A * 
 
 1 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE 
 
 or 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 BY THE REV. J. CAMPBELL, M.A, 
 
 ^V 
 
[^From the Canadian JournaLI 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 BY THE REV. J. CAMPBELL, M.A. 
 
 The important discoveries which, in recent years, have rewarded 
 antiquarian research among the monuments, and especially among the 
 written monuments, of the ancient world, have greatly tended to confirm 
 an intelligent belief in the unity of the human race. Links, similar ia 
 character to those which the physical ethnologist finds between organ- 
 isms difi'cring in form and feature, bind in one the speakers of different 
 languages and the inhabitants of widely separated regions. These 
 links may be termed historical, and are found in the religions and 
 mythologies of the nations of the earth. It is impossible to take up 
 any work on Compai*ative Mythology, or treatise upon the religious 
 systems of different peoples, and not find one's self involuntarily 
 attempting to answer the question, '' Whence comes this marvellous 
 agreement ? " 
 
 The learned Faber, who, in the early part of the present century, 
 gave to the world, in three quarto volumes, a dissertation on the Origin 
 of Pagan Idolatry, framed the following disjunctive judgment, which 
 exhausts the whole field of hypothesis, and shuts the enquirer up into 
 a definite conclusion, after a brief investigation of the subject: 
 
 1. Either all nations agreed peaceably to borrow from one, subsequent 
 to their several settlements ; v r»" 
 
 2. Or all nations, subsequent to their several settlements, were com- 
 pelled by arms to adopt the superstition of one ; 
 
 3. Or all nations were once assembled together in a single place and 
 in a single community, where they adopted a corrupt form of religion, 
 which they afterwards respectively carried with them into the lands that 
 they colonized. 
 
 The first and second of these hypotheses carry absurdity upon their 
 face. Is there any escape from the conclusion, which is the third? 
 An attempt has been made to escape in two ways. The first denies 
 that the disjunctive proposition is exhaustive of the subject ; and the 
 second calls in question the truth of the premise on which the propo- 
 sition is based. Those who deny that the proposition of Faber is 
 exhaustive, add to it a fourth hypothesis, and, showing the third to be 
 
4 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 
 
 as uDtenable as the first and second, make it the conclusion. This final 
 hypothesis may be stated as follows : 
 
 4. Or all nations, by virtue of similarity in the physical condition 
 and mental constitution of the individuals (not necessarily of the same 
 species) who composed them, developed independently certain similar 
 forms of religious belief. 
 
 This is the conclusion at which a large proportion of the scientific 
 men of the present day have arrived; a conclusion which is largely 
 due to the prominence that physical science has acquired at the expense 
 of historical study. Physiology and psychology, which, in the hands 
 of the materialist, is nothing more than a higher kind of physiology, 
 are prepared to depose the Historic Muse from her once proud eminence, 
 to degrade her to the position of a mere annalist of indisputable facts, 
 and themselves to set forth the origin and the destiny of man and 
 nations. The element of truth in this fourth hypothesis has been much 
 exaggerated in importance by the shallow thinkers who save labour by 
 adopting it. It cannot be denied that all men act and think in confor- 
 mity with the same laws of physical and mental action; but experience 
 teaches us that the law of freedom so modifies the law of nature in 
 man, that the details of his thought and action present an almost 
 infinite variety. Man is a religious being, prone to worship; so that , 
 hardly a tribe of the human race is found without a divinity. Allow 
 that mental constitution appears in this universality of worship ; but 
 what mental constitution or physical condition can account for that " 
 which is almost as universal — the bloody sacrifice ? Nature may cause 
 nations far removed from each other in time and place to frame similar 
 laws, and even to appoint law-givers with similar functions; but by 
 what law of mind or matter can we dispose of the Egyptian Menes, the 
 Greek Minos, the Indian Menu, the Phrygian Manis, the Lydian 
 Maeon or Manes, the German Mannus, and the Welsh Menw ? The 
 Pyramids of Egypt and India,' and the Stonehenges of Arabia, 
 Phoenicia and England,'- cannot be accounted for in the same way as 
 we account for the temple-building instinct. Now, Faber utterly 
 demolishes this fourth hypothesis by stating that " the singular, minute 
 and regular accordance among heathen systems appears not only in what 
 is obvious and natural, but also in what is arbitrary and circumstantial, 
 
 1 Wheeler, Geography of Herodotus. IjOiidoii, 1854 ; p. 421. 
 
 3 Geographical Works of Sadik Isfaliaiii. Loiuloii, 1832; p. 9. Palgravf's Travels In Centra 
 Arabia, vol. i., \\ 251. Finn, Byeways in Palestine. London, 1868 ; p. 283. 
 
RELIGIONS ANU CIVILIZATION 
 
 both Id fanciful speculations and in artificial observances. The final 
 means of escape, therefore, from the conclusion which sends us to a 
 common cradle of the whole human race is that afforded by calling in 
 question the truth of the above statement of Faber's. Can it be proved 
 that the learned author of the Origin of Idolatry manufactured resem- 
 blances which did not esist, magnified mere accidental coincidences 
 into identity of plan, or wilfully distorted facts to suit a preconceived 
 theory ? Far from it. There are instances, doubtless, in which he and 
 others who have dealt with the same subject have allowed their general 
 conviction to bias their judgment in particular cases of suspected agree- 
 ment; but these are so few, compared with the large number of cases 
 of indisputable connection, that they do not in the least invalidate the 
 position which these writers have taken. 
 
 I propose, first of all, to glance briefly at a few of the connections 
 and statements of connection which justify Faber's premise that there 
 is "a manifest accordance among the various systems of Heathen 
 Mythology." The myths best known at the present time, and indeed 
 till a comparatively recent period the only ones with which English- 
 speaking people were conversant, are those of the Greeks. It is 
 interesting to notice Bacon's judgment upon the origin of Greek 
 Mythology : " Many of these fables by no means appear to have been 
 invented by the persons who relate and divulge them, whether Homer, 
 Hesiod or others ; for if I were assured that they first flowed from 
 these lat<^r times and authors that transmitted them to us, I should 
 never expect anything singularly great or noble from such an origin. 
 But whoever attentively considers the thing, will find that these fables 
 are delivered down and related by those writers, not as matters then 
 first invented and proposed, but as things received and embraced in 
 earlier ages. Besides, as they are differently related by writers nearly 
 of the same ages, it is easily perceived that the relaters drew from the 
 common stock of ancient tradition, and varied but in point of embel- 
 lishment, which is their own. And this principally raises my esteem 
 of these fables, which I receive not as the product of the age, or 
 invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, gentle whispers and the 
 breath of better times, that, from the traditions of more ancient nations, 
 ( ame at length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks." •' Herodotus 
 !ts very explicit in regard to the origin of Greek divinities : " Almost 
 all the names of the gods crme into Greece from Egypt. My inquiries 
 
 ' Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients ; preftice. 
 
6 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 
 
 prove that they were all derived from a foreign source, and my opinion 
 is that Egypt furnished the greater numher. For, with the exception 
 of Neptune and the Dioscuri, whom I mentioned above, and Juno, 
 Vesta, Themis, the Graces and the Nereids, the other gods have been 
 known from time immemorial in Egypt. This I assert on the authority 
 of the Egyptians themselves. The gods with whose names they profess 
 themselves unacquainted, the Greeks received, I believe, from the 
 Pelasgi, except Neptune. Of him they got their knowledge from the 
 Libyans, by whom he has been always honoured, and who were anciently 
 the only people that had a god of the name."' In another place, 
 speaking of the anomalous fact of the Greeks regarding Hercules, 
 Bacchus and Pan, oldest of the Egyptian deities, as the youngest of the 
 gods, Herodotus says : " To me, therefore, it is quite manifest that the 
 names of these gods became known to the Greeks after those of their 
 other deities, and that they count their birth from the time when they 
 first acquired a knowledge of them."^ In a previous paper I have 
 illustrated the connection in religious observance or worship between 
 Greece, Egypt and Phoenicia.^ Every classical scholar is familiar with 
 some of the many myths that cluster round the name of Cadmus, and 
 serve to bind Syria and Greece together. M. Maury, in his notes to 
 the 7th book of Guigniaut, on the Relations of the worship of Bacchus 
 in Egypt, thus speaks of the connection among themselves of religions 
 which he has already indissolubly united to those of the Greeks. 
 " The study of the religions of Western Asia reveals to us the innu- 
 merable points of resemblance which existed between the divinities of 
 the banks of the Nile and those of Phoenicia and Syria, the worship of 
 which extended afterwards into Phrygia, Lydia and Cappadocia. The 
 myths of Attis and Cybele, of Adonis and Astarte, present an analogy 
 to that of Osiris and Isis which cannot be got rid of. And we cannot 
 withstand the impression that these religions had in part a common 
 origin, as M. Guigniaut has shown in his Notes, &c., on the 4th book 
 of this work." ^ The celebrated Bryant, speaking of Greek historians, 
 says : " The whole Theology of Greece was derived from the East. 
 "We cannot, therefore, but in reason suppose that Clement of Alexan- 
 di'^i, Eusebius of Csesarea, Tatianus of Assyria, Lucianus of Samosata, 
 
 * Rawlinson'8 Herodotus, Bk. ii., cli. 50. 
 6 Id., Bk. ii., ch. 146. 
 
 • " The Pliaraoh of the Exodus Identified in theJMyth of Adonis," in the Canadian Journal, 
 May, 1871, p. 36. 
 
 I Quigniaut, Religions de I'Antiquite. Tome iii., 924. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 7 
 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, Porphjry of Syria, Proclus of Lydia, Philo of 
 Byblus, Strabo of Amasa, Pausanias of Cappadocia, Eratosthenes of 
 Cyrene must know more upon this subject than any native Helladian. 
 The like may be said of Diodorua, Josephus, Cedrenus, Syncellus, 
 Zonaras, Eustathius and numberless more. These had the archives of 
 ancient temples to which they could apply, (Philo Byblius mentions 
 many authors in Phoenicia to which he applied) ; and had traditions 
 more genuine than ever reached Greece." Creuzer, who preceded 
 Guigniaut and Maury, and who carefully abstained from the magnifi- 
 cent generalization and dogmatic theorizing of Bryant, having withal 
 no remnant of Noah's ark to identify, or other preconceived notion to 
 justify, in treating of Greek mythology, is constrained to speak as 
 follows : " We cannot repeat it too frequently : if, in the study of 
 Greek mythology, we desire to arrive at the lowest foundation, we must 
 consult the Oriental dogmas, and not imagine, as many still do, that the 
 gods of Homer are the most ancient known and adored by the Greeks? 
 There are, on the contrary, gods far more ancient than these, of whom 
 indeed authors have transmitted to us but little and obscure informa- 
 tion. To complete and make clear the knowledge they afford we must 
 betake ourselves to the monuments of ancient literature in Persia and 
 in India. These exhibit, in all its truth and fulness, the organic 
 development of ancient religions." " 
 
 If, passing from the Greek, we take up the Latin mythology, we 
 find that, in all its branches, there is much of what one might be 
 tempted to call a reproduction of the Greek, but possessing so distinctive 
 a character that we must conclude against the theory of either people 
 borrowing from the other. While the remains of the Sabine religion 
 are strongly Egyptian in character, those of the Etruscan mythology, 
 as Maury shows, manifest a very decided Perso-Assyrian connection, 
 and are historically linked with the ancient Lydian state.^" 
 
 We do not need the statement of Taliessin that the Britons came 
 from Asia," nor the authority of the Book of Conquests for deriving 
 the ancient Irish stock from Africa," to prove the eastern origin of the 
 Celtic nations ; since their mythological history and worship connect 
 
 8 Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythologj', i., 143. 
 
 • Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Vcilker. Theil H., Heft iii. Nachtrog 3. 
 
 10 Guigniaut, ii., 493. Id., ii., 1204. Herodotus, i., 94. 
 
 11 Davies, British Druids, x. ' 
 1* Keating*s General History of Ireland, p. 84, &c. 
 
8 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 them with Egypt and Phoenicia.'" Finn Magnusen, who first com- 
 pared the Scandinavian and Persian systems of mythology, pointed out 
 the striking coincidences every where manifest between them ; and 
 later writers have rendered it still more apparent.'^ Grimm leaves 
 little doubt in the mind of an unprejudiced reader that the Germanic 
 theology (which includes the Scandinavian) has certain affinities with 
 the Celtic, widely ab the two peoples, Germans and Celts, may differ; 
 and that Lithuanian gods may be found among the Hindoos in a San- 
 skrit dress.^"^ The Slavonian peoples, with whom the Lithuanians are 
 oflen identified, occupy a peculiar position, in language approaching 
 the Latins, and in religion the Persians and Indians. Carl Bitter 
 cannot account for such undoubted traces of Indian mythology and 
 religious pbservance as appear among many European peoples, other- 
 wise than by the supposition that colonies of Indian priests settled 
 around the Black Sea, in Thrace, and even in countries farther west.''* 
 Not only into Europe, however, but also into Africa, these priests of 
 Brahma and Buddha must have penetrated, if Bitter's hypothesis be 
 the solution of the question — how did the similarity between the 
 religions of India and those of western peoples originate ? and the 
 following statement by Dr. Pritchard be correct. " Some of the ear- 
 liest travellers in India were struck with many religious ceremonies 
 and theological fables prevalent in that country, which they observed 
 to bear a comparison with parallel portions of the Egyptian system. 
 P6re Catrou, a Jesuit missionary, was, I believe, the first who remarked 
 this connexion. La Croze followed him, &id pointed the way for an 
 ample investigation of the subject, and for the exertion of much inge- 
 nuity in tracing a variety of coincidences. These are found to amount, 
 according to the general opinion of the learned in the present day, to 
 a satisfactory proof that the mythology of the East emanated from the 
 same source from which the fables of Egypt are derived." " It is not 
 at all surprising to find after this that Indian gods have a place in 
 Persian mythology, so that Burnouf could say, in speaking of the iden- 
 tity of Yima-Kshaeta, Thrsetana and Keresaspa with Yama, Trita and 
 Krisasva : " It is undoubtedly very strange to see one of the most 
 
 18 Banier, La Mythologie et les Fables expliquees par I'histoire, ii., 616. 
 1* Blackwell, in his edition of Mallet's Nortlicm Antiquitieb, p. 47L 
 w Grimm, Dedtsclie Mythologie, 137, &c., 705, &c. 
 !• Bitter, Die Vorhalle Europiiischer Volkergcschichteii vor Herodotus. 
 " Researches into the Pliysical History of Man, p, 341. 
 
RKLIGIONH AND CIVILIZATION. 9 
 
 venerated of Indian divinities (Yama) give his name to the first sovereign 
 of the Ario- Persian dynasty (Yima-Kshacta or Jemschid) : it is one of 
 the facts which most evidently attest the intimate union of the two 
 branches of the great family, which extended many ages before oar era 
 from the Ganges to the Euphrates.'" Sir William Jones shewed the 
 affinities of the Hindoos with almost every other nation ; and found no 
 difficulty in establishing a great resemblance in the religious belief and 
 cereaionial usages of all the people who inhabited the central parts of 
 the Asiatic continent, and even of the Ohineso and Tartars themselves, 
 who were farther removed from the primeval seat of learning and civiliz- 
 ation.'" Turning to the " mythology of the Babylonians, the first point 
 which attracts attention is the apparent similarity of the system with 
 that which afterwarda prevailed in Greece and Home. The same gen- 
 eral grouping is to be recognized ; the same genealogical succession is 
 not unfrequently to be traced ; and in some cases even the familiar 
 names and titles of classical deities can be explained from Babylonian 
 sources. It seems, indeed, to be highly probable that among the 
 primitive tribes who dwelt on the Tigris and Euphrates, when the 
 cuneiform alphabet was invented by reducing pictures to phonetic 
 signs, and when such writing was first applied to the purposes of 
 religion, a Scythic or Scytho-Arian race must have existed, who subse- 
 quently migrated to Europe, and brought with them those mythical 
 traditions which, as objects of popular belief, had been mixed up in 
 the nascent literature of their native country ; so that we are at present 
 able in some cases to explain obscurities both of Greek and Roman 
 mythological nomenclature, not simply from the languages of Assyria 
 and Babylonia, but even from the peculiar and often fantastic devices 
 of the cuneiform system of writing." -" A people very different in 
 character from the Greeks and Romans, namely, the Arabians, wor- 
 shipped the gods of Babylonia. " It is impossible '' say Lenormant 
 and Chevalier " not to identify the Chaldrco-Assyrian gods — Ilu, Bel, 
 Shamash, Ishtar, Sin, Samdan, Nisroch, in the gods of Yemen — II, 
 Bil, Shems, Athtor, Sin, Simdan, Nasr."'^' It would be a simple 
 matter to swell the number of statements and evidences of connection 
 among the mythologies of the different nations of the earth to such an 
 
 18 Max Mttller, Science of ljangiia)?e, 2n(l Series, Lecture xi. 
 
 ii> Pococke, India in Greece, p. 251. Rusaell's Coiiiieition of Sacred and Profane History, by 
 Wheeler, ii., ji. 43. 
 *> Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Bk. i., Essay x., Sec. 1. 
 O Lenonn,jit and Chevalier, Ancient Histoi-j' of the East, ii., p. 322, 
 
10 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 
 
 extent as to fill a large volume. The literature upon the subject is 
 vast, and is daily increasing. Nor is the subject an obscure one : on 
 the contrary, many of the connections established are obvious to the 
 most superficial observer. Thus the Syrian and Phoenician Baal is 
 the Babylonian Bel, the Indian Bali, ihe Greek Belus, the German 
 and Celtic Beli. Astarte becomes the Egyptian Athor, the Syrian 
 Athara, the Arabian Athtor, the Chaldean Ishtar, and the Celtic 
 Ostara, (whence Eastar) : a closely allied goddess, Anat or Anta of 
 Egypt, is the Persian Anaitis and the Phoenician and Carthaginian 
 Tanaitis : and Anna Perenna of the Romans agrees in all respects 
 with Anna Pourna of the Hindoos. The Persian Tir and the Scandi- 
 navian Tyr are the same; the Etruscan Mantus and the Egyptian 
 Araenthe; the Greek Ceres, the Indian Cris, and the Welsh Ceridwen. 
 In the Egyptian Ptah Soccari and Sera Hercules one can hardly fail 
 to detect the Indian Buddha Soukra and the Sabine Semo Sancus. 
 "The names of the children of Ammon, as well as of Cheraosh their 
 god," says Sir J. G. Wilkinson, "ate too near to the Khem and 
 Amun of Egypt to be accidental." -"- Enough, I think, has been said 
 to show that materials are not wanting to justify the position taken by 
 Faber, and to deprive the sceptic of the last argument by which he 
 seeks to overthrow his conclusion. 
 
 It may very' naturally bo asked, however, that evidence distinct 
 from and in addition to that of a mere community of gods should be 
 given of such an intimate connection among the various nations of 
 the world as Faber supposes to have existed prior to the historic 
 period. This evidence may be of two kinds : the most satisfactory, 
 that of direct assertion or statement of historical fact ; the second, 
 that of inference, similar to the evidence on which Faber builds his 
 theory. The first of these two kinds of evidence we find very decid- 
 edly in the writings of the Greeks. " Greek traditions establish 
 various relations or mythical connexions between Egypt and Upper 
 Asia. For example, Cepheus, in whom the primitive East is per- 
 sonified, is given as a son of Belus, a supposed King of Egypt 
 Belus himself is said to have transplanted the Chaldeans from 
 Egypt to Babylonia, and to have naturalized Egyptian institutions 
 there."" Perseus is a Greek, but Herodotus tells us that the 
 Persians called him an Assyrian, and that the Egyptians claim him 
 
 M Rawliiison's Herodotus, App. Bk. iii., Essay i., Sec. 21. 
 « Gulgniaut, 111., 601. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 11 
 
 as a native of Chemmis.^* The Scythians are derived from Her- 
 cules, and the whole known world included in the Greek genealo- 
 gies.'-'' Tlie Egyptian and Phoenician derivation of many Greek 
 peoples I have shown in a previous paper to be a cardinal belief of 
 the Greek historians.-" The Romans derived themselves from the 
 Trojans, although Picus was an Assyrian king, and Saturn came from 
 Crete, and the Etruscans claimed kindred with ancient Lydia.-^ The 
 Lydians themselves, through Agron, Ninus and Belus, are derived from 
 the royal line of Assyria.-'* The ancient Indian traditions give us 
 the name of the lonians as a people bordering on Hindoostan,'-"' while 
 the Shah Nameh makes the land of the Berbers part of Persia, the 
 king of which reigns in Jerusalem."' The shepherd invasion of Egypt 
 was an event that so nearly concerned the Hindoos that a tradition 
 concerning it is found among their writings."' The Germans looked 
 back to Asgard on the Don, or farther east still," and the Celts to 
 Deffrobane or Taprobane,^ as the lands of their nativity as nations. 
 Even the Phoenicians must be brought from the Red Sea/*^ and the 
 Moors from Arabia,-''"' long centuries before the Christian era. The 
 Irish records give a most circumstantial account of the wanderings of 
 the Hibernian family or families from the distant east, where Greeks, 
 Assyrians, Egyptians, Spaniards and Danes were strangely inter- 
 mingled.'"' Somewhat similar is the statement made by Hiempsal, 
 king of the Numidians, concerning the original inhabitants of northern 
 Africa.^ These are but examples of what I have found almost 
 universally in the so-called mythical histories of ancient peoples — first, 
 a derivation from the East ; and second, a drawing close together and 
 mixing up of peoples widely separated and thoroughly distinct from 
 each other at the commencement of the historical period. Were these 
 
 ** Herodot. iv., 54, and ii., 92. 
 K Miiller's Dorians. Oxford, 1830; i., 490. 
 
 *" The Plmriioli of the ExoduH, &c. Canadian Journal, May, 1871, p. 86. 
 ^ Livii Hist. Lib. i. Cory's Ancient Frngiueuts", p. 76. Shuckford's Connection of Sacrud 
 and Profane History, iii., p. 53. Vide Note 10. 
 *8 Herodot. i. , 7. 
 
 W Wilson, Vishnu Purana, p. I!t4. 
 
 *> Atl<inson, Sliah Naniah, p. Uil. Lo Dabistan, Paris, Tom. i., p. 50. 
 •1 Asiatic Researches, vol. iii., p. 46, p. 225, &c. 
 M Anthon's Classical Dictionary. Art. Odin. 
 M Davies, Uritiali Drui<ls, p. 98. 
 •* Herodot. vii., 80. Justin, xviii., 3, 2. 
 * Russell's Connection, by Wheeler, ii., 248. 
 >• Keating's General History of Ireland, 86. 
 W Sallustii Bellum Jugurth., xviii. • 
 
12 THE UIllTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 
 
 peculiarities coDfiioed to a few unenlightened peoples, such as the 
 ancient Germans and Britons, it would be a graceful thing to admit 
 that the schoolmaster was abroad when the so-called mjth sprang into 
 being, and there leave the matter. But when they are found common 
 to the traditions of Phoenicia, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, India, Arabia, 
 Ethiopia, North Africa, Italy, Greece, the Celtic and Germanic peoples 
 and the numerous families of Asia Minor; when they are seen to 
 have been perpetuated from age to age, and retained in spite of 
 advancing knowledge, even to the prejudice of the traditions in which 
 they are found ; when the romance of the middle ages, spite of all the 
 changes to which it subjects the old world story, did not discard them 
 nor alter what were well known as geographical absurdities and unheard 
 of relations among nations : it is then wise to ask if no other reason 
 than universal unbounded ignorance in regard to relation and locality 
 on the part of the ancients lan be giveti for their singular agreement 
 in these particulars. 
 
 So numerous are the facts, from a consideration of which the inti- 
 mate connection of all peoples prior to the historic period may be 
 inferred, that I can simply indicate a few of the classes into which 
 they may be divided. Some are philological in character. The study 
 of comparative philology has resulted in an established belief in the 
 common origin of the languages called Indo-European. It has, how- 
 ever, been customary to erect a barrier between the Semitic and the 
 Indo-European languages, and thus to cut oflF Phoenician, Hebrew, 
 Chaldee, Arabic, &c., from the last great brotherhood of tongues, while 
 Coptic, Ethiopic, and tb '■■ languages of the Assyrian inscriptions have 
 been kept in a state of suspense, being assigned now to one family and 
 now to another. It must surely have occurred to those who hold out 
 most strongly for a radical diversity of the Semitic from the Indo. 
 European languages, that the many connections of old Greek, Boeotic 
 especially, with Phuenician,^ and the conclueion often arrived at that 
 the Pelasgian and Phoenician tongues were identical f' the fact that 
 Coptic lies midway between the Semitic and Indo European languages, 
 and comes nearest of all to the Celtic branch cf * 'le latter/" and the 
 unsatisfRctory way in which the difficulty that leaves the cuneiform 
 inscriptions of Chaldea between heaven and earth is removed by call- 
 ing them Hamitio :■ — from these considerations — if must surely have 
 
 *» Stillidglleet, OiigincH Saoiae, i>. -lOO. Rawlinson in Herod, ii., 49. 
 
 M Uus8 -H's Comiectioii, by Wlieeler, ii., 9H. 
 
 *> Poco.'ke, ludia iu Oieeco, 208. Rawliusou, Herod. App. lik. Ii., Ch. 1. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 18 
 
 occurred to such philologists, as it has to Sir Henry Rawlinsou, possible 
 that Indo-European and Semitic might be traced to a common parent 
 form of speech.*' Hitzig has discovered that the language of the Phil- v 
 istines, intimately as they must have associated with the Phoenicians 
 proper to the north, the Hebrews in the east, and the Egyptians on 
 the louth, manifests no Semitic but decidedly Indo-European affinities, 
 occupying a position midway between the Sanskrit and the Greek.*- 
 The theory of an ancient Cushite civilization has been developed in 
 recent years out of the language of the Hirayaritic inscriptions, a 
 theory bearing much resemblance to the Finnic hypothesis of Arndt 
 and Rask. Traces of the Cushites are found with more or less dis- 
 tinctness in Phoenicia, Arabia, Persia, India, Chaldea, Ethiopia, 
 North Africa, Italy, Spain, and even in Ireland, by writers who have 
 adopted the Cushite hypothesis; and it is clearly shewn by them that 
 not a language in the world has escaped altogether from Himyaritic 
 influences/'' In regard to alphabets we learn from Herodotus that the 
 Ionian letters were much the same as the Phfonician." Dr. Thomson, 
 the author of The Land and the Book, speaking of that famous monu- 
 ment of Phoenician literature, the inscribed sarcophagus of Ashmunazar, 
 says : " Many of the letters so clearly resemble those of our own alpha- , 
 bet that we can scarcely be mistaken in tracing ours up through the 
 Rouian and the Greek to that of l*h(oiiieia. Still more interesting is 
 the fact that the characters on this stone are so like the old Hebrew as 
 to establish their clear relationship, if not their actual identity." *'' In 
 an article upon the Moabite stone so recently discovered. Dr. A. B. 
 Davidson has the following : '* This primal Semitic inscription shows 
 that 900 years before Christ, at least, an alphabet was in use among 
 the Semitic tribes of Palestine; that the alphabet was employed in 
 public monuments by the meanest and lowest of them in the scale of 
 civilization ; that it is essentially the alphabet which we call Phoeni- 
 cian ; that, in all likelihood, it was common to all the Semitic raccc of 
 Asia, being also most probably invented by them ; that it is the alpha- 
 bet which was carried into Greece ; and that, as modified at Rome, it 
 is the alphabet which we now use. Further, though we cannot say 
 precisely at what date the Greeks received this alphabet, whether 
 
 *1 KftWliiiSdii's Ilcridlotus, A]i]i. Ilk. i., Kusay vi., Sec. 18. 
 
 ** Ilit/.i^, Urnt'Sclii(^liti' iiiul Mjtliologie diT Pliilistiier, vl. 
 
 *» HaKlwin, Prehistoric Nations. New York, 1S69. 
 
 ** HtToilot. v., 50. 
 
 * Tliomson, Tlic IjMvX nnil tliu Book. London, 18rtS, ji. \W. 
 
14 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 before the date of this inscription or no, it is certain that at the time 
 they received it the Semitic alphabet was complete, consisting of twenty- 
 two letters. Of these, twenty-one are found on this inscription, and 
 the other certainly occurred several times on the monument. The 
 oldest Greek alphabet corresponds very closely to that on the monu- 
 ment. And whether the Greeks accepted at first all the letters they 
 afterward used or no, it is certain that all their alphabet came ulti- 
 mately from this, and that it was all at their disposal at the time they 
 received any of it."*® Professor Rawlinson, in a note on the 58th 
 chapter of the 5th book of Herodotus, in which the Greek alphabet is 
 traced to a Phoenician source, says : " This is strong evidence to the 
 fact that European Greece got its alphabet direct from the Phoenicians. 
 Otherwise there is so great a similarity between the various alphabets 
 of Western Asia and Southern Europe (the Lycian, Phrygian, Etrus- 
 can, Umbrian, &c.,) that it would be difficult to prove more than their 
 common origin from a single type, which might be one anterior to the 
 Phoenician." Punic and Etruscan characters, we are told, have been 
 found in Central Arabia, supposed to be the home of the old Cushite 
 race that included the Phoenician.'" The Gauls had letters something 
 like the early Greek letters of Cadmus.^** And even the Touariks of the 
 Sahara, according to M. Boiasonnet, have an alphabet almost identical 
 with that of ancient Phoenicia/'' The following table of Gesenius 
 must, I believe, shew some nearer relationship between the peoples 
 who wrote the characters he has arranged in genealogical order than 
 has been generally admitted : — 
 
 Tho First Pliiuiiifiaii. 
 
 Ancient 
 Greek. 
 
 Ancient Araiiiican 
 
 i'ersian. on Egjiitian monuments. 
 
 Etruscan. 
 Umbrian. 
 Oscan. 
 
 Somnite. 
 
 Celtiberian. 
 
 \ 
 
 Roman. 
 
 Palniyrene. 
 
 > 
 
 Sassanidc. 
 
 2end. 
 
 Ancient 
 Hebrew. 
 
 Samaritan. 
 
 Later 
 Phoenician. 
 
 I 
 IliMjante. 
 
 Ethiopic. 
 
 Vulgar Samaritan. 
 
 Tsabian. 
 Square Hebrew. 
 
 Entrangelo & 
 Ncstorian. 
 
 Culic. Pesehitti. 
 
 I 
 Nischi. 
 
 Uigur. 
 
 ♦• British and Foreign Evangelical Review, No. Ixxv., p. 159. 
 *' Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, 87. 
 *■ Davies, Celtic Researches, 242. 
 * Journal Aslatique. Mai, 1847. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 15 
 
 It is gratifying to see that even alphabetical fornos help to swell the 
 tide of evidence that flows in the direction indicated and required by 
 Faber's hypothesis. The presence of foreign words in a modern lan- 
 guage does not excite wonder, since the intercourse of nations and the 
 spread of knowledge make it a necessary result ; but it is worthy of 
 attention that almost all the sacred appellations of the Etruscans show 
 an eastern origin/* that the musical instruments of the Greeks have 
 Syrian names,"'* and that words and phrases of almost pure Hebrew 
 occur in the oldest of Welsh poems. '^ ; < 
 
 Another class of facts illustrative of the intimate connections ex- 
 isting between peoples prior to the historic period may be termed 
 geographico-philological. The author of thut suggestive book, " India 
 in Greece," says that the names of places must be explained by the 
 language of the people inhabiting them if the ordinary theory of 
 ancient history be the true one ; in Greece this cannot be.'"^ What is 
 true of Greece is true of the whole ancient world. Names of places, 
 like the names of mythical characters, may in many (not all) cases, 
 after being subjected to the most arbitrary treatment, be made capable 
 of receiving certain far-fetched and absurd significations ; but no 
 sensible man who has puzzled over ancient geographical nomenclature 
 ever felt satisfied with these. Mr. Pococke would reduce all geogra- 
 phical names whatsoever to the language of the Vedas, because he 
 finds that language serviceable (as no doubt it is) in explaining the 
 names which are common to Europe and Western Asia and to the 
 Indian peninsula. I believe that Bochart was far nearer the mark 
 when he sought to accomplish a similar task by the aid of a Phoenician 
 dialect manufactured for the purpose. The niont important fact in 
 connection with this class of evidence is that the same geographi- 
 cal names arc found in many different parts of the world, generally 
 applied to the same objects, as districts, cities, rivers, mountains, &c., 
 and even that several names frequently occur in exactly the same 
 geographical order and connection in different countries. Thebes in 
 Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor and Greece ; Belka (Boulak), in Egypt, 
 Balkh, in Persia, and Phylace (Phulake), in Greece; Tentyra, in 
 Egypt, Tantura in Palestine, and Tyndaris, in Sicily and Marmarica ; 
 
 M Vossii de Idololatrio!, L. ii., c. 67. 
 
 M Strabo, x., 3, 17. 
 
 B« Davies, British Druids, 137, 564, 573, 4c. 
 
 1 Fucocke, India in Orcece, 22. 
 
16 THE BIRTHPLACK OP ANCIENT 
 
 the Jordan of Palestine, the Jardanus of Elis and Crete, and the 
 Eridanus of Italy ; Meru of India, Moore of Persia and Meroe of 
 Ethiopia ; Atabyrion, (or Tabor,) in Palestine, and Atabyron in Persia, 
 Bhodes and Sicily : these are examples of an almost endless connec- 
 tion. A very striking instance of the double connection of several 
 names of places is given by Pococke in Accho, Kishen, Carmel and Dor, 
 which, with Magadha for Megiddo, occur in the same order in India 
 as in Palestine.^ Ritter, speaking of the position of Ophir, says 
 " Ophir is sometimes used by the ancients to designate countries which 
 lie far apart and in different directions. * ^i- * Hartmann draws 
 the inference that Ophir was one of those wandering names, like 
 Tartessus, Cush, Taurus and the like, and that it was first given to a 
 port of Southern Arabia ; but when emigration began, and the inhabi- 
 tants pushed their way further on and established colonies on the coast 
 of Africa and India, the name too was transplanted and multiplied, and 
 many Ophirs were to be found. His theory furnishes a satisfactory 
 solution of the fact that, for whatever cause, many places bearing the 
 same name are continually referred to in the ancient records, manifestly 
 lying widely apart." ■'■'' With all truthfulness Pococke may say " The 
 whole map is positively nothing less than a journal of emigration on 
 the most gigantic scale." "'" An emigration of the character to which 
 he refers must have had one, not many, starting points, and thus sends 
 us back to a great centre such as that of which Faber speaks. 
 
 Monuments, not more enduring, indeed, but more substantial than 
 names, add their weight to the preponderance of evidence in favour of 
 the commencement of civilization in a single locality. Such are the 
 numberless objects preserved in archaeological museums, or descriptions 
 of which are furnished in ancient writings, that exhibit mechanical 
 skill. Mr. Osburn informs us that the garners pictured on the Egyp- 
 tian monuments are the same as those now used in parts of Greece 
 and Italy '"' The chariots of the ancient Britons were the same as 
 those used by the Greeks at the siege of Troy, by the nations of Pales- 
 tine, and by the Egyptians.'^ Diodorus Siculus mentions the use of 
 the old Egyptian waterwheel in Spain.™' The Celtic church-plank, 
 
 M Id. 223. 
 
 W Ritter, Comparative Geograpliy of Palcatiiie, &c. Edinbuigli, 1866; p. 94. 
 
 W Poi'ocko, Iiulin in Greere, 47. 
 
 W Osburn, MonuinentHl History of Egypt, i., 452. 
 
 M Cu'suris dti bello Gallic, iv., 33. Taciti Agri(^ola, 12. Diwl. Sic. v. 16. 
 
 W Diod. Sif. V. 25. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 17 
 
 used in place of a bell for callinp; together the congregation, appears in 
 the Greek Irjimvrpov or the jiakoos of the Armenians, which is found 
 in many parts of the East'"* " .A sf^yrian sculpture," say Lenormant 
 and Chevalier, " is one of the greatest of ancient arts ; its teachings, 
 received and transmitted by the peoples of Asia Minor, presided over 
 the first steps of Grecian sculpture. IJctween the works of Nincvite 
 artists and the early works of the Greeks, even to the Aeginetans, we 
 may observe an astonishing connection ; the celebrated primitive bas- 
 relief of Athens, known by the common name of the ' Warrior of 
 Marathon,' seems as if detached from the walls of Khorsabad or Koy- 
 undjik.'""'' Sir J. G.Wilkinson holds that Assyrian and Greek pottery, 
 sculpture, architecture, &c., were to a great extent borrowed from the 
 Egyptians;''^ and Lenormant and Chevalier make Phoenician art a 
 mixture of Assyrian and Egyptian."' "Cotton stuflFs and indigo must 
 have been known to the Israelites from a very ancient period ; for they 
 have been found in the burial places of Thebes, which date back to 
 the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and which were used for purposes 
 of sepulture from 1822 to 1476 B.C. Both of them must have been 
 of Indian origin.""* Mr. Baldwin, in his Prehistoric Nations, quotes 
 Dr. Livingstone in favour of his adopted Cushite hypothesis ; the 
 extract will answer as well or a great deal better for Faber's. " Dr. 
 Livingstone, in the account of his ' Expedition to the Zambesi,' des- 
 cribes articles manufactured by the African people, and specifies 
 'hammers, tongs, hoes, adzes, fish-hooks, needles, and spear-heads, 
 having what is termed dish on both sides, to give them the rotary 
 motion of rifle-balls.' He admires their skill in spinning and weaving, 
 and in manufacturing certain kinds of pottery, similar to pottery found 
 in India. He points out that they have admirably-made fish nets, 
 ' nearly identical with those now used in Normandy;' a blacksmith's 
 bellows like that used in Central India; 'fish-baskets and weirs like 
 those used in the Highlands of Scotland ;' and other implements like 
 those found in Egypt and India. He is sure that this striking simi- 
 larity of manufactured articles in widely-separated countries — articles 
 ' from identical patterns widely spread over the globe' — makes it very 
 probable that the arts and usages of these diflFerent people were derived 
 
 •0 Finn, Byeways in Palestine, 440. 
 
 01 Lenormant and Chevalier, i., 405. 
 
 ** Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians, ii., 263. 
 
 •3 Lenormant and Chevalier, ii., '232. 
 
 « Ritter, Comparative Geography of Palestine, &c., i., 121. 
 
 2 
 
18 THE BIRTHPLAC'K OF ANCIENT ' 
 
 from the same source. Not seeing any other explanation, he suggests 
 that they may have been given by direct revelation from God. This 
 hypothesis is reverent, but the very interesting fact to which he calls 
 attention can be explained without resort to miracle. The original 
 instructor in these arts was the ancient Cushite civilization, which 
 went into Africa from the east and the north, and was felt for a very 
 long period of time in all its central countries.'"^"' The merest tyro in 
 archaeology would find little difficulty in filling an entire number of 
 the Journal with extracts illustrative of this third class of facts. 
 
 Another class of facts may be called ethological. I do not use this 
 word in the same sense as Sir William Hamilton or Mr. Mill, nor is it 
 indeed the same word which they employ ; since "EdO^, rite, custom, 
 and not their lld01\ disposition, character, is the root. Ethology 
 would thus be the doctrine of customs or rites. Among the most 
 notable rites practised in different parts of the world are those con- 
 nected with burial, and which the name of Charon, the ferryman of 
 the Styx, at once suggests. Diodorus Sioulus brings these rites from 
 Egypt, with many other ceremonies j"" and even the Muscovites, it 
 appears, received the knowledge of them." Pluto and the parapher- 
 nalia of Hades wandered westward from the Stygian fount in Iduraea, 
 through Greece, Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis, to Spain."" The branch 
 of gold, gathered from a tree in the wood of Hecate, is plainly the 
 mistletoe of the Druids j'*^* the Gallic forest- worship is the grove- 
 worship of Palestine ;''" the Druidical cauldron is that of Dodona f** 
 and Taliessin's Metempsychosis claims kindred with that of the Hin- 
 doos.^* The rites of Ceres, or the Eleusinian mysteries, may be traced 
 in Egypt, India and Britain as distinctly as in Greece.^- The extent 
 to which circumcision is found to have been practised has led many to 
 deny the fact of its being a purely Abrahamic institution." Phallus- 
 worship, often wrongly connected with this rite, is found to have been 
 still more widely diffused."* Festivals of lamps and 13ale-(Baal)fires 
 
 ** liuldwiii, Preliistdi'ic Nntitms, 32T. 
 
 «o Diod. Sic. i., Sec. ii., ;)4, ;iO. 
 
 «7 Bniiicr, ii., 430. 
 
 •W Id. ii., 449. M* Virgilii iEricis, vi., 201. 
 
 «« Id. ii., 624. 
 
 TO DnvieH, Biitish Diiiid«, 217. 
 
 n Id., 57:i. 
 
 W Heiodot., ii., 171. AsiRti(! Re.senrclies, v., 207. Striibo, iv., 4 6. 
 
 " Keinick, Ancient Fgypt under the Plmraolis, i., 376. 
 
 '♦ Maurice, Indian Antiquities, Vol. i., Pt. i., p. 264. 
 
RELIOIONH AND CIVIMZATION. 19 
 
 are not confined to one nation, buf preserve among different peoples 
 the memory of a time when all dwelt within the same illuminated 
 circle."' 
 
 Facts connected with literary and scientific institutions attest the 
 same truth. The identity of the four books of Indian and of Egyptian 
 Scripture;"" the similarity between the llamayana and Mahabharata and 
 the Dionysiacs of Nonnus;^' the agreement of the priests of Memphis 
 with the Brahmins of Benares in their division of the earth y** the 
 wide diffusion of the stories of Rhampsinitus and his treasury, of 
 Rhodope, of Midas and the ass's ears, of the mice at Pelusium, of 
 Melampus and the cows, of a partial deluge, &c. ;'" the minute coinci- 
 dences in the most arbitrary of astronomical systems;"" all these are 
 worthy of consideration in a cumulative argument. 
 
 I close the testimony to the truth of Faber's premise, and thus of 
 his legitimately drawn conclusion, by citing a few of the authors who 
 have been led from various kinds of evidence to the belief that nations 
 now widely separated were once parts of a single community. Weber 
 thinks that Menu and similar names (Minos, JMones, &c.) arose before 
 the sepai'ation of the Indo-European stock.'" Pocoeke holds a national 
 unity of Egyptians. Greeks and Indians.'*'- Sozomen speaks of the 
 Ethiopians as Indians,*' and other ancient writers insist that they are 
 the same people,"*' a conclusion to whicli the lii.stoiian Alison arrived 
 on hearing of the conduct of the Sepoys in Egypt in 1801. "'' The 
 names of Wilfordand Tod are on the side of an Indo-Greek connection/" 
 Sir J. G. Wilkinson finds the Egyptians as an Aryan race in Asia ;*' 
 
 ™ Wlii'cler, (iiM)g. of Herodotus, 4.'):!. .laiiiii'soii, Scottisli Dictioiiiiry, Art. JJi'lt.iiiif. 
 "> The four books of Hermes (Cleiii. Alex., Strom. \i., 4), iiiid tlie four Vedas. Asiatie 
 Researches, iii. De Lalioye's Rameses tlie Great, Appendix, Note 1. 
 '7 .Vsiatie Reseanhos, i., iHS. (itiiyniaut. iii., loiti. 
 '8 Wheeler, GeoKriiiihy of Herodotus, 8li. 
 
 '!• Gnif;. ii., liliO. (i. W. in Rawlin-son's Heroil., ii., l-_'l. .Smith, Diet, of (Jrei'k and Roman 
 Uiograpliy and Myth(do}{y, Art. Ithodopis. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi. Keatin},''s Ireland, l!Ki. 
 Hitzig, die I'hilistner, 201. Compare tlie story of Mehimpus with that of iSsirama in the Rig 
 Veda. !''■'" Max Midler's Lecure XI., Second Series, on Science of Language. 
 
 *" Rawlinson's Herodotus, Ap)). Rk. ii., ch. 7. 
 *l Journal Asiatic Society, Vol. XX., ;t and 4, p. 4:.".» 
 «2 India in Greece, l'->2. 
 ^ Sozomen, ii., ch. 24. 
 ** Russell's Connection, by Wheeler, ii., 271. 
 
 M Alison, History of Europe, Svo., 1843, Vol. IV.. p. r,Or,, note. The Sepoys, tlnding them- 
 selves in the niid.st of emblems of their own religion, fell cm their faces and worshipped. 
 88 I'oeocke's India in Greece, 145. 
 W Wilkinson, A Topuliir Account of the .Vncieiit Egyptians, i., .102. 
 
20 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 
 
 while Professor Rawlinson derives the Chaldeans from Meroe.*^ The 
 Atlantica of Olaus Rudbeck brings Greeks and Romans, Germans and 
 Danes from Sweden, which he makes the Atlantis of Plato.** Voa 
 Hammer calls the Germans a Bactriano-Median nation and gives them 
 a local habitation of the past in Khorassan."" Dom Pezron, who wrote 
 on the "Origin and antiquity of the Celtic tongue," would have Celts 
 to be the chief people of the ancient world."* Dr. Pritchard's Eastern 
 origin of the Celtic nations is well known ; and the latter paifc of his 
 Researches into the Physical History of Man, which happily deals 
 with anything rather than physical history, is so full of links to connect 
 civilized peoples one with the other that it almost appears as if it were 
 written for the special purpose of proving Faber right. "'^ 
 
 Enough I think has been s;iid to show that " all nations were once 
 assembled together in a single place and in a single community, where 
 they adopted a corrupt form of religion which they afterwards respec- 
 tively carried with them into the lands that they colonized ; " the 
 term "all nations" being understood generally of civilized j^^oples, 
 , and not absolutely of all, except in regard to the time prior to the 
 earliest dispersion, and the terms " single place " and " single com- 
 - munity," except in regard to the same, being capable of sufficient 
 expansion to denote an empire half as large as that of Alexander the 
 Great, of which the states that constituted and the tribes that peopled 
 it were distinct one from the other. ^ 
 
 It has proved a far more difficult matter to settle the locality in 
 which the primitive civilization, th;it Faber and others have supposed, 
 sprang into existence, than to justify a belief in their conclusion. A 
 faithful adherence, not to the letter of the Bible, but to the inferences of 
 early commentators, has shut up believers in the truth of the stateiients 
 contained in the book of Genesis to a single centre, from which the 
 human race spread at a very remote period, and to a later central seat 
 of civilization and empire. The first is the mountainous region of 
 Armenia; the second, the plain of Shinar. The idea commonly enter- 
 tained in regard to the dispersion from Armenia is, that the grandsons 
 of Noah at once betook themselves to the regions which, at the com- 
 
 88 Rawlinsou's Herodut., Apji. Bk. i , Essay vi , sec. 16. 
 
 *' Atlantica, Sivc vera Japlieti i»)steroi-uin sedes ac patria, 1679-98. 
 
 *o Voii Huiiiiner, Wien Jaljrbuch, ii., »19. 
 
 M Pezron, Antiquit6s de la Nation ct do la Langiie des Celtos. Paris, 1703 
 
 *" Physical History of Man, from p. 318. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 21 
 
 mencement of the historic period, bore their names, or could in some 
 way be identified with them or their descendents. In accordance with 
 this view, Javan, the fourth son of Japheth, is represented as moving 
 throup;h hundreds of miles of an uninhabited wilderness, and over 
 rivers and seas, to Greece, the abode of the lonians; seltlinp; liis eldest 
 son Elisha in Elis, sendintr Tarshish, the second, far off to Tartessus 
 in Spain, and Kittim, the third, to 3Iacedonia, nearer at hand, while 
 Dodauiin, the youngest, either founds the oracle of Dodona, or, the 
 initial (Jaleth of liis name beinji; transmuted to resh, emigrates to 
 llhodes. Kor this absurd trifling witli hi.story there is not the slightest 
 authority in the language of Scripture. Many reasons may be given 
 for not adopting this crude theory of the origin of nations and the 
 peopling of the countries of the earth. One that will suggest itself 
 to any practical mind is the unlikelihood of small families, in the world's 
 second infancy, finding a reason for emigrating to any great distance 
 from the original centre, to which they were bound by mutual ties. 
 Even allowing that very early migrations did take place, we have the 
 example of Abraham (and even his was a very peculiar case), together 
 with the testimony of history in all ages, even to the present day, as 
 our authorities for saying that the progress of the emigrants from one 
 seat to another must have been very gradual, and with long periods of 
 time intervening. The first migration we do read of is not northward 
 through a wild and inhospitable and difficult tract, where but little 
 provision for the way could be found, but southward into a warm and 
 fertile region, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Every conside- 
 ration would prompt the small band that set out from Armenia to 
 preserve its unity; and the facts that they feared lest they should "be 
 scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth," and that God is 
 represented as saying, " Behold the people is one and they have all 
 one language," tend to prove that this unity was maintained until the 
 dispersion of Babel. "^ At Babel a dispersion certainly did take place. 
 Are we then to decide that from Mesopotamia at this point of time 
 men carried to their respective settlements the mythology, arts, litera- 
 ture, etc., that we find common to so many nations? I answer em- 
 phatically. No ! And here I take objection, as I have hinted above, 
 to the form in which Faber puts his conclusion. "Single place" and 
 "single community" suit the times before the dispersion of Bate! 
 very well ; but they do not suit the facts upon which Faber founds his 
 
 »» Genesis, xi., 4. 6. 
 
22 THK BIIlTHri.ACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 hypothesis. If the Arkite theory, upon which Bryant spent so much 
 labour, be found untenable, because based upon u forced interpretation 
 of every rite and myth of the ancients as a reminiscence of the Noacliian 
 deluge, as untenable must the theory be which makes a Babel of myth- 
 ology by seeking to harmonize it with a reminiscence of what might 
 have occurred in that ancient scat. Even more unintelligible is the 
 latter theory, inasmuch as Nimrod, the great hero of whom all nations 
 are supposed to have had a grateful remembrance, was, in all proba- 
 bility, posterior to the dispersion, or at least contemporary with it. 
 Moreover, we have found that the ancient traditions regard Babylonia, 
 not as the primitive seat of empire, but as occupying a very secondary 
 position, receiving its religion by way of the ^]rythraean sea, and its 
 royal line from Egypt.'" The arts and mythology of Chaldaea arc gen- 
 erally allowed lo be derived from some other source."' 
 
 The great centre to which all the tribes of men gradually converged 
 was Egypt. Whether Noah himself moved westward and planted 
 vines in Hebron, which was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, 
 as the Kabbins inform us,'"' will be a diffii^alt question o answer ; but 
 there can be little doubt that thi. great majority of his descendants, or 
 at least those of them whose life history, in its mythical or accepted 
 forms, cares to record, did pass through Palestine and Arabia on their 
 way to the banks of the Nile. One of the earliest seats of civilization 
 I believe to have been what M. de Lanoye calls " the opulent pentapolis 
 of the Jordan ;" "^ and the earliest of all legends, which many have 
 confused with the story of the Noachian flood, I am convinced arose 
 from the overthrow of the Cities of the Plain. Here, or in the rcirion 
 between the Nile and the Dead Sea, I unhesitatingly place the deluges 
 of Deucalion and Ogyges, with the accompanying events that form an 
 ■ ~ ~~ ~ ' J 
 
 M Ouiiiu's, mciiticined by Hurosus, who came by way of tlie Red Sea, hrouglit letters iiud 
 religion with liim to Babylonia. Uelua, brother of Agenor, an<l father of iEgyi)tuH, connects 
 Babylonia, au its first monarch, with Phoenicia and Kgyjit. 
 
 ;*" Balilwiii, Prehistoric Nations, 180. Jtawliiison's Herodot., Aiij). Bk. i., Kssay \i., sec. 
 1(5, &e. 
 *« Ritter, Comparative, Geography of Palestine, iii., 297. 
 
 M "Since the opulent Pentapolis of the Jordan had snnk in the bituminous gulf of the Dea<l 
 tfea, the most compact centres of pennanent populaticni, existing between Egypt and Ujjper 
 Asia, were the maritime establishments which tjiu Cushites of Camum, driven from the shores 
 of the Krythnean Gulf by convulsions of the soil, had founded upon the Syrian coast ; the forti- 
 lled cities which the Chetas (Hittites) had built between tlie Orontes and the Euphrates ; and 
 -lastly. Babel, in the land of Sengar, where a celebrated temjile of the Sun and great navigable 
 river, attracted caravans and flotillas of pilgrims and traders from all directions." Rameses 
 the Great, 117. 
 
UKIJOIONM AND ClVflJ/ATlON. 28 
 
 introdiictioD to the history of civilization. One of the oldest of ancient 
 records, the Phoenician History of Sanchoniatho, while commencing 
 with Pha3nicia proper (Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, &c., which may have been 
 transported names from the original home on the Red Sea even there), 
 gradually leads the line of Cronus southward through Penua into 
 Egypt. This lino has decided Indo-European affinities in Ouranos, 
 Atlas, Pontus, Nereus, Poseidon, Athene, Melcartus, <fec. From a 
 consideration of the evidence aflForded in the traditions of the ancients, 
 the Abbe Banier decides that Syria, Palestine, Arabia and Egypt, were 
 the parts of the world first peopled, and from which civilization was 
 diffused over the earth."" Plato, in his Epinomis, thus speaks of the 
 origin of astronomical science : " The first who observed these things 
 was a barbarian who lived in an ancient country, where, on account of 
 the clearness of the summer season, they could first discern them ; 
 such are Egypt and Syria, where the stars are clearly seen, there being 
 neither rains nor clouds to hinder their sight; and because we are 
 more remote from this fine summer weather than the barbarians, we 
 came later to the knowledge of those stars." "" The following passage, 
 from the Rev. W. B. Galloway's book on Egypt, coincides most 
 thoroughly with what I have already stated in regard to the topography 
 of the first mythical period : "The conflagration of Phaethon, divested 
 of fable, is interpreted as that of Sodom by the author of an ancient 
 poem ascribed to Tertullian ; it is also regarded by the historians and 
 philosophers of antiquity as a physical fact. Plato in his Timteas 
 mentions that a venerable Egyptian priest told Solon so, though asso- 
 ciating it with an erroneous physical theory. The Scholiast in the 
 Timseus connects it with the mention of the flood of Ogyges and 
 Deucalion, and with the period of the latter; and he informs us that 
 the conflagration was in Ethiopia, which we may construe vaguely as 
 some part of the subject territory of Cusb, who in early times may be 
 viewed as claiming patriarchal supremacy over all the tribes of Ham, 
 and thus over Canaan.'""' Even Egypt was called Ethiopia and Ogygia, 
 as we learn from Eustathius. Julius Africanus gives the same general 
 designation of the locality; and he too associates it with the period 
 
 •* liiiiiier, i., 45. 
 
 »» Costiml, History of Astronomy, p. IK!. 
 
 i"** Mr. (iullowiiy must have forj^ottcn tlif fact tliiit Ktliioiiia ami Southern Palestine are con- 
 founded in auuient story, as in the case of Cephnus, king of Kthioiiia, whom we have the 
 authority of Stral)o, Mela, and other geograpiiers, for making king ot Jopjia and the surround 
 ing comitry. 
 
24 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 of a fiood, indicating, but erroneously, tliat of Deucalion. On the 
 authority of Acusilaus he puts Osryges 1020 years before tho first 
 Olympiad, or equivalent to 1796 years before Christ; to which tine 
 he also refers the Exodus of Israel, much too early a date for the latter 
 event, perhaps not early enough for the flood of Ogyges, but which 
 would place it during the residence of the Israelites in Egypt, 255 
 years before the Exodus. Ogyges, who afterwards founded Elcusis, is 
 said by Thallus to have been of the race of giants who warred against 
 heaven ; and, being defeated, he fled as an emigrant from, Plutnicla to 
 the land then called Actc, but since Attica. The flood which hap- 
 pened in his day through the overflowing of a river, may, therefore, 
 have been not in Greece, but in the country from which he emigrated 
 thitlier. The Scholiast on Plato does not say that it was in Greece, 
 but only that Ogyges was king of Attica. In the Latin of the Chronicus 
 Canon of Euseblus we accordingly find it mentioned thus : " Diluvium 
 Egypti hoc tempore fult, quod factum est sub Ogyge." ^'*' More pro- 
 bably it was in Canaan than in Egypt, though known to the Egyp- 
 tians ; '"- and it is not unlikely that the flow of the waters of the 
 Jordan, which must necessarily have preceded the bursting in and 
 final settling down of the basin of the Dead Sea to its present form, 
 meets us in this tradition, which has since become transferred to 
 Greece, partly from the emigration of Ogyges thither, and also partly 
 from its having become confounded with a later flood. Ptolemy the 
 geographer Informs us that near the Climax, an ascent or hill in or 
 near the Idumean range, there was a spring having Avernian associa- 
 tions, for it was called " the Stygian fountain." Apollodorus makes 
 Phacthon a native of Syria and son of Tithonus (who has Egyptian, and 
 Assyrian, and Persian connections). Ovid, who seems in some things 
 to have taken his materials from Acusilaus, in others doubtless from a 
 variety of other ancient writers of history genuine or traditionary, 
 makes him contemporary with Epaphus, and he glances at the existence 
 of a wide-spread inundation, or sea of collected waters, at or just fol- 
 lowing the period of the conflagration of Phajthon, and at the spot 
 where the ehrth sank down to a lower level. Clement of Alexandria 
 puts the conflagration in the time of Crotopus. Johannes Antiochenus 
 
 101 •■ The Egyptiiiii deluge was at this time, wliiili took pliiee uiuler Ogyges." 
 
 102 Tliere is every roanoii to believe that the plutoiiie iigeiiey at work in the lower basin of the 
 Joulan was of a wide-spread churaeter, and materially altere<l the face of the country towards 
 the shores of the Red Sea, and probably eastward towards Egypt. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 25 
 
 connects it with the story of the giants (Titans as Thallus calls them), 
 l)Ui- throws it back towards the flood, and he places it on the river 
 Eridanus, but he does not understand the right Eridanus, the Jordan. 
 The Titans are mentioned in Phoenician history as a race of men who 
 lived by agriculture and hunting. The name Ogyges, as connected 
 with the Titans or giants, may itself be suggestive of the neighbour- 
 hood of the Jordan, where, at a later period, the last survivor of the 
 remnant of the giants ^ "e the name of "iiy, yiyo.q^ " Og, the giant," ^"^ 
 (the spelling Yoyrj<; su. cs only as a proper name of one of the giant 
 race)."^"' Minos, theL ^reat lawgiver of Greece, is frequently called 
 a Phoeniciao, while his a ,oent from Cadmus through Europa (Cadmus 
 being placed midway between Egypt and Phoenicia), and the presence 
 of his name in Minois near Gaza, which is the border of the Chereth- 
 ites or Cretans, completely identify him with Palestine. We have the 
 authority of Pausanias for stating that the Hebrews shewed the grave 
 of Silenus, and that statues of him were dug up in Palestine ; ^°^ and 
 that of Pliny to the fact that the nurse of Bacchus was buried at Beth- 
 shan or Scythopolis.^'"' As interesting as these is the tradition that 
 Feridun of Persia, who lived a considerable time after the great destruc- 
 tion that preceded the reign of Gilshah or Ubul Muluk. founded Jeru- 
 salem in 1729 B.C.'"^ " Gentile and Jewish records," says Dean 
 Stanley, " combine in placing the earliest records of Phoenician civiliza- 
 tion by the Assyrian lake " (the Dead Sea).''* The Hycsos or shep- 
 herd line of Egypt, who are made the authors, of civilization, are 
 invariably derived from Phoenicia, Philistia and the borders of Pales- 
 tine and Arabia, to which region they are in part supposed to have 
 returned. The name " Phoenician pastors" is the one by which they 
 are most frequently designated. 
 
 The extracts and references given above tend to prove two things : 
 first, that the primitive civilization, of which records remain, is to be 
 found in the southern part of Palestine, whence it extended south- 
 westward into Egypt; and second, that this primitive civilization was 
 the work of a very mixed people, known as Phoenicians. I call the 
 
 103 The name of Agog, common to the Anialukite kings of that region, who are numbered 
 among the invaders of Egypt, comes nearer still. 
 10* Galloway, Egj'pfs Uu(!(>ril, p. 463. 
 1* Paiisanii Oeog., vi., 24, 6. 
 108 riinii, H. N., v., 10. 
 lOT Dabistan, i., 50. 
 108 Stanley, Hinai and Palestine, 28 
 
26 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 Phoenicians a very mixed people, althougli it has been customary to 
 call them pure Hamites, and to accept the statement of Augustine that 
 they descended from Canaan,"" because the evidence of Semitic, and 
 especially of Indo-European elements, in their persons, language and 
 civilization, is diametrically opposed to any such notion As well 
 might we conclude, because the inhabitants of England are called 
 Britons, that their physical conformation, character, language, civiliza- 
 tion, etc., are Celtic. The following passage from Lenormant and 
 Chevalior's Manual must be read cum grano salts, the (jranum being 
 a wholesome ignoring of all such ethnic terms as Canaanite, Cushite, 
 Semitic, Japetic. It will then simply indicate that a people who once 
 dwelt in the eastern part of Southern Palestine, at a subsequent period 
 migrated to Phoenicia. '' The traditions of the Phoenicians collected 
 at Tyre itself by Herodotus, ever careful and intelligent in the choice 
 of his sources of information, and also accepted by the judicious Trogus 
 Pompeius; those of the inhabitants of Southern Arabia preserved by 
 Strabo; and finally those still current in Babylonia during the first 
 centuries of the Christian era, when the Syro-Chaldee original of the 
 book of Nabathaean Agriculture was revised — all agree in stating that 
 the Canaanites (Phoenicians) at first lived near the Cushites, on the 
 banks of the Erythraean Sea or Persian Gulf, on that portion of the 
 coast of Bahrein designated El Katif on our modern maps of Arabia. 
 Pliny speaks of a land of Canaan, in this neighbourhood, in his time. 
 Strabo speaks of the," Islands of Tyre and Aradus," the Bahrein Isles of 
 our day, containing temples similar to those of the Phoenicians ; " and," 
 he adds, " if we may b'^lieve the inhabitants, the islands and the town 
 of the same name in Phfcnicia are their own colonies. " According to 
 Trogus Pompeius, the Canaanites (Phoenicians) were driven from their 
 first settlements by earthquakes, and then journeyed (northwards) 
 towards Southern Syria. The traditions preserved in *' Nabathaean 
 Agriculture" .state, on the contrary, that they were violently expelled, 
 in consequence of a quarrel with the Cushite (?) monarchs of Babylon 
 of the dynasty of Nimrod ; and this is also the account given by the 
 Arabian historians, who have recorded very precisely the traditions as 
 to the migration of the (Janaanites, whom they term the original 
 Amalckites, descendants of Ham, carefully distinguishing them from 
 the second, the Biblical Amalekites, of Semitic race."" One branch of 
 
 ">» Leuoniiant ami Chevalier, ii., 144, 
 no Id 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 27 
 
 the great Phoenician stock, according to Dr. Movers,'" is the nation of 
 the Philidtines, and of them I cannot foibear quoting Hitzig's decided 
 language, *' Ich habe gefunden : die Philisfaer sind keine Semiten, 
 sondern pelasgischen Stammes; und ihre Sprache war deren sparliche 
 Ueberreste, meist Eigennamen, darthun, mit dem Sanskrit und dem 
 Griechischeu verwandt.""- It is not a little remarkable that the first 
 state we hear of after the destruction of the cities of the plain is that 
 of Abimelech, king of the Philistines of Gerar, who bordered closely 
 upon the Amalekites."' These Philistines, who are shown from the 
 names Phicol, Ahuzzath, Gerar, etc., to have been of the Indo-European 
 or JapHetic family, like the Phaniician pastors of Egypt,'*' were in a 
 favourable position for invading that country, as the Arabian tradition 
 charges them with doing;"' being situated just midway between the 
 old home on the Jordan, whence earthquake and flood expelled them, 
 and the coveted wealth of the Nile valley. A striking coincidence 
 appears in the earliest history of Persia, which has links to bind it 
 with that of almost every other people, and especially with the histories 
 of Egypt, India, Chaldea and Arabia. The first Iranian king, after 
 the great destruction of mankind, which came upon them on account 
 of their wickedness, was Gilshah or Kaiomers, whom the Arabs call 
 Ubul-Muluk, or the Father of Kings."'' His grandson Houcheng, or 
 Pischdad, connects by the first name with the Indian Vichnou, and by 
 the second, removing the mere prefix of the Coptic article (Pi), with 
 the Arab Shedad, which is identical with the Welsh Seithwedd, the 
 Indian Soutadanna, the Egyptian (Fo)stat, the Philistine Ashdod, and 
 the Athenian Astu or Fastu. ""* The legend connected with this 
 name is invariably that of a flood. The son of Houcheng, again, 
 is Tahmouras, who is thoroughly identified with Deuiarous, or Dema- 
 roon, of Phoinicia, and Demophcon of the Greek story."' This latter 
 
 m Mtivois (lie I'll! I'll i/icr, i., j). 1, &c. 
 
 "8 " 1 liiivc found it : the Philistines an' no yeinitfis. Itiit of a I'ulusgian .stoi k, ami their 
 language, us the slender] reniaius, mostly of j(roi)er names, jiruve, was relatf^l to tlie Sanskrit 
 rind the Greek," 
 
 11' Genesis, XX., xxvi. - . *' 
 
 in Hit/ig, die Philistiier, 77, ll!>, -J'.U, &<■. 
 
 ll" liitter, C'onip. Geog. of Pal., ili., 'Jiiii. .'iaie's Koran (Preliminary Uiseour.se, .Seetiou \). 
 
 110 RusHell's Connection, ii., US, ;il. "O'* Uio<l. Sic. i., Hi. 
 
 11' This connection ajiiiears in Dcnvlmnd (deiiioii destroyer), a name of Tahmouras. Denio- 
 plioon i.i a word like, Uellerophon. Movers (ilie I'hienizier, 0(51, &c.) connects Demarous 
 (Denuiroon) with the river Damouras or Tamyrns, in Phiunicia, and thus with Tainyras of 
 Cyprus. Tahmouras, like Tamyras, is the sun. As Deniarous is the father of Mclcartus, so 
 Tiibmouni.s is father of Djemsehid, As Dumaroon is adopted son of Dagoii, so is Tahmouras the 
 
28 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 
 
 uamc, as well as the Dagon connection of Houcheng, Vichnou, 
 Shedad, Ashdod, etc., give us families whose history is connected 
 with that of Ceres, which forms one of the earliest of ancient tradi- 
 tions. Eleusis, the abode of Deraophoon, Celeus, his supposed father, 
 Elysium of the Greeks and Latins, Kailasa of the Hindoos, and 
 Gilshah of the Persians, with many similar names, meet in Elusa 
 or Khulasa (according as the breathing is absent or present), which 
 is a town and region in Gerar. Near at hand is Aroer, whence came 
 one of the Ceres line. Erechtheus of A/oura. There, indeed, sprang 
 into existence the Aryan race, as a race of husbandmen. Not far off, 
 towards the Mediterranean, is Jenysus, which is so thoroughly identified 
 with the Nyssa in which Bacchus was born, and from which Proser- 
 pine was carried away."* Space will not permit me to enlarge further 
 upon this most interesting subject. Enough has been said to indicate, 
 if not to prove true, my belief (the proof is yet to come in future 
 papers), that the morning of History rose in the south of Palestine, 
 whence it passed to a brighter Egyptian day ; and that the " Myths 
 of the Dawn" may all be transmuted into genuine narratives of facts 
 by a careful comparison of them one with the other, with the region 
 specified, and with undoubted history, Biblical and Monumental. 
 
 Let the "single community and place" of Faber be the Egyptian 
 Empire at its largest extent, when no civilized nation was known to 
 exist beyond its bounds. These were marked on the north by Mount 
 Amanus ; on the east by the Euphrates and Tigris and the Persian 
 Gulf J on the south by the limits of Arabia Felix and Ethiopia J and 
 on the west by the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Europe was a 
 desert wilderness, peopled, perhaps, after the manner of the American 
 continent, when first discovered ; and the greater part of Asia was in 
 the same condition. When did the nations who received their school- 
 ing within the limits mentioned go forth into the world beyond, to 
 give to history the unmistakable record of a distinct national life in 
 Persia and Asia Minor, Greece, and the Islands, Rome and Carthage, 
 and the later seats of empire in the north and west ? This question 
 may be difficult to answer with exactness ; but monumental evidence 
 exists to show that as late as the date of the Exodus (1491 B.C.), the 
 
 8on of Houuheng or Pischdad, and Demoplioon of Celeus (Khulasn), the favourite of Ceres. 
 There is a Wady Tnamlrali runiiiii}? from Uethlehcm (the house of lireail) to *"ic Dead Sea. 
 Ritter's Comp. Oeog., iii., 135. The Demo or Dema in the above nanu'.s suggest of tlieniselvea 
 a connection with Denieter, Daniitliales, Demo, Damia, &v. Ouigniaut, iii., 616. 
 "• Guigniaut, iii., 07. Diod. 8ie. i., 8, iii., 34, &c. 
 
RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 29 
 
 bounds specified were not exccoaed. There is also decided evidence 
 to the fact that, with Egyptians, Etuiipians, Libyans, Chaldseans, 
 Arabians, Phoenicians and Syrians, whose respective countries fall with- 
 in these limits, there then dwelt Persians and Indians; Lydians, Cap- 
 padocians, Phrygians and other peoples, who afterwards colonized Asia 
 Minor; Greeks and Italians; Moors and Carthaginians; as well as the 
 ancestors of the German and Celtic peoples." During the long period 
 lying between the Dispersion of Babel and the Exodus of Israel, the 
 common literature, religion, art, language — the common civilization, in 
 fact, — of the world had time to develope itself in Egypt and the adja- 
 cent countried. Egypt was the cradle of civilization, net the teacher, 
 but the school of the whole world. Of humanity, as of humanity's 
 divine representative, the saying of the Father is true, " Out of Egypt 
 have I called my son."^-" 
 
 "» Lciioriuant and ChovaliiT, i., J4H, 249, 255, 2uil, l'OO, &u. 
 12« Ilosoa, xi., 1. Matthew, ii., 15.