Slavery was tolerated, but the labors of the slave were light, his rights carefully guarded, and his children were free. The slave could own property, and even other slaves.
Their religion possessed so many features similar to those of the Old World, that the Spanish priests declared the devil had given them a bogus imitation of Christianity to destroy their souls. “The devil,”
said they, “stole all he could.”
They had confessions, absolution of sins, and baptism. When their children were named, they sprinkled their lips and bosoms with water, and “the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given it before the foundation of the world.”
The priests were numerous and powerful. They practised fasts, vigils, flagellations, and many of them lived in monastic seclusion.
The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, had progressed through all the three different modes of writing—the picture-writing, the symbolical, and the phonetic. They recorded all their laws, their tribute-rolls specifying the various imposts, their mythology, astronomical calendars, and rituals, their political annals and their chronology. They wrote on cotton-cloth, on skins prepared like parchment, on a composition of silk and gum, and on a species of paper, soft and beautiful, made from the aloe. Their books were about the size and shape of our own, but the leaves were long strips folded together in many folds.
They wrote poetry and cultivated oratory, and paid much attention to rhetoric. They also had a species of theatrical performances.
Their proficiency in astronomy is thus spoken of by Prescott: “That they should be capable of accurately adjusting their festivals by the movements of the heavenly bodies, and should fix the true length of the tropical year with a precision unknown to the great philosophers of antiquity, could be the result only of a long series of nice and patient observations, evincing no slight progress in civilization.”
“Their women,” says the same author, “are described by the Spaniards as pretty, though with a serious and rather melancholy cast of countenance.
Their long, black hair might generally be seen wreathed with flowers, or, among the richer people, with strings of precious stones and pearls from the Gulf of California. They appear to have been treated with much consideration by their husbands; and passed their time in indolent tranquillity, or in such feminine occupations as spinning, embroidery, and the like; while their maidens beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads.
“Numerous attendants of both sexes waited at the banquets. The balls were scented with perfumes, and the courts strewed with odoriferous herbs and flowers, which were distributed in profusion among the guests as they arrived. Cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before them as they took their seats at the board. Tobacco was them offered, in pipes, mixed with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver. It is a curious fact that the Aztecs also took the dried tobacco leaf in the pulverized form of snuff.
“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.
Antediluvian world Page 33