Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism

by C. Staniland Wake

But how far does this conclusion agree with actual facts? M. Georges Perrot, in his important work on the “History of Art,” says that the ancient Oriental world has seen the birth of three great civilisations, that of Egypt, that of Chaldea, and that of China, all of which have features in common, although each preserves its own proper character. Chaldea was the Sennaar of the author of the Book of Genesis, the land in which were built the ancient cities of Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. The mighty hunter or warrior Nimrod, to whom the erection of those cities is ascribed, was the son of Kush and the grandson of Cham, and he is thus placed by the sacred writer in the same family as the Egyptians, Aithiopians, and the Libyans, as also the Canaanites and Phœnicians. The Kushites, of whom Nimrod is the representative in Genesis, were located by the poets and classical historians in Susiana rather than in Chaldea. Both of these countries, however, adjoin the Valley of the Tigris, and the name Aithiopians applied by those writers to the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf and the sea of Oman agrees with the relationship which, according to the genealogists of the Hebrew Scriptures, subsisted between the Kushites of Asia and those of Africa. It is to the shores of the Persian Gulf that the development, if not the origin, of the Chaldean civilisation has been traced. M. Perrot calls Egypt “the ancestor of civilised nations,” and he affirms that, in grouping the great peoples of antiquity to determine the part taken by each in the work of progress, it is necessary to commence with Egypt as the point of departure of all the forces which operate to that end. The Egyptians were not, however, indigenous to the Valley of the Nile. It is now almost universally acknowledged that they belonged to the white or Caucasian stock of Europe and Western Asia, from which they reached Egypt by the isthmus of Suez. Their Caucasian origin is confirmed by their language, which, with the other Hamitic idioms, had, as M. Lenormant shows, a relationship to the Semitic languages, the two families having a common mother language, the native country of which was in Asia at the east of the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. We are thus taken to the region where the old Chaldean civilisation flourished for the place of origin of the Egyptians; but did they belong to the same Kushite stock? In endeavouring to answer this question, it is necessary to remember that before the foundation of the Empire by Menes Egypt had comprised two kingdoms, that of Lower Egypt or the country of the north, and that of Upper Egypt or the country of the south. These kingdoms must have existed a considerable period, judging from the fact that the later Monarchs carried two crowns to indicate the dominion exercised over the two great divisions of the Empire, and probably it represented some race difference in their inhabitants. The Aryan character described by M. L. Page Renouf to the Egyptian mythology, and the features of many of the figures represented on the tombs of the fourth Dynasty, might lead us to suppose that the earliest Egyptians belonged to the Aryan stock. This opinion is, perhaps, confirmed by the consideration that the earliest and most sacred towns of the Egyptians were situate in Upper Egypt.

M. Lenormant thinks that the descendants of Mizraim settled in Egypt at different epochs, and that the earliest settlers, the Anamim of the Old Testament and the Anou of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, were driven by the later ones into different parts of Egypt, but principally into Nubia. The former may, therefore, have been pure Aryans, the southern country being referred to as the home of the race; although the Empire was first established in Lower Egypt, its chief centre being Memphis, from which its culture gradually overspread the whole country. The early inhabitants of the Delta region were represented at a later date by the Hyksos, who have been identified by Professor Duncker with the Philistines of the Syrian Coast. This people are spoken of in the Book of Genesis as descendants of Mizraim, and their neighbours, the Phœnicians, stood in the same relation to the northern Egyptians as did the Kushites of Chaldea. Like the latter peoples, the Phœnicians were great builders. The remains of vast structures still exist throughout Phœnicia, which was known to the ancient Babylonians as Martu, “the west.” Among modern writers, M. Renan is of opinion that “singular relations exist between the ethnographic, historic, and linguistic position of Yemen and that of Phœnicia,” as showing that there was a close relationship between the latter and the ancient people of Southern Arabia. Mr. Baldwin accepts both these views, and comes to the conclusion that the first great civilisers and builders of antiquity were the Kushites or Aithiopians of Southern Arabia, and that they colonised or civilised Chaldea, Phœnicia, and Egypt. Tradition speaks of Kepheus as one of the great sovereigns of ancient Aithiopia, whose kingdom extended from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and whose capital was Joppa, one of the most ancient cities of Phœnicia. We may well believe that this very early Kushite kingdom comprised part of Northern Africa, and therefore that it included the Delta of the Nile with the great city, Memphis, of the Egyptian pyramid builders. The similarity in many features of the Phœnician and Egyptian architecture points to a close connection between those peoples, and a portion of the Kushite race which peopled Phœnicia doubtless settled in the Delta, from whence its culture would easily spread throughout the Nile Valley. It is certain that Southern Arabia was the seat of a very primitive civilisation, which influenced all the regions around. Phœnicia, however, would seem to have been most intimately allied with Chaldea, the origin of whose civilisation, although ascribed to the fish-god Oannes, can hardly be traced to Arabia.

According to the Biblical writer, Kush was the eldest son of Ham, who was also the father of Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. All these peoples were great builders, and it is very probable, therefore, that they, as well as the Kushites, derived their knowledge from a common source. In this case, and even if Mizraim, Canaan, and Phut were the descendants rather than the brethren of Kush, the civilisation with which the Kushites are accredited was, in reality, that of the earlier Hamites. The probability is that all the peoples belonging to the Hamitic stock possessed the elements of a very ancient civilisation, which was handed down in the most direct line through the Kushites of Chaldea. M. Perrot accepts the opinion of M. Oppert, that when the primitive Chaldeans first settled in the plains of Sennaar they already had a national organisation, and that they possessed writing, the most necessary industries, a religion, and a complete legislation. If this was so we shall have to seek a very primitive source for the Kushite or Hamitic civilisation. What was its origin can only be ascertained when the race ancestry of the Hamites is known. In relation to this point it must not be forgotten that Ham was the brother of Shem and Japhet, and therefore that they were all members of a common family. As the descendants of Noah, they all alike belonged to the great white or Caucasian stock. M. Lenormant, while endorsing this view, says that anciently, as in the present day, there was an anthropological distinction between the Hamites and the Shemites, which he accounts for by supposing the former to have become intermixed with a dark or black race, which they found already established in the country to which they spread, while the Shemites, who stayed behind, preserved the purity of the white race. The facts of linguistic science and anthropology can thus be made to agree, but M. Lenormant has to admit that the Eastern Kushites cannot be brought within that theory, as from the earliest historical period they have spoken a language radically distinct from those of the Shemites and the other Hamitic peoples. He adds that the coast between the Persian Gulf and the Indus appears to have been, from a remote antiquity, the point of meeting and fusion of two distinct races having brown complexions, but inclining more or less to pure black. The Eastern Kushites are thus confounded by a gradual series of transitions with the Dravidians of India. This reference to the Dravidians is perfectly just, as there is no doubt, whatever may be the case now, that originally they partook of the high qualities possessed by the peoples of the Kushite stock. As a race they were noted for their love of art and commerce, and General Forlong, after having examined minutely most of the famous shrines of India, came to the conclusion “that there is nothing to equal those of Dravidia, save some small ones in Western India, which, in their completeness, form, and conception, denote the same master builders who, as Jainas, &c., learned in Mysore and the South under those great architects.” There is indeed reason to believe that the marvellous temples of Cambodia and Java, of which the ruins still exist, were erected by Dravidians from India. M. Moura, the learned author of a history of Cambodia, has established that the great architects of that kingdom were the peoples to whom the name of Khmerdoms is given by their descendants, the Khmers. They were of Hindoo origin, and emigrated from the neighbourhood of Delhi in the fifth century before Christ. Whether the original Khmers were of pure Aryan stock is, however, very doubtful, and it is extremely probable that they were Hinduised Dravidians. The Hindoos, to whom the civilisation of Java is ascribed, are spoken of as coming from Kling, by which is meant the Dravidian Telinga.

If, as M. Lenormant supposes, the Eastern Kushites became fused with a brown or black race, it does not follow that this race was originally black, or that it belonged to a negroid stock. All the Hamites, and especially the Kushites, were of a more or less dark complexion, but the black hue may have been acquired through natural influences operating during a vast period of time. The Dravidians have, at least from a linguistic standpoint, Turanian affinities, and it is now almost universally admitted that the earliest civilised inhabitants of Chaldea belonged to the great Turanian family of peoples who are usually spoken of as the yellow race. There is no doubt that a yellow race, whose languages had an affinity on the one side with the languages of the Altaic peoples, and on the other side with the Dravidian dialects, and who preceded the Shemitic and Japhetic peoples in material civilisation, existed in Eastern Asia alongside of the white race.

M. Ujfalvy supposes the Eastern Turanians to have descended the first from the plateau of the Altai; to be followed by the Western Turanians, who occupied Northern Europe from time immemorial; the children of Noah being the last to quit the primeval home. If this was so we can well understand that the average Turanian physical type must present peculiarities which distinguish it easily from that of the Caucasian races.

What we have now to do with is the origin of primitive civilisation, and everything points to the early Turanians as the people among whom it was developed. We have already seen that if the primitive Chaldeans did not belong to the Turanian stock they were intimately associated with Turanian peoples to whom they are thought to have been indebted for much of their culture. The great western division of the Turanian race appears to have possessed an advanced civilisation long before its Aryan neighbours. The Tchoudes, who are described by Ujfalvy as the most ancient people of the Altaic race, were noted metallurgists, while the Permians and the Finns are supposed to have taught art and agriculture to the Slavs and Scandinavians of Northern Europe. M. Reclus remarks that, not only did the Turanians teach their neighbours the use of iron and other metals, but they have the glory of having given to us most of our domestic animals, and probably also the greater part of our most useful cultured plants. Finally, the Turanians were, says M. Lenormant, “the constructors of the first towns, and the inventors of metallurgy and of the first rudiments of the principal arts of civilisation.” He adds that they were “addicted to rites which were reproved by Yahveh, and were viewed with as much hatred as superstitious terror by the populations still in the pastoral state whom they had preceded in the path of material progress and invention, but who remained morally more pure and elevated.”

This description, applied by M. Lenormant to the Turanians, has reference primarily to the Cainites, and it carries the origin of material civilisation much farther back in time than would have been thought possible a few years ago. The facts mentioned in connection with Cain and his descendants strikingly confirm the opinion that the Kushite civilisation was handed down from a period which, in relation to the Deluge of Genesis, may be called antediluvian. The tradition of the Deluge is a primitive belief of the three white races, the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Hamitic. It appears to have been originally limited to the peoples of the Caucasian stock, and this fact requires that the Turanians should be excluded from the effect of the supposed catastrophe. The yellow race, therefore, may claim an “antediluvian” descent, and as Noah, the progenitor of the white races, belonged to the Sethite stock, the common ancestor of the Turanian peoples must have been a Cainite.

The first public event recorded in the life of Cain after his exile was the building of a town, which he called Enoch, after his first-born son. This town has been identified with the city of Khotan, which is situate in the region where Cain is thought to have fixed his abode. According to Abel Rémusat the traditions of that city, preserved in the native chronicles and referred to by the Chinese historians, go back to a much earlier period than those of any other city of Central Asia. Baron d’Eckstein has, moreover, shown that Khotan was the centre of a district in which the art of metallurgy has been practised from the remotest antiquity. This is important, for Tubal Cain, the youngest son of Lamekh, the descendant of Cain, is said in Genesis to have been “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”

The ancestors of the present Chinese appear not to have been acquainted with the blacksmith’s art when they first descended into the plains, although it was practised by the neighbouring Tibetan tribes, who, we can hardly doubt, were allied to the Kolarian population of Eastern India, if not also to the Dravidians of the south and west. The relationship of the Dravidians to the peoples of the Altaic stock, and the practice of metallurgy by the latter particularly, would tend, however, to prove that the Jabal were not, as supposed by M. Ujfalvy, Turanians who settled in Northern Asia and Europe. Those facts would rather support the view of Knobel, which identifies the Jabal and the Jubal as a musical and pastoral race, as distinguished from a settled metallurgic race to whom the name of Tubal Cain was given.

The opinion that the ancestors of the Turanian peoples were Cainites may be confirmed by reference to certain social and religious phenomena. In the story of the slaying by Cain of his brother Abel there is evident reference to antagonism between a pastoral and an agricultural people. M. Lenormant, who sees a connection between the fratricide and the founding of the first city, has arrived at the conviction that the Chaldæo-Babylon tradition concerning the primitive days of the human race included a reference to those two actions of Cain. He says, however, “there are certain reasons for suspecting that the Chaldeans took the part of the murderer Cain against Abel, as the Romans did that of Romulus against Remus.” The preference of the Chaldeans for the murderer agrees with the Cainite origin ascribed to their Turanian ancestors, among whom the polygamy and revenge attributed to Lamekh were no doubt as prevalent as among some of their descendants at the present day. The French writer sees in the fourth chapter of Genesis a condemnation of Lamekh as the prototype of fierce vengeance, and at the same time of polygamy. The whole pre-Deluge history of man, as given in Genesis, would seem to imply the existence of an hereditary opposition between the descendants of Cain and those of Seth, who was regarded as standing in a special relation to the Shemites. It was evidently written in the same spirit as that which saw in the enmity between the Iranians and Turanians a constant conflict between light and darkness. The race of Cain are referred in the Biblical narrative as “sons of men,” a title which implies a condition of religious or moral inferiority, as compared with the “sons of God” descended from Seth. That narrative says, further, that in the time of Enoch men began to call on the name of Jehovah. This statement, which has reference only to the Sethites, supposes that the Cainites invoked some other god, and in the Shamanism of the Dravidians and various Turanian peoples we have no doubt a phase of the religious worship prevalent among their Cainite ancestors.