the pictures of China, or of Egypt, because these things are indigenous to the American
continent — until C o lum b u s , segregated from the entire Old World: neither -will the
Grecian acanthus, the African lion, or the Asiatic elephant, appear in the sculptures of
Yucatan or Guatemala j simply because, to American man, these objects "were unknown.
Each centre of creation furnished to the human being created for it the models of his incipient
designs. It was materially impossible for him, without intercourse with other centres
to be acquainted with things alien to the horizon of his nativity. An ornithoryncps, or a
kangaroo, if found in a picture, would establish— 1st, that such picture could not be Egyptian,
Chinese, or American; and 2d, that it was made within the last two centuries — that
is, since the discovery of Australia by European navigators. Payne Knight laid down
the rules:—
“ The similitude of these allegorical and symbolical fictions with each other, in every
part of the world, is no proof of their having been derived, any more than the primitive
notions which -they signify, from any one particular people ; for as the organs of sense and
principles of intellect are the same in all mankind, they would all naturally form similar
ideas from similar ob je c tsan d employ similar signs to express them, so long as natural
and not conventional signs were used. . . . The only certain proof of plagiary or borrowing
is where the animal or vegetable productions of one climate are employed as symbols by
the inhabitants of another. . . . As commercial communication, however, became more free
and intimate, particular symbols might have been adopted from one people by another
without any common origin or even connexion of general principles.” (258)
These few remarks suffice as suggestives, to the thoughtful and educated, of .the radical
distinctions which the first glance perceives when comparing the ancient sculptures of three
aboriginal worlds of art, Egyptian, Chinese, or American. But, just as a physician’s
writings presuppose that his readers have passed beyond the elementary schoolroom, so
it is not in “ Types of Mankind ” that any one need expect to find an archaeological
11 Primer.”
We return to the ante-monumental pictures of the Nile and the Hoang-ho — the former,
long anterior to b . c . 8500; the latter, to b . c . 2300; being the minimum distance from
our generation at which the graphical system of each river’s denizens first dawns upon
our view.
Impelled by the same human wants, though absolutely without inter-communication,
the Mongol Chinese for his part, and the Hamitic Egyptian for his, attained, at periods
unknown, the power of representing their several thoughts pictorially. Where they copied
the same universal things — the sun, a star, a goat, a pigeon, a snake, a tree (though here
even, in Flora and Fauna, already the two countries exhibit distinct “ species,”),— those
copies necessarily resemble each other; although, in each, art betrays the individualities
of a separate human type. Where the Chinaman, however, portrays a man, that man is a
Mongol: where the Egyptian draws a human being, that being is an Egyptian.
No stronger exemplification of human inability tp conceive that which, is beyond the
circumference of locai experiences, can be met with, than in Squier’s exhumations from
the primeval mounds of the West. (259) Not merely is the skull, divested by time of its
animal matter, osteologically identical with those of American Aborigines of this day; not
only does every fragmentary relic which accompanies it limit that antique man’s boundaries
of knowledge to a space longitudinally between Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico,
and laterally within the Alleghanian and the Rocky Mountains; — but, every pipe-bowl, or
engraved article, that bears a human likeness, portrays an American Indian, and no other
type: because man can imitate only what he knows. And finally, to bring the case home
to our biblical researches, does not every line of the first nine chapters of Genesis prove
that Hebrew writers never conceived, in speculation upon creative, origines, anything alien
to themselves and to their own restricted sphere of geography ? At their point of view, the
first pair of human beings conversed, at once, in pure Hebrew: — nay, the Talmudic books
(25 8 ) R . P ay ne K k ig h t : Inquiry into the Symbolical Language o f Ancient Art and Mythology; V a lp y ’s 8vo ea.,
1 8 1 8 ; p a r . 2 3 0 , 231.
(25 9 ) Ancient Monuments o f the Mississippi Valley; 1 8 4 8 : com p a r e wood-cuts, pp . 194, 2 4 4 -2 5 1 .
show, that this divine tongue is to be the future language; the speech in which the “ ultima
ratio ” will be meted out to all humanity in heaven!
“ Conoludam . . . verbis Rabbi Jehosuje in Talmud, qui cuidam curiose percontanti de
statu rcsurgentium ad vitam seternam respondat, Quando rcviviscemus, cognosceihus gualis
futurus sit eorum status. Sic de futura lingua Beatorum in coelis, quando reviviscemus,
cognoscemus illam.” (260)
Independently of one another, then, Mongolian man on the Hoang-ho, and Egyptian man
on the Nile, each arrived for himself at picture-writing: yet, aftercastingaretrospectivelook
at the'relative epochas of both achievements, we behold that the difference between their
chronological eras is almost as immense as when we, who in this day actually “print by
lightning,” see an Indian spend hours of lifetime in the effort to adorn a deer-skin with
the uncouth record of his scalping1 exploits. I t the time when Prince Mer-het(261)
caused his sepulchre to be carved and painted with those exquisite hieroglyphs, that, through
16 phonetic, many figurative, and a few symbolical signs, relate his immediate descent from
King Shoopho (262) builder of the mightiest mausoleum ever raised by human hand,__
under the shadows of which great pyramid this (probably) son reposed: at that time,
which, it is far more likely, ascends rather beyond than falls within the thirty-fifth century
E. o., or 5400 years backward from our day — What was the state of civilization in China?
Now, the most exacting of native Chinese archaeologists will confess that their first Emperor
Fo-hi (whose name emblematizes to the Chinese mind above 1000 years of meta-history, as
that of Moses did to the Hebrew intellect in the age of Hilkiah the high-priest),(263) that
this Fo-hi—inventor of writing,(264) through the legendary “ 8 koua” — scarcely floats upon»
the foam of tradition’s loftiest surge: because, no Chinese scholar claims for Fo-hi’s semi-
mythical reign a date earlier than b . c. 3468; while conceding that perhaps it may have
begun 600 years later.
And, if we compare monuments, then the oldest (265) written record of China claims no
higher date than the <( Inscription of Ytj,” estimated at B. -c. 2278 — being above 1000 years
posterior to the Egyptian tomb of Mer-het, now in the Royal Museum of Berlin. All earlier
Chinese documents being lost, the times anterior to Yu are, palceographically, blanks; but
skepticism (scientific, not, the most obdurate, theological,) has no more reason to reject
w h a t of rational story pierces through the gloom of generations preceding, as concerns China,
t h a n 'we have to consider fabulous the British periods of the Heptarchy, although we cannot
now individualize many events, and possess no Saxon “ Saga” coeval with their occurrence.
A moment’s pause will illustrate in what respect Egypt's monuments tower as loftily
above Chinese antiquity, as St. Peter's at Rome above New York “ Trinity Church.” Our
remarks are not directed to personages who, stifled beneath ante-metaphysieal strata, read
little and know le ss; but to readers who have perused, or will examine, the writings of at
least Bunsen, Lepsius, Birch, and De Rouge; without disparagement of these scholars’
ardent colleagues, too numerous for specification.
Whilst the pyramids and tombs of the IVth Memphite dynasty in Egypt stand, about
b. o. 3500, at the uppermost terminus of that lengthy monumental chain — the coils of
which, within a range of twenty miles, may still be unwound from Mohammed-Ali’s mosque
at Cairo, link by link, century by century, and stone by stone, back through all the vicis- .
situdeB of Nilotic annals, for 5400 years, till we touch the sepulchre of Prince Merhet__
these pyramids, these tombs, themselves reveal infinite data upon ages to their construction
long anterior; but, how long? Utterly unknown.
For instance, we here present the hieroglyphic for scribe, writing, or to write.
It is compounded of the reed, calamus, or p en; the ¿ni-bottle; and the scribe’s
palette, with two little cavities for his black and red inks. It may be seen
(260) W alton: Prolegomena; ii. par. 25, p. 19.
(261) Le p s iu s : DenkmtUer; and supra, p. 238; fig. 154.
(262)Ibid.; Briefe am JEgypten, ¿Ethiopian, &c. ; Berlin, 1852; pp. 37, 3 8 - “ Superintendent of all construe-
cons of the king.”
(268) About B. o. 625 —2 Kings xxii. 8; 2 Chrm. xxxiv. 14.
(264) Pauthkr.; Ghine; pp. 24-26. (265) Ibid.; p. 53.
81