating to the ceremony of laying the foundation stone; in other texts cited by Sir Norman Lockyer we find the king saying: “I have grasped the wooden peg [stake] and the handle of the club; I hold the rope with Sesheta [his female consort]. My glance follows the course of the stars; my eye is on Meskhet; standing as divider of time by his measuring instrument” (Duemichen's version) or “mine is the part of time of the number of the hour-clock ” (Brugsch's version). In another part the king says “... I let my glance enter the constellation of the Thigh (representing the divider of time at his measuring instrument)” (Duemichen's translation) or “the part of my time stands in the place of his hour-clock” (Brugsch's translation). Sir Norman Lockyer notes that “the word merech or merechet, in which Brugsch suspects hour or water-clock, does not occur elsewhere.”

Whatever differences there may be in the Brugsch and Duemichen translations and the interpretations of the word ak, the above texts establish that the Egyptian king directed his glance to “the Middle” and that the constellation Meskhet=Ursa Major was connected with time-measurement and the establishment of the four quarters of the temple.

As I shall show further on, the “Sesheta,” mentioned in the text as performing the ceremony with the king, appears to be not a “mythical goddess,” as Sir Norman Lockyer infers, but the living “divine queen,” and consort of the king. She is represented with the insignia of Isis, whereas he wears the crown of Osiris, and I note that while she holds her stake in her left, he holds his in his right hand. Deferring a discussion of the position of Egyptian [pg 386] queens, I point out here that, in the interesting description of a foundation ceremonial, preserved in an inscription relating to the rebuilding of a temple at Abydos, about B.C. 1380, the Sesheta, entitled the “mistress of the laying of the foundation stone,” seems to have been the chief actor, since it is she who addresses the king, as follows: “The hammer in my hand was of gold, as I struck the peg with it, and thou wast with me in thy capacity of Harpedonapt [?]. Thy hand held the spade during the fixing of its [the temple's] four corners with accuracy by the four supports of heaven” (Lockyer, p. 175).

The “four supports of heaven” referred to here are obviously “the gods Mestha, Hapi, Tuamautef and Qebhsennuf,” who are recorded in the Book of the Dead (chapter 17) as being “those which find themselves behind the constellation of the Thigh in the northern heaven.” In an inscription in the kings' graves at Thebes mention is made of the “four Northern Genii who are the four gods of ‘the follower’ [obviously a circumpolar constellation]” (Lockyer, p. 147). They seem to be also identical with the “four constellations [Akhemusek] which are found in the northern heavens,” and the “sailors or oarsmen in the bark of Ra,” mentioned in the same and in many other inscriptions. The four “gods” are represented with human bodies respectively surmounted by the head of a man, an ape, a jackal and a hawk and are identical with the “genii of the dead,” represented on the canopic vases placed at the four corners of the bier. In this connection attention is drawn to how clearly the symbolism of the mortuary customs becomes apparent when it is realized that the mummy, the image of Ptah-Osiris, and of the pole-star god, was laid to “eternal rest” in an imaginary “sacred centre,” obtained by naïvely placing the effigies of the gods of the cardinal points, the personifications of the “four stars of the northern heaven,” at the corners of the bier. The same dominant thought which underlies the popular use of the canopic vases clearly led to the building of the vast pyramids which constituted the sacred “centres of the world” par excellence, the square base typifying the four regions and “corners” of the earth; the triangular sides the four divisions of the sky, which converge to a single Middle, associated with Polaris, the sacred pole or ak of the Cosmos.

Returning to the subject of the measurement of time by means of the circumpolar constellations, it is instructive to find that the [pg 387] Egyptian determinative sign for “time” consists of a central dot with a circle drawn around it and to note that the only celestial body that could be accurately figured as occupying the centre of a circle described around it is the primitive sun, Polaris.

The Egyptian for “time” is rek, an inversion of ker=the night, the common sign for which is a band, figuring the sky, from the centre of which a star is suspended by a thread. As the star is usually formed by two lines, diagonally crossed, at the end of the thread, there is a strong temptation to see in the hanging single star an actual representation of a cross symbol. It is particularly striking to find in Brugsch's work, that the determinative for time is actually represented, in numerous cases, as close to the single hanging star (fig. , 9). I leave it to the reader to form his own conclusions whether this group represents Polaris and the circuit of time measured by the circumpolar constellations, or whether it merely represents, as Brugsch states, the winter solstice, i. e. the day sun in the nocturnal sky.

There exists a remarkable variant of the determinative of time, which I shall discuss more fully further on. Instead of a mere dot, a five-pointed star is distinctly figured in the centre of the circle (fig. , 12). This variant furnishes, in my opinion, convincing proof of the meaning of the determinative for time, which also constituted the well-known sign for Ra=god, and forms a part of the name of the supreme divinity of Egypt, Amen, or Amon or Amun Ra, the “hidden or secret god,” whose name contradicts the current assumption that Ra signifies the diurnal sun merely, and that Amen-Ra was a “solar” deity.

The following texts relating to the “supreme true but hidden god” amply demonstrate that the chief characteristic of his cult was that it was shrouded in secrecy and mystification. Others, which I shall quote farther on, allow us clearly to perceive that individuals were obliged to pass through a series of initiations into the meanings of cabalistic signs and symbols of the divinity before they attained the pure knowledge of the nature of the mysterious, “hidden divinity.” On reading the texts of the famous “Book of the Dead” it has frequently occurred to me that the negative confession and judgment of the soul of the departed may originally signify the actual confession and judgment of an applicant for initiation into the secrets of the priesthood and the astronomical and theological knowledge they so rigidly guarded from the ignorant [pg 388] multitude. The highest knowledge and most profound secret they could impart was doubtlessly the acknowledgment and perception of the existence of a supreme power which governed the universe on a certain plan, which the rulers of the land of Egypt endeavored to apply to its organization and government in order to make it a celestial kingdom upon earth.

The rigidly-adhered-to policy of the ruling caste was, however, the shrouding and concealment of their store of knowledge from the uninitiated and the gradual admission of select individuals to the inner chambers of secrecy. The following texts show that even the true name of the supreme divinity was wrapped in impenetrable mystery, but the assumption that we are dealing with a pole-star god seems to enable us to penetrate the obscurity of the formulæ employed by the scribes to veil the true meaning of the texts.

Beginning with the hymn published by Mr. Wallis Budge, in his useful handbook, “The Nile,” we find Amen-Ra addressed as “King, One among the gods, myriad are his names, how many are they, is not known ... the lord of Law, whose shrine is hidden, ... whose name is hidden from his children in his name Amen.”... In the legend of Ra and Isis (xxth dynasty) he is designated as “the god divine, the creator of himself, the creator of heaven, earth, breath of life, fire, gods, men, beasts, cattle, reptiles, fowl of the air, fish, king of men and gods, in form one, to whom periods are as years, many of names, not known are they, not know them the gods.”

The mysterious supreme god is further spoken of in the hymn as ... “the lord of the uræus crown, exalted of the plumes; the serpent Mehen, and the two uræi are the (ornaments) of his face....” Mention is likewise made of his lordship over the Sekti boat (which sailed from the place of rising in the East) and the Atet boat (which sailed to the place of setting in the West); he is also addressed as the “god Khepera in his boat.” In many passages he is apparently identified with the sun, “the eye of Horus,” but is at the same time, also addressed as Ani, the lord of the New Moon festival and he is termed “the lord of all the gods whose appearances are in the horizon.” His all-embracing nature is clearly conveyed by the passages terming him “the maker and [pg 389] lord of things which are below and of things which are above;” “of the heaven and earth.” The above evidence suffices to show that, on the one hand, Amen-Ra is constantly referred to as the “One god, without a second, the knowledge of whose nature is concealed from men and gods, who reveals himself in innumerable forms; who exerts hidden control and universal dominion and is associated with stability and power, time and eternity.” On the other hand, stress is laid on his dual nature: Amen-Ra is bi-sexual and self-creative; alternately becomes light and darkness; and the sun and moon are the eyes of his “hidden face,” which, literally translated, yields Amen-Hra.

In the hymn previously cited he is also termed the “lord of the sky, the establisher of all things, ... the extender of foot-steps.... One in his times as among the gods....” He is apostrophized as “the maker of the gods, who hast stretched out the heavens and founded the earth,” “the chief who makest the earth like unto himself,”.... “President of the great cycle of the gods, only one without his second ... living in Law every day.... O Form, one, creator of all things, O one only, maker of existences ... he giveth the breath of life to (the germ) in the egg.... Hail to thee, thou only one!... He watches all people who sleep ... all people adore thee.... O thou ... the untiring watcher, Amsu-amen lord of eternity, the Maker of Law....” Another passage states: “the aten (disk) is thy body” (i. e. image or symbol). In the legend of Ra and Isis, quoted above, the god is made to say of himself: “I am the maker of the hours, the creator of days, I am the opener of the festivals of the year.... I am he who when he opens his eyes [i. e. the sun and moon] becometh light, when he shutteth his two eyes, becometh darkness.” Brugsch tells us that Ra, whom he accepts as the day-sun, was addressed as the master of double or two-fold force, who illuminates the world with his two eyes and “was symbolized by two lions.” Further on I shall quote facts establishing that the king and queen of Egypt were respectively named the right and left eye of Amen-Ra, were associated with sun and moon, regarded as the personifications of Osiris and Isis, and that these deities were represented in the form of uræus serpents with human heads, and that the two serpents were employed as symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt. Mr. Wallis Budge informs us that Amen-Ra was named “bull ... in thy name of ‘Amen bull of [pg 390] his mother,’ and that he was entitled ‘lord of the thrones of the two lands;’ ‘king of the gods;’ ‘maker of mortals;’ ‘mighty law.’ ” In one of his forms he is represented as wearing horns (an allusion to duality and the title of bull) and feathers (=mat=maat=law) and holding the emblems of stability, power, dominion and rule.

Figure 62.

Before demonstrating that the chief astronomical signs of the Egyptian zodiac partake of the nature of a rebus and express the sound of the various attributes and titles and some of the “myriad of names” of the “hidden god,” contained in the preceding texts, I point out how clearly the conception of Amen-Ra, as shown in these hymns and invocations, is consistent with a pole-star origin. We have, moreover, the authoritative opinion of Brugsch that “the hieroglyph and name Ra did not only refer to the day-sun, but also designated certain brilliant stars,” which he presumes to be the planets (op. cit. i, p. 79). This identification of the name Ra with stars involuntarily obliges one to recall the Sanscrit tara=star [pg 391] while the Chinese employment of a plain circle to designate “star,” also finds its analogy. Let us now examine the hieroglyphic signs and symbols of Ra and note how intelligible they become when the god is identified as Polaris.

The following (fig. ) are some of the modes in which the name Ra is found expressed in texts published in Mr. Wallis Budge's “First steps in Egyptian:”

Fig. , 1. By a dot in the centre of a circle, the determinative of “time.”

2. By the latter accompanied by the image of a seated god and the numeral 1.

3. Idem, partly surrounded by a serpent in motion and accompanied by the numeral 1.

4. The serpent and circle on the head of a hawk-headed seated god.

To these are added for purposes of comparison

5. The circle with two uræi.

6. Idem, to which a single uræus and a wing are attached.

7. Idem, with two uræi and two wings.

8. Idem, with one wing.

9. Idem, accompanied by the numeral one and the sign for heaven, to which a cross-shaped star is hanging.

10. Idem, resting in the centre of the summit of a twin mountain.

11. Idem, resting in the centre of a boat.

12. Idem, with a central star instead of a dot constituting the word duat=“lower hemisphere” (Brugsch).

13. The variant of this, cited by Brugsch.

14. The disk containing a single eye.

My prolonged study of the ancient Mexican picture-writings having given me the habit of regarding each primitive symbol as a possible rebus led me to look up the phonetic values of the symbols combined with the Ra sign and to note that some of them were actually mentioned in connection with Amen-Ra in the texts cited above, namely: the face, the eye, the egg, the uræus, the disk, the “serpent Mehen.” It was a surprise to find, on simply referring to the glossaries, that the name for uræus=ara and that eye=ari; an egg=ar (also sa, se, and suht); face=hra; [pg 392] each word thus containing the name Ra=god, in simple or inverted form (see fig. , 1-4). The natural inference was that I had obtained an insight into the method devised by the ingenious Egyptian priesthood, to express, in cryptic form, the name of the “hidden god.”

Figure 63.

Further glimpses of light seemed obtained when I found that, as written by German Egyptologists, the determinative for divinity, the banner=nutar, notar, netar, or neter, not only expressed the same sound as the word nut, but also contained the letters “r” and “a” (5). The disk=atun, aton or aten might also be regarded [pg 393] as an anagram, being the inverted form of nutar, minus the last letter (6). The names for wing (7) being tun, ton or ten, the wing attached to the disk constituted a complementary sign, duplicating the final syllable. At the same time, as a second name for wing was meh, or mah (cf. mat and its synonym su=feather), there seemed to be an explanation of the “serpent mehen” applied to Amen-Ra and the possibility that it signified the “winged serpent,” such as is frequently depicted in texts published by Brugsch (8). It was obvious that the uræus=ara and the wing meh, would form an ingenious anagram expressing, by means of the signs, a-meh-ra, the name Amen-Ra.

The constantly recurring form of the Ra sign, in which the serpent is represented as gliding around the circle, enclosing the central point of fixity, naturally suggests the inference that this variant must have been adopted at a time when the constellation Draco, the “Old serpent,” or “Nakkasch qodmun,” was circumpolar and was equally familiar, under this name, to the Egyptian and Euphratean astronomers. This inference seems to be confirmed by the fact that, in the hymn to Amen-Ra, cited above, the name Nak is given to “the serpent with knives stuck in his back,” who, according to the myth, was the demon of night and the enemy of the sun-god, the ruler of day. The fact that, in the temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes, a service was recited daily for the destruction of the serpent Nak by Horus, appears to indicate the growth of the idea of a combat between light and darkness and the dual forces of nature, which would naturally tend to create the thought of an antagonism existing not only between the sexes, but also between the two divisions of Egypt and the separate cults of the nocturnal heaven (Polaris and the moon) and the diurnal heaven (the sun).

In the list of festivals, dating from the Ptolemaic period and inscribed in the temple at Edfu, there are mentioned: “the festival of the end or point of the triangle,” simultaneous with that of “the serpent Nai or Na,” immediately followed by “the festivals of the ‘tena’=[aten?], and of the great serpent Na,” and “of the Ken=the festival of darkness, and of the red serpent Na” (Brugsch op. cit. i, p. 51). Commenting upon the above names I draw attention to the curious fact that in the above word ken, we seem to have the inversion of nak, the name of the “night-serpent” and that na is actually the inversion of the word an, which [pg 394] signifies “he who turns or winds himself around.” I shall show further on, in astronomical texts, that this name is actually identified with the pole.

When these facts are borne in mind the full import of the familiar Egyptian symbol for eternity=tet, becomes clear. It consists of the image of a mummy, symbolizing fixity, around which a great serpent is winding itself, conveying the idea of circling motion (fig. , 9 and 10). It is well known that this group symbolized eternity=tet and the sign is always interpreted as expressing the sound tet. If analyzed more closely, however, and interpreted as a rebus, it appears to yield a fund of deeper meaning.

The serpent Na furnishes the word An=the winder or he who moves around. Linked to one of the names for mummy=sah, the group might be read as An-sah, a name which invites comparison with Anshar, the Assyrian pole-star god who was said to shoot arrows in all directions, i. e. to turn around, and the Akkadian title for Ursa Major, Akanna=the Lord of Heaven. The second name for mummy, given in Mr. Wallis Budge's Nile, is tut, the exact word which signifies “to engender,” which explains why images of the creator should have been made in mummy form. The word tut directs attention to the name of the god Tehuti=Thoth, “the Measurer,” a name to be weighed in connection with the fact that time was measured by the circumpolar constellations. It does not appear impossible that the word khat=corpse may also have been brought into use in the rebus and furnished an anagram or allusion to the ak or centre.

The other well-known symbol for eternity, i. e. stability, is the column tet, representing a pillar usually consisting of four or five parts (fig. , 11). It appears hitherto to have escaped attention that the Egyptian for hand being tet, the hand, employed as a rebus, would actually express the name for eternity and may well have been employed as a secret sign for the divine centre, eternal stability and the sacred number five, consisting of the Middle and the Four Quarters, symbolized by the fingers and thumb (fig. , 12). To this must be added the interesting fact that, in hieratic script, the hand expressed the sound “a” which means “power” while aa=great, aat=great and mighty, aa=mighty one. To those initiated in the mysteries of hieroglyphic writing the hand thus clearly constituted a rebus, expressing the eternal, permanent, stable, [pg 395] great, mighty power, one yet double and fourfold, the sacred five in one, the Middle and Four Quarters.

The following is a group of animal and other figures, which are repeated, with variations of form, combination and position, in the different zodiacs.

Figure 64.

The principal and the phonetic values of their names are figured as follows: the thigh=uart, khepes or maskhet; the bull, ox or cow=ka, ah, aua; the hawk=bak, designated as an, kher or heu=Horus; the cynocephalus ape and phallus=aaani and ka; the lion=mahes; the jackal (anubis) uher or sabi; the scorpion=tart or serkhet; the crocodile=sebek, also amsuk or emsuh, and seta; the vase or jar=nu (cf. nut); the female hippopotamus=tebt, shown by Dr. Gensler to have been associated with the name menat=nurse, she who nurses (see Brugsch I, p. 130).

[pg 396]

[pg 397]

In the Edfu zodiac, the latter, whose name furnishes an anagram of amen=hidden, is represented with the Ra sign on her head and holds a cord to which the constellation of Ursa Major is attached. This is figured, with its seven stars, as the thigh (pl. V, 2), with the head of a bull, elements which furnish the phonetic values of uart, khepes or maskhet and aua, ka or ah, to which should be added that the Egyptian mode of saying “a bull”=ua en ka, literally “one of bull,” the female form being “uat en ka” (see Wallis Budge, First steps in Egyptian).

After having studied the hymns and invocations to Amen-Ra we are aware, not only that the “hidden god” is named “the bull,” but that great stress is laid upon his being “One”=ua, yet double=ka. It therefore appears very significant to find these words incorporated in the name for Ursa Major=thigh, uart, and this combined with bull=ua or ka which furnishes the anagram ak=middle. What is more, the second name for thigh being khepes, this might form a rebus for the common name for (1) luminary or star in general=khebs or khabs, literally, lights, lamps, flames, cf. seb=star; (2) kheper=life, existence, to come into existence, cf. khepdes=uterus, kher khepd=the navel, khepesh=power.

The fact that one title of Amen-Ra was Khepera=the creator, lends additional interest to the association of his secret sign, the hippopotamus, with the constellation Ursa Major, which he apparently holds and guides and which emblematizes life, i. e. motion—The thigh=khepes, scarab=kheper, fish, khepanen, crocodile=seta or sebek, which, inverted, yields the word khebes=star, and royal sickle=khepes, thus appear to have been but different modes of expressing the same meaning and the title of Khepera (fig. , 13-16). It can be readily understood why the scarab beetle, which encloses its egg in a ball of mud and rolls this to a safe hatching place, became the favorite secret sign for the “hidden god,” since none but the initiated would see in the beetle, holding the ball of earth enclosing its egg, the actual rebus of Khepera, the creator, expressed by the kheper; and the circle or disk, the sign of Ra, containing the germ of life.

Returning to an examination of the signs for Ursa Major employed by the Egyptian astronomer scribes, we find, beside the more elaborate form given by Mr. Wallis Budge (pl. v, 3), the variants (4 and 5) which constantly recur in the texts published by Brugsch, and which reveal that the thigh, accompanied by a single [pg 398] star, constituted the essential elements of the sign. It is one of the curiosities of Egyptian hieroglyphics that the image of a star may express either seb=star, or the numeral five=tuau. This being the case, and the word for thigh being either khepes or uart, it is obvious that the thigh and star yield more than one interpretation from the rebus point of view, and may either be read as seb khepdes, seb-uart or tuau-uart—in one case containing the divine title “creator” and in the second a play upon the name ua=One, the favorite appellation given to Amen-Ra.

The following star names contained in the Brugsch texts, and which have avowedly not been satisfactorily identified, up to the present, will speak for themselves and will be found to be comprehensible and appropriate only when identified with Polaris: Seb-uati=the lone, single, only, or sole star (cf. title “One” given to Amen-Ra); Seb-seta=the hidden star, in Greek texts, sebkhes, sebkhe, the sebses, anagrams of khebs, or khepdes (cf. “hidden” god). This star is found pictured in the astronomical texts by a turtle, the name for which is seta, sita, sit or set; in Greek texts cit.

To me it seems clear that the turtle constituted a rebus sign for the “hidden star” and concealed god, and I find that another Egyptian word could have served equally well for the same purpose, viz., seta=the vulture. What is more, the following names, mentioned in the astronomical texts, yield the sound of the first vowel of the words seb=star and seta=hidden, and attention is drawn to the fact that, as the goose and egg, for instance, were known under several names, the secrecy of the true meaning of these sacred symbols was insured: goose=se, ser, sar, seb, smen, apt, aq; egg=se, sa, ser, sar, ar, suht; nest=ses; pool of water=se; heron=sent.

A curious double similarity of sound exists between the name for turtle and one of the names for goose, inasmuch as the turtle=seta is also called aps, and the goose=se is named apt (fig. , 17-18). Another name for goose being aq or ak, we find that its value as a rebus must have been supreme, since it so perfectly expressed the word ak=middle. A proof that its merits were duly appreciated by the ancient scribes, is its constant and widespread employment in decorative art as a so-called “solar symbol,” in association with the circle or disk and the swastika. Through its name se, the goose-symbol likewise expressed the [pg 399] same meaning as the egg and the first syllable of seta=hidden; perhaps also ne-se-r=flame, the synonym of khebs=luminary or star (Brugsch). Through its name ak, the goose symbol became the synonym of all ak or ka words. Finally, through its name apt, it became related to the whole series of anagrams of ptah and the synonym of the pair of horns which express ap in hieratic script.

The association of the syllable ap with the bull=uau and ka, is proven by the name Apis given to the living, sacred bull, under which form the supreme divinity was worshipped from earliest times, at or before the building of the pyramids at Memphis. The explanation that, just as sacred bull was merely a living rebus expressing by the sound of its names, the words “the one, the double, the middle of the central two-fold one,” or “divine twain,” fully explains why, in time, the bull itself came to be chosen, revered and worshipped as the living image of the “hidden god.”

The marks of the sacred calf Apis, described by Herodotus, appear to become intelligible, when translated as follows and then analyzed: “It is black (khem or kam) and has a square (ptah) spot of white (hetet) on the forehead (tehen). On the back (of the head) (makha or at) the figure of an eagle=vulture (seta). In the tail (peh?) double (ka) hairs (anem). On the tongue (nes) a beetle (kheper).”

Feeling convinced that Egyptologists could find further phonetic elements and hidden meaning in the above material, it is with diffidence that I point out some of the meaning I am able to discern with the simple aid of “First steps in Egyptian.” Besides being the image of Amen-Ra Polaris, the one and divine twain, the black (khem) skin (annu) of the sacred bull appears to contain an allusion to Egypt, known as “khem” and its central capital Annu, besides that to the nocturnal heaven and its shining city. The square ptah of white=hetet (cf. hetet, and chut=light) appears to symbolize the quadriform plan of the celestial and terrestrial kingdom and its position on the head (tep) between the two horns (ap) gains in significance when it is realized that, in astronomical texts, the square (designated above as hetet=white) is as frequently pictured between a pair of horns as the pillar=tet, that both square and pillar appear thus to have expressed the same sound=tet, which signifies eternity. The bird of prey=seta on the bull's back (makha) evidently signified the hidden=seta, centre, m-akh-a, further significance being lent to the syllable akh [pg 400] by the fact that it also means “to support,” and that “the support of heaven” was a divine title contained in the hieratic texts. The double hair=anem, ka, appears as another mode of expressing the “hidden” ka=double or ak=centre. The word for tongue (nes) being the reversal of sen=two, the kheper=life, on the tongue, appears as an allusion to dual principles or powers of nature. The giving forth and drawing in of breath by the living Apis bull must doubtlessly have seemed, to the Egyptian priesthood, emblematical of the giving and taking away of breath of life, by the creator, Khepera, over whose emblem, on the tongue of the animal, each breath necessarily passed.

An insight may thus be gained of the method by means of which primitive, naïve picture-writing could have become more ingenious and intricate until, as actually stated in the hymns, the name of the supreme divinity became “hidden from his children in the name Amen” [literally=hidden], and a “myriad of names, how many are they is not known” had been invented by the scribes, to designate the King (Hak), “one among gods, in form one, the lord of eternity, stability and law.”

Before making a cursory examination of the following lists of homonyms of the names for bull=ah, uau and ka, I must revert to astronomical pictures and signs and make some statements concerning the hawk-headed human form found represented in the zodiacs in close association with the image of Ursa Major, the bull; (see pl. v, 1, from Denderah). The presence of the hawk=bak in the centre of the polar region, with the bull ka, assumes significance in connection with the word ak=middle and the name for “the middle of the heavens,” cited by Sir Norman Lockyer; i. e., kabal sami, and all of these words are particularly interesting when it is remembered that the Babylonian name for north was akkad, the Akkadian title for Ursa Major was Akanna, while Ursa Minor was named Kakkabu in Babylonia and Assyria. The Arabian kaaba is recalled here.

The inscriptions accompanying the zodiacs published by Brugsch (op. cit. i, p. 127) designate this hawk-headed personage, who, in each case, holds either a spear or a plain staff, by the following names, of which I give Brugsch's translation, followed by my own commentary. An=he who turns or winds himself around. In this connection I point out that the name Na, given to the serpent, is the inversion of an. Kher-an=he who fights and turns or [pg 401] winds himself around. As kher is likewise the word for ring or circle (cf. Greek kirkos, Latin circus or circulus, Scand. kring), it is evident that the name Kher-an admits of being interpreted as “he who winds or turns around in a ring or circle,” kher=the fighter or combatant. At the same time, the word kher likewise signifies ring or circle; moreover ker=night and rek=time. Therefore the name Neb-kher, cited by Brugsch (op. cit. i, 176), as one of those given to the god of the city of At-Nebes, besides signifying, as he says, the “lord of strife or fighting,” clearly means “the lord of the circle or ring.” This is undoubtedly one of the most appropriate of names for the god of the pole star and Ursa Major and is, besides, the Egyptian equivalent for the Hindu “lord of the wheel,” the Persian “god of the ring,” and the Mexican “lord of the circle and of the night”=Yaual or Yohual-tecuhtli. The other titles of the same god recorded by Brugsch are “the flame or light”=Neser, and “the lord of life”=Neb-ankh.

I merely point out here what I shall discuss more fully later on, that, in the Egyptian An, “he who turns himself around,” we have the counterpart, not only of the Assyrian An-shar (fig. , 5) who shoots his darts in all directions, but also of the “North god” of the ancient Mexicans, who, fully armed is held by one foot, by the sign of the North, to the centre of the cross, the symbol of the Four Quarters, and like the Akkadian “lord of heaven,” Akanna, is identified with Ursa Major.

I note, moreover, that, whereas the common name for hawk is bak, that employed by Brugsch is hru (cf. inversion ur=the Egyptian name for cross symbol) which is sometimes transcribed as hur, her or heru, hor or har=and translated as Horus or Ra Harmachis. An interesting image of the hawk god is found in another inscription in the temple of Denderah containing the group (pl. V, 6) consisting of a single star, the bull and hawk, transcribed by Brugsch as “Hru-Ka” and translated as “the bull (of) Horus” (op. cit. i, p. 7). Another interesting case of the combination of the bull and hawk is the hawk with a bull's head also figured by Brugsch, and which is obviously a variant of “hru-ka.” A curious instance which seems to contain a reversal of these syllables is the bull, repeated in inverted positions, with the cross-sign=ur, a group which might well have been employed as a rebus expressing the sound ur-ak-ka, a combination which I shall discuss further on.

[pg 402]

The identity of Horus as a form of Polaris is hinted at in the following inscription in the temple at Denderah (pl. v, 10) which Brugsch translates: “Ra Horchuti (=hur-chuti) the shining Horus, the ray of light in the night” ... (op. cit. i, p. 16). The “god” is figured in mummy form, holding the sceptre tam (cf. mat=justice, truth) and the sign ankh (life), with the head of a hawk=bak or hru (cf. ur=four, and head=tep or tepet, also name for “chief”), the head conveying idea of four-fold chieftainship, surmounted by the horns=ap and circle or disk=ra.

Figure 65.

An extremely suggestive astronomical picture (pl. v, 13) contains [pg 403] the combination of Horus, the An, in the form of the human-headed hawk, with a serpent Na, the boat (uaa, am or makhen) and the circle enclosing a single star, duat (cf. ua=one). The complete group thus conveys a wealth of hidden meaning which is perfectly intelligible when interpreted as pole-star symbolism.

The reader is now invited to take a preliminary look at the columns of signs included in figs. , , , some of which will be recognized as primitive pole-star symbols already discussed, and which will respectively be found to contain homonyms of ua=One and uahi=permanent; ak and kabal=centre, ka=double, an=he who turns and ankh=life, etc. Special attention is also drawn to the modes of expressing the syllable am by the homonyms boy or child, boat and tree (fig. , 20-22).

Different combinations of identical phonetic elements are found in the following groups which prove to be but different ingenious figures expressing the same sounds, with more or less the same meanings: pl. v, 15, represents the boat, whose phonetic values are given above, with a flower=ankh, the homonym of life, containing the names an and na, from which the uræus=ara, is rising. Later on the deeper symbolism of this and fig. , pl. v, will be further discussed. In the latter, instead of the flower the boat contains the ara and a boy=ah or aah, whose name is the homonym for great, mighty, powerful, etc. Assuming that the boat expressed its particular name uaa=ua=one, we thus have a rendering of the appellation so constantly given to Amen-Ra in the hymns and invocations: “One, great, powerful, mighty god,” accompanied by a whole series of secondary meaning and symbolism. In pl. v, 9, the boat containing the bull or cow, is accompanied by stars which reproduce Ursa Major exactly, minus one star, the head of the animal occupying the centre of the four stars forming the inverted square of “the dipper.” In this case the boat seems to express its name makhen, incorporating ak, the name for the sacred centre of the sky, which is repeated in the name ka=bull, whose image, like that of the boat, conveys the allusion to ua=one, by their respective double names, aua and uaa.

What appears to me to contain the most convincing proof of the identity of Amen-Ra with Polaris is 11, pl. v, which shows us a boat in which lies a mummy, above which is a row of seven stars under an oval, containing two eyes. The oval ring is evidently the image of Amen-Ra, who united in his person the dual principles [pg 404] of nature symbolized by sun and moon=his “two eyes.” The symbolism of the boat and mummy has already been sufficiently discussed to enable the reader to discern its association with the idea of oneness, of stability and centrality. Further light is thrown upon the connection of the two eyes with the sacred centre by pl. v, 14, from the Book of the Dead, where the chosen place of sepulchre for the dead person, mentioned in the text, is the temple pyramid, the apex of which is rendered prominent by being painted black and suggestively occupies a central position between two eyes. After the periods of Greek rule in Egypt, the point of the pyramid must have been associated with the Greek words, akra=hill-top and aku=point, which recurs in the Latin name acacia, by which the thorny tree, originally found in Egypt, is still known. It can readily be seen how this tree would have been chosen as a symbol of the ak=middle and it is possible that its name may originally have been that also given to the olive tree=bak. The inscription on the famous obelisks erected by queen Hat-shepsut contains a special mention of the point of the obelisk, as being made of precious material: “two great obelisks of hard granite of the south, the point of each is of electrum, the tribute of the best quality of all countries” (Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, Vol. ii, p. 86).