The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature

by C.-F. Volney

At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator proceeded:

"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas: First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of mistakes.

"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished, twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them, fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical life of Hercules.*

* See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
Constellations, before cited.

"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations, ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.

"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried into heaven, etc.

* These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
Isis and Osiris. The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
every mistake.

"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves, by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which made its appearance at that period; to describe the winter, they painted a hog or a serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination of these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of these figures and their combinations became excessive, and overburdened the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion and false interpretations. Genius afterwards having invented the more simple art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is limited, and painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical writing thus threw into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its signification, falling daily into oblivion, gave rise to a multitude of illusions, ambiguities, and errors.

* The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
of ancient hieroglyphics.
"The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
figures of the sun and moon. They designate the world by
the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
Chinese Dragon). If they were desirous of expressing the
year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
constellation of the Dog.
"They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
tree to produce a branch every month. They farther
represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land." The
whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
of four years. The abbreviation of this figure of a field
in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
—"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
inundation. Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet—They
represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
from their mouths.—They express the idea of God and destiny
by a star. They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure. All
white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
the moon. Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ. Euseb.
Proecep. Evang. p. 98.
"Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
"A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
lives in the water without any communication with clay,
exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
(Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.) A man at the
helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
which governs all. And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
"At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
"The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
of the air where light abounds.
A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5. Injustice. See
Isis and Osiris.
"The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
own.
"They represent the world also by the number five, being
that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus. The Indians have
the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
things terrestrial. Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
"The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
like that animal he is of a reddish color. Now Typhon
signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
formed from the same root hamr). Jamblicus has farther told
us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
and evil of the ancients."

"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization of ancient states. When the people began to apply themselves to agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued series of astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint certain individuals charged with the functions of watching the appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of the inundation, of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time to sow every kind of grain. These men, on account of their service, were exempt from common labor, and the society provided for their maintenance. With this provision, and wholly employed in their observations, they soon became acquainted with the great phenomena of nature, and even learned to penetrate the secret of many of her operations. They discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the coincidence of their phases and returns with the productions of the earth and the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive properties of plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other method of communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction were confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves as an exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a corporation spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued succession of the same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is true, the progress of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it, the people were daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more superstitious and more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce certain phenomena, announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with celestial powers; and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which they expected from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians, naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction, which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."