For instance, we find in the Ph?nician cosmogony that the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the Ph?nician gods Agrus and Agrotus.
This connects the Ph?nicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.
According to Sanchoniathon, Ouranos was the son of Autochthon, and, according to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis. He married his sister Ge. He is the Uranos of the Greeks, who was the son of Gaea (the earth), whom he married. The Ph?nicians tell us, "Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?)."
Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis. These four sons probably represented four races, the offspring of the earth.
The Greek Uranos was the father of Chronos, and the ancestor of Atlas.
The Ph?nician god Ouranos had a great many other wives: his wife Ge was jealous; they quarrelled, and he attempted to kill the children he had by her. This is the legend which the Greeks told of Zeus and Juno. In the Ph?nician mythology Chronos raised a rebellion against Ouranos, and, after a great battle, dethroned him. In the Greek legends it is Zeus who attacks and overthrows his father, Chronos. Ouranos had a daughter called Astarte (Ashtoreth), another called Rhea. "And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was called Zeus-Arotrius."
We find also, in the Ph?nician legends, mention made of Poseidon, founder and king of Atlantis.
Chronos gave Attica to his daughter Athena, as in the Greek legends. In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and "circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing." It would thus appear that this singular rite, practised as we have seen by the Atlantidae of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Ph?nicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.
"Chronos visits the different regions of the habitable world."
He gave Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who had invented the alphabet. The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was represented among them as "the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world," bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.
This not only connects the Ph?nicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Ph?nicians.
There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Ph?nicians. We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Ph?nicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Ph?nicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Ph?nicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Ph?nicians.
Sanchoniathon tells us, after narrating all the discoveries by which the people advanced to civilization, that the Cabiri set down their records of the past by the command of the god Taaut, "and they delivered them to their successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris), the inventor of the three letters, the brother of Chua, who is called the first Ph?nician." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Ancient History of the East," vol. ii., p. 228.)
This would show that the first Ph?nician came long after this line of the kings or gods, and that he was a foreigner, as compared with them; and, therefore, that it could not have been the Ph?nicians proper who made the several inventions narrated by Sanchoniathon, but some other race, from whom the Ph?nicians might have been descended.
And in the delivery of their records to the foreigner Osiris, the god of Egypt, we have another evidence that Egypt derived her civilization from Atlantis.
Max Muller says:
"The Semitic languages also are all varieties of one form of speech.
Though we do not know that primitive language from which the Semitic dialects diverged, yet we know that at one time such language must have existed. . . . We cannot derive Hebrew from Sanscrit, or Sanscrit from Hebrew; but we can well understand bow both may have proceeded from one common source. They are both channels supplied from one river, and they carry, though not always on the surface, floating materials of language which challenge comparison, and have already yielded satisfactory results to careful analyzers." ("Outlines of Philosophy of History,"
vol. i., p. 475.)
There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the Ph?nicians migrated from the shores of the Erythraean Sea, and this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf; but there was a very old city of Erythia, in utter ruin in the time of Strabo, which was built in some ancient age, long before the founding of Gades, near the site of that town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. May not this town of Erythia have given its name to the adjacent sea? And this may have been the starting-point of the Ph?nicians in their European migrations. It would even appear that there was an island of Erythea. In the Greek mythology the tenth labor of Hercules consisted in driving away the cattle of Geryon, who lived in the island of Erythea, "an island somewhere in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules." (Murray's "Mythology," p.
257.) Hercules stole the cattle from this remote oceanic island, and, returning drove them "through Iberia, Gaul, over the Alps, and through Italy." (Ibid.) It is probable that a people emigrating from the Erythraean Sea, that is, from the Atlantic, first gave their name to a town on the coast of Spain, and at a later date to the Persian Gulf--as we have seen the name of York carried from England to the banks of the Hudson, and then to the Arctic Circle.
The builders of the Central American cities are reported to have been a bearded race. The Ph?nicians, in common with the Indians, practised human sacrifices to a great extent; they worshipped fire and water, adopted the names of the animals whose skins they wore--that is to say, they had the totemic system--telegraphed by means of fires, poisoned their arrows, offered peace before beginning battle, and used drums.
(Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 77.)
The extent of country covered by the commerce of the Ph?nicians represents to some degree the area of the old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Mediterranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to Ireland and England; while from north to south they ranged from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civilization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Columbus sailed to discover a new world, or re-discover an old one, he took his departure from a Ph?nician seaport, founded by that great race two thousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean sailor, with his Ph?nician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had been closed when Plato's island sunk in the sea. And it is a curious fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind's eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he thought it was the river Gihon, that flowed out of Paradise, and he wrote home to Spain, "There are here great indications suggesting the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable."
Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judaea was derived from the Ph?nicians. It would appear probable that, while other races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the Ph?nicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Ph?nician stock, and the people of America.
Upon the Syrian sea the people live Who style themselves Ph?nicians. . . .
These were the first great founders of the world-- Founders of cities and of mighty states-- Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned To each his first department; they bestowed Of land a portion and of sea a lot, And sent each wandering tribe far off to share A different soil and climate. Hence arose The great diversity, so plainly seen, 'Mid nations widely severed.
Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 3.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GOD ODIN, WODEN, OR WOTAN.
In the Scandinavian mythology the chief god was Odin, the Woden, Wotan, or Wuotan of the Germans. He is represented with many of the attributes of the Greek god Zeus, and is supposed by some to be identical with him.
He dwelt with the twelve aesir, or gods, upon Asgard, the Norse Olympus, which arose out of Midgard, a land half-way between the regions of frost and fire (to wit, in a temperate climate). The Scandinavian Olympus was probably Atlantis. Odin is represented as a grave-looking elderly man with a long beard, carrying in his hand a spear, and accompanied by two dogs and two ravens. He was the father of poetry, and the inventor of Runic writing.
The Chiapenese of Central America (the people whose language we have seen furnishing such remarkable resemblances to Hebrew) claim to have been the first people of the New World. Clavigero tells us ("Hist.
Antiq. del Messico," Eng. trans., 1807, vol. i.) that according to the traditions of the Chiapenese there was a Votan who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge; he was one of those who undertook to build the tower that should reach to heaven. The Lord ordered him to people America. "He came from the East." He brought seven families with him. He had been preceded in America by two others, Igh and Imox. He built a great city in America called "Nachan," City of the Serpents (the serpent that tempted Eve was Nahash), from his own race, which was named Chan, a serpent. This Nachan is supposed to have been Palenque. The date of his journey is placed in the legends in the year 3000 of the world, and in the tenth century B.C.
He also founded three tributary monarchies, whose capitals were Tulan, Mayapan, and Chiquimala. He wrote a book containing a history of his deeds, and proofs that he belonged to the tribe of Chanes (serpents). He states that "he is the third of the Votans; that he conducted seven families from Valum-Votan to this continent, and assigned lands to them; that he determined to travel until he came to the root of heaven and found his relations, the Culebres, and made himself known to them; that he accordingly made four voyages to Chivim; that he arrived in Spain; that he went to Rome; that he saw the house of God building; that he went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored; that he marked it, and that he passed by the houses of the thirteen Culebres. He relates that, in returning from one of his voyages, he found seven other families of the Tzequil nation who had joined the first inhabitants, and recognized in them the same origin as his own, that is, of the Culebres; he speaks of the place where they built the first town, which from its founders received the name of Tzequil; he affirms that, having taught them the refinement of manners in the use of the table, table-cloths, dishes, basins, cups, and napkins, they taught him the knowledge of God and his worship; his first ideas of a king, and obedience to him; that he was chosen captain of all these united families."
It is probable that Spain and Rome are interpolations. Cabrera claims that the Votanites were Carthaginians. He thinks the Chivim of Votan were the Hivim, or Givim, who were descended of Heth, son of Canaan, Ph?nicians; they were the builders of Accaron, Azotus, Ascalon, and Gaza. The Scriptures refer to them as Hivites (Givim) in Deuteronomy (chap. ii., verse 32), and Joshua (chap. xiii., verse 4). He claims that Cadmus and his wife Hermione were of this stock; and according to Ovid they were metamorphosed into snakes (Culebres). The name Hivites in Ph?nician signifies a snake.
Votan may not, possibly, have passed into Europe; he may have travelled altogether in Africa. His singular allusion to "a way which the Culebres had bored" seems at first inexplicable; but Dr. Livingstone's last letters, published 8th November, 1869, in the "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society," mention that "tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long, and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals, and not letters; otherwise I should have gone to see them.
People very dark, well made, and outer angle of eyes slanting inward."
And Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his famous exploration of the sources of the Nile, tells of a tunnel or subway under the river Kaoma, on the highway between Loowemba and Marunga, near Lake Tanganyika. His guide Manua describes it to him:
"I asked Manua if he had ever seen any country resembling it. His reply was, 'This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of the Lake Tanganyika, when travelling with an Arab's caravan from Unjanyembeh. There is a river there called the Kaoma, running into the lake, the sides of which are similar in precipitousness to the rocks before us.' I then asked, 'Do the people cross this river in boats?'
'No; they have no boats; and even if they had, the people could not land, as the sides are too steep: they pass underneath the river by a natural tunnel, or subway.' He and all his party went through it on their way from Loowemba to Ooroongoo, and returned by it. He described its length as having taken them from sunrise till noon to pass through it, and so high that, if mounted upon camels, they could not touch the top. Tall reeds, the thickness of a walking-stick, grew inside, the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide--four hundred yards--that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means. Water never came through from the river overhead; it was procured by digging wells.
Manua added that the people of Wambweh take shelter in this tunnel, and live there with their families and cattle, when molested by the Watuta, a warlike race, descended from the Zooloo Kafirs.
But it is interesting to find in this book of Votan, however little reliance we may place in its dates or details, evidence that there was actual intercourse between the Old World and the New in remote ages.
Humboldt remarks:
"We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin. Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a brief period." ("Vues des Cordilleras," p. 148, ed. 1810.)
There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was the Bel of the Ph?nicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and Ph?nicians.
CHAPTER V.
THE PYRAMID, THE CROSS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN.
No fact is better established than the reverence shown to the sign of the Cross in all the ages prior to Christianity. We cannot do better than quote from an able article in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1870, upon this question:
"From the dawn of organized Paganism in the Eastern world to the final establishment of Christianity in the Western, the Cross was undoubtedly one of the commonest and most sacred of symbolical monuments; and, to a remarkable extent, it is so still in almost every land where that of Calvary is unrecognized or unknown. Apart from any distinctions of social or intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or location in either hemisphere, it appears to have been the aboriginal possession of every people in antiquity--the elastic girdle, so to say, which embraced the most widely separated heathen communities--the most significant token of a universal brotherhood, to which all the families of mankind were severally and irresistibly drawn, and by which their common descent was emphatically expressed, or by means of which each and all preserved, amid every vicissitude of fortune, a knowledge of the primeval happiness and dignity of their species. Where authentic history is silent on the subject, the material relics of past and long since forgotten races are not wanting to confirm and strengthen this supposition. Diversified forms of the symbol are delineated more or less artistically, according to the progress achieved in civilization at the period, on the ruined walls of temples and palaces, on natural rocks and sepulchral galleries, on the hoariest monoliths and the rudest statuary; on coins, medals, and vases of every description; and, in not a few instances, are preserved in the architectural proportions of subterranean as well as superterranean structures, of tumuli as well as fanes. The extraordinary sanctity attaching to the symbol, in every age and under every variety of circumstance, justified any expenditure incurred in its fabrication or embellishment; hence the most persistent labor, the most consummate ingenuity, were lavished upon it. Populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits--the highly-civilized and the demi-civilized, the settled and nomadic--vied with each other in their efforts to extend the knowledge of its exceptional import and virtue among their latest posterities. The marvellous rock-hewn caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and the stately temples of Mathura and Terputty, in the East, may be cited as characteristic examples of one laborious method of exhibiting it; and the megalithic structures of Callernish and Newgrange, in the West, of another; while a third may be instanced in the great temple at Mitzla, 'the City of the Moon,' in Ojaaca, Central America, also excavated in the living rock, and manifesting the same stupendous labor and ingenuity as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette--of endeavors, we repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct, and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify and perpetuate some grand primeval symbol. . . .
"Of the several varieties of the Cross still in vogue, as national or ecclesiastical emblems, in this and other European states, and distinguished by the familiar appellations of St. George, St. Andrew, the Maltese, the Greek, the Latin, etc., etc., there is not one among them the existence of which may not be traced to the remotest antiquity.
They were the common property of the Eastern nations. No revolution or other casualty has wrought any perceptible difference in their several forms or delineations; they have passed from one hemisphere to the other intact; have survived dynasties, empires, and races; have been borne on the crest of each successive wave of Aryan population in its course toward the West; and, having been reconsecrated in later times by their lineal descendants, are still recognized as military and national badges of distinction. . . .
Among the earliest known types is the crux ansata, vulgarly called 'the key of the Nile,' because of its being found sculptured or otherwise represented so frequently upon Egyptian and Coptic monuments. It has, however, a very much older and more sacred signification than this. It was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Ph?nicians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it. Thus it was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous labyrinth which encompassed the banks of Lake M?ris, and destroyed by the victorious army of Theodosius (A.D. 389), despite the earnest entreaties of the Egyptian priesthood to spare it, because it was the emblem of their god and of 'the life to come.' Sometimes, as may be seen on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the museum of the London University, the simple T only is planted on the frustum of a cone; and sometimes it is represented as springing from a heart; in the first instance signifying goodness; in the second, hope or expectation of reward. As in the oldest temples and catacombs of Egypt, so this type likewise abounds in the ruined cities of Mexico and Central America, graven as well upon the most ancient cyclopean and polygonal walls as upon the more modern and perfect examples of masonry; and is displayed in an equally conspicuous manner upon the breasts of innumerable bronze statuettes which have been recently disinterred from the cemetery of Juigalpa (of unknown antiquity) in Nicaragua."
When the Spanish missionaries first set foot upon the soil of America, in the fifteenth century, they were amazed to find the Cross was as devoutly worshipped by the red Indians as by themselves, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of St. Thomas or to the cunning device of the Evil One. The hallowed symbol challenged their attention on every hand and in almost every variety of form. It appeared on the bass-reliefs of ruined and deserted as well as on those of inhabited palaces, and was the most conspicuous ornament in the great temple of Gozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. According to the particular locality, and the purpose which it served, it was formed of various materials--of marble and gypsum in the open spaces of cities and by the way-side; of wood in the teocallis or chapels on pyramidal summits and in subterranean sanctuaries; and of emerald or jasper in the palaces of kings and nobles.
When we ask the question how it comes that the sign of the Cross has thus been reverenced from the highest antiquity by the races of the Old and New Worlds, we learn that it is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden, in other words, of Atlantis.
Professor Hardwicke says:
"All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story--jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision lay a paradise of holy joy--a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the mind a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality."