The Fundamental Principles Of Old And New World Civilizations (part 4)

The many variants of the constellation or star termed “the divine triangle” or “the triangle of the god” next claim attention. An extremely interesting variant of this constellation represents a hawk-headed sphinx, next to the triangle (pl. vi, 1); 2-4 represent the common form expressing the name Sopedet. As Brugsch informs us, the above name was changed at a more recent period into Satit (6-8), which he translates as “she who shoots, the archeress” or “she who causes the Nile to rise.” In these cases the written name either contains an arrow (6), the pyramid symbol for earth (7), or a seated figure above whose head is a single star (8). A rarer form of representing the same constellation is 9 and 10, the group being transcribed by “Satit Hont Khabsu” which Brugsch translates as “Sothis, the Queen of the ... stars.” From the feminine terminations employed in the text it is clear that it is a cow which figures here in the boat, with a single star between its horns and it appears to me to be obvious that we have to deal here with the feminine form of Polaris, with Auset=Isis, closely related to the Assyrian “goddess of battle,” Ishtar, the [pg 406] female counterpart of Ausar=Osiris, the Assyrian Anshar, or Ashur, the “god of battle.”

This view is confirmed by further astronomical pictures published by Brugsch, which appear to me not merely to signify the constellations Orion and Sirius as Brugsch infers, but to be hieroglyphs intended to be understood by the initiated only, representing two or more of the forms under which Amen-Ra was figured. At Edfu (pl. vi, 11) the boat=au, uaa, and the mummy=sah form a fair rebus for Ausar=Osiris, while the boat alongside of it contains the cow, a form under which Isis=Hathor was worshipped in Egypt during centuries. At Denderah (12) there is a cow in one boat=Isis; and a man in another who holds the sceptre tam, emblematic of power, and turns his head around, an evident allusion to the action an=he who turns himself around, or to sah=one who turns away. Between both is the hawk=bak or Hur-chuti=Horus, standing on the sceptre named aut, composed of the lotus flower=ankh. A variant of the same group (13) also symbolizing the “Above, Below and Middle,” and from Denderah, represents Isis only in the celestial boat and Osiris standing (on earth) holding, beside the tam, the whip=nekhe khu, emblematic of rule. In 14, a female figure stands in the boat under the written name Auset=Isis and bears in her hand the ankh sign and the lotus flower=ankh sceptre. In the second boat the figure of a boy (ahi) turning (an or sah) his head, holds up the ankh. In 15, we seem to have an evidence of the ascendancy of Isis worship, for the boat contains not only the cow, under the name satit=she who shoots, or the archeress, but also the standing figure of the goddess, crowned by the disk or circle between two horns.

A striking proof that the knowledge of the true, hidden meaning of the signs just discussed was regarded by those who possessed it as an evidence of an advanced stage of initiation in the mysteries of the priesthood, is furnished by the following text, which accompanies pl. vi, 16:

In the Book of the Dead (Leyden, Papyrus, p. 16), in a chapter entitled: “Chapter of the knowledge of the eastern spirits, ro en rex biu abti,” the dead person utters the following words: “I know that eastern mountainous region of the heaven whose south is at the sea Kharo and the north at the river of Ro, at the place where the day-god Ra drives around amidst storm-winds. I am a welcome comrade in the boat and I row without tiring in the bark [pg 407] of Ra. I know that tree of emerald green brandies amongst which Ra shows himself when he goes over the layer of clouds of the god Su. I know that gate out of which Ra issues. I know the meadow of alo, whose wall is of iron.... I know the eastern spirits, namely the god Hur-Chuti, the calf next to this god and the god of the morning,” the original text of the latter sentence being: “au-a-rekh-ku-a biu abti Hur-chuti pu behsu kher nutar pen nutar duaut pu” (Brugsch, op. cit., i, p. 72).

The evasion and caution with which the speaker alludes to his knowledge of the meaning of the signs, without betraying the latter, sufficiently indicate the obligation of absolute secrecy which bound him, and it may be inferred that several of the words he employed were intended to be misleading to an outsider just as the astronomical pictures, exposed to public view, were purposely made to seem to relate to the more familiar sun, moon and constellations, the mind being thus led away from the hidden but true star-god=Polaris. The circumstance that, on the body of the young bull in the boat, there are seven dots and above it a single star and that the hawk-headed seated deity behind it is crowned by the serpent circle or disk of Amen-Ra, sufficiently enlightens us as to the true, veiled significance which represents different forms of the “hidden god,” of the group. A careful analysis of this and of the astronomical images suffices, however, to disclose the limited scope of the meaning of such groups, each one being but a different rebus containing the same phonetic elements. Let us now briefly indicate what appear to have been the essential components which all images contain and a few of the myriad of ways by which they were expressed.

Uahi=permanent, and Ua=One. Represented by

Fig. . 1. An arrow=au (cf. abau=to fight), an arm=a, and the numerical one=ua.

2. The cow=ah, aua, the latter name incorporating the adjective a=mighty, powerful, etc.

3. The thigh=uart.

4. The boat=uaa.

5. The numeral five=tuau.

6. The throne, seat or place=auset, which constitutes the name Auset=Isis, the consort of Ausar=Osiris.

[pg 408]

7. The bowl=au.

8 and 9. Two forms of sceptre or bent staff=au, uat, also aam.

Figure 66.

Besides these signs, well known as sacred symbols, we find that the following names also contain the sacred title Ua: uatet=greenstone, emerald, aut=quadrupeds, au=heir, also dog, maau=rays of light, mau=lion, also cat. The reason why certain quadrupeds, and particularly the cow, lion, and the cat, should have become sacred animals in Egypt, seems to be satisfactorily explained by the fact that each constituted a rebus and could therefore be employed as an “image” of the One god. It is obvious that locality would necessarily influence the choice of the [pg 409] sacred animal and that while one city might adopt the cow, another would be obliged to adopt the cat, etc, as the living rebus. The adoption of “the heir,” or first-born of the sacramental union of king and queen, as the living image of the deity, throws an unexpected light on the reason why members of the royal line were treated with divine honors. While persons, animals and objects whose names contained the divine Ua=one, would thus be chosen, others containing the word Ra=god, would also be adopted.

Ra=god.

Of these I have already pointed out the uræus=ara, the eye=ari, face=hra and egg=ar, also se or sa and suht. To these may also be added the date palm or dates=ben-ra; grain=nepra; the vine=aarer and grapes=aarer, each of which is to be found associated with sacred symbolism.

The veneration accorded in different localities to the pig=re-ra and the horse, may thus be accounted for, especially as the name for the latter, het-ra, consists of het=light or fair, and ra=god, and the horse is actually found associated with the light-gods of antiquity and with so-called solar symbols and the swastika.

Food for reflection is afforded by the Egyptian name for mirror, which literally signifies to see, or the seer=maa, of the face=hra, but which furnishes, as a rebus, the word maat=law, which is usually expressed by the feather=mat, connected with hra=i. e. ra=god (fig. , 10). The employment of the mirror as an image of the god of law would thus naturally have been suggested by its name. The presence of the eye=ari (cf. ra) in the centre of a mirror which is being worshipped, also suggests that in ancient Egypt the mirror was employed in the temple to hold the reflection of Polaris=Amen-Ra, “the untiring watcher, the lord of eternity and the maker of law” (see fig. , 11). It is obvious that the habitual employment, by the astronomer priests, of a mirror so placed in the sanctuary as to catch the reflection of the pole-star through an open doorway, would lead to the discovery of the movements of the sun and the positions it assumes during the year. The flashing of a beam of sunlight once a year, at the period of the summer solstice, upon the mirror which constantly reflected the pole-star, would naturally suggest the idea of “the union of the day-sun with the night-sun” and seem particularly impressive as it was at this period that the Nile began to rise. In dealing [pg 410] with the religious festivals held at this period more will be said on this subject.

The word maat=law, besides being expressed by the feather=mat, could also have been indicated to those initiated in the mysteries of hieratic rebus-writing, by the lion=ma hes; the antelope=ma-het, which also contains the sacred attribute light=het, the synonym of khu, thus expresses the idea of the “light of the law.” The musical instrument named mat may also have originally been, like the tam sceptre, a symbol of lawful power and conveyed an allusion to meht or maht=north. To this series the word am should be added, signifying child, tree and boat, each of which has already been treated of in connection with pole-star symbolism and Amen-Ra (fig. , 20-22).

Duality=ka=double; and the Middle=ak.

The name for bull=ka (fig. , 1) incorporates, as has already been shown, not only duality and middle, but also, through its other names, the idea of oneness and of power. This appears to explain clearly why the bull was chosen as the image or rebus of Polaris and Ursa Major, which appear to have been regarded as a single combination of stars. The fact that in the hymns Amen-Ra is addressed as “the bull,” constitutes a convincing corroboration of the identification of the “hidden god” with Polaris. A line of connection seems, moreover, to exist between the Egyptian kabal sami=the middle of heaven, the image of a bull in the centre of the zodiacs, and the bull of Assyria, under which image Baal was worshipped.

Hieratic signs, expressing the word for middle and double appear to have been: the mummy which, although named sah or tut, also signified khat=corpse (2) and conveyed an allusion to mit=death, the homonym of met=north.

A certain form of fish expressed the syllable kha (3). A cone-shaped object named khaker appears to have served as a rebus for the middle and double as well as night=ker and time=rek (4). In pl. vii, 12, the khaker figures behind the seated image of a deity with the head of a ram=ser or sar, holding the ankh in his hand, the whole forming a rebus for Ansar, and containing much meaning besides.

Kha-ut (fig. , 5) is the name for the sacrificial offering laid on [pg 411] the utu=altar, which is shaped like the tau and symbolizes the above and below by its perpendicular and horizontal lines. In the centre of this is the bread=ta (the homonym of ta=earth, cf. neb-at=fire), which is remarkable on account of its division into four parts analogous to that of nut=city, a feature which justifies the inference that the word for cake=sen-nu made with honey=bat or net, is intended to be expressed here. A jar stands at each side of the cake, which is placed on edge so as to exhibit the sacred design upon it. It is significant that, if the jars contained wine=arp, milk=art, the name of the liquid constituted an anagram of ra, if perfume=anta was present, this furnished the syllables an and ta=earth. It is, of course, impossible to surmise how far such resemblances of sounds influenced the choice of sacred offerings.

Figure 67.

[pg 412]

The kha (fig. , 6)=crown is particularly interesting as Amen-Ra is addressed as “crowned form,” the lord of the ureret crown, ... beautiful of tiara, exalted of the white crown ... on whose brow the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt is established. It appears, therefore, evident that the crown=kha was but another mode of expressing ka=double. At the same time it likewise conveyed the idea of ak=the centre and the act of crowning a sovereign appears as vested with deep symbolical meaning when it is realized that, according to the primitive modes of thought I have been tracing, by enclosing the head of the king in a circlet he was constituted the hak, regent or central chief, the living image of Ra, whose sign was the star or dot in the circle or ring.

Ka (duality) is commonly expressed by an uplifted pair of arms; a variant being the whole figure of a man with raised arms (7 and 8). The fact that the name for phallus was also ka, explains its employment as a sacred symbol, recorded by Herodotus, which proves to what extremes the ancient rebus-writers went in their naïve invention and multiplication of secret signs and modes of expressing the names and attributes of their “hidden god.” The hatred and disgust conceived by the great reformer Amenophis IV, against all that pertained to the cult of Amen-Ra, his destruction of all images devised by the priesthood and adoption of a pure image of the supreme divinity of a plain disk or circle, with rays terminating in hands, are readily understood in connection with the above.

Returning to our list of akh words: the akh or centre is figured by a man between two signs for heaven=pet, supporting the upper heaven with both hands; the idea ka=double or dual, being simultaneously expressed (9).

The hawk=bak (10) constitutes so perfect a rebus or anagram of middle=ak and kabal, as well as for khab=star, that the reason why the hawk was chosen as an image or form of Amen-Ra is as reasonably accounted for as the choice of the bull. Before supporting this assertion by a series of convincing proofs, the following list must be studied:

An=he who turns himself around (i. e. who performs a circuit=the circuiteer) and ankh=life.

In the “First steps in Egyptian” I find the word “an” expressed by (fig. , 1) a man in the act of turning around, resembling the position [pg 413] of the male deity in the boat, already discussed and represented in the astronomical texts (fig. , 2) by an eye, the form of which differs from that of the eye=ari; (3) by a fish, also different in form from the fish=kha, and particularly interesting if compared to the fish khepanen, figured in the kheper series, which constitutes a rebus combining the titles khepera=creator and an=the circuiteer; (4) by a stone=aner, also by hair=anem; (5) by two arms spread outwards, recalling the position of the front legs of quadrupeds; (6) by a spear whose shaft is inserted in a double stand; which sign recurs in the name of the city Annu, expressed by the an=spear, the vase=nu and the nut determinative for city or capital (7). It is extremely interesting to compare, at this point, the Greek polus=a pole or axis, and polis=city or capital, and to realize that, in Egypt and Greece alike, the names for capital are associated with the idea of centrifugal power and rule.

The signification of all the above “an” signs becomes intensified when it is realized that they conveyed also the first two letters of the word ankh=life, which was usually expressed by the familiar symbol expressing the union of the dualities of nature (8).

Figure 68.

Amongst the many surprises received during the course of this investigation, few have given me as much satisfaction and light, as the observation of the fact that the Egyptian name for flower, ankh (9), was the same as that for “life.” The full significance of the lotus blossom as a symbol became clear to me, and my attention having been called by a friend to Mr. William H. Goodyear's admirable work “The Grammar of the Lotus,” London, 1891, I was able to obtain from it the series of Egyptian symbols which I now present and shall proceed to interpret according to the method set forth in the preceding pages. The interesting observation was by Mr. Goodyear that “the ankh was the exact counterpart [pg 414] of the lotus as regards solar association” and in his work, on pl. lxv and elsewhere, this close observer publishes several instances illustrating this view. Of these I reproduce but two, which suffice, feeling convinced that Mr. Goodyear will be as interested as I was to hear that the ankh and lotus were homonyms of ankh=life. This fact of itself fully explains why the lotus flower was employed by the ancient Egyptians, as Mr. Goodyear states, as the “symbol of life, immortality and of renaissance and resurrection and of fecundity.”

Figure 69.

In fig. , 1, two (ka) fishes (khepanen or an) hold the lotus, ankh, and thus constitute a sacred rebus, the profound meaning of which can be surmised by studying the preceding pages. In 2, one (ua) fish holds the ankh instead of the lotus. Both signs obviously express precisely the same meaning with the difference that, in one case duality is expressed by two fishes, and in the other by the ankh symbol which emblematizes the union of nature's dualities.

Fig. , 3, shows the bull, carrying the circle of Ra between its [pg 415] horns and wearing the ankh symbol hanging from its neck. The lotus replaces this in 4, where the circle is missing and one bull (ua en ka) expresses the mystic sacred words ua=One and ka=double or “the divine Twain.” It is evident that it is only when it is assumed that pole-star worship constituted the basis of the natural religion of the ancient Egyptians that their sacred symbols become intelligible.

Though a novice in Egyptology and with extremely limited works of reference at hand, which facts will, I trust, excuse faults and omissions, I perceive so much that is clear and simple in the following series of Egyptian sacred symbols, culled from Mr. Goodyear's work, that I am tempted to submit my interpretation of their meaning, thereby putting my view and method to a crucial test.

In pl. vii, 2, we have an interesting group uniting the boat, the meaning of which has been discussed, a seated figure on a square pedestal, a column, the upper portion of which is separate and simulates the bowl or cup=au, the dot and circle, the sign of Amen-Ra, and a single flower. As a rebus, some of the words expressed are am, uaa or makhen=boat, tet=column, Ra=dot and circle, also seated figure, determinative of god=Ra, and ua en ankh=one flower. While the rebus supplies the words ua=one, uahi=permanent, ra=god, an=the circuiteer, ankh=life, tet=eternal, it is only when identified as pole-star symbolism that the group becomes comprehensible.

Pointing out that, in the above, we have a clear case of the flower in association with the Ra sign and other symbols which have been discussed as pole-star signs, let us next examine 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8, in each of which one blossom=ua en ankh, constitutes the emblem for the sacred Middle, and openly conveys the idea of the verb an, to perform a circuit and ankh=life.

The fact that, in 6, the flower consists of five petals, on four of which the genii of the four quarters stand, sufficiently proves that the flower, like the five-dot group, constituted a symbol of the four quarters and centre, the latter being figured as a pyramid-shaped petal. Interesting variants of this group are 5, with the four genii standing on seven of the nine petals of the flower, which is placed between two buds, the idea of centrality being thus conveyed; and 7 where an inverted triangle replaces the flower and reveals some of the deeper meaning attached to this symbol. In 1 and 3 the flower is surmounted by the hawk crowned with [pg 417] the Ra sign which, as has already been stated, symbolizes circuition around a central point of fixity. The names for hawk=hak (cf. ak and cabal=middle, also hak=king) and her or hur (cf. hru=upper, the above, and ur=four=Horus) reveal its appropriate use as rebus and symbol of the central “sun” god. In 8, instead of the Ra sign, the hawk wears the peculiar double diadem with a circle at its base, which is the particular attribute of the images of the ram-headed god Amon who is represented in no. 12, holding the ankh sign and accompanied by the kheper sign, composed of a circle, surmounted by a cone and supported by a pedestal. It is well known that the ram=ser, sart or sar, was the form under which the supreme divinity was worshipped at Thebes, the real metropolis of the whole land of Egypt, during many centuries. The name Amon, also given as Ammon, Amoun, Hammon, resembles Amen closely enough to justify the identification of Amon as a form of Amen-Ra, the concealed god.

In this connection it is noteworthy that the ram=sar or sart conveys the same sound as the goose=sar or sa, the employment of which, as a pole-star symbol, will be discussed further on, and that the king of Egypt was termed “the living ram (of Amon) on earth” and “the engendering ram.” From Mr. J. P. Mahaffy we learn that, under the Ptolemaic rule, “it seems likely that among the strict prescriptions for all the solemn acts of the king, it was directed that he should assume the insignia of the god Amon, his ram's horns, fleece, etc, when visiting the queen” (History of Egypt, London, 1899).

Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the identification of Amon with Amen-Ra receives support from the magnificent monumental votive ram, preserved at the Berlin Museum, which was dedicated by king Amenophis III, which bears on his head, the disk with the uræus serpent, the familiar sign of the “hidden god.”

[pg 418]

While the diadem of Amen-Ra sufficiently identifies the hawk on the lotus as a form of the “hidden god,” the following extracts from Mr. Goodyear's work will be found to confirm this and throw further light on the subject. “The hawk represented Ra, Horus and all solar gods....” A text at Denderah says: “The sun which was from the beginning rises (i. e. comes forth, appears, see Brugsch for meaning of Egyptian equivalent) like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bud....” At Denderah the king makes offering of the lotus to the sun-god Horus with the words: “I offer thee the flower which was in the beginning the glorious lily of the great water....” In the boat of the dead the soul says, “I am a pure lotus (i. e. life) issue of the field of the sun.”

The circumstance that, in 4, the flower is surmounted by a goose, one name for which being aq=ak, shows that, like the hawk, bak, it may well have served as a rebus for ak=the middle. An instance of the direct association of the sacred goose with the four quarters is given in the bas-relief at Medinet-Abu, described by Brugsch (op. cit. ii, p. 297). This represents “Ramses III ... offering sacrifice to the god ‘Khimti,’ i. e. Pan of Panopolis, the Theban form of which was Amon Generator.... A white bull (the symbol of Pan) and four geese, which are represented as flying towards the cardinal points, constitute the sacrifice.”

The striking association of the goose with the bull=Apis, the astronomical symbolism of which has been shown, gains in significance when it is realized that another name for goose is apt and that this also constitutes an anagram of pta=ptah, one form of Amen-Ra. It is a curious fact that the third name for goose, se or sa, combined with ankh=flower, as in pl. vii, 4, furnishes the word ankh-sa, which recalls the word An-sah obtained by the mummy and serpent rebus and the name of the god of Assyria, Anshar.

In connection with the above Egyptian rebus, expressing the syllables ankh and sa, it surprised me, to find that the Sanscrit name for goose is hangsa, while in ancient Hindu it is hamsa and in modern Hindu hanassa. It is well known that in Hindu mythology the goose was “the bird of Brahma,” the “supreme one who alone exists really and absolutely,” that the birth of Brahma from the lotus is frequently represented in Hindu religious art, and that the lotus is the attribute of the “sun-god” Surya, termed the “lord of the lotus, father, friend and king.” What is more, the goose, [pg 419] associated with “solar” symbolism, i. e. with the circle and central dot, with the swastika, four-petalled flower and the wheel, occurs on the oldest monuments of Greek art; on the prehistoric bronzes and pottery of Italy (where the sacred geese were kept on the Capitoline at Rome); on the bronzes of Hallstatt, of ancient Gaul and of prehistoric Sweden. Pointing out that we thus obtain a whole chain of associations which link the syllables am and an to deities and pole-star symbolism, I next present, for reference, the names for the bird given in Webster's dictionary.

Sanscrit, hangsa; Latin, anser, for hanser; German, gans (in Germany, according to Pliny, the small, white geese were called ganzoe al. gantoe lib. x, 22); Greek, khen; Danish, gaas; Swedish, gos; Welsh, gwydd; Anglo-Saxon, gos; Irish, geadh; Icelandic, gas; Slavonic, gusj and gonsj. Noting that in the Sanscrit, Latin, Greek and German alike, the syllable an or en is present in the name for goose, I return to the Egyptian symbols which express the words an and ankh, and, bearing the “birth of Brahma from a lotus” in mind, refer again to the Egyptian title Neb-ankh, “lord of life,” which, as I point out, also signified “the lord of the lotus flower.” Let us now briefly examine some Egyptian texts relating to pl. v, 12 and 15, which represent the boat (am and its synonyms) and the flower=ankh, associated with the boy and the serpent.

In an astronomical text from Edfu, published by Brugsch, New Year's day is mentioned in connection with the “coming forth of the great lotus blossom in the form of a bud in its symbolical interpretation as the god ahi (literally, boy).... The count of his rulership begins from the first day of his rising or birth....” In another text it is said: “New Year's day, the sun (Ra) comes forth from a lotus flower in the great sea,” and there are numerous allusions in other inscriptions to “the lotus blossom in the great waters, from which the sun-child arises in radiance towards heaven.” The text accompanying (pl. v, 15), where a serpent rises from the lotus in the boat, states “the sun, uniter of the world, in Tentyra”=the New Year.

In another inscription it is said: “thou risest like the sacred serpent, as a living spirit, in thy glorious form in the bark of the sunrise;” and this passage forms an interesting parallel to that already cited where the sun is said to rise “like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bud.” Pl. vii, 14, exhibits a nine-petalled lotus [pg 420] growing from a pedestal and a head issuing from it. As the name for head tep (also tap or tpa, and apt cf. pta), signifies chief, or beginning, we must accept this as another variant of the previous signs.

Deferring the discussion of the so-called “birth” and cult of the diurnal sun, as one form of Amen-Ra, let us now rapidly survey the following figures copied from Mr. Goodyear's work.

Pl. vii, 9. A circle encloses a group consisting of the five-petalled lotus between two buds and the hawk-headed sphinx, which has already been met with in the astronomical texts and, according to Egyptologists, represents Horus, the sun, “who lights the world with two eyes” and is addressed as “a powerful lion,” “the master of double force.” I need scarcely recall here that the combination of a bird and quadruped would naturally symbolize air and earth, the Above and Below and that the hawk-headed sphinx, seated on four petals, clearly expresses the idea of the “lord of Heaven and Earth, the father and mother of all, the ruler of the Four Quarters and lord of the circle.”

Pl. vii, 10. The plain circle or disk, supported by two uplifted arms=ka, arising from (akh) the ankh sign, is another ingenious mode of expressing the idea of the Middle, the circle, duality and life.

No. 13 constitutes as charming and ingenious a play upon the word ankh=life as can be imagined, and a close examination reveals its subtle, hidden and deep significance. It exhibits, in the first case, the ankh sign combined with the flower=ankh, which might, at a first glance, be taken as an example of purely decorative art. But the ever-present thought of the duality of nature manifests itself in the arrangement of the two flowers towards each other and enclosed in the open ring of the ankh sign, and it is evident that the artist took pains to draw the central petal of the lower blossom in the form of a triangle, below which an oblong square and a square may be distinguished.

After the foregoing attempt to show how, even with my rudimentary and limited knowledge of their language, the sacred symbols of the Egyptians become intelligible and full of significance [pg 421] when studied as examples of pole-star symbolism and primitive rebus writing, I draw attention to the limited number of syllables employed in the astronomical texts; to the ingenuity displayed in expressing the same sound over and over again by means of different words possessing the same sound and to the fact I shall hereafter set forth, that the syllables and rebus-figures employed are found indissolubly linked to pole-star and sacred symbolism. Referring a demonstration of these conclusions to the end of the present investigation, I shall next discuss the forms which the cult of the dualities of nature seemingly assumed in ancient Egypt.

As an introduction I present in fig. , the copy of the upper portion of a funeral stela preserved at Bûlâk and published by Perrot and Chipiez (Ægypten, Leipzig, 1884). It exhibits the head or face of Hathor surmounting the tet column and supporting, in turn, the image of a small house or temple, at each side of which is a peculiar projection recalling the circinate line issuing from the red crown of lower Egypt (see fig. , 9, 10). In another Hathor stela, figured in the same work (pp. 510 and 780), the same characteristic circinate projections recur. The image of the house, always represented with a single doorway, is obviously a rebus of the name Hathor, explained by Egyptologists as Het-heru, literally “the house of Horus.” “Athor or Hathor of Thebes, identified with Nut, the sky ... was the female power of nature and is often represented under the form of a cow, ... as a woman with a cow's head, with horns and the disk, or wearing a head-dress in the shape of a vulture and above it the disk and horns.” In the familiar representation of the mask of Hathor on columns, the association with the cow is conveyed by large cow's ears=setem, projecting at each side of the face=hra.

A feature generally present in the miniature doorway of the house, is a single erect head of a uræus, bearing the disk or circle on its head and usually exhibiting a distinctly cross-shaped mark on its neck. The latter peculiarity is clearly shown in fig. , 1, which exhibits moreover a seated divinity at each side of the doorway, each bearing the throne or seat (auset) on its head, and the ankh sign on its knee. Close examination reveals that one of these deities is Ausar=Osiris, whose name is generally written by means of the throne=auset, and the eye=ari, with or without the determinative for god, i. e., the seated figure (fig. , 1 a and 1 b). Opposite to Osiris is Auset=Isis, whose name is usually written as in [pg 422] fig. , 1 c, where the auset, the egg=se, and the seated image of a goddess bearing a bowl=neb, on her head, may be distinguished.

Figure 70.

An idea of the import of fig. , 1, seems gained when it is remembered that in Egyptian the word house=pi, pir or per, was [pg 423] associated with the title of ruler, the name Pharaoh being derived from per=āa=great house. What is more, the word house=pir or pi, is used in astronomical texts, like the Arabian beth, in relation to stars, it being said of a star that “it ever comes forth from its house”=appears (Brugsch).

The permanent image of the disk and serpent, a form of the Ra sign, in the doorway of the sculptured house, would thus convey the idea of the eternal presence of Amen-Ra, the pole-star god. The accentuation of the cross lines on the neck of the ara indicates, moreover, the intentional allusion to four-fold and two-fold force, the latter being expressed by the eyes of the serpent. The door=ptah, which is open, expresses the name Ptah=the Opener, well known as that of the “father of the gods” and a form of Amen-Ra.

The positions assigned to Osiris and Isis, at either side of the “hidden god,” sufficiently shows that they were intended to represent separate incorporations of the male and female principles which were united in Amen-Ra, the “divine Twain.” The association of both deities with the throne, the eternal seat of repose, identifies both alike with Polaris. A monument in the Berlin Museum (no. 261) which was found in the temple of Isis at Ben-naga, in Nubia, and was a votive offering made by the Ethiopian king Netek-Amen and his consort Amen-Tari, contains the following formula, translated by Lepsius, which associates Isis with eternal enthronement. “Thou remainest, thou remainest, on thy great throne, O Isis, queen of Au-ker, like the sun (Ra) that lives in the horizon ... and thou lettest thy son Netek-Amen flourish on his throne....”

The fact I am about to demonstrate, that the king and queen of Egypt were the respective, “the living images” of Osiris and Isis, proves that, as in ancient Peru and China, the sovereigns, who were at the same time high priest and priestess, were considered as the sacred embodiments of the dual principles of nature. As elsewhere also, a chain of associations became attached to each of the dualities; but in Egypt, as may be clearly discerned, during the lapse of centuries great transformations of thought took place and alternately the male and female elements seem to have been associated with the cults of heaven and earth, light and darkness, sun or moon, morning or evening stars, the southeast and the northwest.

[pg 424]

In the sacred writings the sun is usually termed “the right eye” and the moon “the left eye” of Ra (cf. hra=the (divine) face). Brugsch points out that, in certain inscriptions at Denderah translated by Mariette, “the Sothis star of Hathor-Isis is designated as ‘the right eye of Ra’ while the sun is termed the left eye.”

Brugsch states, moreover, that, according to Sextus Empiricus, “the Egyptians compared the king to the ‘right eye’ or the sun; while the queen was compared to the ‘left eye’ or the moon.” The two eyes, often with the designation of “right” or “left,” constitute a favorite decoration on funeral stelæ. In some instances the image of the solar disk, with one wing and one serpent only, is figured as a substitute for the right eye (op. cit. ii, 436, see fig. , 6). The established fact that the eyes of Ra were the equivalents of the uræi usually accompanying the circle of Ra, the so-called “solar disk,” is further explained by the following data.

It is well known that the two uræi on the royal diadem denote sovereignty over Upper and Lower Egypt. In the bas-relief published by Brugsch, the circle or Ra-sign is represented with two uræi, which respectively wear the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (fig. , 7). The crowned uræi recur in the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt published by Mr. Goodyear, the first accompanied by the lotus flower and the second by what Egyptologists usually identify as the papyrus, but which appears to be the ripened pod of the lotus (fig. , 9 and 10). While the two uræi thus emblematized the two divisions of the land of Egypt they are found as distinctly associated with Osiris and Isis, and their living images the king and queen, or the high priest and high priestess of Amen-Ra. The Berlin Museum contains several representations of Isis under the form of a serpent with a woman's head (see official catalogue, nos. 7740, 870 and 2529). Osiris is also represented as a serpent with the head of a bearded man.

A small shrine in the form of a temple, and decorated with royal serpents, is preserved at the Berlin Museum (catalogue no. 8164) and contains the effigies of two uræi, one of which, to the left of the spectator, exhibits the head of Isis, the second, to the right, the features of Osiris. Between them stands the vase or bowl which was a constant feature of Isis cult.

In connection with this monument it is interesting to examine an inscription published by Brugsch (i, p. 108) in which occur two [pg 425] serpents who are pouring liquid into a bowl placed between them and the divided halves of the sky-sign (fig. , 8). The text connects this with the New Year festival when the Nile began to rise “from its two sources” and the “union of heaven and earth” took place, which will be discussed later. The following temporary list briefly presents a summary of the preceding data which is rendered more complete by the addition of the signs and emblems of the festivals, when the “conjunction of sun and moon took place,” figured by the picture of two persons united by their respective right and left hands (fig. , 5) or by the tet column placed between two horns (fig. , 4). As may be seen by numerous examples in Brugsch (vol. ii), the great Sed festival is figured by the image of the small sanctuary which existed on the flat roof of the great temple at Denderah, and resembled an open pavilion with four columns which is usually represented as containing two seats placed back to back (fig. , 2, 3). A small picture in Mr. Wallis Budge's Nile exhibits the king and queen occupying such a double throne, respectively, wearing the insignia and crowns of Osiris and Isis and holding their sceptres, as in the representations of the ceremony of laying the foundation of a temple, in their right and left hands (fig. , 6). The résumé of the preceding material produces the following list:

Right eye of Ra: Left eye of Ra.
Sun: Moon.
King: Queen.
Osiris: Isis.
High priest: High priestess.
Right hand sceptre: Left hand sceptre.
North: South.
Red crown: White crown.

The following data, gleaned from the valuable works of Prof. A. H. Sayce and the serial History of Egypt, written by Prof. Flinders Petrie, J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Milne, furnish strong indications that, in the remotest past, the two divisions of the land of Egypt were respectively governed by a male and female sovereign; a proof that, before the time of Menes, the ancient empire had become disintegrated, and undergone a long period of intense strife and warfare. We learn from Professor Sayce of the probability that “the city of Nek-hen was once the capital of the south and that the vulture, the symbol of the south, was also the emblem [pg 426] of Nekheb, the goddess of the great fortress, the ruins of which lie opposite to Nekhen on the eastern bank of the Nile” (Sayce, op. cit. pp. 152, 191).

While the capital and the emblem of southern or Upper Egypt are thus directly associated with a “goddess,” further data show us that the ancient queens of Egypt were termed “god-women or goddesses.” When the New Empire was founded (1600-1100 B.C.) with its capital at Thebes, King Ahmes assumed the sovereignty of the whole of Egypt, but seems to have shared supreme authority with his consort Ah-mes-nefretere=divine- or god-woman, also termed “the high priestess of Amen.” From the honors accorded to her and to her son Amen-hetep or Amenophis I, it must indeed be inferred that she possessed some inherited sovereign right to one of the ancient divisions of the empire.

During the period of the 26th dynasty, of Saïs, we find Upper Egypt governed by a “god-woman,” Shep-en-upet, who remained in power, even after the land had been conquered by Psammetichus I. The latter obtained, however, that his daughter Nitocris was adopted as the successor to the “divine-woman” ruler of Thebes, and she in turn adopted the daughter of Psammetichus II (B.C. 594-589), whose name was Anches-nefer-eb-re. A tablet from the temple of Karnak, preserved at the Berlin Museum (catalogue no. 2112) represents this female sovereign of Thebes accompanied by her prime minister, and standing in the presence of the gods Amen and Chon.

Another remarkable monument at the Berlin Museum (no. 7972) figures the “god-woman” Shep-en-upet, under the form of a sphinx holding a vase, and records that she had inherited the sovereignty of Thebes from her aunt, the consort of an Ethiopian king. An extremely interesting proof that the beard, per se, constituted an emblem of sovereignty, is furnished by a beautiful portrait statue of the “divine woman,” Hat-shepset (Berlin Museum, no. 2299). She is figured as a sphinx and wears a beard suspended from her head-dress. The serpent decorates her diadem. On other monuments this remarkable queen, who built the temple of Der-el-Bahari, is figured with the crown of Upper Egypt (cf. no. 2279, Berlin Museum). By good fortune the personal gold ornaments of a [pg 427] “divine woman,” an Ethiopian princess, were discovered by Ferlini in the pyramid of Begerauie, enclosed in a plain bronze vase. These precious objects are now exhibited in the Berlin Museum, where I have examined them and noted with interest that the central ornament of two finely worked, broad gold bracelets, is a female figure with the royal diadem and four outstretched arms, to which wings are attached. This furnishes us with an instance of a queen being represented with four wings, in exactly the same manner as the Assyrian king Sargon, on the seal from the time of Sennacherib (fig. , 6), namely, as a “ruler of the four quarters,” which indicates that she held the position of a “central ruler.” As might be expected in the case of a queen who personified Isis, frequently represented under the form of a “woman-serpent,” the uræus is a favorite motif on other gold ornaments belonging to the Ethiopian queen.

Certain passages in Prof. Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt afford a curious insight into the prerogatives of Egyptian queens as far back as about B.C. 2684. The consort of Usertesen II, the fourth king of the twelfth dynasty was named Nefert,of whom a grey granite statue is preserved at the Ghizeh Museum and represents her as seated on a throne. On this are the titles “The hereditary princess, the great favorite, the greatly praised, the beloved consort of the king, the ruler of all women, the king's daughter of his body, Nefert.” Prof. Flinders Petrie adds: “The title ruler or princess of all women is peculiar, and suggests that the queen had some prerogatives of government as regards the female half of the population.” The title in question reappears four centuries later in connection with Nubkhas, the queen of Sebek=Emsaup, of the 13th dynasty and her stele in the Louvre entitles her the “great heiress, the greatly favored, the ruler of all women, the great royal wife, united to the crown Nub-kha-s” (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 175 and 225).

Between B.C. 1423-1414 queen Mutemua-arat appears as “the goddess queen” and “great royal wife” (Flinders Petrie op. cit., ii, p. 174). The consort of Amenhotep III (B.C. 1414-1379) the celebrated Tyi, the daughter of Yuaa and Thuaa, is entitled “princess of both lands,” and “chief heiress, princess of all lands.” Her successor Nefertiti is called “princess of south and north, lady of both lands,” which titles, as Prof. Flinders Petrie comments, “like the titles of Tyi, imply a hereditary right to [pg 428] rule Egypt.” They undoubtedly place her on a footing of equality with the king, which is, however, comprehensible when it is explained that she was the ruler of all women, while he was the ruler of all men. The position of the Egyptian queen would thus prove to have been analogous to that of the ancient Mexican Quilaztli (see pp. 61-67).

The analogy is all the more striking when it is realized that the titles of the Mexican chieftainess were: “the Woman warrior, the Woman of the Underworld or Below, the Woman serpent or female twin and the Eagle woman,” while the emblem of the Egyptian goddess-queen of the south was the vulture and she was the personification of Isis, represented under the form of a serpent, the twin of the male serpent, Osiris.

Figure 71.

Much food for thought is furnished by a Syrian relief sculpture from Amrit (published by Spamer, see fig. , 2), which exhibits a vulture or eagle with outstretched wings, in juxtaposition to a winged disk which appears to combine features of the Assyrian winged disk (the bird's tail and two appendages, see fig. ,1) with the two uræi of the Egyptian form (fig. , 3). It is striking how clear the symbolism of the latter becomes when interpreted (1) as the symbol of the hidden god and his male and female form, Osiris and Isis, accompanied by the wings symbolizing air and the [pg 429] idea that the deity was invisible and immaterial; (2) as the symbol of Egypt itself—an entity, a complete circle, divided into two parts, under two rulers. The pair of antelope horns above emphasize the fact that the twain were as a single pair. The combined crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, the latter exhibiting a serpent's head and the first, what appears to be its tail, constitute the symbol of joint rulership which, in this case, is accompanied by the feather, the rebus expressing the words “truth and justice.”

While the Syrian bas-relief conveys the idea of two separate kingdoms, one conveying the idea of single rulership, by the form of an eagle; the other of dual rulership, by the two uræi, each of which is crowned by a small disk; the Egyptian symbol distinctly conveys the idea of a close union of two distinct parts. The historical fact that Menes succeeded in uniting both lands under a single crown, indicates clearly enough that the ancient empire had become disintegrated and that by marrying the female ruler of the south he had reinstated the dual government on its original primitive basis. That, during the period of separation and independence, a powerful gynocracy had been formed seems more than probable. Just as evidences are met with in ancient Mexico of the existence of female communities, so the Old World furnishes accounts, deemed fabulous, of powerful gynocracies. Thus we have heard of the Amazons, the fabulous race of women warriors who are supposed to have founded a powerful empire on the coast of the Euxine.

A searching analysis of the texts translated by Brugsch, relating to the ceremonies performed at the New Year and famous Sed festivals, as well as historical facts gleaned from the works of living authorities, throw a light upon the position and sacred duties of the Egyptian queens during many centuries. The critical examination of a number of inscriptions, translated by Brugsch, is found to show that the queen was the high priestess and living image of Hathor-Isis and the personification of the female principle of nature, associated in Egypt with the nocturnal Heaven and the Above, and their symbols, the bird or vulture, the cow, the female serpent, the moon, the stars, and in particular Sirius-Sothis. In remotest historical times the goddess-queen seems to have resided in her own capital, a fortress. The universal necessity to insure the safety of women and children in times of warfare may well have originally led to the assignment of a separate, permanent [pg 430] place of residence, to the female portion of the population. The New Year festival, which coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius (20th July, Jul. Cal.) and the overflow of the Nile, which suspended outdoor activity, was generally celebrated throughout the land as the “union of heaven and earth,” or the conjunction of “the sun and the moon, or Sirius.”

It was customary that, at this period, the queen, personifying the Sothis star, should come forth from her retirement and, surrounded by pomp and majesty, meet the king in solemn state, publicly occupy her place on the double throne, and share in the performance of sacred religious rites. It is easy to see that the idea underlying the entire ceremonial was the harmonizing of the actions of the sacred personifications of the dual principles of nature with the natural phenomena, from which arose a strange confusion of ideas concerning the relationship between these consecrated individuals and the powers of nature, which culminated in the artificial belief that they were divinely appointed mediators between humanity and the supreme power.

There are clear indications that the consecrated nuptials of king and queen marked the Sed festival which was celebrated, at the beginning of every fourth year, at Denderah. Brugsch tells us that the place on the roof of the Hathor temple, where the celebration of the Sed festival took place, is specially designated as “the place of the first feast” and in many cases this is shown to have been the small open temple, whose roof is supported by four columns (fig. , 2 and 3). In one passage it is expressly stated that “she, Isis-Sothis, consorts with her father, the sun, at ‘the place of the first feast,’ ” represented by a picture of the said temple (fig. , 6).

It is interesting to compare the following passage with the successive one, as they exhibit different phases of religious cult. “In solemn procession statues of the god Ra and of Hathor-Isis (Sothis-Sirius) were carried up the stairs from the interior of the temple to its roof (the tep-hat or head of the house) where, under the open sky or in the small open temple on the roof designated as Hait at Denderah, the idols were unveiled at a given time....” “On the morn of the New Year Isis-Sothis ‘beheld her father on the beautiful day of the birth of the disk’ (mas-aten) or ‘the birth of the sun’ (mas-ra).” It is described how “the goddess was led upon the roof so that she might behold the rays of her [pg 431] father on his rising.... She is sometimes addressed directly, being told ‘that thou shouldst see thy father on the day of the New Year.’ ” In other texts allusion is made to the approach of Sirius to the sun on New Year's day: “her rays join (heter) with those of the radiant god on that beautiful day of the birth of the sun's disk in the morning of New Year's day:” or “thou consortest with thy father Ra in thy open temple, thy beautiful face being turned towards the south;” and elsewhere, “she comes on her beautiful festival of the New Year, to unite her greatness in heaven with that of her father; the gods are festive and the goddesses are full of joy when the right eye (Sirius) unites itself with the left eye (the sun). She rests upon her throne in the place where the disk of the sun can be seen and the radiant one (Isis-Sothis) combines herself with the radiant one (the sun).”

On one of the columns of the roof-temple at Denderah, the following text is inscribed: “This temple of Rekhit flourishes in possession of a lion (mahes) and of his daughter ... of the Horus of the east and of the goddess Khont-abut. They assume her heavenly form on New Year's day and each one consorts with his neighbor.” Preceding inscriptions are made more clear by the following detached passages translated by Brugsch, which merit careful study. “An inscription at Abydos makes the goddess Safkhet say to the king: ‘thou didst appear as king upon thy throne on the feast hib-seb; like the god Ra at the beginning of the year.’ ” “The high-priest of Ptah at Memphis was charged with the celebration of the Sed festival, which was a general festival throughout the land.” “The annual going of the Hathor of Denderah to Edfu took place in the month Epiphi.” “The goddess Hathor-Isis of Denderah is frequently called the second female sun next to the sun's disk, the many colored, feathered goddess, and is identified with Isis-Sothis.”

According to an extremely ancient belief it was the goddess Hathor Isis-Sothis who caused the inundation of the Nile which, according to the inscriptions, coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius. Owing to this circumstance she is called, “Isis the great, the mother of god, who causes the Nile to overflow when she shines at the commencement of the year,” or “the female sun who appears at the beginning of the year in the heaven as the divine Sothis star, the queen of the decan stars, whose rays illuminate the earth like those of the sun which appears in the morning. She is [pg 432] the mistress of the commencement of the year, who draws the Nile out of its source and thus confers life upon living human beings.” Elsewhere she is termed “the mistress of the commencement of the year, who makes the Nile rise at its period.” It is likewise said of her “on her beautiful feast of beholding her father, the heaven unites itself with the earth and the right eye unites itself with the left eye, at the beginning of the year.” She is described as Isis the great, the mother of god, the lady of Adut in Anet, the mistress of the beginning of the year, the monarch of the Sema? who appears on New Year's day to usher in the new year. (She is) the goddess Ament (the hidden one) in Thebes, Menat (the nurse) in Heliopolis, Renpit (i. e. the year) in Memphis, the divine star Sothis in Elephantine, the radiant one in Apollinopolis magna, etc.

In another passage Hathor-Isis is spoken of as “the goddess Mehen-net of the light-god and his Ar-hatef=(she who acts as pilot) in the boat sektet, which eternally passes through the heaven over the head of her father.” On the north wall of the Prondos of the Denderah temple Isis-Hathor is called “Hathor, the lady of Anet; Isis herself; the eye of Ra; the great one of Tentyra; the lady of heaven; the queen of gods and goddesses; the great Mat ... the female sun; the first in Tentyra; the true one amongst gods; the young; the daughter of a young ... [?] the beauty who appears in heaven; the truth which regulates the world at the prow of the bark of the sun; the queen and mistress of awe; the mistress of goddesses, Isis, the great, the mother of the god.”

The following texts from Brugsch are explicit enough: “The temple of Tentyra is fitted up for a bride, and is occupied by a bride.” “The temple of Tentyra is in bridal array and contains a bride on the beautiful festival of the birth of the sun.” “The temple of Tentyra is fitted up for a bridal and is in possession of a bride on her beautiful festival of the birth of the sun (mas-ra).”

The birth of a male or female Horus, of a young sun or moon, is alluded to in other texts as the “feast of the child in its cradle,” and coincided with New Year's day. According to Brugsch, the festival of the child in its ses=cradle, nest, or couch, undoubtedly coincided with New Year's day, as is proven by the following inscription: “The bringing of the band of stuff to the great Isis, the mother of the god, for the obtainment of a happy year. Receive, receive happy years on the day of the night of the child in [pg 433] its cradle!”... It is usual to interpret the birth of the young child, or sun of the New Year as a mere allegory of the astronomical fact and it may have been thus in later times. On the other hand, historical data prove that the actual birth of a “child,” the offspring of a royal sacramental marriage, did take place in the temple and that children, thus born, afterwards became the rulers of Egypt.

“At Luqsor, ... a great temple was built by Amenhotep III (B.C. 1414-1379) to ‘his father Amen,’ with special reference to the divine conception of the king.... His birth is the great subject of the temple ... and his mother Mut-em-ua is the prominent figure in those scenes, pointing to her being important as queen-mother....” Of the later king Hor-em-heb (B.C. 1332-1328) it is inscribed: “Amen, king of the gods, dandled him ... when he came forth from the womb he was enveloped in reverence, the aspect of a god was upon him; the arm was bowed to him as a child and great and small did obeisance before him ” (Flinders Petrie, op. cit. pp. 177, 190 and 248).

The small Isis temple to the east of the great temple of Hathor at Denderah is specially designated as the lying-in chamber, or sacred house of birth. An inscription dating from the Roman period, on the outer eastern wall of this building reads: “Life! the female Horus, the youthful, the daughter of a hak (regent, Brugsch), Isis, the great, the mother of the Ra=god, is born in Tentyra in the ‘night of the child in its cradle,’ at the west side of the temple of Hat-seses (the great temple of Hathor).” It is, moreover, stated that “Horus, in female form, is the princess, the powerful, the heiress to the throne and the daughter of an heir to the throne.”

In another inscription, on the south wall of the small temple of Isis, the birth of Isis is described thus: “On this beautiful day, ‘of the night of the child in its cradle,’ on the great festival during which the world is re-adjusted, or balanced (sekhek en ta), the bringing forth of Isis takes place in the interior or centre of Anet (Tentyra) by the goddess Ap, the great, in the chamber of Ap, in the form of a dark red female person, the Khnum ankh, the lovely. Her mother, Nut, exclaimed at the sight of her: behold, (As is) I have become a mother. Thence the origin of the name Isis.... The south, towards the place of rising of the sun's disk, has been given over to her, and the north, towards.... [pg 434] She is, namely, the mistress of both sides of Egypt, with her son Horus and her brother Osiris.”

On the east side of the wall of the terrace at Denderah a similar inscription reads: “Uar-kher-ta is the name of this locality. The name of the place of the cradle of Isis is named Adut, which is the house where the ‘accouchement’ of Nut, the goddess of heaven, takes place. It is here that, at the time of the ‘night of the child in its cradle,’ the god-mother is brought into the world, in the form of a dark female, named Khnum-ankhet, the lady of love and the queen of the gods and goddesses. On seeing her, her mother exclaimed: As, îs i. e. lo, or behold, I have become a mother! Thence the origin of her name Isis.... She is the lady of the temple of Egypt with her son Horus and brother Osiris, now and forever into eternity.” The most instructive account of the festival which has come under my notice is the following, contained in another inscription in the temple at Denderah.

“The fourth day, supplementary to the year (of 360 days, i. e. the 364th day) is the beautiful day of the ‘night of the child in its cradle’ and is a great festival of preparation. During the night preceding this day there takes place the procession of the goddess Hathor and the divinities with her. The circuit of her temple is made and all is duly fulfilled according to the custom. Upon this follows the return to their places (chambers in the temple). The golden one (Nubet, the ordinary appellation of Hathor-Isis as the star Sothis-Sirius, Brugsch) rises, shining, above the brow of her progenitor, and her mysterious (literally, full of secrets) form is at the prow of the boat of the sun. As soon as she reaches the āk (centre) of her city in the presence of her Nomos, she beholds her dwelling with the most joyful feelings. When she enters her house her body is full of delight. When she has taken possession of her exalted dwelling, surrounded by her fellow-gods, who stand at each side of her, her soul in her body is full of rejoicings. When they join the rays of her father (the sun god) and are united to the radiance of his disk, the city Anet (Tentyra) is happy. Adoration is made in Adut (the lying-in chamber) and Pi-anet is in festive state, when it beholds the great, the powerful leader, she who creates the festival in the holy city on that beautiful day of the New Year.”

Elsewhere we read: “The city of Anet is in a constant exaltation when the goddess Isis is born in it (in the small Isis temple) in the [pg 435] form of a dark red woman, whose name is Khnum-Ankhet, the lady of love, the queen of goddesses and women, the bride. It is beautiful to see the shining appearance of the ray of light in the heaven, in the dusk, at the time when she is born in this city.... A flying beetle (?) is born in the sky in the primæval city of Tentyra at the period of ‘the night of the child in its cradle.’ The sun shines in the heaven at dusk when her birth has taken place. Gods and goddesses praise the name of her majesty....” “Ra-Hur of Apollinopolis magna, god Sam-ta, comes forth, or arises, in the dawn (akhekh) when the birth takes place in ‘the night of the child in its cradle,’ on the great festival of the entire world (or the entire land). He shines for her majesty when she has brought forth (the child). Her child is in the form of a beautiful boy, who is the lord of Tentyra. The gods and goddesses came to her carrying the symbol of life (the ankh) and the sceptre of power (the tam) so as to fulfil their desire and her wish” (p. 103).

The following extract from a papyrus which belonged to a priest of Amon, named Horsiesis of Thebes, of the time of Augustus, affords an extremely interesting insight of the mysterious ceremonial which had gradually developed. It is evident that the text, though apparently clear, must have been intelligible to the initiated only, who alone were able to understand the allusions to secret, sacred rites and their symbolical meaning.

“Thou raisest thyself to heaven, in the region of the city Ka ... thou goest with the king when he goes to Thebes ... thou seest the Sktt bark on its arrival in the city of Thebes and the two sisters united in Pi-ubkt ... thou seest the goddess Hathor who becomes the mother of her own mother on the day ... of the Tx festival ... thy name is called amongst those of the judges on the great Hermopolis in the night of the festival of he who remains [pg 436] in the middle or centre of his city ... thou seest the immovable ones united into a quatuor, in form like a young bull ... thou seest their wives united together in the form of the goddess Anthat ... thou visitest the caves of Thebes when his majesty betakes himself to the zone of Smu.... The mistress of heaven comes to her house ... thou receivest a cloak from his hand ... the divine eye ... thou watchest at night in the chamber of birth on the day of the [lying in] birth of the goddess Mut....[Nut?] Thou goest in with those who go in and comest out with those who come out like the great Horus in his temple ... thou seest in her domain(?) mysterious actions performed by the Pastophores. No one sees, no one hears (of them) ... thou hearest the voice of the singer in the temple, in varied modulations ... thou ascendest the stairway of the eternal circle of light, thou seest the strong ram in its domain ... thou seest ... in his first form, Osiris, in the house of purification.” (Brugsch, op. cit. ii, pp. 518 and 520).

A careful perusal of the preceding texts conveys an idea of the immense lapse of time it must have required for the state religion of Egypt to have developed itself and crystallized into a complicated ritual, the true significance of which, doubtlessly, gradually receded from view. The naïve primitive symbolization of the union of heaven and earth by the actual marriage of king and queen, followed by general marriage festivities, had naturally created, in course of time, a distinct privileged caste rendered “divine” by the circumstances attending their conception and birth. Once in existence the maintenance and insurance of the divine line of descent would naturally enforce the intermarriage of its members and the sequestration and guarded seclusion of the royal women and the virgin priestesses from whose ranks the destined mothers of the divine children were selected.

A more ancient form of symbolizing the union of heaven and earth seems to have been the cult of Apis, which, according to Maspero, preceded the building of the pyramids and could scarcely have arisen before the adoption of the cow or bull, ua, as the rebus of Polaris, the One=ua. A survival of Apis cult seems to be the allegorical sacred title “bull” (Osiris-Apis) bestowed upon the king, of “cow” upon the queen and “calf” upon their offspring, the young Horus. In later times the king was entitled “the ram” and wore his fleece and horns on visiting the queen. As a natural [pg 437] sequence, the fruit of their union was spoken of as “the lamb.” According to Herodotus (ii, pp. 27-29, Cary's translation), “the sacred Apis, or Epaphus is the calf of a cow incapable of conceiving another offspring; and the Egyptians say that lightning descends upon the cow from heaven and that from thence it brings forth Apis.” “The Egyptian magistrates said ... the god [in the form of Apis] manifested himself at distant intervals ... and when this manifestation took place the Egyptians immediately put on their richest apparel and kept festive holiday.”

As stated by Mr. Wallis Budge, Apis worship was established at Memphis by Ka-kau, the second king of the second dynasty B.C. 4100. The veneration accorded to the bull, cow and calf, as embodiments of the dual principles of nature, in separate and in single form, seems to have been accorded in other localities to different animal forms and to have been replaced, in later times, by triads, composed of a god, goddess and their offspring, each great centre ultimately possessing their particular triad, the living images of which were the high-priest, high-priestess and their “divine” offspring. It should be noted that a group consisting of 8+1=nine gods, high priests or prophets, accompanied the triad, the result being twelve “deities” in all, of which one=the child, was an embodiment of two principles and was the ka=the divine twain.

The transition of Apis worship from the animal to the human form was accomplished during the reign of the Ptolemies (B.C. 305-42) when Serapis or Osiris-Apis was introduced into Egypt and represented as a man with the head of a bull, wearing a disk and uræus. Long before this, however, androsphinxes and other combinations of the human and animal form had existed in Egypt. At Thebes the divine triad was formed by Amen-Ra, Mut-Hathor and Chonsu; at Edfu and Denderah we find Osiris, Isis-Sothis-Hathor and Horus. On the other hand, a curious inscription in the temple at Denderah, translated by Brugsch (ii, p. 512), actually describes Amen-Ra as “the great god in Denderah, who periodically rejuvenates himself and becomes a beautiful boy, who is the concealed or hidden god, whose name is hidden; who is the Horus with colored wings, coming forth in the upper hemisphere of Edfu, the lord of the double heaven.”

The inference one might be tempted to make from this and other texts is that, at one period, a human babe, the fruit of a [pg 438] royal or sacerdotal union, was born in the temple on what constituted New Year's Day and was secretly worshipped there during the ensuing year, as the living image of Amen-Ra, the hidden god and “divine twain.” I venture to point out that the adoption of the child as the image of the divinity was the logical sequence to the preceding employment of the bull as a rebus for the words ua=one and ka=twain; that the consecration of the human form must, undoubtedly, have given a strong impulse to statuary, and that the sanctification of the child correspondingly exalted motherhood and lent a particular consecration to the marriage of its “divine parents.” The following facts, culled at random, afford a limit of the transitions and further developments which took place in Egypt in course of time.

Before proceeding, special mention must be made of one important point which throws a flood of light upon the extent of the development of separate cults of sun and moon and the institution of solar and lunar calendars which respectively governed the activities of the male and female populations. As this matter will be fully treated in my calendar monograph I shall merely note here that Brugsch cites texts proving the existence and simultaneous use of the two calendars, and the supreme importance accorded to the new moon of the month Epiphi on whose appearance the “goddess Isis-Hathor of Denderah embarked on her sacred barge and proceeded up the river, from her city to Edfu (Apollinopolis magna) where she joined his majesty ..., her father, ... the incomparable sun-god Ra, the first of Apollinopolis, the golden disk, whose children are numerous....” It is further stated that the god and goddess became inseparable like sun and moon. Brugsch states that the appearance of the said new moon, which was also associated with the heliacal rising of Sirius, would range from Aug. 18 to Sept. 16, Jul. Cal. (see op. cit. ii, pp. 282-1). The appearance of the goddess was the signal for the opening of a season of general “feasting and drinking, rejoicing, singing and dancing” throughout the land, to which the name Tekhu is given in some texts. This is translated by Brugsch as “the intoxication of gladness or joy;” it “coincided with the highest level attained by the overflow of the Nile,” and its modern survival is the annual “marriage of the Nile” which takes place on the 23d of August.

It is curious to note how the original carrying out of primitive and naïve rites by the queen and high-priestess gradually caused [pg 439] her presence to be regarded as essential for the “drawing out of the Nile from its source” and her person to be surrounded with utmost veneration and sanctity. As Prof. Flinders Petrie states, speaking of as far back as B.C. 1383-1365: “The marriage to a royal high priestess of Amen was, of course, purely a political necessity to legitimate the king's position.”

“It would seem that Hor-em-heb was not married to Nezem-mut until his accession, when he legalized his position by becoming husband of the high-priestess of Amen, as in the arrangement of the later dynasties. This marriage was an affair of politics solely, considering the age of the parties; Horemheb was probably between fifty and sixty at the time and if the queen was the same as Nefertiti's sister Nezem-mut, she must have been about the same age as Horemheb” (op. cit. pp. 183, 250). How long the female Egyptian ruler maintained her sway may, perhaps, best be seen by the following texts describing the political homage paid to the living goddess of the Egyptians under Ptolemaic and Roman rules.

One inscription clearly shows that, at the time of Ptolemy IX, Euergetes II, the living Isis was acknowledged as the sole ruler of the land of the south by the king and his wife, queen Cleopatra III, who jointly occupied the throne of northern Egypt. Jointly the latter dedicated a beautiful hall to the goddess Isis, as a place in which to celebrate the Tekhu feast and in which she might linger at this season (Brugsch, op. cit. ii, p. 284). I have found indications in other works that, in other localities, the goddess entered a secret chamber in the earth or pyramid or celebrated her sacred mysteries and festival on the sacred boat of the sun, in the sacred sea or lake belonging to the temple. In these cases it is obvious that the dominant idea was the performance of the sacred rites in the sacred centre or middle.

At a later period Cleopatra VII ascended the female throne at the age of seventeen and became high-priestess of Amen, the living image of Isis. It was understood that as soon as her brother Ptolemy XIV, then aged twelve, should come of age, she was to marry him. Partly for political reasons, akin to those which had caused king Horemheb, on his accession, to marry the high priestess of Amen, Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony become in succession the consorts of Cleopatra, after whose death Egypt became a Roman province. But the “land of the south,” and traditional, [pg 440] divine, feminine rulership, lingered on. Under the third prefect, Ælius Gallus, Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, invades Egypt at the head of her army. She was defeated, but the position of the high-priestess of Amen, the living Isis, continued to be such as to exact the homage and an act of propitiation from the Roman Emperor.

An inscription, from the time of Augustus, records that a beautiful monument, or “house,” had been erected by the “lord of the land, the autocrator, the son of the sun, Cæsar,” and was presented, at the time of the Isis festival, to its possessor, the great Isis, the mother of the god, the mistress of the lying-in-house, the splendid and mighty queen of Philæ, the benevolent princess of Abaton, the daughter of the sun. She is likewise named “she who is great or whose greatness extends towards the four quarters” and is designated as “the royal wife of the majesty of Osiris and the royal mother of Horus, the victorious bull,” i. e. the ka. It is stated that “she found the house of birth brilliantly adorned and well arranged in every way” and she installed herself in its interior on a given day, so as to bring forth her son in these surroundings. One of the rewards promised to Cæsar for the delicate attention and gift bestowed upon the goddess is “eternal and permanent occupation of the throne of Horus, the first of the living ones.” According to the Esne calendar a “divine birth” actually took place on a given date. Brugsch, referring to Plutarch and calendar texts, shows that the commencement of the Isis festival dated from the time when Isis assumed a phylactery, or amulet, to indicate that she had conceived.

Another inscription shows that Tiberius Claudius had caused the house to be renovated for “the mighty goddess Isis, the life giving mistress of Abaton, the good Hathor, the queen of the land of Nubia, the divine mother of the golden (Nub) Horus, the benevolent sister of Osiris, the great protectress who guards his son.” As Tiberius Claudius, in this text named himself her loving son, it is obvious that the day had passed away when solely her own divine son Horus would be the one legitimate and divine heir to the Egyptian throne. It is interesting to surmise what became of the children whose “divine births” continued to be celebrated as a sacred occurrence to which even a Roman Emperor yielded homage. The natural sequence would have been that, accompanied by a band of devoted followers, the sons of the sun, the young bulls, [pg 441] i. e. the ka, or divine twain, and their sisters, would seek distant lands in which jointly to establish new kingdoms on the ancient, familiar plan.

Collectively, the preceding evidence has afforded a realization of some of the curious but natural results of the prolonged cult of the dual principles of nature in Egypt, the most remarkable being, perhaps, the creation of a distinct, “divine” caste of individuals, from the naïve adoption of marriage and birth as consecrated religious rites, symbolical of the union of heaven and earth and the production of new life. While at one time, and in certain localities, this mode of symbolism obviously took the upper hand and fostered the growth of the artificial idea of the “divine rights of royalty,” there are evidences that, simultaneously, the union of the dual principles of nature was symbolized in one or more different archaic and primitive ways. These appear to have been separately adopted in various centres of thought where the disastrous and debasing consequences of the association of the idea of sex with the cult of heaven and earth, light and darkness, etc., were realized with disapproval.

We thus find that, even at Edfu, the ceremonial rite of lighting new sacred fire by means of a wooden instrument and friction was performed on the great Isis festival which was marked by the “divine birth.” According to the calendar of Canopus this fell on the first day of Payni, and a prescribed illumination of the temples and palace was kept up until the 30th or last day of the month. In the most ancient Egyptian calendars the “lighting of light” at the same period is also recorded (Brugsch, op. cit. ii, p. 470) and, according to Herodotus, the festival was named “the lighting of lamps” and was observed throughout all Egypt. He adds that “a religious reason is given why this night is illuminated and so honored” (ii, 61 and 62).

The influence of increasing astronomical knowledge likewise shows itself in the joint observation of the movements of sun, moon and stars and the determination of the relative positions of the latter to the sun at the periods of the equinoxes and solstices. Without taking period or sequence into consideration for the present, I merely note that we find evidence that, at one time, images of sun and moon, of the right and left eyes of Ra, or statues of Hathor-Isis and Osiris, replaced their living images in religious ceremonies.

[pg 442]

Sometimes the entire ritual seems to have consisted in the union of water, the produce of heaven, with seeds, the produce of earth; the ensuing germination and production of young shoots being deemed sacred and symbolical of the renewal of life. The fact that statuettes of Osiris have actually been found, made of paste containing various seeds, distinctly shows that, like the Babylonian Baal, the Egyptian male divinity was identified with the earth. Another indication of this is furnished by the descriptions of the feast of Pan, which fell at the period of the spring equinox. At this period the crop of dura, which had been sown by the king in the sacred fields at Denderah, at the time of the “Osiris mysteries,” immediately after the inundation had receded and “the earth was laid bare,” became ripe. The ceremony of cutting the first sheaf of dura was performed by the king, with the silex sickle=khepes.

While Osiris was thus directly associated with the produce of the earth there are also evidences that, just as Isis became identified with birth and life, her consort became the lord of death and of the underworld. Mysterious rites and human sacrifices seem to have been instituted in his honor. According to obscure myths Osiris himself had been foully murdered, his body cut into fourteen pieces and cast over the length and breadth of the land. His head was supposed to be preserved at Abydos, the chief centre of his worship, and shrines were erected over the other portions of his body. It will be a matter for further research to investigate whether the “mysteries of Osiris” did not include the dramatization of the death of Osiris, in which a human victim personified the god and was actually killed and dismembered.

It is, perhaps, worth noting here, as an analogy, how appropriately the ancient Mexican annual sacrifice of a youth, chosen among the most perfect, might have answered as a rendition of the drama of Osiris. The body of the victim was divided and the pieces distributed to a fixed number of priests and chieftains, who partook of them as sacred food. The head was preserved in the Great Temple itself, on the Tzompantli, and the large number of skulls seen there by the Spaniards constituted a proof of the great antiquity of the custom. The blood of the victim, poured upon seeds, seems to have been considered essential for bringing about the germination of the sacred shoots and typical of the union of the dual principles of nature and of life springing from death. Idols, formed of seeds moistened with human blood, were [pg 443] distributed to the participants in the ceremony. According to some authors this sacred paste, and not pieces of human flesh, constituted the consecrated food, eaten according to the prescribed ritual.

How far analogous rites were performed in Egypt remains to be seen; it is, at all events, certain that, by slow degrees, the cult of the dual principles of nature gave rise to the institution of strange unnatural rites, the original naïve meanings of which became obscured, debased or lost. While various localities of Egypt, notably Thebes and Abydos, appear to have become the birthplace of curious aberrations of the human intellect, there was one ancient and great centre of learning where monotheism and the knowledge of the fundamental scheme appear to have been preserved intact, namely, at Heliopolis, the ancient On or Anu of the North, named the “House of the Sun” by Jeremiah and “the Eye or Fountain of the Sun” by the Arabs. According to Mr. Wallis Budge, “its ruins cover an area three miles square ... the greatest and oldest Egyptian College or University for the education of the priesthood and laity stood here.... During the xxth dynasty the temple of Heliopolis was one of the largest and wealthiest of all Egypt and its staff was numbered by thousands. When Cambyses visited Egypt the glory of Heliopolis was well on the wane and, after the removal of the priesthood and sages of the temple to Alexandria, by Ptolemy II (B.C. 286), its downfall was well assured. When Strabo visited it (B.C. 24) the greater part of it was in ruins.... Heliopolis had a large population of Jews and it will be remembered that Joseph married the daughter of a priest of On (Annu).... Macrobius says that the Heliopolis of Syria or Baalbek, was founded by a body of priests who left the ancient city of Heliopolis of Egypt” (The Nile, p. 132).

Indirectly we learn the tenor of the doctrines and ideas held by the sages of Heliopolis at one period by the remarkable attempt to reform the religion of Egypt, carried out by their pupil, Amenhotep IV (about B.C. 1450). Evidently realizing, with his masters, the extent to which the ancient fundamental religion had become obscured and debased by the multiplication of images of the deity, and the institution of rival cults, which were shrouded in mystery and darkness, the young prince boldly made war against the priesthood of Amen-Ra and the cult of a “hidden god.”

Destroying the monstrous images which had originally been rebus figures only, and represented the supreme deity in partly [pg 444] human and animal form, he instituted the disk or circle as the simple and purer form under which the divinity was to be revered. Animated by the clear realization to what an extent the original communal or republican scheme of organization was being departed from by the artificial creation of a “divine” race of kings who claimed to be gods, he caused himself and his queen to be portrayed as simple mortals, and not as the deities Osiris and Isis. Choosing the sun as his emblem, this champion of pure light and open truth fought the Egyptian votaries of darkness. He erased the word Amen=hidden, from public monuments, changed his own name from Amenhotep to Chu-en-Aten=the brilliance or glory of the disk and founded a city also named Chu-aten, which was to be the centre of a new and reformed state. It seems evident that this was instituted on the familiar archaic plan and that the so-called “heresy of Amenhotep” was but an attempt, backed by the sages and philosophers of Heliopolis, to abolish the artificialities and abuses which had come into existence and destroyed the order of the state and the harmony of the primitive plan. It is well known that gradually Amenhotep's successors were obliged to yield to the hostility of the priesthood of the “hidden god” and that these, in turn, erased or defaced all images of the disk or aten within their reach.

Ineffectual though the grand attempt had been to reorganize state and religion and reëstablish republican principles, on the original plan, the knowledge of the original scheme seems to have been preserved intact during the following centuries, by the sages and philosophers of Heliopolis, by whom the primitive set of ideas seems to have been gradually developed into an abstract philosophical system. Reminding the reader that Plato spent “thirteen years in Egypt, in gaining an insight into the mysterious doctrines and priest-lore of the sacerdotal caste,” I also draw attention to the passage in his “Timæus,” in which Critias makes the statement [pg 445] that when Plato's ideal republic ... was being discoursed upon, he was reminded, to his surprise, of the account of a state given to the Greek sage, Solon, by the priests of Saïs, and perceived how, “in most respects, the republic described coincided with Solon's statements.” It is indeed striking how clearly we can recognize, in Plato's republic, the underlying, primitive, universal scheme in this case, highly developed, elaborated, transfigured and transformed into the philosophical ideal of a great intellect.

Before demonstrating which of the main features of Plato's cosmogony and ideal republic we have found actually carried out in practice, let us briefly refer to the most ancient descriptions of the primitive government of Greece, preserved in the Timæus and Critias, where the conversations held, by Solon, with the priests of Saïs are recorded. Solon (about 594 B.C.) on his arrival (at Saïs) “was very honorably received; and especially, on his inquiring about ancient affairs of those priests who possessed superior knowledge in such matters, he perceived that neither himself nor any one of the Greeks (so to speak) had any antiquarian knowledge at all.... One of their extremely ancient priests said to Solon: ‘you (Greeks) are all youths in intelligence, for you hold no ancient opinions derived from remote tradition nor any system of discipline that can boast of a hoary old age.... In this our country, ... the most ancient things are said to be here preserved ... and all the noble, great or otherwise distinguished achievements, performed either by ourselves, by you or elsewhere, of which we have heard the report, all these have been engraved in our temples in very remote times and preserved to the present day. The annals of our own city (Saïs) have been preserved eight thousand years in our sacred writings ... your state has a priority over ours of a thousand years.... I will briefly describe the law and more illustrious actions of those states which have existed nine thousand years ...’ ” (Timæus). It is interesting at this point to recall also the familiar statements made by the priests of Saïs to Solon, concerning the immense antiquity of the human race and the “multitude and variety of destructions which have been and will be undergone by the human race ... after which nations become young again, as at first, knowing nothing of the events of ancient times” (Timæus, v).

Referring the reader to the original text I merely point out here that the priest of Saïs, referring to the sacred writings themselves, [pg 446] assigned to remotest antiquity the principle of distribution and arrangement on which the state had originally been founded and established. In the Critias the description of the Athenian state, which “had been founded nine thousand” years before, contains the following particulars which will appear familiar to the reader. “To the gods was once locally allotted the whole earth.... Obtaining a country agreeable to them by just allotment, they chose regions for their habitations.... Different gods received by lot different regions.... Hephaestus and Athene, a brother and sister, both received one region as their common allotment ... their temple was built on the Acropolis ... whose northern and southern slopes were respectively associated with separate winter and summer residences.” The population was divided into classes and each caste occupied a fixed place of residence. “The outer parts, down the flanks (of the Acropolis) were inhabited by craftsmen and husbandmen who tilled the neighboring land; the warrior-classes lived separately, by themselves, in the more elevated parts around the temple of Athene and Hephaestus, which they had formed, as it were, into the garden of a single dwelling by encircling it with one enclosure” (The Critias, vi). “... On this site was a single fountain which furnished every part with abundant water....” “The ‘guardians of the state’ were the ‘leaders’ of the Greeks and as to their number they paid special attention that they should always have the same number of men and women that might serve in war, the whole being about twenty thousand.”

In the description given, in the Critias, of the state of Atlantis, the identical features recur, but are more fully described. In the centre of the island of Atlantis stood a mountain, surrounded by a plain, which was ultimately made square. The mountain was the residence of a pair of mythical lovers, consisting of a god and of a mortal woman, and became the birthplace of their offspring, “a divine race of kings.” “The god ... with his divine power, agreeably adorned the centre of the island, causing two fountains of water to shoot upwards from beneath the earth, one cold and the other hot, and making every variety of food to spring abundantly from the earth.” The central hill, from which thus proceeded all life and festivity, was at first “circularly enclosed, the land and sea being formed into alternate zones, greater and less, two out of land and three out of sea, from the centre of the island all equally distant.” The ten kings, born of the “divine union, [pg 447] lived each in his own district and city, and ruled supreme over his people. The government and commonwealth in each case was, by the injunction of the god, according to the laws which were handed down. The latter were inscribed on a column of orichalcum which was deposited in the centre of the island, in the temple of the god, where the ten kings originally assembled every fifth year. A fire burned near the column and a bull was sacrificed at its base, after which a sacred cup was filled with its blood and this was poured into the fire by way of purifying the column” (Critias, vii-xvi).

The above mention of a column is of interest when it is realized that, in historical times, the laws of Solon were actually inscribed on a square wooden pillar which was made to revolve or turn and was placed on the Acropolis. The presence of a revolving pillar on the Acropolis, the sacred centre of the Athenian state, is, moreover, curiously in keeping with the conception of axial energy set forth by Plato and awakens the desire to learn from Greek scholars what relationship, if any, there was between the Sanscrit aksa=axle or axis, the Greek akra (akris=summit, akros=most high, supreme, akrisios=mountain-top god) and the Egyptian ak=the Centre, and hak=a king; and whether the word polis=city was connected with polos=the pole-star, an axis, pivot or pole, from polein=to turn, and may be interpreted as the equivalent of the Egyptian An and Annu. It would also be important to learn whether the name of the principal ancient god of Greece, Apollo, who was revered under the form of a column at Delphi, can also be connected with the verb polein or pelein=to turn, as well as the name Polias i. e. the goddess protecting the city, a surname for Minerva (Athene) at Athens, where she was worshipped at one time as the protecting divinity of the Acropolis. The title Poliuchus, “protecting the city,” occurs as a surname of several divinities and particularly of Minerva Chalchioecus, “of the brazen house,” at Sparta and Athens. It is instructive likewise to compare the Greek words for axis=axon, and polis=city, with Helice, the name for Ursa Major and for a town in Arcadia, with the Egyptian Annu, An or On, the names of capitals, and the Egyptian word an=that which turns around. It will be for Greek and Egyptian scholars to enlighten us as to whether the Egyptian an and the Greek polis are synonyms; in which connection I draw their attention to the following suggestive passage of the Critias (vii).... “Yet before we narrate this we must briefly warn you not to [pg 448] be surprised at hearing Hellenic names given to barbarians ... and the cause of this you shall now hear. Solon made an investigation into the power of names and found that the early Egyptians, who committed these facts to writing, transferred these names into their own language; and he again, receiving the meaning of each name, introduced it by writing into our language.” While, on one hand, it is certain that the Egyptian astronomer-priests associated the pole star with the words An, Anu, Anubis, on the other, the following passages from Plato's works clearly demonstrate his views concerning axial rotation. A fresh interest is undoubtedly added to Plato's philosophy when it is regarded as the possible result of the thirteen years spent by him with the Egyptian priesthood, who may possibly have confided to him the entire sum of their ancient philosophy and accumulated store of knowledge, and who certainly seem to have imposed upon him the reticence and obscurity noticeable in the Republic, the Critias and the Timæus.

To those who have followed my investigation of the ancient state organization and cosmical conceptions of the ancient Egyptians, and noted the interpretation given to the pyramid and the fact that Amenophis instituted the disk as the image of the Supreme Being, the following detached extracts from Plato's Timæus will appear [pg 449] familiar and full of fresh significance. “To discover the Father and Creator of this universe (also called the heaven or the world) or his work is indeed difficult; and when discovered it is impossible to reveal him to mankind at large.... The composing (or framing) Artificer constituted the universe from entire elements of fire, water, air and earth and ... considering that it would thus be a whole animal.... He gave it also a figure becoming and allied to its nature; and to the animal destined to comprehend all others within itself that figure as the most becoming which includes within itself every sort of figure whatever. Hence he fashioned it in the shape of a sphere, perfectly round, having its centre everywhere equally distant from the bounding extremities.... He assigned to it a motion peculiar to itself ... making the world to turn constantly on itself and on same point, he gave it a circular motion ... he assigned to it a motion peculiar to itself, being that of all the seven kinds of motion.... As for the soul, he fixed it in the middle, extended it throughout the whole and likewise surrounded it with its entire surface ... and so, causing a circle to revolve in a circle, he established the world as one substantive, solitary object.... Let the universe be called heaven or the world or by any other name it usually receives.... The soul of this universe [pg 450] ... being composed of three parts ... being interwoven throughout from the middle to the very extremities of space and covering it even all around externally, though at the same time herself revolving within herself, originated the divine commencement of an unceasing and wise life throughout all time.... Time ... was generated with the universe.... Time ... an eternal image on the principles of numbers ... the perfect number of time completes a perfect year ... for this purpose ... were formed such of the stars as moved circularly through the universe....”

While a careful study of Plato's work will further elucidate his views concerning the quadruplicate nature of the universe, of its comprehensive unity, of axial rotation, the generation of time and of the principle of numbers, I point out that the following passage conveys the idea of applying the universal plan to the regulation of human thought: “This, however, we may assert, that God invented and bestowed sight upon us for the express purpose, that on surveying the circles of intelligence in the heavens, we might properly employ those of our minds, which, though disturbed when compared with the others that are uniform, are still allied to their circulation and that, having thus learned and being naturally possessed of a correct reasoning faculty, we might, by imitating the uniform revolutions of divinity, set right our own silly wanderings and blunders.”

There are two portions of Plato's cosmology to which I wish particularly to draw attention, because of the striking examples that exist, showing that the views therein expressed and suggestions given, were independently carried into practice in ancient times, in widely separated countries. One is the suggestive attempt to figure the Cosmos by geometrical images, a method which had been carried out by the pyramid-builders and Amenophis III and suggests an explanation for the origin and meaning of the geometrical decoration that prevailed at one period of antiquity. The other is the association of time with the principles of numbers, the most remarkable exemplifications of which are furnished by the Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese, Mexican and Maya cyclical systems, founded upon the associations of divisions of time and numerals, and even and uneven numbers with day-names, etc.

Having hastily noted some features of Plato's Cosmos let us next obtain an insight into the ideas associated with Polaris and the Septentriones by the ancient Greeks and their neighbors, before [pg 451] and after Plato's time. I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Richard Hinckley Allen's “Star-names and their meanings” (New York, 1899), for the following valuable information and at the same time express my regret that his useful work was unknown to me when I wrote the preceding portion of my investigation.

“Ursa Minor was not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod for, according to Strabo, it was not admitted among the constellations of the Greeks until about 600 B.C. when Thales, inspired by its use in Phœnicia, his probable birthplace, suggested it to the Greek mariners in place of its greater neighbor which till then had been their sailing guide. Thence its title Phœnice and Ursa Phœnicia. But it also shared, with Ursa Major, the titles Septentrio, Aratos, Amaxa, Aganna and Helice. It also bore the ‘early and universal title’ Kynosura or Cynosura, usually translated ‘the Dog's Tail,’ the origin of which is uncertain, Bournouf asserting that ‘it is in no way associated with the Greek word for dog.’ Cox identified the word with Lycosura (meaning tail or trail of light), which recalls the city of that name in Arcadia considered, by Pausanias, the most ancient in the world, having been founded by Lycaon some time before the Deluge of Deucalion.”

“Euclid said in his Phainomena: ‘A star is visible between the Bears, not changing its place, but always revolving upon itself’ (cf. Plato's Cosmos). Hipparchus, that the pole was ‘in a vacant spot forming a quadrangle with three other stars,’ both writers calling this Polos, the Polus of Lucan, Ovid and other classical Latins, and Euphratean observers had called their pole-star Pūl or [pg 452] Bil. But, although other astronomical writers used these words for some individual star, there is no certainty as to which was intended, for it should be remembered that, during many millenniums, the polar point has gradually been approaching our pole-star which, 2000 years ago, was far removed from it, in Hipparchus' time 12° 24' away, according to his own statement, quoted by Marinus of Tyre and cited by Ptolemy. Heraclitus, the Ionian philosopher of Ephesus of about 500 B.C., asserted that this constellation marked the boundary between the east and the west, which it may be regarded as doing when on the horizon.” This statement is of extreme importance as it proves an orientation of the north by the pole-star and not by the solstitial position of the sun. “Another name for it, πλενθιον, used for it or its quarter of the sky, was from the Greek, as seen in Plutarch's αἰ τῶν πλινθίων ὀπογραφαί the ‘fields’ or ‘spaces’ into which the augurs divided the heavens, the templa, or regiones cœli of the Latins....”

“In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey the use of the seven stars of Ursa Major in Greek navigation is clearly shown. The constellation is entitled the Bear=arctos, described, according to different translators, as ‘circling on high,’ ‘wheeling round,’ or ‘revolving around the axle of the sky.’ Homer used, equally with Arctos, [pg 453] the name Amaxa=the wain or wagon, to designate the seven stars. Aratos called the constellation the ‘Wain-like Bear;’ and, alluding to the title Amaxa, asserted that the word was from ama=together, the Amaxai thus circling together around the pole; but no philologist accepts this and it might as well have come from axion=axle, referring to the axis of the heavens. In fact Hewitt goes far back of Aratos in his statement that the Sanscrit god Akshivan, the Driver of the Axle (aksha), was adopted in Greece as Ixion, whose well-known wheel was merely the circling course of this constellation. Anacreon mentioned it as a Chariot as well as a Bear; and Hesychius had it Aganna, an archaic word from agein, ‘to carry,’ singularly like, in orthography at least, the Akkadian title for the Wain stars, Aganna or Akanna, the Lord of Heaven; and Aben Ezra called it Ajala, the Hebrew word for ‘waggon.’ The name Helice from Ελιξ, the Curved, or Spiral One, apparently first used by Aratos and Apollonius Rhodius, became common as descriptive of its twisting around the pole, ... Sophocles having the same thought in his mention of ‘the circling paths of the Bear.’ Some, however, derived the name from the curved or twisted positions of the chief stars.... Helice was also the name of a city in Arcadia, the country so intimately connected with the Bears, whose inhabitants were called the Bear race.”

As far back as Hesiod's time the constellation was associated in myth, with the name Kallisto, “the beautiful,” which “La Lande referred to the Phœnician Kalitsah or Chalitsa, Safety, as its observation helped to a safe voyage. Another version of the Grecian myth associated the constellation with Artemis, the Roman Diana [i. e. the huntress, cf. Ishtar and Isis-Satit].” The apparent connection of the name Artemis with Themis=“law and justice personified,” should be noted here.

The preceding statements establish that, in ancient Greece, Polaris was identified with the celestial Polos and was described as a star, not changing its place, but always revolving on itself and it appears superfluous to point out how closely Plato's Cosmos agrees with the current astronomical theories. The Ursæ, on the other hand, were identified with the titles Helice, referring to axial rotation, and with the names Aganna (Akanna) Arctos and Amaxa, which are identical in sound with the words we have found associated with Polaris and the Septentriones in the ancient Egyptian texts.

[pg 454]

Deferring the demonstration that a number of the natural objects or animals represented in the Egyptian rebus signs, which were merely employed in hieratic script to express the syllables an, am, ar, ak, etc., are to be found as actual names for Polaris and the Ursæ in different western Asiatic and other countries, I shall now briefly show that, in remotest historical times, the Grecian states were established upon the model of an ideal republic such as is outlined in Plato's works, in accordance with current cosmological conceptions. According to ancient tradition the aborigines of Attica were first civilized under Cecrops who is said to have come hither from Saïs, Egypt, about 1500 B.C.

Turning to Iwan Mueller's monumental “Alterthumswissenschaft” (iv. Handbuch der Griechische Alterthümer), let us examine the data he presents concerning the beginnings of Athenian culture.

“The historical inhabitants of Attica belonged to the Ionic race and claimed to be autochthonous.... They were grouped into four tribes: the Geleontes, Argadeis, Aigikoreis and Hopletes. The existence of these four tribes is usually connected with a territorial division of Attica into four parts and their names are supposed to have been derived from the location and occupation of each tribe. The Geleontæ=the shining ones, are said to have formed the priest or warrior caste and to have lived in Pedion. The Argadæi were the agriculturists and were situated in the plain of Thriasis. The Aigikoræi or goatherds were assigned to Diakria. Authorities still disagree about the habitation of the Hopletes, ‘the armed ones.’ The interpretation of these names is still open to doubt. An ancient tradition attributes to them an Ionic derivation.... On the other hand, it is probable that when they emigrated to Attica the tribe remained separate and became associated with their place of residence ... at a later period the phratries were associated with localities.... Each of the four castes had its chieftain and an equality of rank seems to have been maintained. In ancient times the citizens were divided into three classes: the Eupatridæ or nobility; the Geomoræ or farmers; and the Demiurgæ or artisans, merchants, potters or fishermen,—in fact all who exercised some occupation.

“The political unity of Attica was centred in the plain of Cephisos, which was the kernel of the country. In the lower part of the plain, about a mile from the sea, situated on a plateau, and [pg 455] crowning a high rocky elevation, lay the ancient fortress Cekropia, the residence of Cecrops and Erechtheus, the mythical, earth-born forefathers of the Athenians. At the foot of the fortress, a lower town gradually grew up and spread itself towards the south. This primitive Athens originally formed only the nucleus of a small kingdom situated in the plains and surrounded by enemies.... According to an Attic tradition Cecrops collected the inhabitants of Attica into 12 ... tribes, states or communities.... The names of several of these have been shown to have also been applied to capitals which were independent centres of government. Athens, the centre of the state, developed into a large city in which the nobility of the whole country resided and where many artisans also settled. The majority of the citizens lived, however, in the surrounding country.... The harvest festival, held at ancient Athens, in honor of the goddess Athene, the patroness of agriculture, was also a general feast for all inhabitants of Attica ...” (pp. 104-108).

The foregoing suffices to establish that, in remotest antiquity, Attica was divided into four territorial divisions, with a central seat of government, the capital, which formed the fifth division. The inhabitants of the four regions constituted four tribes, each under its own chieftain. Each tribe became identified with a different occupation and ultimately constituted castes which remained associated with their place of residence. Simultaneously with this territorial distribution, another classification of the population was evolved, which divided it into three strata, corresponding to the upper, central and lower caste and thus yielded a total of seven great divisions of the state, which thus reveals itself as having been a heptarchy and explains the constitution of the Heptanomis, which existed in Central Egypt under Greek rule.

From the preceding material it appears that when Solon divided the people into four classes, he merely reinstated the most ancient form of state organization known in Greece. It would be interesting to learn how far the following offices had been previously known. It is well known that Solon instituted nine archons (literally leaders), which seem to have been the equivalents to the group of “nine gods” mentioned in Egypt in association with the supreme god or goddess. The characteristic feature of the archons appears to have been the fact that they were elected and that the first archon was surnamed Eponymos and gave his name to the year; [pg 456] the second archon, entitled Basileus, was the king, and the third, Polemarchas, was a warrior. The remaining six were collectively called Thesmothetes, administrators of right or justice. Under the above was the Council of Four Hundred. Each of the four phylæ fell into three parts or thirds, producing a total of 12, a number corresponding to the organization of twelve tribes, communities or states. Each of these was divided into 4 Naucrariæ, under 48 captaincies. The following extracts from Iwan Müller's work supply us with further details concerning the Athenian government and show that variants of the same existed at different periods, throughout ancient Greece.

“At Athens, in historical times, the members of one tribe formed a corporation, recognized a common ancestor, observed a form of ancestral cult and kept a tribal register with the names of all newly born children (p. 20). The tribes formed corporations within the state, and each had its own cult and chieftain.... The Doric nation consisted of three such tribes.... In Ephesus the citizens were divided into five ‘gens’ (i. e., four quarters and centre). It is certain that in Athens, Cyrene, and Chios, the phratries were communities with separate forms of cult, who worshipped beside their tribal deities, Zeus Phratrios and Athena Phratria ...” (pp. 20 and 21).

“In Teos the towns inhabited by a ‘gens’ were divided into at least seven quarters.... In Tenos each gens was known as ‘a tower,’ and each individual bore the name of his tower and his gens.” Pausing here for an instant, I draw attention to the recurrence in Greece of certain features of the Great Plan which must now be familiar to the reader: the association of divisions of people with a “tower,” an artificial “high place” or mountain, the development and existence of separate forms of cult, corresponding to tribal and territorial divisions; the supreme cult of a male and female divinity, corresponding to the traditions that the state was founded by two individuals and was governed by two rulers. An illustration of this is furnished by Sparta, which “was governed by two kings, belonging to two different royal families ... the origin of this custom is unknown ... these kings usually were at enmity with each other....” “The population of Sparta was primarily divided into five ‘phyles,’ identified with five local districts. The names of the latter, Pitane, Mesoa, Limnai, Konoura and Dyme, were identical with those of the five Comes or [pg 457] group of separate communities which had constituted the state of Sparta at the time of Thucydides.” It will be perceived that this organization corresponds to that of a capital and four provinces. Simultaneously the population was grouped into three main classes and twenty-seven phratries.

Considering that in ancient times the belief prevailed, and was shared by the Spartans themselves, that Lycurgus had introduced his scheme of organization from Crete, it is interesting to learn that “the Cretans themselves claimed that their laws dated from a remote antiquity and had been communicated to Minos and Rhadamanthus by Zeus himself.” In one of the most ancient portions of the Odysseus, Idomeneus is represented as ruling in particular over cities situated in the middle of the island. In historical times the central rulership or monarchy had been abolished and “the state was ruled by ten chiefs of tribal divisions, who bore in common the title Cosmos and held office for the limit of one year.” Although the most ancient accounts of the maritime supremacy of Crete under its king Minos, the “son of Zeus,” are regarded as grossly exaggerated, modern authorities agree that, on account of its geographical position, Crete must undoubtedly have been an extremely important centre of maritime commerce, during a prolonged period.

On this account, and because the Spartans acknowledged to have received their scheme of organization from Crete, I draw particular attention to the design on a coin from Cnossus, the most important capital of Crete, which recently arrested my attention. It is preserved at the Berlin Museum and is reproduced in Spamer's work, already cited (fig. , 14 and 15). On the obverse, it exhibits the fabulous Minotaurus the monster, half man and half bull, who is stated to have ruled the island. On the reverse, is a geometrical figure, representing a swastika, in the centre of which is the five-dot group. A similar coin also found on the site of Cnossus, and assigned to B.C. 700, is preserved at the British Museum. Its reverse exhibits also the five-dot group and the swastika, between whose branches are four large dots or circles. In the Berlin Museum specimen the latter are replaced by squares containing cross lines. To any one familiar, in the first case, with the scheme of organization into five Comes, i. e. 4+1, such as has been shown to have been adopted in Sparta and elsewhere in Greece, the design on the reverse of both coins appears perfectly intelligible. No geometrical or cursive sign could more clearly express the [pg 458] scheme or ground-plan upon which the most ancient form of government in Greece has been shown to have also rested.

Figure 72.

As to the image of the Minotaurus on the obverse of the Berlin coin: to any one familiar with the widespread system of figuring the state under the form of a human being or of a quadruped, and of symbolizing its ruler as its head, the image appears intelligible as that of the quadruplicate state. The circumstance that the head is that of a bull seems to indicate that, like the Egyptians, the Cretans applied the title “bull” to their king; thence perhaps the fable that the island was at one time governed by the monster [pg 459] Minotaurus who claimed as annual tribute, from conquered tribes, seven youths and maidens. It is striking how perfectly the geometrical figures on the reverse of both coins, which I hold to represent territorial divisions, seem to form the complement to the image of the state represented in semi-human and semi-animal form. Interesting variants of the same design appear on two coins of the same period in the British Museum collection. One of these, from Syracuse, exhibits a swastika, in the centre of which is a human head—a sign which I should interpret as the image of a state and its single central ruler. A coin from Corinth displays a plain swastika only, which suffices to indicate, however, that its state organization was on the familiar plan.

In connection with the swastika and five-dot group it is interesting to examine some ancient Egyptian seals exhibiting crosses with four dots or strokes (fig. , 3-5), and to compare these with Rhodian specimens (10-13). On vases found by Schliemann on the site of Troy (8 and 9), we find, in one case a swastika and in the other a cross and four dots in a circle forming the nave. It is interesting to compare the Athenian nos. 6 and 7, one being a swastika and the other a cross in a lozenge. An extremely curious instance of an entire decoration of a building consisting of crosses and five-dot groups, is furnished by the cenotaph erected by a late king in honor of Midas, king of Phrygia (fig. , 2), which, curiously enough, offers much resemblance to the geometrical style of stucco decorations of the ruins of Mitla, Mexico. The presence of the swastika on coins assigned to about B.C. 700 and its use in Greece, where plain cross-symbols had previously been employed, naturally leads to the inquiry as to the oldest-dated swastikas which have hitherto been found in Greece and Egypt.

In his important work on the subject already referred to, Prof. Thomas Wilson (op. cit. pp. 806 and 833), cites the opinions of Prof. Max Müller and Count Goblet d'Alviella as agreeing with that of Waring, who states that “the swastika is sought for in vain in Babylonia, Assyria and Phœnicia,” and “had no foothold in Egypt.” The same authority says that: “the only sign approaching the fylfot in Egyptian hieroglyphics ... is not very similar to our fylfot ... and forms one of the hieroglyphs of Isis” [pg 460] (Ceramic Art in Remote Ages, p. 82). On the other hand, Professor Goodyear says (Grammar of the Lotus, p. 356): “The earliest dated swastikas, hitherto found in Egypt, occur on the foreign Cyprian and Carian [?] pottery fragments of the time of the twelfth dynasty [B.C. 2466-2266] discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie in 1889. In the Third Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund, Prof. Flinders Petrie published illustrations of Greek vases showing unmistakable swastikas which, though found at Naukratis in Egypt, are not Egyptian, but Greek.”

The only other examples of the swastika in Egypt cited by Prof. Thomas Wilson are those woven on Coptic grave cloths made of linen and reproduced in “Die Gräber- und Textilfunde von Achmim-Panopolis by R. Forrer.” These grave cloths pertained to the Christian Greeks who migrated from their country during the first centuries of our era and settled in Upper Egypt, in Coptos and the surrounding cities. I am able to add another instance of the employment of the swastika in Egypt, which, although of Coptic origin, attaches itself to ancient Egypt.

I have already pointed out that, in Lepsius' Book of the Dead, the foremost of the gods of the four quarters, represented in mummy form, exhibited a cross on his right shoulder. During a recent visit to the Berlin Museum, my attention was arrested by seeing a swastika painted in precisely the same position, on the right shoulder of the stucco mummy case of a man, from Hermopolis, dated from the second century after Christ (Catalogue No. 11649). This remarkable coincidence seems to furnish conclusive evidence that, long before the introduction of Greek culture and Christian influence, the plain cross was employed by the ancient Egyptians in precisely the same way as, subsequently, the swastika by the Copts. To some of my readers the question will perhaps suggest itself whether some early Christian sects and, amongst them, communities of Greek Copts, did not interpret the mission of Christ literally, as an attempt to reëstablish an earthly “kingdom of heaven” on the ancient plan, the knowledge of which had been preserved at Heliopolis, by the sages and philosophers of Egypt and the large Hebrew colony established there.

Returning to the swastika: From the account given by Prof. Thomas Wilson (op. cit., 810) of Schliemann's observations on the swastikas he discovered, during his excavations on the site of Troy, we learn that, whereas the swastika occurs on thousands of whorls [pg 461] found in the third, fourth and fifth cities, but few whorls were found in the first and second cities, which were the deepest and oldest and none of these bore the swastika mark. These observations, added to the appearance of the swastika in Egypt at a comparatively late period, appear to prove that, whereas the cross-symbol was known in remotest antiquity in Asia Minor and Egypt and expressed the same meaning as the swastika, i. e. Polaris and circumpolar rotation and the quadruplicate organization of the Cosmos suggested by these natural phenomena, it was only the form or shape of the cross which underwent a change at a certain period. The earliest-dated specimens of this new form, given to a more ancient symbol, occur on the pottery fragments found in Egypt by Prof. Flinders Petrie. The presence of the swastika, on the whorls found in the ruins of the third city built on the site of Troy, also indicates that its adoption occurred at a fixed date and marked a new departure.

Referring back to page , where I show that the observations which led to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol could not possibly have been made until after Ursa Major had become circumpolar, about B.C. 4000, I point out that the oldest swastikas which have hitherto been found corroborate this view, since they are all posterior to the time when Ursa Major became circumpolar. Long anterior to its adoption, however, the primordial set of ideas, suggested to the human mind by the observation of natural phenomena, had reached an advanced stage of development, and had been worked out, applied to the regulation of human life and symbolized, in various ways, in widely separated countries.

It is impossible to conclude my comparative research, which has been rewarded by a most unexpected wealth of material, without enumerating a few facts connected with the earliest histories of Rome, ancient Ireland, Britain, Wales and Scandinavia. These brief and doubtlessly imperfect résumés will have fulfilled their purpose if they stimulate inquiry and evoke authoritative statements by learned specialists.

ANCIENT ROME.

Whether Rome “was founded by the common resolve of a Latin confederacy or by the enterprise of an individual chief, is beyond the reach even of conjecture. The date fixed upon for the commencement of the city is, of course, perfectly valueless in its [pg 462] precision” (Chambers' Encyclopædia). “According to Varro the city of Rome was founded B.C. 753, but Cato places the event four years later.... The day of its foundation was the 21st of April, which was sacred to the rural goddess Pales. There seems to be some uncertainty whether Romulus gave his name to the city or derived his own from it, but those who ascribe to the city a Grecian origin ... assert that Romulus and Roma are both derived from the Greek word for ‘strength.’ The city, we are assured, had another name which the priests were forbidden to divulge; but what that was it is now impossible to discover. There is, however, some plausibility in the conjecture that it was Pallanteum, and from the great care with which the Palladium, or image of Pallas, was preserved, it seems probable that the city was supposed to be under the care of that deity. If this conjecture be correct, the Pelasgic origin of Rome cannot be doubted, for Pallas was a Pelasgic deity....

“The institution of the vestal virgins was older than the city itself and was regarded by the Romans as the most sacred part of their religious system. In the time of Numa there were but four ... their duty was to keep the sacred fire on the altar in the temple of Vesta from being extinguished and to preserve a certain sacred pledge on which the very existence of Rome was supposed to depend. What this pledge was we have no means of discovering; some supposed that it was the Trojan Palladium; others, some traditional mystery brought by the Pelasgi from Samothrace. One fact is certain: that the Palatine is regarded as the oldest portion of the city and the original site and centre of the embryo mistress of the world and mother of cities, the Roma quadrata, fragments of whose walls have been brought to light.

“Tradition relates that it was on the Palatine that Romulus marked out the Pomœrium, a space around the walls of the city, on which it was unlawful to erect buildings.... The next ceremony was the consecration of the comitium, or place of public assembly. A vault was built under ground and filled with the firstlings of all the natural productions that sustain human life and with [pg 463] earth which each foreign settler had brought from his home. This place was called Mundus” (History of Rome, Goldsmith's abridgment, 21st edition, by W. C. Taylor, p. 13).

This fact furnishes evidence that the sacred central cosmical vault over which a mound may have been formed by the earth contributed from different quarters, was regarded as a synopsis of all, and that sanctity was also attached to the central place of assembly where justice was administered at regular intervals, weekly markets were held and religious rites were celebrated.

Tradition relates that, after the foundation of the central “Mundus,” the founder of Rome established the Sabine town which occupied the Quirinal and part of the Capitoline hills. “The name of this town most probably was Quirium ... the two cities were united on terms of equality and the double-faced Janus, stamped on the earliest Roman coins was probably a symbol of the double state.” It is significant to find not only that Janus was sometimes depicted with four faces instead of two, in which case he was called Janus Quadrifrontis, but that references are also made to the female form of Janus=Jana, the latter being identified with Diana. Considering that it was from Quirium that the Roman youths obtained Sabine wives by force, which had been refused to their entreaties, it would seem as though, originally, as elsewhere, the men and women of the community resided separately and that stringent laws regulated their intercourse. In other ancient communities it has been shown how the separation of the sexes created in time an upper and lower class, and to the same origin may perhaps be assigned the most remarkable feature of the Roman constitution, i. e. the two-fold division of the people into patricians and plebeians.

While the foregoing statements throw light upon the ideas associated with the Middle and show that Rome was originally a dual state, the following facts furnish indications of a quadruplicate division. At an early period Rome was laid out and enclosed in a square, the population was divided into four tribes and mention [pg 464] is made of “the state, under Servius Tullius, being an entity divided into four cities and twenty-six tribes ... this being strictly a geographical division analogous to our parishes. The division of the city into four tribes continued until the reign of Augustus (B.C. 29)....”

The four chief religious corporations of ancient Rome, mentioned in the Century Dictionary, evidently correspond to this fourfold division and it is specially stated of one of these corporations that it was represented and governed by a group consisting of seven “septemvir epulones” who formed a “septemvirate.”

The number of septemvirs corresponded to the “seven hills” which were enclosed by Tullus Hostilius, and it is stated that there were seven places of worship in ancient Rome. It is interesting to find that between A.D. 193 and 211, Septimius Severus, a native of an ancient Punic colony in Africa, erected a Septizonium (an edifice consisting, like the Babylonian zikkurat, of seven stories) on the Palatine, where a large temple of Apollo had previously been built.

Although it is thus evident that, at different periods, seven-fold division was carried out in ancient Rome, it was not until after the reign of Theodosius, according to some authors, that the seven-day [pg 465] period was imported from Alexandria and the term “septimana” adopted in Rome. “Previously to this Rome had counted her periods by eight days, the eighth day itself being originally called Nundinæ—a term later applied to the whole cycle” (Chambers' Encyclopædia). Noting that the period of eight (=2×4) days accords with the quadruplicate system applied to the primitive state, I draw attention to the numerical classification of the citizens of Rome employed during centuries, which so curiously agrees with the system carried out in Peru at a widely sundered period (see p. ).

Ten households formed a gens (clan or family); ten clans or one hundred households formed a curia or wardship; and ten wardships, or one hundred clans, or one thousand households formed a populus, civitas or community. As it is stated that, at one time, Rome consisted of four cities, it is obvious that the above numbers, quadrupled, constituted the state which thus included forty wardships, four hundred gentes and four thousand households. As each gens possessed a chieftain, endowed with paternal authority over its members, there must, at one time, have been four hundred of these “patricians,” whose number is thus found to correspond to the Greek “Council of 400” and curiously enough to the “four hundred Tochtli” or governors of the ancient Mexican commonwealth.

A noteworthy feature of the attempt to institute the Decemvirate in Rome (5th century B.C.) was the arrangement that the ten chosen men exercised office in prescribed rotation for one day, each ruling, in consequence, for thirty-six days in the year which, like the Egyptian, then consisted of three hundred and sixty days and of an epact of five days. The assignment of a day to each chieftain finds its parallel not only in Assyria but also in ancient America (see p. ).

In connection with the Roman communal organization, attention is drawn to what appears to be a remarkable survival of an extremely ancient and natural mode of distinguishing the wardships. It is well known that, according to tradition, the republic of Siena, Italy, was founded at a remote period “by the sons of Remus, the twin brother of Romulus.” The following facts prove that, to this day, certain features of its social organization exhibit an affinity to that of primitive Rome. “Siena, from the earliest day, has been divided into contrade or parishes. Each contrada has its special church, generally of great antiquity, and each contrada is [pg 466] named after some animal, or natural object, these names being symbolical of certain trades or customs. There are now the wolf, giraffe, owl, snail, tower, wave, goose, tortoise, etc., in all seventeen. Each has its colors, heralds, pages, music, flags; all the mediæval paraphernalia of republican subdivision” (Frances Eliot, Diary of an idle woman in Italy i, p. 19).

The employment of the names of animals and natural objects as distinctive marks for a wardship offers a curious analogy to the American institution of tribal names and totems.

The circumstance that, in remotest times, the king of Rome, the acknowledged metropolis or mother city, was accompanied, on public occasions, by twelve lictors or administrators of justice, each carrying the axe tied in a bundle of rods, shows that, at one time, the government was administered by thirteen individuals—a method we shall find again in ancient Ireland and Scandinavia. The history of Rome reveals that the different variants of governmental scheme adopted, one after the other, under influences emanating from Greece and Egypt, were reared upon the familiar universal plan. The most striking instance of this is, however, furnished by the details preserved of the groundwork on which Constantine founded (A.D. 330) the city he intended to be the capital of a universal empire, and named the New or Second Rome.

Historians relate that the peninsula of Byzantium offered striking resemblances to the sites of Carthage and Rome. The design of Constantine embraced the entire peninsula with the seven hills upon it. “On foot, with a lance in his hand, professing to be under the guidance of divine inspiration, the emperor directed the line which was traced as the boundary of the destined capital.” ... “In imitation of Rome at that period, the city was divided into 2×7=fourteen wards (regiones).... Its centre was marked by a column ... surmounted by a bronze colossus of Apollo. The church of S. Sophia, built on the site of an ancient temple of Wisdom, was subsequently dedicated to 'the Holy Eternal Wisdom' by Justinian. In the court called the Forum Augusteum, one side of which was formed by the palace and the other by the church, stood the Milliarium Aureum, not, as at Rome, a gilt marble pillar, but a spacious edifice, the centre from which all the roads of the empire were measured and on the walls of which the distances to all the chief places were inscribed.... In the new reunited empire quadruple division was maintained, the [pg 467] empire being divided into four parts, each forming a prætorian prefecture under a prætorian prefect, who, being the lieutenant of the emperor, ruled over the governors and people of the province with absolute power. The four prefectures were subdivided into thirteen dioceses, each governed by a vice-prefect named vicarius, the total number of dioceses being fifty-two.”

This system of numeration is of particular interest as it is not only identical with the system of a modern pack of cards, the origin of which is unknown, but is also the same as the Mexican year cycle (see p. ). Vestiges of sevenfold organization are traceable in the appointment by Constantine, of “seven ministers of the palace” who exercised “sacred” functions about the person of the emperor, and the division of all Gaul into seven provinces placed under the governorship of the Vicar of the Seven Provinces. In conclusion I venture to point out that the four-storied amphitheatre of Vespasian (A.D. 71), the Pantheon of Agrippa (A.D. 23) and the Mausoleum of Hadrian (A.D. 138) appear to have a cosmical character, the first having been planned to hold the entire population of Rome, around a central space in which, originally, the circling chariot simulated the circuit of the celestial “plaustrum” or “carro”=chariot, the Latin name given to Ursa Major.

While, on public festivals, the amphitheatre must have appeared as a synopsis of the whole empire and may also have been originally used for nocturnal, religious or political assemblages, the great Pantheon enclosing the images of twelve deities, may well have been a conscious attempt to represent the all-embracing Cosmos of Egyptian and Greek philosophy, the framed view of the heaven, seen through the central opening in the dome, being the symbol of the “hidden and invisible god,” of the initiated. To Hadrian, who visited Egypt twice and was undoubtedly acquainted with the idea of Plato's Cosmos or Theos, the idea of building a great circular structure in the centre of which he would be laid to rest, would naturally have suggested itself. Passing from a consideration of the buildings which, with the pyramids, appear to be among the grandest exponents of natural philosophy and religion ever reared by the hand of man, and clearly appear to have been planned under the direct influence of Egyptian and Greek philosophy, let us briefly glance at the mode in which the identical fundamental scheme was perpetuated among some northern peoples.

[pg 468]

ANCIENT IRELAND, BRITAIN AND WALES.

It is a remarkable fact that, in ancient Ireland, we find distinct traces of a state, founded on the same crystallized artificial system that has been found at the basis of the most ancient civilizations of the world. “There is really no authentic history of Ireland before the introduction of Christianity into the country, but there are some genuine traditions which appear based upon truth, because they accord with and explain the peculiar customs which were found to prevail in the island at the time of the English invasion. These traditions declare, that the original Celtic inhabitants were subdued by an Asiatic colony, or at least by the descendants of some Eastern people at a very remote period; they aver that the conquerors were as inferior to the original inhabitants in numbers as they were superior in military discipline and the arts of social life; they describe the conquest as a work of time and trouble and assert that, after its completion, an hereditary monarchy and hereditary aristocracy were for the first time established in Ireland....”

“At some unknown period Ireland was divided into five kingdoms, Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, Munster and Meath ... the latter being the property of the paramount sovereign ...” (W. C. Taylor, History of Ireland, 1837).

John O'Neil cites “the very oldest Irish books, according to which two brothers, the leaders of the Milesian colonization, divided Ireland into Northern and Southern kingdom.” Elsewhere he relates how a prince of the north had been united in marriage to the princess of the south and that “the mythical Niall-Navi-giallach of the nine treasures had had a Northern king for father and a Southern princess for mother.” Besides this subdivision which strikingly recalls the ancient Egyptian, O'Neil brings out the remarkable fact that definite positions in relation to each other and the cardinal points were assigned to the five Irish kings and tells us that “we have a fuller and later division when, in the central hall, the miodh-chuarta of Tara, the king of Erinn sat in the centre, with his face to the East, the king of Ulster being at his North, the king of Munster at his South, while the king of Leinster sat opposite to him and the king of Connaught behind him” (op. cit. i, 463).

I refer the reader to his extremely interesting comparison (i, p. 369) of ancient Ireland being “an Irish instance of a Chinese [pg 469] ‘Middle Kingdom,’ ” and to the data given in connection with the great hall of Tara, which was called Meath or Mid-court, Miodchuarta (pronounced Micôrta), and the Northern hill of Miodhchaoinn (or Midkena), guarded by Miodhchaoinn and his three sons, the guardians of the hill being thus four in all. O'Neil also refers to “the great idol or castrum of Kilair ... which was surrounded by twelve smaller ones and was called the stone and umbilicus of Hibernia and, as if placed in the midst and middle of the land, ‘medio et meditullio’....” “Meath itself, where this Kilair navel stood, was anciently the central one of the five divisions of Ireland and is called Media by Giraldus Cambrensis, ... and connected with the words medi-tullium and medi-tullus.” The legend states that “the castrum of Kilair and the stones around it were transported by Merlin to Stonehenge and ‘set up in the same order.’ ” “At Mag Slecht was the chief idol of Ireland, called Cenn Craich (Mound-chief) covered with gold and silver, and twelve other idols about it, covered with brass” (O'Neil, p. 273).

“The five Irish kingdoms were again subdivided into several principalities inhabited by distinct ‘septs,’ each ruled by its own carfinny or chieftain. The obedience of these local rulers or toparchs to the provincial sovereign was regulated, like his to the general monarch, by the powers that he possessed for enforcing authority.... The succession to every degree of sovereignty was regulated by the law of tanistry, which limited heredity right to the family but not to the individual.... Each district was deemed the common property of the entire sept; but the distribution of the several shares was entrusted to the toparch.... The lower orders were divided into freemen and hetages, or as they were called by the Normans, villanis. The former had the privilege of choosing their tribe; the latter were bound to the soil and transferred with it in any grant or deed of sale.”

Ruined groups of buildings, consisting of seven sanctuaries or churches, situated around a round, high tower, usually with four windows near the top, opening to the cardinal points, exist in various parts of Ireland, the Seven Churches in County Wicklow being the most famous example. The cosmical character of the [pg 470] round towers has been set forth by John O'Neil, to whose work I refer the reader. According to my views the groups testify to the establishment, at one time, of several septarchies in Ireland, the geographical centres of which, as in Assyria and elsewhere, were marked in this case by the cosmical round tower, figuring the axis or spindle, around which each sept built its council house, for religious and political assemblies. In connection with such it is interesting to read what Cæsar says of the priests and judges of Gaul, which was organized into seven provinces, as late as at the time of Constantine: “These Druids held a meeting at a certain time of the year in a consecrated place in the country of the Carnutes [modern Chartres] which country is considered to be in the centre of all Gaul.” It is well known that anterior to the Roman Conquest there existed in Britain a long-established, seven-fold state, governed by seven kings, compared by John Speed (1630) to seven crowned pillars.

The kingdom of Mercia included the counties in the centre of the kingdom and is said to have been founded by Crida or Creoda. The central and chief ruler of Britain was styled Bretwalda. It is well known that Stonehenge, which is associated in folk-lore with the number seven, is situated in the heart of the plain region of England and is supposed to have been the seat of central religion and government.

It is moreover acknowledged by Knight that the ancient Britons were a people who evidently had some great principle of association in their religion as in their industry. The familiar fact, that at one period the ancient Kent, Cantium, was governed by four kings, also styled “the four princes of Cantii,” furnishes an indication that quadruplicate division was also known to the ancient Britons.

[pg 471]

A few instructive facts concerning Welsh Druidism may be appropriately cited here.

Morien has pointed out that the Druidic Celi Ced corresponds to Amen-Ra, the Egyptian Hidden Sun. According to Welsh system the universe was born of Celi-Ced, a dual power, Celi being the masculine and Ced the feminine principle. Ceridwen is termed the Welsh Isis, and her name translated as “the producing woman.” Celi is invariably represented as hidden, the three Hus representing him in manifestation.

“The three Hus are: Hu cylch y Cengant=the Hu of the circle of infinitude; Hu cylch y Sidydd=the Hu of the circle of the zodiac and Hu yn Nghnawd=Hu incarnate. The latter was incarnate in the Arch Druid. He, standing in the middle of the Gorsedd circle, where the triple life lines met, implied by his action that the three emanations which had their root in the dual Ced-Celi, focussed themselves in him. He stood facing the east where the sun rises” (cf. the ceremonial position assumed by the king of Erin in council and that of the Roman augur on drawing his templum). “The name for the physical sun was Huan, translated as ‘the abode of divinity.’ ” “The Druidic bards of N. Wales worshipped Beli.”

In Welsh legend a god named Peredur Paladye Hir (of the long spear or pal) is associated with his brother, both sons of Eliffer, one of the thirteen princes of the north. Peredur is one of seven brothers; there were seven profound mysteries of Druidism, i. e. seven divisions of the reverberations of the Word, emanating from Ced, and the seven Tattaras or seven rays.

SCANDINAVIA.

According to the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturlesson, whose opinion was the re-echo of ancient traditional beliefs, Odin and his eight sons and four companions, twelve in all, were earthly kings and priests of a sacerdotal caste, who had emigrated from Asia—perhaps from Troy—and who conquered and ruled over various parts of Scandinavia and Northern Germany where, after their death, they were regarded by the people as deities (Chambers' Encyclopædia).

O'Neil states “that Odin was named Mith-Odinn (Mid-Odin?) [pg 472] by Saxo Grammaticus,” and quotes the following: “Odinn died in his bed, in Sweden, and when he was near his death he made himself be marked with the point of a spear and said he was going to Godheim” (Ingliga Saga). “The twelve godes or diar or drotnar of Odin were obviously cognate to our god as a name of a deity. They (or the priests who represented them) directed sacrifices and judged the people, and all the people served and obeyed them” (O'Neil i, p. 76).

A strange reality is given to Odin and his twelve “godes,” when it is realized that at Mora, near Upsala, Sweden, there exists the ancient stone throne on which the ancient kings of Sweden were crowned and this central stone is surrounded by twelve lesser stones, just as the Irish “Mound-chief” was surrounded by twelve idols.

While the above facts suffice to indicate that, in remotest antiquity, the government of the state was vested in one supreme and twelve minor chiefs, the following brief extracts from the Eddas reveal the cosmical beliefs of the Norsemen: “In the cold north existed Niflheim in the middle of which was a well from which sprang twelve rivers. In the south existed the warm Muspelheim. There was a contention between both of these worlds.... The union of heat and cold produced Oergelmer or Chaos, and the first human being, Ymir. The revolving eye of the Norse world-millstone was directly above Oergelmer and through it the waters flowed to and from the great fountain of the Universe waters.” Ymir drew his nourishment from four streams of milk proceeding from the mythical cow Aedhumla. Subsequently he was slain by three divine brothers who carried his body to the middle of Ginnungagap, and formed from it the earth and the heavens ... of his skull they formed the heavens, at each of the four corners of which stood a dwarf, viz: Austri at the East, Vestri at the west, Northri at the north and Suthri at the south.... When heaven and earth were formed, the chief gods or Oesir, of whom there were twelve, met in the Centre of the world and built Midgardr or Asgard, the yard, city or stronghold of the Middle and of the Asen=the gods. It was situated on the Himinbiorg, or Hill of Heaven, on the summit of which was the ash-tree, Yggdrasil, whose branches spread over the whole world and tower over the heavens.

The following is from the prose Edda: “Then the sons of [pg 473] Bõr built in the middle of the universe the city called Asgard, where dwell the gods and their kindred, and from that abode work out so many wondrous things both on earth and in the heavens above it. There is in that city a place called Hlidskjalf, and when Odin is seated there upon his lofty throne, he sees over the whole world.”

In the Eddas we find evidences that while Odin or All-fader was the ruler of heaven, his powerful son Thor was “the ruler of Thrudheim and drove through the world in a chariot and became the supreme god.”

The following facts, taken from Mr. Allen's “Star-names,” established the association of Thor with Polaris and the Ursæ. “In ancient times the northern nations termed Ursa Major ‘the wagon of Odin, Woden or Wuotan, the father of Thor.’ The Danes, Swedes and Icelanders also knew it as Stori Vagn, the Great Wagon and as Karl's Vagn; Karl being Thor, their chief god of whom the old Swedish Rhyme Chronicle of Upsala says ‘... The god Thor was the highest of them. He sat naked as a child, seven stars in his hand and Charles' Wain.’ ”

The “throne of Thor” or “Smaller Chariot,” was the name given to Polaris (Ursa Minor) by the early Danes and Icelanders and their descendants still call it the “Litli Vagn,” the little wagon. The Finns, apparently alone among the northern nations of Europe in this conception, named Ursa Minor, Vähä Otawa, the Little Bear. They, however, termed Polaris, Taehti, “the star at the top of the heavenly mountain.”

It is striking how clearly, in Scandinavia, the Middle is associated with a sacred mountain and tree, the world axis, a heavenly city, an enthroned central god, and with Polaris, Ursa Major and the idea of eternal circumpolar rotation expressed by the wain eternally wheeled around the throne of Thor. To any one imbued with the ideas set forth above, the signification of the Scandinavian, Druidic, New Year festival, the name for which was “the wheel” (yule, yeol, yeul, hjol, hiugl, hjul), must clearly appear as the date on which the complete circuit of the Ursæ around the [pg 474] pole, was ceremonially registered. It is obvious that this could best be expressed by a circle being drawn around the swastika or cross, to which the fourth arm would be added, completing thus the registration of the four seasons, marked by the opposite positions assumed by the Ursæ at nightfall. It is well known that the wheel-cross, swastika, triskeles and S-figure constitute, with the winding serpent and the tau, named Thor's hammer, the main symbols of ancient Scandinavia (see fig. , p. and fig. , p. ). I venture to point out how obviously Thor's hammer symbolizes the union of the Above and Below, the heaven represented by the horizontal line resting on the perpendicular support, symbolizing the sacred pole, column, mountain and tree intimately associated with Polaris, the world axis.

As a suggestion only, I venture to point out how, the old Norse name for star being tjara and for tree=tar, the rôle of the tree in Druidic cult would be fully accounted for, the initiated only being aware that it was but a rebus symbol of the secret or hidden star-god Polaris.

It can readily be seen how natural or artificial elevations and erected stones, trees, staffs or poles must have been used as means of determining the positions of the Ursæ at the public celebration of the Yule festival and that the ceremony of kindling of new fire was observed at the time when the “wheel” was supposed to begin its new annual revolution.

Reflection clearly shows that pole-star worship must have taken a stronger hold upon the ancient inhabitants of Scandinavia and their descendants, the seafaring Vikings, than upon any other nation. We are compelled to admit that the recognition that Polaris formed the centre of axial rotation and the middle of the sky, would have impressed itself most profoundly upon observers stationed in the latitude where winter darkness prevailed and the pole-star appeared to be nearly overhead. Under such conditions the association of the opposite positions of the Septentriones with directions in space, i. e., the cardinal points, would be most striking.

What is more: the re-appearance of the sun, after the long darkness of a northern winter, must have established the idea of a fixed relationship between certain positions of Ursa Major and the solstitial position of the sun. It may indeed be said that the observation of the solstices and equinoxes was forced upon the inhabitants of the north as nowhere else on the globe and that it [pg 475] may perhaps be therefore designated as the birthplace of primitive astronomy.

The origin of the idea of an all-pervading duality and the chains of association which linked Light and the Sun to air and water, and to the male element, whilst Darkness and the Nocturnal Heaven became connected with earth, fire and woman, are clearly accounted for in the circumpolar regions only, where the year divides itself into a period of light in which independent and roaming out-door life was possible, and a period of darkness during which family life, in underground fire-lit dwellings, was compulsory. If fathomed, the mind of the Eskimo to-day may possibly reveal the germs of identical associations of ideas, for it would seem as though existence in the polar regions would infallibly stamp them indelibly upon the consciousness of all living creatures, until they unconsciously pervaded their entire being and even affected the structural organization of the human brain.

The tendency to believe that the human race must have spent its infancy near the pole and received there an intellectual stamp, which could not have been conveyed to it so clearly in any other latitude, is undoubtedly encouraged by the opinion of various authorities, that “all forms of life must have originated at the pole, this having been the first habitable portion of our world.” This view is exhaustively treated in William Fairfield Warren's “Paradise Found, the cradle of the human race at the North Pole” (Boston, 1885), to which I refer the reader and which contains much valuable data which I would have incorporated in the present investigation had I had earlier access to the volume. It would seem as though Warren's conclusions were in perfect accord with the conclusions arrived at by some leading palæontologists, geologists and botanists, concerning the distribution of life on the globe. These are conveniently summarized in the article on “Distribution” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, from which the following detached excerpts are made for the benefit of the reader.

“The general result arrived at is that the great northern continents [pg 476] represent the original seat of mammalian life and the regions of its highest development.... The tertiary fauna of North America, compared with that of Europe, exhibits proofs of a former communication between the two northern continents both in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, but always, probably, in rather high latitudes. This is indicated both by the groups which appear to have originated in one continent and then to have passed across to the other and also by the entire absence from America of many important groups which abounded in Europe (and vice versa) indicating that the communication between the two hemispheres was always imperfect and of limited duration.... On the other hand, the marked continuity of the Northern Flora (with only a gradual east and west change in the arctic regions, but with an increased divergency southwards) requires it to be treated as a whole, although it has long been divided into that of the old and new world by the severance of North America from Northern Asia and by the barrier to an interchange of vegetation in the upheaval of the Rocky Mountain range. The old and new world divisions of the flora which, no doubt, began to diverge from the mere influence of distance, have now had that divergence immensely increased by isolation.... Large American genera (of the intermediate flora) have sent off offsets into Eastern Asia which, gradually diminishing in number of species and sometimes slightly modifying their character, have spread over the whole of Asia and invaded almost every part of Europe.... With regard to the arctic alpine flora, Hooker found that, estimating the whole arctic flora at 762 species, arctic East America possessed 379 of which 269 are common to Scandinavia. Of the whole flora 616 species are found in arctic Europe and of these 586 are Scandinavian and this leads Hooker to the striking observation that ‘the Scandinavian flora is present in every latitude of the globe and is the only one that is so.’ According to Bentham, Scandinavia, which would, according to older rules, have been termed the centre of creation for the arctic regions, may now be termed the chief centre of preservation within the arctic circle owing, perhaps, to its more broken conformation and partly to that warmer climate ... which was, during the glacial period a means of preservation of some colder species which were everywhere expelled or destroyed.... We may infer that, towards the close of the Tertiary epoch, the continuous circumpolar land was covered with [pg 477] a vegetation also largely composed of identical plants, but adapted to a warmer climate. As the climate became less warm there would commence a migration southwards which would result in the modified descendants of these plants being now blended with the vegetation of central Europe and the United States. As the glacial period gradually advanced, the tropical plants will have retreated from both sides towards the equator followed in the rear by the temperate productions and these by the arctic. When the climate of the earth again ameliorated, the migration took place in a reverse direction and in this way mountain ranges became the havens of refuge for the fragments of the original arctic flora which were exterminated on the lowlands. An indication of the great antiquity of the arctic alpine flora is afforded by the fact of its absence in the comparatively modern volcanic mountains of France.... If it be granted that the polar area was once occupied by the Scandinavian flora and that the cold of the glacial epoch did drive this vegetation downwards ... in arctic America ... where there was a free southern extension and dilatation of land for the same Scandinavian plants to occupy, these would multiply enormously in individuals....”

The following remarkable results of recent botanical research will be found to be of profound interest to investigators and to support the foregoing conclusions. Amongst the many important discoveries of hitherto undescribed species of plants, made by the distinguished botanists Mr. Stephen Sommier and Dr. Emile Levier during their expedition in the Caucasus mountains, in 1890, was that of a species of fungus named Exobasidium discoideum Ell., which was found growing on the Rhododendron flaro L. This fungus was submitted to Prof. P. Magnus of Berlin, who pronounced it to be the identical Exobasidium which has been found growing on the Azalea viscosa L. in New Jersey, U. S. A. The following is the authoritative statement of Prof. P. Magnus which appears in Messrs. S. Sommier and E. Levier's Enumeratorio plantarum caucas: acta horti petropolitani, vol. XVI. St. Petersburg, 1899.

“The occurrence of the identical species of fungus on two closely related plants, which respectively grow in the Caucasus and in North America and are missing in intermediate countries, deserves our deepest interest.... These plants are relics of the Tertiary period, during which North America and Europe still [pg 478] formed a continuous floral area. While the plants, on which the fungus grew, differentiated into two closely related species, in two at present widely separated but formerly connected radii of distribution, the parasitical Exobasidium remained outwardly unaltered. This is exactly like the case of another fungus, Uromyces glycyrrhizæ, which I have described and explained in the ‘Berichten der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft’ (Bd. VII, 1890, S. 377-384). Exobasidium disc. is also a parasitical fungus which has been growing on the parent form of Rhododendron viscosum and Rhododendron flavum ever since that period when North America and Europe were continuous and possessed the same flora.”

I am also indebted to Professor Magnus and to Dr. Levier for the following names of closely allied species of plants which are found in America and Asia only, it being particularly noticeable that it is in Asia Minor and the Caucasus mountains that the relatives of the American species are most frequently met with.

Platanus occidentalis: North America.
Platanus orientalis: Asia Minor.
Liquidambar styraciflua: North America.
Liquidambar styraciflua: Asia.
Rhododendron viscosum: North America.
Rhododendron flavum: Caucasus Mts.
Rhododendron maximum: North America.
Rhododendron ponticum: Causasus Mts.

Professor Magnus has, moreover, recently pointed out that the fungus Uropyxis, which is a widespread American species and grows in Mexico, has a representative in Manchuria. In his monograph on Uropyxis, Professor Magnus enumerates further species of fungi which occur in America and Asia only and are missing in other portions of the world (P. Magnus, Berichten der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1899. Band xvii, Heft 3).

Referring the reader to Professor Edward S. Morse's trite article, Was Middle America peopled from Asia? (Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, November, 1898), I cite, from this, the following authoritative statements: “From the naturalist's standpoint the avenues have been quite as open for the circumpolar distribution of man as they have been for the circumpolar distribution of other animals and plants, down to the minutest land snail and low fungus. The ethnic resemblances supposed to exist between the peoples of [pg 479] the two sides of the Pacific may be the result of an ancient distribution around the northern regions of the globe.”

The very remarkable survival of certain plants and fungi, dating from the Tertiary period, in two such widely sundered countries as Asia Minor and North America, certainly finds a curious and striking parallel in the analogy of the cosmical ideas and social organization of Babylonia and Assyria with those of Mexico.

What is more: A cosmical scheme, attributable to a prolonged observation of natural celestial phenomena, such as could best have been carried on in circumpolar regions, has been shown to be as widespread as the Scandinavian flora which “is present in every latitude and is the only one that is so.”

Many of my readers will doubtless be inclined to explain the identity of cosmical and religious conceptions, social organization, and architectural plans shown to have existed in the past between the inhabitants of both hemispheres, as the result of independent evolution, dating from the period when primitive man, emerging from savagery, was driven southward from circumpolar regions, carrying with him a set of indelible impressions which, under the influence of constant pole-star worship, sooner or later developed and brought forth identical or analogous results.

Those who hold this view may perhaps go so far as to consider the possibility that, before drifting asunder, the human race had already discovered, for instance, the art of fire-making and of working in stone, had adopted the sign of the cross as a year-register, and evolved an archaic form of social organization. To many this view may furnish a satisfactory explanation of the universal spread of identical ideas and the differentiation of their subsequently independent evolution.

On the other hand, another class of readers may prefer to think that, while both hemispheres may have originally been populated by branches of the same race, at an extremely low stage of intellectual development, civilization and a plan of social organization may have developed and been formulated sooner in one locality than in another, owing to more favorable conditions and thence have been spread to both continents by a race, more intelligent and enterprising than others, who became the intermediaries of ancient civilization.

The great problem of the origin of American peoples lies far beyond the scope of the present work and its final solution can [pg 480] only be obtained at some future day by the joint coöperation of Americanists and Orientalists. On the other hand certain incontrovertible facts which throw light upon the question of prehistoric contact have been coming under my observation during my prolonged course of study and the presentation of these may advance knowledge by acting as a stimulus to discussion, inquiry and research by learned specialists.

For ready reference I submit the following tabulated record of the widely sundered countries in which are found, applied to the governmental scheme, the same cosmical divisions, respectively consisting of four, seven and thirteen parts, the group being invariably associated with the idea of an all-embracing One, constituting the Four in One, Seven in One and Thirteen in One. It is superfluous to add that, in each country enumerated, the existence of more or less distinct traces of an ancient pole-star worship and the cult of the sacred Middle, the Above and Below and Four Quarters, i. e., the four, seven and thirteen directions in space, have been recorded in the preceding pages. Important additional facts, acquired by reference to Hewitt's Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, to which my attention was directed by Mr. Stansbury Hagar, and to other valuable works, will be found included in the following summary.

It would be of utmost assistance to me in my future researches and I would regard it as a personal favor if specialists would draw my attention to any deficiencies they may detect, and inform me of the latest results of their individual investigations bearing upon the subjects under consideration.

INDIA.

Seven zones, seven directions in space, seven sages.

“The conception of the confederated kingdom formed of six dependent and allied states surrounding the seventh ruling state in the centre.”... “It is this conception which is worked out in the six kingdoms surrounding the central kingdom of Jambudvipa, into which they divided India. This form of kingdom still survives in those which form the tributary states of Chota Nagpore, for in all of these the central province is ruled by the king and those surrounding it by his subordinate chiefs ...” (Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, p. 256).

[pg 481]

Four lakes, four rivers, four cosmical divisions, four guardians, p. .

“In the Gond ‘Song of Lingal,’ it is related how, Lingal, having been slain by the confederacy [of six kingdoms surrounding seventh], came to life again, and with four new-born Gonds, founded a new race of Gonds; taught them to build houses and to grow millets.... He divided the people into four tribes.... With these he united the four tribes descended from the Gonds he had brought down in his first avatar.... These formed the eight united races of the tortoise-earth.... Lingal placed among them priests ... who married the new-comers to the daughters of the previous immigrants.... This ... marks the first stage of the union of the Kushikas and the Maghadas, the latter being the race who worshipped the mother-Maga as the sacred alligator (Hewitt).

“According to the Mahābhārata the two races of Kushikas and Maghadas were united under one king.... This land was called by Hindu geographers Saka-dvipa, said in the Mataya Purana to be the land of the mountain whence Indra gets the rain;” that is of the mountain called Khar-sah-kurra, Ushidhan and Savkanta. “This mountain stood as the meeting point of the two confederacies [pg 482] of the patriarchal tribes and the matriarchal races.... Each confederacy is formed by six kingdoms surrounding a seventh or ruling kingdom in the centre.... This, in the Iranian federation, is Khavaniras or Huaniratha and in India, Jambu-dvipa, the land of the Jambu tree.”

Hewitt publishes an interesting drawing (reproduced as fig. , c), formed “by the union of the four triangles representing the Southeastern and Northwestern races, who all looked on the mother mountain of the East, whence Indra gets the rain, as their national birthplace, where they became united as the Kushite race, the confederation of civilized man. It represents the Greek cross and the double dorje or thunderbolt of Vishnu and Indra and also a map of the Indian races, as distributed at the time of the union. It also forms, with spaces left open for the parent rivers, ... an octahedron or eight-sided figure ... and the angles of the tribal angles form the swastika ... the sign of the rain-god ..., the great Sar of the Phœnicians....” Referring the reader to Hewitt's interesting discussion of this figure with which he associates the origin of the swastika, I point out a fact he barely notices, namely that the figure coincides with the description of Mt. Meru, associated with four lakes, four rivers, four mythical animals and four guardians (p. ). It is in connection with the cosmical Middle Mountain that the foundation of an earthly kingdom on the same plan becomes significant and the distribution of races figured by Mr. Hewitt assumes utmost importance. The representation of the four races by “tribal triangles,” is of special interest when collated with the Egyptian sign for city or state and the pyramid, the building of which I have several times alluded to as an event facilitating, symbolizing and commemorating the foundation of a quadruplicate state (pp. and ).

ARABIA.

“In the land of Arabia, of the irrigating and building Minyans and star-worshipping Sabæans, the land of the Queen of Sheba, or the number seven (sheba) ... a fresh confederacy was formed, to rival that of the Kushite mountain of the East ...” (Hewitt, p. 291).

It is significant that among the Sabæans the seven-day period prevailed.

[pg 483]

ASSYRIA.

Seven directions of heaven and earth, seven territorial districts, seven mountains, seven kings, seven-staged towers, seven year and day periods, etc., pp. , and .

Four-god cities, square cities, square four-storied towers, four cities, four regions or provinces, four-fold power embodied in king wearing cross, tetrarchies (?).

EGYPT.

Seven classes of people, seven districts, seven-day period, pp. and .

Quadruplicate division of capital and state, four fields of heaven, p. .

Sacerdotal group consisting of 12+1=13 individuals, p. .

Division of the country, at one time, into twelve parts (Ast).

CHINA.

Seven Manchurian tribes, p. .

Four provinces, four mountains, four seas, p. ; four classes of seven each, p. .

At the summit of the present administration in Pekin, Four Grand Secretaries, two of whom are Manchus and two Chinese.

Twelve districts, p. .

ANCIENT JAPAN.

The “Seven divine generations,” each consisting of a god and goddess.

Four classes of people, 2×4=8 holy quarters, eight great islands.

Imperial council of twelve divided into the higher council of five called Golosew=“Imperial Old Men” and the lower council of [pg 484] seven members termed Waka Tosiyori=“Junior Old Men” (Chambers' Encyclopædia). The imperial council, with the emperor, thus constituted the sacred thirteen.

PERSIA.

Seven divisions of Cosmos, seven regions, seven spirits personifying celestial bodies and moral qualities.

Ancient confederacy of Iran consisted of six kingdoms grouped around the central royal province, “situated under the pole-star,” and called Kwan-iras or Hvan-iratha, ruled by Susi-nag, the original father-god of the model state identified with the pole-star, Draconis, the serpent (Hewitt, op. cit. p. 253), see also Appendix III, list II.

Four-fold rule embodied in king, p. . Darius distributed Persian empire into 4×5=20 satrapies, each including a certain continuous territory (Grote).

GREECE.

Tenos divided into seven quarters, seven divisions of state.

[pg 485]

Four tribes, four castes, territorial division of Attica into four parts, institution of tetrarchies. Thessaly anciently divided into four tetrarchies. Institution (between 600-560 B.C.) of cycle or period, marked by the four sacred Olympic games, one of which took place in one of four cities each year in rotation. Pisistratus added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæa to the ancient annual and lesser Panathenæa (Grote, History of Greece, vol. 4).

[pg 486]

Twelve tribes formed by Cecrops—represented by twelve chiefs, +Cecrops=thirteen.

It is most interesting to find this division adopted in Plato's de Legibus, in which it is imagined that three elderly statesmen come together, belonging respectively to Athens, Crete and Lacedæmon, to discuss the reëstablishment of the depopulated city of Magnesia in Crete. Aristotle has insinuated that the scheme proposed by Plato was not original and had been actually realized at Lacedæmon. Mr. George Burger, the able translator of Bohn's edition of Plato's Works, in his introduction to vol. V, remarks that, if that were the case, Plato would never have wasted his time in writing two elaborate treatises on matters already well known, when it [pg 487] would have been sufficient to point out ... the institutions of Lycurgus as the pattern, if not of a faultless government, at least of one, that approached the nearest to perfection. Plato might have replied to the charge made by Aristotle by saying that his notions were all the better for not being original, for it was thus shown that, as some of them were practicable, since they had already been put into practice—the rest, which were a reform rather of existing institutions than the construction of a code perfectly novel, would be equally practicable if they were submitted to the same test. In his Protagoras, Plato distinctly states that in Crete and Lacedæmon a most beautiful philosophy was to be found, which had been handed down from ancient times.... Let us now examine the plan discussed by the three statesmen and submitted [pg 488] to them by the anonymous Athenian who, according to Cicero, Plutarch and Boeckh, was Plato himself.

In the case of “the Magnesians, whom a god is again raising up and settling into a colony ... a divine polity....” Plato says: ... “It is meet, in the first place, to build the city as much as possible in the middle of the country.... After this to divide it into twelve parts and placing first the temple of Hestia, and Zeus and Athene, to call it the Acropolis and to throw around a circular enclosure and from it to cut the city and all the country into twelve parts. But the twelve parts ought to be equalized ... and the allotments to be five thousand and forty.... After this to assign the twelve allotments to the twelve gods and to call them by their names and to consecrate to each the portion attained by lot and to call it a phyle; and again to divide the twelve sections of the city in the same manner as they divided the rest of the country, and that each should possess two habitations, one near the centre and the other near the extremity, and thus let the method end ... (B. v, C. 14).... We ought, in the first place, to resume the number five thousand and forty because it had and has now convenient distributions, both the whole number and that which was assigned to the wards, which we laid down as the twelfth part of the whole, being exactly four hundred and twenty. And as the whole number has twelve divisions, so also has that of the wards. Now it is meet to consider each division as a sacred gift of a deity through its following both the months and revolutions of the universe. (By this is meant, says Ast, the twelve signs of the zodiac.) Hence that which is inherent leads every state, making them holy.... Some persons indeed have made a more correct distribution than others, and with [pg 489] better fortune have dedicated the distribution to the gods. But we now assert that the number five thousand and forty has been chosen most correctly, as it has all divisions as far as twelve, beginning from one, except that by eleven; ... let us distribute this number; and dedicating to a god ... each portion, and giving the altars ... let us institute monthly two meetings relating to sacrifices ... twelve according to the divisions of the wards and twelve to that of the city ... for the sake of every kind of intercourse.”

It should be noted here that, as in his Republic, Plato provides his ideal state with female as well as male guardians, and with priestesses as well as priests, whose duty it was to fulfil sacerdotal functions. Special attention is drawn to this point, as in practice, it naturally signifies a dual government, such as I have traced in ancient Egypt, Babylonia-Assyria, and also in Mexico and Peru.

“As regards the number of ... festivals ... let there be three hundred and sixty-five ... so that some one of the magistrates may always sacrifice ... there are to be twelve festivals to the twelve gods from whom each tribe has its name ... and twelve guardians of the law.... There ought to be twelve hamlets, one in the middle of each twelfth part, and in each hamlet to be selected first, a market place and temples ... prepare all the rest of the country by it into thirteen parts for the handicraftsmen and to cause one portion of these to reside in the city by distributing this portion among the twelve parts of the whole city ... to have other persons distributed out of the city, in a circle around it.”

The portions of Plato's work dealing with the appointment of the governors and guardians of the state and their rotations in office and imposed tours of inspection, are of such particular interest in connection with the present comparative research, that I am impelled to quote them here.

“Let each (of the twelve) phyles furnish for the year five Rural Stewards (in all sixty) ... each of whom is to choose twelve young men ... to the latter let there be allotted portions of the country during a month ... so that all of them may have a practical knowledge of every part of the country.... But let the governorship and guardianship continue to the guards and governors for two years, and let those who first obtain by lot their [pg 490] respective portions, the guard officers, lead out, changing the places of the country constantly by going to the place next in order towards the right in a circle, and let the right be that which is in the east. But as the years come around, in the second year, in order that the greatest portion of the guards may become acquainted with the country, not only at one season of the year, but that as many as possible may know thoroughly in addition to the country, at the same time what occurs relatively to each spot in the country at each season, let the officers lead them out again to the left, constantly changing the place until they go through the second year. In the third year it is meet to choose other rural stewards and guard officers as the five curators of the twelve young men.... There were to be three city stewards, dividing the twelve parts of the city into three ... and five Market-Stewards, to be chosen from ten elected”....

It is deeply interesting to consider from the standpoint of comparative study the principal features of the perfected scheme proposed by Plato, in the fifth century B. C, for the establishment of an ideal colony, which is designated as a “divine polity” or a “holy land.” This is especially the case when we see that Plato himself states that it is the conformity of the states to the inherent laws of nature, that confers upon it divinity or holiness. It seems impossible not to recognize that both ideal republics of Plato were intended to be “celestial kingdoms” or “kingdoms of heaven” and that he expounded and doubtlessly perfected, an ancient ideal which had been more or less successfully carried out in different countries during many centuries before his time.

Having studied the proposed scheme for the foundation of a new colony of the Greeks, who proudly maintained that “it was meet that the Greeks should rule barbarians,” and pursued a regular [pg 491] system of colonization, let us now obtain an idea of the mode in which Greeks had previously founded colonies by reading the following passage from Grote's History of Greece, vol. iv, chap. xxvii:

“Under reign of Psammetichus, king of Egypt, about the middle of seventh century B.C., Grecian mercenaries were first established in Egypt and Grecian traders admitted ... into the Nile. The opening of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea which separates Krête from Egypt—a dangerous voyage with vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land—and seems to have first made them acquainted with the neighboring coast of Libya ... hence arose the foundation of the important colony called Kyrênê” ... about 630 B.C.

“Thêra was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedæmon ... political dissension among its inhabitants ... bad seasons, distress and over-population led to the emigration that founded Kyrênê.... The oekist Battus was selected and consecrated to work of founding the colony.... From the seven districts into which Thêra was divided, emigrants were drafted for the colony, one brother being singled out by lot from the different families.... The band which accompanied Battus was generally supplied with provisions for one year and was all conveyed in two pentekonters—armed ships with fifty rowers each. Thus humble was the start of the mighty Kyrênê. After six years residence in one spot they abandoned it and were conducted to a better site by guides, saying: ‘Here, men of Hellas, is the place for you to dwell, for here the sky is perforated.’ ” The small force brought over by [pg 492] Battus was enabled at first to fraternize with the indigenous Libyans,—next, reinforced by additional colonists and availing themselves of the power of native chiefs, to overawe and subjugate them....

“The Theræan colonists seem to have married Libyan wives, whence Herodotus describes the women of Kyrênê and Barka as following, even in his time, religious observances indigenous and not Hellenic. Even the descendants of the primitive oekist Battus were semi-Libyan.... We must bear in mind that the population of the [Græco-Libyan] cities was not pure Greek, but more or less mixed, like that of the colonies in Italy, Sicily or Ionia.... Isokrates praises the well-chosen site of the colony of Kyrênê because it was planted in the midst of indigenous natives apt for subjection and far distant from any formidable enemies.... We are then to conceive the first Theræan colonists as established in their lofty fortified post Kyrênê, in the centre of Libyan Perioeki, till then strangers to walls, to arts and perhaps even to cultivated land.... To these rude men the Theræans communicated the elements of Hellenism and civilization, not without receiving themselves much that was non-Hellenic in return, and perhaps the reactionary influence of the Libyan element against the Hellenic might have proved the stronger of the two had they not been reinforced by new-comers from Greece.... About 543 B.C. owing to discontent, etc., the regal prerogative of the Battiad line was terminated and a republican government established; [pg 493] the dispossessed prince retaining both the landed domains and various sacerdotal functions which had belonged to his predecessors.”

ROME.

Seven hills, seven places of worship, septemvirate, seven ministers, Septizonium, p. .

Roman quadrata, Janus quadrifrontis, quadruplicate territorial division carried out. Palestine, for instance, divided into four tetrarchies under Roman rule.

Twelve gods, twelve months, etc.

New Rome divided into four parts, each consisting of thirteen prefectures i. e. fifty-two prefectures in all.

GAUL.

Seven provinces.

BRITAIN.

Seven kings=heptarchy.

Four kings of Kent=tetrarchy.

IRELAND.

Seven sanctuaries grouped around central tower.

Four associates of king of Erin.

Group consisting of 12+1=13 stone figures, p. .

SCANDINAVIA.

Four guardians of four quarters.

Thor, supreme divinity, pole-star god, seated and holding “seven stars,” the symbol of seven-fold power, in his hand.

Group consisting of royal throne surrounded by 12 stones. Odin associated with twelve “godes,” p. .

NORTH AMERICA.

Huron confederacy=seven tribes, quadriform city, 2×4=8 gentes, p. .

ZUNI.

Seven directions in space, seven quarters of city, seven tribes, seven towns.

Four bands of priests, p. .

Twelve, i. e., thirteen priesthoods, p. .

[pg 494]

MEXICO.

Seven tribes issued from seven caves, seven gods or chiefs, p. .

Four quarters of city, represented by four chieftains, four subrulers, four divisions of army, four year signs, four tribes, four tribal trees (fig. ), four storied pyramids.

Thirteen divisions or parts, p. .

Calendar and state organized into 4×13=52 parts.

YUCATAN.

Title of ruler, “the divine Four,” four sub-rulers, four royal brothers, four-year periods, p. , four quarters, p. , four year signs.

Twelve i. e. thirteen priest-rulers of Mayapan, p. .

GUATEMALA.

Seven tribes, seven day period, p. .

Four nations, four provinces, four capitals, four Tullans, pp. , .

Thirteen divisions of warriors, p. .

PERU.

Empire named “Four in one,” Creator named “Earth, air, fire and water in One,” four provinces, four viceroys.

Twelve i. e. thirteen wards in Cuzco, twelve divisions of year, p. .

Before commenting upon the above summary, and as its necessary complement, a brief examination must be made of the various modes in which the phenomenon of celestial axial rotation figured in the rituals of primitive people.

OLD WORLD.

The lighting of “sacred fire,” by means of the wooden fire-drill and the wooden socket block, appears as the most ancient and widespread ritualistic performance.

To begin with, the reader is requested to read carefully the following detached extracts from Hewitt's work:

“In the Rig-Veda the Aryan invaders of Lydia are called the Tritsu, ‘the boring people,’ who used the fire-drill; also Arna, ‘sons [pg 495] of Arani,’ the fire-drill, whose sacred number is four”.... “In India, from time immemorial, by a process like churning, fire has been produced by the Arani, made of the Ashvattha (Ficus religiosa) wood, being twirled repeatedly round till the fire is lighted, by a string fixed in the cross-bar at its top,” a method, I may add, which is a later development of the more primitive mode of twirling the fire-drill by hand. “The Kushites ... believed that life was generated by the union of heat with water ... and that heat was, in the astronomical myth, engendered by the revolution of the Great Bear and the connection between it, the vital heat and the creating water is shown in one of its Akkadian names, Bel-a-sar-a, which means ‘the fire god who measures the water yoke’ (R. Brown and Sayce), or, in other words, Bel, the distributor of the water allotted to the earth. From this heavenly cistern and fire-drill, in which marichi, the fire-spark, is hidden, the water of life is distributed.”

Compare the preceding with the following statements: “According to the Arab doctrine of the pole, the seven stars of the Great Bear and the star Canopus [?] formed the fire-drill.” According to Hewitt “... It was the Ashvins, ... the twin brothers of day and night, ... identified with the twin stars in Gemini, who twirled round the fire drill of the northern pole ... or, according to a later hymn, drove through the seas with one of the wheels of their chariot in Ursa Major and one in heaven,—that is, to drive around the pole.” A deeper comprehension seems to be afforded by this association of the Ashvins with the axis, of the significance of the two figures (of a god and his consort) who, in the Sippar tablet, appear to be directing the wheel of Shamash—the world-axis and symbol of quadruplicate terrestrial government (see p. ). Reference should also be repeated here, to Al-kuth and Al-fass, the Arabian names for Polaris, respectively signifying the axle and the hole of the axle, also to the pole star of Northern India—Grahadhara,—the “pivot of heaven,” and to the significant fact that in Egyptian hieratic script the word an=the Akkadian and Sumerian word for heaven, and Babylonian-Assyrian word for god, is found rendered by a man “turning around,” an action expressing the verb an.

It is interesting to collate these statements with the descriptions of Dhruva (see p. , note 1), the personification of centrifugal power, who, as he turns, causes the heaven to revolve around the fixed centre on which he stands, resting on one foot only, and to [pg 496] note how the two distinct ideas of central stability and rotation influenced the making of pagan divinities. The idea of stability was perpetuated in the house-pole which sustained Aman, the roof of primitive dwellings in the column an, which supported the temple roof and in time was transformed into a hermes, or, in Egypt, into a statue of Amen-ra, and in the mythical mountain of the North, Sama, which supported the heaven (Sama). Dhruva's turning round on one foot, which implies the use of the other, reappears in the Hephaistos of Greek mythology, who was, as Hewitt tells us (p. 504), “the fire-drill and its driver, and was called Amphi-Guēeis, or he who halts on both legs, ... was cast from heaven by Zeus, and was the husband of the fire-socket, the first form of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.”

For information regarding the cult of the fire-socket, the construction of the Hindu fire-altars in the form of a woman, representing “mother-earth” or “the primæval mother,” Aditi, I refer the reader to Hewitt's work, and also to p. of the present publication, where the description of the Jiddah sanctuary proves the existence of the same ancient form of cult in Arabia. Hewitt relates on page 170 that, on the fire-altar, the central fire called Agni jatavedas is kindled when the officiating priest addresses in the words of Rig-Veda iii, 29, 4: “We place thee, O Jatavedas, in the place of Ida (the mountain daughter of Manu) in the navel (nabha) of the altar, to carry our offerings.” In Rig-Veda, x, 61, we are also told how Nabha-Nedishtha (that which is nearest to the navel) was born from the union of celestial lightning flash with the earth, and how, on his birth, he claimed to be the supreme god, saying: “This, our navel, is the highest. I am his son.... I am the twice-born son of the law (of nature)....” Hewitt (p. 171) regards, moreover, the image of the goddess of the earth altar found by Schliemann in the second city from the bottom of the six cities, built one over another on the site of Troy, a counterpart of the Hindu fire-altar. It is significant that the Trojan image exhibits a triangle surrounded by seven disks, and containing the swastika, which Hewitt designates as “the holy fire, the sun of the revolving year,” a view curiously, though indistinctly, analogous and parallel to that I have formulated in the present research.

“In the Brahmanas the Try-Ambika offering, a very ancient form of the rain festival, is described.... Its sanctity dated from the [pg 497] days of primeval theology, for the offerings were made on a spot outside and to the north of the consecrated area, and on one intersected by cross-roads, and thus marked by the cross sacred to the rain-god, which is said to be Rudra's favorite haunts, and the halting place of the Agnis.... Hence the festival is dedicated to Rud-ra, the red (rud) god, the father of the seven Marut stars.... He is called the red god from the spark of fire kindled by him in the fire socket when he was the fire-drill, and from being reddened by the blood of the victim slain in his sacrifices when he was the sacrificial stake to which the annual victims, whose blood fertilized the ground, were bound, and this name was continued to him when he became the red cloud of the thunderstorm which infused the soil of life into the earth by pouring on it the life-giving rain, the blood of the creating god....”

In the Rig-Veda the rain-god is termed Ushana, the “lord of fire,” who is made to exclaim: “It is I who pour down rain for the good of creatures.” It was he who was also known as Varuna, the Greek Ourauos, who ... became the god of the dark night.... The union [in India] of the patriarchal worshippers of the Northern father-god, with the matriarchal races of the south was followed by the miners, metal-workers and artisans of the early bronze age, who looked on fire and the life-giving heat as the author of life. These were the people (of Finnic origin) who employed the word ku for god, in Asia Minor became the worshippers of the mother goddess Magha, the socket block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill, and it was they, “the Sons of Magha” that became the Maghi of Persia and the Maghadas of Indian history.

In connection with the union of a northern patriarchal and a southern matriarchal race, an astronomical myth deserves particular attention, as it commemorates the combination of a feminine cult of the Pleiades, the “spinning stars,” with a masculine cult of Ursa Major. According to this myth, related by Hewitt, the “Spinners”=Krittakas (from krit, to spin) were “the mother-stars of the earth,” who were married to the seven stars of the Great “Bear, the father-stars of the North.” Remarking how [pg 498] curiously the assignment of the north to the male and the south to the female element coincides with what has been noted in Egypt, I note here the interesting detail recorded by Hewitt (p. 379) that to this day the Hindu bride and bridegroom respectively pay reverence to the Pleiades and Ursa Major, before worshipping the pole-star, “the spotted bull,” on entering their house. It would seem as though the fulfilment of this ritual might limit the Hindu marriage season to some particular time of the year, marked by the position of the Pleiades; in which connection it is interesting to remember that, in Mexico, the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight marked the New Year festival, when sacred fire was rekindled and the union of Heaven and Earth took place. On pp. 130-132 of Hewitt's work, vol. i, the reader will find instructive data regarding Pleiades festivals.

The preceding details appear to show that whereas a northern patriarchal race would naturally symbolize axial rotation by the fire-drill, a southern matriarchal race would adopt the spindle for the same purpose. Such a ritualistic use of the spindle would undoubtedly afford a very simple explanation for the presence of cross-symbols and swastikas and other designs of religious significance upon the terra-cotta spinning whorls found in such quantities in Troy, for instance, and the cited allusion on one of these, to the pole-star god, Tur, corroborates this view.

It is instructive to trace how, amongst primitive agricultural races, the art of spinning, the employment of beasts of burden, the invention of the oil-press which “was used in Asia Minor as it has been used for time immemorial in India to extract the oil of the sesame seeds,” and of the wheel and cart, influenced their respective adoption of symbols of axial rotation. In turn, these symbols suggested and created divergent forms of ritual and religious cult. “The Turanians ... when they had evolved the idea of the god [pg 499] of heaven as the pole turned by the revolving days and weeks symbolized it as the pole of the threshing floors around which the oxen were driven.” The reader is referred here to the passages from the Bhagavata-purana quoted in the present work (note 1, p. ), in which axial rotation is compared to “oxen turning around their stakes,” to which must be added the Vedic “one-wheeled car to which one horse named seven was yoked” (see p. , note 1), and the revolving wheel and the revolving measuring pole of the potter and builder castes, which united formed the Telis caste.

In the Vaya Purana, “the seven Maruts drive the stars which are bound to it by ties invisible to man, round the pole. They move round like the beam in the oil-press, for its bottom is, as it were, standing still, while its end moves round”.... In the ritual “the Sanscrit Isha or the beam which turns this pole of heavenly oil-pressing mill, is the husband and father.” A diverging view, which developed and combined the ideas of fixity and circular motion with the kindling of the vital spark by the wooden fire-drill, caused the living tree to become the emblem of the tribal father or mother. The custom, still in use among some primitive people, of drilling for fire in the dry, inflammable bark of dead trees of a particular species, may have forcibly directed the choice of tribal trees. At all events, in India, we find the mango or Am tree, which recurs in Egyptian script (see fig. , ), the fig-tree, the udumbara, the date-palm and other trees established as the parent trees of different tribes, who made their respective house-poles and presumably their fire-drills and sockets, from their wood. The curious ritual of marrying men and women to their respective mother or father tribal trees, before they are wedded to their respective husbands and wives is mentioned by Hewitt on p. 237, etc. This close bond between some special kind of tree and a tribe is a point which I particularly emphasize on account of its analogy to ancient Mexican, Maya and Peruvian tribal trees.

Returning to a study of the pole and the beam of the oil-press we find that, in Essay ii, Hewitt traces the Greek myths of Ixion and Koronis to the Hindu comparison of the heavens to a revolving oil-press and, in the ritual of the Vajapeya sacrifice, refers the dawn of astronomy to the observation of the revolutions of the pole and the reckoning of the seven days of the week.... “Ixion, when raised to heaven, was the rain-god, who turned one wheel, to which his [pg 500] hands and feet were fixed by Hermes, the fire-god, continuously in the air, and this is merely a mythic way of saying that he was the fire-drill, made as the revolving pole to rotate perpetually, and by being turned to every side in his winged course, to produce life-giving heat, the generator of rain.... The Greek Ixion is the same word as the Sanscrit Akshivan, the driver of the axle (aksha).... Ixion is also, according to Bopp and Pott, connected with the root ik, pouring water, which appears in ichor, ‘the blood of the gods,’ the water of life.”

“Moreover, the Sanscrit aksha is a word of which the original is found in the Gond akkha, an axle. In the summer festival of the agricultural Gonds, called Akkhadi or Akhtuj, the worship of the cart axle or Akkha takes place and is associated with Nagur, the rain snake.... In the Vajapeya sacrifice ... the Soma priest consecrates two cups of the sacred drink Soma above the axle, at the same time as the Neskti priest consecrates two cups of Sura below it. In this ceremony we see a reminiscence of the days when the axle was the upright revolving pole pressing out the heavenly rain.... It also shows us how it was that the axle became the sacred part of the Soma cart ... and the revolving pole became the axle of the car of time and of the cart of the agricultural Gonds....”

It seems easy to trace from the rude one-wheeled cart, the evolution of the two-wheeled chariot, the prerogative of royalty in India and Assyria, employed simultaneously with the regal umbrella, which, when twirled, symbolized celestial axial rotation and suggested the idea of a protective deity. The transition from the “one-wheeled car” of the oldest Veda, to which “one horse named seven was yoked” to the chariot of Apollo=“Seven,” whose lyre, with seven chords, struck the divine heptachord of the Pythagoreans, and who drove seven horses, coincides with that of the umbrella which, in Greece, was borne at the period of the summer solstice in the Skirophoria or “festival of the umbrella,” in honor of Athene.

It is particularly gratifying to me, as it so forcibly substantiates the views I have been enlarging upon in this investigation, to refer here to Hewitt's quotations (p. 7, vol. ii) from the Rig-Veda, in which the wheeled chariot, closely identified with the year, is said to be drawn by the father-horse, with seven names, the seven days of the week, etc. Hewitt likewise cites passages of the Rig-Veda containing the conception of year wheels, the varying number of [pg 501] whose spokes agree with different divisions of the year. Thus one year-wheel exhibits twelve spokes, denoting months, another five spokes denoting five seasons. A chariot, with seven wheels with six spokes, is explained as meaning the seven days of the week and the six seasons of the southern year. “All living beings rest on the five-spoked wheel, ... the horses draw the never-aging wheel through space, whence the eye of the sun on which all life depends, looks down. The seventh of those born together they call ‘that born alone’: this is the self-created thirteenth or central month; the six twinned months are said to be those begotten of the gods. They are arranged in their order, six on each side of the central month, by the leader who dwells above.” A striking analogy to the ideas I detected, as associated with central rulership, in ancient America, is set forth in Hewitt's statement that, it was to the one wheel year “that the Hindus likened their universal monarch, the Chakravarta or king, who sits, like the Kushite monarch, as the father of his subject tribes, in the central province of his dominions, and directs his satellites, the rulers of the seasons, who became the ruling stars of the frontier provinces—the Nakshatra stars—to turn the wheel (chakra) of time in its yearly round” (op. cit. p. 31, vol. ii, see also p. 314.)

The single wheel, without any indication of an utilitarian employment, is found directly associated with the pole-star in Japan, where, as in China, the use of the wheel has been known from earliest [pg 502] times. It will be for Scandinavian archaeologists to enlighten us as to the earliest traces of the use, by northern races, not only of the wheeled chariot, familiar to those who named Ursa Major, Thor's wagon, but also that of the mill-stone. The employment of the latter in the description of the “revolving world mill-stone through which the waters of the Universe fountain flowed,” is a proof that the Eddas were written by an agricultural people, possessing advanced methods of grinding or of extracting oil or juice from food stuffs. The association of the Norse mill-stone with the distribution of liquid, appearing to indicate that, like the oil-press of ancient India, the stone-mill of Scandinavia had been employed to extract fluids, challenges investigation as to the original home of the mill-stone and chariot of the Eddas.

Personally I am inclined to regard the term “world mill-stone” as a modernized transcription of the term “axle,” and the whole as a rendering of the archaic idea that “heat was engendered by the revolution of the Great Bear” and that the axle of heaven was the distribution of vital heat and vivifying water. I shall await enlightenment as to the relationship of the Norse tree of the pole and Thor, with the creating fire-drill of Tur, the father-god; and the connection of the Norse “mill-stone” and fountain, to the fire-socket and celestial cistern of the Kushites, said to be the “sons of the Finnic Ku, the begetter and rain-god,” who, having migrated to India and united with other races, founded a mighty confederacy, the plan of which is figured in Hewitt's work (p. 220), by “the union of four triangles, representing the southeastern and northwestern races, ... with spaces left open for the parent rivers,” which flow towards the cardinal points (see figure , c).

If we now revert to the first stages of the mental evolution, the outcome of which we have been reviewing, we cannot but recognize the curious, but perfectly natural chain of reasoning which led early man to explain natural phenomena in different ways by the results of his own immediate observation and experience. He had discovered that the rotation of the fire-drill generated fire; consequently the rotation of the circumpolar constellations must generate life-giving heat. The churning or twirling of liquid in a vessel, by means of the drill, caused an overflow; consequently the action of the fire-drill also caused an external flow of life-giving waters, which, after the invention of the oil or grape press, was compared to the flow of precious oil or wine from the receptacle.

[pg 503]

High mountains attracted lightning-clouds and when these collected around their summits whence rivers constantly flowed, life-giving rain descended; consequently the tops of cloud-capped mountains must reach to the axle of the heaven where fire, heat and rain were being generated and distributed by the rotation of celestial bodies. As Polaris the axle, pivot or fire socket, was immovable it could most appropriately be figured by a wooden or stone socket, from which fire and water flowed towards the four quarters. Such an image would also figure a year, and, by extension, time, since it marked the four annual positions of circumpolar star-groups. The adoption of a stone socket as an image of the “revolving heaven” could thus have long antedated, but have suggested the invention of the wheel, which was at first a religious and then became a royal symbol.

I venture to express the view that the archaic image of Shamash (fig. , a), the homonym of Heaven and the North, which was “an ancient model” at the time of Nabupaliddin (879-855 B.C.), could only have been invented by a race of pole-star worshippers who had long been acquainted with the uses of the fire drill and the oil-press. At the same time I point out how remarkably the combination of four rays and four streams in the image of Shamash (Shame=heaven) coincides with the explanation given by Hewitt (p. 9, vol. ii) of the Akkadian eight-rayed star of Anu (heaven), which, he asserts, is formed by the superposition of the fire-cross and rain cross. It is a most remarkable and undeniable fact that there is a striking analogy between the Anu sign as explained by Hewitt and the Shamash image. The eight-rayed or “spoked wheel” of Ishtar, which figures on the same tablet, also gains significance for the same reason, and particularly when collated with the hymn cited in note 1, p. , in which she is clearly designated as the “axis of the heavens,” i. e. the female Polaris.

Having indicated how the origin of the image of Shamash can be traced to conceptions arising from the use of the fire-drill and some primitive mode of extracting oil or of preparing a highly valued drink from seeds and plants, by centrifugal action, invented by a primitive agricultural people, I advance the suggestion that the celestial tree of the Norsemen and Semites, associated with the fountain and the four rivers of life, appears as a closely related symbol which, however, mainly expressed the idea of stability. In the Eddas the tree occurs as a complement to the world axle, the first as the [pg 504] emblem of stability and of a central power which dispensed shade and life-giving fruits in all directions; the second as the image of centrifugal power which caused the star-groups to assume opposite positions and which impartially distributed heat and water. It is curious to note how readily from the fire-drill and beam of the oil press as a starting point, not only all forms of tree and pole worship and the Chinese assignment of element wood to the Middle, but also all symbols of centrifugal motion, such as the axle, the pivot and the wheel, could have evolved on closely parallel lines.

Let us now transport ourselves to a land where, to this day, the Indian women grind maize on a flat stone, by means of a pestle, where the oil-press and the mill-stone, the pole of the threshing-floor, the potter's wheel and the cart wheel were unknown before the date of the Spanish Conquest and rotatory motion was associated with the fire-drill and spinning whorl only.

NEW WORLD.

The ancient Mexican name for the fire-drill = mamalhuaztli, and that for spinning-wheel=malacatl, are both derived from the verb malacachoa=to whirl, turn or drill. At the time of the Spanish invasion (A.D. 1519) the Mexican priesthood lit the sacred fire of the altar by an extremely primitive method of employing the fire-drill: by holding it tightly between the palms of both hands and rapidly rubbing them alternately forward and backward.

The Codices contain numberless pictures representing a priest, in the act of kindling fire by inserting the drill in a simple wooden beam, usually exhibiting several small holes or sockets. On the other hand the Borgian Codex, which has recently been placed within general reach by the generosity of the Duc de Loubat, shows us two elaborate representations of the great ceremony of kindling the holy fire in a large circular socket, on the body of a woman which, in all cases is combined with the image of an alligator (see p. ). In another Codex the alligator alone supports the socket. The smaller of these representations is reproduced in fig. , and on pp. 93-97 this image is discussed as well as the remarkable stone fire altars in human form, of which one has been unearthed near the city of Mexico, while no less than six were found at Chichen-Itza. My informant on this point is Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay, who added that they seem to have been invariably placed at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the temple, the façade [pg 505] of which is always supported by two great columns, each sculptured in the form of a great serpent with open jaws, the symbol which, in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza and on the Central American stelæ, recurs on the head-dresses of the rulers termed “Divine serpents,” or “divine four in One.”

Postponing comment upon the curious analogy between the stone fire altars in human form, of the Mayas and Mexicans, with those of the Maghadas of Northern India, who called themselves the Sons of Magha = the socket-block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill, or the mother Maga, the sacred alligator, let us examine the fire-drill god of ancient Mexico.

Reference to fig. reveals that it is impossible to see these Mexican representations, which I could supplement by others, and not be struck by their agreement with the descriptions of the Hindu pole-star god Dhruva, who stands on one foot, of the lame Hephaistos of Greek mythology, to which I would add that Hewitt also mentions in his preface to vol. ii the Norse Völunde, the maimed, one-legged turner of the pole; the god called in the Rig-Veda the Aja ekapad, or one-footed goat, who watched the revolutions of the solar disk, and the one-legged bird of Russian mythology, associated with a revolving house and fire-drill. In the Mexican Codices the Mexican Tezcatlipoca, held by one foot to the centre of the north, describes a circle around this. His foot evidently constitutes the fire-drill, which, inserted in the socket, causes smoke, also rain and a serpent to issue from it (see 5 and 6). One figure, representing one leg only in the fire-socket, and a head, exhibiting a small, smoking fire-socket, appears, in the light of comparative research, as a cursive method of representing the fire-drill god, universally associated with Ursa Major.

It is remarkable that, in one case water and in another smoke, indicating fire, issues from the socket of Tezcatlipoca's fire-drill, and that, opposite to the picture in the Borgian Codex, representing the kindling of fire on the fire-altar, we have the image of a pool of water from which four figures spring toward the cardinal points (see fig. ).

It is only after recognizing that, like the people of the Old World, the Mexicans associated with the fire-drill and socket not only the distribution of fire and heat, but also of water, that we also fully grasp the symbolism of the symbol of the “Black or Night Sun,” [pg 506] from the “Life of the Indians,” which is but one of many simple forms exhibiting main features which recur on the highly elaborated Mexican stone of the Great Plan (fig. b). When placed in juxtaposition the undoubted resemblance between the Babylonian image of Shamash and the Mexican image, as well as the deep-seated identity of these two quadruplicate symbols stands out clearly: in the Babylonian, wavy lines emanating from the centre convey the idea of some fluid essence. In the Mexican, instead of the wavy lines, the conventional representation of a drop of water is depicted—the idea in both cases being obviously identical and agreeing with the primeval universal conception of heat or fire, and water emanating from a common source, and flowing to the cardinal points. In both cases an axle or socket is represented, and it is instructive to study the different ways in which the symbol recurs in the Mexican Codices.

Figure 73.

Referring back to fig. , 1, reproduced from the Codex Borgia, we see the axle with rays issuing from a circular band of water. A receptacle filled with water occupies the centre and contains a tecpatl, the symbol of the north, the same associated with the fire-drill god in the next figure. In fig. , 4, the central fountain is surrounded, as in many instances, by stars which connect it with the nocturnal heaven, and it contains a rabbit=tochtli, the rebus figure employed to express the word octli, by which the rain was designated as “earth wine” (see pp. and ).

As I write, I have before me a whole series of painted representations from the Codices of what has heretofore been misinterpreted as images of the diurnal sun. In some of these the open centre is painted blue or green, in others it is filled by a heart from which flows, in some cases, a stream of blood, the essence of life. In several instances a tree with four main branches grows from the [pg 507] centre. In one case the tree grows from a pool and holds in its branches the image of the axle, in the centre of which, as in the Humboldt Tablet preserved at the Berlin Museum, a figure is seated. The centres of others exhibit the head of a divinity painted red, a single eye, or the ollin. All examples establish the fact that the Mexican “axle of the North” represented fire and water emanating from a single source. In notable examples, where the axle is carved in stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is situated. An analogous but shallow depression occurs in the great circular monument, the Conquest Stone of Mexico (see p. ), around which Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed fire-drill god, is represented sixteen times, each time in the act of receiving the enforced homage of the chief or chieftainess of a different locality.

The above monuments, as well as a rudely-carved representation of the “sun” recently discovered and unearthed by Dr. Ed. Seler, lying on a substructure of stones in the centre of an open space, presumably a market place, definitely proves that the design was intended to be placed in a horizontal position. This intention has already been noted in the case of the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico (fig. ), on which the rays and intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of the divine Twain.

A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as far as is known, employed no means of extracting [pg 508] oil or juice or of grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process, come to employ as a sacred symbol, the axle or “mill-stone” which, in India, had been adopted as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the fire-drill and the oil-press?

The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was associated in Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards described as a “stone wheel,” is termed in the Nahuatl text as a “te-malacatl” i. e. a “stone whorl.” Further evidence of the close association of such “stone whorls” with thread or cord, the product of spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was attached by one foot to the open centre of the “stone whorl” and circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was associated with the cosmical axle, or disk.

It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the Assyrian-Babylonian image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot, oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any conclusions or conjectures on this point, however, a number [pg 509] of other questions must be investigated. One fact, however, stands out quite clearly: Whereas in figure , b, we have the rudimentary form of the quadruplicate symbol, closely resembling that which was already ancient and almost obsolete in Babylonia in the ninth century B.C. and pertained to a cult of Shamash, the North and Heaven, which had flourished in that country about 1850 B.C., the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico represents the highly advanced development and elaboration of the identical cult, as actually established there until the year 1519 of our era.

Pausing here and looking back upon the foregoing summary of the universal spread of identical forms of social organization and of rituals suggested by the use of the fire-drill, in association with a primitive pole-star cult, there are a few distinct and unrelated points which claim special attention: First of all, the identity in the form of the fire-altar and the cult of the fire-socket, among the Maghas and Nahushas of India and the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico. Secondly, the striking resemblance of plan and numerical scheme which unquestionably existed between the ideal “divine polities,” recorded by Plato, and the states which actually existed, of ancient Peru and Mexico. It is impossible to read Plato's scheme of an all-pervading division into 12, and his plan for the laying out of the capital and state and not to recognize the fact that, in Peru, as set forth on pp. 133-149 of the present work, these identical principles were actually carried out by the alien Incas who, in comparatively modern times, collected the natives together and organized them into a settled community. Thirdly, the undeniable fact that the numerical scheme of the Maya and Mexican Calendar and state-organization is identical with that adopted by Constantine, in establishing New Rome.

Postponing a closer examination of these points until further on, let us now continue our comparative review.

The universal spread of the identical scheme of organization, vouched for by documentary evidence, is further demonstrated by the results of archaeological and historical research and a comparative study of ancient symbolism. Thus it is impossible not to admit the striking and deep-seated analogy between the Assyrian four-fold division of city and state, the title “lord of the four regions” and the image of Shamash, the “four-spoked wheel;” the Indian, Egyptian and Grecian philosophical conceptions of four elements, culminating in Plato's Cosmos and Theos (an entity, [pg 510] spherical in shape, incorporating four elements) and, for instance, the quadruplicate symbol carved in the centre of the Mexican Cosmical Tablet, which exhibits the symbols of the same four elements embodied in a single symbol, representing the supreme power, who is thus proven to have been conceived by the Mexicans, as well as by the Peruvians, as “the Air, Earth, Fire and Water in One,” or the source of the four elements.

When it is likewise considered that the Mexicans employed the divine title, “four times lord,” that the Maya title “Kukulcan,” signifies the “Divine Four,” that the ancient map of Mayapan proves that, like the Kushite confederacy, and the kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt and Peru, it was a “Four provinces in One” or a “four-fold state,” the identity of the principles underlying the archaic civilizations of the Old and New World becomes more and more apparent. It likewise becomes evident that in each of these countries the significance and symbolism of the archaic cross-symbol and swastika must have been identical, and that, like the pyramid (the form of which, in the ancient Greek alphabet, is given [pg 511] to the letter delta which expresses, numerically, four, a quatuor, or 4,000) and the square stone altar or column, it figured the Four in One, the mystic Five or the Four and all-embracing One. The following array of facts demonstrates further the universal association of archaic cross-symbolism with the conception of an all-embracing, stable, central power.

A striking demonstration of this is furnished by the diagonal cross, employed as a Chinese character, to express the word wū=five, just as it is used, in Egyptian hieratic script, to express the syllables uu, un or ur (see fig. ). Sometimes, in Chinese, a horizontal line is drawn above the cross and another beneath it, and John Chalmers informs us that, according to the Shoh Wan, this “full form means the five elements between heaven and earth, the upper line being heaven and the lower earth.” The sign thus obviously constituted an image of the Cosmos, the 5+2=heaven [pg 512] and earth, thus furnishing the familiar seven directions in space, the chief and synopsis of which is the sacred Centre.

The association, in ancient America, of the cross-shape with central stable power, has already been discussed in the case of the Copan swastika, p. . At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelæ found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. , namely, that the personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelæ, were high-priest rulers, who bore the title “Divine Four,” and were “rulers of the four regions.”

Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon's report, published in vol. i, no. i, of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that, beneath several stelæ examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of these artificially cosmical centres.

What seems quite clear is that the subterraneous vault constituted a sacred cosmical chamber and that the stelæ were memorial stones, which probably represented the image of a lord, and the record of his fixed term of office which formed a period or era of the native calendar (see p. ). The stela which formed the stable, visible centre of the hidden substructure may also have been employed as a gnomon during some period of time, and in the monument the initiated must undoubtedly have recognized the underlying cosmical conceptions, and regarded it as a highly developed form or variant of the archaic cross, the primitive record of a year. It is remarkable how closely analogous are the Central American stelæ with their hidden cruciform vaults, to the conception of the Egyptian “star of Horus” explained by Hewitt as the meridian pole raised in the centre of a cross denoting the four quarters.

[pg 513]

The most striking evidence of a close affinity between the ancient Central American ah-men, or master-masons, who built cruciform windows in the walls of temples and designed the cruciform vaults under the stelæ at Copan and Quirigua, and the amanteca or tolteca, the master-architects and builders of Mitla, Mexico, is furnished by Mr. M. H. Saville's recent excavation of three remarkable subterraneous, cruciform chambers, the largest of which is situated on the summit of a high hill near Mitla. The interior of the latter is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs, like those on the exterior of the Mitla palace. The extreme length from east to west is 9m. 71cm., from north to south 8m. 18cm., and its roof was composed of large flat stones. The entrance to this and the other cruciform vaults is situated at the extremity of the western arm, which in the case described was longer than the other arms.

The most remarkable example of such a cruciform crypt is, however, that situated beneath the palace of Mitla, which has been figured by Dupaix in Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. ix. This vault is also built of the shape of a so-called “Greek” cross, but in its centre stands a large circular stone column reaching from floor to ceiling. It is impossible not to recognize the symbolism of this pillar situated in the centre of a structure, the form of which symbolizes the Four Quarters and the fundamental identity of the column occupying the centre of the Mitla chamber and the Copan stelæ standing above the centre of the hidden cruciform vault. Details associated with the pillar which stood in the Great Temple of Mexico (p. ), and the “pedestal” erected on the hill of justice at Guatemala (p. ) definitely show that, in ancient America, the column was also associated with star-cult, with the administration of justice and central celestial and terrestrial government. Investigation has shown that precisely the same ideas were associated with the circular, square or octagonal columns of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Japan, where they either constituted the images of the central supreme divinity, formed the support for the statues of earthly “divine” rulers, or marked the centres of the cosmos or state, bearing inscriptions of the sacred laws as in Athens, or of the distances to all points of the empire, viz. the Roman Milliarum Aureum.

It is remarkable to find that, whereas in ancient Byzantium the centre of the city had been marked by a column surmounted by a colossal statue of Apollo, a pillar or pole god, Constantine erected [pg 514] a “spacious edifice, from the centre of which all roads of the empire were measured.” Considering that, at the time when this edifice was built, the ancient quadruplicate plan had been revised and the empire of New Rome had been divided into four parts by Constantine, it seems reasonable to infer that the form of the great edifice which marked the territorial centre of the new empire bore the impress of the cruciform plan, and that the shape of the cross should have been adopted throughout the empire, in edifices marking central consecrated places. How much of the true spirit of the Christian ideal of universal brotherhood entered into the constitution of Constantine's New Rome it is impossible to conjecture. Niebuhr denies that Constantine was a Christian, records that he was only baptized shortly before his death, and states that the religion of Constantine “must have been a strange compound indeed, something like the amulet recently discovered at Rome, which is an example of that curious mixture of Judaism, Christianity and Paganism which we so frequently meet with from about the beginning of the third century.”

In an extremely interesting monograph “On the origin of the cruciform plan of the mediæval Cathedral,” by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M. Wheelwright, published in the “Transactions of the Boston Society of Architects, 1891,” I find the significant fact that what is now the little church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the time of Constantine.

The same monograph teaches that “de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the congregation assembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are also found in the catacombs. In [pg 515] the fifth or sixth century cruciform buildings became in the East, and wherever Byzantine influence was potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings commemorative of holy places. These types seem to have been given, by Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their construction and to have appeared to them as monuments requiring a symbolical expression of plan, while they evidently did not consider such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general congregations, which, although of types without distinct association with the Christian faith, were held, for several centuries, to be sufficiently well adapted to purposes of Christian worship without material change from their ancient form [that of the Roman Basilica].”

Referring the reader to Mr. Wheelwright's monograph for interesting data concerning the Byzantine influence discernible in the early types of Christian churches of cruciform plan erected in northern Italy and Europe, I merely note here that in St. Sophia, founded by Constantine, and completed by Justinian, “the load of the dome is thrown on four great piers disposed at either corner of a square. These great piers, with the corresponding buttresses of the outer wall, suggest a possible symbolical intent in the arrangement ... otherwise the cruciform plan here suggested is expressed neither externally nor internally.” I venture to suggest that in St. Sophia, “Holy Eternal Wisdom,” as in the case of the Pantheon, the dominant idea may have been the all-embracing unity, but that, as the number four was identified with “wisdom and justice” by the widespread Pythagorean philosophy, that number must have seemed, to the initiated, to pervade the entire structure. In the case of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where it was Justinian's intention to mark a sacred locality, we find the cruciform plan clearly carried out. “The church of St. Simeon Stylite at Kelat Seman Syria, built about A.D. 500, is a most interesting example of a cruciform church, marking a sacred spot [and associated with a sacred column].”

“The church of the seventh century built at Sichem, over the well of the Samaritan, shows a distribution of plan similar to that of S. Simeon Stylite, the holy object being at the crossing.... There are existing at St. Wandrille and at Querqueville in Normandy, two (cruciform) triapsidal churches of a date prior [pg 516] to the Norman conquest ... a well preserved four-apsed tomb chapel exists at Montmajour near Arles, built in 1019; the detail and plan of which point to a Syrian prototype and resembles two buildings of an early date now existing in Dalmatia.” The use of the cruciform type of church, anterior to the great revival of purely Christian religious architecture in the thirteenth century, was confined to Picardy and the Rhenish provinces, fine churches of this type being at Cologne, Bonn, Marburg, etc.

It is interesting to recall that the building of sacred structures is attributed to “secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative masons which existed during the middle ages, and possessed grades of officers and secret signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.” To this day, in some parts of Germany and Bohemia, the swastika is the sign or mark of the stone-mason's guild which has survived from the mediæval times. In the organized bands of masons whose mark was the swastika and who introduced Eastern cosmical symbolism into Europe and gradually developed, upon this basis, a purely Christian form of architecture, we may perhaps see the descendants of those ancient builders who, filled with the conception of the sacred Central power, the Four Quarters, the Above and Below, planned the square, seven-stoned zikkurats of Babylonia-Assyria, the pyramids, obelisks and sphinxes of Egypt, the columns and cruciform tombs and sanctuaries of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, the cruciform temples and the topes of India and the domes of the Pantheon and St. Sophia.

It would appear that these ancient builders were also the designers and founders of cities and states. It is, for instance, known that Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon, a Milesian, and by profession an architect, gained celebrity in his own art by constructing the Piræus at Athens and by improving the method of distributing [pg 517] streets and planning cities ... and also wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government.

A kinship of thought undoubtedly exists between the trained builders of cosmical structures in the Old World and the ah-men, the amantecas and toltecas of Central America and Mexico, who also reared pyramids, cruciform vaults, circular temples, with openings to the four quarters (see fig. , p. 97), altars and pillars, and in their temples wrought, in stone, endless variations of the great human theme: the sacred central, stable power, the four quarters and elements, and the heaven and earth with the dualities of Nature, and likewise instituted an artificial scheme of social organization, a calendar and religious rites based on these same fundamental principles, which can be traced back to primitive pole-star worship. It has been of utmost interest to me, as I was approaching the end of the present investigation, to become acquainted with Hewitt's work and his view that it was the seafaring Turanians, originally a northern race, the worshippers of Tur=the pole, who claimed descent from the seven stars of Nāgash, the serpent=Ursa Major, and, from India, extended their trade and carried their form of social organization and religious cult first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where they were known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians.

The subjoined detached passages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of pole-star worshippers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who, according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe but also to America. Hewitt bases [pg 518] the latter assertion upon the identity be perceived “between Akkadian and American mythological traditions.”

As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias, related to the Zuñis), as “Mexican” (see vol. ii, p. 243, etc.), a term which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the truly Mexican, “teo-cipactli” as a “fish-god” is unfortunate, as numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that cipactli signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an identity of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake [pg 519] of gaining information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt's further assertion that “the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians ... and who continued in their new land, America, the worship of the rain god, to whom, as their fathers in central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross” (Hewitt, p. 492).

“The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-worshippers who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia, as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the mother-goddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill; who is also worshipped as the mother Maga under the form of the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem.” In Essay viii [pg 520] Hewitt states that these “sons of the great witch-mother Maga” lived in Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the “city of the Magnetes” referred to by Plato as “the mother of laws.” The word mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. ii, p. 54).

The Maya and Mexican fire altars and sockets and their association with the earth-mother and alligator in the native Codices has been discussed. The Mexican day-sign cipactli figures an alligator and is associated with a female deity. The alligator altar at Copan, is described on p. . Were it not for limit of space additional testimony could be cited here, proving that in Mexico the alligator was associated with the mother of the race, the fire-socket, and was a tribal totem.

“As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of towns.... They adored the god of the twirling or churning fire-drill.... They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and thunder god and star-god who guides the stars in their courses and rules the beginning of the year” (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian “Ukko is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly mountain” (vol. ii, p. 155).

[pg 521]

Compare Ku in Maya list, appendix iii, also Tezcatli-poca or puca=Mexican fire-drill god, Ursa Major.

“They worshipped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of Naga=the Nahushas. They worshipped the Pleiades=the mother stars....”

The Nahuas traced ancestry to seven stars of Ursa Major and began their religious year at the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight.

“The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phœnicians ... the red men, who worshipped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North, Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the Akkadians, Egyptians and Kushites.... They reverenced the sacred ‘shu’ stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the world ... as the sacred Shu stone.”

It should be added here that the Hittite sign for Ishtar was a triangle enclosing a stone: “the mountain enclosing the stone of life.”

About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(cf. Kukul) under a great chief or lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. ). In Mexico the name for turquoise is xiuitl and the god of fire is named Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is associated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-goddess. The spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol of generation.

“Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uræus serpent as a sign of royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so widely distant from one another as India and Egypt....”

We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200), that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief survived in Phœnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found amongst the Semites. “Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an animal, plant or [pg 522] heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of Nahash, ‘or the serpent,’ the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest and decimation of the latter.”

The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open serpent's jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured on the Central American stelæ and bas-reliefs. The existence of totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the arbitrary method by which it was established by the Incas of Peru, when they founded the new colony, has been described.

“... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling air-god who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the Abyss, the Assyrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the magical rain-pole, called the god Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in front of every house ...” (p. 194). “They are the Canaanites, or dwellers in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the race of Achæans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent, the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the gods” (Hewitt, p. 175).

Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. ), whose bodies may be seen to consist of a repetition of the conventional sign for tlalli=land, consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These girdling serpents, whose heads unite, [pg 523] being directly associated with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as springing from the sign Acatl (see p. ).

On the other hand, the heavenly “feathered serpent” of Mexico and Yucatan is distinctly associated with the air and the circle; its conception curiously coinciding with that of the “girdling air-god” mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet, but also on the allegorical figure of the “Divine Serpent,” which may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake tribe, associated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their name. The undeniable association, in Mexico, of the serpent with Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the “sons of Achis, the serpent”=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.

In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man, the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned “... his people had replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple, the home and symbol of the creating god, who had been the pillar of the house.... But in their eyes the father-god was not the central pillar but the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the gates of god.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts—the pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of religious festivals.”

Twin pillars, sculptured in the form of great serpents, whose names signify twinship, support the entrances to the ancient temples of Yucatan, Central America, and have been found on the site of the Great Temple of Mexico. The Mexican and Maya accounts of the culture hero Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan state that he and his followers were “great necromancers” and magicians and that they taught handicrafts, metallurgy, and instituted calendar, social organization and ritual. A personal, close examination of a large number of old Peruvian and Mexican as well as Coptic textile fabrics, has convinced me moreover of their identity of technique.

“The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human sacrifices in order to obtain rain” (Hewitt).

“The Phœnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and breasts to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices [pg 524] were made, to Moloch or Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice and the victim's cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes” (Sayce).

The human sacrifices of Mexico are familiar to all. The native dog and various kinds of birds were sacrificed. The Mexican priests, named papas, wore long hair, practised asceticism, gashed their breasts, arms and legs and pierced their ears and tongues. On the Palenque bas-reliefs, priests with long hair are sculptured. The human sacrifices of Mexico and those of Egypt, Phœnicia and Assyria, described by Sayce and Hewitt (pp. 275 and 348), are closely alike. See also Hewitt's account of the blood brotherhood made between the sacrificer and the land on which the blood is poured (p. 196), and the Chichimec blood sacrifice described in the present work, p. .

The foregoing are a few noteworthy analogies which have impressed themselves upon me during the present course of investigation, in addition to the many undeniable and unsuspected evidences I have found, of an identity of star-cult, ritual and social organization in Old and New World civilizations.

It will be seen that the outcome of my researches corroborates the opinions differently expressed by a long line of eminent investigators, who have been constantly discovering and pointing out undeniable similarities and identities between the civilizations of both hemispheres.

It seems to me that an accumulation of evidence now forces us to face and thoroughly investigate the possibility that, from remote antiquity, our continent and its inhabitants were known to the seafarers of the Old World, to whose agency the spread of similar forms of cult and civilization in the New World is to be assigned.

While those who uphold the autochthony of the native civilization may regard such identities as accidental, those who are willing to admit the possibility that the Phœnicians, the red men of antiquity, whose land was Syria, navigating by the pole-star, may have reached America, will doubtlessly dwell upon the unquestionable fact that the most ancient traces of organized and settled communities actually exist along the coast swept by the equatorial currents. A glance at an ordinary chart exhibiting the ocean currents and trade winds shows that vessels sailing southward from the Canary Islands and caught in the north African current, might, at a certain point, enter the north equatorial current flowing towards the coast of America. Further southward still, off the coast of Guinea, the current bearing this name meets the main equatorial [pg 525] current which sweeps along the coast of Honduras and Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico.

What is more, ancient well-known tradition asserts that the culture-hero Kukulcan-Quetzalcoatl, with his followers, came to Mexico from the East (via Yucatan) and told the natives of their distant home, named Tlapallan and Huehue tlapallan which, translated, mean “the red land” and “the great ancient red land.” Native American tradition unquestionably and unanimously ascribes to single individuals of aged and venerable aspect, or leaders of small bands of men and women of an alien race, the peaceable introduction of a definite plan of civilization, identical in its elements with that known to have existed in India, Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria from time immemorial, and said to have been spread to these countries by the Phœnicians.

Native tradition, therefore, is seen unanimously to controvert the independent development of the cosmical schemes of government and most advanced forms of civilization which prevailed in America at the Columbian period. This, of course, in no wise excludes the existence of purely native people, with a certain degree of civilization, more rudimentary in form, founded on impressive natural phenomena, which the natives had always been in a position to observe for themselves.

In order to obtain an insight into conditions which might have determined and affected maritime intercourse with distant America, let us now make a rapid survey of the history of the ancient civilizations of the Old World. This reveals, in the first case, the undeniable fact (one of deepest significance in the light of the present investigation) that the period of a general stirring of men's minds, in countries where pole-star worship had prevailed from time immemorial, exactly coincides with the period to which I alluded on p. 43, during which there ceased to be a brilliantly conspicuous and perfectly immovable pole-star in the northern heavens.

From Mr. Hinckley Allen's work (p. ), I have since learned that astronomers have closely determined this period, and that Miss Clerke writes of this: “The entire millennium before the Christian era may count for an interregnum as regards pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to exercise that office; and Alruccabah had not yet assumed it.” Prof. A. H. Sayce tells us that the Phœnician pilots steered by the pole-star in remotest antiquity, and it is a matter of history that “Pytheas of Massilia, the bold navigator [pg 526] (died about 285 B.C.), showed the Greeks that the pole-star was not at the pole itself.” Previous to that date, however, the astronomer-priests must have noted the change in the heavens. On descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers, whose entire religion and civilization were based on the idea of fixity and rotation, the unaccountable change in the order of the universe must indeed have produced a deep impression. Under such conditions it seems but natural that a great awakening of doubt and speculation should take place, that worship should be transferred from stars known to be subject to change, to the unseen, incomprehensible but ever-present eternal power which ruled the universe.

Let us examine some of the records of the great intellectual movement that swept at one time, like a wave, over the ancient centres of civilization. The eighth, seventh and sixth centuries before our era are marked by the growth of the Ionian philosophy which, as Huxley tells us, “was but one of many results of the stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the Aryan-Semitic population of Western Asia. The conditions of the general awakening were doubtless manifold, but there is one which modern research has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of extremely ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.... The Ionian intellectual movement is only one of the several sporadic indications of some powerful mental ferment over the whole of the area comprised between the Ægean and Northern Hindustan....”

Professor Schroeder's statement that, “in the seventh century B.C., the idea of four, i. e. five elements, spread in India,” is particularly interesting in connection with the date assigned to the birth of the Ionian intellectual movement. Of Pythagoras it is related that, like Solon, “he had visited Egypt, also Phœnicia and Babylon, then Chaldean and independent, and founded a brotherhood originally brought together by a religious influence, with observances approaching to monastic peculiarity, and working in a direction at once religious, political and scientific.” According to the learned translator of Cicero's first Tusculan disputation “it is generally accepted that Pherecydes of Syros (one of the Cyclades islands in the Ægean sea) was the teacher of Pythagoras. Pherecydes, [pg 527] who flourished about B.C. 544 is said to have derived his knowledge from the secret books of the Phœnicians and from travels of inquiry in Egypt.” Through Philolaus (see Grote IV, p. 395, note 2), Pythagorean science was made known to Plato, whose views are quoted on p. . Grote states that, about 300 B.C., the Pythagorean philosophy nearly died out. It is a curious fact that this date coincides, approximately, with the destruction of Tyre (Tsar, in Phœnician,=the rock), the last stronghold of the Phœnicians, “which had defied Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian but at last fell,” according to Prof. A. H. Sayce, “in July, B.C. 332, before the Greek conqueror Alexander. Thirty thousand of its citizens were sold in slavery, thousands of others massacred and crucified and the wealth of the richest and most luxurious city of the world became the prey of an exasperated army. Its trade was inherited by its neighbor Sidon” (op. cit. p. 194). It is obvious that, at this period, bands of fugitives may well have taken refuge in traders' ships and sought safety in flight to distant regions, where they might establish themselves and found colonies on the pattern of Tyre or of Carthage which, in ancient times had also been founded by fugitives and been named “the new city,” Karthakhadasha (Sayce). While the great historical events which marked the fourth century B.C. seem to have arrested the spread of Pythagorean philosophy, we find that, according to Grote, “in the time of Cicero, two centuries later, the orientalizing tendency, beginning to spread over the Grecian and Roman world, caused it to be again revived, with little or none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive religious and imaginative fanaticism.... It was taken up anew by the pagan world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism, passing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted other more positive and masculine systems of pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and revival of Christianity” (op. cit. iv, 398). Neo-Platonism reached its height under its chief Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) who sought to reconcile the Platonic and Aristotelian systems with Oriental theosophy. His pantheistic and eclectic school was the last product of the Greek philosophy.

[pg 528]

It is, at all events, remarkable, that the date tradition assigns to the presence of Kukulcan in Yucatan and the foundation of the quadruplicate state of Mayapan coincides with the dying out, in Europe, of pagan philosophy, one of the features of which had been the elaboration of ideal forms of government based on a numerical and cosmical scheme, the elements of which had apparently been spread by the Phœnicians. In Copan and Quirigua we find remnants of long-established, peaceable communities revealing no trace of war-like weapons, and the memorial stelæ of whose rulers stand above hidden cruciform vaults, while carved personages are represented as seated in the centre of ornate crosses. In Yucatan, through which land the foreign civilization seems to have reached the plateau of Mexico, there are significant traces of an ancient city, named Zilan, situated on the Atlantic coast; proofs that buildings of cosmical forms were erected; that the state of Mayapan was laid out on the familiar cosmical plan; that repeated migrations took place, and that, from time immemorial, a calendar, on the same numerical basis as that of Mexico, had been in use. The great state of Mayapan, where a remarkable stone cross was found at Cozumel by the Spaniards, is shown to have been figured as a circle within a circle, the whole divided into four parts by cross-lines. Here, as in Chiapas and Mexico, all divisions of government, population and time are organized on a numerical scheme representing the combination of 4×5=20 i. e. an entire finger and toe count, “a whole man,” with the 13 directions in space. The multiplication of 13 and 20 results in a unit of 260 which, as a cycle of time, represents the complete set of all harmonious combinations of man the miniature image of the living state, with the thirteen directions of space in the all-embracing Cosmos, composed of four primary elements. In consonance with this we find the existence of 20 (or 4×5) lords, whose names correspond to those of the 4 chief and 16 minor day-signs of the calendar, and of a lord by election, whose name signifies the thirteen divisions or parts, and who constituted a microcosmos, a Four in One. In regular rotation the 20 lords, consisting of 4 chief and 4×4=16=minor rulers fulfilled duties towards the supreme representative who resided in the capital, while they respectively lived in four provinces, the population of which was subdivided into four tribes each of the 20 divisions of the state being again divided into 13 parts.

[pg 529]

In a cosmical state like this in which each individual not only felt himself to be a unit and a microcosmos, but also an indispensable part of a living organism, under the form of which the state was symbolized, its inhabitants, leading lives regulated by a calendar based on the phenomenon of circumpolar rotation, under a chief ruler entitled the “Four in One,” assisted by four sub-rulers, must indeed have felt that they “lived, moved and had their being” in the Teotl or Theos, imagined as the embodiment of the four elements. In this connection it is interesting to learn that “the animal” itself, of Plato, is considered by eminent authorities to have been the tetrad.

In Zuñi, where, at the present day, each individual feels himself identified with some part of the body of a quadruped, his clan totem, the conception of the state as “a living animal,” is an actual reality. Their pueblo moreover represents a 6+1=7, or a “seven in one,” the miniature counterpart of the far distant Ooraon village of Chota Nagpore and of the ancient archaic kingdoms of India, Persia, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc. Anciently the Zuñis called themselves the Ashiwi, a name remarkably like that of the Ashvins, derived from the Akkadian ash=six.

I revert again here to the following landmarks, which may perhaps furnish a useful “working hypothesis” for future investigation. In Mexico the pyramids of Cholula and of Teotihuacan seem to render testimony of the, possibly consecutive, establishment of ideal states amongst tribes “capable of subjection” by Toltecas, or “Master-Builders,” who, according to their method, used the building of a great structure, requiring time and united labor, as a means of organizing a new community or colony. It may be that the period of their completion coincided with the establishment of the Calendar system, beginning with the number one.

In my Preliminary Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System (Stockholm 1894), I demonstrated how, by reconstructing the Calendar cycles, it was possible to determine exactly when the native system was adopted. According to my demonstration, which has now stood unchallenged for six years, a fresh year cycle began in 1507 A.D., with the year sign II Acatl and the day 2 cipactli. For a cycle to be associated with the number two it is obvious that it must have been preceded by a cycle ruled by number one, therefore it may be safely inferred that the cycle II Acatl that commenced in 1507 followed a cyclical period of 4×13=52×20=1840 [pg 530] years (p. ). Accordingly the date when the Mexican system was instituted in the form which existed at the time of the Conquest, may be fixed as corresponding to the year 467 of our era.

Considering that the Calendar system was, however, but one part of the machinery of government, was inseparable from the organization of tribes, classes and individuals, and that its institution signified the foundation of a state, it is remarkable to ascertain that, but 137 years previously, Constantine, in A.D. 330, had instituted the empire of New Rome, on precisely the same numerical basis as that of the Mexican Calendar, and divided it into 4 parts or prefectures, each subdivided into 13, yielding a total of 52 prefectures. Moreover, as far back as the institution of the Kleisthenean democracy, the Greeks had been familiar with an extremely intricate and close union of calendar and government system, such as existed in Babylonia-Assyria and, as I have shown, in ancient Mexico.

It is certainly suggestive that the period of 137 years, which elapsed between the establishment of New Rome on a partly revived and partly amended or remodelled plan, and the foundation of the great democracy of ancient Mexico at the date inferred, is unparalleled in the history of mankind for religious persecutions, carried on in Egypt, Greece and Rome, following upon three centuries marked by the growth and spread of Christianity and the persecution of its followers, the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of the Jews. It was in A.D. 379 that Theodosius, the Greek, proclaimed Christianity the religion of his empire and instituted a relentless persecution of the Arians and followers of the ancient Egyptian religion.

Under Arcadius, Emperor of the East (A.D. 395), the Anthromorphites, who affirmed that God was of human form, destroyed the greater number of their opponents. Under Marcianus (A.D. 451), Silco invaded Egypt with his Nubian followers and the Council of Chalcedon condemned the Monophysite doctrine of Eutyches. Later, under Justinian (A.D. 527), the Monophysites separated from the Melchites and chose their own patriarch, being afterwards called Copts.

It is impossible to close one's eyes to the fact that, during this period of persecution and massacre, imminent peril of death must have forced many a band of the priests and followers of the ancient Egyptian and other religions to seek safety in flight. The [pg 531] events which took place in Egypt between A.D. 379 and 451, culminating in Silco's invasion, must unquestionably have been deeply felt by the descendants of the ancient Phœnician, Carthaginian and Grecian exiles, fugitives and mercenaries who, during countless centuries, had founded colonies along the Libyan coast, and pushed migration further westward along the coast line. Migrations from these regions would doubtless have resulted in the remarkable combination of archaic star, fire-drill and socket worship found in Yucatan and Mexico, existing alongside of a highly developed and perfected philosophical scheme of social organization identical, in principle, with that which, in the Old World, constituted an ideal which was the result of centuries of experience and active intellectual life.

The present investigation, in which I have collected more material than it has been possible to present in this publication, brings out facts tending to show that, originally, both hemispheres were peopled from the North, and that, in antiquity, at intervals, an extremely limited intercourse was kept up between the Old and New Worlds. The obvious fact that navigation must have been seriously impeded by the interregnum of Polaris, lasting for many centuries, would explain a prolonged isolation of America anterior to the Christian era. Whereas the equatorial currents facilitated the voyage to America, the same favorable conditions did not accompany navigation in the same latitudes in a reverse direction, and this suggests the probability that few who set out for “the hidden land,” ever returned to the port whence they sailed. Investigation seems to reveal that influences, emanating from the most ancient centres of Old World civilization, reached sundered regions of America at different times, and that they could have been carried there by a seafaring and building race such as the Minyans, the Magas, the Phœnicians or their descendants.

If such were the case it would be reasonable to expect that, in America, traces of words associated with the archaic set of ideas would be found, and the same method of writing. Let us now refer with prudent reservations as to the possibility of their being accidental, to the striking resemblances which undoubtedly exist between certain names for God, Heaven, North, Middle, etc., in the languages of the most ancient civilizations of the Old World and the Maya and Nahuatl. For convenient reference and without detailed comment, these words are presented as Appendix III.

[pg 532]

Too much importance must not, of course, be given to these linguistic analogies; at the same time we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these broken fragments of language, traceable to India, Babylonia-Assyria, Egypt and Greece, are found, in America, clinging tenaciously to a set of cosmical ideas and a scheme of organization identical in both hemispheres.

It has been surprising to me, for instance, to learn, by carefully collecting facts, that whereas Professor Sayce tells us that the supreme god of the Phœnicians was named Yeud or Ekhad, the supreme god of the Mexican Chichimecs (literally, Red race) was named Youalli-Ehecatl, which signifies, literally, night-air or wind. I likewise ascertained that, whereas the word yau or yu signifies the source or origin in Chinese, is linked to a character forming a cross and is homogeneous with Yaou Sing, a star in Ursa Major, described as “revolving,” the Mexican name for the pole-star god was Yaual or Yohual Tecuhtli, the lord of the circle or of the night.

Again there is a remarkable similarity between the Mexican yaualli=circle and the verb yoli or yuli=to resuscitate or vivify; the Chinese ui=to turn around, and the Scandinavian yul, yeul or yol = wheel, also the festival of the winter solstice, when nature seemed to resuscitate. Whereas the significance of the above Mexican, Chinese and Scandinavian names, is clear, no meaning has, to my knowledge, been attached to the Semitic name for the supreme god, which, as Professor Sayce informs us, was pronounced Yahu or Yaho or Yahve (see Appendix, list i).

Other striking resemblances are found between the names for handicraftsman and master-builder in widely distant countries. Thus, in Phrygia, we have the Daktuloi, the builders who erected monuments decorated with cross-symbols arranged so as to form a geometrical design, such as represented in fig. , 2. In Oaxaca the Toltecatl=builders and handicraftsmen, erected the walled temple and cruciform structures at Mitla, and decorated them with geometrical designs.

Reliable authorities teach us that “the Hittites were the northern minyan or menyan=measurers, a building race” (Hewitt); that Aha-Mena, the first historical ruler of Egypt, was a builder; that the name of Amun, the god of the Ammonites, signified “the builder.” Dictionaries reveal that, in America, Maya-speaking people designated a master builder or handicraftsman as ah-men, or [pg 533] menyah which, in Nahuatl, became amanteca. In Yucatan the name for North was Aman or Xaman; the building race of civilizers seems to have been associated with that region, which the Arabians named Shamaliyy. In the Babylonian-Assyrian Shamash, the Sanscrit Brahman and the Egyptian Amen-ra, we seem to have but different forms of the same word, which recurs in the Akkadian-Sumerian Sama, or an=the revolving heaven (see Appendix, list).

It is to philologists that I refer the question whether the resemblances, in sound and meaning, of certain words I have found associated, in widely sundered countries, with the universal cosmical set of ideas, are merely accidental or whether they furnish indication of a remote common origin or of contact at a later period. It will interest me particularly to learn their opinion as to the oldest forms of the words; and whether there is really no clue to the meaning of the Hebrew Yahu and the Phœnician Yeud-Ekhad. One is tempted to inquire whether the Chichimecan Youalli-Ehecatl was not the same and whether this and other analogies do not constitute evidence tending to establish that Mexico was a Phœnician colony in which during centuries of isolation the archaic forms and meanings of Phœnician words were preserved.

It is my hope that these lists will be carefully examined and explained by competent authorities, to whose judgment they are respectfully submitted. Whether they will be accounted for in one way or another, these lists will be found to establish the existence of striking resemblances which, by themselves, might not carry weight, but which unquestionably gain in significance when found in conjunction with cosmical conceptions, social organization, forms of architecture and cross-symbolism, which appear universal.

A few words here concerning the undoubted general resemblances that exist between the Chinese and Japanese, and Central American methods of organization—resemblances which even extend to certain words directly traceable to Western Asiatic influence in the case of the Eastern Asiatic civilizations. The existence of marked differences between the Chinese and Maya-Mexican numerical systems and determination of elements, appears to exclude the possibility that dominating Asiatic influences could have reached America via China and Japan after the still existing, crystallized forms of government and calendar had been established in the latter countries. As far as I can judge, the great antiquity attributed, by Chinese historians, to the establishment of the governmental [pg 534] and cyclical schemes, still in use, appears extremely doubtful. Referring the question to Sinologists, I venture to ask whether it does not seem probable that the present Chinese scheme dates from the lifetime of Lao-tze, in the sixth century B.C., a period marked, as I have pointed out, by the growth of Ionian philosophy, one feature of which was the invention of numerical schemes applied to “divine polities” and ideal forms of government. Future investigation may, perhaps, prove that “the powerful mental ferment” alluded to by Huxley, as spreading between the eighth and ninth centuries B.C., over the whole of the area comprised between the Ægean and North Hindustan, was caused by the growth and diffusion of plans of ideal states, which would naturally suggest and lead to the formation of bands of enthusiasts, who would set out in search of districts where they could carry out their principles and ideals.

Personally, I am strongly inclined to assign the origin of the Chinese and the Mexican schemes, which are identical in principle, to the same source, and to believe that they were carried in opposite directions, at different periods, by seafarers and colonists, animated by the same purpose. Favorably established in distant regions, both grew and flourished during centuries, constituting analogous examples of an immense, submissive, native population living under a highly perfected, artificial, numerical, scheme of religious government, preserved intact and enforced by a ruling caste, who possessed superior knowledge and claimed divine descent.

It is, of course, to Chinese and Japanese scholars and to archaeologists, some of whom constitute the able staff of the Jesup Expedition, who are investigating the question of Asiatic contact, that I look for further information and enlightenment as to prehistoric contact between China and America.

The foregoing investigation seems to have shown that in all [pg 535] countries alike, at one period or other, the cross-symbol or swastika expressed absolutely the same meaning. Primarily the record of a year, which suggested the division of the heaven into four parts, it had come to signify the establishment of communal life on a basis of fixed law, order and harmony. Like the number four itself which, in Pythagorean philosophy, is identified with wisdom and justice “because it is the first square number, the product of equals,” the cruciform symbols have been the emblems of justice, equality and brotherhood.

From the dawn of human history, the cross, therefore, appears to have expressed a plan as simple as it was noble and great, which consisted in peaceably uniting men, on principles of good-will, peace, equity, equality and mutual help, of instituting and organizing communal life, and of regulating its activity in accord with the immutable laws which govern the movements of celestial bodies, causing the circumpolar constellations to assume opposite positions, forming the sign of the cross, and marking seasons, days and years, all testifying to the existence of a single, all-ruling, all-pervading, stable [pg 536] and eternal central power, who thus controlled not only the heavens but, by a human representative, the earthly kingdom, laid out on the celestial plan.

Considering that no less an authority than St. Augustine has asserted “that which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and in fact was with the human race from the beginning,” it is permissible to ask whether the above scheme does not strikingly substantiate his dictum, afford a deep view under the surface of accumulated dogma and a perception of the mighty principle that has been at work from the beginning of all things and was understood by many at that time when “the people that sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light sprang up.”... “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ ” (Matthew iv, 16, 17). Adopting the cross as the emblem [pg 537] of his earthly mission he said: “If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” By the words: “I bear in my body the mark of the Lord Jesus,” St. Paul designates the recognized “mark” to have been the quadruplicate cross of the Saviour, who charged his apostles to preach, saying: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and promised them that “ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew xix, 28). The mother of Zebedee's children came unto him asking that her sons might sit “the one on thy right hand and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom” (Matthew xx, 20). Repeatedly, the Teacher, referring to children, said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,” or “Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” St. Paul and his followers were designated as “those that have turned the world upside down ... doing contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus” (Acts xvii, 6 and 7).

It is well known that the early Christian church was persecuted because, from the first, it preached a total regeneration of human society and its reëstablishment of a basis of peace and good-will, social equality, absolute justice, mutual aid, respect and sympathy, unselfish, disinterested subservience of the individual to the interest of the community.

It was for the sublime principle of a religious democracy and the regeneration of human society that, in an age of tyranny, oppression and bloodshed, the early Christian martyrs laid down their lives. The foundations of religious orders were as many attempts to realize the Christian ideal, and to this day the Roman Catholic Church, whose clergy and religious orders unquestionably afford a splendid living example of devotion to a common cause, self-abnegation, obedience and humility, clings to the ideal of a state in which temporal power is wielded by a hierarchy raised to rulership from all ranks, merely by virtue of personal, moral and intellectual qualities. Throughout the Christian church the ideal of religious democracy prevails. Each day it is prayed for in the words “Thy kingdom come,” by those taught to look forward to the promise of the time when “former things are passed away and a holy Jerusalem shall descend out of heaven from God, lying four-square, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels and names written [pg 538] thereon which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel ... and the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb,.... And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple in it ... but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.... And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month ...” (Revelation, chaps. xxi and xxii).

It appears significant, in the light of the present investigation, that the birth of Christianity, as well as the revival of pagan systems of philosophy, embodying principles for the organization of religious brotherhoods and ideal democracies, should coincide with the spread of the great tidings that a star had been seen by the Magi, or “wise men of the East, who came from the east to Jerusalem.” Occurring, as it did, after “the interregnum as regards pole-stars,” during which nomadic tribes and seafarers had vainly sought the fixed star which had guided their forefathers, the appearance of a brilliant pole-star must have seemed doubly significant and revived, among pagan philosophers, the ideal of an earthly kingdom ruled by Heaven. The advent, at this time, of the Messiah who, with his twelve disciples, announced that the kingdom of heaven was nigh and taught that God was to be worshipped in the Spirit only, must indeed have appeared particularly impressive and well-timed.

Faithfully clinging to the ideal of a regenerated religious democracy, the early Christian church maintained itself through centuries of persecution and is slowly advancing, amidst almost overwhelming and innumerable difficulties, towards its realization.

Returning to Mexico we find that its civilization at the time of the Conquest was precisely what might be expected if a small body of men of superior wisdom and experience, such as was possessed by a remnant of Græco-Egyptian philosophers, had embarked in ships manned by the descendants of Phœnician seafarers, and found refuge in the “land of the West,” amongst simple, docile people, existing in large numbers, who, treated “as little children and instructed with love and gentleness, willingly submitted themselves to the guidance of their teachers.” A single, short-lived generation [pg 539] of these would have amply sufficed for the establishment of the governmental system and calendar, the firm institution of a “celestial kingdom,” and the spread of knowledge of the technique of various arts and industries deemed most useful to the natives. On the other hand, the foreign element, whose aims were chiefly ideal, could have left little or no impression upon the evolution of the native race, its art and industry, which doubtlessly followed its original independent line of development.

It is remarkable how the echo of great events in Old World history seem to have reached the Western hemisphere. In the Old World the eleventh and twelfth centuries were marked by a revival of religious enthusiasm, by the Crusades, the persecution of infidels by the Christian world and by a general stirring amongst oriental people, the descendants of the ancient pole-star worshippers.

Historical records and traditions accord in stating that in about the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, the civilizations of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America underwent a great period of warfare, pestilence and famine, leading to the disintegration of the great ancient centres, to numberless migrations, and to an assumption of dominion in Mexico by a fierce warrior-race who increased the number of human sacrifices. It seems significant that it is to this troublous period in the history of ancient America that the advent of the Incas in Peru is assigned by native tradition, which also records the existence of more ancient centres of civilization situated around the Titicaca lake. The foundation of the Inca empire is assigned to as late as about 1200 A.D. (see p. , note 1), and all who compare Plato's scheme for the reëstablishment of the holy polity of the Magnetes, and the description of the Peruvian “Four in One” state, must admit that the latter constitutes the most perfect example known, of a community based on those numerical principles which were considered most perfect by Plato. At a first glance one might be tempted to conclude that the foreign civilizers of Peru, the Incas, were acquainted with Plato's twelve-fold scheme and deliberately established or reëstablished a “divine polity” accordingly, naming it the “Four in One” and instituting the worship of a supreme divinity designated as “Earth, Air, Fire and Water in One,” in consonance with the cosmical theory said to have been first formulated by Empedocles about B.C. 444, and adopted by Plato. Reflection shows, however, that no such conclusion is justifiable until competent authorities have thoroughly [pg 540] investigated and satisfactorily established how far the ideas of Empedocles and Plato were original and how far they incorporated older philosophical ideas, such as were preserved by the Egyptian priesthood or had been disseminated by the Phœnicians. Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that the Inca colony constitutes a most valuable object-lesson of a “cosmical state” founded on precisely the numerical scheme and principles of organization advocated by Plato. Reflection shows, moreover, that such a polity could only have been established and maintained itself during centuries, in a land free from enemies and amongst docile people “apt for subjection.”

A significant result of a critical comparison of the celestial kingdoms of Peru and Mexico is the perception that, in the former, as in Egypt, a hereditary sovereignty was exercised by male and female sacerdotal rulers of a “divine line of descent.” On the other hand we find, in Mexico, a state of affairs in exact accordance with Montezuma's account of the behavior of his predecessors towards the lord who had led them and presided over the foundation of the Mexican empire. During his absence they, his vassals, established democratical principles and when he returned, having intermarried with women of the country and founded new cities, they refused to recognize his authority and let him depart. From Montezuma himself we learn that, although they thus emancipated themselves from their former lord, they continued to regard themselves as dependent and owing allegiance to the mother-city whence they had come. Until the time of the Conquest, however, they [pg 541] were governed by rulers whom they elected, and who had risen in rank merely by virtue of their moral and intellectual distinction.

It is indeed deeply suggestive and impressive to realize that, in antiquity as in modern times, the American Continent seems to have been sought, as a place of refuge, by men whose ideals have been state institutions founded on democratic principles. The ancient polities of Mexico and Peru and, what is more, the archaic Pueblos of to-day, alike furnish examples of conditions, such as undoubtedly existed in Mediterranean countries in ancient times and inspired Greek statesmen and philosophers to plan ideal polities, and must have preceded the creation of the Jewish and early Christian spiritualized ideal of a New Jerusalem, pervaded throughout by the Divine Spirit. In conclusion, there are a few points which I recommend to the consideration of students. Different writers have, as Prescott summarizes, with certainty discerned in the highest American civilizations, a Semitic or an Egyptian or an Asiatic origin.

This remarkable combination of features, distinctively characteristic of the said civilizations, actually existed amongst the Phœnicians who, as Professor Sayce relates, were allied to the Semitic race, were affected by contact with their cousins the Arameans or Syrians, penetrated to the coast of India, derived their art from Babylonia, Egypt, and later from Assyria, and “knew how to combine together the elements it had received and to return them, modified and improved, to the countries from which they had been borrowed.” In the case of India and China it is an established and accepted truth that an active communication existed between these countries and Asia Minor, which was carried on by a race of seafarers and colonists. When it is realized that, through them, distant regions became known and accessible, and that at one time in the history of Greek philosophy, for instance, statesmen, philosophers and mathematicians alike rivalled each other in planning ideal states, based on the identical principle: the harmonizing of human life with Nature's laws; it seems but rational to infer that, at different times, bands of enthusiasts, adopting one numerical scheme in preference to another, and led perhaps by its inventor or disciples, set out in search of distant countries where they could undisturbedly establish “celestial kingdoms” according to their ideal plan. To such an enterprise as this I venture to assign the establishment of the celestial kingdom of China, drawing [pg 542] attention to Biot's statement, cited on p. , that year cycles (i. e. the sociological and chronological system since in use) were introduced there from India, after the Christian era. This being the case, contrary to the claims of a much greater antiquity by Chinese scholars, the present form of the “celestial kingdom” appears to date from the arrival in China, from Persia, of Semitic emigrants, during the first century of our era (see p. ), and to have undergone a certain re-modelling in the first half of the sixth century, after the arrival of a band of Syrian Christians (p. ).

Pointing out that these dates would make it appear as though the cyclical systems of India and Eastern Asia had been formulated under the direct or indirect influence of Greek philosophy, I observe that the date of their introduction and establishment assigns them to approximately the same period which produced the numerical scheme adopted by Constantine, Maya and Mexican calendrical and chronological scheme. At the period when Constantine established New Rome and instituted four divisions of the empire, each divided into thirteen yielding a total of fifty-two prefectures, there lived in Byzantium a philosopher and rhetorician (315-390 A.D.) whose name was Themistius and who filled the office of prefect of Constantinople. It is well known that the attempt thus to organize the empire proved fruitless and that the proclamation of Christianity as the religion of his empire by Theodosius I (379 A.D.) inaugurated a prolonged persecution of pagan religion and philosophy (see p. ).

Is it inadmissible to consider at least the possibility that, disappointed and driven from their land, some of those who clung to the ancient ideal, and were acquainted with the perfected scheme of state organization instituted by Constantine during the lifetime of Themistius, carried it at a later period, to the “hidden land” of the West and established it there, where it was preserved intact until the time of the Spanish Conquest? Is it by accident only that one of the names of the capital of ancient Mexico, as preserved in the writings of Cortés and Bernal Diaz is Temistitan, literally “land of Temis,” the Nahuatl language not furnishing any meaning to the latter word? Can it be that, just as the word Teotl, resembling Theos, is found on Mexican soil, employed with the same meaning as in Greek, the name Temistitan means “the land of established law, order and justice” dedicated to the Greek Themis, just as New Rome was dedicated to Sofia=Wisdom? Or [pg 543] did some sort of connection exist between the name of the Mexican capital, the system on which it was established and the philosopher Themistius?

Is it by chance merely that the state calendar of Temistitan was based on 4×13=52 divisions, and that Themistius of Byzantium, a member of that school of philosophy which had evolved numberless plans and numerical schemes for ideal states, should have held one of the 4×13=52 prefectures during Constantine's reign? In order to make the most rapid advance towards a solution of the great problem of the origin of American civilizations, I venture to suggest that Orientalists and Americanists should combine and freshly study it from opposite points of view. One side might be taken by those who incline to admit the possibility that a few Phœnician traders discovered the American continent in ancient times and that, subsequently, those to whom they imparted their discovery and their successors, the daring Greek navigators, conveyed thither, at intervals, bands of refugees or enthusiasts who braved danger and death, in the hope of reaching the blessed land where, free from persecution, they could found ideal democracies or divine polities.

Besides studying and adding to the numberless similarities which have been cited by so many different authorities and to which I have added a modest contribution, let them produce evidence showing the improbability that the identical forms of cult, religion, social organization, calendar cycles and numerical schemes should have been independently evolved two or more times by distinct races. On the other hand, let those who hold the view that American civilization was purely autochthonous, advance grounds for the supposition that it developed a school of philosophical speculation and that America produced its Empedocles and its Plato. Let them also formulate the psychical law which caused the American race to formulate the four elements, recognized as such by the philosophers of India and Greece, and not the five of Chinese philosophy; and to evolve numerical schemes applied to social organization, identical with those current in India, Western Asia and the Mediterranean countries, but different from that employed in China and Japan. It will also be incumbent upon them not only to disprove American traditions, which record the introduction of a higher civilization and plans of social organization by strangers, but also to demonstrate that, although in ancient times, Phœnician [pg 544] traders carried on an active traffic with Britain, daring the perils of the Bay of Biscay, they could not possibly have ventured across the southern Atlantic, even in the most favorable seasons. It has remained a source of sincere regret to me that circumstances prevented my attending the Orientalist Congress which met at Rome, in October, 1899, under the presidency of the illustrious Count Angelo de Gubernatis, to whom credit is due for having first suggested and planned that a section of the Congress should devote itself to the discussion of prehistoric contact or connection between the Old and New Worlds.

With an apology for my non-attendance and consequent failure to aid in organizing the section and carrying out a plan which met with my enthusiastic approval, I venture to submit the present investigation to the President and officers of the Orientalist Congress with the earnest hope that it may contain material and suggestions for fruitful discussions during the next Congress held, and that these may be carried on in a section devoted to the consideration of facts relating to prehistoric America and its relation to the Old World.

Summary and Conclusion.

In the preceding pages the view is advanced that the ancient cross-symbol or swastika was first used by man, presumably in circumpolar regions, as a record of the opposite positions assumed, by circumpolar constellations, in performing their nocturnal and annual circuit around Polaris. Employed as a year sign in the first case, the cross or swastika later became the symbol of the Four Quarters, of quadruplicate division and of a stable central power whose rule extended in four directions and controlled the entire Heaven.

At some remote period of antiquity man developed the idea of social organization and, in India, ancient Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria, actual proofs exist that the earliest cities and states were divided into four quarters, a division involving the distribution of the population into four tribes under a central chief. Wherever this division was carried out, it represented an attempt to harmonize human society and the establishment of the ideal of a religious democracy, founded on principles of law, order, justice, peace and good will. The pyramid, a primitive form of which consisted of four stories, and cruciform sacred structures, may be regarded as [pg 545] monuments commemorating a cosmical and territorial organization into four parts. The more extended conception of seven directions in space, consisting of the Above and Below, or Heaven and Earth, the Four Quarters and the sacred Middle, the synopsis of all, was also evolved. In the confederations of India and Iran, and Arabia, in the seven-storied towers of Babylonia, and in the division of the Egyptians into seven classes, we find the earliest traces of a practical application of this numerical division.

The ancient historical records of Egypt and Greece reveal that, in the earliest polities, the population was divided into groups consisting of a fixed number of individuals, officially represented by chieftains, or officers of the state, and that, in consequence, a state formed a unit, constituted according to a mathematical scheme, which was also applied to the regulation of time. Each officer of the state held office for a fixed term, in a prescribed order of rotation. The year was divided into a fixed number of seasons, marked by the positions of a circumpolar constellation, and this therefore appeared to regulate not only the cycle of time but the governmental rotation of office and the entire activity of the community. Starting from a common basis of quadruplicate division in different countries, a great variety of constitutions of state was independently invented by statesmen and philosophers, who devised cycles produced by different combinations of numbers and signs, the object being to regulate time and communal life in imitation of the law, order and harmony existing in the motion of the stars and under the guidance of a supreme ruler, the earthly representative of Polaris.

The origin of these ideas and governmental scheme, in the Old World, is assigned by competent authorities to a northern race which had discovered the art of fire-making and evolved a religious cult and ritual suggested by it, in association with pole-star worship. Their civilization is supposed to have been developed by contact with a southern race, in Phrygia, and to have been carried at a remote period by their seafaring descendants to India, Asia Minor, Egypt and beyond the pillars of Hercules, to European countries, situated on the Atlantic.