ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART IV

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER I

TRADITIONS OF ATLANTIS

WE find allusions to the Atlanteans in the most ancient traditions of many different races.

The great antediluvian king of the Mussulman was Shedd-Ad-Ben-Ad, or Shed-Ad, the son of Ad, or Atlantis.

Among the Arabians the first inhabitants of that country are known as the Adites, from their progenitor, who is called Ad, the grandson of Ham. These Adites were probably the people of Atlantis or Ad-lantis. "They are personified by a monarch to whom everything is ascribed, and to whom is assigned several centuries of life." ("Ancient History of the East," Lenormant and Chevallier, vol. ii., p. 295.), Ad came from the northeast. "He married a thousand wives, had four thousand sons, and lived twelve hundred years. His descendants multiplied considerably. After his death his sons Shadid and Shedad reigned in succession over the Adites. In the time of the latter the people of Ad were a thousand tribes, each composed of several thousands of men. Great conquests are attributed to Shedad; he subdued, it is said, all Arabia and Irak. The migration of the Canaanites, their establishment in Syria, and the Shepherd invasion of Egypt are, by many Arab writers, attributed to an expedition of Shedad." (Ibid., p. 296.)

Shedad built a palace ornamented with superb columns, and surrounded by a magnificent garden. It was called Irem. "It was a paradise that Shedad had built in imitation of the celestial Paradise, of whose delights he had heard." ("Ancient History of the East," p. 296.) In other words, an ancient, sun-worshipping, powerful, and conquering race overran Arabia at the very dawn of history; they were the sons of Adlantis: their king tried to create a palace and garden of Eden like that of Atlantis.

The Adites are remembered by the Arabians as a great and civilized race. "They are depicted as men of gigantic stature; their strength was equal to their size, and they easily moved enormous blocks of stone." (Ibid.) They were architects and builders. "They raised many monuments of their power; and hence, among the Arabs, arose the custom of calling great ruins "buildings of the Adites." To this day the Arabs say "as old as Ad." In the Koran allusion is made to the edifices they built on "high places for vain uses;" expressions proving that their "idolatry was considered to have been tainted with Sabsm or star-worship." (Ibid.) "In these legends," says Lenormant, "we find traces of a wealthy nation, constructors of great buildings, with an advanced civilization, analogous to that of Chaldea, professing a religion similar to the Babylonian; a nation, in short, with whom material progress was allied to great moral depravity and obscene rites. These facts must be true and strictly historical, for they are everywhere met with among the Cushites, as among the Canaanites, their brothers by origin."

Nor is there wanting a great catastrophe which destroys the whole Adite nation, except a very few who escape because they had renounced idolatry. A black cloud assails their country, from which proceeds a terrible hurricane (the water-spout?) which sweeps away everything.

The first Adites were followed by a second Adite race; probably the colonists who had escaped the Deluge. The centre of its power was the country of Sheba proper. This empire endured for a thousand years. The Adites are represented upon the Egyptian monuments as very much like the Egyptians themselves; in other words, they were a red or sunburnt race: their great temples were pyramidal, surmounted by buildings. ("Ancient History of the East," p. 321.) "The Sabns," says Agatharchides ("De Mari Erythr," p. 102), "have in their houses an incredible number of vases, and utensils of all sorts, of gold and silver, beds and tripods of silver, and all the furniture of astonishing richness. Their buildings have porticos with columns sheathed with gold, or surmounted by capitals of silver. On the friezes, ornaments, and the framework of the doors they place plates of gold incrusted with precious stones."

All this reminds one of the descriptions given by the Spaniards of the temples of the sun in Peru.

The Adites worshipped the gods of the Phnicians under names but slightly changed; "their religion was especially solar... It was originally a religion without images, without idolatry, and without a priesthood." (Ibid., p. 325.) They "worshipped the sun from the tops of pyramids." (Ibid.) They believed in the immortality of the soul.

In all these things we see resemblances to the Atlanteans.

The great Ethiopian or Cushite Empire, which in the earliest ages prevailed, as Mr. Rawlinson says, "from the Caucasus to the Indian Ocean, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the mouth of the Ganges," was the empire of Dionysos, the empire of "Ad," the empire of Atlantis. El Eldrisi called the language spoken to this day by the Arabs of Mahrah, in Eastern Arabia, "the language of the people of Ad," and Dr. J. H. Carter, in the Bombay Journal of July, 1847, says, "It is the softest and sweetest language I have ever heard." It would be interesting to compare this primitive tongue with the languages of Central America.

The god Thoth of the Egyptians, who was the god of a foreign country, and who invented letters, was called At-hothes.

We turn now to another ancient race, the Indo-European family--the Aryan race.

In Sanscrit Adim, means first. Among the Hindoos the first man was Ad-ima, his wife was Heva. They dwelt upon an island, said to be Ceylon; they left the island and reached the main-land, when, by a great convulsion of nature, their communication with the parent land was forever cut off. (See "Bible in India.")

Here we seem to have a recollection of the destruction of Atlantis.

Mr. Bryant says, "Ad and Ada signify the first." The Persians called the first man "Ad-amah." "Adon" was one of the names of the Supreme God of the Phnicians; from it was derived the name of the Greek god "Ad-onis." The Arv-ad of Genesis was the Ar-Ad of the Cushites; it is now known as Ru-Ad. It is a series of connected cities twelve miles in length, along the coast, full of the most massive and gigantic ruins.

Sir William Jones gives the tradition of the Persians as to the earliest ages. He says: "Moshan assures us that in the opinion of the best informed Persians the first monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth, was Mashab-Ad; that he received from the Creator, and promulgated among men a sacred book, in a heavenly language, to which the Mussulman author gives the Arabic title of 'Desatir,' or 'Regulations.' Mashab-Ad was, in the opinion of the ancient Persians, the person left at the end of the last great cycle, and consequently the father of the present world. He and his wife having survived the former cycle, were blessed with a numerous progeny; he planted gardens, invented ornaments, forged weapons, taught men to take the fleece from sheep and make clothing; he built cities, constructed palaces, fortified towns, and introduced arts and commerce."

We have already seen that the primal gods of this people are identical with the gods of the Greek mythology, and were originally kings of Atlantis. But it seems that these ancient divinities are grouped together as "the Aditya;" and in this name "Ad-itya" we find a strong likeness to the Semitic "Adites," and another reminiscence of Atlantis, or Adlantis. In corroboration of this view we find,

1. The gods who are grouped together as the Aditya are the most ancient in the Hindoo mythology.

2. They are all gods of light, or solar gods. (Whitney's Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 39.)

3. There are twelve of them. (Ibid.)

4. These twelve gods presided over twelve months in the year.

5. They are a dim recollection of a very remote past. Says Whitney, "It seems as if here was an attempt on the part of the Indian religion to take a new development in a moral direction, which a change in the character and circumstances of the people has caused to fail in the midst, and fall back again into forgetfulness, while yet half finished and indistinct." (Ibid.)

6. These gods are called "the sons of Aditi," just as in the Bible we have allusions to "the sons of Adab," who were the first metallurgists and musicians. "Aditi is not a goddess. She is addressed as a queen's daughter, she of fair children."

7. The Aditya "are elevated above all imperfections; they do not sleep or wink." The Greeks represented their gods as equally wakeful and omniscient. "Their character is all truth; they hate and punish guilt." We have seen the same traits ascribed by the Greeks to the Atlantean kings.

8. The sun is sometimes addressed as an Aditya.

9. Among the Aditya is Varuna, the equivalent of Uranos, whose identification with Atlantis I have shown. In the vedas Varuna is "the god of the ocean."

10. The Aditya represent an earlier and purer form of religion: "While in hymns to the other deities long: life, wealth, power, are the objects commonly prayed for, of the Aditya is craved purity, forgiveness of sin, freedom from guilt, and repentance." ("Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 43.)

11. The Aditya, like the Adites, are identified with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Yama is the god of the abode beyond the grave. In the Persian story he appears as Yima, and "is made ruler of the golden age and founder of the Paradise." (Ibid., p. 45.) (See "Zamna," p. 167 ante.)

In view of all these facts, one cannot doubt that the legends of the "sons of Ad," "the Adites," and "the Aditya," all refer to Atlantis.

Mr. George Smith, in the Chaldean account of the Creation (p. 78), deciphered from the Babylonian tablets, shows that there was an original race of men at the beginning of Chaldean history, a dark race, the Zalmat-qaqadi, who were called Ad-mi, or Ad-ami; they were the race "who had fallen," and were contradistinguished from "the Sarku, or light race." The "fall" probably refers to their destruction by a deluge, in consequence of their moral degradation and the indignation of the gods. The name Adam is used in these legends, but as the name of a race, not of a man.

Genesis (chap. v., 2) distinctly says that God created man male and female, and "called their name Adam." That is to say, the people were the Ad-ami, the people of "Ad," or Atlantis. "The author of the Book of Genesis," says M. Schbel, "in speaking of the men who were swallowed up by the Deluge, always describes them as 'Haadam,' 'Adamite humanity.'" The race of Cain lived and multiplied far away from the land of Seth; in other words, far from the land destroyed by the Deluge. Josephus, who gives us the primitive traditions of the Jews, tells us (chap. ii., p. 42) that "Cain travelled over many countries" before he came to the land of Nod. The Bible does not tell us that the race of Cain perished in the Deluge. "Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah;" he did not call on his name; the people that were destroyed were the "sons of Jehovah." All this indicates that large colonies had been sent out by the mother-land before it sunk in the sea.

Across the ocean we find the people of Guatemala claiming their descent from a goddess called At-tit, or grandmother, who lived for four hundred years, and first taught the worship of the true God, which they afterward forgot. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 75.) While the famous Mexican calendar stone shows that the sun was commonly called tonatiuh but when it was referred to as the god of the Deluge it was then called Atl-tona-ti-uh, or At-onatiuh. (Valentini's "Mexican Calendar Stone," art. Maya Archlogy, p. 15.)

We thus find the sons of Ad at the base of all the most ancient races of men, to wit, the Hebrews, the Arabians, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the Central Americans; testimony that all these races traced their beginning back to a dimly remembered Ad-lantis.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

CHAPTER IX

ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE SKULL.

AN examination of the American monuments shows (see figure on page 269) that the people represented were in the habit of flattening the skull by artificial means. The Greek and Roman writers had mentioned this practice, but it was long totally forgotten by the civilized world, until it was discovered, as an unheard-of wonder, to be the usage among the Carib Islanders, and several Indian tribes in North America. It was afterward found that the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans practised this art: several flattened Peruvian skulls are depicted in Morton's "Crania Americana." It is still in use among the Flat-head Indians of the north-western part of the United States.

In 1849 a remarkable memoir appeared from the pen of M. Rathke, showing that similar skulls had been found near Kertsch, in the Crimea, and calling attention to the book of Hippocrates, "De Aeris, Aquis et Locu," lib. iv., and a passage of Strabo, which speaks of the practice among the Scythians. In 1854 Dr. Fitzinger published a learned memoir on the skulls of the Avars, a branch of the Uralian race of Turks. He shows that the practice of flattening the head had existed from an early date throughout the East, and described an ancient skull, greatly distorted by artificial means, which had lately been found in Lower Austria. Skulls similarly flattened have been found in Switzerland and Savoy. The Huns under Attila had the same practice of flattening the heads. Professor Anders Retzius proved (see "Smithsonian Report," 1859) that the custom still exists in the south of France, and in parts of Turkey.

"Not long since a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap,

STUCCO BAS-RELIEF IN THE PALACE OF PALENQUE.

while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to this day." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 241.)

Professor Wilson remarks:

"Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact brought under our notice, by the disclosures of ancient barrows and cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the north of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores of the German Ocean to Behring's Strait." ("Smithsonian Report," 1862, p. 286.)

Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the Caledonians and Scandinavians in the earliest times; and Dr. Thurman has treated of the same peculiarity among the Anglo-Saxons. Crania Britannica," chap. iv., p. 38.)

ANCIENT SWISS SKULL.

Here, then, is an extraordinary and unnatural practice which has existed from the highest antiquity, over vast regions of country, on both sides of the Atlantic, and which is perpetuated unto this day in races as widely separated as the Turks, the French, and the Flat-head Indians. Is it possible to explain this except by supposing that it originated from some common centre?

The annexed out represents an ancient Swiss skull, from a cemetery near Lausanne, from a drawing of Frederick Troyon. Compare this with the illustration given on page 271, which represents a Peruvian flat-head, copied from Morton's "Ethnography and Archlogy of the American Aborigines," 1846. This skull is shockingly distorted. The dotted lines indicate the course of the bandages by which the skull was deformed.

The following heads are from Del Rio's "Account of Palenque," copied into Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 440. They show that the receding forehead was a natural characteristic of the ancient people of Central America. The same form of head has been found even in fossil skulls. We may therefore conclude that the skull-flattening, which we find to have been practised in both the Old and New Worlds, was an attempt of other races to imitate the form of skull of a people whose likenesses are found on the monuments of Egypt and of America. It has been shown that this peculiar form of the head was present even in the ftus of the Peruvian mummies.

PERUVIAN SKULL.

CHINOOK (FLAT-HEAD), AFTER CATLIN.

Hippocrates tells us that the practice among the Scythians was for the purpose of giving a certain aristocratic distinction.

HEADS FROM PALENQUE.

Amed Thierry, in his "History of Attila," says the Huns used it for the same reason; and the same purpose influences the Indians of Oregon.

Dr. Lund, a Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas-Geraes, Brazil, ancient human bones associated with the remains of extinct quadrupeds. "These skulls," says Lund, "show not only the peculiarity of the American race but in an excessive degree, even to the entire disappearance of the forehead." Sir Robert Schomburgh found on some of the affluents of the Orinoco a tribe known as Frog Indians, whose heads were flattened by Nature, as shown in newly-born children.

In the accompanying plate we show the difference in the conformation of the forehead in various races.

OUTLINES OF SKULLS OF DIFFERENT RACES.

The upper dotted line, A, represents the shape of the European forehead; the next line, B, that of the Australian; the next, C, that of the Mound Builder of the United States; the next, D, that of the Guanche of the Canary Islands; and the next, E, that of a skull from the Inca cemetery of Peru. We have but to compare these lines with the skulls of the Egyptians, Kurds, and the heroic type of heads in the statues of the gods of Greece, to see that there was formerly an ancient race marked by a receding forehead; and that the practice of flattening the skull was probably an attempt to approximate the shape of the head to this standard of an early civilized and dominant people.

Not only do we find the same receding forehead in the skulls of the ancient races of Europe and America, and the same attempt to imitate this natural and peculiar conformation by artificial flattening of the head, but it has been found (see Henry Gillman's "Ancient Man in Michigan," "Smithsonian Report," 1875, p. 242) that the Mound Builders and Peruvians of America, and the Neolithic people of France and the Canary Islands, had alike an extraordinary custom of boring a circular bole in the top of the skulls of their dead, so that the soul might readily pass in and out. More than this, it has been found that in all these ancient populations the skeletons exhibit a remarkable degree of platicnemism, or flattening of the tibior leg bones. (lbid., 1873, p.367.) In this respect the Mound Builders of Michigan were identical with the man of Cro Magnon and the ancient inhabitants of Wales.

The annexed ancient Egyptian heads, copied from the monuments, indicate either that the people of the Nile deformed their heads by pressure upon the front of the skull, or that

EGYPTIAN HEADS.

there was some race characteristic which gave this appearance to their heads. These heads are all the heads of priests, and therefore represented the aristocratic class.

The first illustration below is taken from a stucco relief found in a temple at Palenque, Central America.

CENTRAL AMERICAN HEAD.

EGYPTIAN HEAD.

The second is from an Egyptian monument of the time of Rameses IV.

The outline drawing on the following page shows the form of the skull of the royal Inca line: the receding forehead here seems to be natural, and not the result of artificial compression.

Both illustrations at the bottom of the preceding page show the same receding form of the forehead, due to either artificial deformation of the skull or to a common race characteristic.

PERUVIAN INCA SKULL, FROM THE ANCIENT CEMETARY OF PAHACAMAC.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRONZE AGE IN EUROPE.

THERE exist in Europe the evidences of three different ages of human development:

1. The Stone Age, which dates back to a vast antiquity. It is subdivided into two periods: an age of rough stone implements; and a later age, when these implements were ground smooth and made in improved forms.

2. The Bronze Age, when the great mass of implements were manufactured of a compound metal, consisting of about nine parts of copper and one part of tin.

3. An age when iron superseded bronze for weapons and cutting tools, although bronze still remained in use for ornaments. This age continued down to what we call the Historical Period, and embraces our present civilization; its more ancient remains are mixed with coins of the Gauls, Greeks, and Romans.

The Bronze Period has been one of the perplexing problems of European scientists. Articles of bronze are found over nearly all that continent, but in especial abundance in Ireland and Scandinavia. They indicate very considerable refinement and civilization upon the part of the people who made them; and a wide diversity of opinion has prevailed as to who that people were and where they dwelt.

In the first place, it was observed that the age of bronze (a compound of copper and tin) must, in the natural order of things, have been preceded by an age when copper and tin were used separately, before the ancient metallurgists had discovered the art of combining them, and yet in Europe the remains of no such age have been found. Sir John Lubbock says ("Prehistoric Times," p. 59), "The absence of implements made either of copper or tin seems to me to indicate that the art of making bronze was introduced into, not invented in, Europe." The absence of articles of copper is especially marked, nearly all the European specimens of copper implements have been found in Ireland; and yet out of twelve hundred and eighty-three articles of the Bronze Age, in the great museum at Dublin, only thirty celts and one sword-blade are said to be made of pure copper; and even as to some of these there seems to be a question.

Where on the face of the earth are we to find a Copper Age? Is it in the barbaric depths of that Asia out of whose uncivilized tribes all civilization is said to have issued? By no means. Again we are compelled to turn to the West. In America, from Bolivia to Lake Superior, we find everywhere the traces of a long-enduring Copper Age; bronze existed, it is true, in Mexico, but it held the same relation to the copper as the copper held to the bronze in Europe--it was the exception as against the rule. And among the Chippeways of the shores of Lake Superior, and among them alone, we find any traditions of the origin of the manufacture of copper implements; and on the shores of that lake we find pure copper, out of which the first metal tools were probably hammered before man had learned to reduce the ore or run the metal into moulds. And on the shores of this same American lake we find the ancient mines from which some people, thousands of years ago, derived their supplies of copper.

Sir W. R. Wilde says, "It is remarkable that so few antique copper implements have been found (in Europe), although a knowledge of that metal must have been the preliminary stage in the manufacture of bronze." He thinks that this may be accounted for by supposing that "but a short time elapsed between the knowledge of smelting and casting copper ore and the introduction of tin, and the subsequent manufacture and use of bronze."

IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE.

But here we have in America the evidence that thousands of years must have elapsed during which copper was used alone, before it was discovered that by adding one-tenth part of tin it gave a harder edge, and produced a superior metal.

The Bronze Age cannot be attributed to the Roman civilization. Sir John Lubbock shows ("Prehistoric Times," p. 21) that bronze weapons have never been found associated with Roman coins or pottery, or other remains of the Roman Period; that bronze articles have been found in the greatest abundance in countries like Ireland and Denmark, which were never invaded by Roman armies; and that the character of the ornamentation of the works of bronze is not Roman in character, and that the Roman bronze contained a large proportion of lead, which is never the case in that of the Bronze Age.

It has been customary to assume that the Bronze Age was due to the Phnicians, but of late the highest authorities have taken issue with this opinion. Sir John Lubbock (Ibid., p. 73) gives the following reasons why the Phnicians could not have been the authors of the Bronze Age: First, the ornamentation is different. In the Bronze Age "this always consists of geometrical figures, and we rarely, if ever, find upon them representations of animals and plants, while on the ornamented shields, etc., described by Homer, as well as in the decoration of Solomon's Temple, animals and plants were abundantly represented." The cuts on p. 242 will show the character of the ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In the next place, the form of burial is different in the Bronze Age from that of the Phnicians. "In the third place, the Phnicians, so far as we know them, were well acquainted with the use of iron; in Homer we find the warriors already armed with iron weapons, and the tools used in preparing the materials for Solomon's Temple were of this metal."

This view is also held by M. de Fallenberg, in the "Bulletin de la Soci des Sciences" of Berne. (See "Smithsonian Rep.," 1865-66, p. 383.) He says,

ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE.

"It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phnicians--the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans--should have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phnicians carried to the people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead. If the civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phnicians would have done as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phnicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the south-east."

Professor E. Desor, in his work on the "Lacustrian Constructions of the Lake of Neuchatel," says,

"The Phnicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the Scandinavian coasts. . . . The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with the use of iron as well as the Phnicians, and it has already been seen that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch. . . . We must look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phnicians in attempting to identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes. It will be the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of Phnicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before the discovery of iron. We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing to prove that the Phnicians were the first navigators. History, on the Contrary, positively mentions prisoners, under the name of Tokhari, who were vanquished in a naval battle fought by Rhamses III. in the thirteenth century before our era, and whose physiognomy, according to Morton, would indicate the Celtic type. Now there is room to suppose that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic. If such a commerce really existed before the time of the Phnicians, it would not be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended also to the people of the age of bronze in Switzerland. The introduction of bronze would thus ascend to a very high antiquity, doubtless beyond the limits of the most ancient European races."

For the merchants of the Bronze Age we must look beyond even the Tokhari, who were contemporaries of the Phnicians.

CELTIC WARRIOR, FROM EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS.

The Tokhari, we have seen, are represented as taken prisoners, in a sea-fight with Rhamses III., of the twentieth dynasty, about the thirteenth century B.C. They are probably the Tochari of Strabo. The accompanying figure represents one of these people as they appear upon the Egyptian monuments. (See Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 108.) Here we have, not an inhabitant of Atlantis, but probably a representative of one of the mixed races that sprung from its colonies.

Dr. Morton thinks these people, as painted on the Egyptian monuments, to have "strong Celtic features. Those familiar with the Scotch Highlanders may recognize a speaking likeness."

It is at least interesting to have a portrait of one of the daring race who more than three thousand years ago left the west of Europe in their ships to attack the mighty power of Egypt.

They were troublesome to the nations of the East for many centuries; for in 700 B.C. we find them depicted on the Assyrian monuments. This figure represents one of the Tokhari of the time of Sennacherib. It will be observed that the headdress (apparently of feathers) is the same in both portraits, al, though separated by a period of six hundred years.

It is more reasonable to suppose that the authors of the Bronze Age of Europe were the people described by Plato, who were workers in metal, who were highly civilized, who preceded in time all the nations which wecall ancient. It was this people who passed through an age of copper before they reached the age of bronze, and whose colonies in America represented this older form of metallurgy as it existed for many generations.

CELTIC WARRIOR, FROM ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS.

Professor Desor says:

"We are asked if the preparation of bronze was not an indigenous invention which had originated on the slopes of the Alps? . . . In this idea we acquiesced for a moment. But we are met by the objection that, if this were so, the natives, like the ancient tribes of America, would have commenced by manufacturing utensils of copper; yet thus far no utensils of this metal have been found except a few in the strand of Lake Garda. The great majority of metallic objects is of bronze, which necessitated the employment of tin, and this could not be obtained except by commerce, inasmuch as it is a stranger to the Alps. It would appear, therefore, more natural to admit that the art of combining tin with copper--in other words, that the manufacture of bronze--was of foreign importation." He then shows that, although copper ores are found in the Alps, the probability is that even "the copper also was of foreign importation. Now, in view of the prodigious quantity of bronze manufactured at that epoch, this single branch of commerce must itself have necessitated the most incessant commercial communications."

And as this commerce could not, as we have seen, have been carried on by the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, or Phnicians, because their civilizations flourished during the Iron Age, to which this age of bronze was anterior, where then are we to look for a great maritime and commercial people, who carried vast quantities of copper, tin, and bronze (unalloyed by the lead of the south of Europe) to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy? Where can we find them save in that people of Atlantis, whose ships, docks, canals, and commerce provoked the astonishment of the ancient Egyptians, as recorded by Plato. The Toltec root for water is Atl; the Peruvian word for copper is Anti (from which, probably, the Andes derived their name, as there was a province of Anti on their slopes): may it not be that the name of Atlantis is derived from these originals, and signified the copper island, or the copper mountains in the sea? And from these came the thousands of tons of copper and tin that must, during the Bronze Age, have been introduced into Europe? There are no ancient works to indicate that the tin mines of Cornwall were worked for any length of time in the early days (see "Prehistoric Times," p. 74). Morlot has pointed out that the bronze implements of Hallstadt, in Austria, were of foreign origin, because they contain no lead or silver.

Or, if we are to seek for the source of the vast amount of copper brought into Europe somewhere else than in Atlantis, may it not be that these supplies were drawn in large part from the shores of Lake Superior in America? The mining operations of some ancient people were there carried on upon a gigantic scale, not only along the shores of the lake but even far out upon its islands. At Isle Royale vast works were found, reaching to a depth of sixty feet; great intelligence was shown in following up the richest veins even when interrupted; the excavations were drained by underground drains. On three sections of land on this island the amount of mining exceeded that mined in twenty years in one of our largest mines, with a numerous force constantly employed. In one place the excavations extended in a nearly continuous line for two miles. No remains of the dead and no mounds are found near these mines: it would seem, therefore, that the miners came from a distance, and carried their dead back with them. Henry Gillman ("Smithsonian Rep.," 1873, p. 387) supposes that the curious so-called "Garden Beds" of Michigan were the fields from which they drew their supplies of food. He adds,

"The discoveries in Isle Royale throw a new light on the character of the 'Mound Builders,' giving us a totally distinct conception of them, and dignifying them with something of the prowess and spirit of adventure which we associate with the higher races. The copper, the result of their mining, to be available, must, in all probability, have been conveyed in vessels, great or small, across a treacherous and stormy sea, whose dangers are formidable to us now, being dreaded even by our largest craft, and often proving their destruction. Leaving their homes, those men dared to face the unknown, to brave the hardships and perils of the deep and of the wilderness, actuated by an ambition which we to-day would not be ashamed to acknowledge."

Such vast works in so remote a land must have been inspired by the commercial necessities of some great civilization; and why not by that ancient and mighty people who covered Europe, Asia, and Africa with their manufactures of bronze--and who possessed, as Plato tells us, enormous fleets trading to all parts of the inhabited world--whose cities roared with the continual tumult of traffic, whose dominion extended to Italy and Egypt, and who held parts of "the great opposite continent" of America under their control? A continuous water-way led, from the island of Atlantis to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence up the Mississippi River and its tributaries almost to these very mines of Lake Superior.

Arthur Mitchell says ("The Past in the Present," p. 132),

"The discovery of bronze, and the knowledge of how to make it, may, as a mere intellectual effort, be regarded as rather above than below the effort which is involved in the discovery and use of iron. As regards bronze, there is first the discovery of copper, and the way of getting it from its ore; then the discovery of tin, and the way to get it from its ore; and then the further discovery that, by an admixture of tin with copper in proper proportions, an alloy with the qualities of a hard metal can be produced. It is surely no mistake to say that there goes quite as much thinking to this as to the getting of iron from its ore, and the conversion of that iron into steel. There is a considerable leap from stone to bronze, but the leap from bronze to iron is comparatively small. . . . It seems highly improbable, if not altogether absurd, that the human mind, at some particular stage of its development, should here, there, and everywhere--independently, and as the result of reaching that stage--discover that an alloy of copper and tin yields a hard metal useful in the manufacture of tools and weapons. There is nothing analogous to such an occurrence in the known history of human progress. It is infinitely more probable that bronze was discovered in one or more centres by one or more men, and that its first use was solely in such centre or centres. That the invention should then be perfected, and its various applications found out, and that it should thereafter spread more or less broadly over the face of the earth, is a thing easily understood."

We will find the knowledge of bronze wherever the colonies of Atlantis extended, and nowhere else; and Plato tells us that the people of Atlantis possessed and used that metal.

The indications are that the Bronze Age represents the coming in of a new people--a civilized people. With that era, it is believed, appears in Europe for the first time the domesticated animals-the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the hog. (Morlot, "Smithsonian Rep.," 1860, p. 311.) It was a small race, with very small hands; this is shown in the size of the sword-hilts: they are not large enough to be used by the present races of Europe. They were a race with long skulls, as contradistinguished. from the round heads of the Stone Period. The drawings on the following page represent the types of the two races.

This people must have sent out colonies to the shores of France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, who bore with them the arts and implements of civilized life.

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A SKULL OF THE AGE OF STONE, DENMARK ( NATURAL SIZE).

A SKULL OF THE EARLIEST TIMES OF THE AGE OF IRON, DEMARK ( NATURAL SIZE).

They raised crops of grain, as is proved by the bronze sickles found in different parts of Europe.

It is not even certain that their explorations did not reach to Iceland. Says Humboldt,

"When the Northmen first landed in Iceland (A.D. 875), although the country was uninhabited, they found there Irish books, mass-bells, and other objects which had been left behind by earlier visitors, called Papar; these pap(fathers) were the clerici of Dicuil. If, then, as we may suppose from the testimony here referred to, these objects belonged to Irish monks (papar), who had come from the Faroe Islands, why should they have been termed in the native sagas 'West men' (Vestmen), 'who had come over the sea from the westward' (kommer til vestan um haf)?" (Humboldt's "Cosmos," vol. ii., 238.)

If they came "from the West" they could not have come from Ireland; and the Scandinavians may easily have mistaken Atlantean books and bells for Irish books and mass-bells. They do not say that there were any evidences that these relics belonged to a people who had recently visited the island; and, as they found the island uninhabited, it would be impossible for them to tell how many years or centuries had elapsed since the books and bells were left there.

The fact that the implements of the Bronze Age came from some common centre, and did not originate independently in different countries, is proved by the striking similarity which exists between the bronze implements of regions as widely separated as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, and Africa. It is not to be supposed that any overland communication existed in that early age between these countries; and the coincidence of design which we find to exist can only be accounted for by the fact that the articles of bronze were obtained from some sea-going people, who carried on a commerce at the same time with all these regions.

Compare, for instance, these two decorated bronze celts. the first from Ireland, the second from Denmark; and then compare both these with a stone celt found in a mound in Tennessee, given below. Here we have the same form precisely.

IRISH CELT.

DANISH CELT.

LEAF SHAPED BRONZE SWORDS.
 
STONE CELT, MOUND IN TENNESSEE.

Compare the bronze swords in the four preceding illustrations-from Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark--and then observe the same very peculiar shape--the leaf-shape, as it is called--in the stone sword from Big Harpeth River, Tennessee.

We shall find, as we proceed, that the Phnicians were unquestionably identified with Atlantis, and that it was probably from Atlantis they derived their god Baal, or Bel, or El, whose name crops out in the Bel of the Babylonians, the Elohim, and the Beelzebub of the Jews, and the Allah of the Arabians, And we find that this great deity, whose worship extended so widely among the Mediterranean races, was known and adored also upon the northern and western coasts of Europe. Professor Nilsson finds traces of Baal worship in Scandinavia; he tells us that the festival of Baal, or Balder, was celebrated on midsummer's night in Scania, and far up into Norway, almost to the Loffoden Islands, until within the last fifty years. The feast of Baal, or Beltinne, was celebrated in Ireland to a late period. I argue from these facts, not that the worship of Baal came to Ireland and Norway from Assyria or Arabia, but that the same great parent-race which carried the knowledge of Baal to the Mediterranean brought it also to the western coasts of Europe, and with the adoration of Baal they imported also the implements of bronze now found in such abundance in those regions.

The same similarity of form exists in the bronze knives from Denmark and Switzerland, as represented in the illustrations on p. 254.

In the central figure we have a representation of an Egyptian-looking man holding a cup before him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the magnetic needle, or "mariner's compass," dates back to the days of Hercules, and that it consisted ofa bar of magnetized iron floating upon a piece of wood in a cup.

BRONZE KNIVES FROM DENMARK.

BRONZE KNIVES FROM SWITZERLAND.

It is possible that in this ancient relic of the Bronze Age we have a representation of themagnetic cup. The magnetic needle must certainly have been an object of great interest to a people who, through its agency, were able to carry on commerce on all the shores of Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The second knife represented above has upon its handle a wheel, or cross surrounded by a ring, which, we shall see here after, was pre-eminently the symbol of Atlantis.

HUT URN, ALBANO.

If we are satisfied that these implements of bronze were the work of the artisans of Atlantis--of the antediluvians--they must acquire additional and extraordinary interest in our eyes, and we turn to them to earn something of the habits and customs of "that great, original, broad-eyed, sunken race."

We find among the relies of the Bronze Age an urn, which probably gives us some idea of the houses of the Atlanteans: it is evidently made to represent a house, and shows us even the rude fashion in which they fastened their doors. The Mandan Indiana built round houses very much of this appearance.

BRONZE LAKE VILLAGE.

The museum at Munich contains a very interesting piece of pottery, which is supposed to represent one of the lake villages or hamlets of the era when the people of Switzerland dwelt in houses erected on piles driven into the bottom of the lakes of that country. The accompanying illustration represents it. The double spiral ornament upon it shows that it belongs to the Bronze Age.

Among the curious relies of the Bronze Age are a number of razor-like knives; from which we may conclude that the habit of shaving the whole or some part of the face or head dates back to a great antiquity. The illustrations below represent them.

These knives were found in Denmark. The figures upon them represent ships, and it is not impossible that their curious appendages may have been a primitive kind of sails.

An examination of the second of these bronze knives reveals a singular feature: Upon the handle of the razor there are ten

BRONZE RAZOR-KNIVES.

series of lines; the stars in the sky are ten in number; and there were probably ten rings at the left-hand side of the figure, two being obliterated. There were, we are told, ten sub-kingdoms in Atlantis; and precisely as the thirteen stripes on the American flag symbolize the thirteen original States of the Union, so the recurrence of the figure ten in the emblems upon this bronze implement may have reference to the ten subdivisions of Atlantis.

ANCIENT GALLEY, FROM A ROMAN COIN.

The large object in the middle of this ship may be intended to represent a palm-tree--the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age. They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato described as filling the harbors of Atlantis.

SHIP OF WILLIAM THE CONQUERER.

We give on page 258 a representation of a bronze dagger found in Ireland, a strongly-made weapon. The cut below it represents the only implement of the Bronze Age yet found containing an inscription. It has been impossible to decipher it, or even to tell to what group of languages its alphabet belongs.

IRISH BRONZE DAGGER.

It is proper to note, in connection with a discussion of the Bronze Age, that our word bronze is derived from the Basque, or Iberian broncea, from which the Spanish derive bronce, and the Italians bronzo. The copper mines of the Basques were extensively worked at a very early age of the world, either by the people of Atlantis or by the Basques themselves, a colony from Atlantis. The probabilities are that the name for bronze, as well as the metal itself, dates back to Plato's island.

INSCRIBED CELT.

I give some illustrations on pages 239 and 242 of ornaments and implements of the Bronze Age, which may serve to throw light upon the habits of the ancient people. It will be seen that they had reached a considerable degree of civilization; that they raised crops of grain, and cut them with sickles; that their women ornamented themselves with bracelets, armlets, earrings, finger-rings, hair-pins, and amulets; that their mechanics used hammers, adzes, and chisels; and that they possessed very fair specimens of pottery. Sir John Lubbock argues ("Prehistoric Times," pp. 14, 16, etc.):

"A new civilization is indicated not only by the mere presence of bronze but by the beauty and variety of the articles made from it.

BRONZE HAIR PINS.

We find not only, as before, during the Stone Age, axes, arrows, and knives, but, in addition, swords, lances, sickles, fish-hooks, ear-rings, bracelets, pins, rings, and a variety of other articles."

If the bronze implements of Europe had been derived from the Phnicians, Greeks, Etruscans, or Romans, the nearer we approached the site of those nations the greater should be the number of bronze weapons we would find; but the reverse is the case. Sir John Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 20) shows that more than three hundred and fifty bronze swords have been found in Denmark, and that the Dublin Museum contains twelve hundred and eighty-three bronze weapons found in Ireland; "while," he says, "I have only been able to hear of six bronze swords in all Italy." This state of things is inexplicable unless we suppose that Ireland and Denmark received their bronze implements directly from some maritime nation whose site was practically as near their shores as it was to the shores of the Mediterranean. We have but to look at our map on page 43, ante, to see that Atlantis was considerably nearer to Ireland than it was to Italy.

The striking resemblance between the bronze implements found in the different portions of Europe is another proof that they were derived from one and the same source--from some great mercantile people who carried on their commerce at the same time with Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Switzerland, and Hungary. Mr. Wright ("Essays on Archlogy," p. 120) says, "Whenever we find the bronze swords or celts, whether in Ireland, in the far west, in Scotland, in distant Scandinavia, in Germany, or still farther east, in the Sclavonic countries, they are the same--not similar in character, but identical." Says Sir John Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 59), "Not only are the several varieties of celts found throughout Europe alike, but some of the swords, knives, daggers, etc., are so similar that they seem as if they must have been cast by the same maker."

VASES FROM MOUNDS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

What race was there, other than the people of Atlantis, that existed before the Iron Age-before the Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Phnician--that was civilized, that worked in metals, that carried on a commerce with all parts of Europe? Does history or tradition make mention of any such?

We find a great resemblance between the pottery of the Bronze Age in Europe and the pottery of the ancient inhabitants of America. The two figures on page 260 represent vases from one of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley. Compare them with the following from the lake dwellings of Switzerland:

VASES FROM SWITZERLAND.

It will be seen that these vases could scarcely stand upright unsupported; and we find that the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland had circles or rings of baked earth in which they placed them when in use, as in the annexed figure. The Mound Builders used the same contrivance.

ANCIENT SWISS VASE AND SUPPORTER.

The illustrations of discoidal stones on page 263 are from the "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 77. The objects represented were taken from an ancient mound in Illinois. It would be indeed surprising if two distinct peoples, living in two different continents, thousands of miles apart, should, without any intercourse with each other, not only form their vases in the same inconvenient form, but should hit upon the same expedient as a remedy.

BRONZE CHISELS.

We observe, in the American spear-head and the Swiss hatchets, on the opposite page, the same overlapping), of the metal around the staff, or handle--a very peculiar mode of uniting them together, which has now passed out of use.

SPIRALS, FROM SCOTLAND.

A favorite design of the men of the Bronze Age in Europe is the spiral or double-spiral form. It appears on the face of the urn in the shape of a lake dwelling, which is given on p. 255; it also appears in the rock sculptures of Argyleshire, Scotland, here shown.

SPIRAL, FROM NEW MEXICO.

We find the same figure in an ancient fragment of pottery from the Little Colorado, as given in the "United States Pacific Railroad Survey Report," vol. iii., p. 49, art. Pottery. It was part of a large vessel. The annexed illustration represents this.

The same design is also found in ancient rock etchings of the Zus of New Mexico, of which the cut on p. 265 is an illustration.

DISCOIDAL STONES, ILLINOIS.

COPPER SPEAR-HEAD, LAKE SUPERIOR.

BRONZE HATCHETS, SWITZERLAND.

SPIRAL, FROM NEW MEXICO.

We also find this figure repeated upon vase from a Mississippi Valley mound, which we give elsewhere. (See p. 260.)

It is found upon many of the monuments of Central America. In the Treasure House of Atreus, at Mycen Greece, a fragment of a pillar was found which is literally covered with this double spiral design. (See "Rosengarten's Architectural Styles," p, 59.)

This Treasure House of Atreus is one of the oldest buildings in Greece.

SHELL ORNAMENT, MOUND NEAR NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE.

We find the double-spiral figure upon a shell ornament found on the breast of a skeleton, in a carefully constructed stone coffin, in a mound near Nashville, Tennessee.

Lenormant remarks ("Anc. Civil.," vol. ii., p. 158) that the bronze implements found in Egypt, near Memphis, had been buried for six thousand years; and that at that time, as the Egyptians had a horror of the sea, some commercial nation must have brought the tin, of which the bronze was in part composed, from India, the Caucasus, or Spain, the nearest points to Egypt in which tin is found.

Heer has shown that the civilized plants of the lake dwellings are not of Asiatic, but of African, and, to a great extent, of Egyptian origin. Their stone axes are made largely of jade or nephrite, a mineral which, strange to say, geologists have not found in place on the continent of Europe." (Foster's "Prehistoric Races," p. 44.)

COPPER AXE, FROM A MOUND NEAR LAPORTE, INDIANA.

COPPER AXE, WATEFORD IRELAND.

Compare this picture of a copper axe from a mound near Laporte, Indiana, with this representation of a copper axe of the Bronze Age, found near Waterford, Ireland. Professor Foster pronounces them almost identical.

Compare this specimen of pottery from the lake dwellings of Switzerland with the following specimen from San Jos Mexico.

FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, LAKE NEUFCHATEL, SWITZERLAND.

FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, SAN JOS MEXICO.

Professor Foster calls attention to the striking resemblance in the designs of these two widely separated works of art, one belonging to the Bronze Age of Europe, the other to the Copper Age of America.

These, then, in conclusion, are our reasons for believing that the Bronze Age of Europe has relation to Atlantis:

1. The admitted fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age relegates it to a great antiquity.

2. The fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age is conclusive that it is not due to any of the known European or Asiatic nations, all of which belong to the Iron Age.

3. The fact that there war. in Europe, Asia, or Africa no copper or tin age prior to the Bronze Age, is conclusive testimony that the manufacture of bronze was an importation into those continents from some foreign country.

4. The fact that in America alone of all the world is found the Copper Age, which must necessarily have preceded the Bronze Age, teaches us to look to the westward of Europe and beyond the sea for that foreign country.

5. We find many similarities in forms of implements between the Bronze Age of Europe and the Copper Age of America.

6. If Plato told the truth, the Atlanteans were a great commercial nation, trading to America and Europe, and, at the same time, they possessed bronze, and were great workers in the other metals.

7. We shall see hereafter that the mythological traditions of Greece referred to a Bronze Age which preceded an Iron Age, and placed this in the land of the gods, which was an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and this land was, as we shall see, clearly Atlantis.

8. As we find but a small development of the Bronze Age in America, it is reasonable to suppose that there must have been some intermediate station between America and Europe, where, during a long period of time, the Bronze Age was developed out of the Copper Age, and immense quantities of bronze implements were manufactured and carried to Europe.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

CHAPTER VII

THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET

[Transcribers note: the argument in this section heavily depends on the Bishop Landa Maya alphabet, which was purely conjectural and which has now been shown to be completely incorrect. The Mayan writing was not decoded until late in the 20th Century. Mayan hieroglyphs are purely ideographic and had no particular phonetic encoding, much less the one that Landa invented. The only thing demonstrated in this section is the evolution of the alphabet in the Old World, which has no bearing on the question of Atlantis--jbh]

ONE of the most marvellous inventions for the advancement of mankind is the phonetic alphabet, or a system of signs representing the sounds of human speech. Without it our present civilization could scarcely have been possible.

No solution of the origin of our European alphabet has. yet been obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form, until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phnicians, Hebrews, and Cushites, but. beyond this the light fails us.

The Egyptians spoke of their hieroglyphic system of writing not as their own invention, but as "the language of the gods." (Lenormant and Cheval, "Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ii., p. 208.) "The gods" were, doubtless, their highly civilized ancestors--the people of Atlantis--who, as we shall hereafter see, became the gods of many of the Mediterranean races.

"According to the Phnicians, the art of writing was invented by Taautus, or Taut, 'whom the Egyptians call Thouth,' and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thouth, or Thoth, otherwise called 'the first Hermes,' in which we clearly see that both the Phnicians and Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence, and to an older nation, from which both peoples received it." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 91.)

The "first Hermes," here referred to (afterward called Mercury by the Romans), was a son of Zeus and Maia, a daughter of Atlas. This is the same Maia whom the AbbBrasseur de Bourbourg identifies with the Maya of Central America.

Sir William Drummond, in his "Origines," said:

"There seems to be no way of accounting either for the early use of letters among so many different nations, or for the resemblance which existed between some of the graphic systems employed by those nations, than by supposing hieroglyphical writing, if I may be allowed the term, to have been in use among the Tsabaists in the first ages after the Flood, when Tsabaisin (planet-worship) was the religion of almost every country that was yet inhabited."

Sir Henry Rawlinson says:

"So great is the analogy between the first principles of the Science of writing, as it appears to have been pursued in Chaldea, and as we can actually trace its progress in Egypt, that we can hardly hesitate to assign the original invention to a period before the Hamitic race had broken up and divided."

It is not to be believed that such an extraordinary system of sound-signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any one age. Like all our other acquisitions, it must have been the slow growth and accretion of ages; it must have risen step by step from picture-writing through an intermediate condition like that of the Chinese, where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign. The fact that so old and enlightened a people as the Chinese have never reached a phonetic alphabet, gives us some indication of the greatness of the people among whom it was invented, and the lapse of time before they attained to it.

Humboldt says:

"According to the views which, since Champollion's great discovery, have been gradually adopted regarding the earlier condition of the development of alphabetical writing, the Phnician as well as the Semitic characters are to be regarded as a phonetic alphabet that has originated from pictorial writing; as one in which the ideal signification of the symbols is wholly disregarded, and the characters are regarded as mere signs for sounds." ("Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 129.)

Baldwin says (" Prehistoric Nations," p. 93):

"The nation that became mistress of the seas, established communication with every shore, and monopolized the commerce of the known world, must have substituted a phonetic alphabet for the hieroglyphics as it gradually grew to this eminence; while isolated Egypt, less affected by the practical wants and tendencies of commercial enterprise, retained the hieroglyphic system, and carried it to a marvellous height of perfection."

It must be remembered that some of the letters of our alphabet are inventions of the later nations. In the oldest alphabets there was no c, the g taking its place. The Romans converted the g into c; and then, finding the necessity for a g Sign, made one by adding a tail-piece to the c (C, G). The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon, shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phnicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phnician y (yod) into i (iota). The Greeks converted the Phnician alphabet, which was partly consonantal, into one purely phonetic--"a perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language." The w was also added to the Phnician alphabet. The Romans added the y. At first i and j were both indicated by the same sound; a sign for j was afterward added. We have also, in common with other European languages, added a double U, that is, VV, or W, to represent the w sound.

The letters, then, which we owe to the Phnicians, are A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Z. If we are to trace out resemblances with the alphabet of any other country, it must be with these signs.

Is there any other country to which we can turn which possessed a phonetic alphabet in any respect kindred to this Phnician alphabet? It cannot be the Chinese alphabet, which has more signs than words; it cannot be the cuneiform alphabet of Assyria, with its seven hundred arrow-shaped characters, none of which bear the slightest affinity to the Phnician letters.

It is a surprising fact that we find in Central America a phonetic alphabet. This is in the alphabet of the Mayas, the ancient people of the peninsula of Yucatan, who claim that their civilization came to them across the sea in ships from the east, that is, from the direction of Atlantis. The Mayas succeeded to the Colhuas, whose era terminated one thousand years before the time of Christ; from them they received their alphabet. It has come to us through Bishop Landa, one of the early missionary bishops, who confesses to having burnt a great number of Maya books because they contained nothing but the works of the devil. He fortunately, however, preserved for posterity the alphabet of this people. We present it herewith.

LANDA'S ALPHABET (From ''North Amer. of Antiquity,'' p. 434.

Diego de Landa was the first bishop of Yucatan. He wrote a history of the Mayas and their country, which was preserved in manuscript at Madrid in the library of the Royal Academy of History. . . . It contains a description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the Mayas. Landa's manuscript seems to have lain neglected in the library, for little or nothing was heard of it until it was discovered by the French priest Brasseur de Bourbourg, who, by means of it, has deciphered some of the old American writings. he says, 'the alphabet and signs explained by Landa have been to me a Rosetta stone.'" (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 191.)

When we observe, in the table of alphabets of different European nations which I give herewith, how greatly the forms of the Phnician letters have been modified, it would surprise us to find any resemblance between the Maya alphabet of two or three centuries since and the ancient European forms.

It must, however, be remembered that the Mayas are one of the most conservative peoples in the world. They still adhere with striking pertinacity to the language they spoke when Columbus landed on San Salvador; and it is believed that that language is the same as the one inscribed on the most ancient monuments of their country. Ser Pimental says of them, "The Indians have preserved this idiom with such tenacity that they will speak no other; it is necessary for the whites to address them in their own language to communicate with them." It is therefore probable, as their alphabet did not pass from nation to nation, as did the Phnician, that it has not departed so widely from the original forms received from the Colhuas.

The Alphabet.

But when we consider the vast extent of time which has elapsed, and the fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the alphabet which preceded the archaic Phnician, it will be astonishing if we find resemblances between any of the Maya letters and the European forms, even though we concede that they are related. If we find decided affinities between two or three letters, we may reasonably presume that similar coincidences existed as to many others which have disappeared under the attrition of centuries.

The first thought that occurs to us on examining the Landa alphabet is the complex and ornate character of the letters. Instead of the two or three strokes with which we indicate a sign for a sound, we have here rude pictures of objects. And we find that these are themselves simplifications of older forms of a still more complex character. Take, for instance, the letter pp in Landa's alphabet, : here are evidently the traces of a face. The same appear, but not so plainly, in the sign for x, which is . Now, if we turn to the ancient hieroglyphics upon the monuments of Central America, we will find the human face appearing in a great many of them, as in the following, which we copy from the Tablet of the Cross at Palenque. We take the hieroglyphs from the left-hand side of the inscription. Here it will be seen that, out of seven hieroglyphical figures, six contain human faces. And we find that in the whole inscription of the Tablet of the Cross there are 33 figures out of 108 that are made up in part of the human countenance.

We can see, therefore, in the Landa alphabet a tendency to simplification. And this is what we would naturally expect. When the emblems--which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions, where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated--were placed in the hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans, and afterward the Phnicians, men with whom time was valuable, the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it, as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.

The same tendency is plainly shown in the two forms of the letter h, as given in Landa's alphabet; the original form is more elaborate than the variation of it. The original form is . The variation is given as . Now let us suppose this simplification to be carried a step farther: we have seen the upper and lower parts of the first form shrink into a smaller and less elaborate shape; let us imagine that the same tendency does away with them altogether; we would then have the letter H of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure, ; now, as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one, this would become in time . We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we find the letter h indicated by this sign, , precisely the Maya letter h simplified. We turn to the archaic Hebrew, and we find . Now it is known that the Phnicians wrote from right to left, and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so did the Phnicians slope their letters to the left. Hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phnician this, . In some of the Phnician alphabets we even find the letter h made with the double strokes above and below, as in the Maya h. The Egyptian hieroglyph for h is while ch is . In time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still farther, and eliminated the top lines, as we have supposed the Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes, and they left the letter as it has come down to us, H.

Now it may be said that all this is coincidence. If it is, it is certainly remarkable. But let us go a step farther:

We have seen in Landa's alphabet that there are two forms of the letter m. The first is . But we find also an m combined with the letter o, a, or e, says Landa, in this form, . The m here is certainly indicated by the central part of this combination, the figure ; where does that come from? It is clearly taken from the heart of the original figure wherein it appears. What does this prove? That the Atlanteans, or Mayas, when they sought to simplify their letters and combine them with others, took from the centre of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure. Now let us apply this rule:

We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our own day to the time of the Phnicians, o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle. Now where did the Phnicians get it? Clearly from the Mayas. There are two figures for o in the Maya alphabet; they are and ; now, if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of it. And that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph, and used alone, as in the case of the m, is proved by the very sign used at the foot of Landa's alphabet, which is, . Landa calls this ma, me, or mo; it is probably the latter, and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph.

We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a circle, repeated in the Phnician forms for o, thus, and , and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.

Are these another set of coincidences?

Take another letter:

The letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign, itself probably a simplification of some more ornate form, . This is something like our letter S, but quite unlike our N. But let us examine into the pedigree of our n. We find in the archaic Ethiopian, a language as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ; in archaic Phnician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, , or in this form, ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, . The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phnicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then it passed into : the archaic Greek form is ; the later Greeks made , from which it passed into the present form, N. All these forms seem to be representations of a serpent; we turn to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for n was the serpent, ; the Pelasgian n was ; the Arcadian, ; the Etruscan, .

Can anything be more significant than to find the serpent the sign for n in Central America, and in all these Old World languages?

Now turn to the letter k. The Maya sign for k is . This does not look much like our letter K; but let us examine it. Following the precedent established for us by the Mayas in the case of the letter m, let us see what is the distinguishing feature here; it is clearly the figure of a serpent standing erect, with its tail doubled around its middle, forming a circle. It has already been remarked by Savolini that this erect serpent is very much like the Egyptian Urs, an erect serpent with an enlarged body--a sacred emblem found in the hair of their deities. We turn again to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for k was a serpent with a convolution or protuberance in the middle, precisely as in the Maya, thus, ; this was transformed into the Egyptian letter ; the serpent and the protuberance reappear in one of the Phnician forms of k, to wit, ; while in the Punic we have these forms, and . Now suppose a busy people trying to give this sign: instead of drawing the serpent in all its details they would abbreviate it into something like this, ; now we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for k (ka), and we have , or the Himyaritic Arabian ; while in the Phnician it becomes ; in the archaic Greek, ; and in the later Greek, when they changed the writing from left to right, . So that the two lines projecting from the upright stroke of our English K are a reminiscence of the convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy.

Turn now to the Maya sign for t: it is . What is the distinctive mark about this figure? It is the cross composed of two curved lines, thus, . It is probable that in the Maya sign the cross is united at the bottom, like a figure 8. Here again we turn to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for t is and ; and in the Syriac t it is . We even find the curved lines of the Maya t which give it something of the appearance of the numeral 8, repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets; thus the Punic t repeats the Maya form almost exactly as and . Now suppose a busy people compelled to make this mark every day for a thousand years, and generally in a hurry, and the cross would soon be made without curving the lines; it would become X. But before it reached even that simplified form it had crossed the Atlantic, and appeared in the archaic Ethiopian sign for tsa, thus, . In the archaic Phnician the sign for t is and ; the oldest Greek form is or and the later Greeks gave it to the Romans , and modified this into ; the old Hebrew gave it as and ; the Moab stone as ; this became in time and .

Take the letter a. In the Maya there are three forms given for this letter. The first is ; the third is . The first looks very much like the foot of a lion or tiger; the third is plainly a foot or boot. If one were required to give hurriedly a rude outline of either of these, would he not represent it thus, ; and can we not conceive that this could have been in time modified into the Phnician a, which was ? The hieratic Egyptian a was ; the ancient Hebrew, which was or ; the ancient Greek was the foot reversed, ; the later Greek became our A.

Turn next to the Maya sign for q (ku): it is . Now what is the peculiarity of this hieroglyph? The circle below is not significant, for there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet. Clearly, if one was called upon to simplify this, he would retain the two small circles joined side by side at the top, and would indicate the lower circle with a line or dash. And when we turn to the Egyptian q we find it in this shape, ; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it , as qua, ; while the Phnician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in ; the Moab stone was ; the Himyaritic Arabian form became ; the Greek form was , which graduated into the Roman Q. But a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phnician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the q, the Maya cu, which is . Now, if we apply the Maya rule to this, and discard the outside circle, we have this left, . In time the curved line would be made straight, and the figure would assume this form, ; the next step would be to make the cross on the straight line, thus, . One of the ancient Phnician forms is . Can all this be accident?

The letter c or g (for the two probably gave the same sound as in the Phnician) is given in the Maya alphabet as follows, . This would in time be simplified into a figure representing the two sides of a triangle with the apex upward, thus, . This is precisely the form found by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Troy, . What is the Phnician form for g as found on the Moab stone? It is . The Carthaginian Phnicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus, . The hieratic Egyptian figure for g was ; in the earlier Greek form the left limb of the figure was shortened, thus, ; the later Greeks reversed it, and wrote it ; the Romans, changed this into and it finally became C.

In the Maya we have one sign for p, and another for pp. The first contains a curious figure, precisely like our r laid on its back , There is, apparently, no r in the Maya alphabet; and the Roman r grew out of the later Phnician r formed thus, ; it would appear that the earliest Phnician alphabet did not contain the letter r. But if we now turn to the Phnician alphabet, we will find one of the curious forms of the p given thus, , a very fair representation of an r lying upon its face. Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the p, in both Maya and Phnician, should contain this singular sign?

The form of pp in the Maya alphabet is this, . If we are asked, on the principle already indicated, to reduce this to its elements, we would use a figure like this, ; in time the tendency would be to shorten one of these perpendicular lines, thus, and this we find is very much like the Phnician p, . The Greek ph is Φ.

The letter l in the Maya is in two forms; one of these is , the other is . Now, if we again apply the rule which we observed to hold good with the letter m--that is, draw from the inside of the hieroglyph some symbol that will briefly indicate the whole letter--we will have one of two forms, either a right-angled figure formed thus, , or an acute angle formed by joining the two lines which are unconnected, thus, ; and either of these forms brings us quite close to the letter l of the Old World. We find l on the Moab stone thus formed, . The archaic Phnician form of l was , or ; the archaic Hebrew was and ; the hieratic Egyptian was ; the Greek form was --the Roman L.

The Maya letter b is shaped thus, . Now, if we turn to the Phnician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in the direction of the writing, thus, ; while in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left, thus, ; a similar form is also found in the Phnician , and this in the earliest Greek changed into , and in the later Greek into Β. One of the Etruscan signs for b was , while the Pelasgian b was represented thus, ; the Chaldaic b was ; the Syriac sign for b was ב the Illyrian b was .

The Maya e is ; this became in time ; then (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, : we even find in some of the ancient Phnician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, ; then we find the old Greek form, ; the old Hebrew, ; and the later Phnician, : when the direction of the writing was changed this became . Dr. Schliemann found a form like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy, . This is exactly the form found on the American monuments.

The Maya i is ; this became in time ; this developed into a still simpler form, ; and this passed into the Phnician form, . The Samaritan i was formed thus, ; the Egyptian letter i is : gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to the figure used on the stone of Moab, and ; this in time became the old Hebrew , or ; and this developed into the Greek .

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas themselves into this figure, : if we attempt to write this rapidly, we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal; naturally we form something like this, : the distinctive figure within the sign for m in the Maya is ח or . We see this repeated in the Egyptian hieroglyphics for m, , and , and ; and in the Chaldaic m, ם and in the Ethiopic . We find one form of the Phnician where the m is made thus, ; and in the Punic it appears thus, ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab, , or the ancient Phnician forms , , and the old Greek , or the ancient Hebrew , .

The , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward , this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this, or ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phnician, ; or the Moab stone, ; or the later Phnician or the Hebrew , , or the old Greek, : the later Greek form was Ξ.

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however, a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as, in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc. As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca, and not k, it evidently represents a different sound. The sign ca is this, . A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol for k, thus, , this would appear to be a simplification of ca, but turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters we find the sign k represented by this figure , simplified again into ; while the sign for k in the Phnician inscription on the stone of Moab is . If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca, , we find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters. The Phnician s is ; in the Greek this becomes ; the Hebrew is ; the Samaritan, . The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is ; the Egyptian letter s is ; the Ethiopic, ; the Chaldaic, ; and the Illyrian s c is .

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet. In some cases the pedigree, is so plain as to be indisputable.

For instance, take the h:

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Hebrew, ; Phnician, .

Or take the letter o:

Maya, o; old Greek, o; old Hebrew, o; Phnician, o.

Or take the letter t:

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Phnician, and .

Or take the letter q:

Maya, ; old Phnician, and ; Greek, .

Or take the letter k:

Maya, ; Egyptian, ; Ethiopian, ; Phnician, .

Or take the letter n:

Maya, ; Egyptian, ; Pelasgian , Arcadian, ; Phnician, .

Surely all this cannot be accident!

But we find another singular proof of the truth of this theory: It will be seen that the Maya alphabet lacks the letter d and the letter r. The Mexican alphabet possessed a d. The sounds d and t were probably indicated in the Maya tongue by the same sign, called t in the Landa alphabet. The Finns and Lapps do not distinguish between these two sounds. In the oldest known form of the Phnician alphabet, that found on the Moab stone, we find in the same way but one sign to express the d and t. D does not occur on the Etruscan monuments, t being used in its place. It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed to the Phnicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for b. To illustrate this we place the signs side by side:

It thus appears that the very signs d and r, in the Phnician, early Greek, and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in the Maya, were supplied by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while the Phnician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?

In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U. "In the present so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabc, Palmyrenic, and some other kindred writings, the vau takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and some other writings." ("American Cyclopia," art. F.)

Since writing the above, I find in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society" for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian. I quote:

It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the human leg.

"Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord. . . . But the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way, the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it. Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun.

So far as sound is concerned, the English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian 'cake,' ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun's orbit is essentially the same."

It would appear as if both the Phnicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b. And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs--in the c, h, t, i, k, m, n, o, q, and s--eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle! If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society," we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all this? And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world.

Let us suppose that two men agree that each shall construct apart from the other a phonetic alphabet of sixteen letters; that they shall employ only simple forms--combinations of straight or curved lines--and that their signs shall not in anywise resemble the letters now in use. They go to work apart; they have a multitudinous array of forms to draw from the thousand possible combinations of lines, angles, circles, and curves; when they have finished, they bring their alphabets together for comparison. Under such circumstances it is possible that out of the sixteen signs one sign might appear in both alphabets; there is one chance in one hundred that such might be the case; but there is not one chance in five hundred that this sign should in both cases represent the same sound. It is barely possible that two men working thus apart should bit upon two or three identical forms, but altogether impossible that these forms should have the same significance; and by no stretch of the imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets so created, without correspondence, thirteen out of sixteen signs should be the same in form and the same in meaning.

It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more closely by supplying intermediate forms.

We find in the American hieroglyphs peculiar signs which take the place of pictures, and which probably, like the hieratic symbols mingled with the hieroglyphics of Egypt, represent alphabetical sounds. For instance, we find this sign on the walls of the palace of Palenque, ; this is not unlike the form of the Phnician t used in writing, and ; we find also upon these monuments the letter o represented by a small circle, and entering into many of the hieroglyphs; we also find the tau sign (thus ) often repeated; also the sign which we have supposed to represent b, ; also this sign, , which we think is the simplification of the letter k; also this sign, which we suppose to represent e, ; also this figure, ; and this . There is an evident tendency to reduce the complex figures to simple signs whenever the writers proceed to form words.

Although it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can go far enough to see that they used the system of simpler sounds for the whole hieroglyph to which we have referred.

Bishop Landa gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the Maya letters. For instance, we have this figure as the representative of the month Mol . Here we see very plainly the letter ח for m, the sign for o; and we will possibly find the sign for l in the right angle to the right of the m sign, and which is derived from the figure in the second sign for l in the Maya alphabet.

One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country. They came, their legends tell us, from the East, from beyond the sea.

And even after the lapse of so many thousand years most remarkable resemblances have been found to exist between the Chiapenec language and the Hebrew, the living representative of the Phnician tongue.

The Mexican scholar, Ser Melgar ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 475) gives the following list of words taken from the Chiapenec and the Hebrew:

English.	Chiapenec.	Hebrew.
Son	Been	Ben.
Daughter	Batz	Bath.
Father	Abagh	Abba.
Star in Zodiac	Chimax	Chimah.
King	Molo	Maloc.
Name applied to Adam	Abagh	Abah.
Afflicted	Chanam	Chanan.
God	Elab	Elab.
September	Tsiquin	Tischiri.
More	Chic	Chi.
Rich	Chabin	Chabic.
Son of Seth	Enot	Enos.
To give	Votan	Votan.

Thus, while we find such extraordinary resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Phnician alphabet, we find equally surprising coincidences between the Chiapenec tongue, a branch of the Mayas, and the Hebrew, a branch of the Phnician.

Attempts have been repeatedly made by European scholars to trace the letters of the Phnician alphabet back to the elaborate hieroglyphics from which all authorities agree they must have been developed, but all such attempts have been failures. But here, in the Maya alphabet, we are not only able to extract from the heart of the hieroglyphic the typical sign for the sound, but we are able to go a step farther, and, by means of the inscriptions upon the monuments of Copan and Palenque, deduce the alphabetical hieroglyph itself from an older and more ornate figure; we thus not Only discover the relationship of the European alphabet to the American, but we trace its descent in the very mode in which reason tells us it must have been developed. All this proves that the similarities in question did not come from Phnicians having accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phnician alphabet was formed. In the light of such a discovery the inscriptions upon the monuments of Central America assume incalculable importance; they take us back to a civilization far anterior to the oldest known in Europe; they represent the language of antediluvian times.

It may be said that it is improbable that the use of an alphabet could have ascended to antediluvian times, or to that prehistoric age when intercourse existed between ancient Europe and America; but it must be remembered that if the Flood legends of Europe and Asia are worth anything they prove that the art of writing existed at the date of the Deluge, and that records of antediluvian learning were preserved by those who escaped the Flood; while Plato tells us that the people of Atlantis engraved their laws upon columns of bronze and plates of gold.

There was a general belief among the ancient nations that the art of writing was known to the antediluvians. The Druids believed in books more ancient than the Flood. They styled them "the books of Pheryllt," and "the writings of Pridian or Hu." "Ceridwen consults them before she prepares the mysterious caldron which shadows out the awful catastrophe of the Deluge." (Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," vol. ii., pp. 150, 151.)

In the first Avatar of Vishnu we are told that "the divine ordinances were stolen by the demon Haya-Griva. Vishnu became a fish; and after the Deluge, when the waters had subsided, he recovered the holy books from the bottom of the ocean." Berosus, speaking of the time before the Deluge, says: "Oannes wrote concerning the generations of mankind and their civil polity." The Hebrew commentators on Genesis say, "Our rabbins assert that Adam, our father of blessed memory, composed a book of precepts, which were delivered to him by God in Paradise." (Smith's "Sacred Annals," p. 49.) That is to say, the Hebrews preserved a tradition that the Ad-ami, the people of Ad, or Adlantis, possessed, while yet dwelling in Paradise, the art of writing. It has been suggested that without the use of letters it would have been impossible to preserve the many details as to dates, ages, and measurements, as of the ark, handed down to us in Genesis. Josephus, quoting Jewish traditions, says, "The births and deaths of illustrious men, between Adam and Noah, were noted down at the time with great accuracy." (Ant., lib. 1, cap. iii., see. 3.) Suidas, a Greek lexicographer of the eleventh century, expresses tradition when he says, "Adam was the author of arts and letters." The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an antediluvian, and it wrote annals before the Flood." The Chinese have traditions that the earliest race of their nation, prior to history, "taught all the arts of life and wrote books." "The Goths always had the use of letters;" and Le Grand affirms that before or soon after the Flood "there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on large stones." (Fosbroke's "Encyclopia of Antiquity," vol. i., p. 355.) Pliny says, "Letters were always in use." Strabo says, "The inhabitants of Spain possessed records written before the Deluge." (Jackson's "Chronicles of Antiquity," vol. iii., p. 85.) Mitford ("History of Greece," vol. i, p. 121) says, "Nothing appears to us so probable as that it (the alphabet) was derived from the antediluvian world."