Footnotes
[1.]The Swastika. Report of the U. S. National Museum, 1894. Washington, 1896. During the preparation of this paper I also consulted the following works, from which some forms of swastika are likewise reproduced on pl. [ii]: Le signe de la Croix avant le Christianisme. Gabriel de Mortillet. Paris, 1866. Zur Geschichte der Swastika. Zmigrodski, Braunschweig, 1890. La migration des symboles. Comte Goblet d'Alviella. Paris, 1891.[2.]
I would insert here that it was only when the present investigation was almost completed, that my attention was arrested by a reference in Professor Wilson's work, already cited, to a short article on the Fylfot and the Futhorc tir by H. Colley March, M.D.
Having succeeded in obtaining a copy of the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (vol. 4, pp. 1-12, 1886), in which it appeared, I had the extreme satisfaction of finding that a specialist working in another field and approaching the problem from another direction had come to two of the identical conclusions that I had reached in a totally different manner. This fact constitutes, in my opinion, the most powerful support of the correctness of the views we hold in common after having formed, expressed and worked them out in such a different way, as can be verified by a comparison of our two works.
Referring the reader to his valuable and suggestive communication to which I shall revert, I shall merely mention here that Dr. March recognizes, as I do, that the “essential suggestion [of the swastika and fylfot] is of axial rotation.” He attributes the original of the swastika to the nocturnal (not as I do, to the annual) rotation of the Ursa Major around Polaris, and likewise refers to the fact that about four thousand years ago, the circular sweep of the circumpolar constellations was far more striking than at present. After meeting on this common ground our lines of investigation part company and go wide asunder, nor am I able to follow some of Dr. March's conclusions such as, for instance, his opinion that the fylfot was a sign of a “diurnal rotation” suggested by “the rising and setting of the sun and moon when the spectator looked at them with his back to the north.” On the other hand I am indebted to him for much valuable information relating to the rune or futhorc tir, to which I shall refer later.
Besides the word coatl=twin, the Mexicans had another term to express some thing double, in pairs. A plant with two shoots was named xolotl. Double agave plants, or maize when occasionally met with, were regarded with superstition and named me-xolotl. The pretty little parroquets, popularly known as “love-birds” from their habit of constant association, in pairs, were named xolotl. The circumstance that the term for birds'-down was also xolotl may explain why the down-feathers of eagles and other birds were employed and played a certain rôle in ritual observances. They expressed and conveyed the sound of a word which meant something double and could therefore be used to symbolize a variety of meanings relating to multiplication or propagation. That the Mexicans figuratively connected birds'-down with generation is proven by the well-known myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli from the union of a ball of birds'-down and a goddess named “she with the petticoat of serpents” (Sahagun, book iii, chap. i).
Tufts of birds'-down figure, in the B. N. MS., on the shield of the female ancestress of the human race, one of whose numerous titles was toci,=“our grandmother,” to express which the figure of a citli or hare was sometimes employed in pictography. Of her it was said, that she bore only twins, a figure of speech meaning great productiveness, just as the female divinity is also termed “the woman with 400 breasts” (text to p. 29, Vatican Codex, Kingsborough, vols. ii and v). In the text to the Telleriano-Remensis Codex (Kingsborough, vol. i, pl. 24), we find Xolotl, a deity wearing the shell-symbol of Quetzalcoatl, directly named “the god of twins.”
This native belief is beautifully illustrated by the two “highly artistic shell-gorgets representing winged human beings,” which are described and figured by Mr. Wm. H. Holmes, in Part ii of his instructive and extremely useful “Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico,” which I have received just as this paper is going to press. I am much pleased at the possibility of drawing attention, by means of a footnote, to the interesting fact that in one gorget the human head is figured with butterfly wings, whilst in the other it is accompanied by conventionalized feathers and a butterfly wing. There can be no doubt that both gorgets are attempts to represent the resuscitated souls of departed warriors, according to the native ideas concerning them. It is nevertheless very remarkable to see actually that the ancient Mexicans employed the butterfly as a symbol of an immortal soul and had also evolved the idea of a winged head, analogous to that of a cherub, to represent a blest spirit, dwelling in celestial regions.
It is noticeable that the name of the Mexican priests was papa, which syllables are the first in the word papalotl=butterfly. It may be that a distinction was made and that the souls of the dead priests were supposed to assume the shape of butterflies or moths, whilst the warriors became celestial humming-birds.
It is the merit of the late distinguished philologist Dr. Buschmann, in his invaluable work on Aztec names of localities to have pointed out that although the Cakchiquel language is now spoken at Cozumalhuapa or Cotzumalguapan, its name is unquestionably Nahuatl (Cozamalo-apan). Ueber Aztekische Ortsnamen, vii, p. 34.
The largest number of illustrations of the beautiful bas-reliefs found in the above locality have been published by M. Herman Strebel of Hamburg, whose valuable publications and splendid collections of ancient Mexican antiquities, preserved at Berlin and Hamburg, are well known. Die Steinsculptures von Santa Lucia Cozumalhuapa (Guatemala) in Museum fur Volkerkunde. Hamburg, 1894. Jahrbuch der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Austallen, xi.
Three of these remarkable bas-reliefs are figured in the valuable publication by Geheimrath A. Bastian: Steinsculpturen aus Guatemala, Berichte der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin, 1882. Dr. Habel's drawings were published in 1878, in the 22d vol. of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.
Casts of these bas-reliefs are on exhibition in the Peabody Museum.
“The skins of lions, with the heads, had been prepared, with gold ear-pieces in the ears and golden teeth in place of the real teeth which had been pulled out. In the paws were certain rings of gold. Those who were dressed or invested with these skins put on the head and neck of the lion so as to cover their own and the skin of the body of the lion hung from the shoulders.” op. cit. p. 45.
The wearing of puma and ocelot skins by one of the two highest grades of warriors in Mexico is too well known to need further mention here.
Annals of the Cakchiquels. Library of Aboriginal Literature, vol. vi, D. G. Brinton, p. 71. It is a striking coincidence which further excavations may however destroy, that seven similar upright slabs were found at Santa Lucia, six complete ones of which exhibit individuals whose left hands bear special marks. What is more, these figures are accompanied by animals which agree with a native chronicle quoted by Dr. Otto Stoll (op. cit. p. 6). According to this some of the totems or marks of dignity worn by certain Quiché chieftains were representations of pumas, ocelots and vultures. It is, perhaps, permissible to advance the hypothesis that the personages on the slabs are representatives of the seven tribes and display their totemic devices.
I would add a couple of observations which seem to indicate that the language of the people who sculptured and set up the Santa Lucia slabs was Nahuatl. In the first case on the long slab, figured by M. Herman Strebel as No. 11, a chieftain in a recumbent position is conferring with a personage masked as a deer. The date is sculptured on this slab, recalling the Mexican method of figuring numerals and indicates that a historical event is being recorded.
The Nahuatl word for deer is mazatl and we know that the Mazahuas, or “deer-people” is the name of a native tribe which inhabits to this day the coast region of Guatemala. A town named Mazatenango=the capital or mother-city of the Mazahuas lies between the lake of Atitlan and the coast (tenan=mother of somebody; tenamitl=walled city). A small village named Mazahuat also lies farther south and inland on the Lempa river, in San Salvador. On one of the upright slabs two sculptured heads resembling dogs' heads are enclosed in circles. The Nahuatl name for dog is itzcuintl; and a town of the same name, corrupted to Escuintla, lies between the latitude of Amatitlan and the coast of Guatemala, at about the same distance inland as the town of Maza-tenango. As both places were within easy reach from Santa Lucia, it seems possible that the slabs may refer to some conquest or agreement made with the “deer and dog people.” At all events the agreement is worth noting as a hint for future research.
Leon y Gama advanced the opinion that the stone, supplemented by a gnomon, served as a solar clock or dial, to mark the hours of the days and the seasons, etc. He added that the stone may have served further purposes than those he enumerated and hints that it may have also recorded lunar periods. This distinguished scholar concludes by acknowledging that the ancient Mexicans possessed enlightened knowledge of the movements of the principal planets and methods of observing them, in order to divide time for the purposes of civil and religious government (Description de las dos Piedras. Mexico, 1852, p. 110).
The late Doctor Philip Valentini, in a learned discourse on the Calendar-stone, read at New York in 1878, expressed his view that it contained a complete and plastic representation of the division of time employed in ancient Mexico.
The distinguished Mexican scholar, Señor Alfredo Chavero, has published the most elaborate treatise which has been written on the subject and discusses the views of Gama and Valentini with much erudition. Referring the reader to his publications in the Annals of the National Museum of Mexico I shall but mention his views that the four symbols, contained in the quadruplicate central figure, record four epochs of the native cosmogony, that the central head is an image of the sun and that the monument itself is a votive tablet which was erected to the Sun in historical time, two conclusions to which I cannot subscribe. It is impossible to discuss fully the valuable publications of Señores Troncoso and Chavero in these cursive remarks, but I shall do so on another occasion. Meanwhile there is one point upon which both of these authorities agree, namely, in admitting the possible connection between the civilization of Mexico and Peru and in recognizing that various ancient people of America had the nahui-ollin in common. A passage in Señor Chavero's work claims moreover special mention, as it contains his supposition that the sign nahui-ollin may have symbolized not only the four movements of the sun, but also those of the moon, which the writer seems to regard as the nocturnal or dark sun. I am quite ready to agree with the above authorities on some of the points mentioned, conflicting as their views appear to be at first sight. Inasmuch as I regard the monument as the image of a plan or theoretical scheme which colored and influenced all native thought, I hail any recognition made by other students of its all-pervading presence in the Calendar and in the cosmogony of the ancient Mexicans. On the other hand I maintain a view which materially differs from those of previous writers, namely, that the entire plan was originally based on the primitive observation of Polaris and in the conception of a stable centre: the seat of a power extending over the Four Quarters and the Above and Below.
An analytical study of the Babylonian and Assyrian divinities enumerated in Professor Jastrow's hand-book enables us to detect some of the natural associations of ideas that influenced the formation of one artificial theological system after another, all springing from a single root.
The fundamental realization of the antithesis of light and darkness giving rise to the division of the universe into two distinct parts, the conception of an eternal antagonism between both followed and led to the stage of thought set forth by Mr. Robert Brown who tells us (op. cit.) that “the original twins were the Sun and Moon” and that an archaic cosmogonic legend attached to the third month of Kas (twins) is that of two hostile brethren and the building of the first city. The great twin-brethren who join together to build the city are the Sun and Moon, engaged in preserving cosmic order yet also constantly antagonistic to each other and who constantly chase each other, one being up when the other is down. Mr. Brown also relates the myth of antagonistic satraps Namaros and Parsondas and states that, in the twin stars, Castor and Pollux, named by the Euphrateans the great Twins=Mastab-bagal-gal, the Sun and Moon were re-duplicated. The Euphratean abbreviation is mas=twin or mas-mas, and Pollux is equated with the fourth antediluvian king Ammenon, a name derived from Akkadian: umun=offspring, an=heaven i. e. the Sun, “the son or offspring of heaven.”
“There are reasons for believing, however, that Sarpanitum, the offspring-producing goddess once enjoyed considerable importance of her own; that, prior to the rise of Marduk to his supreme position, a goddess was worshipped in Babylon, one of whose special functions it was to protect the progeny while still in the mother's womb. A late king of Babylon, the great Nebuchadnezzar, appeals to this attribute of the goddess. To her was also attributed the possession of knowledge concealed from men.... A late ruler of Babylon, Shamash-Shumu-kin, calls her ‘the queen of the gods’ and declares himself to have been nominated by her to lord it over men” (Jastrow, op. cit. p. 122).
The following extracts from Assyrian prayers addressed to Ishtar further define her position at one time: “The producer, queen of heaven, the glorious lady. To the one who dwells in E-babbara.... To the queen of the gods to whom has been entrusted the commands of the great gods. To the lady of Nineveh.... To the daughter of Sin, the twin-sister of Shamash, ruling over all kingdoms. Who issues decrees, the goddess of the universe.... Besides thee there is no guiding deity....”
It is remarkable that the sound of the Latin word for ram=aries, so closely resembles the Egyptian symbols for Amen-Ra (see fig. [63], 1-4) and that the am and ar syllables occur in the following names for ram or sheep, applied to the zodiacal constellation:
Al Hamal=the sheep (Arabic).
Bara=the ram (Persian).
Amru=the ram (Syrian).
Varak=the ram (Parsi).
The following detached extracts, partly from Mr. Richard Hinckley Allen's valuable work, should be carefully studied in connection with the above text, as they throw further light upon the ideas associated with the sacred centres of heaven and earth by nations with whom the Greeks were in touch.
“To the whole Arabian nation, heathen or Mahommedan, Polaris was Alfass, the hole in which the earth's axle found its bearing” (p. 451).
The following important material pertains to the chapter on India, of whose insufficiency I am painfully aware. “In earliest Northern India the star nearest the pole was known as Grahadhara, ‘the pivot of the planets,’ representing the great god Dhruva, and Al Biruni said that among the Hindus of his time it was Dhruva himself. It was an object of their worship” (p. 456).
In Bournouf's Bhagavata-pûrana (chap. iv) it is said that “Dhruva, meditating on Brahma, stood on one foot, motionless as a post; while he did so half the world, wounded by his big toe, bent over under his weight like a boat which, bearing a vigorous elephant, leans at each step he takes, from left to right.” O'Neil, citing the same source continues: “In consequence of his austerities Bhagavat said ‘I grant thee virtuous Child, a Spot which has never yet been occupied by any being, a Spot blazing with splendor, of which the ground is firm, where is fixed the circus of the celestial lights, of the planets, constellations and stars; which turn all around like oxen round their stake, and which [the Spot] subsists motionless even after the Dwellers of a Kalpa [342]). According to Professor Sayce it begins: “Thou who as the axis of the heavens dawnest. In the dwellings of the earth her name revolves” (O'Neil, p. 715).
O'Neil further notes that “Dhruva is named the sun of Uttâna-Pâda” and that this name is connected with uttarat=north and also signifies outstretched, supine. He also states that “Uttara and Uttarâ was the dual god of the north, the son and daughter of Virâta, and expresses the opinion that the age of the Dhruva legend is unutterable” (p. 503).
According to another Sanscrit legend: “At one time in the history of the creation an attempt was made by Visvamitra to locate a southern pole and another bear in positions corresponding to the northern, this pole passing through the island Lumka or Vadavāmukha (Ceylon)” (Allen, p. 436). Professor Sayce writes: “In early Sumerian days, the heaven was believed to rest upon the peak of ‘the mountain of the world’ in the far northeast, where the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv, 13) [the mount of congregation in the uttermost parts of the north], while an ocean or ‘deep’ encircled the earth which rested upon its surface.” Von Herder referred to it as “Albordz, the dazzling mountain on which was held the assembly of the gods, and identified it with the holy mountain of God,” alluded to in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel xxviii, 14; and Professor Whitney quoted from the sixty-second verse of the first chapter of the Surya Siddhanta, “the mountain which is the seat of the gods” and from the thirty-fourth verse of the twelfth chapter: “A collection of manifold jewels, a mountain of gold, is Meru, passing through the middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side;” commenting on which he says: the “seat of the gods” is Mount Meru, situated at the North Pole (p. 452).
The cult of Ishtar=Isis, associated with mystery and of Serapis=Osiris, had been instituted in Rome by Domitian (A.D. 82) who caused temples to be built for them. Curious instances of the spread of the cults of other countries throughout the Roman empire have come under my personal notice. In the Museum at Bonn, Germany, there is a Roman tombstone the inscription on which consists of a wheel above the name Jovis, the association of Jove with the wheel, being very remarkable and significant in connection with the present subject.
At Nîmes in the South of France, a curious statue of Mithra was found in the ruins of the Roman city. It consists of a Hermes, surmounted by a hairy, dog-like face. A great serpent is wound around the Hermes, the signs of the zodiac being sculptured between the coils. In the light of the present investigation the meaning of the symbolical statue seems too obvious to require explanation. It is strange that the recollection of seeing this statue at the age of nine with my father, who pointed out and explained the signs of the zodiac to me, is one of the most vivid of my childhood.
Hewitt states (p. 90) that, “it was successively immigrating races from the North ... who placed a king at the head of the confederated provinces formed from their confederated villages.... The confederate form of these kingdoms is shown in such names as Chuttisgurh which means the 36 gurhs or united provinces. But the final consolidated form of the pre-Aryan Indian village was that framed by the Kushites. It was they who placed the royal province in the centre of the kingdom.... It was on these principles that the government of the Ooraon village of Chota Nagpore was constructed. The Ooraon form of village government is that which has been preserved with less alteration from subsequent invaders than that of any other part of India, for the Ooraons, Mundas, Ho-kals and Bhuyas have always been able, under the protection of their mountain fastnesses, their political organization and their natural love of independence, to keep their country free from the interference of the hated Sadhs, the name by which they call the Hindus. But these people, who repelled and held themselves aloof from later invaders were of no less foreign origin than those who succeeded them, for they were all formed by the union with the matriarchal Australioids and patriarchal Mongols or Finnish and other Northern stocks, most of whom were formed into confederated tribes of artisans and agriculturists in Asia Minor and it was from the southern part of Asia Minor or Northern Palestine, that the Ooraons came. They themselves say that they came from Western India, from the land of Ruhidas [the land of the red men], but this means Syria, the country whose people were called Rotou by the Egyptians, and they were the race who introduced barley and plough-tillage into India and Chota Nagpore.”
Particular attention is drawn to Wylie's statements, quoted on p. [303], concerning the migration of Israelites to China, via Persia (about A.D. 58-75) and the native record that Christianity was the ancient religion of Ta-Tsin=Syria. Hewitt's identification of Syria as the “red land” causes the Ooraon and Chinese traditions to agree in assigning it as the common source of origin of their civilization. According to Professor Sayce it was “about B.C. 600 that the Phœnicians penetrated to the northwest coast of India,” and “tradition brought them originally from the Persian Gulf” (Ancient Empire of the East, p. 183).
This association of Tenos with seven-fold division is particularly suggestive because, in Pythagorean philosophy, the number seven was named Parthenos, Athene, also Apollo, Hermes, Hephaistos, Heracles, Dionysius, Rex, etc. These divinities, the second and third of which are specially known as patrons of cities, appear in a new light when it is realized that they were personifications of the number seven and, by extension, of the seven-fold cosmos, state and city. On p. [449], Plato's division of the Cosmos is cited. Reference to the history of Greek philosophy shows, however that the spurious existence of four or five elements had not always been accepted in Greece, that Thalês (640-550 B.C.) had laid down the doctrine of a single eternal, original element, water or fluid substance, and “assimilated the universe to an organized body or system.” Xenophanës (570-480 B.C.) conceived “nature as one unchangeable and indivisible whole, spherical, animated ... penetrated by or indeed identical with God.” It is usually accepted that it was Empedocles (444 B.C.) who first formulated the elements, earth, air, fire and water, to which later philosophers added a fifth, the all-embracing æther.
In a luminous monograph (Pythagoras und die Inder, Leipzig, 1884.), Professor L. von Schroeder, of Dorpat, Russia, quoting the authority of Professor Max Müller, Edward Zeller and Oldenburg, has conclusively shown that the five elements, earth, fire, water, air and æther (Sanskrit ākaçā) already occur in the Brahmanas; were taught in the Sāmkhya philosophy of the Kapila and were therefore known in India at least as far back as in the seventh century B.C. The idea of the five elements is so familiar to the Hindus at the present time that death is usually spoken of as “a dissolution into the five elements,” or a “going over into the Five.” Professor von Schroeder's conclusion is that Pythagorean philosophy derived the elemental divisions from India as well as its doctrine of transmigration, etc., and its science of geometry and of number, mentioning, in support of the latter assertion, the fact that Sâmkya, the name of the ancient Indian school of philosophy, signifies “number,” that its followers were therefore designated as “philosophers or teachers of numbers.” At the same time I point out that, according to Oliver, “a large portion of Egyptian philosophy and religion was constructed almost wholly upon the science of numbers and we are assured by Kircher (Oedip. Egypt, ii, 2) that everything in nature was explained on this principle alone.”
Returning to Professor von Schroeder's work I refer the reader to pp. 59 and 65, and notes for an extremely interesting discussion of the Greek name of the fifth element that figures in the work of Philolaus, the first who wrote a treatise on the Pythagorean system of philosophy. The name employed has been deciphered by different authorities as ὅλχας, ὁλχας, χυχλάς, ογχος, ὁγοτας, or ὅλας. The interpretation given is that the name (the first syllable of which recurs in the word Olympus) signified “that which moves or carries with it the universe.” Professor von Schroeder suggests that the name may be a corruption of the Sanscrit name for æther, the all-embracing element, âkâça. I venture to recall here the curious fact that, in ancient Mexico, the symbol, enclosing the four elements, is always designated as the ollin, a word associated with the idea of “movement” and of life=yoli.
In his work on the “Pythagorean Triangle,” the Rev. G. Oliver gives an extremely clear account of the Pythagorean philosophy and tells us that its central thought is the idea of number, the recognition of the “numerical and mathematical relations of things....” “The Pythagoreans seem,” says Aristotle, “to have looked upon number as the principle and, so to speak, the matter of which existences consist;” and again “they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of existence, and pronounced the whole heaven to be harmony and number.”
Concerning the universe, like many early thinkers, as a sphere, they placed in the heart of it the central fire to which they gave the name of Hestia, the hearth or altar of the universe, the citadel or throne of Zeus. Around this move the ten heavenly bodies ... the earth revolved on its own axis....
They developed a list of ten fundamental oppositions: 1, limited and unlimited; 2, odd and even; 3, one and many; 4, right and left; 5, masculine and feminine; 6, rest and motion; 7, straight and crooked; 8, light and darkness; 9, good and evil.... The union of opposites in which consists the existence of things is harmony; hence the expression that the whole heaven or the whole universe is harmony. Pointing out that it is only by a combination of odd and even numbers that a harmonious cycle is created, I continue to cite from Mr. Oliver's work: “The decade, as the basis of the numerical system, appeared to them to comprehend all other numbers in itself, and to it are applied, therefore, the epithets quoted above of number in general. Similar language is held of the number ‘four’ because it is the first square number and is also the potential decade (1+2+3+4=10). Pythagoras is celebrated as the discoverer of the holy ‘Tetraktos’ the fountain and root of ever-living nature, or the Cosmos consisting of Fire, Air, Earth, Water, the four roots of all existing things.
“Number,” says Philolaus, “is great and perfect and omnipotent, and the principle and guide of divine and human life. Number then is the principle of order, the principle on which cosmos or ordered world exists.” Without number and the limitation which number brings, there would only be chaos and the illimitable, a thought abhorrent to the Greek mind.
“The four Ionic tribes were abolished by Kleisthenes (510 B.C.) who created, in their place, ten new tribes founded on a new principle, independent of the gentes and phratries. Each new tribe comprised a certain number of demes or cantons with the enrolled proprietors and residents in each of them. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals and a common fund for such meetings, in honor of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice; and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens.... The demes taken altogether, included the entire surface of Attica. Simultaneously Kleisthenes divided the year into ten portions called Prytanies,—the fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany and receiving during that time, the title of The Prytanes. The order of precedence among the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot.... Moreover, a further subdivision of the prytany into five periods of seven days each and of the fifty tribe-senators into five bodies of ten each, was recognized; each body of ten presided in the senate for one period of seven days, drawing lots every day among their number for a new chairman called Epistates, to whom, during his day of office were confided the keys of the acropolis and the treasury, together with the city seal.” The remaining senators, not belonging to the prytanizing tribe, might of course attend if they chose, but the attendance of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, was imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting and to insure a constant representation of the collective people. During those later times—the ekklesia or formal assembly of the citizens, was convened four times regularly during each prytany ... (op. cit., vol. iv, p. 138). Special attention is drawn here to the intimate association of the system of government and the calendar, analogous to the ancient Mexican system.
“The number of inhabitants an ideal state should contain and their numerical organization were evidently subjects of supreme interest to Greek statesmen and philosophers. The great work by Aristoteles (384-322 B.C.) on Politics, ‘according to Grote,’ was based on a collection made by himself, of 158 different constitutions of states, which collection has, unfortunately, been lost.” “The purpose of comfortable subsistence for which commonwealths are instituted, requiring a minute subdivision of labor,” Aristotle says, that “in this particular view, the more populous the community its end will be the more completely attained.... All things considered he declares in favour of what would be now deemed a very small commonwealth, consisting of 15,000 or 20,000 citizens....”
“In his ‘Book of Laws’ Plato intended to delineate a more practicable scheme of government than that of his first.... His two republics nearly agree in form, though they differ in magnitude; the first containing one thousand and the second five thousand and forty men bearing arms.... In his second republic he equalizes estates but leaves population unlimited.... A regulation directly the reverse of this is introduced by one of the most ancient writers on the subject of politics, Pheidon of Corinth, who limits population, but does not equalize possessions.... The republic, planned by the architect Hippodamus, consisted of ten thousand men, divided into the three classes of artificers, husbandmen and soldiers. The territory he likewise divides into three portions: the sacred, destined for the various exigencies of public worship; the common, to be cultivated for the common benefit of the soldiers; and the private, to be separately appropriated by the husbandmen. His laws were also divided into three kinds....” (Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, John Gillies, LL.D., London 1804).
The knowledge that a republic was actually planned on the scheme of three-fold division naturally suggests the possibility that the Sicilian coat of arms, the triskeles, may be a survival of a period when a similar republic existed in Sicily and the year was divided into three seasons only. (For interesting details concerning the employment and spread of a year of three seasons in ancient times, see Hewitt, op. cit. Preface xvi, vol. i.)
In Grote's history we learn that after the establishment of the first Athenian democracy by Kleisthenes and the victory they gained over the Bœotians and Chalkidians, the Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their citizens as kleruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the wealthy conquered Chalkidians. This is a system which we shall find hereafter extensively followed out by the Athenians in the days of their power; partly with a view of providing for their poorer citizens, partly to serve as garrison among a population either hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These Attic kleruchs did not lose their birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not colonists in the Grecian sense and they are known by a totally different name—but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies formally planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase of the poorer population was always more or less painfully felt in every Grecian city ... the numerous kleruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to Eubœa was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multiplication of the poorer population, which her extended power was employed in providing for ... (op. cit. vol. 4, p. 171). The number “four thousand” specially designated is of particular interest because the letter of the Greek alphabet expressing it was the delta, in the form of a triangle or pyramid, which also signified “the fourth” or “a quarter.” The ideas suggested by these facts are: that the foundation of such a colony would have been commemorated by the building of a pyramid by the conquered race, the division of labor amongst them preparing the way for the institution of a social organization on the familiar plan (cf. p. 273). It is only when we reflect what an admirable means of establishing communal life and activity the mere act of building under direction and guidance must have been, that we appreciate the fine wisdom of the ancient kings, civilizers and culture-heroes, who were, first of all, master builders, architects and masons and who began the work of rearing an empire by directing the erection of a monument which, by its form, expressed the all-pervading plan of organization.
“Taylor says that the reason Plato adopted this division is because the number 12, the image of all-perfect progression, is the product of 3 by 4, both of which numbers, according to the Pythagoreans, are images of perfection. On the other hand, Ast conceives that Plato had in mind the division of the country in twelve parts found in Egypt and elsewhere, and which seems, as may be inferred from other portions of his work, to have been connected with the division of the year into twelve months, each under the superintendence of one of the twelve greater gods.” To this note I add the remark that, in B. vi, C. 8, Plato distinctly refers to the twelve tribes as “the thrice four tribes, recommending that they should appoint thrice four interpreters,” one for each tribe. It should also be recalled that Cecrops is said to have employed the division into twelve and is supposed to have brought it from Egypt. In the present summary the employment of the same division in other countries can be verified.
It may be of interest to note here that, like the Egyptians, the Greeks divided their month into 3 decades. The year consequently contained 3×12=36 decades+5 days.
An interesting interpretation of this somewhat obscure sentence is obtained by collating it with the conception of “the revolving eye of the Norse world mill-stone which was directly above Oergelmer and through which the waters flowed to and fro from the great fountain of the Universe mountains” (p. 472). The analogy is strengthened by the fact that the mountainous region in which Kyrênê was situated has always been noted for its fertility, the water, from the mountains enclosing its plains, settling in pools and lakes, affording a constant supply, during the summer months, to the Arabs who frequent it. The feature of Kyrênê, most renowned in antiquity, was its inexhaustible Fountain of Apollo, and travellers describe how, to this day, the Bedouin Arabs flock to it when their supply of water and herbage fails in the interior. Grote states that the same circumstance must have operated in ancient times to hold the nomadic Libyans in a sort of dependence upon Kyrênê (Grote, op. cit. vol. iv, p. 37).
The realization that an inexhaustible fountain of water meant life to primitive nomadic people, enables us to understand the expression “fountain of life” and the constant associations of the sacred central mountain with pools of water and streams flowing in four directions. It is remarkable and highly suggestive how closely the following topographical details, given by Grote, of the original seat of the Macedonians (which were in the regions east of the chain of Skardus, north of the chain which connects Olympus with Pindus and which forms the northwestern boundary of Thessaly), coincide with the conception of Mt. Meru, for instance.
“Reckoning the basin of Thessaly as a fourth, here are four distinct inclosed plains on the east side of this long range of Skardus and Pindus,—each generally bounded by mountains which rise precipitously to an alpine height, and each leaving only one cleft for drainage by a single river,—the Axius, the Erigōn, the Haliakmōn and the Peneius respectively. All four plains ... are of distinguished fertility ...” (Grote, op. cit. vol. iv, p. 10). The close vicinity of Olympus, the Grecian “divine mountain,” is particularly suggestive, inasmuch as it proves to be geographically associated with four remarkable plains and rivers.
In a paper read to the Section of Anthropology of the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr. Stansbury Hagar communicated the interesting results of his study of the Salcamayhua tablet which has been alluded to on p. [162] of the present publication. With his kind authorization I take pleasure in citing here his interpretation of the name of the Peruvian Creator, an abbreviation of which is inscribed on the plate or tablet. It will be found to accord with that given by Sir Clements B. Markham (History of Peru, p. 20), but to be more explicit. According to his view the name should be analyzed as follows: illa=light, lightning=fire; ticci=foundation, brick=earth; uayra i. e. huaii=air, wind; cocha=lake=water.
“Illa ticci uayra cocha would thus mean: the universal spirit defined by naming what seemed to a people unacquainted with scientific chemistry to be the four ultimate elements.”
Referring to the cognate Aymara language, Mr. Hagar interprets the name pachaya chachic as “source, lit. male ancestor, grandfather of all things,” and states that the opening inscription on the tablet should therefore read: “Spirit of Fire, Earth, Air and Water, source of all things” ... that is to say “image of the source whence heaven and earth have emanated.” Mr. Hagar states that this source seems to be appropriately figured by the oval form which he interprets as an egg (see fig. [28], c). On the other hand I point out that the flat plate of fine gold, which was set up by the Inca Manco Capac between images of the sun and moon, is figured as circular in shape (fig. [28], b).
I draw attention to Mr. Stansbury Hagar's interesting and suggestive paper on “The Celestial Bear,” which appeared in vol. xiii, no. xlix, of the Journal of American Folk-lore, in July, 1900. In this he relates the legend connected with Ursa Major by the Micmac Indians, that “this group of stars served to mark the divisions of the night and the seasons for the Micmacs.” A point of particular interest in connection with the Micmac legend is the fact, so clearly distinguishable, that the story was suggested to the minds of the Indians by the different positions assumed by the constellation in its annual circuit around Polaris.
“The Micmacs say,.... In all things as it was and is in the sky, so it is on earth.... In midspring the bear does actually seem to be climbing down out of her [celestial] den [corona borealis], which appears higher up to the northern horizon. In midsummer ... the bear runs along the northern horizon.... Soon after the bear assumes an erect position she topples over on her back [is slain] in the autumn. In midwinter she lies dead on her back, ... but the den [corona borealis] has re-appeared, with the bear of the new year lying therein, invisible. But this does not end the story of the bear, ... through the winter her skeleton lies upon its back in the sky, but her life spirit has entered another bear who also lies upon her back in the den, invisible and sleeping the winter sleep. When the spring comes around again, this bear will again issue forth from the den to be again pursued by the hunters, to be again slain, but again to send into the den her life-spirit, to issue forth yet again when the sun once more awakens the sleeping earth. And so the drama keeps on eternally.” Reasoning by induction, I am strongly tempted to assign the origin of the Egyptian myth of Osiris and of the “child in its cradle,” to the same source of inspiration—possibly also other myths of antiquity, such as the twelve labors of Hercules (held by O'Neil to be a pole-star god) may be assigned to the same source. At all events, the Micmac example is extremely instructive and suggestive.
The following extracts from Mr. Hagar's paper establish that Ursa Major was known as the Bear to several North American tribes, and generally served to mark time and seasons. “In a Blackfoot myth we read: The seven Persons slowly swung around and pointed downward. It was the middle of the night,” showing that they too marked the time at night by the position of these stars. So the Zuñis tell, when winter comes, how the bear, lying, sleeps, no longer guarding the West land from the cold of the Ice gods, etc., a story which demonstrates that in Zuñi mythology there was a marked association between the terrestrial bear [the “great white bear of the seven stars,” Cushing] and the seasons.
The Ojibways mention the constellation in connection with the four quarters in heaven, showing that they, at some time, were accustomed to mark their seasons not only by the position of the stars of the Bear, but also by the rising and setting of various fixed stars.
In conclusion I would state that Miss Alice Fletcher has informed me that, among the Omaha Indians, time is measured by Ursa Major, and that the pole-star is named the “Star which never travels.”
“The Tur-vasu, or people whose creating god (vasu) was the pole (tur), when united with the traders of the south, became the mercantile mariners of the Indian Ocean, who had imposed their rule and traditions both on the lands of Northern India and on those of the twin rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris.... From India, the only land on the Indian Ocean where they could build sea-going ships, they extended their trade, forms of government and national myths, first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where they were known to the Greeks as the Phœnicians” (p. 356).
“These people had seven parent stars whose names are preserved. Professor Sayce has identified the first of these, Sugi, with ‘the star of the Wain’ and states that it means the ‘creating-spirit-reed’ or the northern khu=bird, the ‘reed of the bird, the mother of life.’ Sugi is therefore an additional name for the Bear to that of Bel, distributor of waters.... In both names the metaphor is the same, for it is from the reeds at the source of the rivers, their point of distribution, that the rivers are born.... Both names denoted the star that led the year and it was the Great Bear, as Sugi, that led the earliest year, opening with the week of creation” ... (p. 357). ... “The sons of the Tur or pole were the Indian Tur-vashu, the Zend Turanians, the mariners of Asia Minor called by the Egyptians Tour-sha (Maspero), the sea traders of the Mediterranean called the Tur-sene of Lydia, the Tur-sena or Tyrrhenians of Lemnos and Etruria, who spoke a language closely allied to that of the Akkadians. That their god was worshiped in Cyprus and Asia Minor is proved by the terra-cotta whorl found in one of the settlements on the site of Troy, dedicated in Cypriote characters to Patori-Turi, the father Tur, who gave his name to the Phrygian city of Turiaion. The great antiquity of the settlement is proved by the fact that though some bronze knives and instruments were found in it, by far the greater number of implements were of stone and the pottery, though similar to that of Mycenæ, is of a more archaic type” (Schuchhardt's Schliemann's Excavations, App. I, 331-332 and 334).
“They were also the first spinners, weavers, makers of pottery and built canoes and worked in mines.... They grew wheat, barley, peas, flax and fruit trees.... These men covered the whole of Europe and Southern Asia ... and the Indian Dekhan with cromlechs and stone circles, which were certainly in some cases roofed over, dolmens, meaning stone tables, shrines, altars, tumuli and memorial stones or pillars and all of these, whether found in Western Europe or Southern Asia, are completely identical in character. These people had, in their migrations, established an active and widespread foreign trade...” (p. 178).
“These maritime Tursena were intermingled with the matriarchal Amazonian tribes who preceded them, and who seemed to have founded the ancient ports of Asia Minor and Palestine, especially the Ionian cities of Smyrna and Ephesus and that of Askelon. It was in the land of Phrygia, the mountain countries of the Caucasus range and the snowy heights whence the Euphrates rose, that the earliest shepherds met the matriarchal races, the immigrants from the southeast, the Hindu village communities, who are called by the Greeks Amazons, and are described as the earliest ruling races of Asia Minor and Greece (p. 175).”
“... The Great Naga is the Akkadian god Ner-gal, and the Phœnician god Sarrahu, or the Great Sar. His name among the Shuites, or the worshippers of Susi-nag on the west of the Euphrates, is Emu, a name which is letter for letter the same as that of the national god of the Ammonites, Amun” (Sayce: Hibbert Lectures, 1887, iii, p. 196, note 1. “Amun means the builder, or architect, and is, like that of the Egyptian god, formed of aman, to sustain” (Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 115). “He was the god of the house pole, who became in Egyptian Thebes, Amen-Ra, the hidden, and it was the people who made the house-pole the symbol of their ancestors, ... who brought to Egypt as well as to Assyria and India, the custom of having cities for the dead apart from those for the living.... It was from the rains of the summer-solstice ... generated from the Naga snake that the Phœnician sons of Kush were born, whose kings, like those of Egypt, wore the Uræus snake as a sign of royal authority. Their original settlement, according to a tradition recorded by Theophrastus, was at Tulos or Turos, in the Persian Gulf, the modern Bahrein. This was the holy island of Diloun, called Dilmun by the Akkadians.... It was the settlement of Hindu navigators in the holy island of Dilmun in the Persian gulf, and at Eridu, which first brought them in contact with the Arabian star-gazers and merchants, and it was the union, in the ancient city of Ur, of these races with the Hebrew tribe of Gad (who built, not only the cities of Bashan, but also those of Assyria and were the great builders of the ancient world), which first formed the Semite race. It was the meridian pole, the heavenly, revolving pole, the Tur of the Akkadians, which the Dravidian traders of India brought with them to Eridu” (p. 292). “It was these Tursena who, by developing the ancient organization of the village and province in India, divided all the countries they occupied into confederacies of cities, such as we find among the Euphratean nations, the Egyptians, Canaanites and the people of Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. It was they who were the fathers of Greek and Latin civilization.” (p. 296). “It was these people who brought from India their village institutions, their holy groves and seasonal dances.... Among them the Finnic mining races descended.... It was in Phrygia that they were mixed with the Daktuloi, or race of handicraftsmen and artificers, the sons of Dak, the showing or teaching god, the god Daksha, the father of the Kush race.... They were the carpenters and builders of the Stone age.”
Prof. Sayce's “Ancient Empires of the East” furnishes further interesting details concerning the Phœnicians. According to this eminent authority, at an early date, in order to relieve the pressure of population, they sent out organized colonies to the recently discovered lands of the West. Accordingly commercial marts were established at Thera and Melos,.... Colonies were established at Attica, on the coast of Africa, in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and beyond the columns of Herakles, in Gadeira. The three cities of Rhodes were planned by Phœnician architects.... The Assyrian character of early Greek art is due to its Phœnician inspiration.... It was about “B.C. 600 that these people penetrated to the northwest coast of India and probably to the island of Britain as well.... They were the intermediaries of ancient civilization ... and the chief elements of Greek art and civilization came from Assyria through the hands of Phœnicians.... Phœnician art was essentially catholic ... it assimilated the art of Babylonia, Egypt and Assyria superadding something of its own.... Their chief deity was Yeud or Ekhad=the Only One ... they worshipped the Kabeiri ... originally seven stars ... who were the makers of the world, the founders of civilization, the inventors of ships.... The cities of Phœnicia were the first trading communities the world has seen.... Their colonies were originally mere marts and their voyages of discovery were taken in the interests of trade. The tin of Britain, the silver of Spain, the birds of the Canaries, the frankincense of Arabia, the pearls and ivory of India, all flowed into their harbours.... Many of their colonies were wholly independent, and governed by their own kings and benefiting Phœnicia only in the way of trade.... In Phœnicia ... the king seems to have been but the first among a body of ruling ... princes and ... chiefs. In time the monarchy disappeared altogether, its place being supplied by suffetes or ‘judges,’ whose term of office lasted sometimes for a year, sometimes for more, sometimes even for life.... At Carthage there were two suffetes, who were merely presidents of the senate of thirty ... whose power was subsequently checked by a board of one hundred and four.... By providing that no member of the board should hold office for two years running, Hannibal changed the government into a democracy.”
To those of my fellow-workers who have made a special study of the most ancient forms of cursive and ikonomatic writings of the Old World, I should like to submit some facts concerning the ancient Mexican method, which may carry a fresh suggestion and be an aid to future research.
When the first Spanish missionaries who reached Mexico found themselves confronted by the barrier of language and wished to teach the native converts the Lord's Prayer in Latin, they adopted the method of picture writing employed by the aborigines. By painting a banner=pantli, a stone=tetl, a cactus=nochtli and another stone=tetl, they conveyed the words Pa-te-noch-te, which, approximately, represented paternoster. The consequence was that the Indians were able to memorize prayers in a language unknown to them, by referring to pictures of objects and naming these in their own tongue. A number of curious documents exist, which exhibit a great difference and variety in execution and are more or less cursive, according to the artistic sense and ability of the missionary or converted Indian who drew them. The fact that Spaniards, possessing our mode of writing, should have found picture-writing the most effective means of teaching primitive people speaking an alien tongue has always appeared to me as most instructive and suggestive.
As the natives suggested this method to their instructors, it is obvious that it was their habitual mode of memorizing a foreign language. The possibility that words recorded in native pictography may belong to an alien tongue, opens out a new field for future research. A curious result is obtained when Tenoch-Titlan, one of the ancient names of the capital of Mexico is studied from this point of view. In the well-known rebus now employed as the arms of Mexico, the syllables Te and Noch only are actually expressed in picture-writing by the stone=tetl, from which a cactus=nochtli is growing. This group is, however, surmounted by an eagle holding a serpent in its talons and the meaning of this animal group appears symbolical merely. It may be a curious coincidence that the eagle holding a serpent in its talons was employed by Mediterranean people as an emblem of victory and occurs on ancient Greek coins with this significance, and that the recorded name, Tenochtitlan or “the land of Tenoch,” curiously resembles Tenos, the name of a Greek heptarchy, founded by seven tribes just as the adjacent town of Chalco, in Mexico, resembles Chalcis, the town in Eubœa, where Aristoteles died.
On p. [418] and in my discussion of Egyptian hieratic script, I have pointed out that some signs employed express the sounds of words in another tongue, that the syllables am and an, for instance, seem indissolubly and universally linked to pole-star worship and symbolism. It does not seem unreasonable to endeavor to explain this by imagining that individuals, wishing, in each case, to teach the word Sama=the revolving heaven i. e. the North, to people speaking different languages, should make a picture of a tree or boat named am in one tongue, and in another country, draw a spider, named am, by its inhabitants. In the first country the tree, or boat, and in the second, the spider, would, in time, become the symbols of the north, and though different, signify the same thing. In time, each sign might be employed to express the syllable am in general and in this way isolated systems of ikonomatic writing would evolve and, in course of time, native artists would more or less skilfully produce conventionalized and distinctly characteristic forms and methods.
At the same time the colonizing race might be employing and perfecting a totally different form of cursive writing for their own purposes of registration, etc. For instance: in Athens, where Euclid held an archonship in 403 B.C. and, during centuries, Pythagorean philosophers identified “earth with a cube, fire with a pyramid, air with an octahedron, water with an icosahedron, and the Sphere of the Universe with a dodecahedron,” and also taught that a point corresponds with the monad, both being indivisible; a line with the duad, etc., it is obvious that points, lines and geometrical figures must have been employed for the cursive registration of ideas. In a state, firmly established on fixed principles of numbers, the cursive registration of its subdivisions, by means of numbers only, was rendered possible and in such a community the necessity for cursive writing would be limited and perhaps be confined to the registration and identification of individuals, the reports of quantities of produce, etc.
The facts that the letters of the Greek alphabet possess fixed numerical values, and that the initial letters only of their tribal names were inscribed on the shields of Lacedæmonian, Sicyonian and Messenian warriors, for instance, appear to indicate that, at one time, each Greek tribal division possessed its cursive mark, a letter, which may have indicated, at the same time, a numerical division of the confederacy. To understand such cursive records it is evident that a knowledge of the numerical basis of the state would be indispensable and imperative and that this would be confined to the rulers only. My opinion that the Maya calculiform hieroglyphs constitute cursive notation relating entirely to the calendrical and governmental cyclical system and absolutely unintelligible without a knowledge of this, has already been partially referred to on pp. 242 and 244. From Mexican manuscripts, where individuals, by means of a number and a calendar sign, are linked to a division of the state, I hope yet to be able to clearly demonstrate the practical harmonious working of a machinery of state, established on a perfected numerical scheme, the cursive notation of which was extremely simple.
Meanwhile I offer the foregoing remarks as suggestions for future research and as an expression of my opinion that people, using geometrical and numerical cursive methods of notation in their own country, may have systematically employed the pictographic method in teaching their language to strangers and in establishing their civilization in foreign lands.
It is particularly interesting to learn from Professor Sayce (op. cit. p. 188), not only that Phœnician culture had been introduced among the rude tribes of Israel, but that the temple of Jerusalem was built by Phœnician artists after the model of a Phœnician one, the main features of which were the two columns or cones at the entrance and the brazen sea or basin, which rested on twelve bulls, this number agreeing with the number of Israelitic tribes and with tribal or caste divisions in other ancient centres of civilization. It is thus certainly suggestive to find the number twelve associated with the Phœnicians, to whom the spread of civilization in the Old World is attributed and whose predecessors, at the period of Babylonian culture, were, according to Professor Sayce, “solitary traders, who trafficked in slaves, in purple-fish ... and whose voyages were intermittent and private.”
... “Diodorus Siculus assigns to the Carthaginians the knowledge of an island in the ocean, the secret of which they reserved for themselves as a refuge to which they could withdraw should fate ever compel them to desert their African home. It is far from improbable that we may identify this obscure island with one of the Azores, which lies 800 miles from the coast of Portugal. Neither Greek nor Roman writers make any reference to them, but the discovery of numerous Carthaginian coins at Carvo, the northwesterly island of the group, leaves little room to doubt that they were visited by Punic voyagers.”—Sir Daniel Wilson. The lost Atlantis and other ethnographic studies. New York, 1892.
Quoted by O'Neil from Satow and Hawes' Hdbk. of Japan, 2nd ed. p. 39.
It is interesting to compare the following Japanese words with Miyauken:
MIYO=wonderful, admirable, secret, mysterious, holy.
MIYA=Shinto temple where the kami are worshipped. Japan.
MIYUKI=travelling, going, only applied to circuit of provinces performed by Mikado.
KEN=imperial domain, or that territory which is under the direct government of the Mikado, cf. Chinese k'an=land.