47. Obelisks at Axum. (From Lord Valentia’s ‘Travels.’)
The temple most like it in India is probably that at Budh Gya. That, in its present form, is undoubtedly more modern, but probably retains many of its original features. It also resembles the tower at Chittore,[[62]] but towers are from their form such frail structures, that certainly nine-tenths of those that once existed have perished; and it is only because they are so frequent still in China and other Buddhist countries that we are sure that the accounts are true which represent them as once as frequent as in the country of their birth. Be this as it may, this exceptional monolith exactly represents that curious marriage of Indian with Egyptian art which we would expect to find in the spot where the two people came in contact, and enlisted architecture to symbolise their commercial union.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.
INTRODUCTORY.
It is by no means impossible that the rich alluvial plain of Shinar may have been inhabited by man as early as the Valley of the Nile; but if this were so, it is certain that the early dwellers in the land have left no trace of their sojourn which has as yet rewarded the research of modern investigators. So far indeed our knowledge at present extends, we have proof of the existence of the primitive races of mankind in the valleys of France and England at a far earlier period than we trace their remains on the banks of either the Euphrates or the Nile. It is true these European vestiges of prehistoric man are not architectural, and have consequently no place here, except in so far as they free us from the trammels of a chronology now admitted to be too limited in duration, but which has hitherto prevented us from grasping, as we might have done, the significance of architectural history in its earliest dawn.
Unfortunately for our investigation of Chaldean antiquity, the works of Berosus, the only native historian we know of, have come down to us in even a more fragmentary state than the lists of Manetho, and the monuments have not yet enabled us to supply those deficiencies so completely, though there is every prospect of their eventually doing so to a considerable extent. In the meanwhile the most successful attempt to restore the text which has been made, is that of Herr Gutschmid,[[63]] and it is probable that the dates he assigns are very near the truth. Rejecting the 1st dynasty of 86 Chaldeans and their 34,080 years as mythical, or as merely expressing the belief of the historian that the country was inhabited by a Chaldean race for a long time before the Median invasion, he places that event 2458 B.C. His table of dynasties then runs thus.—
| Years. | B.C. | ||||
| II. | 8 | Medes | 224 | commencing | 2458 |
| III. | 11 | Chaldeans | 258 | 2234 | |
| IV. | 49 | Chaldeans | 458 | 1976 | |
| V. | 9 | Arabians | 245 | 1518 | |
| VI. | 45 | Assyrians | 526 | 1273 | |
| VII. | 8 | Assyrians | 122 | 747 | |
| VIII. | 6 | Chaldeans | 87 | 625 | |
| Persian conquest | 538 |
As every advance that has been made, either in deciphering the inscriptions or in exploring the ruins since this reading was proposed, have tended to confirm its correctness, it may fairly be assumed to represent very nearly the true chronology of the country from Nimrod to Cyrus. Assuming this to be so, it is interesting to observe that the conquest of Babylonia by the Medes only slightly preceded the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, and that the fortification of Avaris “against the Assyrians”[[64]] was synchronous with the rise of the great Chaldean dynasty, most probably under Nimrod, B.C. 2234. If this is so, the whole of the old civilisation of Egypt under the pyramid-building kings had passed away before the dawn of history in Babylonia. The Theban kings of the 12th dynasty had spread their conquests into Asia, and thus it seems brought back the reaction of the Scythic invasion on their own hitherto inviolate land, and by these great interminglings of the nations Asia was first raised to a sense of her greatness.
What we learn from this table seems to be that a foreign invasion of Medes—whoever they may have been—disturbed the hitherto peaceful tenor of the Chaldean kingdom some twenty-five centuries before the Christian era.