[240] Some small objects are reported as wheel-made; but this requires confirmation, according to a writer in the Athenæum (Dec. 18, 1880).
[241] The copper bracelet (Troy, p. 150, No. 88) with its terminal knobs is the modern trade ‘manilla’ of the West African coast. This survival will again be noticed in chap. ix.
[242] The word in its older form was written ‘allay.’ Johnson derives it from à la loi, allier, allocare: it appears to me the Spanish el ley, the legal quality of coinable metal. We have now naturalised in English ley, meaning a standard of metals. (Sub voc. Dict. of Obsolete and Provincial English, by Thomas Wright; London, Bell and Daldy, 1869.)
[243] Recherches sur les Mystères; and Mémoire pour servir à la religion secrète, &c. &c.
[244] The ‘Aglaophemus,’ so called from the initiator of Pythagoras. I see symptoms of a revival in assertions concerning a ‘highly cultivated beginning, with the arts well known and practised to an extent which, in subsequent ages, has never been approached; and from which there has not anywhere been discovered a gradual advancement; but, on the contrary, an immediate and decidedly progressive declension.’ This, however, is a mere question of dates. Man’s civilisation began long before the Mosaic Creation; and science has agreed to believe that savage life generally is not a decadence from higher types, not a degeneracy, but a gradual development.
[245] We now divide language into three periods: 1st, intonative, like the cries of children and lower animals; 2nd, imitative, or on onomatopoetic; and 3rd, conventional, the civilised form.
[246] Axieros (the earth-goddess), Axiokersa (Proserpine of the Greeks), Axiokersos (Hades), and Casmilos (Hermes or Mercury). Ennemoser may be right in making the Kabeiroi pygmies (i.e. gnomes), but not in rendering Dactyloi by ‘finger-size.’
[247] The lame and deformed ‘artificer of the universe,’ who became Hephæstos (Vulcan) in Greece, and Vishvakarma in India. Sokar has left his name in the modern ‘Sakkárah.’
[248] The Assyrian cuneiforms allude to ‘the (Great) Bear making its crownship,’ that is, circling round the North Pole.
[249] The temples of the Cabiri have lately been explored by Prof. Conze for the Austrian Government at Samothrace, and we may expect to learn something less vague concerning these mysterious ancients.