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AS an opponent of what may be
termed the Aryan school of interpretation it has been my special work to show
that mythology is not a farrago of foolish fables, nor the mere raving of words
that have lost their senses. I have amply demonstrated the fact that the
myths were no mere products of ancient ignorance, but are the deposited results
of a primitive knowledge; that they were founded upon natural phenomena and
remain the register of the earliest scientific observation. Those,
however, who have not yet learned that mythology contains the gnosis of the
earliest science, and is the great pre-historic record, are unable to teach us
anything fundamental concerning it. They cannot read the record itself or
verify it by continual reference to those natural phenomena on which it is
based, and by which the truth of the interpretation has to be verified and
tested. Without this foothold of fact being firmly established mythology
resolves itself into a bog without a bottom.
2. It appears to me that
Professor Sayce in his lectures on the Babylonian Religions, is frequently
dealing with matters which can only be fathomed by the comparative process, and
that it is misleading to compare the ancient mythologies with the Egyptian
omitted, whereas he rigorously rejects any light from that source. No
Mythological Religion can be explained by itself alone. The comparative
method is as the bringing together of flint and steel to strike the first spark
for the necessary light. Without question or inquiry; without collecting
and comparing the data; without presenting his evidence for the assertion, he
makes the following authoritative declaration. "Apart from the general
analogies which we find in all early civilizations, the Script, the Theology and
the Astronomy of Egypt and Babylonia show no vestiges of a common source."
(Hib. Lect. p. 136.)
3. There may be a pitfall
intended in these delusive words as the mythology and so-called cosmology are
entirely omitted. But you cannot have the Astronomy apart from the
Mythology by which it was represented! The Prof. says further there
is one conclusive and fatal objection to the derivation from Egypt "inasmuch as
there is no traceable connection between the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the
primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters were developed."
Professor Sayce is an expert and an authority passably orthodox, whose word will
be taken for gospel by those who are not qualified to question it. I am
not an acknowledged authority. I can only plead that my facts may have a
hearing. Without knowing the facts we cannot attain the truth, and short
of the fullest truth there is no final authority. The Egyptian
hieroglyphics were developed out of the same primitive pictures and natural
objects as the Akkadian. Both were direct transcripts from nature at
first, and there is but one origin in nature for the earliest figures.
Again he says: "If Lepsius were right (in maintaining the opposite view) the
primitive hieroglyphics out of which the
cuneiform characters were evolved would offer resemblances to the hieroglyphics.
But this is not the case. Even the idea of divinity is represented
differently in them. In Chaldea it is expressed by an eight-rayed star; in
Egypt, by a stone-headed axe" (p. 435).
4. That is true; and yet in
the sole illustration adduced by him the Professor is wrong! The evidence
of the first witness called is against the truth of his vaguely vast
generalization. The star with the eight rays is likewise an Egyptian
ideograph of divinity; it is a numerical figure for the Nunu or Associate Gods.
(Burton E.H. 34.) This is the sign of the pleroma of the godhead, the
divine ogdoad. It was continued as a symbol of Horus-Orion, the manifestor
of the Eight, the mummy-constellation of the only one who rose again! The
eight-rayed sign was also a symbol of Hathor and of Taht because, like the
eight-rayed or eight-looped star, it was the numerical figure of the eight gods,
hence it was the sign of the Abode as Hathor, and the manifestor as Taht-Smen;
as it is of Ishtar and of Assur. The Egyptians not only used this octave
of divinity, they also give us the reason for using it. This numerical
sign of the primary group of eight gods was not continued as the symbol of
abstract divinity, and it is rare, but still it exists to refute the Professor,
who has to plumb far more profoundly before he touches bottom. The
five-rayed star, Seb, is likewise the hieroglyphic symbol for a god or divinity,
so that the Professor's suggested inference is false twice over. It will
never do to presume too much on the common ignorance concerning the buried past
of Egypt, the rootage out of range, and the long development of the original
ideographs. For example, the Egyptian pictograph of a soul is a
human-headed bird, and that type is continued when the Babylonian dead are
described as being clad like birds in a garment of feathers.
Notwithstanding Mr. Sayce's offhand dicta it will be seen in the future
that Egypt was as truly the parent of hieroglyphics as she is of alphabets!
But to show the Professor's determination to avoid Egypt: after pointing to the
fact that the statues from Telloh bear a great likeness to the Egyptian in the
time of the pyramid builders; and after admitting that the Egyptian art of
sculpture was infinitely superior to the Babylonian at that time,—he quietly
suppresses Egypt altogether on behalf of an entirely unknown "school of
sculpture in the Sinaitic peninsula!" (P. 138.) Anything rather than look
Egypt honestly in the face!
5. The Professor is so anxious
to hustle unacceptable facts out of sight and get rid of their testimony, he
asserts that the existence of a "Cushite race" in Chaldea solely depends on a
misinterpretation and a probable corruption of the text in the Book of Genesis.
But Cush is the black. The Cushites were the Black race; and the
aborigines of Babylonia were the Black men of the monuments, the "black-heads"
of the Akkadian Texts. Hence the god Kus, their deity of eclipse and
darkness. The Professor is all hind-before with regard (or disregard) to
the origins in the black land, the primeval birthplace. He is not yet out
of the Ark of the Semitic or the shadow of the Aryan beginnings, which have so
darkened and deluded us; and has to advance backwards a good deal further beyond
the Altaic boundaries.
6. As I have already shown in
the "Natural Genesis," the beginnings of mythology in Egypt and Akkad are
definitely identical. The Old Dragon of Chaos and the Abyss is the same
whether called Tiamat, Tavthe, or Typhon. By Typhon I mean the beast that
imaged the first Great Mother, hippopotamus in front and crocodile behind, who
therefore is the Dragon of Egypt. Her name of Tep, Teb, or Tept is the
original of Typhon. Tiamat=Tavthe represents that abyss of the beginning
which is the Egyptian Tepht. This Tepht is the abyss, the source, the
void, the hole of the snake, the habitat of the dragon, the outrance or uterus
of birth as place which preceded personification. Another name for the
abyss is Abzu, the earlier form of which is the Egyptian Khepsh in the
north—that is, the Pool of Khep, the hippopotamus or Typhon=Dragon. Tept
and Tavthe are one, the water-horse and dragon-horse are one. In both
forms they give birth to the well-known seven primal powers, elemental energies,
or demons of physical force, first recognised as warring in
chaos, who were afterwards cast out and superseded, or moralised as the seven
wicked spirits. When the primary powers become the seven evil spirits, it
is said of them, "They are not known among the sentient gods." So in Egypt
the same seven were denounced as the non-sentient "Children of inertness."
And just as the Akkadian seven were continued and made the messengers and
ministers of wrath to the supreme God, Anu, so did the Egyptian seven survive as
the seven great spirits in the service of Ra; their station being in the region
of the Great Bear, the constellation of their mother. (Rit., ch.
17.)
7. This mother-goddess first
brought forth in space and next in time. If we take the star of evening
and morning as the type of the earliest time, then the mother Tiamat passes into
Ishtar, goddess of the evening and the morning star. The dragon Tiamat was
called the Bis-Bis, identified by George Smith with the crocodile as the symbol
of Egypt; and Ishtar=Venus, the "Lady of Dawn," was called Bis-bisi, which shows
the survival of the same genetrix in her change of character out of space into
time. Another proof of this continuity by transformation is furnished when
Ishtar as Queen of Heaven (so rendered by Mr. Sayce) called herself the
"Unique Monster" (p. 267.) Precisely in the same way do we see the
Typhonian genetrix Ta-Urt in Egypt pass into Hes-ta-Urt (whence Hestaroth or
Ashtaroth) and Hathor, when the domesticated cow succeeded the water-cow as the
Zoötype of Hes, As (Isis), or of Hathor, the Lunar form of the Goddess of Love,
in whose person the beast was transfigured into the beauty.
8. According to ancient
tradition, the culture of Chaldea was brought to that country by a Fish-Man, who
rose up in "the first year," from that part of the Red or "Erythræan Sea which
borders upon Babylonia." The original of this type can be identified in Ea
the fish-god, deity of the house of the deep and divinity of wisdom.
Whence came Ea, then, by the Red Sea? Lepsius says from Egypt—so says
Egypt herself.
9. Professor Sayce had
previously denied our right to compare the myths of two different nations before
their relationships have been established by language, and that by grammar
(which is late), in preference to the vocabulary. Thus mythology is put
out of court, and words are to be accounted of no weight. Still, it is
well to remember that the Professor has before now taken his stand on a false
bottom that was found to be crumbling under foot day by day! It is at
least suggestive to find that the name and nature of Ea, the oldest Akkadian
form of the One God, may be so fully explained by the Egyptian Uâ (later Ea)
for the one, the one alone, isolated as the only one; also the Thinker and the
Captain of the Boat. It should be premised that the Egyptian U preceded
the letter or sound of E, hence Ua=Ea. The Egyptian Ua, which passed into
Ea, also appears in the Akkadian Ua for the Supreme One, the sole Lord or Chief.
In one form Ea is the fish-god, and the hieroglyphic sign for Ua=Ea is
fishing-tackle! Ea was the deity of the deep, and Ua=Ea is Boat and
Captain both. Of course the fish was the earlier image, but the Egyptians
had gone far ahead in substituting the work of their own hands for the primitive
natural types. Ea is the wise god, the thinker and instructor; and Uaua
(Eg.) means to think, consider, meditate. Ea's prototype in the
indefinitely earlier mythology of Egypt is Num=Kneph, whose twofold nature is
indicated by the two ways of spelling one name. As Num he is Lord of the
inundation; as Kneph he is the Breath of those who are in the firmament.
Nef signifies breath, and is also the name of the sailor. Ea is god of the
watercourse and the atmosphere. Ea was the Antelope of the deep; Num was
the bearded He-goat; the Sea-goat of the Zodiac. One type of Num is the
serpent; as it is of Ea. Ea is said to represent the House, which is â in
Egyptian. In a case of this kind Professor Sayce can only perceive or will
only admit a "general analogy."
10. Egyptian also offers the
likeliest original for the name of Oan or Oannes, the Greek form of Ea, the
fish, seeing that Ua=Oa, and that An is the fish in Egyptian; whilst An, to
appear, to show, is determined by the fish in the water-precinct, where the fish
is the revealer who emerged from the waters as Ea-an, or Oannes.
(Denkmäler 3, 46 C.) If the original Fish-Man came
from Egypt, it would probably be as the Crocodile=Dragon, the Typhonian type of
both the ancient mother and her son Sevekh. The crocodile is the
fish that passes the day on dry land and the night in the waters. Its name
of Sevekh is identical with that of the number seven; and Ea is connected with a
typical fish of seven fins (?). The crocodile, as Plutarch tells us, was a
supreme type of the one God, or, as the name shows, of the seven-fold powers in
one image. Sevekh was the same good demon of one Cult in Egypt that Num-Ra
was in the other, but indefinitely earlier.
11. To my apprehension, the
Babylonian "House of the Seven bonds of heaven and earth," is identical with the
"House of the Seven Halls and Seven stairways," assigned to Osiris; and the God
Nebo as stellar, lunar, and planetary Deity; as prophet and proclaimer, is
identical with Sut-Anup (later Nub and Anubis) in a dozen different aspects;
whilst Nebo-Nusku = the double Anubis. Further, the same Great Mother who
was Venus as Hathor became the mother-moon. Professor Sayce seems to think
that where the moon is male it cannot also be female. If I am right,
Ishtar must also have had a lunar character as the Mother-Goddess. But
Professor Sayce makes the point-blank assertion that Ishtar was not a goddess of
the moon. (P. 256.) "The moon was conceived of as a God, not
as a Goddess." He assures us that Ishtar was the spirit of earth and the
Goddess of Love, the dual divinity of the planet Venus. But there is no
male moon without the female Goddess. It is not a question of
"Conception," but of begettal. The observers were concerned with the lunar
phases as natural facts, the mother or reproducing phase being first. The
mother Goddess brought forth the Child of light, whether as Taht, Khunsu, Duzu,
Tammuz, or Horus, and there is no lunar myth possible without the motherhood,
which preceded the fatherhood. The child of the moon in one phase is her
consort in the other. Thus when Ishtar makes up to Izdubar, the solar god
who represents the later fatherhood, he twits her on the subject of her
child-consort, the bridegroom of her youth, whom she had so long pursued, like
Venus wooing Adonis. In the legend of Tammuz and Ishtar the Goddess, in
descending to the underworld in search of her bridegroom, passes through seven
gates. In each of these she is stripped of a part of her glory,
represented as her ornaments. On her return she ascends through seven
other gates, when her ornaments are restored to her, both being done according
to ancient rules. These gates are the 14 lower lunar mansions in which the
lunar Osiris was torn into 14 parts by Typhon, the Power of darkness, when Isis
descended in search of her beloved. They likewise coincide with the 14
houses of judgment and the 14 trials in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which
will explain the tests and punishments of the Goddess as the pre-solar type of
the suffering and triumphing souls who had to win their crown of justification
in these 14 trials. Besides which one of Ishtar's titles is that of
Goddess Fifteen, because that is the day of mid-moon in a soli-lunar month of 30
days. Professor Sayce leaves this title unnoticed, and then denies that
Ishtar was a goddess of the moon! Moreover, there is another test to be
applied in natural phenomena. The Goddess in her Course is credited with
various infidelities. Not only is she charged with having clung year after
year to her child-consort Tammuz, as the Bridegroom, amongst her victims are the
Eagle (Alala) the Lion, the Horse, Tabulu the shepherd, and Isullanu, the
gardener. These, as I read the Mythos, refer to certain constellations,
corner-keepers or others, to be found in the lunar course, which cannot apply to
the planet Venus or to the Spirit of the earth. A sign of the lunar
reckoning may be read in the statement that Ishtar rode the horse with whip and
spur for seven leagues galloping, or during one quarter of the moon.
Another lunar sign may be seen in the statement that Ishtar had also torn out
the teeth of the Lion seven by seven, or for seven nights together, in her
passage through the Lion-quarter of the moon; Eagle, Horse (Pegasus?), and Lion
must probably stand for three of the four quarters of a lunar zodiac. Also
the Errand of Ishtar corresponds to the descent of Isis into the underworld in
search of Osiris, who was torn into 14 parts, and Isis was the lunar Goddess.
Moreover, Ishtar robbed her lover, Isullanu, of his eye, and
in his blindness mocked him; just as Horus and Samson were each robbed of an
eye. Lastly, the Bow was lunar and Ishtar was Goddess of the Bow.
Here, as elsewhere, we are left utterly adrift if we cannot secure a firm
anchorage in the various natural phenomena themselves, by which the types of
divinity must be determined. Professor Sayce acknowledges his inability to
account for the name of Ishtar. "Its true etymology was buried in the
night of antiquity." "It is therefore quite useless to speculate on the
subject." (P. 257.) And so, of course, there is an end of it, the
last word being said. It is just possible, however, that Egypt, from which
the Professor looks religiously away, has something final yet to say on these
matters. Not perhaps by such interpretation as Mr. Renouf's.
Professor Sayce admits that Ishtar appears as Esther in the Book of Esther.
Here it is Hadassah who figures in the mythical character of Ishtar as the
virgin dedicated or betrothed during twelve months. Whether the typical
character is thus continued or not, it is the fact that the word "Shtar"* is the
Egyptian name of the Betrothed female, and Shta denotes that which is most
mystical, secret, and holy, the very mother of mystery. Ishtar was the
betrothed of Tammuz; she was called the "Bridal Goddess," the goddess who was
mystically betrothed to the child that grew up to become her own Consort.
She remained the Mother of Mystery. Thus Ishtar=Venus, the goddess of
love, was the Shtar or Betrothed, as the pre-monogamic consort or bride,
i.e.,
the "bridal goddess," who is denounced in Revelation as the Great Harlot.
12. Again, it appears to me that
much of what I have already said of Horus, of Taht, of Khunsu, Apollo, and other
forms of the soli-lunar hero is applicable not only to Mithras but to Merodach,
and to an Assyrian god called Adar (provisionally). I may claim to have
discovered the origin of this particular mythical character through seeking the
foundations in natural phenomena. Adar is a solar hero who is especially
related to night and darkness, and yet is a deity of light. He is a
warrior and champion of the gods. He is the voice or supreme oracle of the
divinities. He is the son, the messenger, the revealer of the Solar god
hidden in the deep of the underworld. In other features he is like Taht
and Khunsu, each of whom is the visible representative, the revealer, of the
sun-god by night. Adar was designated "Lord of the date," just as Taht was
called "Lord of the date-palm." Adar was likewise "Lord of the Pig," just
as Khunsu is the personified lord over the pig of Typhon in the disk of the moon
at full (Zodiac of Denderah). This is the god who, as Adonis, was slain by
the pig or boar at one season of the year, but who was victor over it in the
first of the six upper signs, which is the sign of Pisces in the Zodiac of
Denderah.† This same character is continued in Tammuz, the deity who was first
brought forth by the mother alone, to become her consort, the only one of a
twofold nature; and who was made the later revealer of a Father in heaven as the
child of the solar god when reborn as such of the mother-moon. The month
of Tammuz in the Aramaic calendar is (roughly) our month of June. This is
the month of Duzu in the Assyrian calendar. In the Egyptian it was the
month Mesore, as June in the sacred year, the month of the re-birth of the river
and of the child Horus, who was re-born (Mes) of the river at the re-birth of
the Inundation. In the pre-Osirian Mythos the child was the representative
of Tum and to be the re-born (Mes) Tum or the child of Tum, as was Iu-em-hept,
the Eternal Word, would be renderable as Tum-mus or Messu, just as Ra-messu
means the child of the solar god, although I am not aware that Tum does appear
under that form of name, and I am supposing that Tammuz was a development from
the Egyptian Tum. For this reason! We are told in the texts‡ that
Tum is the duplicate of Aten=Adon=Adonai; and Adon = Tammuz. Aten was the
child-God; Tum was the father. This child of the sun-god was always born
in the moon as the solar light of the world by night, the son of the Spirit of
the deep who was the hidden sun in the under-world. He is pourtrayed in
the disk of the full-moon both as Horus (or Tum-mes) and
Khunsu (Planisphere and Zodiacs of Denderah). Now, when the actual deluge
began with the sun in the sign of the Beetle (later Crab), and in the month of
Tammuz or Mesore, the moon rose at full in the sign of the sea-goat, and the
child was therefore reborn of the full moon in that sign, and so on through the
three water signs, which are consequently solar on one side of the Zodiac and
lunar on the other! Rightly read this absolutely proves the Egyptian
origin of the signs set in heaven in relation to the Inundation, the lunar
zodiac being first, and identifies the child of Tum as the original of the
Akkadian Dumu-zi-Apzu, and of the Semite "Timmuz (or Dimmuz) of the Flood;"**
not Noah's unfortunate deluge, but the inundation of the Nile, the deluge that
began in the month Mes-Horus or Tum-Mes=Tammuz, and culminated at the autumn
equinox as it always has done, and did this year. The Akkadian name of the
month Tammuz is Su-Kul-na, "seizer of seed," and to explain that we must go back
to the sign of the Beetle set above by the Egyptians, because the beetle Khepr
began to roll up his seed at that time to preserve it from the coming flood.
The Beetle is the sign of Cancer in the oblong Zodiac of Denderah.
13. Professor Sayce's account
of Tammuz and Ishtar shows neither gauge nor grip of the real subject matter.
He tells us that Adonis=Tammuz was "slain by the Boar's Tusk of Winter," and his
"funeral-festival" was held in June because the "bright Sun of the springtide
was then slain and withered by the hot blasts of summer" (pp. 227-9).
But here is the true rendering as restored according to the Egyptian myth, which
was extant in the pre-monumental times of the Shus-en-Har, who are claimed to
have been the Rulers for 13,000 years before the time of Menes. The Solar
God as Source of Life was re-born in natural phenomena, as his own child the
Horus of Light in the Moon; the Child of the Lotus in the Water; the Seed as the
Bread of Life in the Corn. In each phase he was opposed by Sut-Typhon in
the form of Darkness, Drought, or Death. Previous to the Inundation he was
pierced by Sut in the parching Drought. Then it was the errand of Isis as
of Ishtar to fetch the Water of Life. This she did as the Lunar Mistress
of the Water. At the birth of the River in Mesore-Tammuz, the Moon rose at
full in the first Lunar Water-sign, whither she had gone for the Water of Life
in the under-world—or, astronomically, entered the lowest signs. Here is
one proof. Papsukal is the Regent of Capricorn, the first water-sign, and
he is the messenger that hurries off to the Sun-God (who is certainly not the
dead Tammuz!) with the news of Ishtar's arrival in search of the Fountain of
Life.
14. Isis in her search was
accompanied by Anup, her golden dog; and in the Hermean Zodiac Anup is stationed
in the sign of the Sea-Goat, where he is shaking the Systrum of Isis to frighten
away the Typhonian influences.—(Plutarch.) Here is additional evidence.
When the Moon rose at full in these three signs they represented the Waters of
Life to Egypt, in accordance with the then flowing Inundation of the Nile; but
when the Sun itself entered the sign of Capricorn, in winter, the passage became
the "Crossing of the Waters of Death," for the Solar God, or the Souls in
the Eschatological phase. Hence the typical "Two Waters" of the Egyptian
Mythos, called the Pools of the North and South. My contention is, that
the imagery thus set in heaven to reflect the seasons on earth was Egyptian from
the first, and that it can only be rightly read in the original version
according to time and season in Egypt.
15. Professor Sayce makes the
perplexing assertion that "the month of Tammuz was called in the Akkadian
Calendar 'the month of the Errand of Ishtar.'" But the month Ki-Innanna
(formerly read Ki-Gingir-na), the message of Nanna or Ishtar, is Ululu,
two months later than Tammuz; and the message of Ishtar, as Virgo, in August, is
not to be converted into the legend of her descent into Hades in June, when the
Sun was in Cancer and the full Moon was in Capricorn.
16. Merodach represents the Sun in Scorpio, as the deity of
that sign, but this does not mean that he is
the Sun itself! In the Egyptian mythos it was as the Sun in Scorpio that
Osiris was betrayed to his death by Typhon. Then his son, Horus=Merodach,
was reborn of the Moon in the Bull, the first of the six upper signs, to become
the avenger of his victimised father! Thus as heir-apparent of the Solar
God, the Hero comes to the aid of the Moon during an eclipse, and overcomes the
Dragon of Darkness.
17. This revealer of the
father-god in natural phenomena, under whatsoever name, is supremely important
as the mythical character that supplied the type to current Christology.
When the scientific fact was first discovered the doctrine of a divine trinity,
consisting of father, mother, and child, was then established. The child
was the light of the sun, his father being the hidden source in the underworld,
his mother the moon, as reproducer of that light. This reflex image of the
father's glory, his light of the world by night, the representative of his power
in the six upper signs, whilst the sun was in the six lower signs, is the child
as Horus, as the re-born Tum=Tum-mes, Tammuz, Apollo, Merodach, the hero, the
warrior against the dragon, and the powers of darkness at night or during the
lunar eclipse, the Masu, the anointed, the only begotten, furnished by the past
as a factor in the theology of the present, which meets with no recognition
whatsoever from Professor Sayce, or from any other writers on mythology who are
known to me.
18. Except in the technique
of his scholarship, one sees but little sign that the professor has thought out
his far-reaching subject fundamentally. For example, Berossos repeats a
Babylonian description of nature, which he distinctly affirms to have been
allegorical. The professor admits (p. 392) that these "composite
creatures were really the offspring of Totemism"; that is, they were symbolical
Zoötypes. And yet he can say of them, "we may see (in these) a sort of
anticipation of the Darwinian hypothesis"! But men with wings, two heads,
and horses' feet, centaurs, mermaids, and sphinxes, belong to a mythical mode of
representing ideas, not to "imperfect, first attempts of nature," in accordance
with the doctrine of development. Such confusion of thought is likely to
make the truth of the matter doubly indistinguishable. Again, he tells us
that "the god was a beast before he became a man," whereas he means that the
primary forces recognised in nature first were represented by Zoötypes before
the superhuman powers were imaged in the human likeness. He does not
define what he means by "worship" or "religion" when he imports these terms into
the remoter past, and thus sets up a false standard of judgment. Worship
of the heavenly bodies was nothing more than the looking up to them as the
tellers of time, even though they may be called oracles! The Kronian gods
were only types of time in a world without clocks and watches. He speaks
of theological conceptions becoming mythical, whereas the mythical
representation preceded the theological phase. He can "find no trace of
ancestor-worship in the early literature of Chaldea" (p. 358). But I
doubt whether a man who resolves the Dæmon of Socrates into an Intuition, can
know how or where to look for the proof. He tells us the earliest
Babylonian religion was purely Shamanistic, only the spirits it recognised were
not spirits in "our sense of the word," whichever sense that may be! Now
Shamanism is the most primitive kind of Spiritualism, but it includes human
spirits as well as the elementals; and as human spirits include the spirits of
ancestors, and as Mul-lil is the Lord of ghost-world, and Nergal is the god of
apparitions, called the Khadhi (which agrees with the Egyptian Khati for the
dead), then the Shamanism of Babylonia must have included a worship of
ancestors! The non-evolutionist cannot truly interpret the past for us,
even when reinforced by the non-spiritualist.
19. It matters little to me
that Professor Sayce should ignore my work, but it does matter greatly to him
that he should have to ignore all the facts which are fatal to his assumptions.
He cannot get rid of the facts by thus ignoring them. He cannot establish
a negation by closing his eyes to all that is positively opposed to his
conclusions. In trying to do so he has blindly shut out all that Egypt had
to say and show and suggest. That simple policy was practised long ago by
the ostrich, and the ruse is generally acknowledged to have proved a
preposterous failure. As the superstructure of Assyriology is now reared
and settling down securely upon fixed foundations, I am willing to discuss the
matters here mooted in the press or debate with Professor Sayce upon the
platform, where I will undertake to demonstrate the common origin of the
mythological astronomy, and prove that the Egyptian is the primeval parent of
the Babylonian. Meanwhile the foregoing pages and the following
comparative list (not to say anything of the "Natural Genesis") contain a
sufficient answer to his declaration that the two have nothing in common but
general analogies:— |
