SCOTTISH ARCHÆOLOGY.
INTRODUCTION.
"Large are the treasures of oblivion. Much more is buried in silence than recorded; and the largest volumes are but epitomes of what hath been. The account of Time began with night, and darkness still attendeth it."—Sir Thomas Browne.
History which is derived from written materials must necessarily begin only where civilisation has advanced to so ripe a state, that the songs of the bard, and the traditions of the priest, have ceased to satisfy the cravings of the human mind for mastery over the past and the future. It has been too generally assumed that history is an inconceivable thing independent of written materials. Historians have accordingly, with a transient and incredulous glance at the fabulous infancy of nations, been too frequently content to leave their annals imperfect and maimed of those chapters that should record the deeply interesting story of their origin and rise. This mode of dealing with history is happily no longer sanctioned by the example of the ablest of its modern investigators. They are at length learning to analyze the myths which their predecessors rejected; and the results have already rewarded their toil, though much still remains obscure, or utterly unknown.
Gifted with an inspired pen, Moses has recorded in briefest words the story of the world's infancy: that, therefore, is rendered independent of myth or fable. But quitting that single illuminated spot, how shall the investigator recover the annals of our race during the dubious interval between the era of the dispersion of the human family and the earliest contribution of written materials? Job, we know, was no Hebrew, but a man of Uz, in the land to which Edom succeeded. Could we fix his era, it would be of interest; for we know that he lived in a literate age; and his desire against his adversary was, that he had written a Book! But Biblical students are disagreed as to this epoch. A recent German critic brings it down to the period of the Exodus, while the great majority of commentators have heretofore placed it some 700 years nearer Creation. We must, meanwhile, be content to receive this as one pregnant scene of primitive social life incorporated into the Book of Books, while all the rest are swallowed up with the old centuries to which they belonged. It has to be intercalated as best may be, into its place in the first chapters of human history, ere we grope our way onward or backward, seeking amid the darkness for that historic oasis—the first establishment of the human race on the banks of the Nile.
Wilkinson places the era of Menes, the founder of Egyptian monarchy, and probably one of the earliest wanderers from the eastern cradle of our race, some 2200 years B.C. Bunsen, aiming, in his "Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte," at fixing the exact year, assigns that of 3643 B.C., or, in other words, 1295 years before the commonly accepted era of the Deluge. Yet even this has not satisfied all the requisites of newly discovered data. Fleury, in his "L'Egypte Pharaonique," carries back the Menean age some 1600 years farther into the past; and Böckh, following out an independent series of investigations, fixes the same era, in his "Manetho und die Hundssternperiode," for the year B.C. 5702. The world's early historic chronology, it is now universally admitted, has been misinterpreted. The last date is just 1698 years before the creation of the world, if we are still implicitly to accept Archbishop Usher for our guide. But even this it is possible may yet be revised, as too scanty for the events which it must comprehend; unless, following the example of one distinguished archæologist, Mr. S. Sharpe, we consign all Egyptian history prior to the era of Osirtesen I. to the same order of fabulous or mythic inventions as the crude traditions of our own chroniclers, and esteem Menes as no more than the classic Saturnus, or the Scandinavian Odin. It is not our province here to do more than indicate the fact, that all early chronology is liable to correction by the contributions of new truths, its most accredited data being at best only approximations to the desired end. "Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been: to be found in the register of God, not in the records of men. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the Flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the Equinox?"[9]
Similar necessities and difficulties meet us when we would investigate the beginnings of younger nations. The oldest intelligible inscription known in Scotland is that graven in Anglo-Saxon Runes on the Ruthwell Cross, Dumfriesshire, and dating not earlier than the ninth century. The oldest written historic documents are probably the charters of Duncan, engrossed about the year 1035, and still preserved among the muniments of Durham Cathedral. Prior to these the Romans furnish some few scanty notes concerning the barbarian Picti. The Irish annalists contribute brief but valuable additions. The northern sagas, it is now certain, contain a still richer store of early historic notes, which the antiquaries of Copenhagen are busily digesting for us into available materials. Yet, after all these are ransacked, what shall we make of the long era which intervenes between the dispersion of the human family and the peopling of the British Isles? When did the first rude prow touch our shores?—who were its daring crew? Whence did language, manners, nationality, civilisation, and letters spring? All these are questions of the deepest interest; but on nearly all of them history is as silent as on the annals of Chaos. With reverential piety, or with restless inquisitiveness, we seek to know somewhat of the rude forefathers of our island race. Nor need we despair of unveiling somewhat of the mystery of their remote era, though no undeciphered hieroglyphics, nor written materials, preserve one solitary record of the Menes of the British Isles.
Human intelligence and research have already accomplished so much, that ignorance alone can presume to resign any past event to utter oblivion. Between "the Beginning," spoken of in the first verse of the Book called Genesis, and the creation of man, the most humble and devout of Biblical students now acknowledge the intervention of ages, compared to which the whole era of our race is but as the progression of the shadow one degree on the dial of time. Our whole written materials concerning all these ages are comprehended in the few introductory words of the Mosaic narrative, and for well-nigh 6000 years no more was known. But all the while their history lay in legible characters around these generations who heeded them not, or read them wrong. At length this history is being deciphered. The geologist has mastered the characters, and page after page of the old interleaved annals of preadamite existence are being reduced to our enchorial text—to the writing of the people. The dislocated strata are being paged, as it were, and re-arranged in their primary order. The palimpsests are being noted, and their double readings transferred to their correct places in the revised history. The whole accumulations of these ages between Chaos and man are, in fact, being dealt with by modern science much in the same way as the bibliographer treats some monkish or collegiate library suddenly rescued from the dust and confusion of centuries.