This poetical view subsequently gave way to one less poetical—namely, that the earth was supported by pillars; on what the pillars rested is not stated, and it does not matter. We must not consider this as ridiculous, and pardonable merely because it is so early in point of time; because, coming to the time of Greek civilisation, Anaximander told us that the earth was cylindrical in shape, and every place that was then known was situated on the flat end of the cylinder; and Plato, on the ground that the cube was the most perfect geometrical figure, imagined the earth to be a cube, the part of the earth known to the Greeks being on the upper surface. In these matters, indeed, the vaunted Greek mind was little in advance of the predecessors of the Vedic priests.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST GLIMPSES OF EGYPTIAN ASTRONOMY.
THE ROSETTA STONE.
(In the British Museum.)
In the general survey, which occupied the preceding chapter, of the records left by the most ancient peoples, it was shown that Egypt, if we consider her monuments, came first in the order of time. I have next to show that in the earliest monuments we have evidences of the existence and utilisation of astronomical knowledge.
It is impossible to approach such a subject as the astronomy of the ancient Egyptians without being struck with surprise that any knowledge is available to help us in our inquiries. A century ago, the man to whom we owe more than to all others in this matter; the man who read the riddle of those strange hieroglyphs, which, after having been buried in oblivion for nearly two thousand years, were then again occupying the learned, was not yet born. I refer to Champollion, who was born in 1790 and died in the prime of his manhood and in the midst of his work, in 1832.
Again, a century ago the French scientific expedition, planned by the great Napoleon, which collected for the use of all the world facts of importance connected with the sites, the buildings, the inscriptions, and everything which could be got at relating to the life and language of the ancient Egyptians, had not even been thought of; indeed, it only commenced its labours in 1798, and the intellectual world will for ever be a debtor to the man who planned it.
I know of no more striking proof of the wit of man than the gradual unravelling of the strange hieroglyphic signs in which the learning of the ancient Egyptians was enshrined; and there are few things more remarkable in the history of scientific investigation than the way in which a literature has been already brought together which is appalling in its extent; and yet it may well be that, vast as this literature is at present, it is but the vanguard of a much more stupendous one to follow; for we are dealing with a nation which we now know existed completely equipped in many ways at least seven thousand five hundred years ago.
It forms no part of the present work to give an account of the unravelling to which I have referred, one which finds a counterpart in the results achieved by the spectroscope in another scientific field.
But a brief reference to one of the most brilliant achievements of the century may be permitted, and the more as it will indicate the importance of one of the most valued treasures in our national collections. I refer to the Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum. It was the finding of this stone in 1799 by Boussard, a captain of French artillery at Rosetta, which not only showed the baselessness of the systems of suggested interpretations of the hieroglyphics which had been in vogue from the time of Kircher downwards, but by its bilingual record in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek characters, paved the way for men of genius like Thomas Young (1814) and Champollion (1822). The latter must be acknowledged as the real founder of the system of interpretation which has held its own against all opposition, and has opened the way to inquiries into the history of the past undreamt of when the century was young. Chateaubriand nobly said of him, "Ses admirables travaux auront la durée des monuments qu'il nous a fait connaître."