Thus far have Ireland and Persia kept company together, both equally rejoicing in the common name ofIran. But now, when we descend to particulars, this harmony separates. Ireland being anislandsurrounded on all sides by water—which Persia is not—it was necessary it should obtain a denomination expressive of this accident; or, at all events, when the alteration was so easily formed as by the change of the finalanintoin—anmeaningland, andin island—the transition was so natural as at once to recommend its propriety.
Hence it is that though we occasionally meet withIran, as applied to this country, yet do we more frequently findIrinas its distinctive term; whereas the latter is never, by any chance, assigned to Persia, the former alone being its universal name. And this is all conformable to the closest logical argumentation, which teaches that every species is contained in its genus, but that no genus is contained in its species;Irin, therefore, which is the specific term, may also be calledIranthe generic, whileIran—except as inourinstance, where theextensionof both is identical—could never be calledIrin: and so it happens thatIrelandis indifferently called by the names ofIranorIrin, the latter alone marking itsinsularcharacteristic; whereasPersia, not being so circumstanced, is mentioned only by the general form ofIran.
To simplify this reasoning I must repeat thatIran[147]signifies theSacred Land, andIrin,[148]theSacred Island; now everyislandis aland, but everylandis not an island: Persia, therefore, which isnot an island, could not be calledIrin, whereas Ireland,which is, may as well be called one as the other.[149]
Irin, then, is thetrue,appropriate,characteristicandspecificdenomination belonging to this island:—and the words Ire, Eri, Ere,[150]and Erin, applied also thereto, are but vicious or dialectal modifications of this grand, original, and ramifying root.
The import of this appellative having spread itself over the globe before Rome was ever known, under that name, as a city, and when Greece was but just beginning to peep into the light, the Pelasgi—who were partly Budhists, allied somewhat to them in religion, and still more akin in birth and endowments—conveyed, in conjunction with the Phœnician merchants, to the early Greek inhabitants;[151]and they, by a very easy process, commutedIrintoIérne, which is but a translation of the word—ἱερος signifyingsacred, and νηος an island.
Of this Greek form, Ierne, there were again various inflections and depraved assimilations, such as Iernis, Iuernia, Ouvernia, Vernia, etc. And from one[152]of those, the Latins, without, perhaps, exactly knowingwhat it meant, conjured upHibernia, but which, however, with soul-stirring triumph, retainsuninjuredour original root, the initialHbeing nothing more than the aspirate of the Greek ἱερος, sacred; νηος,island, remaining unaltered; and the letterbonly interposed for sound-sake.[153]
So that, whether we consider it asIrin,Ierne, orHibernia, or under the multiplied variations which diverge, almost interminably, from thosethree originals, in the several languages which theyrespectivelyrepresent, they will be found, each and all, to resolve themselves into thisone, great, incontrovertible position of the“Sacred Island.”
Thus, under heaven, have I been made the humble instrument of redeeming my country from the aspersions of calumniators. I have shown todemonstrationthe real origin of itssanctifiedrenown. I have traced from theIrish, through all the variations ofGreekandLatincapricios, itsdelineatoryname; and have proved, beyond the possibility of rational contradiction, that in all those different changes regard was still held to the original epithet.
Where, then, are the sneers—of “hallucination,”—of “lunacy,”—and of “etymological moonshine?” These are very cheap and convenient terms for gentlemen to adopt, as cloaks to the ignorance of the purport of denominations imposed at a time when everywordwas ahistory. In the early ages of the world whimsicality never mingled with the circumstantialdesignation of either person or locality. Every name was the sober consequence of deliberate circumspection; and was intended to transmit the memory of events, in the truest colours, as well as in the most comprehensive form, to the latest generation.
Will this be considered thevapouringof conceit? Is it thespoutingof self-sufficient inanity? Let the heartlessutilitarian, unable to appreciate the motives which first enlisted me in this inquiry, and which still fascinate my zeal, at an age when—did not my love fortruthand the rectification of my country’s historyrise superiorto the mortification ofalienatedhonour—I should have flung from me letters and literature in disgust, and betaken myself, an adventurer for distinction as a soldier,—let such, I say,conceal within himselfhis despicable worldly-mindedness, and leave me unmolested, if unrewarded, to posterity.
“Come thou, my friend, my genius, come along,Thou master of the poet and the song,And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,To man’s low passions, or his glorious ends,Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,To fall with dignity—with temper rise;Formed by thy converse happily to steerFrom grave to gay, from lively to severe;Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease;Intent to reason, or polite to please.”
The origin of the term “Sacred Island,” being now for ever adjudicated, the reader will at once see that it belonged to an era long anterior to Christianity. In assigning to it thisdate,[154]I pretend not to beunique; and, as I should not wish to deprive any brow of thelaurels which it has earned—more especially, where an undisputed enjoyment has amounted toprescription—I shall register, in express words, my predecessor’s own exposé, which is, that “the isle must have been so namedbecause of its nurturing no venomous reptile”[155]!!! Who will not smile?
No, sir, the imposers of this name were too sensible of its value, and too jealous of its use, to expose it to ambiguity. It pourtrayed the sanctity of the occupying proprietors; and lest there should be any misconception as to thespeciesof worship whence that “sanctity” had emanated, they gavethis sceneof its exercise three other names, viz.Fuodhla,Fudh Inis, andInis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh[156]—which at once associate the “worship” with theprofessionof the worshippers: forf, orph, being only the aspirate ofb, and commutable with it,Fuodhla—which is compounded ofFuodhandila, this latter signifyingland—becomesBuodhla—that is, Budhland.[157]Fudh Inis, by the same rule, is reducible toBudh Inis, of which the latter meansisland, that is, Budh-island;[158]whileInis-na-Bhfiodhbhadhrequires no transposition, being clear and obvious in itself, as theIsland of Budhism.
Now, “to make assurance doubly sure,” go toKeating’s History of Ireland, p. 49, and you will there find “the female deities”—an incorrect expression for the deities worshipped by the females—ofthe Tuath-de-danaans, to have been Badhha, Macha, and Moriagan.[159]Of these the first needs no exposition; the second I shall reserve for another place, but the third I will here develop. He was the military deity of this “sacred” colony, and a personification of Budh, under the designation of Farragh,[160]i.e.Copulation; and, accordingly, the Scythians, who incorporated with them, after first dethroning them, adopted this term as their exhilarating war-shout, while under the veil of the epithet was really meant thesun, whose aid they invoked to givestrengthto theirloinsandvigourto theirarms.[161]
And yet this is the name whichSpenserwould derive from that of Fergus, king of Scotland! Fifteen hundred years and more before Fergus was born, which, by the way, was not until the sixth century of the Christian era, the Irish basked in thesunshineof their resplendent war-god, who, under another and equivalent denomination, viz. Buodh, abbreviated intoBoo,[162]and thus with the prefixa, implyingto, orunder the auspices of—assumed by the different septs as their distinctive watchwords, branched out into the national and spirit-stirringacclamations ofO’Briena-Boo![163]O’Neil a-Boo! etc. etc.; which the early English settlers, who would fain becomeHibernis ipsis Hiberniores, afterwards imitated: such as Butler a-Boo; Shanet-a-Boo; Grasagh a-Boo; Crom a-Boo, etc.; the last having been that adopted by Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, and still retained as the motto of his armorial escutcheon.
It is worth while to listen to Spenser’sgratulation, while chuckling himself with the idea of his fancied discovery: “This observation of yours,” he says to himself, “is verygoodanddelightful, far beyond theblind conceitsof some, who upon the same word Farragh have made a verybluntconjecture.”Oh patria! Oh mores!how little is known of Ireland! But I am not surprised atforeigners, when the verynatives, the descendants of theactorsin those glorious scenes, are ignorant of its history!
Take up any document, purporting to give an account of this country, and you will find it to be composed, either of absurd and nauseousexaggerationson the one hand, or of gross and calumniousdetractionson the other. But though thewildnessof theformercannot fail to generate, in the intellectual amongst all readers, anunfavourable impression; and in those of a different nation, already prejudiced, or mayhap incapable of separating the gold from the baser metal,incredulityandcontempt; yet thetrue Irish searcher, versed in the antiquities, not only of his own dear “father-land,” but of the kindred East, which maintained in the old world a religious and incessantcommunication with this “Sacred Isle,” will glean in the distortion of thosemaniac effusions, theglimmeringsof thattruthwhence they originally emanated—while theinjusticeof thecalumniator’smust,of itselfbring dismay, with the whole train of confusion and dishonour, upon the mercenary instruments of those foul abuses, as well as upon the heartless abettors who could have enlisted their vassalage!
Truth, notwithstanding, obliges me to say that the blame should not altogether be laid upon the historians. They did as much as, under the circumstances, could be expected at their hands. Two successive invasions having passed over, and swept away, in the whirlwind of their desolating fury, all those monuments of learning to which the world had bowed just before—one frominnate antipathyto thethingitself; the other fromapprehensionthat the contents of those memorials, acting upon the sensibilities of a high-hearted and proud race, should stimulate their ardour to the recovery of their lost rights, and the consequent ejectment of the party who had usurped them[164]—the patriot had little more to guide him in supplying the deficiencies thus created, than the rude imagining of his own brain, or the oral traditions of the village schoolmaster and genealogist.
The rigour, however, of penal observances began, in time, gradually to relax; and the people ventured to confess that they had still in their possession such things asmanuscripts, illustrative of their lineage and ancestral elevation. This was the signal to some liberalindividuals to prosecute an inquiry for additional memorials; and the result was, that they rose from the pursuit, if not with aconnected aggregate of demonstrational evidence, at least with aconvictionon theirminds, that those treasured visions of primeval lustre, hereditary and inborn within the breast of every Irishman, and impossible to be eradicated, were not yet,late as was the hour, without something like a basis to rest upon.
I would be unjust did I not furthermore avow, that it was not their enemies alone that waged this ungenerous warfare with the literature of the Irish. St. Patrick himself was the individual who, in pursuance, as he conceived, of his apostolic charge, may be said to have perpetrated the greatest outrage upon our antiquities; having set fire, in a paroxysm of pious zeal, to no less thanone hundred and eighty volumes, which he selected from the great mass of the records of the nation, as embodying the tenets ofBudhismandAstrology. The rest, relating to the notification of national or personal achievements, he left untouched and secure.
Yet, will it be believed that this was the severest infliction, so far aslettersare concerned, which we have sustained, after all? For as thereligionof the ancient Irish was intermingled with theirhistory, and as the wide diffusion of theircelebrityarose from the eminence of theirreligious creed, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a loss upon the antiquarian whichfifteen centuries of studyhave not been able to repair!
Despite, however, the united inroads of suspicion and mistaken piety, the Irish have still materials, ample and authentic, for the completion of a history,not only ofinsular, but, ifproperly handled, of almostuniversalelucidation:[165]and of this Toland himself was, in some measure, aware, when he said that “notwithstanding the long state of barbarity in which that nation hath lain, and after all the rebellions and wars with which the kingdom has been harassed, they (the Irish) haveincomparablymore ancient materials of that kind for their history, to which even theirmythology is not unserviceable, than either the English, or the French, or any other European nation with whose ancient manuscripts I have any acquaintance.”
But though resources most unquestionable thus notoriously still abounded, yet has it not been the fortune of Ireland, hitherto, to meet with any historian gifted with the widely comprehensive, philosophicalviews and suitable education calculated to do her justice; so that, by the untoward hand of fate, and the iniquitous operation of the old political stroke, the knowledge of the character in which those papers are couched has become already so almost extinct, that they lie on the shelves, to all intents and purposes adeadletter.[166]
I now beg leave to introduce this identical war-god, in his military costume and hyperborean philabeg, in which, as before observed, the Scythians never invested themselves; and hope the reader will enjoy a hearty laugh at the expense of those blunderers, who, in theirpreposterous, I had almost saidrepentant, devotion to monastic refinements, would rob the Pagans of this long-cherishedidol, and convert his godship into aChristiannonentity!
You will find him—name and all corresponding—described fully in theRites and Ceremonies of all Nations, as similarly officiating and worshipped in the East. “There is,” says the author, “in the province of Matambo, anidolwhose priests aresorcerersormagicians; and this image standsupright, directly over against the temple dedicated to his peculiar service, in abasket made in the form of a bee-hive.”[167]
“To this deity in particular they apply themselves for success when they go out ahuntingorfishing, and for the relief of all such as are indisposed![168]Mirambaalways marches at the head of their armies; and he is presented with the first delicious morsel, and the first glass of wine that is served up at the governor’s or King of Matambo’s table.”
But alivingtraveller, in a very interesting work just launched from the press, and without expecting therein to become my auxiliary, decides this ascription without further pains. “This village,” says our author (near Rampore, on the Himalaya range), “instanced the care which the sacerdotal orders in the East take for their comfort and good. It was a neat, clean, and substantial place, in all acceptations of the word. These Brahmin villagers pay no rent of any kind to the state: they live on the granted lands, but are obliged to keep thetemplesin repair, to furnish all the implements, and to take care of the godships within it—these aresmall brass images, with nether garments in the shape of petticoats. They are carried in procession, on certain occasions, and the ceremonies belonging to them are performed twice a day. Mahadeo is the great god of the mountains.”[169]
But if the advocates of modernism have cause to be annoyed at my depriving them of this specimen of “the Fine Arts in Ireland,” which they thought they had appropriated to the prejudice of truth, how much greater must not be their chagrin at my wrenching from their grasp another “exceedingly curious” and “richly-ornamented” “ecclesiastic?”[170]Ecclesiastic, indeed! Yes; but reverenced and revered, by many a beating heart, as the head of all ecclesiastics, for centuries upon centuries, before the name of monachism, as connected with Christianity, was ever articulated!
This, Sir, is no less a personage than Mr. Budha himself, or rather the personified abstract, in the possession of one of the last queens of the Tuath-de-danaans, at the moment of the inundation of the Scythian dynasty. I hope that, after so long an obscuration, and the uncourtly treatment he has received during the humiliating interval of revolving centuries, you will—now that he chooses to reveal his proper character, avow his delegation, and acknowledge the supremacy of that power by which his empire had been overthrown—treat him as anIrishman, with generous cordiality, and impute not to him a crime which belonged only to his followers.
But his dress is like a Christian. So much the better, man: we ought to like him the more for that. But to be serious,—although, as my friend Horace formerly told me, “what hinders one laughing from speaking truth?”—all our ecclesiastical ritual, as well ofceremonyas ofcostume, has been borrowed from the Jewish, and that again from the Pagans, with such alterations only as the allwise Jehovah thought necessary to recommend. Besides, we have the authority of Dr. Buchanan for stating that “Samonais a title bestowed on the priests of Godama (Budha), and is likewise applied to theimagesof thedivinity, whenrepresented, as he commonly is, in thepriestly habit.”[171]
Pharaoh,[172]the titular appellation of the monarchs of Egypt, being but thelocal modificationof this our IrishPhearagh, the mind is instinctively directed towards that great storehouse of bygone consequence. And as the best authority that we can command in gaining any insight into its reverses is through the medium of its own historians, let us hear what Manetho, a priest of the country, thus transmits:—
“We had formerly,” says he, “a king named Timæus, in whose reign, I know not why, but it pleased God to visit us with a blast of His displeasure; when, on a sudden, there came upon this country a large body ofobscure peoplefrom the East, and with great boldness invaded the land, and took it without opposition. Their behaviour to the natives was very barbarous; for they slaughtered the men, and made slaves of their wives and children. The whole body of this people were calledHuksos, orUksos; that is, Royal Shepherds: for the first syllable, in thesacreddialect, signifies a ‘king,’ as the latter, in the popular language, signifies ‘a shepherd.’ These two compounded together constitute the word Huksos. These people are said to have been Arabians.”
“The Vedas, or Sanscrit records of Hindustan, furthermore state that these invaders were the “Pali,” or shepherds, a powerful, warlike, and enterprising Indian tribe. While the deadly aversion which existed in the minds of the Egyptians against the name and office of a shepherd in Joseph’s day, is a lasting memorial of their visit and their severity.”[173]
They did not go, however, without leaving behind them other signs. The pages of Herodotus afford ample evidence of the resemblance between the Egyptian customs and those of the more remote East. By his description of the rites and ceremonies, the mode of life, etc., of the priests of Egypt, they are at once identified with the Brahmins of India. China still celebrates that festival of lamps which was formerly universal throughout the extent of Egypt;[174]and “we have the most indubitable authority for stating that the sepoys in the British overland army from India, when they beheld in Egypt the ruins of Dendera, prostrated themselves before the remains of the ancient temples, and offered up adoration to them; declaring, upon being asked the reason of this strange conduct,thattheysaw sculpturedbefore them the Gods of their country.”[175]
But the most stupendous and appalling memento of their dominion and science was the three great pyramids of Geeza, the erection of which, Herodotus assures us (bk. ii. sec. 128), though thepriestswould attribute to Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus, three Egyptian kings, “yet thepeopleascribed them to ashepherdnamed Philitis,who at that time fed his cattlein those places”; so consonant with theinvasionabove authenticated. This is additionally confirmed by the Sanscrit records already referred to, informing us ofthree mountains, Rucm-adri, “the Mount of Gold,” Rajat-adri, “the Mount of Silver,” and Retu-adri, “the Mount of Gems”; having been raised by that Indian colony who had conquered Egypt; which is only a figurative denotation of thosefactitious heights, those astounding monuments of religion and ostentation, which were originally cased withyellow,white, andspotted marbles, brought from the quarries of Arabia, until stripped by the rapacity of succeeding colonies.
Belzoni’s testimony is decisive on this point, as his drawing of the second pyramid represents the upper part of its casing remaining still entire, about a third of the distance from the summit to the base downwards. We meet with other pyramids, it is true, chiefly dispersed about the Libyan deserts, but they are much inferior to the fore-mentioned three, except one near the mummies, whose dimensions and structure are very nearly the same with the largest Geziteone. This latter, according to Greaves, is 693 feet square at the base; its perpendicular height 499 feet; that is, 62 feet higher than St. Peter’s at Rome, and 155 feet higher than St. Paul’s in London; while the inclining height is 693 feet, exactly equal to the breadth of the base; so that the angles and base make an equilateral triangle.[176]Belzoni measures them all differently, and gives to the second even greater dimensions than areusuallyassigned to the first or largest, viz. base, 684; perpendicular height, 456; central line down front, from apex to base, 568; coating, from top to where it ends, 140.
The variation arises from the circumstance of the latter gentleman’s measurement having been taken after the base had been cleared away of all sand and rubbish; while those of his predecessors applied only as taken from the level of the surrounding heap. The small ones above noticed are some quadrilateral,some round, terminating like a sugar-loaf, some rising with a greater and some with a lesser inclination. All commence immediately south of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, and extend, in an uninterrupted range, for many miles in a southerly direction, parallel with the banks of the river.
After what has been said above, I need scarcely allude to the ridiculous supposition of those having been built by Joseph as granaries for his corn! Their form and construction, ill adapted to such an occasion, refutes that absurdity, as it does the derivation upon which it has been founded, viz. theGreekwordsπυρος, wheat, and αμαω, I gather; as if, forsooth, anEgyptianstructure, erected before theGreeklanguage was ever known to exist, should wait for a designation until Greece should be pleased to christen it. Still more disposed must one be to discard with contempt the usual derivation given them, of πυρ, fire; as this not only labours under the weakness of the former, but betrays an ignorance of the correct idea of the Greek word πυρος, of which πυρ, fire, is the true derivation, “quia flammæ instar inacutumtendit”;[177]intimating itscontinually taperinguntil it ends in apoint; whereas the top of the Egyptianpyramidsnever does so end; that of the largest above described ending in a flat of nine stones, besides two wanting at the angles, each side of this platform being about sixteen feet; so that a considerable number of people may stand on it, and have, as from most of ours, one of the most beautiful prospects imaginable.
Wilkins’s derivation frompouro, a king, andmisi, a race, would seem plausible enough, being a purely Coptic or Egyptian analysis; but when we consider the general ascription of them by the people to theshepherd Philitis, whether as one of thePali—that is, shepherds—or Uksi, which meant the same—king-shepherds above adduced; or asemphatically the shepherd, the son of Israel,[178]it argues a disposition on the part of the people to assign the honour—if taken in the latter light—to the workmen employed; if in the former, to a prince of a different dynasty from those whom the Egyptian priests would fain associate with them. This derivation, therefore, will not stand; and we have only to betake ourselves to the ingeniousconjecture of Lacroze,[179]which, perhaps, may give more satisfaction respecting the etymology of the wordpyramid. Lacroze derives it from theSanscrit termBiroumas, and traces an analogy between Brahma, Birma (which the Indians of Malabar pronounce Biroumas), and the word Piromis, which means the same thing, namely, a virtuous and upright character—Piromia meaning, according to him, in the language of Ceylon, man in general.
Herodotus states,[180]that the priests of Egypt kept in a spacious building large images of wood, representing all their precedinghigh priests, arranged in genealogical order, every high priest placing his image there during his life. They mentioned to Hecatæus, the historian, when they were showing this edifice to him, that each of the images he saw represented aPiromis, begotten by anotherPiromis, which word, says Herodotus, signifies, in their language, avirtuousandhonest man. A passage from Synesius, the celebrated bishop of Cyrene, in his treatise “on Providence,” at once coincides with, and is illustrative of this anecdote. “The father of Osiris and Typhon,” says he, “was at the same time aking, apriest, and aphilosopher. The Egyptian histories also rank him among the gods; for the Egyptians are disposed to believe that many divinities reigned in their country in succession before it was governed by men, and before their kings were reckoned in a genealogical order byPeiromafter Peirom.”
The Japanese celebrate an annual festival in honour of onePireun, who, they say, was many ages ago king ofFormosa, and who, being disgusted with theabandoned morals of his subjects—wealthy traders—consigned himself solely to the worship of the gods. Forewarned in a dream, he took flight from the impending visitation, and had scarcely sailed ere the island, with its inhabitants, sunk to the bottom of the sea. As for the good king, he arrived safe in China, whence he went over to Japan, where he has been ever since honoured by the above commemoration.
The true Coptic name for those edifices is Pire monc—which signifies asunbeam[181]—not so much in allusion to theirformas to their appropriation, which we shall make the subject of a separate inquiry.
It has, I trust, satisfactorily been proved that the erection and nomination of those wondrous edifices were not ofnativegrowth. It has, I trust, additionally appeared thatbothwere essentially Indian. It may not now be “ungermane to the matter,” if we would for a moment digress, to consider the era of their probable date, as introductory to the character of their probable destination.
Josephus expressly informs us that the Israelites were employed in the construction of the pyramids. Is there any reason why we should doubt so respectable an authority? Oh, yes, it is said the Scriptures are against it—the task of the Israelites during their bondage being exclusively confined to the making of brick. I deny that the Scriptures either allege or insinuate any such thing. On the contrary, we may fairly infer, from Ex. ix. 8, 10, that they were engaged in other servile offices; as also from Ps. lxxxi. 6, where it is said, “I removed his shoulderfrom theburden, and his hands were delivered from themortar-box”—notpots, as our translation has it; and such rendering is supported by the Septuagint, Vulgate, Symmachus, and others.[182]
This ascription receives further countenance from a passage in Diodorus, i. 2, where, referring to those immense piles, and the ideas of the Egyptians themselves respecting them, he adds: “They say the first was erected by Armæus, the second by Amosis, the third by Inaron.” Who is it that pronounces the last two names, if only spelled, aMosis and inAron, and recollects, at the same time, what the Scriptures tell us of Moses and Aaron, that is not at once struck with the similarity of the sound? And as to Armæus, why it bears so evident an affinity with Aramæus or Aramean, that one cannot avoid connecting it with the “Aramite ready to perish,” the very name given to Jacob, Deut. xxvi. 5.[183]Nothing, then, prevents, so far as I can see, our concludingoneof those structures at least—I say one at least toconciliatethe brick-party; and I think, besides, I have read somewhere, that one of the pyramids, the smaller ones no doubt, was built of such material—to have been the work of the sons of Israel. And the rather as it was consonant with the uniform practice of the ancient Oriental nations to employ captive foreigners on servile and laborious works.
The usual time, too, assigned to the slavery of the Israelites corresponds very nearly with that generally allotted to the erection of those masses. The stay of the sons of Israel in the land of Egypt is generally understood to have been two hundred and fifteen years. Of these Joseph ruled seventy; forty is a fairaverage for the generation that succeeded—which, added to his seventy, leaves one hundred and five years to the Exodus. Now we learn from Herodotus that Cheops, thereputedfounder of the first or greatest of these pyramids, was the first also of the Egyptian kings who oppressed, or in any way tyrannised over, his subjects. His reign is stated to have been fifty years. Cephrenes, who succeeded, showed himself in every respect his brother, barring, as the other before him, the approach to every temple, stopping the performance of the usual sacrifices, and keeping his subjects all the while employed in every species of oppressive task and laborious drudgery. The period of his reign is stated to have been fifty-six years, which, added to the preceding fifty, make one hundred and six, exactly answering to the above calculation.
The Exodus, besides, is stated to have occurredB.C.1791; and Herodotus and Diodorus together, while acknowledging their ignorance of the actual date of the pyramids, and the impossibility, on their part, to ascertain it, declare also their conviction that they must have been built at least about that period.
I have thus, I trust, done honourable justice to the testimony of Josephus. I have done so for many reasons—firstly, because of the importance of the subject itself; secondly, from my respect for the merits of the writer; and, thirdly, because that I think it very probable indeed that the Israelites may have been occupied in the erection of some of the minor and later pyramids. Butinsuperableobstacles stand in the way of our associating them with the structure of themall; and of theseoneis, the improbability that the victorious invaders would single out the inoffensive Israelites as particular objects of their oppression, whenpolicy should suggest to them a directly different course in securing their adherence in opposition to the native residents. By Josephus’s account, however, it would appear that the Israelites alone were engaged upon those edifices; and the Scriptures themselves confine the intimation of drudgery to the Israelitish race: it therefore is manifest that the Egyptiannativeswere favoured by thethen existingdynasty, while it is on all hands agreed, that thenew-comers had treated during the whole period of their dominion, theentireEgyptian nation with indiscriminate rigour and chastisement.
Besides this, that deadly animosity existing in the Egyptian mind to the name and profession of shepherds, above alluded to, at once identifies their character with that of the “Uksi,” or “King-shepherds,” to whom we have before referred, and proves the date of their invasion anterior in point of time to Israel’s introduction into the land of Egypt. Joseph was well aware of the particulars of this invasion, and of the sting it left behind it in the mind of the Egyptians; and accordingly he acquaints his brothers, whose “trade also had been about cattle,” that “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians.”[184]
Manetho himself, the Egyptian priest, is my voucher for this deduction, when he says that, “After these—the shepherd-kings—cameanother set of peoplewho were sojourners in Egypt, in the reign of Amenophis. These chose themselves a leader one who was a priest of Heliopolis, and whose name was Osarsiph; and after he had listed himself with this body of men he changed his name to Moses.”
But this, it will be said, is at variance with Moses’ own account, which states that he obtained his name on being rescued from a watery cradle by Pharaoh’s daughter. Not in the least, I reply; for it is more than probable that, after his slaying the Egyptian, and consequent flight, he dropped his name to ensure concealment, and only resumed it on being invested with his divine commission. Or, what is more likely still, and perhaps the truth, that Osarsiph was the name which his “mother” had given him, and which adhered to him until “he grew up,”—a term in Scripture which expressesmatureage,—until when it was not that the princess had designated him as Moses.
Strong, too, as my veneration is for Josephus, I cannot conceal either from myself or from the reader, that his testimony inthis instanceis rather of a dubious character. The idea of interpolation I altogether waive—it is, atall times, a contemptible subterfuge. I will take for granted that the text is genuine; and, on the very face of it, it bears the impress—in the first place, of inaccuracy, confounding the period of his countrymen’sservitudewith that of their actualsojournin Egypt; and, in the second place, ofindistinctness, attaching a term of obloquy to those edifices, without condescending to offer therefor any cause. Here are his own words: “When time had obliterated the benefits of Joseph, and the kingdom of Egypt had passed into another family, they inhumanely treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours: for they ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many ditches, and to build walls, and raise mounds by which to confine the inundations of the river (Nile); and, moreover, vexed our nation in constructingFOOLISH PYRAMIDS,forced them to learn various arts, and inured them to undergo great labours; and after this manner did they, forfour hundred years, endure bondage; the Egyptians doing that to destroy the Israelites by overmuch labour, whilst we ourselves endeavoured to struggle against all our difficulties.”
Now, it is not a little remarkable, as connecting the erection of the pyramids with the “royal shepherd race,” the former occupants of the above fertile territory, that those immense edifices happen to be situated in the very vicinity of Goshen. Geeza, where the threegreat onesstand, is universally allowed to have been the site whereon Memphis once stood; and as a west wind took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea (Ex. x. 19), Goshen, which we find by Gen. xlv. 10, cannot have been far from Joseph’s own residence, will be more aptly fixed in the vicinity of this spot within the Heliopolitan nome, than within any other nome or præfecture, particularly the Tanitic, “where the same wind,” as has been justly remarked by Dr. Shaw, “would not have blown those insects into the Red Sea, but into the Mediterranean, or else into the land of the Philistines.” Goshen, then, was that part of “the land of Rameses,” “the best of the land” (Gen. xlvii. 6-11) which lay in the neighbourhood of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, where, as already observed, the pyramids are first met with, and whence they proceed in a continued line along the banks of the river, in a southerly direction for many miles together.
After reading these details it will be impossible, I conceive, for any dispassionate mind to remain longer in suspense as to the origin of the pyramids. The doubt, too, and obscurity in which they have beenheretofore enveloped can be explained with similar ease, if we but remember the execration in which their Cushite founders were held by the Egyptians, and their consequent disinclination to associate their name with such splendid memorials. With this view, indeed, it is not at all improbable but that active legislative measures were adopted to cancel and suppress every vestige of proof which could tend to perpetuate the memory of the obnoxious erectors. So that we must not wonder if, after a lapse of years, their history was as great a riddle to the Egyptians themselves as that ofour pyramidsis to the Irish nation.
A collateral cause for this universal ignorance of their use and origin was the probable absence of letters on the part of the Egyptians, until now, for the first time, introduced by those learned Arabians; and though any one who is acquainted with the oriental disquisitions of Wilfrid, and the coincidences he establishes between the ancient history of Egypt and the account given of the customs and dynasties of that kingdom, as drawn from the Hindoo Puranas, will at once admit that “there must have been a period when a Hindoo power had reigned in Egypt by right of conquest,” and established therein the peculiar rites of their religion with the elements of literature and social civilisation, yet it is probable that during their sojourn, which, we have seen, was a continued series of warfare, they kept themselves aloof from all intercourse with the natives, and checked, as much as possible, the circulation of their science among them.
Somesparksof it, however, must inevitably have transpired; and the Egyptian intellect was too finely constituted to be insensible to its value, or allow it to extinguish without food; so that, in the time ofMoses, and long after, their learning and accomplishments were courted by the philosophers of the day, and were so eminently conspicuous, as to become a proverb (Acts Apost. vii. 22). Homer, we all know, visited that favoured land—so did Pythagoras—so did Solon, Thales, Plato, and Eudoxus; in short, all the sages of antiquity, of whom we read so much, and whom we peruse with suchrecuperativepleasure, either finished their education in that favoured school, or conversed with those who had themselves done so.
The Egyptians are said to have been the first who brought the “rules of government,” with the art of making “life easy” and “a people happy”—thetrue endof worldly politics—to a regular system. But much as they excelled other nations in scientific lore, in nothing was their superiority so conspicuous as in thatmagicart which enabled them to cope, for so long a time, and under such trying varieties, even with the prophet and ambassador of God himself.
These exhibitions are too stubbornly authenticated by scriptural proofs, as well in the Old as in the New Testament,[185]for any one to affect disbelief in them without at the same time disbelieving the authenticity of the Scriptures themselves. Yes, I implicitly subscribe to the truth of the narration; and as I mean to bring home theirinitiationin the art, as well as in their other several accomplishments, to the Chaldean diviners, orAire Cotishepherds—a branch of the Tuath-de-danaan colonists of this our western isle—from whom, or their relatives, under the designation of Uksi, Indo-Scythæ, or Cushite shepherds—who, if not all one and the same, were at least mixed and incorporated—the Egyptians had imbibed it—this, Itrust, will plead my excuse for obtruding its notice here, as well as for dilating so much at large upon the early history of Egypt.[186]
I come now, with the same view, to consider thedestinationof their famous “Pyramids.”[187]In this pursuit the first thing that strikes us is the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in their architecture. They all have their sides accurately adapted to the four cardinal points, as the four apertures near the summit of most of ours indicate a similar regard to fidelity to the compass. In six of them which have been opened, the principal passage preserves the same inclination of 26° to the horizon, being directed towards the polar star. And I doubt not, were the groundwithinandaround allofourssufficiently explored, there would be found, in some at least, regular vistas to correspond with this description. Their obliquity too being so adjusted as to make the north side coincide with the obliquity of the sun’s rays at the summer’s solstice, has, combined with the former particulars, led some to suppose theywere solely intended for astronomical uses; and certainly, if not altogether true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate acquaintance withastronomical rules,[188]as well as a due regard to the principles ofgeometry.[189]
No one, I believe, has ever questioned the latter fact. Some, induced thereby, have thought them to be erected for the purpose of establishing the exact measure of the cubit; of which they happen to contain both in breadth and height a certain number of multiples. But as they were evidently constructed by persons well versed in all the niceties of exact measurement, and who consequently had no occasion for such colossal reference to refresh their memories, like the Lancasterian apparatus, it is ridiculous to suppose them erected with this view, nor should I have alluded to it but to expose its weakness. Others have fancied them intended for sepulchres; and asthe Egyptians,taught by their ancient Chaldean victors, connectedastronomywith theirfunerealandreligious ceremonies, they seem not in this to be far astray, if we but extend the application to theirsacred bullsandother animals, and not merely to theirkings, as Herodotus would have us suppose.
The immense sarcophagus lying in the interior of the first or Great Pyramid, with thebonefound by the Earl of Munster[190]in the second, must put this question beyond the possibility of doubt; as Sir Everard Home, after a laborious examination of the properties of this relic, found it accurately to agree with the lower extremity of the thigh-bone of an ox, while it corresponded with that of no other animal.
In conformity with this conclusion were the discoveries of Belzoni some time before, in Upper Egypt, which abounds in specimens of the most splendid antiquities, in a catacomb amongst which, called “Bîban el Moluk,” that is “the gates of the king”—meaning thereby theuniversal king of the ancients, the generating principle of vegetation and life, of whichApisandMnevis,OsirisandTyphon, were but the representatives among the Egyptians, as other nations had adopted equivalent forms and names, according to the genius of their climes and languages—I mean the Sun—well, in one of the numerous chambers of this catacomb, Belzoni discovered an exquisitely beautiful sarcophagus of alabaster, 9 feet 5 inches long, by 3 feet 9 inches wide, and 2 feet 1 inch high, covered within and without with hieroglyphics, and figures in intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell, and as transparent as glass: from the extraordinary magnificence of which,he conceives, it must have been the depository of the remains of Apis; in which idea he is the more confirmed by having found the carcass of abullembalmed with asphaltum, in the innermost chamber.
The passage in Herodotus, to which I before referred, appears to throw some light on the intricate subject which we are now pursuing. In lib. ii. p. 124, etc., “the father of historians” tells us that the two kings, who succeeded each other on the throne of Egypt, after the happy reign of Rhampsinitus and his predecessors, and to whom the building of those pyramids was reputedly ascribed, had shown themselves indeedbrothers, not more by affinity of blood than by the similar outlines of their cruelty and intolerance. No species of oppression was by them left unattempted; no extreme of rigour or rapacious plunder by them unenforced: but what peculiarly characterised the hardship of their tyranny was the restraint they put upon thereligionand pious exercises of their subjects; closing the portals of thetempleswhere they were wont to adore, and preventing the oblation of their usual sacrifices.
Though Herodotus has been justly honoured with the designation of “Father of Historians,” he has also, perhaps, not so very justly been called “the Father of Errors”; and, as he himself admitted his incapability of obtaining any satisfactory insight into the original of those structures, may we not fairly conclude that, in the extract now cited, he either confounds those princes with theforeign dynastywhich we have already established, or else, from the ignorancesuperinducedto obliterate their memory, mistakes the erection of some of theminorandlaterones, which this “par nobile fratrum” may, indeed, have devised, in imitationof the three “mountains” built by the Uksi. What he states, however, is of value, as it points to aprevious form of worship, and asystem of governmentby an alien house. The prohibition of sacrifices and the closing the temple doors make this as clear as words can delineate anything. All we want, then, is to be informed what the particular temples alluded to were: and that they were thepyramids, will, I think, be conceded by everyone who has carefully perused the arguments here set down, and who has not his judgment warped by favourite plans of literary systems and speculative hypotheses.
This conclusion receives additional force from the conversation which Wilford, in his “Dissertation upon Egypt and the Nile,”[191]tells us he had with several learned Brahmins, when, upon describing to them the form and bearings of the great Egyptian pyramid, one of them asked ifit had not a communication under ground with the river Cali? Being answered that such communication was spoken of as having once existed, and that awellwas still to be seen, they unanimously agreed that it was atempleappropriated to the worship ofPadma-devi, and that the supposedtombwas atrough, which, on certain festivals, her priests used to fill with the sacred water and lotos-flowers.
Mr. Davison, British Consul to Algiers, when accompanying Mr. Wortley Montague to Egypt, in 1763, discovered here a chamber, before unnoticed, and descended, to a depth of 155 feet, the three successive reservoirs. The principal oblique passage has, since then, been traced by the very enterprising master of a merchant vessel, Captain Caviglia, 200 feet fartherdown than by any former explorer, and found to communicate with the bottom of the well, which is now filled with rubbish. A circulation of air being thus procured, he was emboldened to proceed 28 feet farther, which brought him to a spacious hall, 66 feet by 27 feet, unequal in altitude, and directly under the centre of the pyramid. In no instance yet recorded has any appearance presented itself of human remains within those apartments, nor indeed was there any possibility of conveying such thither, unless placed there before the erection of the pile itself; for theextremitiesof the gallery, which leads into thegreat chamber, are sonarrowandcircumscribed, that it iswith difficultyone can effect anentrance into it, even by creeping upon his belly.
Thesymbolical anatomyprefigured in this contrivance, and which equally exhibits itself in all the temples of the ancients, as wellunderasover ground, is such as almost to have tempted me to makethisthe occasion on which I should uncover another secret of their mystic code. But a moreconcentratedopportunity will occur as we advance, and for which this intimation will answer as a prelude; meanwhile, I would have the reader soberly to bethink himself, what possible use coulddead bodies have of wells of water? Is notsuchthetype, as it is also theaccompaniment, oflifeand activity? And does notthis, of itself, subvert the absurdity of those temples having been erected as mere mausoleums for kings?
I have already hinted my confident beliefthat if the ground all, within, and around our pyramids were sufficiently examined, there would not be wanting indications of subterraneous passages. I am the more confirmed in this, my belief, from the appearances thatpresented themselves on the demolition ofthatat Downpatrick, in 1790, “to make room for the rebuilding of that part of the old cathedral next which it stood, and from which it was distant about forty feet. When the tower was thrown down,” continues Dubourdieu, in hisStatistical Surveyof the county, “and cleared away to the foundation, another foundation was discovered under it, and running directly across the site of the tower, which appeared to be a continuation of the church wall, which, at some period prior to the building of the tower, seemed to have extended considerably beyond it.” With great deference, however, to the authority of so respectable a writer, I hesitate not to proclaim that the second foundation so discovered wasnota “continuation of the church wall,” but the remnant of somepaganstructure, appertaining to the tower itself—in fact aVihâr, or college for its priests—or else the vestige of some larger temple, and connected therewith, previously existing on the same locality.
That this announcement is correct will be apparent, from thesuperiority of masonic skillexhibited in thisfoundation, as well as in its having been upon a larger scale and ampler dimensions than what the Christian “cathedral” had ever occupied; “in the walls of which,” says my authority, “there are many pieces of cut stone that have evidently been used in some former building. The same circumstance may also be observed in several of the ruined churches at Clonmacnoise.”[192]
Nor ought this relic of an ancient pagan edifice to excite our surprise, when we are told that the templeof the “Syrian goddess,” which existed in the days of Lucian, was not that which was originally erected by Deucalion, but one builtmany agesafter, on thesame site, by Attis, Bacchus, or Semiramis.
With the church, therefore, or other Christian edifice, this “foundation” had no relation. St. Patrick was the first who erected one in that vicinity, to which he gave the name of Sgibol Phadruig, or Patrick’s Granary; having been built on the identical spot on which Dichu, son of Trichem, of the tribe of the Dalfiatachs, and lord of the territory of Lecale, had a granary constructed to preserve his corn, before that his gratitude for the saint, by whom he was just converted, induced him to consecrate the place where that event occurred, by raising thereon a house to the God of nature and of harvests.
Its situation, be it observed, was “two miles from the city of Down”;[193]different, therefore, from that of the cathedral, as was also itsform: having been built from north to south, at the solicitation of Dichu himself, agreeably to the plan of the former storehouse.
This took place in 433-34; and though, for concession’ sake, I may admit,—what yet is far from being my conviction,—thatsomeof our Round Towers may have been erectedsubsequentlyto the Christian era, yet positive I must be thatno oneof themwas after the successful missionof the Apostle of Ireland; and the explosion of the doctrines with which even themost modern of themmay happen to be associated,—while the majority, and thereal ones, I shall prove, belong to an infinitely earlier date.
As a further inducement to explore for cavitiesbeneath, and connected with, our Round Towers, I beg leave to bring under review what Maundrel relates of two Round Pillars, which he met with in his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, on the sea-coast, a little to the south of Aradus, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli. He describes one of them as thirty-three feet high, composed of a pedestal, ten high and fifteen square, surmounted with a tall cylindrical stone, and capped with another in the form of apyramid. The second was not quite so high—thirty feet two inches—its pedestal, which was supported by four lions, rudely carved at each corner, was in height six feet, being sixteen feet six inches square; the superstructure upon which was one single stone cut in the shape of ahemisphere. Each of these pillars, of which he gives accurate drawings, has under it several catacombs or sepulchral chambers, the entrances to which lie on the south side. He pronounces a third which he met with, as “a very ancient structure, and probably a place of sepulchre.”[194]
With the opinion of this judicious traveller I altogether concur, provided only, as said before, in reference to the pyramids, that the application be extended to the sacred bulls and crocodiles, serpents, dragons, and heifers, with the whole train ofbestialdivinities, which both Indians and Egyptians, and all the other polished nations of antiquity, thought proper to adopt as objects of their regard, and treat with the homage—though onlycommemorative, as they will tell you—of the One Great Supreme.[195]
This extension of the use will at once afford a solution of the otherwise unaccountable and unnecessarysizeof those cavities, and is further supported by Savary’s remark, made on occasion of his searching for the Egyptian Labyrinth, viz. that “amidst the ruins of the towns of Caroun, the attention is particularly fixed by several narrow, low, and very long cells, which seem to have had no other use than that of containing the bodies of the sacred crocodiles; these remains can only correspond with the labyrinth.” While Herodotus’s declaration, of his not being allowed to enter its vaults, on the score of their “containing within them the bodies of the fifteen kings, together with thesacred crocodiles,” should afford it a determination no longer liable to doubt.
Archer, also, when mentioning a very ancient Hindoo temple, at the south end of the fort of Gualior, resembling in shape those on the Coromandel coast, and decorated with much carving, says that “there was a subterranean communication with the plain at the north end, but the passage has been so long neglected as to be impassable.”
Am I not justified, therefore, in the conviction, from what I have already intimated, as to thecomplicateddesign of those sacred piles, thatour Round Towerswould be found similarly furnished with subterranean chambers? I do respectfully urge that such is myfirm belief, and that it would be well worth the while of the learned community to investigate the accuracy of the surmise here put forward.