Historical Reprints
History
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THE legend of Atlantis, an island-continent lying in the Atlantic Ocean over against the Pillars of Hercules, which, after being long the seat of a powerful empire, was engulfed in the sea, has been made the basis of many extravagant speculations; and anew awakens keenest interest with the revolving centuries.
It is strange how gloomy thoughts vanish as one sets foot in Asia. Only yesterday we were still tossing on the sea of European thought, with its political anxieties, its social miseries and its restless aspirations, the heritage of the unquiet race of Japhet-and now we seem to have ridden into still water, where we can rest and forget and be thankful.
I have endeavoured, in a special manner, to show that strict methods should be followed in those archaeological inquiries which are at the same time anthropological, because in them there appears to be a special liability to fail in seeing the whole significance of the observations from which conclusions are drawn as to the antiquity and condition of the so-called Primeval Man.
The world, at this late day, expects so little truth about the origin and infancy of man that it extends but a grudging consideration to anything beyond the vaguest surmises and the most shadowy outlines; and is always ready to condemn, what it would call, the credulous temerity of an individual, who ventures accurately to survey regions of investigation which it pronounces inexplorable.
The times in which Junius wrote were big with events. The Seven Years' War had just closed with shining victories to Prussia and England. Frederic, with an unimpaired nation and a permanent peace, it left with a good heart and much personal glory; but George III., with India and America in his hands, with the plunder of a great conquest to distribute to a greedy and licentious court, it left pious, but simple.
Certainly of all men that suffered from the confusion of Babel, the Egyptians found the best evasion; for, though words were confounded, they invented a language of things, and spake unto each other by common notions in Nature.
St. Paphnutius used to tell a story which may serve as a fit introduction to this book. It contains a miniature sketch, not only of the social state of Egypt, but of the whole Roman Empire, and of the causes which led to the famous monastic movement in the beginning of the fifth century after Christ.
THE work consists of a group of Hermetic books, which have been called the Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead. It is not, indeed, strictly a Ritual in the more extended sense of that term, but consists of several Hermetic works divided into separate chapters, each preceded by a title indicating its purport, and each principal section followed by directions explaining its use.
IN studying the phenomena of knowledge and art, religion and mythology, law and custom, and the rest of the complex whole which we call Civilization, it is not enough to have in view the more advanced races, and to know their history so far as direct records have preserved it for us.
The original source material for the Legend of Atlantis was Plato's Critias dialog. Now get seven translations, paraphrased, and transliterations of this ancient manuscript in one handy volume.
Of Assyriology it may truly be written, "day unto day uttereth knowledge." There is probably no section of the science of comparative mythology of which, till recently, less has been known, or of which, at present, more authentic materials remain, than the subject of "Chaldean Magic: its Origin and Development."
All Hopi priests are very solicitous that sketches of the Patki altar in the Soyaluna should not be shown to Tewa men or women, and the Tewa men begged me to keep silent regarding their altars while conversing with the Walpi chiefs. There is a very strict taboo between the two peoples at the time of the Winter Solstice ceremony, which is more rigid than at other times.
The first tale of Khamuas is remarkable from every point of view. It is one of the finest works of imagination that Egypt has bequeathed to us; it belongs to the best period of demotic writing, when the script was at once full and expressive yet free from corruptions and superfluities, and the existing copy contains very few mistakes.
For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common and ordinary thing, for what reason priests lay aside their hair and go in linen garments.
"Love is always the same. As Sappho loved, fifty years ago, so did people love ages before her; so will they love thousands of years hence." These words, placed by Professor Ebers in the mouth of one of the characters in his historic novel, An Egyptian Princess, express the prevalent opinion on this subject, an opinion which I, too, shared fifteen years ago. Though an ardent champion of the theory of evolution, I believed that there was one thing in the world to which modern scientific ideas of gradual development did not apply-that love was too much part and parcel of human nature to have ever been different from what it is to-day.