How came Egypt by her knowledge? When broke the dawn of that civilization whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the bits and fragments supplied to us by the archæologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to Œdipus.

What Egypt taught to others she certainly did not acquire by the international exchange of ideas and discoveries with her Semitic neighbors, nor from them did she receive her stimulus. “The more we learn of the Egyptians,” observes the writer of a recent article, “the more marvellous they seem!” From whom could she have learned her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. Proudly secluding herself within her enchanted domain, the fair queen of the desert created wonders as if by the sway of a magic staff. “Nothing,” remarks the same writer, whom we have elsewhere quoted, “proves that civilization and knowledge then rise and progress with her as in the case of other peoples, but everything seems to be referable, in the same perfection, to the earliest dates. That no nation knew as much as herself, is a fact demonstrated by history.”

May we not assign as a reason for this remark the fact that until very recently nothing was known of Old India? That these two nations, India and Egypt, were akin? That they were the oldest in the group of nations; and that the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—had come from India as a matured people, bringing their civilization with them, and colonizing the perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer a more complete elaboration of this theme for our second volume.[772]

“Mechanism,” says Eusebe Salverte, “was carried by the ancients to a point of perfection that has never been attained in modern times. We would inquire if their inventions have been surpassed in our age? Certainly not; and at the present day, with all the means that the progress of science and modern discovery have placed in the hands of the mechanic, have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the Egyptians forty centuries ago erected in such numbers before their sacred edifices.”

As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning the course of the Nile—or rather of its three principal branches—and bringing it to Memphis, was accomplished during the reign of that monarch, who appears to us as distant in the abyss of time as a far-glimmering star in the heavenly vault. Says Wilkinson: “Menes took accurately the measure of the power which he had to oppose, and he constructed a dyke whose lofty mounds and enormous embankments turned the water eastward, and since that time the river is contained in its new bed.” Herodotus has left us a poetical, but still accurate description of the lake Mœris, so called after the Pharaoh who caused this artificial sheet of water to be formed.

The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual overflow for the irrigation of the country, for many miles round. Its numerous flood gates, dams, locks, and convenient engines were constructed with the greatest skill. The Romans, at a far later period, got their notions on hydraulic constructions from the Egyptians, but our latest progress in the science of hydrostatics has demonstrated the fact of a great deficiency on their part in some branches of that knowledge. Thus, for instance, if they were acquainted with that which is called in hydrostatics the great law, they seem to have been less familiar with what our modern engineers know as water tight joints. Their ignorance is sufficiently proved by their conveying the water through large level aqueducts, instead of doing it at a less expense by iron pipes beneath the surface. But the Egyptians evidently employed a far superior method in their channels and artificial water-works. Notwithstanding this, the modern engineers employed by Lesseps for the Suez Canal, who had learned from the ancient Romans all their art could teach them, deriving, in their turn, their knowledge from Egypt—scoffed at the suggestion that they should seek a remedy for some imperfections in their work by studying the contents of the various Egyptian museums. Nevertheless, the engineers succeeded in giving to the banks of that “long and ugly ditch,” as Professor Carpenter calls the Suez Canal, sufficient strength to make it a navigable water-way, instead of a mud-trap for vessels as it was at first.

The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries, have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings—the canal of Necho—led from Suez to this branch. After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, at Actium, it was proposed that a portion of the fleet should pass through the canal to the Red Sea, which shows the depth of water that those early engineers had secured. Settlers in Colorado and Arizona have recently reclaimed large tracts of barren land by a system of irrigation; receiving from the journals of the day no little praise for their ingenuity. But, for a distance of 500 miles above Cairo, there stretches a strip of land reclaimed from the desert, and made, according to Professor Carpenter, “the most fertile on the face of the earth.” He says, “for thousands of years these branch canals have conveyed fresh water from the Nile, to fertilize the land of this long narrow strip, as well as of the Delta.” He describes “the net-work of canals over the Delta, which dates from an early period of the Egyptian monarchs.”

The French province of Artois has given its name to the Artesian well, as though that form of engineering had been first applied in that district; but, if we consult the Chinese records, we find such wells to have been in common use ages before the Christian era.

If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes, wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of Philoe, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter remarks that “these stupendous and beautiful erections ... these gigantic pyramids and temples” have a “vastness and beauty” which are “still impressive after the lapse of thousands of years.” He is amazed at “the admirable character of the workmanship; the stones in most cases being fitted together with astonishing nicety, so that a knife could hardly be thrust between the joints.” He noticed in his amateur archæological pilgrimage, another of those “curious coincidences” which his Holiness, the Pope, may feel some interest in learning. He is speaking of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, sculptured on the old monuments, and the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul. “Now, it is most remarkable,” says the professor, “to see that not only this belief, but the language in which it was expressed in the ancient Egyptian times, anticipated that of the Christian Revelation. For, in this Book of the Dead, there are used the very phrases we find in the New Testament, in connection with the day of judgment;” and he admits that this hierogram was “engraved, probably, 2,000 years before the time of Christ.”

According to Bunsen, who is considered to have made the most exact calculations, the mass of masonry in the great Pyramid of Cheops measures 82,111,000 feet, and would weigh 6,316,000 tons. The immense numbers of squared stones show us the unparalleled skill of the Egyptian quarrymen. Speaking of the great pyramid, Kenrick says: “The joints are scarcely perceptible, not wider than the thickness of silver paper, and the cement is so tenacious, that fragments of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding the lapse of many centuries, and the violence by which they were detached.” Who, of our modern architects and chemists, will rediscover the indestructible cement of the oldest Egyptian buildings?

“The skill of the ancients in quarrying,” says Bunsen, “is displayed the most in the extracting of the huge blocks, out of which obelisks and colossal statues were hewn—obelisks ninety feet high, and statues forty feet high, made out of one stone!” There are many such. They did not blast out the blocks for these monuments, but adopted the following scientific method: Instead of using huge iron wedges, which would have split the stone, they cut a small groove for the whole length of, perhaps, 100 feet, and inserted in it, close to each other, a great number of dry wooden wedges; after which they poured water into the groove, and the wedges swelling and bursting simultaneously, with a tremendous force, broke out the huge stone, as neatly as a diamond cuts a pane of glass.

Modern geographers and geologists have demonstrated that these monoliths were brought from a prodigious distance, and have been at a loss to conjecture how the transport was effected. Old manuscripts say that it was done by the help of portable rails. These rested upon inflated bags of hide, rendered indestructible by the same process as that used for preserving the mummies. These ingenious air-cushions prevented the rails from sinking in the deep sand. Manetho mentions them, and remarks that they were so well prepared that they would endure wear and tear for centuries.

The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; but Herodotus informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was “born again,” and became an adept.

Herodotus gives us, however, a just idea of the enormous labor expended in transporting one of these gigantic blocks of granite. It measured thirty-two feet in length, twenty-one feet in width, and twelve feet in height. Its weight he estimates to be rising 300 tons, and it occupied 2,000 men for three years to move it from Syene to the Delta, down the Nile. Gliddon, in his Ancient Egypt, quotes from Pliny a description of the arrangements for moving the obelisk erected at Alexandria by Ptolemæus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from the Nile to the place where the obelisk lay. Two boats were floated under it; they were weighted with stones containing one cubic foot each, and the weight of the obelisk having been calculated by the engineers, the cargo of the boats was exactly proportioned to it, so that they should be sufficiently submerged to pass under the monolith as it lay across the canal. Then, the stones were gradually removed, the boats rose, lifted the obelisk, and it was floated down the river.

In the Egyptian section of the Dresden, or Berlin Museum, we forget which, is a drawing which represents a workman ascending an unfinished pyramid, with a basket of sand upon his back. This has suggested to certain Egyptologists the idea that the blocks of the pyramids were chemically manufactured in loco. Some modern engineers believe that Portland cement, a double silicate of lime and alumina, is the imperishable cement of the ancients. But, on the other hand, Professor Carpenter asserts that the pyramids, with the exception of their granite casing, is formed of what “geologists call nummulitic limestone. This is newer than the old chalk, and is made of the shells of animals called nummulites—like little pieces of money about the size of a shilling.” However this moot question may be decided, no one, from Herodotus and Pliny down to the last wandering engineer who has gazed upon these imperial monuments of long-crumbled dynasties, has been able to tell us how the gigantic masses were transported and set up in place. Bunsen concedes to Egypt an antiquity of 20,000 years. But even in this matter we would be left to conjecture if we depended upon modern authorities. They can neither tell us for what the pyramids were constructed, under what dynasty the first was raised, nor the material of which they are built. All is conjecture with them.

Professor Smyth has given us by far the most accurate mathematical description of the great pyramid to be found in literature. But after showing the astronomical bearings of the structure, he so little appreciates ancient Egyptian thought that he actually maintains that the porphyry sarcophagus of the king’s chamber is the unit of measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth—“England and America.” One of the books of Hermes describes certain of the pyramids as standing upon the sea-shore, “the waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base.” This implies that the geographical features of the country have been changed, and may indicate that we must accord to these ancient “granaries,” “magico-astrological observatories,” and “royal sepulchres,” an origin antedating the upheaval of the Sahara and other deserts. This would imply rather more of an antiquity than the poor few thousands of years, so generously accorded to them by Egyptologists.

Dr. Rebold, a French archæologist of some renown, gives his readers a glimpse of the culture which prevailed 5,000 (?) years b. c., by saying that there were at that time no less than “thirty or forty colleges of the priests who studied occult sciences and practical magic.”

A writer in the National Quarterly Review (Vol. xxxii., No. lxiii., December, 1875) says that, “The recent excavations made among the ruins of Carthage have brought to light traces of a civilization, a refinement of art and luxury, which must even have outshone that of ancient Rome; and when the fiat went forth, Delenda est Carthago, the mistress of the world well knew that she was about to destroy a greater than herself, for, while one empire swayed the world by force of arms alone, the other was the last and most perfect representative of a race who had, for centuries before Rome was dreamed of, directed the civilization, the learning, and the intelligence of mankind.” This Carthage is the one which, according to Appian, was standing as early as B. C. 1234, or fifty years before the taking of Troy, and not the one popularly supposed to have been built by Dido (Elissa or Astartè) four centuries later.

Here we have still another illustration of the truth of the doctrine of cycles. Draper’s admissions as to the astronomical erudition of the ancient Egyptians are singularly supported by an interesting fact quoted by Mr. J. M. Peebles, from a lecture delivered in Philadelphia, by the late Professor O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer. Upon the coffin of a mummy, now in the British Museum, was delineated the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal equinox, in the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell calculated the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system at the time indicated. “The result,” says Mr. Peebles, “I give in his own words: ‘To my astonishment ... it was found that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.’”[773]

Professor John Fiske, in his onslaught on Dr. Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, sets his pen against the doctrine of cyclical progression, remarking that “we have never known the beginning or the end of an historic cycle, and have no inductive warrant for believing that we are now traversing one.”[774] He chides the author of that eloquent and thoughtful work for the “odd disposition exhibited throughout his work, not only to refer the best part of Greek culture to an Egyptian source, but uniformly to exalt the non-European civilization at the expense of the European.” We believe that this “odd disposition” might be directly sanctioned by the confessions of great Grecian historians themselves. Professor Fiske might, with profit, read Herodotus over again. The “Father of History” confesses more than once that Greece owes everything to Egypt. As to his assertion that the world has never known the beginning or the end of an historical cycle, we have but to cast a retrospective glance on the many glorious nations which have passed away, i.e., reached the end of their great national cycle. Compare the Egypt of that day, with its perfection of art, science, and religion, its glorious cities and monuments, and its swarming population, with the Egypt of to-day, peopled with strangers; its ruins the abode of bats and snakes, and a few Copts the sole surviving heirs to all this grandeur—and see whether the cyclical theory does not reässert itself. Says Gliddon, who is now contradicted by Mr. Fiske: “Philologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing; of the calendar and solar motion; of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword; of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished syenite, nine hundred tons in weight, for any distance, by land and water; of building arches, rounded and pointed, with masonic precision unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by 2,000 years to the ‘Cloaca Magna’ of Rome; of sculpturing a Doric column 1,000 years before the Dorians are known in history; of fresco painting in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of time-defying pyramid-building.”

“Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of his art 4,000 years ago; and whether it be a wheelwright building a chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using the self-same form of knife of old as is considered the best form now, a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that identical form of blow-pipe but lately recognized to be the most efficient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as Schooho’s, above 4,300 years ago—all these, and many more astounding evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a glance at the plates of Rossellini.”

“Truly,” exclaims Mr. Peebles, “these Ramsean temples and tombs were as much a marvel to the Grecian Herodotus as they are to us!”[775]

But, even then, the merciless hand of time had left its traces upon their structures, and some of them, whose very memory would be lost were it not for the Books of Hermes, had been swept away into the oblivion of the ages. King after king, and dynasty after dynasty had passed in a glittering pageant before the eyes of succeeding generations and their renown had filled the habitable globe. The same pall of forgetfulness had fallen upon them and their monuments alike, before the first of our historical authorities, Herodotus, preserved for posterity the remembrance of that wonder of the world, the great Labyrinth. The long accepted Biblical chronology has so cramped the minds of not only the clergy, but even our scarce-unfettered scientists, that in treating of prehistoric remains in different parts of the world, a constant fear is manifested on their part to trespass beyond the period of 6,000 years, hitherto allowed by theology as the age of the world.

Herodotus found the Labyrinth already in ruins; but nevertheless his admiration for the genius of its builders knew no bounds. He regarded it as far more marvellous than the pyramids themselves, and, as an eye-witness, minutely describes it. The French and Prussian savants, as well as other Egyptologists, agree as to the emplacement, and identified its noble ruins. Moreover, they confirm the account given of it by the old historian. Herodotus says that he found therein 3,000 chambers; half subterranean and the other half above-ground. “The upper chambers,” he says, “I myself passed through and examined in detail. In the underground ones (which may exist till now, for all the archæologists know), the keepers of the building would not let me in, for they contain the sepulchres of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. The upper chambers I saw and examined with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other human productions.” In Rawlinson’s translation, Herodotus is made to say: “The passages through the houses and the varied windings of the paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration as I passed from the courts into the chambers, and from thence into colonnades, and from colonnades into other houses, and again into courts unseen before. The roof was throughout of stone like the walls, and both were exquisitely carved all over with figures. Every court was surrounded with a colonnade, which was built of white stones, sculptured most exquisitely. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty fathoms high, with large figures engraved on it, and it is entered by a vast subterranean passage.”

If such was the Labyrinth, when viewed by Herodotus, what, in such a case, was ancient Thebes, the city destroyed far earlier than the period of Psammeticus, who himself reigned 530 years after the destruction of Troy? We find that in his time Memphis was the capital, while of the glorious Thebes there remained but ruins. Now, if we, who are enabled to form our estimate only by the ruins of what was already ruins so many ages before our era—are stupefied in their contemplation, what must have been the general aspect of Thebes in the days of its glory? Karnak—temple, palace, ruins, or whatsoever the archæologists may term it—is now its only representative. But solitary and alone as it stands, fit emblem of majestic empire, as if forgotten by time in the onward march of the centuries, it testifies to the art and skill of the ancients. He must be indeed devoid of the spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it.

Champollion, who passed almost his entire life in the exploration of archæological remains, gives vent to his emotions in the following descriptions of Karnak: “The ground covered by the mass of remaining buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is astounded and overcome by the grandeur of the sublime remnants, the prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere.” No people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our porticos, arrests itself and falls powerless at the foot of the hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the hall.

A writer in a number of an English periodical, of 1870, evidently speaking with the authority of a traveller who describes what he has seen, expresses himself as follows: “Courts, halls, gateways, pillars obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for modern comprehension.”

Says Denon, the French traveller: “It is hardly possible to believe, after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! 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 are lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. These two edifices are selected as examples from a list next to inexhaustible. The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is wonderful, according to all the experts ... animals and plants look as good as natural, and artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land, and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their bas-reliefs.”

“The monuments,” says an English author, “which there strike the traveller, fill his mind with great ideas. At the sight of the colossuses and superb obelisks, which seem to surpass the limits of human nature, he cannot help exclaiming, ‘This was the work of man,’ and this sentiment seems to ennoble his existence.”[776]

In his turn, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the Temple of Dendera, says: “The female figures are so extremely well executed, that they do all but speak; they have a mildness of feature and expression that never was surpassed.”

Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiselled. Does not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? The obelisks have their inscriptions cut two inches, and sometimes more, in depth, and they are cut with the highest degree of perfection. Some idea may be formed of their depth, from the fact that the Arabs, for a small fee, will climb sometimes to the very top of an obelisk, by inserting their toes and fingers in the excavations of the hieroglyphics. That all of these works, in which solidity rivals the beauty of their execution, were done before the days of the Exodus, there remains no historical doubt whatever. (All the archæologists now agree in saying that, the further back we go in history, the better and finer become these arts.) These views clash again with the individual opinion of Mr. Fiske, who would have us believe that “the sculptures upon these monuments (of Egypt, Hindustan, and Assyria), moreover, betoken a very undeveloped condition of the artistic faculties.”[777] Nay, the learned gentleman goes farther. Joining his voice in the opposition against the claims of learning—which belongs by right to the sacerdotal castes of antiquity—to that of Lewis, he contemptuously remarks that “the extravagant theory of a profound science possessed by the Egyptian priesthood from a remote antiquity, and imparted to itinerant Greek philosophers, has been utterly destroyed (?) by Sir G. C. Lewis[778] ... while, with regard to Egypt and Hindustan, as well as Assyria, it may be said that the colossal monuments which have adorned these countries since prehistoric times, bear witness to the former prevalence of a barbaric despotism, totally incompatible with social nobility, and, therefore, with well sustained progress.”[779]

A curious argument, indeed. If the size and grandeur of public monuments are to serve to our posterity as a standard by which to approximately estimate the “progress of civilization” attained by their builders, it may be prudent, perhaps, for America, so proud of her alleged progress and freedom, to dwarf her buildings at once to one story. Otherwise, according to Professor Fiske’s theory, the archæologists of A.D. 3877 will be applying to the “Ancient America” of 1877, the rule of Lewis—and say the ancient United States “may be considered as a great latifundium, or plantation, cultivated by the entire population, as the king’s (president’s) slaves.” Is it because the white-skinned Aryan races were never born “builders,” like the Eastern Æthiopians, or dark-skinned Caucasians,[780] and, therefore, never able to compete with the latter in such colossal structures, that we must jump at the conclusion that these grandiose temples and pyramids could only have been erected under the whip of a merciless despot? Strange logic! It would really seem more prudent to hold to the “rigorous canons of criticism” laid down by Lewis and Grote, and honestly confess at once, that we really know little about these ancient nations, and that, except so far as purely hypothetical speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient priests did, we have as little chance in the future. We only know what they allowed the uninitiated to know, but the little we do learn of them by deduction, ought to be sufficient to assure us that, even in the nineteenth century, with all our claims to supremacy in arts and sciences, we are totally unable, we will not say to build anything like the monuments of Egypt, Hindustan, or Assyria, but even to rediscover the least of the ancient “lost arts.” Besides, Sir Gardner Wilkinson gives forcible expression to this view of the exhumed treasures of old, by adding that, “he can trace no primitive mode of life, no barbarous customs, but a sort of stationary civilization from the most remote periods.” Thus far, archæology disagrees with geology, which affirms that the further they trace the remains of men, the more barbarous they find them. It is doubtful if geology has even yet exhausted the field of research afforded her in the caves, and the views of geologists, which are based upon present experience, may be radically modified, when they come to discover the remains of the ancestors of the people whom they now style the cave-dwellers.

What better illustrates the theory of cycles than the following fact? Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras was taught the doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form, and the whole heliocentric system. And in 317 A.D., we find Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, son of Constantine the Great, teaching his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by the sky, which is composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical doctrine of the earth’s globular form!

Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the possibility, if not certainty, that the alleged discovery was not totally unknown to the ancients.

It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolemaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for lack of proofs to the contrary. We may disdain to search for a profounder meaning in some characteristic sentences of Servius, and other writers; we cannot so obliterate them but that, at some future day, that meaning will appear to us in all its significant truths. “The first inhabitants of the earth,” says he, “never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they brought down the heavenly fire.”[781] “Prometheus discovered and revealed to man the art of bringing down lightning; and by the method which he taught to them, they brought down fire from the region above.”

If, after pondering these words, we are still willing to attribute them to the phraseology of mythological fables, we may turn to the days of Numa, the king-philosopher, so renowned for his esoteric learning, and find ourselves more embarrassed to deal with his case. We can neither accuse him of ignorance, superstition, nor credulity; for, if history can be believed at all, he was intently bent on destroying polytheism and idol-worship. He had so well dissuaded the Romans from idolatry that for nearly two centuries neither statues nor images appeared in their temples. On the other hand old historians tell us that the knowledge which Numa possessed in natural physics was remarkable. Tradition says that he was initiated by the priests of the Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing Jupiter, the Thunderer, to descend upon earth.[782] Ovid shows that Jupiter Elicius began to be worshipped by the Romans from that time. Salverte is of the opinion that before Franklin discovered his refined electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and that Tullus Hostilius was the first victim of the dangerous “heavenly guest” recorded in history. Titus Livy and Pliny narrate that this prince, having found in the Books of Numa, instructions on the secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius, made a mistake, and, in consequence of it, “he was struck by lightning and consumed in his own palace.”[783]

Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numa’s scientific secrets, “makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct processes;” the one obtained thunder (impetrare), the other forced it to lightning (cogere).[784] “Guided by Numa’s book,” says Lucius, quoted by Pliny, “Tullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter.... But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by thunder.”[785]

Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded it by a hedge of the white bryony,[786] a climbing plant which has the property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning-rod, for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a re-discovery after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.[787]

If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear notions as to all the effects of electricity, there is very strong evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted with electricity itself. “Ben David,” says the author of The Occult Sciences, “has asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the phenomena of electricity.” Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this opinion. Michaelis, remarks—firstly: “that there is no indication that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand years. Secondly, that according to Josephus,[788] a forest of points ... of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. Thirdly, that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which the points would act as conductors.”[789]

Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his statements, tells that “The magii, preserved perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.”[790] There is a sentence in the Hindu Oupnek-hat, which runs thus: “To know fire, the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three-fourths of the science of God.”[791]

Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, “India was acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.” This historian plainly states that “iron placed at the bottom of a fountain ... and made in the form of a sword, with the point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting storms and lightnings.”[792] What can be plainer?

Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the light-house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in it; for he honestly confesses that “If the mirror really existed, as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the invention of the telescope.”[793]

Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers, and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to be compared with Pheidias of old, and strict truth would, perhaps, hesitate at such a flattery.

Professor Jowett discredits the story of the Atlantis, in the Timæus; and the records of 8,000 and 9,000 years appear to him an ancient swindle. But Bunsen remarks: “There is nothing improbable in itself in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9,000 years B. C., for ... the Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before Christ.[794] Then how about the primitive Cyclopean fortresses of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according to archæological accounts, “even among the ancients it was reported to have been the work of the Cyclops,”[795] be deemed posterior to the pyramids? Masses of rock, some equal to a cube of six feet, and the smallest of which, Pausanias says, could never be moved by a yoke of oxen, laid up in walls of solid masonry twenty-five feet thick and over forty feet high, still believed to be the work of men of the races known to our history!

Wilkinson’s researches have brought to light the fact that many inventions of what we term modern, and upon which we plume ourselves, were perfected by the ancient Egyptians. The newly-discovered papyrus of Ebers, the German archæologist, proves that neither our modern chignons, skin-beautifying pearl powders, nor eaux dentifrices were secrets to them. More than one modern physician—even among those who advertise themselves as having “made a speciality of nervous disorders” may find his advantage in consulting the Medical Books of Hermes, which contain prescriptions of real therapeutic value.

The Egyptians, as we have seen, excelled in all arts. They made paper so excellent in quality as to be timeproof. “They took out the pith of the papyrus,” says our anonymous writer, previously mentioned, “dissected and opened the fibre, and flattening it by a process known to them, made it as thin as our foolscap paper, but far more durable.... They sometimes cut it into strips and glued it together; many of such written documents are yet in existence.” The papyrus found in the tomb of the queen’s mummy, and another one found in the sarcophagus of the “Chambre de la Reine,” at Ghizeh, present the appearance of the finest glossy white muslin, while it possesses the durability of the best calf-parchment. “For a long time the savants believed the papyrus to have been introduced by Alexander the Great—as they erroneously imagined a good many more things—but Lepsius found rolls of papyri in tombs and monuments of the twelfth dynasty; sculptured pictures of papyri were found later, on monuments of the fourth dynasty, and now it is proved that the art of writing was known and used as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarch;” and thus it was finally discovered that the art and their system of writing were perfect and complete from the very first.

It is to Champollion that we owe the first interpretation of their weird writing; and, but for his life-long labor, we would till now remain uninformed as to the meaning of all these pictured letters, and the ancients would still be considered ignorant by the moderns whom they so greatly excelled in some arts and sciences. “He was the first to find out what wondrous tale the Egyptians had to tell, for one who could read their endless manuscripts and records. They left them on every spot and object capable of receiving characters.... They engraved, and chiselled, and sculptured them on monuments; they traced them on furniture, rocks, stones, walls, coffins, and tombs, as on the papyrus.... The pictures of their daily lives, in their smallest details, are being now unravelled before our dazzled eyes in the most wondrous way.... Nothing, of what we know, seems to have been overlooked by the ancient Egyptians.... The history of ‘Sesostris’ shows us how well he and his people were versed in the art and practice of war.... The pictures show how formidable they were when encountered in battle. They constructed war-engines.... Homer says that through each of the 100 gates of Thebes issued 200 men with horses and chariots; the latter were magnificently constructed, and very light in comparison with our modern heavy, clumsy, and uncomfortable artillery wagons.” Kenrick describes them in the following terms: “In short, as all the essential principles which regulate the construction and draught of carriages are exemplified in the war-chariots of the Pharaohs, so there is nothing which modern taste and luxury have devised for their decoration to which we do not find a prototype in the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty.” Springs—metallic springs—have been found in them, and, notwithstanding Wilkinson’s superficial investigation in that direction, and description of these in his studies, we find proofs that such were used to prevent the jolting in the chariots in their too rapid course. The bas-reliefs show us certain melées and battles in which we can find and trace their uses and customs to the smallest details. The heavily-armed men fought in coats of mail, the infantry had quilted tunics and felt helmets, with metallic coverings to protect them the better. Muratori, the modern Italian inventor who, some ten years ago, introduced his “impenetrable cuirasse,” has but followed in his invention what he could make out of the ancient method which suggested to him the idea. The process of rendering such objects as card-board, felt, and other tissues, impenetrable to the cuts and thrusts of any sharp weapon, is now numbered among the lost arts. Muratori succeeded but imperfectly in preparing such felt cuirasses, and, notwithstanding the boasted achievements of modern chemistry he could derive from it no preparation adequate to effect his object, and failed.

To what perfection chemistry had reached in ancient times, may be inferred from a fact mentioned by Virey. In his dissertations, he shows that Asclepiadotus, a general of Mithradates, reproduced chemically the deleterious exhalations of the sacred grotto. These vapors, like those of Cumæ, threw the Pythoness into the mantic frenzy.

Egyptians used bows, double-edged swords and daggers, javelins, spears, and pikes. The light troops were armed with darts and slings; charioteers wielded maces and battle-axes; in siege-operations they were perfect. “The assailants,” says the anonymous writer, “advanced, forming a narrow and long line, the point being protected by a triple-sided, impenetrable engine pushed before them on a kind of roller, by an invisible squad of men. They had covered underground passages with trap-doors, scaling ladders, and the art of escalade and military strategy was carried by them to perfection.... The battering ram was familiar to them as other things; being such experts in quarrying they knew how to set a mine to a wall and bring it down.” The same writer remarks, that it is a great deal safer for us to mention what the Egyptians did than what they did not know, for every day brings some new discovery of their wonderful knowledge; “and if,” he adds, “we were to find out that they used Armstrong guns, this fact would not be much more astonishing than many of the facts brought out to light already.”

The proof that they were proficient in mathematical sciences, lies in the fact that those ancient mathematicians whom we honor as the fathers of geometry went to Egypt to be instructed. Says Professor Smyth, as quoted by Mr. Peebles, “the geometrical knowledge of the pyramid-builders began where Euclid’s ended.” Before Greece came into existence, the arts, with the Egyptians, were ripe and old. Land-measuring, an art resting on geometry, the Egyptians certainly knew well, as, according to the Bible, Joshua, after conquering the Holy Land, had skill enough to divide it. And how could a people so skilled in natural philosophy as the Egyptians were, not be proportionately skilled in psychology and spiritual philosophy? The temple was the nursery of the highest civilization, and it alone possessed that higher knowledge of magic which was in itself the quintessence of natural philosophy. The occult powers of nature were taught in the greatest secresy and the most wonderful cures were performed during the performing of the Mysteries. Herodotus acknowledges[796] that the Greeks learned all they knew, including the sacred services of the temple, from the Egyptians, and because of that, their principal temples were consecrated to Egyptian divinities. Melampus, the famous healer and soothsayer of Argos, had to use his medicines “after the manner of the Egyptians,” from whom he had gained his knowledge, whenever he desired his cure to be thoroughly effective. He healed Iphiclus of his impotency and debility by the rust of iron, according to the directions of Mantis, his magnetic sleeper, or oracle. Sprengel gives many wonderful instances of such magical cures in his History of Medicine (see p. 119).

Diodorus, in his work on the Egyptians (lib. i.), says that Isis has deserved immortality, for all nations of the earth bear witness to the power of this goddess to cure diseases by her influence. “This is proved,” he says, “not by fable as among the Greeks, but by authentic facts.” Galen records several remedial means which were preserved in the healing wards of the temples. He mentions also a universal medicine which in his time was called Isis.[797]

The doctrines of several Greek philosophers, who had been instructed in Egypt, demonstrates their profound learning. Orpheus, who, according to Artapanus, was a disciple of Moyses (Moses),[798] Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato owe their philosophy to the same temples in which the wise Solon was instructed by the priests. “Antiklides relates,” says Pliny, “that the letters were invented in Egypt by a person whose name was Menon, fifteen years before Phoroneus the most ancient king of Greece.”[799] Jablonski proves that the heliocentric system, as well as the earth’s sphericity, were known by the priests of Egypt from immemorial ages. “This theory,” he adds, “Pythagoras took from the Egyptians, who had it from the Brachmans of India.”[800] Fénelon, the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray, in his Lives of the Ancient Philosophers, credits Pythagoras with this knowledge, and says that besides teaching his disciples that as the earth was round there were antipodes, since it was inhabited everywhere, the great mathematician was the first to discover that the morning and evening star was the same. If we now consider that Pythagoras lived in about the 16th Olympiad, over 700 years B.C., and taught this fact at such an early period, we must believe that it was known by others before him. The works of Aristotle, Laërtius, and several others in which Pythagoras is mentioned, demonstrate that he had learned from the Egyptians about the obliquity of the ecliptic, the starry composition of the milky way, and the borrowed light of the moon.

Wilkinson, corroborated later by others, says that the Egyptians divided time, knew the true length of the year, and the precession of the equinoxes. By recording the rising and setting of the stars, they understood the particular influences which proceed from the positions and conjunctions of all heavenly bodies, and therefore their priests, prophesying as accurately as our modern astronomers, meteorological changes, could, en plus, astrologize through astral motions. Though the sober and eloquent Cicero may be partially right in his indignation against the exaggerations of the Babylonian priests, who “assert that they have preserved upon monuments observations extending back during an interval of 470,000 years,”[801] still, the period at which astronomy had arrived at its perfection with the ancients is beyond the reach of modern calculation.

A writer in one of our scientific journals observes “that every science in its growth passes through three stages: First, we have the stage of observation, when facts are collected and registered by many minds in many places. Next, we have the stage of generalization, when these carefully verified facts are arranged methodically, generalized systematically, and classified logically, so as to deduce and elucidate from them the laws that regulate their rule and order. Lastly, we have the stage of prophecy, when these laws are so applied that events can be predicted to occur with unerring accuracy.” If several thousand years B.C., Chinese and Chaldean astronomers predicted eclipses—the latter, whether by the cycle of Saros, or other means, matters not—the fact remains the same. They had reached the last and highest stage of astronomical science—they prophesied. If they could, in the year 1722 B.C., delineate the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal equinox, and so unerringly as Professor Mitchell, the astronomer, proved, then they knew the laws that regulate “carefully-verified facts” to perfection, and applied them with as much certainty as our modern astronomers. Moreover, astronomy is said to be in our century “the only science which has thoroughly reached the last stage ... other sciences are yet in various stages of growth; electricity, in some branches, has reached the third stage, but in many branches is still in its infantine period.”[802] This we know, on the exasperating confessions of men of science themselves, and we can entertain no doubt as to this sad reality in the nineteenth century, as we belong ourselves to it. Not so in relation to the men who lived in the days of the glory of Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylon. Of the stages they reached in other sciences we know nothing, except that in astronomy they stood equal with us, for they had also reached the third and last stage. In his lecture on the Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips very artistically describes the situation. “We seem to imagine,” says he, “that whether knowledge will die with us or not, it certainly began with us.... We have a pitying estimate, a tender pity for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages.” To illustrate our own idea with the closing sentence of the favorite lecturer, we may as well confess that we undertook this chapter, which in one sense interrupts our narrative, to inquire of our men of science, whether they are sure that they are boasting “on the right line.”

Thus we read of a people, who, according to some learned writers,[803] had just emerged from the bronze age into the succeeding age of iron. “If Chaldea, Assyria, and Babylon presented stupendous and venerable antiquities reaching far back into the night of time, Persia was not without her wonders of a later date. The pillared halls of Persepolis were filled with miracles of art—carvings, sculptures, enamels, alabaster libraries, obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls. Ecbatana, in Media, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings, was defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colors, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed with silver tiles; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight, in its halls, the sun was rivalled by many a row of naphtha cressets. A paradise, that luxury of the monarchs of the East, was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian empire was truly the garden of the world.... In Babylon there still remained its walls, once more than sixty miles in compass and, after the ravages of three centuries and three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were still the ruins of the temple of the cloud-encompassed Bel; on its top was planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal communion with the stars; still there were vestiges of the two palaces with their hanging gardens, in which were trees growing in mid-air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had supplied them from the river. Into the artificial lake, with its vast apparatus of aqueducts and sluices, the melted snows of the Armenian mountains found their way and were confined in their course through the city by the embankments of the Euphrates. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, was the tunnel under the river-bed.”[804] In his First Traces of Man in Europe, Albrecht Müller proposes a name descriptive of the age in which we live, and suggests that “the age of paper” is perhaps as good as any that can be discussed. We do not agree with the learned professor. Our firm opinion is, that succeeding generations will term ours, at best, the age of brass; at worst, that of albata or of oroide.

The thought of the present-day commentator and critic as to the ancient learning, is limited to and runs round the exoterism of the temples; his insight is either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the solemn adyta of old, where the hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard the public worship in its true light. No ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of creation, and that the starry heaven and our mother earth were created for his sake. He, who doubts the assertion, may turn to the Magical and Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster, and find its corroboration in the following:[805]