Human Origins

by S. Laing

ADAM, EVE, AND THE SERPENT. (From a Babylonian cylinder.)

The only approach to a clue I can find for an explanation of these extraordinary Mycenæan faces is afforded by the picture of Adam and Eve, with the Serpent and Tree of Life, on an old Babylonian cylinder in the British Museum.

It will be seen at once that there is a considerable resemblance between the two types of countenance, and it strikes me as possible that, as Mycenæan art was so largely derived from Babylonian, this may have become a conventional type for the first human ancestors, in which it was thought by the Mycenæan copyists that heroes and kings ought to be represented.

This, however, is a mere conjecture, and all we can infer with any certainty from Troy and Mycenæ is, that a considerable civilization and commerce must have prevailed in the Eastern Mediterranean at a date long prior to the commencement of classical history, though much later than that of the older records of Egypt and Chaldæa.

[CHAPTER IV.
ANCIENT RELIGIONS.]

Egypt—Book of the Dead—Its Morality—Metaphysical Character—Origins of Religions—Ghosts—Animism—Astronomy and Astrology—Morality—Pantheism and Polytheism—Egyptian Ideas of Future Life and Judgment—Egyptian Genesis—Divine Emanations—Plurality of Gods and Animal Worship—Sun Worship and Solar Myths—Knowledge of Astronomy—Orientation of Pyramids—Theory of Future Life—the Ka—the Soul—Confession of Faith before Osiris.

Chaldæan Religion—Oldest Form Accadian—Shamanism—Growth of Philosophical Religion—Astronomy and Astrology—Accadian Trinities—Anu, Mull-il, Ea—Twelve great Gods—Bel-Ishtar—Merodach—Assur—Pantheism—Wordsworth—Magic and Omens—Penitential Psalms—Conclusions from.

The religious ideas of a nation afford a pretty good test of the antiquity of its civilization. Thus, if 5000 years hence all traces of England being lost except a copy of the Athanasian Creed, it would be a legitimate inference that the race who retained such a creed as part of their ritual, had long passed the primitive period of fetichism or animism, had schools of priests and philosophers, and that their religion had developed into a stage of subtle and profound metaphysical speculations. If this would be true in the hypothetical case of England, it is equally true in the actual case of Egypt. In its sacred book, the Todtenbuch, or Book of the Dead, which we meet with at the earliest periods of Egyptian history, we find conceptions of the Great First Cause of the Universe, which are in many respects identical with those of Athanasius. In fact, with some slight alterations of expression, his creed might be a chapter of the Todtenbuch, and it is clear that in his controversy with Arius he got his inspiration from his native Alexandria, and from the old Egyptian religion stripped of its polytheistic and idolatrous elements, and adapted to the modern ideas of the Neo-Platonic philosophy and of Christianity.

The Egyptian religion, as disclosed to us in the earliest records, is one which of itself proves its great antiquity. There is an extensive literature of a religious character; the Book of the Dead, which contains many of the principal prayers and hymns, and descriptions of the Last Judgment, is already a sacred book. Portions of it are certainly older than the time of Menes, and it had already acquired such an authority in the times of Pepi, Teta, and Unas, of the sixth dynasty, about 3800 b.c., that the inner walls of their pyramids are covered with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from it. From this time forward, almost every tomb and mummy-case contains quotations from it, just as passages of the Bible are quoted on our own gravestones. The Book of Isis, and hymns to various gods, are of the same nature and early date; and in addition to these, there are ethical treatises, ascribed to kings of the oldest dynasties, as well as works on medicine, geometry, mensuration, and arithmetic. Education was very general, as is proved by the fact that the workmen at the mines of Wady Magarah could scrawl hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of their tunnels, and on their blocks of dressed stone. Birch, in his Ancient History of Egypt from the Monuments, which I prefer to quote from as, being published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, it cannot be suspected of any bias to discredit orthodoxy, says that, "In their moral law the Egyptians followed the same precepts as the Decalogue (ascribed to Moses 2500 years later), and enumerated treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of magic as crimes of the deepest dye." The position of women is one of the surest tests of an advanced civilization; for in rude times, and among savage races, force reigns supreme, and the weaker sex is always the slave or drudge of the stronger one. It is only when intellectual and moral considerations are firmly established that the claims of women to an equality begin to be recognized. Now in the earliest records of domestic and political life in Egypt, we find this equality more fully recognized than it is perhaps among ourselves in the nineteenth century. Quoting again from Birch, "The Egyptian woman appears always as the equal and companion of her father, brethren, and husband. She was never secluded in a harem, sat at meals with them, had equal rights before the law, served in the priesthood, and even mounted the throne."