[633] See the ‘colossal male head’ in General Palma di Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 123.

[634] Preface to History of Egypt, p. xvi; and vol. ii. 124, where a list of racial names is given. Brugsch, it should be noted, is here entirely opposed to his predecessors, De Rougé, Chabas, &c.

[635] As opposed to the Aqaiuasha or Achæans of the Caucasus (ii. 124).

[636] ‘I have seen it affirmed that in those times (early Roman) the youth was instructed in the Etruscan learning, as they are now in the Greek’ (Livy ix. 35).

[637] Described in Etruscan Bologna, p. 144. The blade is in Count Aria’s collection. The Sword of Misanello, une longue epée de fer, also in that museum, is noticed in p. 359, Transactions of the Congress of Bologna in 1871.

[638] One vol. folio large quarto, with 17 Tables. It was preceded by ‘Di una necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese,’ 1865, large quarto, with 20 Tables. Count Gozzadini is one of the earliest students who followed in the steps of M. Boucher de Perthes.

[639] A fine specimen of a dagger from Thebes with the rapier-blade, and a broad flat hilt of ivory, is in the Berlin Museum.

[640] Di un antico Sepolcro a Ceretolo nel Bolognese (Modena: Vincenzi, 1879), p. 9.

[641] This weapon resembled the bronze forms found at Broilo in Tuscany and in the great collection discovered in 1875 and called the ‘Fonderia di Bologna.’ An account of the latter is found in Note Archeologiche, &c. (Bologna: Fava e Garagnani, 1881).

[642] The learned French anthropologist compared these weapons with those found in the Marne graves. (Les Gaulois de Marzabotto, Revue Archéol. 1870–71, &c.)

[643] Count Gozzadini replied in M. G. de Mortillet’s Matériaux pour l’Histoire primitive de l’Homme; and the paper was entitled by the Editor (not by the author), ‘L’Élément Étrusque de Marzabotto est sans mélange avec l’élément gaulois’ (Jan. 1873).

[644] L’Étrurie et les Etrusques, vol. i. p. 93. Atlas, p. 2, Pl. II.

[645] Genthe, Program, &c. p. 15.

[646] The bronze is in the British Museum; the iron in the possession of Mr. H. S. Cuming (Meyrick).

[647] XXVIII. cap. 45.

[648] Vol. iv, Pl. XXX.; it is copied by Meyrick.

[649] The writer of this sentence is, curious to say, the learned Dr. Birch (p. 5, vol. i., Soc. Bib. Archæology, 1872). Even Justin (lib. i.) knew better; he makes Sesostris (ii. 3) 1,500 years older than Ninus, ‘the most ancient king of Assyria,’ whom he places in b.c. 2196–2144 (Wetzel).

[650] In the LXX Orech; the Cuneiform Uru-ki (City of the Land); in Talmud, Urikut, City of the Dead for Babylon (hod. Warka); and in Greek Orchóe, whence perhaps ‘Orcus.’ Urukh became among the Classics of Europe ‘pater Orchamus.’

[651] Assyrian Discoveries (London: Sampson Low & Co., 1876), p. 447. He gives, as a scheme of Abydenus and Berosus, the Chaldæan:—

	Years.
Alorus and 9 kings before the Babylonian Flood	432,000
86 kings after B. Flood to Median conquest (1st dynasty)	34,080 (33,091)
8 Median kings (2nd dynasty)	224 (160?)
11 other (3rd dynasty)	unknown
49 Chaldæan (4th dynasty)	458
9 Arabian (5th dynasty)	245
Semiramis 45 kings (7th dynasty)	526

Nabonidus, the antiquary king (b.c. 555), according to a Cylinder found at Sipar (Sepharvaim, Sun-city) and studied by Mr. Pinches, assigns a date to the deified Sargina of about b.c. 3,800 years. He unburied, 18 cubits below the surface, the Cylinder of Naramsin, son of Sargina (b.c. 3750?), ‘which no king had seen for 3,200 years.’ Sir Henry C. Rawlinson (the Athenæum, Dec. 9, 1882) is disposed to accept the date ‘within certain limits.’

[652] The word is Har-Minni, or Mountains of the Minni. The oldest Armenian inscriptions date from the eighth century b.c.

[653] It was in attacking these Khita that Ramses II. (Sesostris) left his three ‘columns’ or tablets on the rocks near the Nahr el-Kalb of Bayrut (chap. ix.). Six Assyrian inscriptions were also known there, bearing the names of Assur-ris-ilîm, Tiglath-pileser, Assurnazirpal, Shalmanesar, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. No epigraphs were found on the north side of the river, where an ancient aqueduct, overgrown with luxuriant verdure, turns a mill. About three years ago, however, the proprietor, when making a new channel, broke away part of the rock, and a fragment bearing cuneiforms attracted the attention of Dr. Hartmann, Chancellor of the German Consulate. No other steps were taken till October 10, 1881, when M. Julius Loytved, Danish Vice-Consul for Bayrut, bared the face of the cliff and discovered five cuneiform inscriptions, one containing 45 lines. They seem to have been hastily cut, as they follow the shape of the rock whose surface has not been dressed. According to Professor Sayce, they are Babylonian, not Assyrian.

[654] Or Asshur, ‘the Arbiter of the Gods,’ represented by the winged disc of Egypt.

[655] Nineveh, destroyed by the Medes (Manda or Madu) and Persians in b.c. 583, had thus a life of 1,617 years, assuming its origin at the middle term, b.c. 2200.

[656] Brugsch, vol. i. chap. xvi., shows that Seshonk (Shishak) and other Pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty were Assyrians who ruled ‘Mat Muz-ur,’ the people of Egypt.

[657] The great scholar derives from Egypt the Cuneiform Syllabarium, which was originally pictorial:—drawing everywhere preceded writing. The astronomy of Mesopotamia is Egyptian (the unit of measure being the ell of 0·525 mètre); and the architecture, that prime creation of the human mind, shows by temples, temple-towers, tombs, and especially pyramids (e.g. that at Birs Namrud), an imperfect imitation of the Nile Valley. Herodotus attributes to Babylon the discovery of the Pole, the Sun-dial, and the twelve hours of day, all well known to ancient Egypt. The ‘Sabbaths’ are Assyrian.

[658] The Athenæum, July 24, 1880.

[659] That the Assyrians had books appears plainly from the inscriptions: ‘In the night-time bind round the sick man’s head a sentence taken from a good book’ (a soporific!). Parchment was most probably the first material (Trans. of Soc. Bib. Archæology, vols. ii. 55, and iii. 432); and the language proves that the papyrus-scroll (Duppu-ga-zu) was known.

[660] We find in Assyria the wild goat standing upon a capital, now the arms of Istria. The same appears at Palmyra (Prof. Socin’s Collection). The winged bulls probably suggested, like the Egyptian Cherubs, our angels’ wings. These motors should now be forbidden in statuary by Act of Parliament; or the artist should be compelled to supply the pinions with the muscles necessary for working them. I need hardly say that the required development would convert the human dorsum to the appearance of the two-humped camel. The late Gustave Doré’s admirable illustrations of Dante (Purgat. xix. 51) sin greatly in this way.

[661] A goddess in alabaster has in each hand a lotus flower, which she holds against her breasts. This is characteristic of old Egypt, which derived the plant from the Equatorial African Lake-region. The same figure again wears a large Egyptian wig, the hair falling in ringlets upon the shoulders.

[662] The Soma, a weed in India (Asclepias gigantea), is a derivation from Homa. The Persea, or Egyptian Tree of Life, was probably the Balanitis Ægyptiaca.

[663] The careless confusion of Svastika, the worshipper-sect, with Svasti, the symbol, was made by me in my Commentary on Camoens (chap. iv. ‘Geographical’). Burnouf (Emile), in La Science des Religions, made the Svasti the feminine principle; and the Pramantha, or perpendicular fire-stick, the male. If used on sacrificial altars to produce the holy fire (Agni), the practice was peculiar, and not derived from every-day-life: as Pliny knew (xvi. 77), the savage uses two, never three, fire-sticks. The Svasti is apparently the simplest form of the guilloche. According to Wilkinson (II. chap. ix.), the most complicated form of the guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upwards of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svasti spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or crutched cross.

[664] Assyria, like Egypt, cultivated geometry and algebra, which have been supposed to originate from revenue surveys and altar measurements. She used the Astrolabe and popularised square roots and fractions, with a denominator of 60, the sole representative of the decimal and duodecimal systems. With her fall (b.c. 555) coincides the birth of literature in Greece, where writing became general about b.c. 500. The Assyrians were great in magic and in divination, such as birth-portents, dog-omens, &c. &c.

[665] Again Egyptian. Wilkinson, II. chap. vii.

[666] The nearest site would be the Caucasus, which in early ages yielded a small supply. Layard (p. 191) supposes the tin to have been obtained from Phœnicia; and, ‘consequently, that used in the (Assyrian) bronzes of the British Museum may actually have been exported, nearly three thousand years ago, from the British Isles.’

[667] A ‘copper instrument from Koyunjik’ (Layard, p. 596) is shaped exactly like the so-called Etruscan razors. See chap. ix.

[668] Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 163.

[669] See chap. vi. He figures one of the latter (Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 195): it measured 3 feet 8 inches long by 4⅝ inches in breadth.

[670] ‘Assyrians placing a human-headed bull on a car,’ with levers and ropes (Layard, p. 112), reminds us of the statue of Ramses II., and shows that the people could move enormous weights. Both societies had ‘unbounded command of naked human strength.’

[671] Demmin, pp. 293–94.

[672] We have still to explain ‘Kakku’ (weapon?) and ‘Gizzin’ (scymitar?).

[673] In the Tablets we read of the ‘Star of the double Sword’ (Kakab gir-tab) . ‘Hammasti,’ also, is the ‘blade of the double Sword.’

[674] ‘Ashur create a Son,’ b.c. 673. Assyrian Discoveries, by G. Smith (London: Sampson Low, 1876).

[675] For instance, that in the bas-reliefs of Burs Nimrúd, b.c. 1000, now in the Louvre. The hippopotamus is now never found out of Africa.

[676] With cavalry as well as infantry (Layard, p. 55). Upon this, a very complicated subject, I shall have much to say.

[677] Whence the French cravache.

[678] This abomination popularly derives from Semiramis (Sa-am-mu-ra-mat) of Assyria, and extended far and wide. Even in the earlier part of the present century eunuchs were manufactured for Christian and Catholic Rome. The practice is still kept up in Egypt, Turkey, and Persia, although strictly forbidden by the Apostle of Allah.

[679] Col. Hanbury exhibited it at the British Museum. Notes by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen, read April 6: Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology, vol. iv. Part II. 1876.

[680] Nebo, in the inscriptions, holds a golden reed or rod, as the Homeric Hermes is Χρυσόρραπις; he also leads the ghosts to Hades. The Chaldæan gods were, like the Egyptian, deceased ancestors, and they were followed by natural objects, Anu (sky), Bel (earth), Hea (sea), personified into a vast and various mythology. Sun, moon, and æther, were the first Triad of Babylon. Thus the Chthonic gods of Greece, Uranus (the Egyptian Urnas), Gaia and Thalassa (Assyrian), preceded the Olympic anthropomorphism. Of course they were represented with human shapes. Presently the priest introduced as godheads cosmo-poetic causes and effects, which presently peopled the Pantheon with glorified men. For, I repeat, man worships only one thing—himself.

[681] George Smith, Chaldæan Genesis, pp. 62, 95.

[682] Sibri or Sibirru. I have noted the probable derivation of this word from the Egyptian Sf, Sayf, or Seft; and its resemblance to our ‘sabre.’

[683] Budil (says Mr. Boscawen) succeeded his father in b.c. 1350. He defended the north-eastern peoples, the Nari and the Guti, Gutium or Goim; he also built largely, and his son, Vul-nirari (Vul is my hope), from whose palace the Sword came, was one of the greatest of the early Assyrian kings. The British Museum has a long inscription recording his restoration of the causeway leading to the Temple of Ashur.

[684] Layard advocates the theory that the Persians and Hindús separated from a common centre about b.c. 1500. But of what Hindús does he speak? Certainly not of the ‘Turanian’ tribes, which peopled the peninsula before the Brahmin immigration.

[685] The Greeks having no sh sound, turned Kurush into Kyros.

[686] Media was North-Western Persia, from Armenia to Azerbáiján, south of the Caspian. ‘Great Armenia’ afterwards included Georgia and Abkhasia. From their racial name Manda or Mada came the Greek Mantiene and Matiene. (See Bib. Archæology, Nov. 9, 1882.)

[687] Herod. i. 136, 138, &c. All writers assure us that the ancient Egyptians and Persians, the Chinese and Hindús (Marco Polo), were truth-telling races who abhorred a lie. ‘How sweet a thing is truth!’ exclaimed a Nile-dweller. In the Carpentras Inscription the Lady Ta-Bai ‘spoke no falsehoods against any one.’ In the trilingual Behistun Inscription (b.c. 516) Darius the king says, ‘Thou who mayest be king hereafter, the man who may be a liar, and who may be an evil-doer, destroy them with the destruction of the Sword’ (col. iv. par. 14). They are now emphatically the reverse. The wild tribes, such as the Bedawin, the Iliyát, and the outcasts of India, still preserve the old characteristic. ‘The word of a Korager’ is proverbial on the West Coast of the Hindu Peninsula. I cannot but attribute the deterioration to extensive commerce, contact with strangers, and change of faith. The subject, however, is too vast and important even to glance at in these pages; but I may note that the Hindú has deteriorated even in my day. In 1845 the trade-books of a Sahukár (merchant) were received as evidence in our law courts. In 1883 the idea would be scouted.

[688] The conquests of Alexander the Great had given the civilised world a unity of language. The Ptolemies, having asserted Greek mastery in Egypt, established that perfect toleration which is proved by the Septuagint, Manetho and Berosus.

[689] Famous in the Book of Esther (Amestris), which contains scant traces of the faith of Israel. This terrible virago (b.c. 474) caused the massacre of 800 men at Shushan, and 7,500 in the provinces. From the Pehlevi name of Xerxes (Khshhershe), possibly we may derive the modern titles, ‘Shah’ and ‘Shahanshah.’

[690] Hence, perhaps, Pukhtu or Pushtu, the Afghan language, an old and rugged dialect of Persian type.

[691] The South American lasso has been pitted, of course on horseback, against the Sword. Many a murder has been committed with it in the Argentine Republic, the victim being ‘thugged’ unawares and dragged to death. Needless to say, the lasso was well known in Egypt (Wilk. i. 4), where it was used to catch the gazelle and even the wild ox. The Pasha or Indian lasso was ten cubits long, with a noose one hand in circumference. It was composed of very small scales, ornamented with leaden balls; and was not regarded as a ‘noble weapon.’ The Roman gladiators, called ‘Laqueatores,’ derived their name from the lasso: they must not be confounded with the ‘Retiarii.’

[692] A. J. xx. 7, sec. 10.

[693] To be noticed in a future chapter (xii.).

[694] Chap. ix.

[695] Travels in Georgia, Persia, &c. (1817–20), by Sir Robert Ker Porter. Other illustrators are Le Bruyn, Chardin, Niebuhr, and Leake (Athens, ii. pp. 22–26).

[696] It may, however, have been treated as a dagger, while the Sword was worn on the left.

[697] Wilkinson (Egyptians, II. chap. v.) remarks, ‘If there is any connection between the religions of Egypt and India, this must be ascribed to the period before the two races left Central Asia’; and Layard, it has been said, would place that period about 1500 b.c. I again protest against the idea that the Egyptian ever came from, or had ever anything to do with, ‘Central Asia,’ beyond civilising it.

[698] Chandragupta (Sandracottus?) b.c. 316; his son Bindusara, b.c. 291; and his grandson (Dharm) Asoka or Priyadasi, b.c. 250–241, whose children divided the empire. The Topes are probably Phallic buildings.

[699] I would explain the fact that India is confounded with East Africa by the classics and by mediæval geographers as a survival of the connection of the continents in the Miocene and, perhaps, in even later ages.

[700] Utilised by Horace Hayman Wilson in his article ‘On the Art of War as known to the Hindús.’ Dhanu (Sanskr. the bow) came to signify any missile or weapon; and hence, Dhanúrvidya comprised the knowledge of all other arms. The bow was also named; for instance, that of Vishnu was called Shárnga (Oppert, p. 77).

[701] The Commander-in-Chief drew four thousand Varvas (gold coins) per mensem. Prof. Oppert, with true German naïveté, says (p. 8), ‘If this scale of salaries is correct, and if the salaries were really paid, one would be inclined to think that an extensive gold currency existed in ancient India.’ That the country worked its gold mines is proved by the Wynaad and other diggings, lately reopened, but we may fairly doubt the coinage;—at least, till a coin be found.

[702] I now borrow from Professor Gustav Oppert, On the Weapons &c. of the Ancient Hindus (London: Trübner, 1880). Unfortunately the work is unillustrated. Its capital fault is not adducing proofs, or offering highly unsatisfactory proofs, of the antiquity to be attributed to its authorities, the Shukraniti (p. 43); the Naishedha (p. 69), and the various pagodas showing firearms (p. 76). The Mánavad-harmashástra, or Institutes of Menu (Halhed, p. 53), speaks of ‘darts blazing with fire,’ a well-known missile, but not to be confounded with firearms proper. And the Institutes in their actual form are comparatively modern.

[703] Prof. Oppert gives the names of all these subdivisions; and, at the same time, a lesson in Hindú absurdity (p. 11).

[704] Here we have the true Indian imaginativeness. The idea of a Western anthropomorphising a bow after this fashion!

[705] Prof. Oppert says that Book III. of the Nitípra-kashika is entirely devoted to the Khadga. In the Shukraniti, as will be seen, the word denotes a two-handed Sword six feet long. The Professor translates it ‘broadsword.’

[706] He lived between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and wrote a notable Ovidian work. A translation is now being printed (not published) by the Hindoo Káma-Shastra Society of London and Benares.

[707] The Italian word is evidently a diminutive of the Latin stilus, or rather stylus (στῦλος). Dagger (Germ. Dolch) is from the Keltic dag, point. Degen, a larger weapon, originally means a warrior; hence the Anglo-Sax. Thaegn and our Thane.

[708] Strabo (xv. 1, § 66) makes the Indian Sword three cubits (= four feet and a half) in length; and the Greeks of the Alexandrine day notice two-handed Swords and bow-drawing with the feet.

[709] Roteiro, p. 115.

[710] This is evidently inverted. The huge falchion, an exaggeration of the Kukkri, may be seen in the British Museum, one blade inscribed with Pali characters. Most of these huge weapons were used in sacrificing; and the low-caste Mhars still behead with falchions the buffalos offered to Kali.

[711] He constantly appears in the Mahabhárata, especially in Book I.

[712] Some writers are determined to find chess amongst the Romans, and quote the Panegyric of Piso, and the game of Latrunculi. But if so, where are their chessmen? The earliest allusion in any known author is in Anna Comnena’s Alexias, when the First Crusade had done some good by mixing the Eastern and the Western worlds.

[713] Loc. cit. p. 61.

[714] Sport in British Burmah (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879).

[715] Lib. ii. cap. 53.

[716] The earliest date of the famous siege is b.c. 1370 (Justin, like the Arundelian marbles, gives b.c. 1184), and the latest is b.c. 724–636. In Troy and its Remains, we find (p. 123) that the age proposed for the founding of the city is b.c. 1400; that the war took place after the reigns of six kings (p. 27), say two centuries, or in b.c. 1200; and that Homer lived 200 years after the destruction of the city (p. 91), or in b.c. 1000. Thus Herodotus and Dr. Schliemann do not agree; but what possible agreement can there be upon such a subject?

[717] Would it not be more prudent to say ‘not hitherto found’?

[718] Dr. Schliemann, Ilias.

[719] The Arab, or rather the Moslem, practice of Koran-reading may explain that of ancient Greece. There are two distinct ways: the vulgar, as though it were a profane book; and the learned with peculiar intonation (Kirá’at), of which there are some seventy systems. The Hindús recite with a similar artful modification. So the Hellenes would either pronounce their scriptures, Homer and Hesiod, according to popular accent, or intone by quantity. That men ever wrote accents without pronouncing them is one of those wild theories which can commend itself only to a savant. Besides, we know that as late as the eleventh century there were Greek authors who wrote indifferently according to accent or quantity.

[720] The tools known to the Iliad were those of Central Africa, anvil, hammer, and tongs (Il. xviii. 477, and Od. iii. 434–5).

[721] viii. 14; ix. 41.

[722] xxxv. 12, 43.

[723] E.g. δέσμοι, bands or ties; ἥλοι, studs; περόναι, pins, fibulæ; and κέντρα, points (Il. xviii. 379; xi. 634; Pausanias xi. 16).

[724] iii. 2.

[725] Il. viii. 20. The Assyrian Hadi or Bet Edi, ‘House of Eternity,’ probably Grecised, by an afterthought, to ἀϊδής—invisible. See the earliest ‘Miracle-play,’ the descent of Ishtar into Hadi; Soc. Bib. Archæol. vol. ii. part i. p. 188.

[726] Eur. Ion. 1.

[727] From the copper trumpet comes χαλκεόφωνος, ringing-voiced (Il. v. 785). The Iliad applies the epithet to Stentor (Il. v. 785), and Hesiod (Theog. 311) to Cerberus.

[728] Od. iii. 425.

[729] For instance, Stasinus or Hegesias, author of the Kypria or Cyprian Iliad (Herod. Lib. ii. 117), assigned to the end of the eighth century b.c., when Kypros may have had her ‘Homeric School.’ It was in nine books, of which the argument has been preserved by Proclus in Photius; and it forms a kind of introduction to the Iliad. See Palma’s Cyprus, p. 13. ‘Homer’ is said to mention iron thirty times.

[730] Dr. Evans (Bronze, p. 15) quotes Dr. Beck’s suggestion that the -eros of Sideros is a ‘form of the Aryan ais (conf. æs, æris). In another place (Stone, p. 5), he alludes to the possible connection of Sideros with ἀστὴρ (a meteor), the Latin Sidera, and the English Star.

[731] Od. ix. 391.

[732] This is a fair instance of ‘elegant translation.’ What Homer says is:

The reply will be that Homer does not say it in this way; and to this reply I have no rejoinder.

[733] Hes. Opera, 174, sq.

[734] Ibid. ix. 366.

[735] xi. 34, 35, &c.

[736] Dr. Schliemann is assuredly singular when translating the Homeric Cyanus by ‘bronze’ (Preface to Mycenæ, p. x.). Millin (Minéralogie Homérique) holds it to be tin. The ‘Cyanus’ of Pliny (xxxvii. 38) is lapis lazuli.