Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numa’s scientific secrets, “makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct processes;” the one obtained thunder (impetrare), the other forced it to lightning (cogere).[784] “Guided by Numa’s book,” says Lucius, quoted by Pliny, “Tullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter.... But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by thunder.”[785]
Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded it by a hedge of the white bryony,[786] a climbing plant which has the property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning-rod, for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a re-discovery after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.[787]
If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear notions as to all the effects of electricity, there is very strong evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted with electricity itself. “Ben David,” says the author of The Occult Sciences, “has asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the phenomena of electricity.” Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this opinion. Michaelis, remarks—firstly: “that there is no indication that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand years. Secondly, that according to Josephus,[788] a forest of points ... of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. Thirdly, that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which the points would act as conductors.”[789]
Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his statements, tells that “The magii, preserved perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.”[790] There is a sentence in the Hindu Oupnek-hat, which runs thus: “To know fire, the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three-fourths of the science of God.”[791]
Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, “India was acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.” This historian plainly states that “iron placed at the bottom of a fountain ... and made in the form of a sword, with the point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting storms and lightnings.”[792] What can be plainer?
Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the light-house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in it; for he honestly confesses that “If the mirror really existed, as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the invention of the telescope.”[793]
Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers, and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to be compared with Pheidias of old, and strict truth would, perhaps, hesitate at such a flattery.
Professor Jowett discredits the story of the Atlantis, in the Timæus; and the records of 8,000 and 9,000 years appear to him an ancient swindle. But Bunsen remarks: “There is nothing improbable in itself in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9,000 years B. C., for ... the Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before Christ.[794] Then how about the primitive Cyclopean fortresses of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according to archæological accounts, “even among the ancients it was reported to have been the work of the Cyclops,”[795] be deemed posterior to the pyramids? Masses of rock, some equal to a cube of six feet, and the smallest of which, Pausanias says, could never be moved by a yoke of oxen, laid up in walls of solid masonry twenty-five feet thick and over forty feet high, still believed to be the work of men of the races known to our history!
Wilkinson’s researches have brought to light the fact that many inventions of what we term modern, and upon which we plume ourselves, were perfected by the ancient Egyptians. The newly-discovered papyrus of Ebers, the German archæologist, proves that neither our modern chignons, skin-beautifying pearl powders, nor eaux dentifrices were secrets to them. More than one modern physician—even among those who advertise themselves as having “made a speciality of nervous disorders” may find his advantage in consulting the Medical Books of Hermes, which contain prescriptions of real therapeutic value.
The Egyptians, as we have seen, excelled in all arts. They made paper so excellent in quality as to be timeproof. “They took out the pith of the papyrus,” says our anonymous writer, previously mentioned, “dissected and opened the fibre, and flattening it by a process known to them, made it as thin as our foolscap paper, but far more durable.... They sometimes cut it into strips and glued it together; many of such written documents are yet in existence.” The papyrus found in the tomb of the queen’s mummy, and another one found in the sarcophagus of the “Chambre de la Reine,” at Ghizeh, present the appearance of the finest glossy white muslin, while it possesses the durability of the best calf-parchment. “For a long time the savants believed the papyrus to have been introduced by Alexander the Great—as they erroneously imagined a good many more things—but Lepsius found rolls of papyri in tombs and monuments of the twelfth dynasty; sculptured pictures of papyri were found later, on monuments of the fourth dynasty, and now it is proved that the art of writing was known and used as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarch;” and thus it was finally discovered that the art and their system of writing were perfect and complete from the very first.