Chapter XXI: Front Matter (21)

Four tribes,(140) four castes, territorial division of Attica into four parts, institution of tetrarchies. Thessaly anciently divided into four tetrarchies. Institution (between 600-560 B.C.) of cycle or period, marked by the four sacred Olympic games, one of which took place in one of four cities each year in rotation. Pisistratus added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæa to the ancient annual and lesser Panathenæa (Grote, History of Greece, vol. 4).

Twelve tribes formed by Cecrops—represented by twelve chiefs, +Cecrops=thirteen.

It is most interesting to find this division adopted in Plato’s de Legibus, in which it is imagined that three elderly statesmen come together, belonging respectively to Athens, Crete and Lacedæmon, to discuss the reëstablishment of the depopulated city of Magnesia in Crete. Aristotle has insinuated that the scheme proposed by Plato was not original and had been actually realized at Lacedæmon. Mr. George Burger, the able translator of Bohn’s edition of Plato’s Works, in his introduction to vol. V, remarks that, if that were the case, Plato would never have wasted his time in writing two elaborate treatises on matters already well known, when it would have been sufficient to point out ... the institutions of Lycurgus as the pattern, if not of a faultless government, at least of one, that approached the nearest to perfection. Plato might have replied to the charge made by Aristotle by saying that his notions were all the better for not being original, for it was thus shown that, as some of them were practicable, since they had already been put into practice—the rest, which were a reform rather of existing institutions than the construction of a code perfectly novel, would be equally practicable if they were submitted to the same test. In his Protagoras, Plato distinctly states that in Crete and Lacedæmon a most beautiful philosophy was to be found, which had been handed down from ancient times.... Let us now examine the plan discussed by the three statesmen and submitted to them by the anonymous Athenian who, according to Cicero, Plutarch and Boeckh, was Plato himself.

In the case of “the Magnesians, whom a god is again raising up and settling into a colony ... a divine polity....” Plato says: ... “It is meet, in the first place, to build the city as much as possible in the middle of the country.... After this to divide it into twelve parts(141) and placing first the temple of Hestia, and Zeus and Athene, to call it the Acropolis and to throw around a circular enclosure and from it to cut the city and all the country into twelve parts. But the twelve parts ought to be equalized ... and the allotments to be five thousand and forty.... After this to assign the twelve allotments to the twelve gods and to call them by their names and to consecrate to each the portion attained by lot and to call it a phyle; and again to divide the twelve sections of the city in the same manner as they divided the rest of the country, and that each should possess two habitations, one near the centre and the other near the extremity, and thus let the method end ... (B. V, C. 14).... We ought, in the first place, to resume the number five thousand and forty because it had and has now convenient distributions, both the whole number and that which was assigned to the wards, which we laid down as the twelfth part of the whole, being exactly four hundred and twenty. And as the whole number has twelve divisions, so also has that of the wards. Now it is meet to consider each division as a sacred gift of a deity through its _following both the months and revolutions of the universe_. (By this is meant, says Ast, the twelve signs of the zodiac.) _Hence that which is inherent leads every state, making them holy_.... Some persons indeed have made a more correct distribution than others, and with better fortune have dedicated the distribution to the gods. But we now assert that the number five thousand and forty has been chosen most correctly, as it has all divisions as far as twelve, beginning from one, except that by eleven; ... let us distribute this number; and dedicating to a god ... each portion, and giving the altars ... let us institute monthly two meetings relating to sacrifices ... twelve according to the divisions of the wards and twelve to that of the city ... for the sake of every kind of intercourse.”

It should be noted here that, as in his Republic, Plato provides his ideal state with female as well as male guardians, and with priestesses as well as priests, whose duty it was to fulfil sacerdotal functions. Special attention is drawn to this point, as in practice, it naturally signifies a dual government, such as I have traced in ancient Egypt, Babylonia-Assyria, and also in Mexico and Peru.

“As regards the number of ... festivals ... let there be three hundred and sixty-five ... so that some one of the magistrates may always sacrifice ... there are to be twelve festivals to the twelve gods from whom each tribe has its name ... and twelve guardians of the law.... There ought to be twelve hamlets, one in the middle of each twelfth part, and in each hamlet to be selected first, a market place and temples ... prepare all the rest of the country by it into thirteen parts for the handicraftsmen and to cause one portion of these to reside in the city by distributing this portion among the twelve parts of the whole city ... to have other persons distributed out of the city, in a circle around it.”

The portions of Plato’s work dealing with the appointment of the governors and guardians of the state and their rotations in office and imposed tours of inspection, are of such particular interest in connection with the present comparative research, that I am impelled to quote them here.

“Let each (of the twelve) phyles furnish for the year five Rural Stewards (in all sixty) ... each of whom is to choose twelve young men ... to the latter let there be allotted portions of the country during a month ... so that all of them may have a practical knowledge of every part of the country.... But let the governorship and guardianship continue to the guards and governors for two years, and let those who first obtain by lot their respective portions, the guard officers, lead out, _changing the places of the country constantly by going to the place next in order towards the right in a circle, and let the right be that which is in the east_. But as the years come around, in the second year, in order that the greatest portion of the guards may become acquainted with the country, not only at one season of the year, but that as many as possible may know thoroughly in addition to the country, at the same time what occurs relatively to each spot in the country at each season, let the officers _lead them out again to the left, constantly changing the place until they go through the second year_. In the third year it is meet to choose other rural stewards and guard officers as the five curators of the twelve young men.... There were to be three city stewards, dividing the twelve parts of the city into three ... and five Market-Stewards, to be chosen from ten elected”....(142)

It is deeply interesting to consider from the standpoint of comparative study the principal features of the perfected scheme proposed by Plato, in the fifth century B. C, for the establishment of an ideal colony, which is designated as a “divine polity” or a “holy land.” This is especially the case when we see that Plato himself states that it is the conformity of the states to the inherent laws of nature, that confers upon it divinity or holiness. It seems impossible not to recognize that both ideal republics of Plato were intended to be “celestial kingdoms” or “kingdoms of heaven” and that he expounded and doubtlessly perfected, an ancient ideal which had been more or less successfully carried out in different countries during many centuries before his time.

Having studied the proposed scheme for the foundation of a new colony of the Greeks, who proudly maintained that “it was meet that the Greeks should rule barbarians,” and pursued a regular system of colonization, let us now obtain an idea of the mode in which Greeks had previously founded colonies by reading the following passage from Grote’s History of Greece, vol. IV, chap. XXVII:

“Under reign of Psammetichus, king of Egypt, about the middle of seventh century B.C., Grecian mercenaries were first established in Egypt and Grecian traders admitted ... into the Nile.(143) The opening of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea which separates Krête from Egypt—a dangerous voyage with vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land—and seems to have first made them acquainted with the neighboring coast of Libya ... hence arose the foundation of the important colony called Kyrênê” ... about 630 B.C.

“Thêra was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedæmon ... political dissension among its inhabitants ... bad seasons, distress and over-population led to the emigration that founded Kyrênê.... The oekist Battus was selected and consecrated to work of founding the colony.... _From the seven districts into which Thêra was divided, emigrants were drafted for the colony, one brother being singled out by lot from the different families_.... The band which accompanied Battus was generally supplied with provisions for one year and was all conveyed in two pentekonters—armed ships with fifty rowers each. Thus humble was the start of the mighty Kyrênê. After six years residence in one spot they abandoned it and were conducted to a better site by guides, saying: ‘Here, men of Hellas, is the place for you to dwell, for here the sky is perforated.’ ”(144) The small force brought over by Battus was enabled at first to fraternize with the indigenous Libyans,—next, reinforced by additional colonists and availing themselves of the power of native chiefs, to overawe and subjugate them....

“The Theræan colonists seem to have married Libyan wives, whence Herodotus describes the women of Kyrênê and Barka as following, even in his time, religious observances indigenous and not Hellenic. Even the descendants of the primitive oekist Battus were semi-Libyan.... We must bear in mind that the population of the [Græco-Libyan] cities was not pure Greek, but more or less mixed, like that of the colonies in Italy, Sicily or Ionia.... Isokrates praises the well-chosen site of the colony of Kyrênê because it was planted in the midst of indigenous natives apt for subjection and far distant from any formidable enemies.... We are then to conceive the first Theræan colonists as established in their lofty fortified post Kyrênê, in the centre of Libyan Perioeki, till then strangers to walls, to arts and perhaps even to cultivated land.... To these rude men the Theræans communicated the elements of Hellenism and civilization, not without receiving themselves much that was non-Hellenic in return, and perhaps the reactionary influence of the Libyan element against the Hellenic might have proved the stronger of the two had they not been reinforced by new-comers from Greece.... About 543 B.C. owing to discontent, etc., the regal prerogative of the Battiad line was terminated and a republican government established; the dispossessed prince retaining both the landed domains and various sacerdotal functions which had belonged to his predecessors.”

ROME.

Seven hills, seven places of worship, septemvirate, seven ministers, Septizonium, p. 464.

Roman quadrata, Janus quadrifrontis, quadruplicate territorial division carried out. Palestine, for instance, divided into four tetrarchies under Roman rule.

Twelve gods, twelve months, etc.

New Rome divided into four parts, each consisting of thirteen prefectures _i. e._ fifty-two prefectures in all.

GAUL.

Seven provinces.

BRITAIN.

Seven kings=heptarchy.

Four kings of Kent=tetrarchy.

IRELAND.

Seven sanctuaries grouped around central tower.

Four associates of king of Erin.

Group consisting of 12+1=13 stone figures, p. 469.

SCANDINAVIA.

Four guardians of four quarters.

Thor, supreme divinity, pole-star god, seated and holding “seven stars,” the symbol of seven-fold power, in his hand.

Group consisting of royal throne surrounded by 12 stones. Odin associated with twelve “godes,” p. 472.

NORTH AMERICA.

Huron confederacy=seven tribes, quadriform city, 2×4=8 gentes, p. 198.

ZUNI.

Seven directions in space, seven quarters of city, seven tribes, seven towns.

Four bands of priests, p. 201.

Twelve, _i. e._, thirteen priesthoods, p. 201.

MEXICO.

Seven tribes issued from seven caves, seven gods or chiefs, p. 62.

Four quarters of city, represented by four chieftains, four subrulers, four divisions of army, four year signs, four tribes, four tribal trees (fig. 52), four storied pyramids.

Thirteen divisions or parts, p. 181.

Calendar and state organized into 4×13=52 parts.

YUCATAN.

Title of ruler, “the divine Four,” four sub-rulers, four royal brothers, four-year periods, p. 218, four quarters, p. 223, four year signs.

Twelve _i. e._ thirteen priest-rulers of Mayapan, p. 209.

GUATEMALA.

Seven tribes, seven day period, p. 179.

Four nations, four provinces, four capitals, four Tullans, pp. 164, 171.

Thirteen divisions of warriors, p. 179.

PERU.

Empire named “Four in one,” Creator named “Earth, air, fire and water in One,” four provinces, four viceroys.

Twelve _i. e._ thirteen wards in Cuzco, twelve divisions of year, p. 144.

Before commenting upon the above summary, and as its necessary complement, a brief examination must be made of the various modes in which the phenomenon of celestial axial rotation figured in the rituals of primitive people.

OLD WORLD.

The lighting of “sacred fire,” by means of the wooden fire-drill and the wooden socket block, appears as the most ancient and widespread ritualistic performance.

To begin with, the reader is requested to read carefully the following detached extracts from Hewitt’s work:

“In the Rig-Veda the Aryan invaders of Lydia are called the Tritsu, ‘the boring people,’ who used the fire-drill; also Arna, ‘sons of Arani,’ the fire-drill, whose sacred number is four”.... “In India, from time immemorial, by a process like churning, fire has been produced by the Arani, made of the Ashvattha (_Ficus religiosa_) wood, being twirled repeatedly round till the fire is lighted, by a string fixed in the cross-bar at its top,” a method, I may add, which is a later development of the more primitive mode of twirling the fire-drill by hand. “The Kushites ... believed that life was generated by the union of heat with water ... and that heat was, in the astronomical myth, engendered by the revolution of the Great Bear and the connection between it, the vital heat and the creating water is shown in one of its Akkadian names, Bel-a-sar-a, which means ‘the fire god who measures the water yoke’ (R. Brown and Sayce), or, in other words, Bel, the distributor of the water allotted to the earth. From this heavenly cistern and fire-drill, in which marichi, the fire-spark, is hidden, the water of life is distributed.”

Compare the preceding with the following statements: “According to the Arab doctrine of the pole, the seven stars of the Great Bear and the star Canopus [?] formed the fire-drill.” According to Hewitt “... It was the Ashvins, ... the twin brothers of day and night, ... identified with the twin stars in Gemini, who twirled round the fire drill of the northern pole ... or, according to a later hymn, drove through the seas with one of the wheels of their chariot in Ursa Major and one in heaven,—that is, to drive around the pole.” A deeper comprehension seems to be afforded by this association of the Ashvins with the axis, of the significance of the two figures (of a god and his consort) who, in the Sippar tablet, appear to be directing the wheel of Shamash—the world-axis and symbol of quadruplicate terrestrial government (see p. 365). Reference should also be repeated here, to Al-kuth and Al-fass, the Arabian names for Polaris, respectively signifying the axle and the hole of the axle, also to the pole star of Northern India—Grahadhara,—the “pivot of heaven,” and to the significant fact that in Egyptian hieratic script the word an=the Akkadian and Sumerian word for heaven, and Babylonian-Assyrian word for god, is found rendered by a man “turning around,” an action expressing the verb an.

It is interesting to collate these statements with the descriptions of Dhruva (see p. 448, note 1), the personification of centrifugal power, who, as he turns, causes the heaven to revolve around the fixed centre on which he stands, resting on one foot only, and to note how the two distinct ideas of central stability and rotation influenced the making of pagan divinities. The idea of stability was perpetuated in the house-pole which sustained Aman, the roof of primitive dwellings in the column an, which supported the temple roof and in time was transformed into a hermes, or, in Egypt, into a statue of Amen-ra, and in the mythical mountain of the North, Sama, which supported the heaven (Sama). Dhruva’s turning round on one foot, which implies the use of the other, reappears in the Hephaistos of Greek mythology, who was, as Hewitt tells us (p. 504), “the fire-drill and its driver, and was called Amphi-Guēeis, or he who halts on both legs, ... was cast from heaven by Zeus, and was the husband of the fire-socket, the first form of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.”

For information regarding the cult of the fire-socket, the construction of the Hindu fire-altars in the form of a woman, representing “mother-earth” or “the primæval mother,” Aditi, I refer the reader to Hewitt’s work, and also to p. 323 of the present publication, where the description of the Jiddah sanctuary proves the existence of the same ancient form of cult in Arabia. Hewitt relates on page 170 that, on the fire-altar, the central fire called Agni jatavedas is kindled when the officiating priest addresses in the words of Rig-Veda III, 29, 4: “We place thee, O Jatavedas, in the place of Ida (the mountain daughter of Manu) in the navel (nabha) of the altar, to carry our offerings.” In Rig-Veda, X, 61, we are also told how Nabha-Nedishtha (that which is nearest to the navel) was born from the union of celestial lightning flash with the earth, and how, on his birth, he claimed to be the supreme god, saying: “This, our navel, is the highest. I am his son.... I am the twice-born son of the law (of nature)....” Hewitt (p. 171) regards, moreover, the image of the goddess of the earth altar found by Schliemann in the second city from the bottom of the six cities, built one over another on the site of Troy, a counterpart of the Hindu fire-altar. It is significant that the Trojan image exhibits a triangle surrounded by seven disks, and containing the swastika, which Hewitt designates as “the holy fire, the sun of the revolving year,” a view curiously, though indistinctly, analogous and parallel to that I have formulated in the present research.

“In the Brahmanas the Try-Ambika offering, a very ancient form of the rain festival, is described.... Its sanctity dated from the days of primeval theology, for the offerings were made on a spot outside and _to the north_ of the consecrated area, and on one intersected by cross-roads, and thus marked by the cross sacred to the rain-god, which is said to be Rudra’s favorite haunts, and the halting place of the Agnis.... Hence the festival is dedicated to Rud-ra, the red (rud) god, the father of the seven Marut stars.... He is called the red god from the spark of fire kindled by him in the fire socket when he was the fire-drill, and from being reddened by the blood of the victim slain in his sacrifices when he was the sacrificial stake to which the annual victims, whose blood fertilized the ground, were bound, and this name was continued to him when he became the red cloud of the thunderstorm which infused the soil of life into the earth by pouring on it the life-giving rain, the blood of the creating god....”

In the Rig-Veda the rain-god is termed Ushana, the “lord of fire,” who is made to exclaim: “It is I who pour down rain for the good of creatures.” It was he who was also known as Varuna, the Greek Ourauos, who ... became the god of the dark night.... The union [in India] of the patriarchal worshippers of the Northern father-god, with the matriarchal races of the south was followed by the miners, metal-workers and artisans of the early bronze age, who looked on fire and the life-giving heat as the author of life. These were the people (of Finnic origin) who employed the word ku for god, in Asia Minor became the worshippers of the mother goddess Magha, the socket block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill, and it was they, “the Sons of Magha” that became the Maghi of Persia and the Maghadas of Indian history.

In connection with the union of a northern patriarchal and a southern matriarchal race, an astronomical myth deserves particular attention, as it commemorates the combination of a feminine cult of the Pleiades, the “spinning stars,” with a masculine cult of Ursa Major. According to this myth, related by Hewitt, the “Spinners”=Krittakas (from krit, to spin) were “the mother-stars of the earth,” who were married to the seven stars of the Great “Bear, the father-stars of the North.”(145) Remarking how curiously the assignment of the north to the male and the south to the female element coincides with what has been noted in Egypt, I note here the interesting detail recorded by Hewitt (p. 379) that to this day the Hindu bride and bridegroom respectively pay reverence to the Pleiades and Ursa Major, before worshipping the pole-star, “the spotted bull,” on entering their house. It would seem as though the fulfilment of this ritual might limit the Hindu marriage season to some particular time of the year, marked by the position of the Pleiades; in which connection it is interesting to remember that, in Mexico, the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight marked the New Year festival, when sacred fire was rekindled and the union of Heaven and Earth took place. On pp. 130-132 of Hewitt’s work, vol. I, the reader will find instructive data regarding Pleiades festivals.

The preceding details appear to show that whereas a northern patriarchal race would naturally symbolize axial rotation by the fire-drill, a southern matriarchal race would adopt the spindle for the same purpose. Such a ritualistic use of the spindle would undoubtedly afford a very simple explanation for the presence of cross-symbols and swastikas and other designs of religious significance upon the terra-cotta spinning whorls found in such quantities in Troy, for instance, and the cited allusion on one of these, to the pole-star god, Tur, corroborates this view.(146)

It is instructive to trace how, amongst primitive agricultural races, the art of spinning, the employment of beasts of burden, the invention of the oil-press which “was used in Asia Minor as it has been used for time immemorial in India to extract the oil of the sesame seeds,” and of the wheel and cart, influenced their respective adoption of symbols of axial rotation. In turn, these symbols suggested and created divergent forms of ritual and religious cult. “The Turanians ... when they had evolved the idea of the god of heaven as the pole turned by the revolving days and weeks symbolized it as the pole of the threshing floors around which the oxen were driven.” The reader is referred here to the passages from the Bhagavata-purana quoted in the present work (note 1, p. 448), in which axial rotation is compared to “oxen turning around their stakes,” to which must be added the Vedic “one-wheeled car to which one horse named seven was yoked” (see p. 452, note 1), and the revolving wheel and the revolving measuring pole of the potter and builder castes, which united formed the Telis caste.

In the Vaya Purana, “the seven Maruts drive the stars which are bound to it by ties invisible to man, round the pole. They move round like the beam in the oil-press, for its bottom is, as it were, standing still, while its end moves round”.... In the ritual “the Sanscrit Isha or the beam which turns this pole of heavenly oil-pressing mill, is the husband and father.” A diverging view, which developed and combined the ideas of fixity and circular motion with the kindling of the vital spark by the wooden fire-drill, caused the living tree to become the emblem of the tribal father or mother. The custom, still in use among some primitive people, of drilling for fire in the dry, inflammable bark of dead trees of a particular species, may have forcibly directed the choice of tribal trees. At all events, in India, we find the mango or Am tree, which recurs in Egyptian script (see fig. 63, 22), the fig-tree, the udumbara, the date-palm and other trees established as the parent trees of different tribes, who made their respective house-poles and presumably their fire-drills and sockets, from their wood. The curious ritual of marrying men and women to their respective mother or father tribal trees, before they are wedded to their respective husbands and wives is mentioned by Hewitt on p. 237, etc. This close bond between some special kind of tree and a tribe is a point which I particularly emphasize on account of its analogy to ancient Mexican, Maya and Peruvian tribal trees.

Returning to a study of the pole and the beam of the oil-press we find that, in Essay II, Hewitt traces the Greek myths of Ixion and Koronis to the Hindu comparison of the heavens to a revolving oil-press and, in the ritual of the Vajapeya sacrifice, refers the dawn of astronomy to the observation of the revolutions of the pole and the reckoning of the seven days of the week.... “Ixion, when raised to heaven, was the rain-god, who turned one wheel, to which his hands and feet were fixed by Hermes, the fire-god, continuously in the air, and this is merely a mythic way of saying that he was the fire-drill, made as the revolving pole to rotate perpetually, and by being turned to every side in his winged course, to produce life-giving heat, the generator of rain.... The Greek Ixion is the same word as the Sanscrit Akshivan, the driver of the axle (aksha).... Ixion is also, according to Bopp and Pott, connected with the root ik, pouring water, which appears in ichor, ‘the blood of the gods,’ the water of life.”

“Moreover, the Sanscrit aksha is a word of which the original is found in the Gond akkha, an axle. In the summer festival of the agricultural Gonds, called Akkhadi or Akhtuj, the worship of the cart axle or Akkha takes place and is associated with Nagur, the rain snake.... In the Vajapeya sacrifice ... the Soma priest consecrates two cups of the sacred drink Soma above the axle, at the same time as the Neskti priest consecrates two cups of Sura below it. In this ceremony we see a reminiscence of the days when the axle was the upright revolving pole pressing out the heavenly rain.... It also shows us how it was that the axle became the sacred part of the Soma cart ... and the revolving pole became the axle of the car of time and of the cart of the agricultural Gonds....”

It seems easy to trace from the rude one-wheeled cart, the evolution of the two-wheeled chariot, the prerogative of royalty in India and Assyria, employed simultaneously with the regal umbrella, which, when twirled, symbolized celestial axial rotation and suggested the idea of a protective deity. The transition from the “one-wheeled car” of the oldest Veda, to which “one horse named seven was yoked” to the chariot of Apollo=“Seven,” whose lyre, with seven chords, struck the divine heptachord of the Pythagoreans, and who drove seven horses, coincides with that of the umbrella which, in Greece, was borne at the period of the summer solstice in the Skirophoria or “festival of the umbrella,” in honor of Athene.

It is particularly gratifying to me, as it so forcibly substantiates the views I have been enlarging upon in this investigation, to refer here to Hewitt’s quotations (p. 7, vol. II) from the Rig-Veda, in which the wheeled chariot, closely identified with the year, is said to be drawn by the father-horse, with seven names, the seven days of the week, etc. Hewitt likewise cites passages of the Rig-Veda containing the conception of year wheels, the varying number of whose spokes agree with different divisions of the year. Thus one year-wheel exhibits twelve spokes, denoting months, another five spokes denoting five seasons. A chariot, with seven wheels with six spokes, is explained as meaning the seven days of the week and the six seasons of the southern year. “All living beings rest on the five-spoked wheel, ... the horses draw the never-aging wheel through space, whence the eye of the sun on which all life depends, looks down. The seventh of those born together they call ‘that born alone’: this is the self-created thirteenth or central month; the six twinned months are said to be those begotten of the gods. They are arranged in their order, six on each side of the central month, by the leader who dwells above.” A striking analogy to the ideas I detected, as associated with central rulership, in ancient America, is set forth in Hewitt’s statement that, it was to the one wheel year “that the Hindus likened their universal monarch, the Chakravarta or king, who sits, like the Kushite monarch, as the father of his subject tribes, in the central province of his dominions, and directs his satellites, the rulers of the seasons, who became the ruling stars of the frontier provinces—the Nakshatra stars—to turn the wheel (chakra) of time in its yearly round” (_op. cit._ p. 31, vol. II, see also p. 314.)(147)

The single wheel, without any indication of an utilitarian employment, is found directly associated with the pole-star in Japan, where, as in China, the use of the wheel has been known from earliest times. It will be for Scandinavian archaeologists to enlighten us as to the earliest traces of the use, by northern races, not only of the wheeled chariot, familiar to those who named Ursa Major, Thor’s wagon, but also that of the mill-stone. The employment of the latter in the description of the “revolving world mill-stone through which the waters of the Universe fountain flowed,” is a proof that the Eddas were written by an agricultural people, possessing advanced methods of grinding or of extracting oil or juice from food stuffs. The association of the Norse mill-stone with the distribution of liquid, appearing to indicate that, like the oil-press of ancient India, the stone-mill of Scandinavia had been employed to extract fluids, challenges investigation as to the original home of the mill-stone and chariot of the Eddas.

Personally I am inclined to regard the term “world mill-stone” as a modernized transcription of the term “axle,” and the whole as a rendering of the archaic idea that “heat was engendered by the revolution of the Great Bear” and that the axle of heaven was the distribution of vital heat and vivifying water. I shall await enlightenment as to the relationship of the Norse tree of the pole and Thor, with the creating fire-drill of Tur, the father-god; and the connection of the Norse “mill-stone” and fountain, to the fire-socket and celestial cistern of the Kushites, said to be the “sons of the Finnic Ku, the begetter and rain-god,” who, having migrated to India and united with other races, founded a mighty confederacy, the plan of which is figured in Hewitt’s work (p. 220), by “the union of four triangles, representing the southeastern and northwestern races, ... with spaces left open for the parent rivers,” which flow towards the cardinal points (see figure 73, _c_).

If we now revert to the first stages of the mental evolution, the outcome of which we have been reviewing, we cannot but recognize the curious, but perfectly natural chain of reasoning which led early man to explain natural phenomena in different ways by the results of his own immediate observation and experience. He had discovered that the rotation of the fire-drill generated fire; consequently the rotation of the circumpolar constellations must generate life-giving heat. The churning or twirling of liquid in a vessel, by means of the drill, caused an overflow; consequently the action of the fire-drill also caused an external flow of life-giving waters, which, after the invention of the oil or grape press, was compared to the flow of precious oil or wine from the receptacle.

High mountains attracted lightning-clouds and when these collected around their summits whence rivers constantly flowed, life-giving rain descended; consequently the tops of cloud-capped mountains must reach to the axle of the heaven where fire, heat and rain were being generated and distributed by the rotation of celestial bodies. As Polaris the axle, pivot or fire socket, was immovable it could most appropriately be figured by a wooden or stone socket, from which fire and water flowed towards the four quarters. Such an image would also figure a year, and, by extension, time, since it marked the four annual positions of circumpolar star-groups. The adoption of a stone socket as an image of the “revolving heaven” could thus have long antedated, but have suggested the invention of the wheel, which was at first a religious and then became a royal symbol.

I venture to express the view that the archaic image of Shamash (fig. 73, _a_), the homonym of Heaven and the North, which was “an ancient model” at the time of Nabupaliddin (879-855 B.C.), could only have been invented by a race of pole-star worshippers who had long been acquainted with the uses of the fire drill and the oil-press. At the same time I point out how remarkably the combination of four rays and four streams in the image of Shamash (Shame=heaven) coincides with the explanation given by Hewitt (p. 9, vol. II) of the Akkadian eight-rayed star of Anu (heaven), which, he asserts, is formed by the superposition of the fire-cross and rain cross. It is a most remarkable and undeniable fact that there is a striking analogy between the Anu sign as explained by Hewitt and the Shamash image. The eight-rayed or “spoked wheel” of Ishtar, which figures on the same tablet, also gains significance for the same reason, and particularly when collated with the hymn cited in note 1, p. 448, in which she is clearly designated as the “axis of the heavens,” _i. e._ the female Polaris.

Having indicated how the origin of the image of Shamash can be traced to conceptions arising from the use of the fire-drill and some primitive mode of extracting oil or of preparing a highly valued drink from seeds and plants, by centrifugal action, invented by a primitive agricultural people, I advance the suggestion that the celestial tree of the Norsemen and Semites, associated with the fountain and the four rivers of life, appears as a closely related symbol which, however, mainly expressed the idea of stability. In the Eddas the tree occurs as a complement to the world axle, the first as the emblem of stability and of a central power which dispensed shade and life-giving fruits in all directions; the second as the image of centrifugal power which caused the star-groups to assume opposite positions and which impartially distributed heat and water. It is curious to note how readily from the fire-drill and beam of the oil press as a starting point, not only all forms of tree and pole worship and the Chinese assignment of element wood to the Middle, but also all symbols of centrifugal motion, such as the axle, the pivot and the wheel, could have evolved on closely parallel lines.

Let us now transport ourselves to a land where, to this day, the Indian women grind maize on a flat stone, by means of a pestle, where the oil-press and the mill-stone, the pole of the threshing-floor, the potter’s wheel and the cart wheel were unknown before the date of the Spanish Conquest and rotatory motion was associated with the fire-drill and spinning whorl only.

NEW WORLD.

The ancient Mexican name for the fire-drill = mamalhuaztli, and that for spinning-wheel=malacatl, are both derived from the verb malacachoa=to whirl, turn or drill. At the time of the Spanish invasion (A.D. 1519) the Mexican priesthood lit the sacred fire of the altar by an extremely primitive method of employing the fire-drill: by holding it tightly between the palms of both hands and rapidly rubbing them alternately forward and backward.

The Codices contain numberless pictures representing a priest, in the act of kindling fire by inserting the drill in a simple wooden beam, usually exhibiting several small holes or sockets. On the other hand the Borgian Codex, which has recently been placed within general reach by the generosity of the Duc de Loubat, shows us two elaborate representations of the great ceremony of kindling the holy fire in a large circular socket, on the body of a woman which, in all cases is combined with the image of an alligator (see p. 91). In another Codex the alligator alone supports the socket. The smaller of these representations is reproduced in fig. 29, and on pp. 93-97 this image is discussed as well as the remarkable stone fire altars in human form, of which one has been unearthed near the city of Mexico, while no less than six were found at Chichen-Itza. My informant on this point is Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay, who added that they seem to have been invariably placed at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the temple, the façade of which is always supported by two great columns, each sculptured in the form of a great serpent with open jaws, the symbol which, in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza and on the Central American stelæ, recurs on the head-dresses of the rulers termed “Divine serpents,” or “divine four in One.”

Postponing comment upon the curious analogy between the stone fire altars in human form, of the Mayas and Mexicans, with those of the Maghadas of Northern India, who called themselves the Sons of Magha = the socket-block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill, or the mother Maga, the sacred alligator, let us examine the fire-drill god of ancient Mexico.

Reference to fig. 1 reveals that it is impossible to see these Mexican representations, which I could supplement by others, and not be struck by their agreement with the descriptions of the Hindu pole-star god Dhruva, who stands on one foot, of the lame Hephaistos of Greek mythology, to which I would add that Hewitt also mentions in his preface to vol. II the Norse Völunde, the maimed, one-legged turner of the pole; the god called in the Rig-Veda the Aja ekapad, or one-footed goat, who watched the revolutions of the solar disk, and the one-legged bird of Russian mythology, associated with a revolving house and fire-drill. In the Mexican Codices the Mexican Tezcatlipoca, held by one foot to the centre of the north, describes a circle around this. His foot evidently constitutes the fire-drill, which, inserted in the socket, causes smoke, also rain and a serpent to issue from it (see 5 and 6). One figure, representing one leg only in the fire-socket, and a head, exhibiting a small, smoking fire-socket, appears, in the light of comparative research, as a cursive method of representing the fire-drill god, universally associated with Ursa Major.

It is remarkable that, in one case water and in another smoke, indicating fire, issues from the socket of Tezcatlipoca’s fire-drill, and that, opposite to the picture in the Borgian Codex, representing the kindling of fire on the fire-altar, we have the image of a pool of water from which four figures spring toward the cardinal points (see fig. 29).

It is only after recognizing that, like the people of the Old World, the Mexicans associated with the fire-drill and socket not only the distribution of fire and heat, but also of water, that we also fully grasp the symbolism of the symbol of the “Black or Night Sun,” from the “Life of the Indians,” which is but one of many simple forms exhibiting main features which recur on the highly elaborated Mexican stone of the Great Plan (fig. 73_b_). When placed in juxtaposition the undoubted resemblance between the Babylonian image of Shamash and the Mexican image, as well as the deep-seated identity of these two quadruplicate symbols stands out clearly: in the Babylonian, wavy lines emanating from the centre convey the idea of some fluid essence. In the Mexican, instead of the wavy lines, the conventional representation of a drop of water is depicted—the idea in both cases being obviously identical and agreeing with the primeval universal conception of heat or fire, and water emanating from a common source, and flowing to the cardinal points. In both cases an axle or socket is represented, and it is instructive to study the different ways in which the symbol recurs in the Mexican Codices.

Figure 73.

Referring back to fig. 1, 1, reproduced from the Codex Borgia, we see the axle with rays issuing from a circular band of water. A receptacle filled with water occupies the centre and contains a tecpatl, the symbol of the north, the same associated with the fire-drill god in the next figure. In fig. 1, 4, the central fountain is surrounded, as in many instances, by stars which connect it with the nocturnal heaven, and it contains a rabbit=tochtli, the rebus figure employed to express the word octli, by which the rain was designated as “earth wine” (see pp. 95 and 185).

As I write, I have before me a whole series of painted representations from the Codices of what has heretofore been misinterpreted as images of the diurnal sun. In some of these the open centre is painted blue or green, in others it is filled by a heart from which flows, in some cases, a stream of blood, the essence of life. In several instances a tree with four main branches grows from the centre.(148) In one case the tree grows from a pool and holds in its branches the image of the axle, in the centre of which, as in the Humboldt Tablet preserved at the Berlin Museum, a figure is seated. The centres of others exhibit the head of a divinity painted red, a single eye, or the ollin. All examples establish the fact that the Mexican “axle of the North” represented fire and water emanating from a single source. In notable examples, where the axle is carved in stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is situated. An analogous but shallow depression occurs in the great circular monument, the Conquest Stone of Mexico (see p. 259), around which Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed fire-drill god, is represented sixteen times, each time in the act of receiving the enforced homage of the chief or chieftainess of a different locality.

The above monuments, as well as a rudely-carved representation of the “sun” recently discovered and unearthed by Dr. Ed. Seler, lying on a substructure of stones in the centre of an open space, presumably a market place, definitely proves that the design was intended to be placed in a horizontal position. This intention has already been noted in the case of the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico (fig. 56), on which the rays and intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of the divine Twain.

A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as far as is known, employed no means of extracting oil or juice or of grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process,(149) come to employ as a sacred symbol, the axle or “mill-stone” which, in India, had been adopted as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the fire-drill and the oil-press?

The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was associated in Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards described as a “stone wheel,” is termed in the Nahuatl text as a “te-malacatl” _i. e._ a “stone whorl.” Further evidence of the close association of such “stone whorls” with thread or cord, the product of spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was attached by one foot to the open centre of the “stone whorl” and circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was associated with the cosmical axle, or disk.

It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the Assyrian-Babylonian image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot, oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any conclusions or conjectures on this point, however, a number of other questions must be investigated. One fact, however, stands out quite clearly: Whereas in figure 73, _b_, we have the rudimentary form of the quadruplicate symbol, closely resembling that which was already ancient and almost obsolete in Babylonia in the ninth century B.C. and pertained to a cult of Shamash, the North and Heaven, which had flourished in that country about 1850 B.C., the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico represents the highly advanced development and elaboration of the identical cult, as actually established there until the year 1519 of our era.

Pausing here and looking back upon the foregoing summary of the universal spread of identical forms of social organization and of rituals suggested by the use of the fire-drill, in association with a primitive pole-star cult, there are a few distinct and unrelated points which claim special attention: First of all, the identity in the form of the fire-altar and the cult of the fire-socket, among the Maghas and Nahushas of India and the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico. Secondly, the striking resemblance of plan and numerical scheme which unquestionably existed between the ideal “divine polities,” recorded by Plato, and the states which actually existed, of ancient Peru and Mexico. It is impossible to read Plato’s scheme of an all-pervading division into 12, and his plan for the laying out of the capital and state and not to recognize the fact that, in Peru, as set forth on pp. 133-149 of the present work, these identical principles were actually carried out by the alien Incas who, in comparatively modern times, collected the natives together and organized them into a settled community. Thirdly, the undeniable fact that the numerical scheme of the Maya and Mexican Calendar and state-organization is identical with that adopted by Constantine, in establishing New Rome.

Postponing a closer examination of these points until further on, let us now continue our comparative review.

The universal spread of the identical scheme of organization, vouched for by documentary evidence, is further demonstrated by the results of archaeological and historical research and a comparative study of ancient symbolism. Thus it is impossible not to admit the striking and deep-seated analogy between the Assyrian four-fold division of city and state, the title “lord of the four regions” and the image of Shamash, the “four-spoked wheel;” the Indian, Egyptian and Grecian philosophical conceptions of four elements, culminating in Plato’s Cosmos and Theos (an entity, spherical in shape, incorporating four elements) and, for instance, the quadruplicate symbol carved in the centre of the Mexican Cosmical Tablet, which exhibits the symbols of the same four elements embodied in a single symbol, representing the supreme power, who is thus proven to have been conceived by the Mexicans, as well as by the Peruvians, as “the Air, Earth, Fire and Water in One,” or the source of the four elements.(150)

When it is likewise considered that the Mexicans employed the divine title, “four times lord,” that the Maya title “Kukulcan,” signifies the “Divine Four,” that the ancient map of Mayapan proves that, like the Kushite confederacy, and the kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt and Peru, it was a “Four provinces in One” or a “four-fold state,” the identity of the principles underlying the archaic civilizations of the Old and New World becomes more and more apparent. It likewise becomes evident that in each of these countries the significance and symbolism of the archaic cross-symbol and swastika must have been identical, and that, like the pyramid (the form of which, in the ancient Greek alphabet, is given to the letter delta which expresses, numerically, four, a quatuor, or 4,000) and the square stone altar or column, it figured the Four in One, the mystic Five or the Four and all-embracing One. The following array of facts demonstrates further the universal association of archaic cross-symbolism with the conception of an all-embracing, stable, central power.

A striking demonstration of this is furnished by the diagonal cross, employed as a Chinese character, to express the word wū=five, just as it is used, in Egyptian hieratic script, to express the syllables uu, un or ur (see fig. 60). Sometimes, in Chinese, a horizontal line is drawn above the cross and another beneath it, and John Chalmers informs us that, according to the Shoh Wan, this “full form means the five elements between heaven and earth, the upper line being heaven and the lower earth.” The sign thus obviously constituted an image of the Cosmos, the 5+2=heaven and earth, thus furnishing the familiar seven directions in space, the chief and synopsis of which is the sacred Centre.

The association, in ancient America, of the cross-shape with central stable power, has already been discussed in the case of the Copan swastika, p. 222. At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelæ found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. 220, namely, that the personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelæ, were high-priest rulers, who bore the title “Divine Four,” and were “rulers of the four regions.”

Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon’s report, published in vol. I, no. I, of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that, beneath several stelæ examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of these artificially cosmical centres.