UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES IN MEMOR1AM BERNARD MOSES PRE-HISTORIC NATIONS; OR, INQUIRIES CONCERNING SOME OF THE GREAT PEOPLES AND CIVILIZATIONS OF ANTIQUITY, THEIR PROBABLE RELATION TO A STILL OLDER CIVILIZATION OF THE ETHIOPIANS OR CUSHITES OF ARABIA. BY JOHN D. BALDWIN, A.M. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE! 1872. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1SCO, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Copyright also secured in Great Britain, and entered at Stationer's Hall, London, and translation reserved. THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY, OF WHICH THE AUTHOR HAS THE HONOR OF BEING A MEMBER. Montesquieu says: "II y a des choses que tout le monde. dit, parce qu'elles ont ete dites un fois." Many stupidities of history and dog- ^ matic denials of the past have no other warrant. Instead of repeating anything "because it has been said once," it is better to accept the results of conscientious investigation. 213192 CONTENTS. Page I. INTRODUCTORY GENERALITIES 9 H. PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO THE CURRENT CHRONOLOGIES, THE RELATION OF HELLAS TO CIVILIZA- TION, AND THE MEANING OF PRE-HISTORIC TIMES 23 The current Chronologies 24 Hellas and Civilization 39 Pre-Historic Times 49 HI. PRE-HISTORIC GREATNESS OF ARABIA 55 An early Civilization in Arabia 56 Arabia was the Ancient Ethiopia 57 Misapprehension concerning Arabia 67 The two Races in Arabia 73 Concerning the Old Race 78 Ancient Arabian Ruins and Inscriptions 80 The ancient Arabian Language 88 Concerning the Origin of Alphabetic Writing 91 Ancient History of Arabia 95 Greek Notices of Arabia 99 Arabian Recollections of the Past 102 Fragments of Old Arabian History 108 The Cushite System of Political Organization 112 Cushite Science, Astronomical and Nautical 11G IV. THE PHOENICIANS 129 Origin of the Phoenicians ]30 The Immigration doubted 135 "Eenan's Theory ... 137 Their Cushite Religion and Architecture 141 vi Contents. PK Antiquity of the Phoenicians 145 Periods of Phoenician History 147 The Building of Gades 15G Extent of Phoenician Influence 158 The Pelasgians 162 Minos and his Conquests ./ 1G5 Phoenician Language and Literature 107 V. CUSHITE OR ARABIAN ORIGIN OF CHALDEA. 1T3 Chaldean Civilization and Learning 174 History of Chaldea by Berosus 180 Chaldean Antiquities and Traditions 185 The Chaldean Ruins and Inscriptions 188 The Origin of Chaldea 192 The Cushite Language in Chaldea 194 Political Changes in Ancient Chaldea 190 The Year 2234 B.C 193 Concerning an old Chaldean Temple 202 Assyria and the Semitic Race 204 ATheory concerning the Chaldeans 205 Concerning Chaldean Ancient History 206 Hypothetical Scheme of Chaldean History 209 n. INDIA, SANSKRIT, AND ANTE-SANSKRIT : 216 The Indo-Aryans preceded by the Cushites 218 The Rock-cut Temples of India 228 The Dravidian Race and their Language 238 Aryan History and Antiquity 243 The Veda and the Vedic Age 247 Religious History of Sanscrit India 253 Modern Brahmanism 258 Indian History and Chronology 260 "The Ancient Malayan Empire 63 VII. EGYPT PREVIOUS TO MENES 2C7 Manetho's History of Egypt 268 Origin and Antiquity of Egypt 271 The old Sanskrit Books on Egypt 277 Contents. vii Pago Dionysus, called Osiris and Bacchus 23 Mythology and Mythological Personages 292 The Ages before Menes 29(> Antiquity of Writing in Egypt 300 Attempts to measure Egyptian Antiquity 303 VIII. AFRICA AND THE ARABIAN CIJSHITES 306 The Races in Africa 307 A brief Essay on Races 311 The Arabian Cushites in Africa 322 Traces of African Ancient History 32G Northern Africa in Pre-Hlstoric Times 335 The Berbers, especially the Touaricks 338 Navigation round Africa 345 IX. WESTERN EUROPE IN PRE-HISTORIC TIMES 352 An ancient Civilization in Western Europe 353 The Age of Bronze in Western Europe 358 The Ancient Race in Western Europe 368 The Ancient History of Italy 371 Western Europe anciently called Africa 375 The old Sanskrit Books on Western Europe 378 The Ancient History of Ireland 381 The Keltic Language 389 Ancient Communication with America 392 PRE-HiSTORic NATIONS. INTRODUCTORY GENERALITIES. THE origin of man, and the date of liis first appearance on earth, have always been subjects of speculation. We see this in the cosmogonic myths and legends of antiquity, and in the dogmatic chronologies that have been allowed currency in modern times; but, so far as we know, it is only in very recent times that visionary speculation on these topics has given way to enlightened inquiry. The cyclical schemes of the ancient Eastern world, which computed by tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands the years of man's existence on earth previous to the regular begin- nings of history, may be treated with small ceremony now ; but they are quite as scientific as Archbishop Usher's scheme of chronology, for the men who invented them were skilful astronomers ; and whoever undertakes to show that they are not quite as reasonable, may discover that some- thing can be said on the other side of this question. These cyclical estimates of the past may turn out to be as near the truth as Usher's system of chronology, but neither the one nor the other can now be accepted as an intelligent and truthful exposition of the antiquity of the human race. The whole tendency of scientific investiga- tion and discovery, at the present time, is to class them to- A2 10 Pre-IIistonc Nations. gether as alike unwarranted and worthless. We moderns have underrated the antiquity of man. This is shown more and more clearly in two departments of inquiry, where the greatest results are yet to be realized geology and the science of language. Conscientious geologists are forced to say, " The date of man must be carried back far- ther than we had heretofore imagined ;" and accomplished scholars and thinkers respond from the field of linguistic science, " Late discoveries are showing us that the an-tiq- nity of the human race upon earth must be much greater than has been generally supposed." These two sciences bring important aid to the study of pre-historic times, by compelling us to throw off the tram- mels of false chronologies, and by showing us room in the past for those great pre-historic developments of civiliza- tion, and those long pre-historic ages of human activity and enterprise, Avhich are indicated by the oldest monuments, records, and mythologies. It is impossible to study faith- fully the ancient mythologies, or the results of exploration in the oldest ruins, or the fragmentary records in which the ancients speak of what to them was misty antiquity, with- out feeling that, to accept all they signify, we must enlarge the past far beyond the limits of any scheme of chronology known to modern times. If we lack strength and boldness to break down the barriers of unreason and pursue inquiry with unfaltering reverence for truth, we may find refuge in the oracular cave of historical skepticism, where little or nothing is seen beyond the first Greek Olympiad save bar- barism, lying fables, and general chaos. But human intel- ligence cannot remain imprisoned there, especially in this age, when so much is constantly added to our knowledge of the past, and when increasing means for a careful and The Oldest Writings. 11 hopeful study of antiquity so stimulate inquiry as to make it irrepressible. The oldest writings in existence are inscriptions found in the ancient ruins of Egypt and Southwestern Asia. The oldest books, leaving out those of China, are those preserved by the Indian and Iranian branches of the Aryan family the Rig- Veda, a translated fragment of the Desatir, and portions of the works of Zoroaster ; next to these come the Hebrew Scriptures ; then follow the works of Homer, and some other books and fragments of books, in the Greek language, representing the culture of the lonians of Asia Minor. These books show us the civilization of the com- munities in which they originated, but they do not tell us when or where civilization first appeared. The mytholo- gies, the ruins, the discoveries of linguistic science, and the general voice of tradition, lead us to the conclusion that, so far as relates to the Cushite, Semite, and Aryan races, its first appearance was somewhere in the southwestern part of Asia ; but we can not describe the agencies and methods of its first development, nor give the date of its origin. We nowhere find a continued and permanent advance- ment of any nation or community of these races, but we see a constant progress of civilization from lower toward higher degrees, from the few to the many, and from limited and special toward many-sided and all-embracing develop- ment. Nations rise, flourish, and sink again to obscurity. The Egypt of to-day is not that Egypt which we see in the monuments of its Old Monarchy ; Chaldea is not now the ancient Chaldea which we study in its ruins; to-day we inquire in vain on the coast of Asia Minor for that Ionian confederacy whose marvelous culture, passing over into 12 P I'e-Historic Nations. the Hellenic peninsula, illumed Athens, and made that city the glory of Hellas. It is long since Carthage and Rome ceased to exist. But, while communities and nations have disappeared, this old civilization has remained ; sometimes checked and lowered for a succession of ages, but always reappearing with new developments of its forces and new forms. The Reverend Dr. Lang, in his " View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation," is led by the sub- ject to make this observation : " In Tuscany and in Egypt, in India and in China, and, I will add, even in the South Sea Islands and in both Americas, we behold the evidences of a primitive civilization, which, in some instances, had run its course anterior to the age of Homer, but which, at all events, acknowledged no obligation to the wisdom or refinement of the Greeks." Few will question the fact he states, so far as relates to Italy and Asia, although not many who carefully study the past will describe all that civilization as "primitive." Dr. Lang himself is not quite satisfied with this description ; for, in attempting to ex- plain the origin of the ancient civilization which had near- ly run its course in different countries previous to the time of Homer, he adopts the notion of Bailly and others, that it was originated by the antediluvians, and brought through the Deluge to their successors by the family of Noah. Without fully exploring it, he saw a fact that was much too large for his chronology a fact for which there was not sufficient room in the past, as he measured it. The great civilization, so apparent in various nations of antiquity that present themselves to view just beyond the borders of regular history, was not the work of a single people nor of a single period of national existence. Thoso Whence came Civilization? 13 nations were preceded by others no less great and impor- tant, although more hidden from observation by their great- er distance from us in time. The civilization of the Phoe- nicians, Egyptians, and other nations of the East passed to the Gi'eeks, the Romans, and the magnificent empire of the Caliphs, making some losses and receiving new develop- ments. Without speaking of what we received from the Kelts, whose civilization was greater than history has ad- mitted, the civilization of modern Europe has grown part- ly out of that of Greece and Rome, and also out of that of the Saracens to a much greater extent than is generally recognised. So has the mental and social cultivation, first seen in Western Asia, flowed on through the ages, from people to people, from the civilizers of Egypt, Chaldea, and India to Europe and America, never defeated entirely, and always surviving the " dark ages" that obscured it. We have the highest and widest development it has ever reached. To find its starting-point and write its early his- tory, we must be able to explore the obscurest deeps of antiquity. And yet what seems in these inquiries to be the obscur- est antiquity becomes extremely modern when considered in connection with what geology says of the antiquity of man. Those familiar with the later discoveries of this sci- ence know how slowly, and against what persistency of incredulity and doubt, geologists themselves have been brought to admit the evidence which shows the existence of the human race in the latter part of the geological peri- od Avhich Lyell and others describe as Post-pliocene. This period, which next precedes the " Recent," or that in which we live, seems as modern as yesterday in relation to the countless geological ages that went before it; but some 14: Pre-Historic Nations. tentative efforts at computation make us feel how far awn y it is from yesterday. Sir Charles Lyell's lowest estimate of the time required to form the present delta and alluvial plain of the Mississippi is more than 100,000 years. It be- longs almost wholly to the Recent period. The lower portion of the peninsula of Florida has been created by a constant growth of coral reefs toward the south, and this growth is still in full activity. " The whole is of Post-ter- tiary origin," say Agassiz and Lyell, " the fossil zoophytes and shells being all of the same species as those now in- habiting the neighboring sea ;" that is to say, the com- mencement of the growth was later than the beginning of the Post-pliocene formation, and probably not much older than the beginning of the Recent period. Agassiz, having ascertained as nearly as possible the average rate of this coral growth, estimates that the gradual formation of the southern half of Florida must have filled a period of not less than 135,000 years. It is no part of my purpose to discuss geological ques- tions. The questions presented in this volume, and the conclusions reached, do not in any way depend on geolog- ical estimates of past time. It may, however, be observed that the discoveries of geology show plainly that the pre- historic ages in "Western Europe were not wholly barbar- ous. They show us the remains of a very remote "Age of Stone," in which there is no trace of civilization ; but they also bring to light manufactured articles, sepulchral cus- toms, and old structures, the remains of other remote ages when civilized peoples inhabited that part of Europe; such are the monuments of the " Age of Polished Stone" and the " Age of Bronze." Western Europe has its an- cient ruins that invite careful study. Its antiquities of Two ancient Civilizations in Asia. 15 this kind are not as grand as those at the East, although the old temple at Abury was not destitute of grandeur in the days of its glory. They have nothing to rival the amazing architecture or the multitudinous inscriptions found in the old ruins of Egypt and Chaldea, but they show us remains of civilized peoples of whom history gives no account. We must turn to Asia to discover the earliest manifesta- tions of civilized life, and ascertain how far they can be traced back into the past. Here we see two great devel- opments of ancient civilization, entirely disconnected from each other, and, so far as we can see, nearly equal in age. The origin of each is hidden by the shadows of very re- mote antiquity. At the East is China, with literary rec- ords claiming to be more than nineteen centuries older than the Christian era, and with a culture in science, in- dustry, literature, and the arts of civilized life scarcely in- ferior to that of the most enlightened nations that have ap- peared in history. Tried by the standards of modern Eu- rope, it takes a very high place in the respect and admira- tion of those best acquainted with it. Professor Whitney, in his "Language and the Study of Language," says very justly, " No race, certainly, outside the Indo-European and Semitic families, and not many races of those families, can show a literature of equal value with the Chinese." This Chinese culture is one of the most remarkable facts in the world's history. Instead of passing from nation to nation, and taking new forces and new forms in a grand progress round the globe, it has neither wandered far from home, nor shown any remarkable variety of development. It has remained chiefly in the country where it grew up, and in the hands of the people by whom it was originated 16 Pre-IIistoric Nations. dwelling apart from what we call history, as if China were a world by itself. At the West arose another civilization, that seems to have originated somewhere near the waters of the Persian Gulf O and Indian Ocean. Unlike the Chinese in character and history, it was enterprising ; it went forth into the world ; it established communication with all peoples within its roach; it colonized and occupied other lands; its influence IH r;ime paramount "from the extremity of the East to the extremity of the West ;" it changed its seat from nation to nation, ever developing, more and more, a wonderful power of life; it created India and Egypt; its light was kindled all around the Mediterranean; and, finally, by way of Western Europe, it travelled to America, where it seems likely to have its widest and richest development. It is not in our power to explain with certainty those primitive groupings of mankind which determined the ori- gin of diverse races, and created distinct families of lan- guage. The diverse races exist, although, at the present time, there are not anywhere on the face of the globe many communities where any original race is found entirely free from mixture with some other; and the separate families of language exist, so radically and absolutely unlike that we find it impossible to believe they all proceeded from a common source. The essential unity of mankind in all the peculiar characteristics of humanity is an incontestable fact which cannot be affected by any differences of race or language. Whatever theory denies this fact, or makes it uncertain, is false to human nature, as it appears and speaks for itself in every race and in every language. This is not questioned by those who attempt to solve the prob- lem by adopting the hypothesis that the human race came Hebrew Tradition concerning Three Races. 17 into existence, originally, at different points on the earth, by simultaneous or successive creations, each primordial group being the source of a separate race and a separate family of languages. Those primeval traditions of the Hebrews, which Moses deemed truthful and worthy of record in the sacred books of his nation, relate almost entirely to the Semitic, Cush- ite, and Aryan families, which, on any hypothesis, must have had a common origin. Their languages constitute three distinct families, for linguistic scholars are making the discovery that the Cushite tongues are a family by themselves, although they more closely resemble the Se- mitic language than that of the Aryan race. Neither of these families differs from the others as they all differ from the Chinese. Between these three races there is no physi- ological difference whatever ; and their differences in other respects are not so great as to exclude entirely the possi- bility of their having issued from a common primordial source, and separated in the early infancy of their first di- alects. They have played connected parts in the work of human development ; and now the Aryan race, enriched with the acquisitions of their combined influence, seems destined to possess and rule the whole planet on which we live. The Cushite race appeared first in the work of civiliza- tion. That this has not always been distinctly perceived is due chiefly to the fact that the first grand ages of that race are so distant from us in time, so far beyond the great nations of antiquity commonly mentioned in our ancient histories, that their most indelible traces have long been too much obscured by the waste of time to be readily com- prehended by superficial observation. In the earliest Pie- 18 Pre-Historic Nations. brew traditions, older probably than Abraham, and imme- diately connected with a description of the " land of Eden," where " the Lord God planted a garden" for Adam, Cush (translated Ethiopia) is mentioned as a country or geo- graphical division of the earth; the Hebrews saw nothing geographical more ancient than this land of Cush. In the tenth chapter of Genesis, the names recorded are professed- ly used, for the most part, as ethnical and geographical des- ignations ; but this ethnical geography of Genesis, which, excepting the interpolations, was probably more ancient than even the Hebrews themselves understood, must be re- ferred to a period anterior to that great immigration of Cushites from Arabia into the valley of Mesopotamia, the primeval home of the Semites, which brought civilization and gave existence to the old cities of Chaldea. It seems to me impossible for any free-minded scholar to study the traditions, mythologies, fragmentary records, mouldering monuments, and other remains of the pre-his- toric ages, and fail to see that the people described in the Hebrew Scriptures as Cushites were the original civilizers of Southwestern Asia ; and that, in the deepest antiquity, their influence was established in nearly all the coast re- gions, from the extreme east to the extreme west of the Old "World. This has been repeatedly pointed out with more or less clearness, and it is one of those incontestable facts that must be accepted. In nearly all the recorded investi- gations of scholars for the last two centuries, it has ap- peared among those half-seen facts which dogmatic criticism could treat as fancies without troubling itself to explain them. It could not be otherwise ; for, to see and fully comprehend the significance of Cushitc antiquity, we must have greater freedom in the matter of chronology, and a Conservatism of " Orthodox" Scholarship. 19 more accurate perception of the historic importance of Ara- bia, than have usually appeared in such investigations. Neither Usher's chronology, nor the little country known to the Greeks and Romans as Phoenicia, will suffice to ex- plain that mighty and wide-spread influence of the Cushite race in human affairs, whose traces are still visible from Farther India to Norway. Here, as well as everywhere else in the advancement of learning from the old to the new, from the explored to the unexplored, the investigator must settle his relations with the professional conservatism of what passes current as " orthodox" scholarship. This conservatism, like all other conservatisms, has its eminent oracles, whose influence is too frequently allowed to limit inquiry and shape its re- sults. It is less malignant than some other conservatisms, but no less self-assured, and no less ready to chastise bold inquiry. In the history of mankind, it has been common to see wig mistaken for wisdom, while authority usurped the place of reason ; but nothing else has the force of truth ; it r-.ny wait for recognition, like Boucher do Perthes on the field of geological science, and, while waiting, be rudely treated as a visionary ; yet it will surely sweep all obstruc- tions out of its way, and constrain the oracles to pronounce in its favor. The influence of what is accepted as " orthodox" learning sometimes deals very summarily with both the work and the reputation of venturesome innovators, who flout its or- acles, question its wisdom, criticise its methods, and under- take to show that important additions can be made to its stock of knowledge. Controversies with such all-wise con- servatism, however, are incident to all inquiry by which progress is maintained. Each profession instinctively dis- -20 Pre-Historic Nations. allows and resists any interference with its established creed, and becomes a castle where the old is vigorously defended against the new. So it is in theology, in law, in politics, in medicine, in science of every kind, and in every department of learning. "We can not reasonably expect our archaeological and historical studies to escape this in- fluence ; nor should we very much desire it. If conserva- tism needs movement, innovation needs to adjust its rela- tions with whatever truth is already established. The in- novator proceeds by means of the sharpest methods of criticism; therefore he can afford to endure criticism. Soon or late, whatever investigations sweep away venera- ble rubbish and open the way to progress in knowledge will enforce their claim to respectful consideration; and nowhere is this surer to be realized than among enlight- ened scholars, where no ardor of feeling can become fanat- icism, nor any prejudice or pride of opinion be transformed into cureless bigotry. One purpose of this volume is to point out what may be known of the ancient Cushite people, and of the great part they played in developing and spreading civilization. In doing this, it becomes necessary to criticise and discredit some influential theories, speculations, and methods of in- vestigation, which I find to be obstructions in the path of inquiry; and also to show that Usher's chronology is a very false measure of the past, that the antiquity of the human race is much greater than he supposed, and that there can be no intelligent study of antiquity where his or any similar scheme of chronology, or any other dogmatic falsification of the past, is allowed to paralyze inquiry and dictate conclusions. I do not write for learned archaeologists. They havo The Aim of this Work. 21 written for me. It is possible, however, that those most deeply learned in archaeology and the science of language may find in this volume suggestions worthy of their at- tention. Perhaps it will enable them to discover a more satisfactory solution of certain ethnical and linguistic prob- lems with which they are familiar. It can hardly fail to do this if it shall succeed in convincing them that the original Ethiopia was not in Africa, and that the ancient home of the Cushites or Ethiopians, the starting-point of their great colonizing and civilizing movements, was Ara- bia. I do not write for historical skeptics. Their use of reason is so poor and their credulity so great, when they deal with antiquity, that no common influence is likely to break the spell that makes them incapable of looking wise- ly into the past, and studying pre-historic times with any hope of enlightenment. Their habit of accepting prepos- terous and monstrous absurdities, in order to deny the his- torical significance of myths and traditions, and discredit the discoveries of linguistic and archaeological science, must be left to play out its comedy without interference. Others, whose interest in these studies may be stimula- ted anew, or for the first time awakened, by reading this work, will perhaps desire to pursue the subject in a more minute and elaborate way. If so, they can find in the works of German, Danish, French, and English explorers and scholars abundant materials to aid investigation ; and in the department of linguistic science, which in these in- quiries is of the highest importance, there are very valua- ble works by several American scholars, such as Whitney, Marsh, and others. On looking over what I have written, I find that I have criticised many of the linguistic and arch- aeological theories of that eminent and accomplished inves- 22 Pre-Historic Nations. tigator, Ernest Renan, without properly expressing my sense of his great services in these departments of science. If his works relating to the subjects I discuss were not so rich and attractive, or if his style of writing were not so perspicuous and eloquent, it may be that I should have given him less attention. n. PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING THE CURRENT CHRONOLOGIES, THE RELATION OF HELLAS TO CIVILIZA- TION, AND THE MEANING OF PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. HTJMBOLDT says in his Cosmos, " What we usually term the beginning of history is only the period when the later generations awoke to self-consciousness." It requires an enlightened view of the past and considerable mental free- dom to see and accept what this signifies; but the ten- dency of scientific studies at the present time is to make it clear and establish it as a commonly accepted truth. Our studies of Ancient History have been embarrassed by two strong but not very wise influences a false chronol- ogy, and a false estimate of the Hellenic people in their re- lation to civilization. These influences have been sup- ported until lately by the theological training and the scholarship of modern times, and they have mutually sup- ported each other; for those who maintain that enlight- ened civilization began in Hellas very easily accept the rabbinical notion that man was created only about 4000 or 5000 years previous to the Christian Era, while those who uphold this unwarranted system of chronology very readily accept the belief that mankind did not get far away from barbarism previous to the literary and artistic devel- opment that brightened Athens. It is impossible to think correctly of the past, or to comprehend the testimony of its monuments, where these views are received as infallible 24 Pre-Historic Nations. oracles and allowed to regulate investigation ; therefore it seems necessary to make them the subject of a few prelim- inary observations. THE CURRENT CHRONOLOGIES. Rollin, writing Ancient History, and giving his view of the time and greatness of Ninns and Semiramis, whom lie described as the immediate successors of the first founder of the Assyrian empire, made this confession ; "I must own that I am somewhat puzzled by a difficulty that may be raised against the extraordinary things related of Ninus and Semiramis, as they do not seem to agree with times so near the Deluge ; I mean such immense armies, such a nu- merous cavalry, and such vast treasures of gold and silver, all of which seem to be of later date." According to Rol- lin's chronology, the Assyrian empire began its great career 2234 years before Christ, or about 115 years after the Del- uge, and 235 years previous to the death of Noah. The Hebrew Scriptures inform us that " Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years." Rollin never doubt- ed this record, and did not revise his chronology. There- fore he must have believed (although he carefully avoided saying so) that Noah outlived the founders of that empire, and saw its progress and grandeur during more than two centuries. It is not surprising that he was puzzled by chronological difficulties. His system afforded no relief from them. It is true that in writing of Ninus and Semir- amis he followed that ready fabler, the Carian physician Ctesias. The first princes of the celebrated Assyrian mon- archy lived nearly a thousand years later. The great em- pire existing in that part of Asia at the date given by Rollin was Chaldean ; but there is nothing in this to re- Chronological Embarrassments. 25 move his perplexity, and later researches afford it no relief, for it is now certain that there were great monarchies in Asia much older than the year 2234 B.C. Such embarrassments as that felt by Rollin multiply as we increase our knowledge of ancient times by a more care- ful study of the mythologies and traditions of the ancients, by investigating the monumental records of the older na- tions, by exploring the oldest ruins (the oldest now, be- cause others that were much older have gone to dust), by comprehending the great revelations of linguistic science, and by searching intelligently the memorials of past time presented in the discoveries of geology. The absurd chro- nology by which they are created, not capable of serving as a guide, becomes an obstruction that must be removed. O t Could we have the literary records of all the pre-historic nations, or even the lost libraries of the Phcenicians, Chal- deans, and Egyptians, its most confident supporters would become ashamed to urge its claim to respect, and scholars everywhere would hasten to disown the absurdities it has introduced into Ancient History. As it is, enough is known, without calling in the testimony of geology, to show that the period between the creation of man and the birth of Christ is much longer than any of the current chronologies are able to measure. I can not wonder at the amazement, trepidation, and even rage with which some of the dogmatic chronologists behold the revelations of geology. My purpose, however, does not require an appeal to what geology says of the an- tiquity of man. It is manifest, without such aid, that the time between the beginning of the human race and the Christian Era may have been, as Bunsen maintained in his work on Egypt, five times 4004 years, and even much lon- B 26 Pre-Historic Nations. ger than Bunsen supposed. The great past was certainly long enough for all that human existence and activity iu pro-historic ages of which so many traces are found. There is nothing to require, indicate, or suggest that the current chronologies should be treated with the smallest degree of respect, while, on the other hand, there is much that de- mands for the pre-historic ages "the longest measure intel- ligent inquiry has ever proposed. The business of constructing systems of "biblical" chro- nology has furnished employment for a large amount of learned ingenuity which otherwise might have been led to write great folios on the word " Selah" in the Psalms, or to expound the natural history of ancient giants, or to in- terpret in a very marvelous way the prophetic mysteries of the Apocalypse. It has been chiefly the work of monks and rabbins, and its relation to historical science is very much like that of conjuring astrology to the science of as- tronomy. But it is not wholly useless. It has undoubt- edly furnished many satisfactions to those whose calling did not afford a more profitable occupation for intellectual activity, or whose learning had not introduced them to a more enlightened study of antiquity. The authority of what is falsely called " biblical" chronology is no longer very potent. It can not maintain itself against that prog- ress of science which constantly increases our knowledge of the past. It must soon disappear, and take its place in the rubbish of the ages with other legendary absui-dities which in their time dishonored religion, oppressed the hu- man intellect, and misled honest people by claiming im- mortal reverence. Any system of chronology that places the creation of man only about 4000 or 5000 years previous to the birth The Bible misused and falsified. 27 of Christ is a mere invention, a scholastic fancy, an elab- orate absurdity. There is nothing to warrant it, and not much to excuse it. Those who profess to find it in the Bible misuse and falsify that book. We may as well seek in the Bible for a perfected science of astronomy or chem- istry. It is not there ; and no such chronological scheme ever grew out of scientific inquiry. Moreover, there is a remarkable want of harmony among those who have con- structed such schemes. The various systems of "biblical" chronology claiming attention are at variance among them- selves. According to the Jewish rabbins, man was created 3761 years before Christ ; the Greek and Armenian church- es have been taught to say 5509 years; Eusebius said 5200 ; Panadoras, a learned Egyptian monk, having solved the problem with great care and exactness of demonstra- tion, said 5493 ; we and the nations of "Western Europe have followed Usher, a romancing archbishop of Ar- magh, who maintained, with great particularity of dog- matic demonstration, that the human race began to exist on earth precisely 4004 years before Christ; others have argued, with ingenuity quite as marvelous, to establish the validity of figures different from any of these. In all these attempts to construct systems of "biblical" chronology, nothing is more apparent than utter lack of scientific method and purpose. The aim has been, not to discover facts, allow their influence, and accept the result, but to compel facts to harmonize with a preconceived the- ory and support given conclusions. A point has been as- sumed in the past beyond which the date of man's first appearance on earth must not be carried ; and this assump- tion, not having the support of science, has feloniously sought that of revelation. Thus chronological dogmatism 28 Pre-Historic Nations. has perpetrated an atrocious outrage on the Bible by im- piously claiming for itself the reverence due to religion. Even learned and religious men have sought to identify this false chronology with Christianity itself, and have pur- sued their investigations of antiquity with a purpose, de- liberately expressed, to force every fact of science, and ev- ery date of ancient history, to agree with it. Maurice's "Indian Antiquities," and his "Ancient History of Hindu- stan," are valuable works. They were first published about eighty years ago, but no one can read them now without respect for the author's learning and ability; yet the style in which he upheld this dogmatism of the " biblical" chro- nologists is nowise likely to be imitated at the present time by any scholar having the same enthusiasm for archaeolog- ical researches. In his preface to the "Antiquities" he wrote thus : " The daring assertions of certain skeptical French phi- losophers with respect to the age of the world (whose ar- guments I have attempted to refute arguments founded principally on the high assumptions of the Brahmins and other Eastern nations in point of chronology and astrono- my), could their extravagant claims be substantiated, would have a direct tendency to overturn the Mosaic system, and with it Christianity." In his first volume of the "His- tory," on page 276, he renewed the subject as follows: "I am not inclined violently to dispute any positions on this head (chronology) that do not tend to subvert the Mosaic chronology, and I am decidedly for allowing the Eastern his- torians, as a privilege, the utmost latitude of the Septuagint chronology. It is not for a century or two, more or less, that we wage the contest with infidelity, but we cannot al- low of thousands and millions being thrown into the scale." A Crime against Christianity. 29 There was a time when it was deemed a sacred and in- contestable proposition that Hebrew, given by miraculous inspiration, was the original language of mankind, and the primeval mother of all other languages. To assume, as a vital thing in religion, that linguistic inquiry must not be allowed to show any thing contrary to this proposition, would be just as rational as this violent assumption of Maurice in behalf of what he calls the " Mosaic" system of chronology; and yet with what lordly arrogance of au- thority his "Mosaic" system was set forth ! It would con- descendingly allow its own largest limits " as a privilege," but facts must take care to exist in submissive accordance with its permission, or they would be treated as infidel heresies, for inquiry can have no legitimate aim but to show its infallibility ! What crimes against Christianity have been committed by some of its zealous friends ! and not the least of these crimes is that which makes it responsible for such follies as this. Nothing can be more unwarranted than to assume that any scheme of chronology is " Mosaic" or " biblical ;" nor does it seem possible to do infidelity a greater service than to use Christianity as the antagonist of honest inquiry and intelligent progress in knowledge, or to talk as if she were not sufficiently great and comprehensive to wear her crown of glory in presence of any development of science or any progress of civilization. Modern astronomical dis- coveries were at first treated as grave heresies that should be suppressed by the Inquisition. Geology, the most rev- erent of sciences, has been treated as an infidel. It is not surprising that discoveries relating to pre-histofic times, which set aside the current chronologies, have encountered similar criticism ; but it would be very surprising if this 30 Pre-Historic Nations. unchristian dogmatism could maintain itself anywhere much longer. At any rate, truth is not discovered by such methods as that indicated by Maurice. There are many considerations which should have check- ed the confidence with which dogmatic chronology has limited and falsified the past. The origin of nearly every- thing in our civilization is lost in the obscurity of ages that go back far beyond the oldest historic period. The arts of writing, building, spinning, weaving, mining, and work- ing metals in a word, nearly all the arts and appliances of civilized life, came to us from pre-historic times. They were brought to Europe chiefly by the people known in history as Phoenicians, or through their agency; but, as I have already stated, neither history nor tradition can tell us when or where they originated. Evidence of the riches and magnificence they had created in very remote ages abounds in the records, mins, and other remains of antiq- uity, but neither Chaldea nor Egypt could give a clear ac- count of their beginnings and early history. One thing, however, is certain : they indicate the existence, in pre-his- toric times beyond the reach of tradition, not only of civil- ized communities and nations, but also of long periods of civilized life ; and they give special significance to such statements of the old writers as the following from Diodo- rus Siculus : " Asia was anciently governed by its own na- tive kings, of whom there is no history extant, either as to any memorable actions they performed, or so much as their names." He says this at the beginning of his account of Nimis, and applies it to the ages preceding Nineveh and Babylon! The great antiquity of some of the sciences is incontesta- ble. If there were no monumental records of ancient Chal- Antiquity of Civilization and Science. 31 dea, Egypt, Arabia, and India, we should still have convinc- ing evidence of their great attainments in that knowledge which was " the excellency of the Chaldees" and " the wis- dom of the Egyptians ;" Euclid, an Egyptian, would still bo recognised as one of the foremost writers on geometry, and we should find it necessary to refer the origin of the science to an age more ancient than the oldest date of even Egyptian chronology. At the same time, it could be shown by authentic quotations from the literary remains of antiq- uity that some of the scholars of Ionia, which preceded Hellas in civilization, taught by the Phrenicians, Egyptians, and Chaldeans, had a knowledge of astronomy and of other sciences that was not retained by the scholars of Hellas, and seems to have disappeared from the Grecian world with the disciples of Pythagoras. The most ancient peoples of antiquity, at the earliest pe- riods in w r hich we can see and study them, show us that civilization was older than their time. It is apparent in their architecture, in the varied possessions and manifesta- tions of their civilized life, in their riches and magnificence, and in the splendor of their temples and royal palaces, that they had many of the arts and sciences, which we deem modern. Meanwhile, we can not easily deny their great at- tainments in astronomy, in presence of the general admis- sion that the sphere filled with constellations, and the zodi- ac with its twelve signs, are at least as old as the Chal- deans. Humboldt, stating the result of inquiry on this point, says : " The division of the ecliptic into twelve parts originated with the ancient Chaldeans." They had the zo- diac, and gave it to the Western countries. So much is eas- ily seen. But the Chaldeans themselves may have received the zodiac from the more ancient civilizers of their country. 32 Pre-IIistoric Nations. During the present century, much has been added to our knowledge of the past by exploration in the ruins of Egypt and Chaldea. The researches in Egypt have given us datrs as authentic as the monuments themselves, which confound the current chronologies, and open the past to our view somewhat as the discoveries of Columbus opened the world to the geographers of modern Europe. It is now as cer- tain as anything else in ancient history that Egypt ex^ud as a civilized country not less than 5000 years earlier than the birth of Christ. The monumental and sepulchral rec- ords of that country, marvelously abundant, have substan- tially confirmed Manetho's history of Egypt. There w:is never any good reason for doubting the correctness of his dynastic list, as prepared by himself. He was an Egyptian of great learning and wisdom; he wrote with the libraries and monuments of Egypt "before him ; his dates are as au- thentic as those of any other historian ; and the only ob- jection to them, of any account, comes from the dogmatism of that false chronology which assumes with oracular con- fidence that the past has not room for such dates. We meet here, much less awful than formerly, the same blind arrogance of old prejudice that could see nothing but here- sy in the astronomical discoveries of Galileo. But prejudice is not reason ; false chronology is neither science nor ivlig- ion ; and the lesson of every age is, that sure defeat awaits those who forbid progress in knowledge, and employ against it the menaces of any tribunal of intolerance. The magnificent discoveries in Egypt, by confirming Manetho's history, have seriously troubled this dogmatism. How can it allow that Menes, who first united all Egypt under one government, began his reign not less than 3893 years previous to the Christian Era? And where can it Egypt and the Chronologists. 33 find respectable logic to discredit such dates against the evidence by which they are supported ? It is amusing to observe the effect of these discoveries on certain eminent and admirable English scholars who have given much at- tention to studies of this kind, one of them being an accom- plished Egyptologist. They cannot deny the facts, and have no inclination to deny them ; but their Oxford and English Church associations seem to have interfered to prevent a frank acceptance of the incontestable antiquity of the Old Monarchy of Egypt. For a time they sought to reconcile it with the current chronology which orthodox churchmen hold in great reverence. When this became impossible, and compelled their acknowledgment of the im- possibility, they adopted silence as the best policy under the circumstances, intimating that they could not solve this Egyptian problem in a satisfactory manner. Meaner men can sneer, deny violently, falsify the record, and, with godless infatuation, denounce the whole investigation as "business fit only for infidels." Christianity must be di- vine, for it is able to survive the championship of these meaner men. It will not be questioned that blind reverence for this false method of chronology has been very powerful to dis- credit facts and dates against which there could be no val- id argument, solely on the ground that they seemed disas- trous to its authority. It has controlled the judgment of learned and conscientious men more than they could admit to themselves more than will seem credible a few centu- ries hence, when its character will be explained chiefly by recollection of its absurdities. It comes into every archaeo- logical investigation, to mislead inquiry and hide the true explanation of every fact that implies great antiquity, too B2 34: P re-Historic Nations. frequently sure of success because it has been incorporated with the investigator's thought and imagination from the o o o moment when he began to think and acquire knowledge. Its influence grows weaker every day, and yet those who are sufficiently free in thought to disregard it entirely fre- quently find it moving them to utter apologies for doing so. A free-minded and accomplished archaeologist, speaking of the dates furnished by the chronology of Egypt (Revue des Deux Mondes, tome Ivi., p. 666), says: "I know how appalling these figures are, and what grave apprehensions they awaken. I have shared these apprehensions ; but what can we do against the concurring lists furnished by Manetho, Eratosthenes, the Turin papyrus, and the Egyp- tian tablets of Abydos, Thebes, and Sakkara ?" This tone of apology may have some good use, perhaps, but does it express anything that can actually be found in his own conviction or feeling ? Such dates can alarm nothing but false chronology, for which he cannot feel much concern. Instead of being hostile to any thing else in which a hu- man interest is possible, they are friendly and full of satis- factions. It seems astonishing that the authority of false chronol- ogy should ever have been sufficient to secure toleration for some of the absurdities it has originated. Take, for in- stance, its very surprising representations concerning the time of Zoroaster. It was necessary to recognise Zoroas- ter as a real personage, representing a great religious epoch of the Iranian people. It was seen that all accounts of him placed the time of his appearance far back in the past, the Greeks saying that he lived 5000 years before the Trojan War, and 6000 years before the death of Plato. But facts must not be stubborn, for here, as everywhere else, the cur- Absurdities of false Chronology. 35 rent chronology, being supreme, must read the testimony and construe the facts in its own way ; therefore it was as- sumed falsely that Zoroaster lived in the sixth century be- fore Christ, during the reign of Darius Hystaspes, or during that of his father, who, as we know, was not a king, and never reigned at all And this absurdity, already inex- pressible, was heightened by a miraculous operation of " Mosaic" zeal, which transformed the great Iranian teach- er into a Jew. The Rev. Drs. Hyde and Prideaux (the former in his " Veterum Persarum et Medorum Religionis Historia," and the latter in his "Connexions"), with sol- emn gravity befitting the wonderful announcement, repre- sented Zoroaster as a native of Palestine, born of Jewish parents, who first appeared in Persia as a menial servant in the families of Ezra and Daniel. Here was brilliancy almost equal to that of a Rev. Dr. Joshua Barnes, of the last century, who published an elab- orate work to prove that Solomon wrote the Iliad.* It is not common to see Zoroaster transformed into a Jew, even by those who refuse to see that he lived many ages before Abraham. Even a hundred and seventy years ago, when Dr. Hyde wrote, not many " biblical" chronologists. were " Mosaic" to this extent. Anquetil du Perron, and others who followed him, adhered to the incongruous chronologi- cal dicta already established, although larger information should have qualified them to apply the proper criticism and present a more intelligent view of Iranian antiquity. * Scientific investigation is accustomed to, the, remarkable brilliancies of this kind of learned acumen. Dr, Hitchcock says in a work on Geol- ogy : " Felix Plater, professor of anatomy at Basle, referred the bones of an elephant found at Lucerne to a giant afleast 19 feet high, and in En- gland similar bones were regarded as those of the fallen angels ! " 3(5 P re-Historic Nations. According to the Desatir, the Dabistan, and the old Ira- nian histories, there was a great king of that branch of the Aryan people known as Kai Khusro, who was a prophet and an ascetic. He had no children, and after "a erlorious ' O reign of sixty years" he abdicated in favor of a subordinate prince named Lohorasp, also an ascetic, who, after a long reign, resigned the throne to his son Gushtasp. It was during the reign of Gushtasp that Zoroaster appeared. Gushtasp was succeeded by Bahman, his grandson ; Bah- man by Darab, who was slain by rebels ; and Darab by Se- kander, who restored order and became famous in Iranian history. These were not kings of Persia; they reigned at Balkh, and lived many centuries before Persia became an independent kingdom. The Desatir calls their realm the kingdom of Hiras, and their people the Hirasis, names that seem to be modifications of the word Arya. All this implied that the time of Zoroaster was far away iji the past. The current chronologies were " frightened" at the mention of its possible distance from us. Such an- tiquity must be disallowed ; therefore the kingdom of Hi- ras was transformed into the kingdom of Persia, Kai Khus- ro into Cyrus the Great, and Gushtasp into Darius Hystas- pes or his father. And why was this done ? The answer is, " Because this period is less subject to chronological dif- ficulties than many others." This is the only reason that can be given for a stupidity that is wellnigh matchless. The chronological system used does not allow room in the past for the true period. The time of Darius Hystaspes or his father is the best it can afford, although the true pe- riod may have been several millenniums previous to that time. It was certainly many ages before either Media or Persia was heard of as a distinct nation. The kingdom of Our Chronologies and China. 37 Hiras belongs to remote ages previous to Babylon and As- syria, and, it may be, previous to Chaldea and Egypt, so far as relates to its origin and the first periods of its history. The time has come when our cm*rent chronologies must more definitely adjust their relations with the history of China. This has already been attempted without satisfac- tory results, and there have been efforts to discredit the great antiquity implied by the civilization and literary rec- ords of that country. It is nowise likely that a more com- plete acquaintance with Chinese historical literature will make the task easier. It seems evident now that actual harmony betAveen our chronology and Chinese antiquity is impossible. Heretofore we have seen China from a dis- tance, heard reports of its civilization from mariners and merchants who have been permitted to visit some of its ports, from missionaries who have seen something of the interior, and from embassies that have seen its magnificent roads and its royal court ; and Chinese books collected and brought to Europe have engaged the attention of scholars. But the commercial intercourse with Eastern Asia now opening across the Pacific begins a new era in the history of the world, and China, withdrawn from a seclusion no longer possible, will become as familiarly known to us as any other cultivated nation with which we have inter- course. It is impossible to deny the vast antiquity of that coun- try without using methods of criticism that would destroy the credibility of all history. Litse, an eminent Chinese historian, after describing the fabulous and mythical ages, comes to "the reigns of men" during long periods of time of which there is no chronology, although some knowledge of those old nilers is recorded. One of them, named Sui- 21319J3 oS P re-Historic Nation*. shin, " took observations of the stars, and investigated the five elements." Next come the " Five Rulers," who are mythical representatives of historical epochs in " the peri- od before Yao." They are named as follows : 1. Fu-hi, who cultivated astronomy, religion, and the art of writing, and whose dynasty consisted of fifteen kings : he repre- sents a great epoch in Chinese history; 2. Shin-nung, who promoted agriculture and medical science, and had a line of successors. 3. Hoang-ti, a great sovereign, who put down a revolt, and in whose time the magnetic needle was discovered, the written character improved, and many ap- pliances of civilized life carried to greater perfection ; the 4th and 5th of these " Rulers," or heads of dynasties, were descendants of Hoang-ti. The "Five Rulers" were fol- lowed by the second period, called " the period of Yao and Shin." Next came the period of the " Imperial Dynasties," which began with the Emperor Yu, or Ta-yu, the great and good Yu. The great historical work of Sse-ma-thi-an, writ- ten about 2000 years ago, narrates events chronologically from the year 2637 B.C. to 122 B.C. In the earliest tim'es brought to view there appears a degree of civilization and culture which must have been the growth of many previous ages. One fact stated is im- portant in its relation to " the period of the Five Rulers." It is said that the Chinese cycle of 60 years was established in the 61st year of Hoang-ti's reign. This being so, it fol- lows, by mathematical demonstration, that Hoang-ti's reign began in the year 2698 B.C., for the 75th recurrence of this cycle was completed with the year 1863 A.D. The time of Fu-hi was probably 500 years earlier ; and previous to him were the more ancient rulers, some of whom cultivated the science of astronomy. It seems impossible to avoid Hellas and Civilization. 39 the conclusion that Chinese civilization is as old as Usher's date for the beginning of the human race, and, perhaps, much older. I assume, in these inquiries, that the current ""biblical" chronologies have no Avarrant from either science or the Bible, and that they must not be allowed to pass for more than they are worth. HELLAS AND CIVILIZATION. The false chronologies, and slowness to admit that pre- historic times were not necessarily barbarous, have troubled our histories of the people called Greeks. Heretofore the scholarship of modern Europe has too much fostered a be- lief that enlightened civilization, science, and art all began with the people of Hellas, and had their first great devel- opment at Athens. Hellenic egotism, inherited with Hel- lenic literature, has not served as the best qualification for writing or reading histories of the Greek race. What be- longs to several families of this brilliant group of the great Aryan people has been given to one, and that the latest in development ; and what they all received from the Phoeni- cian or Cushite culture, which immediately preceded them in the same regions, has not been well considered. This influence has sometimes made it difficult to see that even Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, and Persia had any thing higher or more enlightened than a certain greatness of " barbaric pomp and splendor." That interpretation of antiquity which begins its history of civilization with the Hellenes and the Romans, and ex- cludes every thing not recognized and celebrated by their literary oracles, is not entitled to the highest degree of re- spect. Neither the Hellenes nor the Romans gave an in- 4:0 Pre-Historic Nations. telligible account of the beginnings of their own history. Their literature betrays no clear consciousness of the bril- liant civilizations that preceded them in Thrace, Asia Mi- nor, and Etruria, and furnishes only confused and uncertain notices of the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Persians previ- ous to Alexander the Great. This is not altogether true of Herodotus, who was an Ionian ; but it is true of what has heretofore passed current as most orthodox and au- thoritative in Greek literature, and has done most to regu- late modern opinion. In certain respects Mr. Grote's history of Greece is ad- mirable, so far as it professes to be a history of the Hellenic peninsula; but his treatment of what is usually termed the " Legendary and Heroic Age of Greece" is chiefly remark- able as an elaborate display of unphilosophical skepticism. He begins the history with the year 776 B.C., and finds nothing but " interesting fictions" in the myths and legends representing the previous ages. The history of Hellas did tfot go back into the past many generations beyond that date. Hellas was scarcely as old as Homer, who was not a native of that country, and did not represent its culture'. Grote's positive and not always ingenuous skepticism may be as reasonable as that theory of Greek antiquity which finds in the myths and legends nothing more than- a " le- gendary and heroic age" of the Hellenes. It is false to the past, but not much more so than this theory itself. The Greek race settled around the JEgean Sea, in Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, and through- out the Grecian peninsula consisted of a group of tribes or families as closely related in origin and language, prob- ably, as the Scandinavian group in Northwestern Europe. They inherited the culture of their predecessors, the Pho:- Historical Skepticism and the Greeks. 41 nicians, or Cushites, and the Pelasgians, who, in more an- cient times, established the oracle of Dodona, made Thrace eminent as a seat of civilization and science, established enlightened communities in Asia Minor, and carried their civilizing influence into the Grecian peninsula itself. The earliest and greatest known development of the Greek race was that which created the Ionian confederacy of Asia Mi- nor ; the latest was that of Hellas. Very true it is that the Argonautic expedition, the le- gendary sieges of Thebes, the oracle of Dodona, the cities of Mycenae and Tiryns, and such personages as Orpheus, Musa?us, Olen, Linus, Cecrops, Cadmus, Pelops, and many others, have very little to do with the history of Hellas ; but it is not true that they are all mere fictions or illusions. Criticism that destroys narrow and false interpretations of the legendary lore of the Greeks deserves respect, but it should not be content with skepticism, and assume too readily that " the curtain is the picture." It may be true, as Cousin says in his lectures on the History of Philosophy, thr.t skepticism is the first appearance of common sense in our philosophizing; but it is not the only appearance of common sense on that field, for skepticism is neither the middle nor the end of true philosophy. Historical criti- cism should be able not only to destroy falsehood, but also to establish truth. Mr. Grote might reasonably find in the Hellenic myths and legends nothing belonging to the history of Hellas ; but, however brilliantly or weirdly arrayed by imagination, they are the children of Fact; they contain recollections, not of the first ages of Hellenic history, but of communities and nations more ancient. True interpreters of antiquity see this ; it could not be seen by Mr. Grote, who adopted 4:2 Pre-Historic Nations. what he describes as "the just position long ago laid down by Varro," and which he states thus : " First, there was the time from the beginning of mankind down to the first del- ug2 a time wholly unknown. Secondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, which is called the mythical period, because many fabulous things are re- counted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad down to ourselves, which is called the historical period, be- cause the things done in it are comprised in true histories." According to this " position," mankind did nothing im- portant, and appear not to have risen much above barba- rism previous to the first Greek Olympiad. It assumes that actual history begins with the Hellenes ; and Grote appears to take for granted that civilization, culture, and even lan- guage were in their infancy when Hellas rose. He finds in the mythical traditions nothing to indicate previous civ- ilization or previous nationalities ; he fails to recognise the influence of the Phoenicians and Egyptians ; and his eyes are blind to the fact that the civilization of Ionia was older and greater than that of Hellas. He finds " prodigious im- probability" in the legendary account Herodotus gives of the oracle of Dodona, not seeming able to comprehend that no " prodigious improbabilities" can exceed those put forth in support of this scheme of confident skepticism, which sees nothing but "fictions" in the traditions and mytho- logical legends of antiquity, and attributes them wholly to the " creative imagination" of the Greeks. He states very justly that, in Hellas, or Greece proper, " physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of the Peloponnesian war," and that even Plato " permitted physical astronomy only under great restric- tions antl to a limited extent." And yet he fails to notice, The earliest Greek Culture icas Asiatic. 43 in such a manner as faithful exposition of Greek history demanded, that Thales, Pythagoras, and many other lonians had a science of astronomy which included correct knowl- edge of the solar system. It seems impossible to inquire carefully without perceiving that Hellenic culture was pre- ceded by a great development of civilization, science, and art, which it inherited, but could not wholly make its own, and which, in Ionia, was superior to anything known af- terward at Athens, excepting, perhaps, in elegant literature, sculpture, and certain forms of philosophical speculation. What is usually talked of as Greek culture had its origin in Asia Minor, and was richly developed there long before its light appeared at Athens. The earliest intellectual movement that found expression in the Greek language was wholly Asiatic. It appeared in Ionia, the country of Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, and Herodotus, where, during many ages before the lonians and their language became predominant, another people had richly brightened the land with their culture. The literature, language, and sway of that older people were superseded or absorbed by the Ionic family of the Greek race, just as in Italy, some centuries later, the speech, culture, and dominion of Etruria were su- perseded by the Romans. The cities of Ionia, and of the whole coast of Asia Minor, were built and occupied origin- ally by the race represented by the Phoenicians, followed by the Pelasgians ; and in that beautiful region, whatever* culture was known to Arabia, Egypt, Chaldea, and the East, received its most elegant development. The scholars of Ionia itself studied in the schools of Phoenicia and Egypt. They reached a degree of intellectual independence and of progress in science never equaled by any community on the other side of the ^Effean. 44 Pre-JIistonc Nations. Only a small portion of the literature of Ionia has been preserved ; but the earliest Greek writers known or men- tioned were all natives of Asia Minor, or representatives of its culture. Homer was born and educated there ; IIc- siod's parentage and literary training were both Ionian ; Archilochus, " the first Greek who composed iambic verses according to fixed rules," was born on that coast in the eighth century before Christ, and had a fame " second only to that of Homer." There appeared the first development of what has been called the " Greek philosophy," and He- rodotus tells us that Thales, " the father of Greek philoso- phy," was " of Phoenician extraction ;" lie was born at Miletus in the seventh century before Christ. Pythagoras was a native of Samos, one of the most important Ionian cities. All the early historians who wrote in Greek were born and educated in Asia Minor; Herodotus was a native of Halicarnassus ; Hecateus was a native of Miletus. Ty r- taeus, born at Miletus nearly 700 years before the Christian Era, was one of those who carried Ionian culture to Athens; and in the same century appeared, on the Asiatic side of the ^Egean, Terpander, Alcman, Alcanis, Sappho, and other brilliant Grecian lyrists. In Asia Minor rose the most ele- gant and beautiful order of Greek architecture the Ionic. At the beginning of the sixth century before Christ the Greek world had two matchless temples that moved all beholders with admiration and wonder: they were both in Asia Minor, one being the temple of Hera, at Samos, the other the temple of Diana, at Ephesus. Artistic architec- ture had not then made its appearance in Hellas. The intimate relations of Athens with Ionia contributed more than anything else to make that city superior in cul- ture to any other community on the Hellenic peninsula What the Greek Myths signify. 45 In this region, the people generally, like the Spartans, nev- er reached a very high degree of cultivation ; but the Hel- lenic writers left no histories of literature to show what the Greek race inherited from the enlightened civilization of other and older peoples, or to point out distinctly their own relation to Ionia. Herodotus showed that religion, letters, and civilization came to the Greeks from the Phoe- nicians and Egyptians; but in Hellas his statements were severely attacked, Plutarch describing them as " the malig- nity of Herodotus ;" and, until recently, modern scholars, swayed by Hellenic influence, took a similar tone, and treat- ed him as an untrustworthy fabler. It is now understood that no Greek historian was more truthful or more intelli- gent. We should study the Greek myths and traditions, not as indications of a " legendary and heroic age of Greece" nor with that stultifying skepticism which represents them as nothing more than " interesting fictions," but as imper- fect, confused, and idealized recollections of civilizations, peoples, events, and persons that had become ancient be- fore the time of the first Olympiad. "Without the aid of regular history, we can see that ancient Thrace and Phryg- ia were enlightened and important nationalities, that flour- ished and declined several ages before the period to which the Trojan War is usually assigned. To their time be- longs the later period of the oracle of Dodona ; and con- temporary with them, probably, were Mycena? and " sacred Tiryns." It is quite as absurd to call Olen, Orpheus, Mu- saeus, Eumolpus, and Minos, Greeks ; as to call Livy, Virgil, Cicero, Pliny, Hannibal, and Scipio, Frenchmen. They did not belong to the nation or age of Plato, Euripides, Xeno- ,phon, and Socrates. Some of them were Thracians ; and 46 Pre-Histoiic Nations. the Thrace of Orpheus must have been nearly as distant in time from Hellas, as the Rome of the Caesars was from the France of Philip Augustus. Between them were " middle ages" to which belonged Troy, Argos, the origin of the or- acle of Delphi, with the earlier periods of the kingdom of Lydia and of the Ionian confederacy. The language of Thrace and Dodona must have been a dead language be- fore the time of Homer; and the hymns of Olen, Orpheus, and Musa3us, preserved by use in celebrating the Eleusinian Mysteries, must have needed translation in the time of Onomacritus, even if the language in which they were writ- ten had been neither Pelasgic nor "Ammonian," but, in- stead, some ancient dialect of the Greek family. It is not a fortunate circumstance that our studies of an- tiquity have been so much influenced by Hellenic narrow- ness and egotism ; nor is it creditable to the scholars of Hellas that they said so little, and appeared to know so little of the ancient history of that beautiful region around the -ZEgean, where civilization was as old as the commer- cial enterprise that created Sidon. Their influence has giv- en us histories of Greece in which nearly everything in that region is made subordinate to Hellas, which is set forth as the beginning, middle, and end of all the enlightened cul- ture it ever knew. It should be sufficient to appeal to the Greek language itself against this method of writing histo- ries of the Greeks. The extraordinary development of this language appears in its oldest literary monuments that have been preserved, making us feel that they cannot be the oldest in its history. Its substantial identity in all the dialects shows that it was the speech of a civilized and cul- tivated people before dialects began to appear. Whence came this development ? It shows a history in which Hel- Future Ignorance and American History. 47 las occupies only the last ages. We know something of Ionia and the other Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor, and we are sure that the beginning of that his- tory cannot be made a " fiction" by the obscurity in which it is hidden. Three thousand years hence, when all the living lan- guages of the present time have been long dead, and all the literature connected with them lost, some writer be- longing to a nation and using a language that will first ap- pear in the world two thousand years after our time may undertake to write the history of America. To do it as some have written the history of Greece, he will begin with some great epoch in our history yet to come, perhaps, pre- vious to which authentic history will be found impossible ; but mythical and traditional recollections of Europe and of the first ages of American history will remain, and these will be grouped together and referred to a " legendary and heroic age" of America. Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Shakspeare, Napoleon Bonaparte, Luther, Dante, and possibly Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Ma- homet, will all become mythical Americans. Another his- torian of that future age may protest, with the air of ex- cessive wisdom, that the mythical and legendary recollec- tions are merely " interesting fictions," and signify nothing. They will agree, however, that actual history begins with the given epoch. The Hellenes are not the only people whose audacious egotism has assumed and believed them to be the selectest people on earth the matchless blossom and glory of hu- manity, while all others were outside barbarians; but it may well be doubted whether this weakness in any other people ever had such a powerful and fai'-reaching influence. 48 Pre-Hiatoric Nations. I do not believe the history of America can be written, three thousand years hence, as ignorantly and meanly as I have supposed. The culture of the present time, with all its defects, is so much larger and nobler, so much more ob- servant of what is true and just, in its treatment of the past and the present, than was ever realized in Hellas, that it cannot transmit to future ages the same misleading in- fluence. Bryant, in his " Analysis of Ancient Mythology," dis- cusses the narrowness and self-conceit of the Hellenic spir- it with much intelligence and force. He points out gross mistakes in Hellenic writers on Mythology, and shows that they were too ignorant of their predecessors, and too big- oted and egotistic, to treat this subject in a proper manner. He maintains that the most useful Greek writers on sub- jects relating to antiquity are those who did not reside in Hellas, and names Lycophron, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Homer, Nonnus, who wrote " Dionysiaca," Porphy- ry, Proclus, lamblicus, Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias, and the Christian fathers Theophilus, Tatianus, Athenagoras, Clemens, Origen, Eusebius, Theodoret, Syncellus, and oth- ers. In such writers he finds a more unprejudiced refer- ence to antiquity, and a more candid record of what was known of the older nations. It would, however, be too much to expect, anywhere in Greek literature, a just and cordial appreciation of the great civilization that prevailed around the ./Egean and the Mediterranean for ages before the Greek race came into history. It is not there. The lost literature of Thrace, Phrygia, Ionia, Etruria, and Phoe- nicia would tell us more ; but its beginnings were in very remote times, and successive changes of race and language so wasted the early records and monuments, that a com- Lost Books of the Greeks. 49 plete history had become difficult, if not impossible, to the later generations. Some of the most important Grecian works on archaso- logical topics are lost, or known only in preserved frag- ments of them. Who that is drawn to these studies would not like to have a complete copy of the Ethnica of Stepha- nus of Byzantium ? or of the more ancient mythological history of Pherecydes, who is said to have obtained his knowledge from the secret books of the Phoenicians ? or of the genealogical, chronological, and historical works of Hellanicus of Mytilene ? or of that very ancient work of Thyma3tes, of "Asia Minor," written in a language older than the Greek, to which Diodorus Siculus and others re- fer in their accounts of Dionysus or Bacchus ? A vast li- brary of such lost works would fail to satisfy half our ques- tions, but it would add much to our knowledge of the past ; and how greatly would this knowledge be extend- ed could we add to it the lost mythological and historical literature of Phoenicia, Arabia, Egypt, and Chaldea, with those " ancient histories of Iran" mentioned in the Dabis- tan and other Eastern writings ! PRE-HISTOKIC TIMES. Those " ancient histories of Iran," long since lost, would tell us much that we desire to know, not only of the early history of the Aryan people, whose great antiquity it is now impossible to deny, but also of the great people of an- cient Arabia, whose civilization was much older and more enterprising, and who were known to the Hebrews as Cush- ites, and to the early Greeks as Ethiopians. It seems to me impossible to inquire carefully without being led to the conclusion -that Arabia, in very remote antiquity, was the C 50 Pre-Historic Nations. seat of a brilliant civilization, which extended itself through- out Southwestern Asia, and spread its influence from the extreme east to the extreme west of the known world. The wonderful people of ancient Arabia the revered and mys- terious Ethiopians of ancient tradition seem to have filled the world, as they knew it, with their commercial activity, their maritime enterprise, their colonies, and the light of civilized life. Their traces are still found everywhere. Their civilization may have originated in Southern Arabia ; it may have been due to the influence of some older peo- ple. This problem cannot be solved ; but those who are using the disentombed records of Assyrian and Chaldean culture to reconstruct linguistic, ethnic, and political his- tory, may see in them that " third race, neither Indo-Euro- pean nor Semitic," which " laid the foundation of the cul- ture which was adopted and developed there by the other races, as they later, one after another, succeeded to the su- premacy." By pre-historic times I mean the ages between the crea- tion of man and the beginning of authentic history. If we accept the usual method, and begin regular history with the Greeks and Romans, we must exclude from it the his- tory of China, and pretty much the whole of Rawlinson's history of the "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World ;" we must place in pre-historic times all that relates to the old Egyptians, since Menes as well as before his time, not to speak of the older Aryans and Cush- ites, or Ethiopians, who belong there ; and we must find nothing historical in any part of Western Europe beyond the accounts given by the Romans. This method is open to very effective criticism. The limit of history should be moved farther back into the past, and more importance Pre-IIistorw Times not wholly unseen. 51 should be allowed to some existing documents which it dis- regards; but it is unnecessary to engage in controversy with those who begin history with the first Greek Olym- piad, provided they do not deny all previous civilization, and maintain that everything in human affairs previous to that date is either unknown or fabulous. We know much of the history of times more ancient. Egypt has been unveiled. We know much of the Assyrian empire from its beginning to its close ; and when the in- scriptions discovered in the Assyrian and Mesopotamian ruins, amounting now to " whole libraries of annals, and works of science and literature," shall be fully explored and deciphered, the veil may be partly withdrawn from the history of that great race which created Egypt and Chal- dea, and whose characteristic traces still show the extent of its influence. The Cushite element is already clear to the best interpreters ; and, apart from linguistic inquiry, what was known already, rightly studied, was sufficient to warrant a prediction that it would be found there. The great period of the Cushite or Ethiopian race had closed many ages previous to the time of Homer, although separate communities of that race remained, not only in Egypt, but also in Southern Arabia, in Phrenicia, in Africa, and elsewhere east and west. The distance in time from our age to that of Homer is much less than that from his age to the very remote period when the Cushites of Ara- bia colonized Chaldea. When we consider the exclusive- ness of the Hellenes, and their lack of disposition to study and comprehend the past, it is not surprising that they knew so little of the history of more ancient nations ; on the contrary, we can see more reason for surprise that their literature and traditions furnish so much to indicate the an- 52 Pre-Historic Nations. cient civilization and greatness of the people whom they called Ethiopians. We cannot write an authentic history of the ancient peo- ple of Arabia, nor of any other pre-historic people; but we t-an study what is known of them, inquire at every new source of information, and draw such conclusions as the facts may warrant. Inquiry concerning the condition of the human race in prc-historic times cannot now be avoid- ed. It is forced upon us by the constant and increasing influence of progress in linguistic and physical science. That the antiquity of man is much greater than our chro- nologies have allowed is coming to be an established fact. Should the later reports of geology on this subject be fully confirmed by future discoveries, this inquiry will become more active, and assume higher importance. Advocates of what is called the " development theory," as well as champions of the narrow chronologies, find it convenient to assign the first appearance of civilization to a very modern date in the great pre-historic past. Their hypothesis, suggested by speculation on the origin of spe- cies, and unsupported by any facts, sets forth that the " hu- man race was evolved out of the most highly organized and endowed of the inferior mammalia ;" and that " the fai-ther back we trace man into the past, the more shall we find liini approach, in bodily conformation, to those species of the anthropoid quadrumana which are most akin to him in structure." Brutes became men by virtue of the assumed "tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the orig- inal type," brute instinct, meanwhile, by a like wondrous change, being transformed into all the great attributes of the human soul. According to this theory, the first ap- pearance of man on earth was followed by a vast period The Development Tlieowj. 53 of human savagery, which lasted until the ever-progressing development had made the race capable of civilization. It is mere hypothesis, accepted by its advocates as true, but, as they admit, not proved. Geology says nothing in its favor, for the oldest human remains discovered by ge- ologists are those of men already capable of improvement, and most of them consist of arms, implements, and uten- sils of human manufacture. Sir John Lubbock and others mention only two human skulls that can be referred to the most ancient period of the Age of Stone, and the antiquity of one of these is doubtful. Of the other, known as the Engis skull, Mr. Huxley says, in his " Man's Place in Na- ture," " There is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage." Sir J. Lubbock says " it might have been that of a modern European, so far, at least, as form is concerned." This seems to be an explicit contradiction of the " development theory." Moreover, it cannot be shown that communities more or less civilized did not exist on some portions of the globe at the oldest period to which these remains can be as- signed. Northwestern Europe is but a small portion of the globe we inhabit. To suppose the existence of such communities at that time is inconsistent with nothing but this unproved hypothesis ; and to say they did not exist, because we have no record of their existence, is mere as- sumption, with no more claim to the consideration due to ascertained fact than the supposition itself. Archffiological investigation has brought to view civil- O o *~J ized peoples much farther back in the past than history 54 Pre-IIistoric Nations. has ever supposed possible. Linguistic science enables us to trace others much older. Who can show that many civilized communities and family groups of language did not successively appear, run their course, and perish in the veiled ages of pre-historic time ? Who can make it certain that the first appearance of civilization in those ages was at a comparatively modern date ? If we must have a hy- pothesis concerning the condition of mankind in the most obscure prc-historic ages, let it not be inspired entirely by the generalizings of physical speculation, but rather let it come from the higher dictates of reason, and be honorable to human nature. There is much to suggest such a hy- pothesis as I have indicated, not only in the nature of man, but also in the widespread traces of pre-historic civiliza- tion. For instance, we are not the first civilized inhabi- tants of North America, as the almost obliterated but still unmistakable evidence of an ancient civilization through- out the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys clearly shows. These reflections, however, are somewhat beyond the scope of our present inquiry, which relates chiefly to the antiquity and character of the ancient people of Arabia, and their influence in promoting the civilization of the Semitic and Aryan races ; therefore I close them with the following from Humboldt's Cosmos : " We will not at- tempt to decide the question whether the races at present termed savage are all in a condition of original wildness, or whether, as the structure of their languages often allows us to conjecture, many among them may not be tribes that have degenerated into a wild state, remaining as scattered o ' ** fragments from the wreck of a civilization that was early lost." ni. FEE-HISTORIC GREATNESS OF ARABIA. IN our researches into the beginnings of culture in the oldest nations mentioned in history, we perceive that they did not originate civilization. It preceded their existence, and came from an older people. They gave it new forms, each developing an individuality of its own ; but it came originally from abroad. On this point tradition is uniform and explicit. In Eastern Africa, the civilizers proceeded from the south toward the Mediterranean, creating the countries in the valley of the Nile. The traditions of inner Asia bring civilization from the south, and connect its or- igin with the shores of the ErythraBan Sea, meaning the Arabian shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; and these traditions are confirmed by inscriptions found in the old ruins of Chaldea. These inscriptions reveal also the fact that the first civilizers were neither Semites nor Aryans, but a " third race," which ethnic and linguistic in- vestigators have been slow to recognise. Meanwhile, it is distinctly apparent in the religions, my- thologies, institutions, and customs of these ancient na- tions that they all had the beginnings of their civilization from the same source. The foundations of their culture were all laid by the same hand, whose traces are still visi- ble in its ruins in the remains of its most ancient religious forms, its most primitive architecture, and its most archaic styles of writing. This is so plain that some writers, not 5G P re-Historic 3,'u.t'ton*. able to see the vast extent of pre-historic times, or to com- prehend the possibility of human development in ages too remote for their chronology, have sought to show that some one of these nations gave civilization to all the others. Some have suggested that it came from Egypt, a hypothe- sis which neither facts nor probability can allow. Some have said it went from India to all the other nations, which is still more improbable. Other clever theorists have found the primeval source of ancient civilization in Chaldea, where, as both tradition and the ruins testify, it was not original, but came hi from an enlightened people belonging to more ancient times. AX EARLY CIVILIZATION IN ARABIA. In studying the influence of this more ancient culture, and seeking to discover the source from which it proceeded, we are led to Arabia, and to a people known in remote an- tiquity as Ethiopians and Cushites. It is evident that, in ages older than Egypt or Chaldea ages away in the Past, far beyond the limit of Usher's chronology Arabia was the seat of an enlightened and enterprising civilization, which went forth into the neighboring countries, and spread its influence "from the extremity of the east to the ex- tremity of the west." At that time Arabia was the ex- :iitrd and wonderful Ethiopia of old tradition the centre and light of what, in Western Asia, was known as the civ- ilized world. There are traditions of the ancient eastern world, which, rightly interpreted, can have no other mean- ing ; and modern research presents linguistic and ethnolog- ical problems that can have no other satisfactory solution. The geographical position of Arabia, as well as the char- acteristics of the great race by which it was occupied, must Arabia the ancient Ethiopia. 57 have given it this early pre-eminence. A peninsula of great extent, lying between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, having at command the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, within easy reach of the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates, the eastern coast of Africa, the Nile Valley, and the regions on the Eastern Mediterra- nean, and with an atmosphere and other physical relations that gave it cosmical importance, it had all those conditions by which commercial and intellectual development are most powerfully stimulated. It is not surprising to hear what the oldest traditions say of the wonderful Ethiopians, nor to find indications that they were the civilizers of Egypt and Southwestern Asia. If, as Heeren says, " the first seats of commerce were also the first seats of civilization," the civilization of Western Asia must have begun with the people who, previous to the time of Alexander the Great, had, from time immemorial, monopolized commercial and maritime enterprise. ARABIA WAS TUB AKCIENT ETHIOPIA. In the early traditions and literary records of the Greeks, Arabia is described as Ethiopia ; and this name was ap- plied to other regions occupied or controlled by the Ara- bian Cushites. In modern times, it has commonly been assumed, without proper inquiry, that the Ethiopians were of course Africans. This grave mistake has been the source of much misunderstanding and confusion. Another fruit- ful source of misapprehension is that notable exercise in etymology which derives the word Ethiopia from the Greek words aWw and wi/>, and makes it a designation for all the dark-colored races of Africa. Careful students of antiq- uity now point out that " the people of Ethiopia seem to C2 58 P re-Historic Nations. have been of the Caucasian race," meaning white men, and that the word was, to the Greeks, " perhaps really a for- eign word corrupted."* The Greeks themselves used the appellation as a sacred term in the religious vocabulary they had received from the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It is supposed to have been originated by what is called the " serpent worship" of the Cushites. To derive it from the Greek would be as little reasonable as to derive some Greek name, such as Hellas, from modern Hungarian. Eustathius (Schol. in Homerum) says: "^Ethiops is a title of Zeus;'' Ai0ese branches of the Aryan family separated. It would be unreasonable, in my view, to deny or doubt that, in ages farther back in the past than the beginnings of any old nation mentioned in our ancient histories, Arabia was the seat of a great and influential civilization. This fact, so clearly indicated in the remains of antiquity, seems indispensable to a satisfactory solution of many problems that arise in the course of linguistic and archaeological in- quiry. It is now admitted that a people of the Cushite or Ethiopian race, sometimes called Hamites, were the first civilizers and builders throughout Western Asia, and they are traced, by remains of their language, their architec- The ancient . Arabian Civilization. 67 ture, and the influence of their civilization, on both shores of the Mediterranean, in Eastern Africa and the Nile val- ley, in Hindustan, and in the islands of the Indian Seas. These people had a country which was the home of their civilization. These civilizers, this " third race," now so dis- tinctly reported by scientific investigators, but not yet well explained, must have been very different from a swarm of nomads, or a flood of disunited tribes moving from region to region, without a fixed country of their own. Those wonderful builders, whose traces reveal so plainly the habit of fixed life and the spirit of developed nationality, were not a horde of homeless wanderers. They had a country of their own, from which their enterprise and cul- ture went forth to other lands, and this country must have been Arabia. It is apparent that no other race did so much to devel- op and spread civilization ; that no other people had such an extended and successful system of colonization ; that they seem to have monopolized the agencies and activities of commerce by sea and land ; and that they were the lord- ly and ruling race of their time. The Arabians were the great maritime people of the world in ages beyond the reach of tradition ; . as Phoenicians and Southern Arabians they controlled the seas in later times, and they were still the chief navigators and traders on the Indian Ocean when Vasquez di Gama went to India around the Cape of Good Hope. IGNORANCE AND MISAPPREHENSION CONCERNING ARABIA. It can be objected that the common estimate of the Ara- bian peninsula does not accord with such views of its an- cient history as I have indicated. The reply is, that no 68 Pre-Historic Nations. part of the globe has been so little known or so greatly misapprehended in modern times as Arabia. It is com- monly assumed that the whole interior of the country is a dreary waste of deserts, and that the only portions of it where civilized communities can exist are certain districts on the coast, the rest of this great peninsula being given up to nomads, or " wandering Arabs." This assumption, though very old and very confident, is wholly incorrect ; its picture of Arabia is a fancy sketch to which the reality has no resemblance. That lack of knowledge which makes such pictures possible is due partly to the extreme isolation of the Arabian peninsula, since the rise of Western Europe changed the route to India, and took away its commanding importance as the central country between India and the West, and partly to Mahomctanism and the decline of civ- ilization in Western Asia. But its isolation from the West- ern countries began earlier. The later Greeks knew but little of Arabia, the Romans knew less, and in modern times intelligent travelers have journeyed along the coast in some districts of the Hedjaz, Yemen, Hadramaut, and Oman without making an actual discovery of the coun- try. Lieut. Wellsted surveyed nearly the whole coast-line of Arabia, and traveled extensively in Oman, and yet so lit- tle did he know of Central Arabia that the printed record of his travels begins as follows: "Arabia has been aptly compared to a coat of frieze bordered with gold, since the only cultivated or fertile spots are found on its confines, the intermediate space being filled with arid and sandy wastes." Even Ilumboldt, relying on the old assumption and the reports of travelers, supposed "the greater part. of the interior of Arabia was a barren, treeless, and sandy Ignorance of Arabia. 69 waste." Ptolemy, living at Alexandria, gained some knowl- edge of the country, which appears in his geography, where cities and towns are located in the interior; but in Mr. Forster's work it is pointed out as a very grave mistake that " the Ptolemaic map prepared by Mercator" repre- sents the " uninhabitable desert as clothed throughout with towns and covered with inhabitants." In the same way modern ignorance has criticised and discredited the Ara- bian geography of El Edrisi, because, as it alleges, through " invincible dislike to large blanks in a map," he filled up " the uninhabited country" of the interior with towns and villages. Mr. Forster's notion of the extent of this " unin- habited country" may be seen in his account of one of its deserts, which, according to his description, fills two thirds of the whole peninsula. Meanwhile it remains true that Ptolemy and El Edrisi had a much better knowledge of Central Arabia than is possible to the invincible assurance of such imaginative constructors of its geography. In 1862-3, Mr. William Gifford Palgrave, whose long residence at the EagSt, intimate knowledge of the Mahometan world, and perfect knowledge of the Arabic language gave him admirable qualifications for such a tour of observation, spent six months in Central Arabia, traveling through it from west to east. He tells us that he began this journey " supposing, like most people, that Arabia was almost ex- clusively the territory of nomads." His preparations for " traffic and intercourse with the natives" were made in ac- cordance with this supposition, which, he adds, was "a grievous mistake, of which we soon became aware." In- stead of nomads and " uninhabitable wastes," he found a rich and beautiful country, a settled and civilized popula- tion, and, throughout nearly the whole of his journey, cities, TO Pre-IIistoric Nations. towns, tillage, and regular government, " where Bedouins stand for little or nothing." The nomads, found chiefly at the north, constitute scarcely one seventh of the population ; and he seeks to impress upon his readers that the wander- ing Bedouins must not be taken as representatives of the Arabian race, for " they are only a degenerate branch of that great tree, not its root or main stock" In a word, they are a debased and roving population, " grown out of and around the fixed nation," and nowise like the fancy- formed "saijes and noblemen of the desert" shown us in O the portrayals of romance. Mr. Palgrave discovered that Central Arabia is an ex- tensive and fertile table-land, diversified by hills and val- leys, and surrounded by a circle of waste and desert soil. He estimates that this great plateau comprises nearly half of the whole peninsula, or about 500,000 square miles, which is twice the extent of France. He found it occupied by two kingdoms, Shomer and Nejed ; the former contain- ing five provinces, Djebel Shomer, Djowf, Kheybar, Upper Kasseem, and Teyma; and the latter eleven provinces, 'Aared, Yemamah, Hareek, Aflaj, Wadi Dowasir, Seley'yel, Woshem, Sedeyr, Lower Kasseem, Hasa, and Kateef. In reality, there seemed to be but one nation there ; and, in times not very distant, when Kasseem and Sedeyr were metropolitan provinces, there w r as, probably, but one su- preme government. The industry, culture, and general condition of the people seemed to be above what is found in the neighboring countries of Asia. " The soil belongs in full right to its cultivators, not to the government, as in Turkey ; nor is it often in the hands of large proprietors, like the zemindars of India or the wealthier farmers of England." He noticed that the show of civilization in- Palgrave on Central Arabia. 71 creased as he proceeded eastward. In the province of Sedeyr, where Mr. Palgrave seems to have had very cordial communication with the people, he found " elegant and co- pious hospitality," with much dignity and politeness in the manners of the people. He says, " The dominant tone of society, especially in Sedeyr, is that of dignified and even refined politeness." He touched the kingdom of Shomer first at Wadi Serhan, and came soon to the Djowf, an oasis or valley belonging to that kingdom, described as the western vestibule to the central country. It is fertile and very beautiful, and has, besides many smaller towns and villages, two cities con- taining over 30,000 inhabitants. Hayel, the capital of Shomer, " surrounded by fortifications twenty feet high, with bastion towers, some round, some square, and large folding gates at intervals," had from 20,000 to 22,000 in- habitants ; but " its area would easily hold 300,000 or more, were its streets and houses close packed like those of Brus- sels or Paris." It has spacious gardens and pleasure- grounds within the walls, while the plain " all around the town is studded with isolated houses and gardens, the property of wealthy citizens." All along the ro^e he traveled were towns and villages, " clean and pleasant, and not unlike those of Jafnapatam and Ceylon." Coming to the plain of Lower Kasseem, he saw it as follows : " Before us, to the utmost horizon, stretched an immense plain, studded with towns and villages, towers and gi'oves, all steeped in the dazzling noon, and announc- ing everywhere opulence and activity." Kasseem is an ancient seat of Arabian civilization. Two of its cities w T hich he saw contained, one over thirty thousand inhab- itants, and the other over twenty-five thousand. Riad, the 72 Pre-Historic Nations. capital of Nejed, is " large and square, with high towers and strong walls of defense, a mass of roofs and terraces," with " edifices of remarkable appearance here and there breaking through the maze of gray roof-tops ; and " for full three miles over the surrounding plain waved a sea of palm-trees above green fields and well-watered gardens, while southward the valley opened into the great and even more fertile plains of Yemamah, filled with groves and villages, among which Manfoohah, hardly inferior to Kiad itself, was clearly distinguished." Such, in reality, is that " uninhabited country," that "vast and dreary world" of "arid and sandy wastes," that imag- ined land of" treeless and waterless deserts" Central Ara- bia. The extent of the fertile countries along the coast had already become known. The whole peninsula contains. over a million square miles, and probably three fourths of it are now excellent for cultivation. In the great days of Ethiopian supremacy a still larger portion of Arabia was used for agricultural purposes, and for the various wants of a settled population. Even now a sufficient supply of water for irrigation would transform most of the desert disti|pts into luxuriant fields and gardens. The ancient Arabians provided for this want by means of immense tanks similar to those still existing in Ceylon. Mr. Pal- grave speaks thus of the Syrian desert : " These very lands, now so utterly waste, were, in old times, and under a bet- ter rule, widely cultivated, and full of populous life, as the numerous ruins strewn over their surface still attest." The same may be said of other desert districts in and near Arabia. There is no reason to doubt that very consid- erable portions of the desert region between Xejed and Hadramaut, usually called " the Dahna," were formerly The Races in Arabia. 73 cultivated, and occupied by towns, villages, and planta- tions.* This remarkable country had no lack of fitness to be the home of a great people, and in the days when Balbec and Petra were flourishing cities, and Arabia was the busy com- mercial centre of the civilized world, it could have sup- ported a hundred million people as easily as France now sustains forty million. It had no lack of resources for the great part played by its people in human affairs. If En- gland and Spain could colonize and fill the whole Ameri- can continent in the space of two or three centuries, what might not be done by the ancient Arabians in the course of twenty centuries ? The great power and far-reaching activity of this people had declined many ages before the time of Ptolemy, and yet he enumerated 170 cities, ports, and large towns existing in his time within the region de- scribed by him as Arabia Felix. THE TWO KACES IN AKABIA. At the present time Arabia is inhabited by two distinct races, namely, descendants of the old Adite, Cushite, or Ethiopian race, known under various appellations, and dwelling chiefly at the south, the east, and in the central parts of the country, but formerly supreme throughout the whole peninsula; and the Semitic Arabians Mahomet's race found chiefly in the Hedjaz and at the north. In some districts of the country these races are more or less * According to Arabian tradition, Ad, the primeval father of the pure Arabians, settled in the region occupied by this desert, where he built a city that became great and powerful. The Mahometans say the city and people were destroyed on account of the unbelieving wickedness of the Adites. D 74 Pre-Historic Nations. mixed, and since the rise of Mahometanism the language of the Semites, known to us as Arabic, has almost wholly superseded the old Ethiopian or Cushite tongue ; but the two races are very unlike in many respects, and the dis- tinction has always been recognised by writers on Arabian ethnology. To the Cushite race belongs the oldest and purest Arabian blood, and also that great and very ancient civilization whose ruins abound in almost every district of the country. To the Semites belong the originators and first preachers of Mahometanism, and also the nomads. The Semites claim to be descendants of Ishmael, and they first appeared in Arabia at a period comparatively modem, probably not much older than the time of the He- brew settlements in Canaan; the Cushites are connected with the oldest traditions of the country. For this reason, the Semitic Arabs, who settled at the north and in the Hedjaz, have always given precedence to the Arabians of the central and southern districts, and conceded their su- perior antiquity. In Arabic speech the Arabians of the old race are called Arilah, that is to say, Arabians of pure blood, Arabians par excellence, while those of Mahomet's race are described as Moustarribes, people of foreign origin, who were grafted on the pure stock by the marriage of Ishmael with a princess of the Cushite race. Heretofore both tradition and the Oriental historians have agreed in saying that in ancient times a language was spoken in Arabia wholly different from the Arabic of Mahomet. Modern research has confirmed this statement. That old language has been discovered. We have it in what are called the Himyaric inscriptions; and modern dialects of it are still spoken in two or three districts of the peninsula, and to a considerable extent in Eastern and Mahometanism and the old Race. 75 Northern Africa, where it is written as well as spoken. It is found, also, in the ruins of Chaldea ; and, in remote an- tiquity, it seems to have been spoken throughout most of Western Asia, and also in Hindustan, where it is probably represented at the present time, in a corrupted form, by the group of languages called Dravidian. It cannot prop- erly be classed in the same family with the Arabic, but is closely related to the old Egyptian. It has been called " a new form of speech," because it was new to those who first discovered it ; but it is very ancient, existing now only in disentombed inscriptions, in sentences preserved, without history, on the stones and rocks of old ruins, and in frag- mentary and obscure communities representing the great pre-historic people by whom it was used. In the termin- ology of linguistic science, this language is called Ethiopic, Cushite, and sometimes Hamitic. Mahometan fanaticism applied the term "Djohal," or "Ignorants" (or anti-Christ, as Christians might say), to all who dwelt in Arabia previous to the advent of its prophet ; and the fierce blaze of this fanaticism consumed the old Cushite orTEthiopian literature, in which it saw nothing represented but accursed thoughts and feelings of the previ- ous ages of" heathenish wickedness." The strange tongue of the " godless Djohal," which gradually fell into disuse, made this destruction easy ; but, as we can see in Ma- hometan literature, there remained a prevailing conscious- ness of the great eminence, influence, and antiquity of the old race ; and the wealth of the old culture in Arabia, Phoe- nicia, and Syria is seen in the superior development of the Arabic language, in the civilization that gave such lustre to the empire of the caliphs, and in the knowledge of sci- ence and philosophy brought to Western Europe by the 76 P re-Historic Nations. Saracens. This ineradicable consciousness of a great an- cient history of the Arabian Cushites appears in the studi- ed attempts of Mahometan historians and traditionists to connect with them the origin of Mahomet's race. Mahomet, they say, inherited the purest of the " blue blood" through the marriage of an ancestor with a princess of Yemen ; and one tradition, which has been issued in many editions, rep- resents that Joktan, son of Heber, recognised for this pur- pose as the most ancient father of the Semitic Arabians, was identical with Kali tan of Cushite history, described as the first king of Yemen. These Mahometan inventions have confused and falsified the traditions of Arabian antiquity. William Muir, in the introduction to his learned and elaborate life of Mahomet, says : The identification of Joktan with Kahtan " is one of those extravagant fictions which the followers of Islam, in their zeal to accommodate Arabic legends to the, Jewish Scriptures, have made in defiance of the most violent im- probability and the grossest anachronisms." He adds: " It is no better than that of the Medina party, who tried to prove that Kahtan was a descendant of Ishmael, and therefore had no connection with Joktan." The Joktan invention is treated in the same way by Caussin de Perce- val. These fictions are not as old as Mahometanism ; and their chief purpose was to connect the founders of this re- ligion with the prestige of the more ancient race, which still lived in the popular mind throughout the peninsula. The connection of the Arabian Semites with the Hebrews, to whom they had claimed relationship through Ishmael, was older than Mahomet, and had made them acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures. When, under the lead of Ma- homet, they first emerged from obscurity, and aspired to The Races in Arabia. 77 lordly supremacy in the whole country, they began to ap- propriate to themselves the antiquity and the great names of the old Ethiopians, or Cushites, whose grand career had long since closed. Then arose the legends that sought to ennoble Mahomet's race by giving it the oldest Arabian blood, and even attempted to Semitize the Cushites by transforming the ancient Kahtan of that race into their imagined or traditional ancestor, Joktan. In reality, neither history nor tradition has knowledge of more than two races in Arabia the very ancient Cush- ites, who were a great and enterprising people in remote pre-historic times, and the Arabian Semites, who were not there during the grand periods of Arabian ancient history, and did not appear there until many centuries after the extended empire of the Cushites, or Ethiopians, had de- clined and become disunited. These Arabic Semites, who have chiefly occupied attention, and whose history has been allowed to obscure the ancient and true Arabians, were an unimportant, and probably a nomadic people, when they first appeared in the country, and they remained very obscure until the beginning of the seventh century after the Christian Era. They are generally called Mous- tarribes by their own writers, while those of the ancient race are called Aribah, or Arabians of the oldest and se- lectest blood. Ibn-Dihhyah, an Arabic historian, keeping up the fiction about Joktan, in a modified form, describes three distinct classes of Arabians the Aribah, the most ancient tribes of Arabian tradition ; the Moutarribes, cre- ated, though not clearly defined, by the Joktan fable ; and the Moustarribes, or descendants of Ishmael. His Mou- tarribes may be dismissed from consideration. Mahometan writers cannot be safely trusted when they touch this ques- 78 Pre-Histotic Nations. tion of Arabian ethnology, discourse about Joktan, and seek to connect the race of their prophet with everything ancient or great in Arabian history. CONCERNING THE OLD RACE. According to Arabian tradition, the old race, or the Cush- ites, consisted originally of twelve tribes, with the follow- ing designations Ad, Thamoud, Tasm, Djadis, Amlik, Ou- mayim, Abil, Djourhoum, Wabar, Jasm, Antem, and Hash- en. Some writers mention only nine ancient tribes of pure, unmixed Arabians ; others mention more than twelve. As these traditions were not created by Mahometan assump- tion, they may preserve recollections of ancient names of tribal communities, or of cities and districts organized as separate municipalities, and governed by hereditary chiefs subordinate to the supreme authority. I shall endeavor to show that this method of political organization was a marked peculiarity of the Cushites. One of the names, Amlik, is biblical, being the same as Amalek. The saying, " old as Ad," is used in Arabia to designate the remotest period in the past ; but we have no means to determine ei- ther the antiquity or the historical facts that may be indi- cated by these traditional names. In the traditions, the ancient people to whom they are applied are described as wonderful builders, who were rich in gold, silver, and pre- cious stones. They have glowing descriptions of the mag- nificent cities and sumptuous palaces of the Adites and the Thamoudites. But, as I have shown, we have more conclusive testimony than Arabic tradition to indicate that Arabia was the land of Cush, or Ethiopia ; and the great and extended influence of the? Cushite race in distant pre-historic times is now a