LETTER XXV. OUTLINES OF THE STATE OF THE EARLIEST CIVILIZED XXV. MY DEAR SON, LETTER THE most civilized nations which have appeared in the world, are so many links of a connected chain, which has been extending and enlarging from the deluge to our own time. The family of Ham stand prominent at the commencement as its founders; and as he was sufficiently mature in age, when the old world ceased, to have imbibed its social and mental acquisitions, and had the benefit of his father's larger acquaintance with them, and also had the companionship of his elder brothers, we may assume, that the settlement of his children represented, generally, the state and progress of the civilization and attainments of the antediluvian world. renewed world, therefore, began with a population as much civilized, as the cultivation of mind and manners in the destroyed races, had enabled the preserved survivors to acquire and transmit; and as this extended to the invention of such musical instruments as the harp and connected pipes of melodious sound, and to the discovery and use of brass and iron, and to various arts of working in them, and to the building of cities,1 mankind could not have re See Genesis, iv. 17, 21, 22. The commenced their human life in that brutal and bar- LETTER barous state which some of the ancients imagined.2 The four civilized nations which were founded by the children of Ham were the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, the Phenicians, and the Babylonians and these states preceded all others, which authentic history notices, in their intellectual attainments and activities. The Ethiopians have been already alluded to in our remarks on Cush. It is the opinion of some of our contemporaries, from the monumental remains and hieroglyphical inscriptions found in Nubia, so much resembling those of Egypt, that the ancient Egyptians had a Nubian or Ethiopian origin. But as some of the ancient kings of Egypt at times subdued and reigned over the Ethiopian Meroe, and formed columns, temples and inscriptions there,* this fact will account for such edifices being now observable. At the same time we may remember, that as Cush and Mizraim were brothers, the arts which the one knew, the other could not be ignorant of. Their respective families would partake of these improvements, and when one branch settled in Nubian Ethi 2 Some represent the earth as generally in this state, others the particular countries they mention. Thus in Crete, their dwellings were in the woody parts of mountains, in the caves of vallies, or in places where nature gave them a shelter; for the building of houses was not yet found out.' Diod. Sic. 334. So in Greece, men were living on growing buds, herbs and roots, but Pelasgus taught them that acorns and beech mast were more healthful; he likewise led them to build huts to keep off the rain and cold, and to make coats of the skins of swine.' Pausan. Arc. 456. See before, Lett. xxiv. p. 481. Strabo mentions the Ethiopian Tearcon's warlike expeditions into Europe, and as having extended to the strait of Gibraltar. L. xv. p. 1007. ⚫ Lett. xxiv. p. 481. In Strabo's time they had fallen mostly into a nomadical and poor condition. L. xv. p. 1135. XXV. XXV. LETTER opia, and the other moved down the Nile to what became, under its settlement, Upper Egypt, each would have made its sacred edifices and public monuments for itself; and these, from their kindred origin, would, in their primitive forms, naturally resemble each other. 5 But it is probable, that the Ethiopian line of Ham had connections or ramifications in the Indian Peninsula. As we have already remarked, they were deemed a colony from India. It is not improbable that the temples and idol figures excavated from the rock in the caves of Ellora, on the western side of India, near Bombay, may represent to us some of the works and rites of this branch of the ancient nations. There are several other caverned exca "Lett. xxiv. p. 481. Apollonius Tyanæus, when he passed from Egypt into Ethiopia, is described by his biographer to have found Gymnosophists there, to whom he said, 'You praise the Indians because you were formerly Indians yourselves, and, urged by angry prodigies, came from their country hither; you would rather seem to be any thing than Ethiopians who have come from India; now you would rather worship in the Egyptian manner than in your own.' Philost. l. vi. c. 6, p. 277. 6 Engravings from these may be conveniently seen in Fisher's Views in India. They are thought to be images of the Boodh kind. The grand cave there is the Bioma Kurm. It has been excavated with an arched roof, and with its lofty vaulted ceiling, solid octagonal pillars, long-vaulted aisle and colossal image, is very striking. The temple of Kylas is the most perfect; its central building rises in the midst of a wide area, all scooped out from the solid rock to the height of one hundred feet, being one immense block of isolated excavation, upwards of five hundred feet in circumference, containing many apartments; beyond are three galleries, supported upon pillars containing forty-two gigantic figures of gods and goddesses. The Rameswar temple consists of a fine hall seventy-two feet long and fifteen high. There is another temple thirty-one feet square in a recess of this. The principal apartment is supported by pillars and pilasters; the roof and walls are covered with figures of deities, in dance and revelry; the principal figures are skeletons; at their southern extremity they are terminated by the Dher Warra cave. The principal hall is one hundred feet long and XXV. vations in this side of the Peninsula; of these the LETTER most remarkable, and which may have a still nearer relation to the descendants of Cush, are the caves of Elephanta; they have manifestly not been made at any one time, nor under one system of opinion, and therefore belong to different eras." But being of that and forty in breadth, supported by pillars. The rock from which these temples are wrought is hard red granite. They are not now venerated by the Hindoos. The attendant Bramins say that the skeletons are rakshesas, or demons. E. Roberts' Description. 7 One fact deserves notice. A greater number of magnificent cave temples present themselves on this part of the west coast of the peninsula of India, than are to be met with any where else in Hindostan. Those of Canara, Amboli, and some others on the island of Salsette; the fine cave of Carli, on the road to Poona, by the Bor Ghaut; the smaller cave temples in the Kohan, and near the Adjunta Pass, are all on Mahratta ground.' Hall's Fragm. Voy. v. iii. p. 257. 8 The Elephanta Island is called by the natives Gara-poori, or place of caves, and lies six miles from Bombay, and five from the main shore. In the great cave, the gigantic triple head forms the principal feature. It represents its divinity only down to the breast, and is nearly eighteen feet from the top of the cap to the bottom of the image. All these figures are carved out of the solid trachyte rock, It lies in a recess cut in the rock to the depth of thirteen feet. The cap is richly adorned with figures and flowers; among which is a skull and a serpent. "The lower lip of all the figures seems thickest, and more African than Asiatic. There are a large crowd of minor deities. The spacious front is supported by two massy pillars and two pilasters, forming three openings under a steep rock. Large ranges of columns appear closing in perspective on every side. Darkness obscures the interior of the temple, which is dimly lighted only by the entrances. Gigantic gloomy stone figures are ranged along the walls; and hewn, like the whole temple, out of the rock. The Great Cave was 130 feet deep from the chief entrance to the further end, and 133 feet broad from the east to the west entrance. The height varies from 17 to 15 feet.' Erskine, in Hall's Frag. v. iii. 229. &c. Of three caves, those of Kanara and Carli seem to have belonged to the Bouddhists; Amboli and Elephanta to the Bramin system; and those of Ellora to both. LETTER side of India which lies most contiguous to the Red XXV. Sea, and to the coast of Ethiopia, they are most likely to mark the regions in the Hindoo peninsula, from which the Ethiopians originated, or to which they were, if ever, related. I do not affirm the alleged affinity, but I wish to lay before you such facts as are most likely to have been connected with it, if it really subsisted." But the earliest civilization of the repeopling earth was most conspicuously displayed in the kingdom of EGYPT. Its inhabitants always considered and represented themselves to be the most ancient nation in the world," and Aristotle, with other Grecians, submits to their pretensions. Their country received many denominations; but that which was derived from the son of Ham, is the name by which the Arabian geographers and historians, as well as Moses and the Jewish prophets and chronologers, desig 12 10 That there is some common relation between the images in these caves and those in Nubia and Egypt, seems to be proved by the veneration paid by the sepoys in Sir David Baird's army, which was transported from India to Egypt to assist against the French there, when the Hindoo soldiers saw the images in the temples on the Nile, from a feeling of the similitude to their own.-Porphyry mentions, that the most ancient peoples, raλaurarov, before temples were thought of, consecrated hollowed caverns and caves to their gods.' De Ant. Num. p. 121. " Herodotus mentions, they thought themselves to be the first of all men, πρωτες παντων ανθρωπων ; the Phrygians claimed the same antiquity; and Psammetichus thought he could decide the question by having a babe brought up among sheep with the ewe's milk, where he could hear no human voice, and by having it observed what sound he would first utter. When the shepherd entered the fold at the fit time, the animal-nursed infant expressed a tone that seemed like 'Bekos;' and the king, finding this word used by the Phrygians for bread, deemed it a proof that they were the elder nation'!! Herod. 1. ii. c. 2. 12 Arist. Meteor. quoted in Lett. xxii. note 21. |