The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

"The table was well supplied with substantial meats, especially game,
among which the most conspicuous was the turkey. Also, there were found
very delicious vegetables and fruits of every variety native to the
continent. Their palate was still further regaled by confections and
pastry, for which their maize-flower and sugar furnished them ample
materials. The meats were kept warm with chafing-dishes. The table was
ornamented with vases of silver and sometimes gold of delicate
workmanship. The favorite beverage was chocolatl, flavored with vanilla
and different spices. The fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture
of sweets and acids, supplied various agreeable drinks of different
degrees of strength."

It is not necessary to describe their great public works, their floating
gardens, their aqueducts, bridges, forts, temples,

COMMON FORM OF ARCH, CENTRAL AMERICA.

palaces, and gigantic pyramids, all ornamented with wonderful statuary.

SECTION OF THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF ATREUS AT MYCENAE

We find a strong resemblance between the form of arch used in the
architecture of Central America and that of the oldest buildings of
Greece. The Palenque arch is made by the gradual overlapping of the
strata of the building, as shown in the accompanying cut from Baldwin's
"Ancient America," page 100. It was the custom of these ancient
architects to fill in the arch itself with masonry, as shown in the
picture

ARCH OF LAS MONJAS, PALENQUE, CENTRAL AMERICA

on page 355 of the Arch of Las Monjas, Palenque. If now we took at the
representation of the "Treasure-house of Atreus" at Mycenae, on page
354-one of the oldest structures in Greece--we find precisely the same
form of arch, filled in in the same way.

Rosengarten ("Architectural Styles," p. 59) says:

"The base of these treasure-houses is circular, and the covering of a
dome shape; it does not, however, form an arch, but courses of stone are
laid horizontally over one another in such a way that each course
projects beyond the one below it, till the space at the highest course
becomes so narrow that a single stone covers it. Of all those that have
survived to the present day the treasure-house at Atreus is the most
venerable."

The same form of arch is found among the ruins of that interesting
people, the Etruscans.

"Etruscan vaults are of two kinds. The more curious and probably the
most ancient are false arches, formed of horizontal courses of stone,
each a little overlapping the other, and carried on until the aperture
at the top could be closed by a single superincumbent slab. Such is the
construction of the Regulini-Galassi vault, at Cervetere, the ancient
Caere." (Rawlinson's "Origin of Nations," p. 117.)

It is sufficient to say, in conclusion, that Mexico, under European
rule, or under her own leaders, has never again risen to her former
standard of refinement, wealth, prosperity, or civilization.

CHAPTER II.

THE EGYPTIAN COLONY.

What proofs have we that the Egyptians were a colony from Atlantis?

1. They claimed descent from "the twelve great gods," which must have
meant the twelve gods of Atlantis, to wit, Poseidon and Cleito and their
ten sons.

2. According to the traditions of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians derived
their civilization from them; and as the Egyptians far antedated the
rise of the Phoenician nations proper, this must have meant that Egypt
derived its civilization from the same country to which the Phoenicians
owed their own origin. The Phoenician legends show that Misor, from
whom, the Egyptians were descended, was the child of the Phoenician gods
Amynus and Magus. Misor gave birth to Taaut, the god of letters, the
inventor of the alphabet, and Taaut became Thoth, the god of history of
the Egyptians. Sanchoniathon tells us that "Chronos (king of Atlantis)
visited the South, and gave all Egypt to the god Taaut, that it might be
his kingdom." "Misor" is probably the king "Mestor" named by Plato.

3. According to the Bible, the Egyptians were descendants of Ham, who
was one of the three sons of Noah who escaped from the Deluge, to wit,
the destruction of Atlantis.

4. The great similarity between the Egyptian civilization and that of
the American nations.

5. The fact that the Egyptians claimed to be red men.

6. The religion of Egypt was pre-eminently sun-worship, and Ra was the
sun-god of Egypt, Rama, the sun of the Hindoos, Rana, a god of the
Toltecs, Raymi, the great festival of the sun of the Peruvians, and
Rayam, a god of Yemen.

7. The presence of pyramids in Egypt and America.

8. The Egyptians were the only people of antiquity who were
well-informed as to the history of Atlantis. The Egyptians were never a
maritime people, and the Atlanteans must have brought that knowledge to
them. They were not likely to send ships to Atlantis.

9. We find another proof of the descent of the Egyptians from Atlantis
in their belief as to the "under-world." This land of the dead was
situated in the West--hence the tombs were all placed, whenever
possible, on the west bank of the Nile. The constant cry of the mourners
as the funeral procession moved forward was, "To the west; to the west."
This under-world was beyond the water, hence the funeral procession
always crossed a body of water. "Where the tombs were, as in most cases,
on the west bank of the Nile, the Nile was crossed; where they were on
the eastern shore the procession passed over a sacred lake." (R. S.
Poole, Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 17.) In the procession was
"a sacred ark of the sun."

All this is very plain: the under-world in the West, the land of the
dead, was Atlantis, the drowned world, the world beneath the horizon,
beneath the sea, to which the peasants of Brittany looked from Cape Raz,
the most western cape projecting into the Atlantic. It was only to be
reached from Egypt by crossing the water, and it was associated with the
ark, the emblem of Atlantis in all lands.

The soul of the dead man was supposed to journey to the under-world by
"a water progress" (Ibid., p. 18), his destination was the Elysian
Fields, where mighty corn grew, and where he was expected to cultivate
the earth; "this task was of supreme importance." (Ibid., p. 19.) The
Elysian Fields were the "Elysion" of the Greeks, the abode of the
blessed, which we have seen was an island in the remote west. The
Egyptian belief referred to a real country; they described its cities,
mountains, and rivers; one of the latter was called Uranes, a name which
reminds us of the Atlantean god Uranos. In connection with all this we
must not forget that Plato described Atlantis as "that sacred island
lying beneath the sun." Everywhere in the ancient world we find the
minds of men looking to the west for the land of the dead. Poole says,
"How then can we account for this strong conviction? Surely it must be a
survival of an ancient belief which flowed in the very veins of the
race." (Contemporary Review, 1881, p. 19.) It was based on an universal
tradition that under "an immense ocean," in "the far west," there was an
"under-world," a world comprising millions of the dead, a mighty race,
that had been suddenly swallowed up in the greatest catastrophe known to
man since he had inhabited the globe.

10. There is no evidence that the civilization of Egypt was developed in
Egypt itself; it must have been transported there from some other
country. To use the words of a recent writer in Blackwood,

"Till lately it was believed that the use of the papyrus for writing was
introduced about the time of Alexander the Great; then Lepsius found the
hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus-roll on monuments of the twelfth
dynasty; afterward he found the same sign on monuments of the fourth
dynasty, which is getting back pretty close to Menes, the protomonarch;
and, indeed, little doubt is entertained that the art of writing on
papyrus was understood as early as the days of Menes himself. The fruits
of investigation in this, as in many other subjects, are truly most
marvellous. Instead of exhibiting the rise and progress of any branches
of knowledge, they tend to prove that nothing had any rise or progress,
but that everything is referable to the very earliest dates. The
experience of the Egyptologist must teach him to reverse the observation
of Topsy, and to '`spect that nothing growed,' but that as soon as men
were planted on the banks of the Nile they were already the cleverest
men that ever lived, endowed with more knowledge and more power than
their successors for centuries and centuries could attain to. Their
system of writing, also, is found to have been complete from the very
first. . . .

"But what are we to think when the antiquary, grubbing in the dust and
silt of five thousand years ago to discover some traces of infant
effort--some rude specimens of the ages of Magog and Mizraim, in which
we may admire the germ that has since developed into a wonderful
art--breaks his shins against an article so perfect that it equals if it
does not excel the supreme stretch of modern ability? How shall we
support the theory if it come to our knowledge that, before Noah was
cold in his grave, his descendants were adepts in construction and in
the fine arts, and that their achievements were for magnitude such as,
if we possess the requisite skill, we never attempt to emulate? . . .

"As we have not yet discovered any trace of the rude, savage Egypt, but
have seen her in her very earliest manifestations already skilful,
erudite, and strong, it is impossible to determine the order of her
inventions. Light may yet be thrown upon her rise and progress, but our
deepest researches have hitherto shown her to us as only the mother of a
most accomplished race. How they came by their knowledge is matter for
speculation; that they possessed it is matter of fact. We never find
them without the ability to organize labor, or shrinking from the very
boldest efforts in digging canals and irrigating, in quarrying rock, in
building, and in sculpture."

The explanation is simple: the waters of the Atlantic now flow over the
country where all this magnificence and power were developed by slow
stages from the rude beginnings of barbarism.

And how mighty must have been the parent nation of which this Egypt was
a colony!

Egypt was the magnificent, the golden bridge, ten thousand years long,
glorious with temples and pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the
most complete and continuous records of human history, along which the
civilization of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests,
philosophers and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to
Greece, to Rome, to Europe, to America. As far back in the ages as the
eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a
point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the
arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other
and greater empire of which even this wonderworking Nile-land is but a
faint and imperfect copy.

Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her works: The
pyramids, still in their ruins, are the marvel of mankind. The river
Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous embankments to make a
place for the city of Memphis. The artificial lake of Moeris was created
as a reservoir for the waters of the Nile: it was four hundred and fifty
miles in circumference and three hundred and fifty feet deep, with
subterranean channels, flood-gates, locks, and dams, by which the
wilderness was redeemed from sterility. Look at the magnificent
mason-work of this ancient people! Mr. Kenrick, speaking of the casing
of the Great Pyramid, says, "The joints are scarcely perceptible, and
not wider than the thickness of silver-paper, and the cement so
tenacious that fragments of the casing-stones still remain in their
original position, notwithstanding the lapse of so many centuries, and
the violence by which they were detached." Look at the ruins of the
Labyrinth, which aroused the astonishment of Herodotus; it had three
thousand chambers, half of them above ground and half below--a
combination of courts, chambers, colonnades, statues, and pyramids. Look
at the Temple of Karnac, covering a square each side of which is
eighteen hundred feet. Says a recent writer, "Travellers one and all
appear to have been unable to find words to express the feelings with
which these sublime remains inspired them. They have been astounded and
overcome by the magnificence and the prodigality of workmanship here to
be admired. Courts, halls, gate-ways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic
figures, sculptures, rows of sphinxes, are massed in such profusion that
the sight is too much for modern comprehension." Denon says, "It is
hardly possible to believe, after having seen it, in the reality of the
existence of so many buildings collected on a single point--in their
dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction
required, and in the incalculable expense of so much magnificence." And
again, "It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him
to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally
yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake." There were lakes and
mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. "The cathedral of Notre
Dame at Paris could be set inside one of the halls of Karnac, and not
touch the walls! . . . The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the
Catacombs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs,
pyramids, and pillars." Every stone was covered with inscriptions.

The state of society in the early days of Egypt approximated very
closely to our modern civilization. Religion consisted in the worship of
one God and the practice of virtue; forty-two commandments prescribed
the duties of men to themselves, their neighbors, their country, and the
Deity; a heaven awaited the good and a hell the vicious; there was a
judgment-day when the hearts of men were weighed:

"He is sifting out the hearts of men
Before his judgment-seat."

Monogamy was the strict rule; not even the kings, in the early days,
were allowed to have more than one wife. The wife's rights of separate
property and her dower were protected by law; she was "the lady of the
house;" she could "buy, sell, and trade on her own account;" in case of
divorce her dowry was to be repaid to her, with interest at a high rate.
The marriage-ceremony embraced an oath not to contract any other
matrimonial alliance. The wife's status was as high in the earliest days
of Egypt as it is now in the most civilized nations of Europe or America.

Slavery was permitted, but the slaves were treated with the greatest
humanity. In the confessions, buried with the dead, the soul is made to
declare that "I have not incriminated the slave to his master," There
was also a clause in the commandments "which protected the laboring man
against the exaction of more than his day's labor." They were merciful
to the captives made in war; no picture represents torture inflicted
upon them; while the representation of a sea-fight shows them saving
their drowning enemies. Reginald Stuart Poole says (Contemporary Review,
August, 1881, p. 43):

"When we consider the high ideal of the Egyptians, as proved by their
portrayals of a just life, the principles they laid down as the basis of
ethics, the elevation of women among them, their humanity in war, we
must admit that their moral place ranks very high among the nations of
antiquity.

"The true comparison of Egyptian life is with that of modern nations.
This is far too difficult a task to be here undertaken. Enough has been
said, however, to show that we need not think that in all respects they
were far behind us."

Then look at the proficiency in art of this ancient people.

They were the first mathematicians of the Old World. Those Greeks whom
we regard as the fathers of mathematics were simply pupils of Egypt.
They were the first land-surveyors. They were the first astronomers,
calculating eclipses, and watching the periods of planets and
constellations. They knew the rotundity of the earth, which it was
supposed Columbus had discovered!

"The signs of the zodiac were certainly in use among the Egyptians 1722
years before Christ. One of the learned men of our day, who for fifty
years labored to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon
a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the
zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed
was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to
whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the
exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on
the equinox of that year. This was done, and a diagram furnished by
parties ignorant of his object, which showed that on the 7th of October,
1722 B.C. the moon and planets occupied the exact point in the heavens
marked upon the coffin in the British Museum." (Goodrich's "Columbus,"
p. 22.)

They had clocks and dials for measuring time. They possessed gold and
silver money. They were the first agriculturists of the Old World,
raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc. They manufactured
linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years
B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and
sixty-five minor threads. They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze,
and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel. They were the
first chemists. The word "chemistry" comes from chemi, and chemi means
Egypt. They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made boats
out of earthenware; and, precisely as we are now making railroad
car-wheels of paper, they manufactured vessels of paper. Their dentists
filled teeth with gold; their farmers hatched poultry by artificial
beat. They were the first musicians; they possessed guitars, single and
double pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps, flutes, the sambric, ashur,
etc.; they had even castanets, such as are now used in Spain. In
medicine and surgery they had reached such a degree of perfection that
several hundred years B.C. the operation for the removal of cataract
from the eye was performed among them; one of the most delicate and
difficult feats of surgery, only attempted by us in the most recent
times. "The papyrus of Berlin" states that it was discovered, rolled up
in a case, under the feet of an Anubis in the town of Sekhem, in the
days of Tet (or Thoth), after whose death it was transmitted to King
Sent, and was then restored to the feet of the statue. King Sent
belonged to the second dynasty, which flourished 4751 B.C., and the
papyrus was old in his day. This papyrus is a medical treatise; there
are in it no incantations or charms; but it deals in reasonable
remedies, draughts, unguents and injections. The later medical papyri
contain a great deal of magic and incantations.

"Great and splendid as are the things which we know about oldest Egypt,
she is made a thousand times more sublime by our uncertainty as to the
limits of her accomplishments. She presents not a great, definite idea,
which, though hard to receive, is, when once acquired, comprehensible
and clear. Under the soil of the modern country are hid away thousands
and thousands of relics which may astonish the world for ages to come,
and change continually its conception of what Egypt was. The effect of
research seems to be to prove the objects of it to be much older than we
thought them to be--some things thought to be wholly modern having been
proved to be repetitions of things Egyptian, and other things known to
have been Egyptian being by every advance in knowledge carried back more
and more toward the very beginning of things. She shakes our most rooted
ideas concerning the world's history; she has not ceased to be a puzzle
and a lure: there is a spell over her still."

Renan says, "It has no archaic epoch." Osborn says, "It bursts upon us
at once in the flower of its highest perfection." Seiss says ("A,
Miracle in Stone," p. 40), "It suddenly takes its place in the world in
all its matchless magnificence, without father, without mother, and as
clean apart from all evolution as if it had dropped from the unknown
heavens." It had dropped from Atlantis.

Rawlinson says ("Origin of Nations," p. 13):

"Now, in Egypt, it is notorious that there is no indication of any early
period of savagery or barbarism. All the authorities agree that, however
far back we go, we find in Egypt no rude or uncivilized time out of
which civilization is developed. Menes, the first king, changes the
course of the Nile, makes a great reservoir, and builds the temple of
Phthah at Memphis. . . . We see no barbarous customs, not even the
habit, so slowly abandoned by all people, of wearing arms when not on
military service."

Tylor says (" Anthropology," p. 192):

"Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria handicrafts had
already come to a stage which could only have been reached by thousands
of years of progress. In museums still may be examined the work of their
joiners, stone-cutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and
in putting to shame the modern artificer. . . . To see gold jewellery of
the highest order, the student should examine that of the ancients, such
as the Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan."

The carpenters' and masons' tools of the ancient Egyptians were almost
identical with those used among us to-day.

There is a plate showing an Aztec priestess in Delafield's "Antiquities
of America," p. 61, which presents a head-dress strikingly Egyptian. In
the celebrated "tablet of the cross," at Palenque, we see a cross with a
bird perched upon it, to which (or to the cross) two priests are
offering sacrifice. In Mr. Stephens's representation from the Vocal
Memnon we find almost the same thing, the difference being that, instead
of an ornamented Latin cross, we have a crux commissa, and instead of
one bird there are two, not on the cross, but immediately above it. In
both cases the hieroglyphics, though the characters are of course
different, are disposed upon the stone in much the same manner.
(Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 61.)

Even the obelisks of Egypt have their counterpart in America.

Quoting from Molina ("History of Chili," tom. i., p. 169), McCullough
writes, "Between the hills of Mendoza and La Punta is a pillar of stone
one hundred and fifty feet high, and twelve feet in diameter."
("Researches," pp. 171, 172.) The columns of Copan stand detached and
solitary, so do the obelisks of Egypt; both are square or four-sided,
and covered with sculpture. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 60.)

In a letter by Jomard, quoted by Delafield, we read,

"I have recognized in your memoir on the division of time among the
Mexican nations, compared with those of Asia, some very striking
analogies between the Toltec characters and institutions observed on the
banks of the Nile. Among these analogies there is one which is worthy of
attention--it is the use of the vague year of three hundred and
sixty-five days, composed of equal months, and of five complementary
days, equally employed at Thebes and Mexico--a distance of three
thousand leagues. . . . In reality, the intercalation of the Mexicans
being thirteen days on each cycle of fifty-two years, comes to the same
thing as that of the Julian calendar, which is one day in four years;
and consequently supposes the duration of the year to be three hundred
and sixty-five days six hours. Now such was the length of the year among
the Egyptians--they intercalated an entire year of three hundred and
seventy-five days every one thousand four hundred and sixty years. ...
The fact of the intercalation (by the Mexicans) of thirteen days every
cycle that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days
and a quarter--is a proof that it was borrowed from the Egyptians, or
that they had a common origin." ("Antiquities of America," pp. 52, 53.)

The Mexican century began on the 26th of February, and the 26th of
February was celebrated from the time of Nabonassor, 747 B.C., because
the Egyptian priests, conformably to their astronomical observations,
had fixed the beginning of the month Toth, and the commencement of their
year, at noon on that day. The five intercalated days to make up the
three hundred and sixty-five days were called by the Mexicans Nemontemi,
or useless, and on them they transacted no business; while the
Egyptians, during that epoch, celebrated the festival of the birth of
their gods, as attested by Plutarch and others.

It will be conceded that a considerable degree of astronomical knowledge
must have been necessary to reach the conclusion that the true year
consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours (modern
science has demonstrated that it consists of three hundred and
sixty-five days and five hours, less ten seconds); and a high degree of
civilization was requisite to insist that the year must be brought
around, by the intercalation of a certain number of days in a certain
period of time, to its true relation to the seasons. Both were the
outgrowth of a vast, ancient civilization of the highest order, which
transmitted some part of its astronomical knowledge to its colonies
through their respective priesthoods.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33