Arabia—Recent Discoveries—Inscriptions—Sabæa—Minæans—Thirty-two Kings known—Ancient Commerce and Trade-routes—Incense and Spices—Literature—Old Traditions—Oannes—Punt—Seat of Semites—Arabian Alphabet—Older than Phœnician—- Bearing on Old Testament Histories.
Troy and Mycenæ—Dr. Schliemann's Excavations—Hissarlik—Buried Fortifications, Palaces, and Treasures of Ancient Troy—Mycenæ and Tiryns—Proof of Civilization and Commerce—Tombs—Absence of Inscriptions and Religious Symbols—Date of Mycenæan Civilization—School of Art—Pictures on Vases—Type of Race.
CHINA.
The first country to which we might naturally look for independent annals approaching in antiquity those of Egypt and Chaldæa is China. Chinese civilization is in one respect the oldest in the world; that is, it is the one which has come down to the present day from a remote antiquity with the fewest changes. What China is to-day it was more than 4000 years ago; a populous empire with a peaceful and industrial population devoted to agriculture and skilled in the arts of irrigation; a literary people acquainted with reading and writing; orderly and obedient, organized under an emperor and official hierarchy; paying divine honours to ancestors, and a religious veneration to the moral and ceremonial precepts of sages and philosophers. Addicted to childish superstitions, and yet eminently prosaic, practical, and utilitarian. Unlike other nations they have no traditions attributing the origin of arts and sciences to foreign importation, as in the Chaldæan legend of Oannes, or, as in Egypt, to native gods; that is, to development on the soil from an unknown antiquity. The Chinese annals begin with human emperors, who are only divine in the sense of being wise and virtuous ancestors, and who are represented as uttering long discourses on the whole duty of man, in a high moral and philosophical tone.
But these annals do not profess to go back further than to about 2500 b.c., or to a period at least 2000 and probably 3000 years later than the commencement of historical annals, confirmed by monuments in Egypt and Chaldæa, and any traditions prior to this period are of the vaguest and most shadowy descriptions. We only know with certainty that prior to Chinese civilization there was an aboriginal, semi-savage race, the Miou-tse, remnants of whom are still to be found in the mountainous western provinces; and it had been conjectured from the form of the hieroglyphics to which the Chinese written characters can be traced back, that they were invented by a pastoral people who roamed with flocks and herds over the steppes of Central Asia. Thus the sheep plays a very prominent part, the idea of "beauty" being conveyed by an ideogram meaning "a large sheep"; that of "right" or "property" by one which means "my sheep," and so on in many other instances.
There is a tradition also of a clan of 100 families who came down from the West and descended the valley of the Yang-tse-Kiang, expelling the aboriginal Miou-tse. But for any real information as to Chinese origins we are indebted to recent discoveries of Accadian records. It has been proved by Lacouperie, Bell, and other experts in the oldest forms of the Chinese and Accadian languages, that they are not only closely allied, as both forming part of the Ugrian or Turkish branch of the Turanian family, but almost identical. Thus, by following the well-known philological law by which an initial 'g' is often softened in course of time into a 'y,' it was found that by writing 'g' for 'y' in many Chinese words beginning with the latter letter, pure Accadian words were obtained. Thus "to speak" is in Accadian gu, in the Mandarin Chinese yu, and in the old form of Chinese spoken in Japan go; night is ye in Chinese, ge in Accadian. The very close connection between Accadian and Chinese civilization is still more conclusively shown by the identity in many matters which could not have been invented independently. Thus the prehistoric period of Chaldæa before the Deluge is divided, according to Berosus and the tablets, into ten periods of ten kings, whose reigns lasted for 120 Sari or 432,000 years, a myth which is purely astronomical. The early Chinese writers had a myth of precisely the same number of ten kings and the same period of 432,000 years for their united reigns. Chinese astronomy also, said by their annals to have been invented by the Emperor Yao about 2000 b.c., was an almost exact counterpart of that of the earliest Accadian records. They recognized the same planets, and gave them names with the same meanings; they divided the year into the Chaldæan period of twelve months of thirty days each, making the new year begin, as in Chaldæa, in the third month after the winter solstice; and counting the calendar for the surplus days by the same cycle of intercalary days. The oldest Chinese dictionaries give names of the months, which had become obsolete, since the usage of mentioning the months by their numbers, as second, third, and fourth months, had become general, and the meaning of which had been lost. It turns out that several of these names correspond with those of the Accadian calendar.
Such coincidences as these cannot be accidental, and it is obvious that one nation must have derived its civilization from the other, or both from a common source. There can be little doubt in this case that Chaldæa taught China, for its astronomy, knowledge of the arts, and general culture are proved by its records to have existed at least 4000, and probably 5000 years b.c., and then to be attributed to mythical gods and to a fabulous antiquity; while in China they are said to have been taught ready-made by human emperors, at a date from 2000 to 3000 years later. The inference is irresistible that somehow the elements of Accadian civilization must have been imported into China from Chaldæa, at what is a comparatively modern date in the history of the latter country. The only approach to a clue to this date is that the great Chinese historian Szema-Tsien says that the first of their emperors was Nai-kwangti, who built an observatory, and by the aid of astronomy "ruled the varied year." The name is singularly like that of Kuder-Na-hangti, who was the Elamite king who conquered Babylonia about 2280 b.c. It is difficult to see how such an intercourse between Chaldæa and China could have been established across such an enormous intervening distance of mountains and deserts, or by such a long sea-voyage; but it is still more difficult to conceive how not only language, physical characteristics, and civilization should have been so similar, but myths and calendars should have been almost verbatim the same in the two countries, unless a communication really existed between them. Nor will the theory of a common origin apply, for it is impossible to suppose that any common ancestors of the Chinese and Accadians could have attained to such a knowledge of astronomy, and of the industrial arts and agriculture, while wandering as nomad shepherds over the steppes of Central Asia.
We must remember also the fact that caravans actually do travel, and have travelled for time immemorial, over enormous distances, across the steppes of Central and Northern Asia, and that within quite recent historical times, a whole nation of Calmucks migrated under every conceivable difficulty from hostile tribes, pursuing armies, and the extremes of winter cold and summer heat, first from China to the Volga, and then back again from the Volga to China. Nor must we overlook the fact that Ur and Eridhu were great sea-ports at a very remote period, and that the facilities for pushing their commerce far to the east were great, owing to the regular monsoons, and the configuration of the coast.
We must be content, therefore, to take the facts as we find them, and admit that China gives us no aid in carrying back authentic history for anything like the time for which we have satisfactory evidence from the monuments and records of Egypt and Chaldæa.