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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:— |
