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THE  SILENT  PAST 

Mysterious  and  Forgotten  Cultures 
of  the  World 


BOOKS  BY  IVAR  LISSNER 

The  Silent  Past 

Mysterious  and  Forgotten  Cultures  of  the  World 

Man,  God  and  Magic 

The  Caesars 

Might  and  Madness 

The  Living  Past 


IVAR  LISSNER 


THE  SILENT  PAST 

Mysterious  and  Forgotten  Cultures  of  the  World 


Translated  from  the  German  by 
J.  MAXWELL  BROWNJOHN,  M.A.  {Oxon.) 


FOUNDED  I8i8 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK 


©  1962  BY  G.  P.  Putnam's  sons,  new  york,        \ 

AND  JONATHAN  CAPE  LIMITED,  LONDON 

All   rights   reserved.   This   book,   or  parts   thereof,  must      '"'^jXtioM 
not    be    reproduced    in    any    form    without    permission.         f     v 

Published    simultaneously    in    the    Dominion    of    Canada 
by  Lojigmans  Canada  Limited,  Toronto 

Originally    published    in    Gertnany    under    the    title 
Ratselhafte  Kultiiren,   ©    1961    by  Walter- Verlag   Olten. 

Library  of  Congress   Catalog 
Card  Number:  62-18286 


MANtJFACTURED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
VAN  REES  PRESS     •     NEW   YORK 


A  WORD  OF  THANKS 


I  SHOULD  like  to  extend  my  sincere  thanks  to  the  archaeologists, 
scientists  and  scholars  whose  advice  and  suggestions  have  been  of 
such  invaluable  assistance  to  me  and  who  have  scrutinized  individual 
sections  of  this  book  or  shown  me  over  palaces,  temples  and  ruined 

sites: 

Professor  Antonio  Blanco  Freijeiro  of  Seville  University,  Director 
of  the  Museo   del  Prado,   Madrid,   for  checking  the  sections  on 

Tartessus. 

Professor  Carl  W.  Blegen,  the  eminent  archaeologist  who  un- 
earthed the  stratum  containing  Homeric  Troy,  for  taking  me  over 
'     the  ruins  of  Nestor's  palace  at  Pylos. 

V'  SoTiRis  Dakaris,  Ephoros  Archeotiton  at  the  Museum  of  Archaeol- 

^  ogy,  loannina,  for  explaining  details  of  the  temple  precincts  and 

J  ruins  in  the  Valley  of  Dramissos  and  checking  the  sections  dealing 

i  with  the  oracle  of  Dodona. 

i     Dr.   Hans-Dietrich  Disselhoff,   authority   on  ancient  American 
-     civilizations  and  Director  of  the  Museum  of  Ethnology,  Berlin,  for 
much  invaluable  advice  and  generous  help. 

William  P.  Fagg,  Deputy  Keeper  of  the  Department  of  Ethnog- 
raphy in  the  British  Museum,  for  checking  the  section  on  Benin. 

Professor  Dr.  Martin  Gusinde  of  Vienna  University,  Nanzan 
4  University,  Nagoya,  Universidad  de  Chile  and  CathoHc  University, 

Washington,  D.  C,  ethnologist  and  expert  on  prehistoric  civilizations, 
'^  American  Indian  tribes,  especially  those  of  Tierra  del  Fuego,  and 
t'   many   other   primitive   peoples,   who    wilHngly   answered    all   my 

questions  and  enlightened  me  on  a  number  of  unsolved  problems. 

Professor  Dr.  Wilhelm  Koppers  4*,  the  distinguished  authority  on 
ethnology  and  prehistory  to  whom  I  shall  always  be  indebted  for  his 
.,^,  encouragement  and  instructive  comments. 

5 


6  A  WORD  OF  THANKS 

Dr.  Gerdt  Kutscher  of  the  Ibero-American  Library,  Berlin,  for 
scrutinizing  the  sections  on  the  Maya  and  oifering  valuable  sugges- 
tions on  the  subject  of  Benin. 

Professor  Dr.  Siegfried  Lauffer  of  Munich  University,  for  giving 
me  so  many  valuable  hints  and  checking  the  sections  on  Mycenaean 
civilization  and  Delphi. 

Professor  Giovanni  Lilliu,  Universita  degli  Studi  di  Cagliari,  for 
personally  enlightening  me  on  the  culture  of  ancient  Sardinia. 

Dr.  Karl  J.  Narr,  Lecturer  in  Prehistory  at  Gottingen  University, 
for  looking  through  the  sections  on  the  megalithic  cultures. 

Professor  Dr.  Adolf  Schulten  •!*,  archaeologist  and  authority  on 
ancient  history  and  geography,  particularly  that  of  the  Iberian  Pen- 
insula, for  his  many  verbal  suggestions  and  interpretations. 

Professor  Dr.  Ernest  Sittig  •^,  who  was  the  first  to  instruct  me  on 
the  subject  of  research  into  Linear  B. 

Dr.  Herbert  Tischner,  Custodian  and  Director  of  the  Indo-Oceanic 
Department  of  the  Museum  of  Ethnology  and  Prehistory,  Hamburg, 
for  looking  through  the  section  on  the  Sepik  culture. 

Concepcion  Blanco  De  Torrecillas,  Director  of  the  Museo  Arqueo- 
logico,  Cadiz,  for  granting  me  access  to  rare  relics  of  the  Tartessus 
civilization. 


INTRODUCTION 

JORDANIA 

SYRIA 

SYRIA 

LEBANON 

NORTH  AFRICA 

WESTERN  EUROPE 

WESTERN  EUROPE 

WESTERN  EUROPE 

SYRIA 

SARDINIA 

SARDINIA 

GREECE 

GREECE 

GREECE 

GREECE 

GREECE 

GREECE 

GREECE 

SPAIN 

SPAIN 


CONTENTS 

Birds  of  Passage 9 

The  Walls  of  Jericho 15 

Good  Living  in  Ugarit 25 

The  World's  First  Alphabet ....  34 

Tyre  and  Sidon 43 

Queen  of  the  Seas 52 

The  Silent  Stones  of  Malta 58 

Their  Faith  Moved  Mountains .  .  6^ 

The  Megaliths  of  Morbihan  ...  76 

Mari,  the  Wonder  City 80 

Island  of  8,000  Towers 89 

A  Pre-Christian  Madonna 95 

Linear  B   102 

—  Life  in  the  Mycenaean  Age  ....  1 1 1 

'  The  Cult  of  Apollo  120 

The  Delphic  Oracle 126 

The  Pythia  Replies 133 

Olympias,  Zeus  and  Alexander.  .  139 

Latest  News  of  Dodona 149 

Atlantis,  Fact  or  Fiction? 156 

City  Beneath  the  Sands 165 

7 


8 

SPAIN 

CANARY  ISLANDS 

CHINA 

INDIA 

INDIA 

CENTRAL  ASIA 

CENTRAL  ASIA 

PERSIA 

EURASIA 

EURASIA 

EURASIA 

ARABIA 


CONTENTS 

The  Civilization  of  Tartessus ...  173 

The  Guanches 182 

The  Mask  of  T'ao-t'ieh 194 

A  Man  Named  Siddhartha 203 

—  Gandhara  and  the  Buddha  Image  2 10 

The  Cave  Temples  of 

Tun-huang   222 

The  Silk  Road 230 

The  Treasure  of  the  Oxus 243 

The  Scythians   253 

Company  for  the  King 260 

Kings,  Concubines  and  Horses .  .  269 

King  Solomon's  Furnaces  278 


SOUTHERN  RHODESIA    In  Quest  of  Ophir  287 


NIGERIA 

NEW  GUINEA 

GUATEA/IALA 

GUATEMALA 

GUATEMALA 

CONCLUSION 

APPENDIX 


The  Bronzes  of  Benin 294 

River  of  a  Thousand  Eyes 301 

Men  of  Maize  311 

Cities  in  the  Jungle 320 

Tikal,  the  Enigma 327 

"Behold,  All  Things  Are 

Become  New"  336 

Bibliography    345 

Sources  of  Illustrations 359 

Index     365 


INTRODUCTION 


Birds  of  Passage 

HISTORY  is  imperishable.  Unseen  and  unrecognized,  the  past  lives 
on  in  us  in  its  quiet,  imperceptible  way.  Whether  lying  dormant  in 
the  unfathomable  sea  of  the  millennia  or  buried  beneath  the  ground 
and  swathed  in  a  vast  winding  sheet  of  earth  and  stone,  "past" 
civilizations  are  still  with  us  even  though  their  tangible  remains  lie 
hidden  and  still  undiscovered.  One  and  all,  the  civilizations  of  the 
past  live  on  in  us,  for  our  lives  are  rooted  deep  in  the  remote,  myste- 
rious and  ancient  civilizations  of  the  past.  Once  a  civilization  has 
existed  on  earth,  its  effects  are  permanent.  A  memory,  a  new  dis- 
covery, a  visit  to  an  exhibition— any  one  of  these  may  suddenly  alert 
us  to  their  mute  presence. 

Civilization  is  a  word  of  wide  application.  It  is  the  sum  total 
of  human  achievement,  of  techniques,  of  methods  of  building  and 
transportation,  of  living  conditions,  of  handicrafts  and  utensils,  of 
written  characters,  of  sciences;  it  is  the  moral  and  religious  order  of 
things;  it  is  the  behavior  of  each  individual;  it  embraces  all  man's 
spiritual  endeavors,  his  art  and  morals,  his  sense  of  values  and  his 
religion. 

All  human  hopes  and  thoughts  are  directed  toward  the  eternal  and 
transcendental,  for  it  is  man's  nature  to  be  more  concerned  with  the 
mind  than  the  body. 

When  man  made  the  transition  from  thinking  only  of  visible 
things— from  "conditioned"  thought— to  abstract  thought,  the  era  of 
true  humanity  had  arrived.  From  that  moment,  no  more  than  six 
hundred  thousand  or  a  milhon  years  ago,  spirituality  has  been  man's 
hallmark,  his  distinguishing  feature  and  his  cross.  And  it  has  been 
man's  pastime  to  fight  against  this  cross,  to  disavow,  deride  or 
attempt  to  destroy  it  during  periods  of  cultural  decline.  But  matter 
is  not  only  lifeless:  it  is  not  even  real.  Man  alone  can  infuse  it  with 
life  and  give  it  the  sort  of  vitality  which  we  shall  observe  in  so  many 
examples  of  human  handiwork— in  works  by  the  artists  of  Benin,  for 
instance.  The  real  bane  of  our  time  is  not  the  earth's  burgeoning 
population  but  the  ever-increasing  superabundance  of  inanimate 
objects  and  the  possessiveness  that  springs  from  a  sense  of  personal 
inadequacy.  The  greater  the  number  of  objects  that  surround  us, 
the  fewer  we  can  infuse  with  life.  Man's  intellect  has  been  dulled  by 

9 


lo  INTRODUCTION 

a  superfluity  of  mass-produced  articles  devoid  of  any  breath  of  life. 

Only  when  the  West  has  completely  smothered  the  intellect  will 
it  succumb,  not  before.  That  is  why  it  is  so  important  to  recognize 
that  man's  desire  for  spiritual  sustenance  will  always  be  stronger 
than  his  craving  for  material  objects  and  to  acknowledge  that  our 
only  means  of  preserving  the  world  in  which  we  live  lies  in  that 
realization.  Since  all  spirituality  is  essentially  religious  in  concep- 
tion, everything  that  is  good  on  earth  must  have  its  foundation  in  a 
belief  in  God  or  gods.  The  same  basic  belief  underlies  all  civilizations, 
and  to  examine  them  is  to  receive  fresh  confirmation  of  this  truth. 

Our  age  yearns  for  a  better  knowledge  of  the  buried  past.  People 
sense  that  even  the  most  alien  and  mysterious  civilizations  are  part 
of  their  present  existence.  It  is  immensely  exciting  to  spot  the  truth 
that  lies  behind  a  mystery,  to  delve  beneath  the  ground  and  unearth 
cities,  to  realize  that  this  was  how  they  did  things,  this  was  how 
they  thought,  this  was  their  intellectual  contribution  to  our  life— 
to  realize,  in  short,  that  during  our  brief  sojourn  on  earth  we  are 
merely  birds  of  passage. 

I  believe  that  in  every  age  man  has  devoted  his  greatest  efforts  to 
the  spiritual  aspects  of  life  and  that  he  has  always  striven  to  reach 
beyond  sensory  perception  and  grasp  the  supersensual  and  divine. 
Strangely  enough,  no  one  has  ever  denied  these  attributes  to  the 
advanced  civilizations  of  the  ancient  world,  even  though  the  catas- 
trophes that  afflict  us  today  are  rooted  in  the  shocking  and  erroneous 
belief  that  scientific  and  technical  achievements,  social  legislation  and 
governmental  intervention  are  the  only  things  that  can  ameliorate 
human  existence. 

I  believe  that  man  ought  to  be  alive  to  the  truth  contained  in 
the  fourth  chapter  of  St.  Matthew,  namely  that  he  cannot  live  by 
bread  alone,  and  that  he  should  insist  on  his  sovereign  right  to  live 
with  complete  freedom,  spiritually  and  in  the  spirit.  As  Friedrich 
Schiller  said:  "Each  individual  man  carries,  according  to  his  disposi- 
tion and  determination,  a  purely  ideal  man  within  him"— and  the 
realm  of  taste  is  a  realm  of  freedom. 

I  believe  in  the  self-delusion  of  the  masses  and  in  the  spirituality 
of  the  individual— even  the  so-called  "savage"  who  never  actually 
existed  at  all.  We  should  beware  of  branding  as  uncivilized  primitive 
races  which  in  truth  possessed  a  high  degree  of  spiritual  cultmx 
which  we  either  cannot  grasp  or  do  not  share. 


INTRODUCTION  1 1 

I  believe  in  the  vital  force  of  all  civilizations  and  hold  that  their 
life  is  determined  by  the  untrammeled  mind  of  man,  not  by  nature. 
I  believe  in  the  essential  unity  of  political  history  and  cultural  history 
because  I  do  not  recognize  the  existence  anywhere  in  this  world 
of  civilizations  which  stand  alone  like  isolated  trees,  unseeded,  root- 
less and  sprung  from  nothing.  Either  they  must  have  taken  seed 
from  some  vanished  people,  some  civilization  unknown  to  us,  per- 
haps, but  ever  present,  or  their  roots  have  become  secretly  and  sub- 
terraneously  entwined  with  those  of  other  civilizations. 

I  believe  that  culture  springs  neither  from  what  we  possess  nor 
from  what  we  think  but  only  from  what  we  are.  I  believe  that  time 
is  indivisible  and  that  all  chronological  subdivisions  are  the  work 
of  man;  that  time  is,  in  fact,  an  integral,  cosmic  and  divine  work  of 
art.  I  believe  that  mankind's  conception  of  time  is  its  greatest  single 
error,  that  in  reality  there  is  neither  beginning  nor  end,  and  that 
only  God  can  have  a  truly  correct— as  it  were,  oblique— view  of  time. 

Within  the  true  span  of  our  lifetime,  therefore,  we  may  have 
walked  the  massive  walls  of  Jericho  or  stood  atop  the  world's  oldest 
tower,  four  thousand  years  older  than  the  first  Pyramid.  We  may 
s.till  remember  Tyre,  the  famous  Phoenician  island  city  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  inhabitants  whose  man-created  water  supply  helped 
to  make  it  the  most  impregnable  fortress  in  the  Mediterranean.  We 
may  have  stoked  King  Solomon's  smelting  ovens  in  the  guise  of 
slaves,  working  in  unendurable  heat  at  the  desert's  edge.  With  a 
past  as  limitless  as  ours,  the  eight  thousand  mysterious  towers  of  the 
Sardi  may  seem  familiar  to  us,  built  though  they  were  in  the  Bronze- 
Age  spirit  of  800  B.C.  We  may  carry  within  us  the  wisdom  of  the 
Delphic  oracle  or  the  truth  of  Atlantis.  A  thousand  legacies  from  the 
distant  past  are  embodied  in  us.  To  survey  the  mysterious  caverns, 
chambers  and  temples  of  men  who  walked  the  earth  long  before  us 
is  to  gain  a  glimpse  of  eternal  life,  because  all  their  achievements,  all 
their  art  and  beliefs  are  still  within  us  today  and  are  destined  to 
endure  forever. 


THE  SILENT  PAST 

Mysterious  a?id  Forgotten  Cultures 
of  the  World 


JORDANIA 

THE  WALLS  OF  JERICHO 

We  have  now  completed  five  seasons^  excavations.  Each  year 
our  trenches  and  squares  have  got  deeper  and  deeper,  and  the 
working  levels  have  to  be  reached  by  ever-lengthening  staircases 
cut  in  the  earth  dow?i  the  edges  of  the  area,  hi  several  areas  we 
have  now  reached  bedrock,  at  a  depth  of  some  fifty  feet  from  the 
surface. 

—Kathleen  Mary  Kenyon,  Digging  Up  Jericho, 

p.  50,  London,  1957 

JERICHO  was  immensely  ancient.  It  was  so  old  that  not  even  the 
patriarchs  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob  knew  its  origins. 

Roam  the  entire  world  in  search  of  its  oldest  cities  and  you  will 
always  come  back  to  the  Near  East,  for  it  was  there  that  man,  having 
lived  on  earth  for  about  600,000  years  as  a  nomad,  food  collector 
and  hunter,  first  began  to  set  stone  on  stone  and  build  dwellings  and, 
eventually,  cities.  Only  when  the  biped  Homo  had  once  learned  how 
to  sow  and  reap,  capture  wild  animals  and  domesticate  them,  did  fixed 
settlements  become  practicable. 

Very  old  advanced  civilizations  have  been  excavated  near  the 
Hwang  Ho,  Indus  and  Nile  and  in  the  valleys  of  the  Euphrates  and 
Tigris,  but  what  archaeologists  have  recently  unearthed  below  ground 
near  the  Jordan  derives  immense  significance  from  the  fact  that  it 
dates  the  building  of  fortresses,  houses  and  temples  almost  as  far 
back  as  the  close  of  the  last  Ice  Age. 

In  600,000  years  man  has  survived  four  Ice  Ages  and  three  warmer 
interglacial  periods.  The  last  Ice  Age  came  to  an  end  about  8000  b.c. 
Even  though  the  icy  masses  of  the  north  never  penetrated  the  Near 
East,  the  city  is  still  a  miracle,  for  the  Ice  Age  was  also  a  Stone  Age 
in  which  technical  aids  were  of  the  most  rudimentary  kind  and  man 
was  a  nomad.  For  600,000  years,  the  longest  homogeneous  epoch 
in  human  history,  tools  and  utensils  were  made  exclusively  of  stone, 
bone  and  wood.  Next  came  the  art  of  molding  clay  and  loam,  then 
the  discovery  of  casting  copper  and  bronze,  and  finally  the  Iron  Age. 

Jericho  was  built  at  a  time  when  man  was  still  ignorant  of  clay 
vessels.  The  people  of  Jericho  lived  in  a  powerful  city,  yet  they  were 
people  of  the  mesolithic  or  Middle  Stone  Age  (10,000-7500  b.c), 
which  was  followed  by  the  neolithic  or  Late  Stone  Age  (7500- 

15 


i6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

4000  B.C.).  Jericho  is  not  merely  the  oldest  fortress  to  be  excavated 
so  far;  at  more  than  800  feet  below  sea  level  it  is  also  the  lowest- 
lying  city  in  the  world.  The  summers  are  extremely  hot  because  the 
area  is  surrounded  by  mountains  reaching  3,500  feet. 

Fifteen  miles  northeast  of  Jerusalem  and  eight  miles  from  where 
the  Jordan  flows  into  the  Dead  Sea  stands  the  hill  of  Tell  Es-Sultan. 
In  it  are  buried  the  remains  of  many  cities  superimposed  one  upon 
another,  the  result  of  a  process  lasting  thousands  of  years  in  which 
new  life  was  forever  springing  up  on  the  ruins  of  the  past.  The  site 
was  excavated  first  by  English  archaeologists  in  1865,  then  by  an 
Austro-German  expedition  between  1908  and  191 1,  and  finally  by 
Professor  John  Garstang  of  Liverpool  University,  whose  examination 
of  some  particularly  deep  layers  convinced  him  that  men  had  dwelt 
in  houses  there  in  neolithic  times.  In  1956  further  diggings  by  Kath- 
leen Kenyon  revealed  the  astonishing  fact  that  Jericho  had  existed 
as  a  true  town  in  the  pre-ceramic  period,  i.e.  long  before  5000  B.C. 

It  was  earher  supposed  that  men  who  had  ceased  to  be  nomads 
soon  began  to  make  bowls,  jugs  and  other  vessels  from  clay,  such 
articles  being  much  too  fragile  to  be  taken  on  long  nomadic  treks. 
Jericho  shed  a  new  light  on  this  theory,  for  men  lived  there  in  per- 
manent abodes  for  thousands  of  years  before  they  discovered  ce- 
ramics. Between  the  nomadic  period  and  the  time  when  clay  vessels 
were  first  manufactured  came  an  epoch  which  saw  the  emergence  of 
thriving  towns  whose  inhabitants  made  nothing  but  stone  tools  and 
utensils  of  bone  or  wood.  Jericho's  pre-ceramic  period  goes  back 
some  nine  or  ten  thousand  years  and  lasted  from  about  7800  B.C.  to 
about  5000  B.C.  Its  ruins  lay  heaped  fifty  feet  high,  each  succeeding 
generation  having  built  upon  the  debris  of  its  predecessors,  but  only 
at  the  fifty-foot  mark  do  traces  of  pottery  come  to  light. 

The  earliest  houses  were  circular  in  shape  and  probably  re- 
sembled beehives  or,  more  precisely,  halved  eggs.  The  floors  were 
earthen  while  the  walls  were  of  oval  bricks  with  flat  bases  and  curved 
sides  which  still  display  grooves  made  by  the  brickmakers'  thumbs. 
Since  the  streets  of  an  old  city  acquire  layers  of  debris  and  refuse  in 
the  course  of  centuries,  the  floors  of  Jericho's  houses  eventually  lay 
below  street  level,  and  one  can  still  make  out  the  steps  which  led 
down  to  them.  The  latter  are  known  to  have  been  faced  with  wood, 
for  remnants  of  charred  beams  were  found  everywhere. 

The  city's  earliest  period  was  followed  by  another  period— still 


Syria— Jordan 


i8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

long  before  5000  b.c— which  saw  the  construction  of  houses 
with  fairly  large  rectangular  rooms  whose  corners  were  carefully 
rounded  as  if  to  prevent  their  collecting  dust,  as  in  modern  hos- 
pitals. These  dwellings  possessed  small  store  chambers  and  a  number 
of  subsidiary  rooms.  Cooking  was  done  on  a  hearth  situated  in  an 
interior  courtyard,  and  the  many  layers  of  ash  which  were  found 
indicated  that  meals  had  been  prepared  in  the  same  spot  for  decades 
or  centuries.  The  walls  of  the  houses,  which  mav  even  have  had  two 
floors,  were  built  of  sun-dried  bricks  which,  Mrs.  Kenyon  tells  us, 
were  fitted  together  with  great  accuracy.  Even  today,  after  eight  or 
nine  thousand  years,  it  is  difficult  to  dismantle  them  or  remove  indi- 
vidual bricks. 

When  archaeologists  washed  the  "stuccoed"  floors,  much  as  the 
women  of  Jericho  must  have  done  many  thousands  of  years  before, 
they  found  to  their  surprise  that  these  had  been  polished  with  great 
care.  The  interior  walls  were  also  coated  ^vith  hard  stucco  and 
polished  to  a  mirrorlike  smoothness.  Apparently  the  people  of 
Jericho  appreciated  comfort,  for  their  rooms  were  carpeted  with 
rush  mats  which,  though  destroyed  by  the  passage  of  time,  had  left 
their  imprint  on  the  floors.  It  was  even  possible  to  see  where  an  ant 
had  once  made  its  way  through  the  carpet! 

It  is  particularly  interesting  that  the  bowls,  dishes  and  other  re- 
ceptacles used  in  the  well-appointed  houses  of  so  advanced  a  civiliza- 
tion seem  to  have  been  made  only  of  stone.  Wood  and  bone  may  also 
have  been  employed,  but  nothing  of  these  materials  has  survived. 
The  people  of  Jericho  still  made  their  tools,  which  included  blades, 
drills,  scrapers  and  extremely  handsome  saws,  out  of  flint  or  obsidian. 
No  large  tools  were  found,  yet  the  builders  of  such  a  city  must  have 
possessed  picks,  axes  and  a  range  of  heavy  implements  suitable  for 
dealing  with  balks  of  timber.  Nothing  of  the  sort  was  found,  how- 
ever, although  diggers  unearthed  flint  arrowheads  which  may  have 
been  used  in  the  city's  defense  as  well  as  for  hunting. 

Another  unsolved  riddle  is  the  purpose  of  some  tiny  coups  de  po'wg 
of  green  stone  which  do  not  seem  to  be  jewelry  but  may  have  been 
used  in  some  form  of  cult.  One  house,  at  any  rate,  contained  a  sort 
of  altar  or  shrine,  or  so  it  would  appear  from  the  discovery  of  a 
small  pillar  of  volcanic  rock,  a  niche  and  a  stone  pedestal.  The  pillar 
fits  the  pedestal  and  both  would  fit  neatly  into  the  niche.  Even 
though  they  were  separated  when   found  in    the  rubble   of  the 


JORDANIA  19 

ruined  house,  they  seem  to  offer  support  for  a  theory  that  the  people 
of  Jericho  worshiped  a  god  or  gods. 

The  largest  chamber  to  be  excavated  may  also  have  been  employed 
for  religious  purposes.  In  the  center  of  this  templeHke  building  stood 
a  basin,  and  near  it  two  tiny  figurines  which  possibly  represented 
goddesses  of  fertility.  Small  female  statuettes  which  served  a  fertility 
cult  or  had  some  other  directly  religious  significance  are  already 
familiar  to  us  from  the  Aurignacian  period.  These  are  the  famous 
"Venus"  statuettes  found  at  Willendorf,  Lespugue,  Brassempouy, 
Gagarino  on  the  Don,  and  Malta,  northwest  of  Irkutsk.  Some  of  the 
European  Venus  statuettes  date  back  as  much  as  thirty  or  fifty 
thousand  years. 

The  city  was  originally  encompassed  by  a  stout  wall  some  sixteen 
feet  high.  When  the  wall  collapsed  it  was  rebuilt,  and  when  it  col- 
lapsed again  it  was  replaced  by  another,  this  one  over  twenty  feet 
high.  Mystery  surrounds  the  tower  of  Jericho,  thirty  feet  in  diameter 
and  so  solidly  built  of  undressed  stone  that  it  now  stands  there,  after 
excavation,  like  some  massive  medieval  bastion.  The  oldest  tower 
in  the  world,  it  existed  even  before  Jericho  acquired  its  protective 
walls.  The  men  who  planned  and  constructed  it  lived  nine  thousand 
or  more  years  ago,  and  it  is  about  four  thousand  years  older  than 
the  oldest  Pyramid.  Inside  the  tower  a  flight  of  steps  built  of  stone 
slabs  thirty  inches  long  leads  up  through  an  opening  to  the  upper 
platform.  Below  is  a  passage  faced  with  stone  slabs  three  feet  long, 
and  in  this  passage  archaeologists  found  twelve  skeletons  lying  close 
together  as  though  the  bodies  had  been  buried  in  extreme  haste.  The 
tower  is  enclosed  by  two  further  rings  of  stone.  Only  the  outer  shell 
touches  the  city  wall,  so  the  latter  must  have  come  into  being  at  a 
later  stage. 

The  significance  of  this  prehistoric  building  while  it  remained 
unconnected  with  the  wall  and  had  no  defensive  role  is  uncertain, 
but  it  was  probably  a  cult  site  or  perhaps  a  temple  at  whose  summit 
sacrifice  was  made  in  honor  of  gods  unknown  to  us. 

Kathleen  Kenyon's  theory  is  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  earliest, 
conical,  houses  were  forced  to  defend  themselves  against  people 
who  eventually  captured  the  town  and  later  erected  the  rectangular 
houses  with  the  finely  polished  stucco  floors.  The  victorious  new- 
comers were  certainly  not  nomads,  for  their  well-planned  methods 
of  housing  construction  belonged  to  a  highly  developed  sedentary 


20  THE  SILENT  PAST 

culture  and  presupposed  long  experience.  Miss  Kenyon  deduces  that 
these  experienced  architects  hailed  from  existing  towns,  probably  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Jericho,  and  brought  their  knowledge  of 
architecture  from  there.  If  this  is  so,  other  age-old  stone  citadels 
must  lie  elsewhere,  probably  in  the  Jordan  valley,  still  awaiting 
discovery. 

The  most  important  finds  made  at  Jericho  were  ten  human  skulls 
which  were  dug  up,  one  by  one,  from  beneath  some  houses.  They 
represent  an  extraordinary  discovery,  for  through  them  we  are 
suddenly  made  aware  of  man's  quest  for  a  higher  spirituality,  a 
quest  pursued  with  means  and  at  a  period  which  seem  well-nigh 
fantastic  to  us  today.  These  skulls  were  skillfully  coated  with 
plaster  and  their  eye  sockets  had  been  inlaid  with  shells  with  the 
apparent  intention  of  reproducing  the  features  of  the  dead  as  they 
were  in  life.  Traces  can  still  be  seen  of  the  paint  with  which  the 
people  of  Jericho  tried,  with  considerable  artistic  skill,  to  re-create 
the  complexion  and  facial  expression  of  their  dead.  It  is  yet  another 
example  of  man's  never-ending  attempt  to  conquer  death  through  art. 

We  are  here  confronted  by  the  earliest  human  portraits  in  the 
world,  for  the  things  that  Stone-Age  man  carved  on  mammoth's 
tusk  and  bone  or  painted  on  cave  walls  in  southern  France  or  north- 
west Spain  never  aimed  at  achieving  a  true  likeness.  Skeletons  with 
skulls  missing  were  found  beneath  almost  all  the  houses  in  Jericho, 
and  the  fact  that  the  heads  were  buried  immediately  below  the  floor 
may  point  to  the  existence  of  a  cult  devoted  to  ancestor  worship. 

It  is  quite  certain  that  the  people  of  Jericho  believed  in  spiritual 
powers  and  in  the  spiritual  activity  of  their  ancestors— perhaps,  even, 
in  a  life  hereafter— for  they  would  never  have  taken  such  pains  had 
they  not  been  convinced  that  the  dead  and  the  unseen  world  of  the 
spirit  could  communicate  with  and  intervene  in  the  world  of  the 
living. 

The  artistic  quality,  spiritual  exaltation  and  desire  for  perpetuity 
evident  in  these  skulls  reveal  an  almost  bafflinCT  decree  of  skill,  and 
the  fact  that  such  proficiency  existed  at  a  time  when  the  world  had 
been  thought  to  be  devoid  of  towns  makes  it  all  the  more  incredible. 

The  ruins  of  Jericho  tell  a  storv  embracing  many  thousands  of 
years.  The  city  was  overwhelmed  and  occupied  by  a  succession  of 
invaders,  and  ultimately  newcomers  arrived  who  had  already  mas- 
tered the  art  of  making  pottery.  They  left  behind  no  houses  of  any 


JORDANIA  21 

sort,  so  it  is  possible  that  the  ancient  city  had  fallen  down  and  that 
they  settled  in  the  ruins,  but  they  arrived  with  a  well-developed 
knowledge  of  the  potter's  art.  Mountains  of  broken  clay  vessels  have 
been  dug  up,  yet  no  signs  of  community  life  are  discernible  from  this 
mysterious  period.  One  discovery  made  by  Professor  Garstang  was 
of  particular  interest:  the  remains  of  three  approximately  life-sized 
limestone  statues  representing  a  man,  a  woman  and  a  child,  of  which 
only  the  male  figure  was  complete  with  head.  Kathleen  Kenyon  has 
suggested  that  these  figures  represent  the  earliest  portrayal  of  a 
"holy  family."  Carved  long  before  the  invention  of  writing  and 
thousands  of  years  before  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  came  into 
being,  they  seem  to  offer  a  first,  mute  Messianic  prophecy  and  an 
indication  that,  even  in  the  mists  of  prehistory,  people  embraced  a 
religion  which  may  not  have  been  so  different  from  our  own 
experience. 

The  next  invaders  made  finer  and  better-baked  clay  vessels  with 
engraved  patterns,  and  for  the  first  time  we  can  distinguish  a  cultural 
relationship  between  the  Jericho  people  and  others  whose  relics 
have  been  excavated  near  Sha'ar  ha  Golan  on  the  river  Yarmuk,  at 
Byblos  and  in  other  places.  It  becomes  apparent  that  by  this  stage 
(about  4750  B.C.)  inventions  were  being  introduced  into  Jericho 
from  places  outside. 

Then  silence.  All  signs  of  human  activity  disappear,  for  an  interme- 
diate period  about  which  archaeologists  can  discover  nothing.  The 
next  message— a  voice  from  the  grave,  as  it  were— does  not  arrive 
until  3200  B.C.  The  pre-pottery  neolithic  town  builders  buried 
their  dead  beneath  the  floors  of  their  houses,  and  the  potter  folk 
left  virtually  no  traces  of  their  existence  apart  from  pottery,  but  the 
post-3200  B.C.  inhabitants  left  behind  regular  graves  in  the  hills 
around  the  city.  Professor  Kenyon  calls  this  period,  whose  remains 
she  has  excavated  personally,  the  "proto-urban  period."  The  graves 
were  usually  circular  shafts  leading  downward  through  the  rock  into 
underground  chambers  which  were  sealed  by  one  large  stone  or 
several  smaller  ones. 

In  one  chamber,  which  was  larger  than  the  rest,  no  less  than  1 1 3 
human  skulls  had  been  carefully  arranged  so  that  their  empty  eye 
sockets  stared  sightlessly  toward  the  center  of  the  grave.  The  occu- 
pants of  this  grave,  which  is  known  as  A  94,  had  been  supplied  with 
clay  vessels,  bowls,  large  pitchers  and  numerous  winepots.  Archaeo- 


22  THE  SILENT  PAST 

logical  methods  are  now  so  highly  developed  that  it  is  possible  to 
establish  that  when  the  heads  were  placed  in  the  grave  they  were 
already  in  a  skeletal  condition.  The  dead  must  therefore  have  been 
stored  somewhere  until  decomposition  was  complete  and  the  skulls 
could  be  severed  from  the  trunks.  The  skeletons  themselves  were 
carried  into  the  grave  and  burned  in  the  middle  of  the  chamber,  the 
skulls  being  arranged  around  them  so  that  they  could  "watch"  the 
burning  of  their  own  limbs.  We  know  that  the  skulls  were  there 
at  the  time  because  they  show  signs  of  scorching,  whereas  the 
funerary  vessels  are  unmarked  by  fire  and  must  have  been  installed 
subsequently.  Two  hundred  and  fifty-one  vessels  were  recovered 
from  A  94.  The  radiocarbon  method  of  dating,  which  has  been 
widely  used  in  recent  years,  reveals  that  the  grave  was  built  about 
3260  B.C.  Archaeologists  think  that  the  occupants  of  these  tombs 
were  nomads. 

Eventually,  the  early  Bronze  Age  arrived.  It  lasted  in  Jericho 
from  2900  until  about  2300  B.C.  Once  again  massive  walls  were  built, 
once  again  sentries  must  have  stood  guard  on  them,  once  again  the 
city  flourished,  and  once  again  the  inhabitants  of  Jericho  must,  like 
their  forerunners  in  the  very  early  days,  have  lived  in  fear  of  attack 
by  nomads. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  recorded  human  history,  culturally 
advanced  peoples  who  live  in  fertile,  well-watered  valleys  have 
always  been  menaced  by  parched  and  famished  nomads  like  those 
who  provide  the  earliest  figures  in  our  Bible.  History,  as  recorded 
in  the  Old  Testament,  goes  back  to  1700  b.c,  the  time  of  the 
Patriarchs.  Archaeologists  C.  H.  Gordon,  E.  A.  Speiser  and  W.  F. 
Albright  have  demonstrated  that  Abraham  came  from  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Harran  in  northwest  Mesopotamia.  He  left  his  native  land 
and  trekked  southward  through  Palestine  and  the  land  of  Canaan 
with  his  herds  and  tents.  Isaac,  Esau  and  Jacob  lived  in  enmity  after 
Abraham  died.  In  the  next  generation,  Jacob  and  his  twelve  sons, 
like  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him,  led  a  nomad's  life. 
Jacob's  son  Joseph  must  have  acquired  a  respected  position  at  the 
Egyptian  court  before  he  and  his  father  and  brothers  were  allowed 
to  settle  in  the  province  of  Goshen,  but  under  the  succeeding 
Pharaohs  and  after  the  fall  of  the  Semitic  Hyksos  monarchy  the 
Israelites  ultimately  became  serfs  until  Moses  saved  his  people  and 
extricated  the  tribes  of  Jacob  from  Egypt.  Palestine  proper  was 


JORDANIA  23 

gradually  occupied  by  the  Israelites,  a  process  of  annexation  which 
is  partly  attributed  to  Joshua,  Moses'  successor. 

The  Israelites  were  still  seminomads,  but  they  had  developed  a 
taste  for  settled  civilization.  They  marched  through  fertile  plains 
past  towns  which  were  still  in  the  hands  of  the  original  Canaanite 
inhabitants,  until  ultimately  Joshua  stood  with  his  people  before  the 
walls  of  Jericho.  Once  a  day  for  six  successive  days  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant  was  borne  around  the  city  to  the  sound  of  trumpets. 
Then,  on  the  seventh  day,  seven  priests  circled  the  city  seven  times 
and  the  walls  "fell  down  flat"  to  the  blaring  of  trumpets  and  a 
"great  shout"  raised  by  the  besiegers.  According  to  research  con- 
ducted by  the  American  archaeologist  W.  F.  Albright,  the  events 
described  in  the  Book  of  Joshua  took  place  between  1375  and  1300 
B.C.,  although  they  were  not  committed  to  writing  until  about 
620  B.C. 

Jericho  was  the  best-fortified  city  in  the  Jordan  valley  and  a 
place  of  great  strategic  importance,  for  it  dominated  the  passes  into 
the  central  highlands.  Anyone  who  proposed  to  capture  it  had  to 
have  precise  information  about  its  walls,  its  military  strength  and 
the  hazards  and  difficulties  involved.  Accordingly,  Joshua  sent  two 
spies  into  the  city  to  lodge  at  the  house  of  the  harlot  Rahab.  When 
the  King  of  Jericho  learned  of  this  and  tried  to  have  them  arrested, 
Rahab  concealed  their  presence  and  swore  that  although  two  men 
had  visited  her  she  had  had  no  idea  who  they  were  and  that,  anyway, 
they  had  left  before  the  city  gates  were  shut  for  the  night.  In  reality, 
she  had  hidden  the  spies  and  later  helped  them  to  escape,  securing 
in  return  a  promise  that  she  and  her  family  would  be  spared  if  the 
Israelites  captured  the  city.  Rahab  was  firmly  convinced  that  Jericho 
was  doomed.  Bored  and  irritated  by  her  smug  Canaanite  compatriots 
who  lived  so  comfortably  within  the  stout  walls  of  their  fortress,  she 
was  ripe  for  treachery. 

One  more  interesting  detail  emerges  from  the  account  in  Joshua. 
Rahab's  house  was  built  abutting  the  city  wall.  Excavations  at  Jericho 
have  brought  to  light  just  such  houses,  bounded  on  one  side  by  the 
city  wall  itself. 

We  do  not  know  why  Jericho's  walls  collapsed.  Perhaps  its  in- 
habitants were  panic-stricken  and  opened  the  gates  because  reports 
of  the  besiegers'  strength  and  of  Jehovah's  support  had  preceded 
them,  spreading  fear  and  despondency  among  the  Canaanites.  Ex- 


24  THE  SILENT  PAST 

cavations  have  indicated  that  houses  and  city  walls  were  destroyed 
by  earthquakes  at  different  periods.  Perhaps  one  of  these  earthquakes 
occurred  on  the  seventh  day! 

All  this  happened  when  Jericho  was  already  immensely  old.  In  its 
six  or  seven  thousand  years  of  existence  it  had  already  seen  many 
cities  crumble  within  its  walls,  to  be  replaced  by  new  cities. 

If,  in  about  1300  b.c,  the  children  of  Israel  chanced  to  hear  of  the 
skulls  which  men  had  once  tried  to  preserve  for  eternity  with  artis- 
tically molded  layers  of  plaster,  they  may  well  have  assumed  that  it 
all  happened  an  unimaginably  long  time  ago  and  dismissed  it  as  no 
more  than  a  legend  dating  from  a  time  when  man  was  not  yet  man. 

Yet  the  whole  fabulous  city  and  its  skulls  were  dug  up  in  our  own 
day.  So  real  and  so  tangible  that  no  one  can  doubt  their  existence, 
they  testify  to  the  amazing  spirituality  of  man  in  times  beyond  our 
ken.  Three  thousand  years  separate  us  from  Joshua  and  the  children 
of  Israel  who  conquered  Jericho,  but  five  thousand  years  separated 
Joshua  from  the  men  who  made  these  first  real  attempts  at  human 
portraiture. 


SYRIA 

GOOD  LIVING  IN  UGARIT 

From  flow  on  it  is  possible  to  say  that  the  palace  of  Ugarit  is  the 
largest  arid  njost  jnagnificent  among  royal  residefices  knoimi  to 
have  existed  in  the  Near  East  during  the  second  millemiimn  b.c. 

—Claude  F.  A.  Schaeffer,  Le  Palais  Royal  d'Ugarit, 

Paris,  1955 

THIRTY  years  ago  a  hill  was  opened  up  to  reveal  a  civilization 
which  even  today  exercises  a  shadowy  influence  on  our  attitude 
toward  life  and  death,  God  and  the  world  to  come.  Behind  all  our 
religious  beliefs  there  stands,  latent  and  almost  lost  in  the  remote 
reaches  of  history,  a  race  that  inhabited  the  Biblical  lands  long  before 
the  Israelites. 

Sometimes,  like  a  faint  glimmer  of  light  in  the  gloom  of  evening, 
we  catch  a  glimpse  of  this  mysterious  race.  At  the  time  the  follow- 
ing events  occurred  the  hour  was  already  late  and  their  civilization 
had  long  since  passed  its  prime.  The  Bible  tells  us  that  when  Christ 
visited  the  district  of  Tyre  and  Sidon  he  was  confronted  by  an 
unfortunate  woman  whose  daughter  was  mentally  ill.  The  unhappy 
mother  begged  him  to  help  her  child,  but  Jesus  remained  silent.  Still 
she  persisted,  saying:  "Lord,  help  me."  It  was  like  the  elemental  voice 
of  prayer,  the  cry  from  the  heart  to  which  the  Psalms  sometimes 
give  expression.  It  was  an  appeal  for  help  from  a  heathen  world,  and 
Jesus  answered  it  with  the  words:  "O  woman,  great  is  thy  faith: 
be  it  even  as  thou  wilt." 

This  unique  story  and  its  moving  climax  contain  a  fundamental 
truth.  They  illustrate  how  boundless  a  belief  in  God  could  and  can 
still  inhabit  the  heathen  breast,  that  it  is  age-old,  and  that  a  Canaanite 
woman  was  quite  capable  of  such  faith. 

The  race  whose  civilization  was  unearthed  thirty  years  ago  was 
that  of  the  Canaanites,  and  the  woman  who  confronted  Christ  in  the 
Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark  was  a  latter-day  descendant  of  those 
much-maligned  seekers  after  God  who  lived  long  before  the  first 
figures  in  Biblical  history.  They  were  the  people  whom  the  Greeks 
called  Phoenicians,  the  people  who  ruled  over  the  powerful  maritime 
cities  of  Tyre  and  Sidon.  The  greatest  seafaring  race  in  the  ancient 
world,  they  were  responsible  for  founding  the  city  of  Carthage  in 

25 


26  THE  SILENT  PAST 

814  B.C.  Their  greatest  son,  Hannibal,  almost  succeeded  in  conquer- 
ing Rome  during  the  Punic  Wars. 

The  Phoenicians,  who  began  to  roam  the  seas  about  1250  b.c, 
gained  fame  as  mariners,  manufacturers  of  purple  dye,  merchants, 
city  builders  and,  later,  as  a  naval  power  to  be  reckoned  with. 

The  extremely  interesting  culture  of  this  ancient  race  did  not 
spring  into  clear  focus  until  recent  times.  Resident  in  Syria  and 
Palestine  since  about  3000  b.c,  the  Canaanites  built  upon  the  ruins 
of  former  cities  and  evolved  a  way  of  life  and  a  social  order  which 
seemed  unbelievably  refined  to  the  Israelite  herdsmen  who  followed 
them.  They  enjoyed  their  highly  developed  culture  and  continued 
to  look  down  with  contempt  from  their  city  walls  at  the  new  arrivals 
from  the  desert,  until  they  were  eventually  humbled  by  the  Patriarchs. 

That  sedentary  races  in  thriving  cities  should  be  continually  sub- 
jugated by  invading  nomads  is  the  human  tragedy  and  seed  of 
destruction  inherent  in  almost  all  high  cultures.  Armed  conquest 
does  not,  however,  always  mean  victory  over  a  people's  culture. 
For  instance,  the  tough  race  of  hunters  known  as  the  Tunguses 
conquered  Peking  and  the  whole  of  China  down  to  the  Yangtze  in 
the  twelfth  century  a.d.,  yet  the  Manchu  Dynasty  founded  by 
their  descendants  was  later  vanquished  by  the  insidious  refinement 
of  Chinese  culture.  The  Romans  conquered  Greece,  yet  in  a  thou- 
sand aspects  of  cultural  life  the  Greeks  triumphed,  and  the  spirit  of 
Greece  was  ultimately  disseminated  by  the  victorious  Romans 
throughout  Europe  and  most  of  the  Near  East.  In  their  material  as 
well  as  their  spiritual  culture  the  sedentary  Canaanites  were  un- 
doubtedly superior  to  the  newcomers,  and  the  victorious  Israelites 
were  in  constant  danger— at  least  until  the  time  of  Solomon,  who 
lived  circa  950  b.c— of  being  bewitched  and  seduced  by  the  race 
whom  they  had  subjugated  so  long  before. 

Between  3000  and  1200  b.c  the  Canaanites'  fortifications,  domestic 
architecture,  street  systems  and  town  planning  were  true  wonders 
of  the  contemporary  world.  In  addition,  they  devised  extremely 
practical  sewerage  systems,  boasted  skilled  potters  and  artisans  in 
bronze.  Their  contribution  to  the  history  of  ideas  is  almost  in- 
estimable. Greece,  Rome  and  eventually  all  Europe  and  half  the 
world  owed  the  Canaanites  not  only  their  alphabet  but  also  ele- 
ments of  their  religious  observances,  legends  and  myths,  and  the 
basic  principles  of  town  construction. 


SYRIA 


27 


Assur 


Ugarit,  by  the  shores  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean 


28  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  Canaanites  built  powerful  fortresses  such  as  Megiddo,  Beth- 
shean,  Taanach,  Gezer,  Beth-shemesh  and  Hazor.  In  Beth-shean  four 
Canaanite  temples  dating  from  the  period  circa  1 300-1000  b.c.  were 
dug  up.  At  Tanaach  diggers  unearthed  the  foundations  of  a  Canaanite 
royal  palace.  At  Gezer,  whose  outer  walls  were  more  than  thirteen 
feet  thick,  the  Canaanites  had  eliminated  the  possibility  of  a  water 
shortage  during  times  of  siege  by  building  a  tunnel  to  a  spring 
situated  130  feet  below  present  ground  level.  During  1937  Gordon 
Loud  explored  the  palace  at  Megiddo  and  was  rewarded  by  finding 
beneath  its  foundation  walls  a  cache  of  two  hundred  engraved  ivory 
tablets.  One  of  these  plaquettes  depicts  a  prince  of  Megiddo  driving 
prisoners  before  his  war  chariot.  The  same  tablet  shows  him  seated 
on  a  throne,  drinking  from  a  bowl  and  listening  to  a  harpist,  much 
as  Saul  must  have  listened  to  David.  Also  at  Megiddo,  P.  L.  O.  Guy 
excavated  stables  capable  of  housing  three  hundred  horses  and  war 
chariots.  These  buildinCTs  dated  from  the  time  of  Kincr  Solomon. 
We  are  told  in  I  Kings:  ix,  19,  that  Solomon  constructed  "cities  for 
his  chariots  and  cities  for  his  horsemen"  and  also  that  he  fortified 
the  city  of  Megiddo.  Archaeology's  recent  habit  of  producing 
tangible  evidence  of  Old  Testament  accounts  is  positive  compen- 
sation for  the  more  dangerous  aspects  of  our  overscientific  era. 

In  1929  Claude  SchaefiFer  made  an  exceedingly  interesting  dis- 
covery. Digging  at  Ras  Shamra  on  the  northern  coast  of  Syria 
opposite  the  island  of  Cyprus,  he  unearthed  the  ancient  citv  of 
Ugarit  near  the  modern  town  of  Latakia.  The  place  had  been  in- 
habited for  many  thousands  of  years  by  people  whose  traces  went 
back  to  paleolithic  times.  The  lowest  layer,  in  which  flint  tools  were 
found,  lay  at  a  depth  of  60  feet.  It  yielded  no  pots  or  receptacles  of 
any  kind.  These  had  probably  been  made  of  wood  or  leather, 
materials  which  had  crumbled  away  to  nothing  in  the  course  of 
thousands  of  years.  At  a  depth  of  between  52  and  55  feet  Schaeffer 
found  some  stone  bowls.  We  do  not  know  what  sort  of  people  lived 
here  so  long  ago,  but  they  probably  differed  from  us  very  little. 
It  is  generally  correct  to  say  that  the  people  of  the  whole  world,  who 
have  demonstrably  belonged  to  Homo  sapiens  for  at  least  thirty 
thousand  years  and  probably  far,  far  longer,  are  more  closely  re- 
lated physically  and  mentally  than  we  tend  to  suppose.  At  Kan- 
jera,  northeast  of  Lake  Victoria  in  East  Africa,  skulls  belonging  to 
sapiens-like  men  have  been  found  which  are  no  less  than  three 


Stratigraphic  drawing  of  Ugarit.  the 
city  excavated  by  Claude  Schaeflfer. 
This  plan  shows  how  the  layers  of 
an  ancient  city  are  superimposed 
one  upon  the  other,  (a)  The  most 
recent  layer  of  earth  covering  the 
hill  of  Ugarit.  (b)  and  (c)  City 
and  house  walls,  (d)  and  (e)  The 
walls  of  the  city  between  141 5  and 
1365  B.C.,  before  it  was  destroyed 
by  an  earthquake,  (f),  (g)  and  (h) 
A  burial  chamber  with  funerary 
gifts  for  the  dead,  dating  from  the 
period  between  1450  and  1365  b.c. 
(j)  Funerary  gifts  in  the  Minoan 
style,  imported  from  Crete  between 
1900  and  1750  B.C.  or  made  in 
Ugarit  under  the  guidance  of 
Cretan  craftsmen,  (k)  Layer  of 
earth.  (1)  Various  pieces  of  jewelrv 
of  the  period  between  2900  and 
1900  B.C.  (I)  and  (m)  Here,  26 
feet  beneath  the  surface  of  the  hill, 
were  found  the  earliest  examples 
of  painted  vases  in  Ugarit. 


Im. 


\-i''^:-i 


■K 


0m 


9«, 


30  THE  SILENT  PAST 

hundred  thousand  years  old  and  indicate  that  neither  Peking  nor 
Neanderthal  man  was  the  prototype  of  the  human  race. 

Between  6000  and  5000  B.C.  the  inhabitants  of  Stone-Age  Ras 
Shamra  and  Jericho  appear  to  have  come  into  contact,  or  so  similar- 
ities between  the  earliest  stone  vessels  found  in  both  places  seem 
to  indicate.  Tools  made  of  quartzite,  obsidian  and  bone  lie  at  depths 
of  40  and  50  feet,  but  even  as  early  as  this,  man  was  beginning  to 
produce  painted  pottery  of  amazingly  high  quality.  King  Sargon  I, 
ruler  of  the  Akkadian  empire,  one  of  the  greatest  Semitic  statesmen 
in  world  history  and  the  man  responsible  for  uniting  the  Sumerians 
and  the  Semitic  Akkadians,  probably  passed  through  the  district  of 
Ugarit  about  2300  b.c.  and  may  well  have  visited  the  city  itself. 

Many  thousands  of  years  of  history  and  grandeur  lie  buried 
beneath  the  hill  of  Ras  Shamra,  The  French  archaeologist  A.  Parrot, 
who  unearthed  the  city  of  Mari  beneath  Tell  Hariri  on  the  middle 
reaches  of  the  Euphrates,  found  a  clay  tablet  among  the  royal 
archives  there.  A  letter  from  the  celebrated  lawgiver  Hammurabi 
( 1 728-1686  B.C.),  who  held  sway  over  the  whole  of  Babylonia, 
Assyria  and  Mesopotamia,  mentioned  that  the  king  of  Ugarit  had 
informed  him  of  his  wish  to  visit  the  palace  of  Zimrilim,  residence 
of  the  last  king  of  Mari. 

We  are  now  in  a  period  whose  remains  lie  some  25  feet  below 
ground  level.  Graves  of  this  time  yielded  bracelets,  sewing  needles 
complete  with  eyes,  necklaces  and  other  articles  of  adornment  made 
of  bronze.  These  were  traces  of  Europeans  who  had  either  come  to 
Ugarit  from  the  Balkans,  the  Danube,  the  Rhine  or  the  Caucasus  or 
had  exported  fine  examples  of  their  craftsmanship  to  the  area. 
Similar  objects  have  been  found  throughout  these  regions. 

The  mighty  land  of  Egypt  established  relations  with  Ugarit,  and 
it  must  have  been  a  splendid  moment  when  the  stone  statuette  of 
the  Egyptian  princess  Shnumit  was  borne  into  the  city.  In  Crete 
this  was  the  time  of  the  golden  age  of  Minoan  culture.  Once  again 
the  soil  yields  information  about  the  liistory  of  commercial  relations 
between  Ugarit  and  the  maritime  kingdom  of  Crete,  for  fragments 
of  magnificent  Cretan  vases  have  come  to  light.  One  grave,  for 
instance,  contained  a  tiny  terracotta  bowl  no  bigger  than  an  eggshell, 
undoubtedly  imported  from  Crete  between  1900  and  1750  b.c. 

What  happened  after  that  is  hard  to  tell,  for  some  unidentified 
power  destroyed  the  Egyptian  statues  found  in  Ugarit.  Judging  by 


SYRIA  31 

their  refined  tastes  and  cosmopolitan  attitude  to  life,  Ugarit's  Semitic 
inhabitants  would  never  have  been  responsible  for  such  wanton 
destruction.  The  city  recovered,  however,  and  the  funerary  gifts 
found  there  display  an  astonishing  variety  of  artistic  styles.  People 
from  the  island  of  Cyprus,  merchants  from  Egypt,  scholars  from 
Mesopotamia  and  craftsmen  from  all  over  the  contemporary  world 
must  have  congregated  within  the  city's  walls. 

Ugarit  eventually  fell  prey  to  the  most  powerful  and  competent 
of  Egypt's  Pharaohs,  Pharaoh  Thutmosis  III,  perhaps  the  greatest 
political  genius  in  the  pre-Christian  Near  East.  The  mummy  of  this 
mighty  ruler,  which  has  survived,  displays  a  truly  royal  countenance 
with  a  fine  aquiline  nose,  resolute  mouth  and  long  occiput.  The 
statue  in  the  Temple  of  Karnak,  too,  conveys  some  measure  of  the 
enormous  energy  which  must  have  animated  this  man.  Thutmosis  III 
needed  bases  for  his  campaigns  and  supply  depots  for  his  troops,  and 
his  best  harbor  in  the  north  was  Ugarit.  The  people  who  lived  there 
about  1500  B.C.,  Cypriots,  Aegeans,  Cretans,  Egyptians,  as  well  as 
the  natives  of  Ugarit  themselves,  all  derived  benefits  from  the 
Egyptian  conquest,  and  under  the  "pax  Aegyptia"  the  city  enjoyed 
a  golden  age  which  produced  some  truly  amazing  architecture. 

Extensive  residential  areas  were  laced  by  straight  streets  intersect- 
ing at  right  angles.  There  were  multiroomed  houses  equipped  with 
baths  and  elaborate  sanitary  installations.  Rainwater  flowed  into  the 
city  along  fine  stone  canals  and  there  was  an  admirable  drainage 
system.  Walled  fountains  installed  in  the  courtyards  were  faced 
with  handsome  stone  tiles  and  their  central  access  sheltered  by  small 
roofs  supported  on  four  legs.  Large  stone  tubs  were  placed  by  the 
fountains  to  receive  water.  Living  and  sleeping  quarters  were  prob- 
ably situated  on  the  second  story,  and  were  approached  by  stone 
stairs  of  considerable  width. 

If  the  living  lived  in  comfort,  the  dead  were  certainly  not  neg- 
lected. Beneath  each  house  was  a  burial  chamber  with  a  vaulted  roof, 
usually  very  neatly  constructed  of  stone  slabs.  A  passage  led  into 
the  interior,  and  there,  beneath  their  ancestral  home,  the  dead  con- 
tinued to  share  in  the  life  of  the  family.  They  went  into  eternity 
provided  with  costly  articles  of  use  and  adornment.  Indeed,  the 
people  of  Ugarit  buried  their  dead  in  truly  royal  fashion,  which  is 
why,  unfortunately,  almost  all  the  graves  have  suffered  from  the 
depredations  of  thieves.  However,  grave  robbers  normally  took 


32  THE  SILENT  PAST 

only  objects  of  gold  and  funerary  gifts  of  obvious  value,  leaving 
behind  beautiful  pieces  of  faience,  ivory  ornaments,  alabaster  vases 
and  superb  Mycenaean  ceramics,  most  of  which  originated  in  work- 
shops on  the  islands  of  Rhodes  and  Cyprus.  Many  of  the  Minoan 
vases  with  tapering  bases  and  painted  decoration  are  of  unique 
beauty.  Claude  Schaeffer,  the  discoverer  of  this  amazing  city,  even 
established  that  the  dead  were  buried  with  vessels  containing  brewed 
beverages.  Great  luxury  was  lavished  on  the  dead  in  Ugarit,  and  we 
shall  later  investigate  why  this  implicit  belief  in  an  afterlife  existed. 

The  harbor  stood  on  the  bay  of  Minet  el  Beida.  Here,  too,  the 
people  of  Ugarit  had  built  houses  equipped  with  every  amenity,  and 
here,  too,  graves  of  artistic  design  were  found,  as  well  as  warehouses 
and  storerooms  of  surprisingly  modern  appearance.  In  one  such 
store  chamber  Schaeffer  counted  more  than  eighty  earthen  jars 
which  must  have  contained  oil  or  wine  intended  either  for  domestic 
use  or  for  export.  Some  indication  of  the  harbor's  large  turnover 
and  commercial  activity  is  provided  by  a  building  in  which  were 
stored  more  than  a  thousand  large  jars  with  handles,  mostly  of 
Cyprian  origin  and  once  used  to  hold  perfumed  oil  which  was 
exported  to  Palestine  and  Egypt. 

A  highly  developed  cosmetics  industry  had  grown  up  in  Ugarit. 
Fragile  phials  for  scent,  ivory  rouge  boxes,  many  in  the  form  of 
ducks  with  expressions  of  comical  surprise,  and  tiny  falcons  in 
bronze  with  inlaid  feathers  of  gold  prove  that  Egyptian  art  had 
gained  a  foothold  here.  Not  that  the  pampered  inhabitants  of  Ugarit 
despised  Aegean  and  Minoan  craftsmanship.  Artists  from  Crete  and 
Greece,  sculptors,  goldsmiths  and  bronze  casters  must  all  have  been 
patronized  in  their  workshops  by  the  well-dressed,  rouged  and 
powdered  matrons  of  3,500  years  ago.  One  glazed  clay  cup  found 
in  a  grave  in  Minet  el  Beida  bears  a  finely  modeled  female  mask 
exemplifying  the  well-groomed  features  of  the  Cretan  ladies  who 
were  emulated  by  the  high  society  of  Ugarit.  Just  over  six  inches 
high,  it  reposes  in  the  Louvre  at  Paris  and  is  one  of  the  showpieces 
of  what  is  the  largest  collection  of  art  treasures  in  the  world. 

Schaeffer  found  in  the  course  of  his  excavations  that  an  earth- 
quake had  destroyed  the  city  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century  b.c.  Ruined  houses,  shattered  walls,  massive  blocks  of  dis- 
placed masonry  and  widespread  evidence  of  fire  can  all  be  clearly 
distinguished.  Abimilki,  King  of  Tyre,  recounted  the  catastrophe 


[  I  ]  Male  head  forming  part  of  the  remains  of  three  roughly  life-size  limestone  statues 
of  a  man,  woman  and  child  excavated  by  Professor  Garstang.  In  Kathleen  Kenyon's 
opinion,  these  figures  represent  the  earliest  known  prehistoric  portrayal  of  a  "Holy 

Family." 


-C?^ 


[2]   Skull  sculpture  from  Jericho  modeled  around  an  actual  skull.  It  is  roughly 
years  old  and  was  probably  associated  with  ancestor  worship. 


10,000 


[3]  This  building  was  erected  in  Jericho  7,800  years  before  Christ's  birth.  The  circular 
depressions  are  assumed  to  have  held  supporting  beams.  The  people  of  Jericho  were 
already  living  in  an  advanced  residential  culture  by  about  2,000  years  after  the  end  of 
the  last  Ice  Age.  Theirs  is  the  only  city  of  the  period  to  have  been  excavated  so  far. 


\„ 


[4]   Among  the  most  amazing  discoveries  made  at  Jericho  were  human  skulls  coated 

with  clay  to  preserve  the  features  of  the  departed.  The  eye  sockets  were  inlaid  with 

shells  and  the  entire  sculpture  painted  to  reproduce  the  natural  color  of  the  human 

face.  (Profile  and  full-face  views  of  the  same  head.) 


[5]   The  oldest  house  so  far  excavated  anywhere  in  the  world   (photographed  from 

above).  It  abuts  on  the  city  vvall  (right)  and  was  built  between  nine  and  ten  thousand 

years  ago.  When  this  house  was  erected  the  people  of  Jericho  were  still  living  in  the 

Stone  Age.  Although  they  made  no  pottery,  they  were  already  city  builders. 


[6]  Excavated  at  Ugarit,  this  small  ivory  carving  of  a  Canaanite  goddess  dates  from 

about  1350  B.C.  and  is  now  in  the  Louvre,  Paris.  The  modeling  of  the  face  and  the 

artistic  coiffure,  headband  and  necklace  all  reveal  that  the  sculptor  either  came  from 

Greece  or  was  influenced  by  early  Greek  style. 


[y]  Copper  statuette  of  a 
deity  found  by  the  French 
archaeologist  Claude 
Schaeffer  at  Ugarit  in  1937. 
It  was  made  between  1800 
and  i6oo  b.c.  The  pictures 
show  front  and  side  view 
of  the  same  figure. 


[8]  The  harbor  of  Ugarit 
stood  by  the  sea  4,000  years 
ago,  but  in  the  course  of 
time  the  bay  of  Minet  el 
Beida  has  become  silted  up. 
Roughly  one  half  mile  far- 
ther inland  from  the  port 
stands  the  city-mound  of 
Ugarit  proper,  now  called 
Ras  Shamra. 


.^J^Sfww^^SaSWRfw^as^^  -. 


#    • 


[g]  Bronze  statuette  of  the  god  Baal  dating  from  the  15th  or  14th  century  b.c.  The 
tall  coiffure  and  head  are  covered  with  a  layer  of  gold,  the  body  with  silver.  This  rare 
piece  was  excavated  at  Minet  el  Beida,  the  ancient  harbor  of  Ugarit,  and  is  now  in 

the  Louvre,  Paris. 


7   ^'f    ^        f      ''I' 


[lol  Clay  tablet  from  the  central  archives  of  Ugarit.  The  text  is  written  in  the  world's 
oldest  alphabet,  evolved  by  the  Canaanites  about  3,400  years  ago.  The  tablet  bears  the 

seal  of  the  royal  dynasty. 
[11]  The  clay  vessel  (top)  was  probably  used  for  mixing  wine  with  water  in  Ugarit, 
1600-1450  B.C.  The  twin  vases  (below)  date  from  the  period  1450-1365  b.c.  They  too 

were  made  out  of  clay  and  painted  reddish-brown  and  black. 

[12]  This  fragment  from  an  ivory  plaque  set  into  the  footboard  of  the  royal  bed  is 

one  of  the  finest  known  examples  of  Canaanite  art.  It  shows  the  king  of  Ugarit 

menacing  a  foreign  ruler  with  his  sword. 


'■^ 


[13]  A  figurine  in  reddish  terra-cotta  portraying  a  male  Phoenician  clad  in  an  apron. 
Just  over  5I/2   inches  tall,  this  very  fine  piece  is  more  than  3,000  years  old  and  was 

excavated  at  Byblos  by  Maurice  Dunand. 

[  14]  Also  in  reddish  terra-cotta,  this  head  with  tall  hat  and  chin  strap  formed  the  neck 

of  a  Phoenician  vase.  Byblos,  where  this  unusually  fine  piece  was  found,  was  probably 

inhabited  by  men  with  expressive  features  of  this  type. 


SYRIA  33 

to  Pharaoh  Amenophis  IV  in  the  following  words:  "The  royal  city 
of  Ugarit  has  been  destroyed  by  fire.  Half  the  city  was  burned; 
the  other  half  has  simply  ceased  to  exist."  It  is  one  of  the  unsolved 
riddles  of  history  why  Ugarit,  the  Cretan  city  of  Knossos,  Troy  and 
other  large  cities  should  all  have  suffered  widespread  devastation 
almost  simultaneously  during  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.  It  seems 
strange  that  an  earthquake  should  have  struck  down  such  widely 
scattered  places  at  almost  the  same  time. 

Once  more  Ugarit  revived,  once  more  houses  and  palaces  were 
built  and  once  more  the  ladies  wore  splendid  robes  in  the  Egyptian 
and  Mycenaean  style— more  particularly  the  latter,  since  the  Cretans 
were  by  now  Ugarit's  wealthiest  citizens  and  its  arbiters  of  fashion. 

Then,  about  1200  B.C.,  final  tragedy  struck.  Like  a  tornado, 
invaders  bore  down  on  the  fertile  land  of  Syria  from  the  north, 
from  Greece  and  Asia  Minor.  These  "people  from  the  sea"  were 
armed  with  unfamiliar  weapons  of  iron,  and  Ugarit  did  not  with- 
stand their  onslaught.  The  city  died  with  the  Bronze  Age,  and  was 
extinguished  forever.  The  merchants  ceased  their  busy  calculations, 
the  scribes  laid  down  their  styluses,  and  their  clay  tablets  were 
scattered  to  the  winds  by  the  destroyers  of  their  amazing  city.  The 
elegant  ladies  laughed  no  more,  and  layer  upon  layer  of  earth  arose 
to  form  the  hill  which  is  still  in  the  process  of  being  explored  at  the 
present  day. 


SYRIA 

THE  WORLD'S  FIRST  ALPHABET 

And  Hiram  king  of  Tyre  sejit  his  servants  unto  Solomon;  for  he 
had  heard  that  they  anointed  him  king  in  the  room  of  his  father: 
for  Hiram  was  ever  a  lover  of  David.  Ajid  Solomon  sent  to  Hira7ti, 
saying,  thou  knowest  how  that  David  my  father  could  not  huild 
an  house  unto  the  name  of  the  Lord  his  God  for  the  wars  which 
were  about  him.  on  every  side,  until  the  Lord  put  them  under  the 
soles  of  his  feet.  But  now  the  Lord  my  God  hath  given  me  rest  on 
every  side,  so  that  there  is  neither  adversary  nor  evil  occurrent. 
And,  behold,  I  purpose  to  build  an  house  unto  the  name  of  the 
Lord  viy  God 

—I  Kings:  v,  1-5 

NO  ARCHAEOLOGIST  who  proposes  to  dig  up  cities  and  civilizations 
plies  his  spade  at  random.  It  is  far  better  to  delve  into  books  before 
delving  into  the  ground. 

What  follows  is  a  splendid  example  of  the  fact  that  ancient  pre- 
Christian  literary  sources  often  provide  reliable  information,  that 
we  should  not  write  off  as  mere  fantasy  everything  that  at  first  sight 
appears  incredible,  and  that  even  myths  normally  contain  some 
truth.  We  have  still  to  learn  that  neither  man's  mental  powers  nor 
his  basic  wisdom  have  increased  appreciably  in  the  course  of  thou- 
sands of  years.  It  is  one  of  the  misfortunes  of  our  time  that  we  give 
complete  credence  to  scientific  research  but  tend  to  ignore  those  who 
have  communicated  the  greatest  spiritual  truths  to  mankind,  men 
like  Buddha,  Confucius,  Euripides  and  Socrates— all  of  whom,  inci- 
dentally, lived  at  about  the  same  period,  some  2,500  years  ago. 

In  485  B.C.  a  child  who  was  one  day  to  be  described  as  the  father 
of  history  was  born  into  a  respected  family  in  Halicarnassus.  Herod- 
otus traveled  throughout  the  contemporary  Mediterranean  world. 
A  scholar  endowed  with  unusual  powers  of  observation,  he  was  also 
a  man  of  wide  interests  and  unlimited  curiosity.  He  took  the  stories 
he  passed  on  seriously,  but  was  fond  of  indulging  in  gentle  satire. 
He  paid  homage  to  tradition  but  was  fascinated  by  novelt)^.  Al- 
though he  had  no  expert  military  knowledge  he  gave  a  brilliant 
description  of  the  great  war  in  which  Persia  and  Greece  fought  for 
supremacy  of  the  known  world.  He  was  prejudiced  against  no 
people  or  race  and  beheved  above  all  that  a  man  endowed  with 

34 


SYRIA  35 

reason  and  some  knowledge  of  the  past  is  free  to  mold  his  history 
and  his  future— that  he  is  by  no  means  merely  the  plaything  of 
natural  forces  and  blind  fate.  That  was  why,  unlike  later-day 
prophets  of  Western  decline,  Herodotus  never  attempted  to  fore- 
cast the  future  of  nations,  on  the  principle  that  no  man's  future 
behavior  is  predictable, 

Herodotus  tells  us  in  the  fifth  book  of  his  Histories  where  the 
Greeks  got  their  written  script.  The  Phoenicians,  he  writes,  came  to 
Greece  with  King  Cadmus,  bringing  with  them  many  branches  of 
knowledge,  among  them  the  art  of  writing,  "which,  so  I  believe, 
the  Hellenes  did  not  possess  before." 

The  world's  first  historian  also  believed  the  Phoenicians  to  be 
the  inventors  of  the  alphabet  from  which  the  Greeks  evolved  their 
own  sequence  of  written  characters  and  which  has  become  the 
alphabet  of  all  European  languages.  Although  his  accounts  have 
often  been  questioned  by  modern  historians,  Herodotus  has  received 
signal  confirmation.  What  he  wrote  in  the  fifth  century  b.c.  has  been 
vindicated  in  our  own,  for  Claude  Schaeffer's  excavations  between 
1929  and  the  present  day  have  produced  concrete  evidence  of  all 
that  Herodotus  reported  in  such  detail  and  with  such  accuracy 
thousands  of  years  ago. 

While  uncovering  the  city  of  Ugarit,  which  was  buried  beneath 
the  hill  of  Ras  Shamra,  Schaeffer  identified  five  separate  layers 
representing  five  human  civilizations  ranging  from  the  Stone  Age 
of  many  thousand  years  ago  to  1 100  B.C.,  when  Ugarit  disappeared. 
The  fifth  layer  is  the  oldest  and  naturally  lies  lower  than  the  rest. 
The  first  or  topmost  layer  contains  the  ruins  of  a  city  which 
flourished  between  1500  and  iioo  b.c.  At  that  level  Schaeffer  dis- 
covered the  ruins  of  a  large  building  with  a  courtyard  at  its  center 
surrounded  by  several  sizable  rooms  and  approached  through  a 
massive  door  on  the  north  side.  A  flight  of  stairs  led  upward  to  the 
second  floor.  The  palatial  building  must  have  been  a  veritable  univer- 
sity devoted  to  the  art  of  calligraphy,  for  the  scholars  of  this  thriving 
Canaanite  city  studied  the  Akkadian,  Sumerian,  Hurritic  and,  most 
important  of  all,  the  proto-Phoenician  script  used  by  the  ancestors 
of  the  Phoenicians— the  script,  in  fact,  of  the  Canaanites.  Writing, 
or  the  engraving  of  written  characters  on  clay  tablets,  was  a  greater 
art  in  those  days  than  it  is  now,  and  had  to  be  carefully  learned. 

Like  the  archives  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  the  library  at  Ugarit 


36  THE  SILENT  PAST 

contained  clay  tablets  inscribed  on  both  sides  with  the  characters 
usually  termed  cuneiform  or  "wedge-shaped."  One  feature  of  the 
newly  discovered  Ugarit  script,  however,  sprang  to  the  eye  even 
before  it  had  been  deciphered.  The  Mesopotamian  scripts  consisted 
of  several  hundred  symbols,  each  of  which  stood  for  a  whole  syllable 
or  word;  the  Ugarit  texts  were  executed  with  only  29  or  30  charac- 
ters. It  was  at  once  apparent  that  the  earliest  alphabet  in  the  world 
had  been  discovered. 

In  April  1930,  one  year  after  the  first  tablets  had  been  unearthed 
at  Ugarit,  the  French  scholar  Virolleaud  published  texts  written  in 
the  mysterious  script.  A  brilliant  member  of  Halle  University,  Pro- 
fessor Hans  Bauer,  was  struck  by  the  thought  that  a  Semitic  language 
similar  to  Hebrew  or  Phoenician  must  be  involved.  Accordingly,  he 
tried  to  identify  some  Semitic  words  by  comparing  the  juxtaposition 
of  different  letters  and  actually  succeeded  in  discovering  the  written 
equivalents  of  the  words  "three"  and  "four"  and  of  several  religious 
names  such  as  Asherat,  Ashtart,  Baal,  El,  and  Elah. 

If  this  sounds  simple,  it  should  be  remembered  that  in  this,  as  in 
all  Semitic  languages,  vowels  are  almost  always  left  to  be  supplied  by 
the  reader,  so  inspired  guesswork  of  this  kind  demands  an  extensive 
knowledge  of  mythology.  STRT  stands  for  the  name  of  the  goddess 
Ashtart  or  Astarte.  Anyone  who  was  not  already  familiar  with  this 
goddess  from  Egyptian  inscriptions  would  never  have  realized  that 
STRT  meant  Astarte.  Similarly,  the  god  Baal  must  be  identified 
from  the  two  letters  BL. 

Bauer  eventually  deciphered  fourteen  out  of  twenty-eight  letters. 
In  nine  further  cases  he  went  astray,  and  the  remaining  five  eluded 
him.  The  French  have  done  yeoman  work  in  deciphering  this  script 
and  exploring  Canaanite  culture  in  general.  After  the  French  scholar 
Dhorme  had  succeeded  in  identifying  more  of  the  doubtful  letters, 
Hans  Bauer,  this  time  aided  by  Dhorme's  findings,  set  to  work  once 
more  and  solved  the  whole  mystery  with  the  exception  of  one 
letter.  Professor  Virolleaud  began  to  study  large  numbers  of  Canaan- 
ite tablets  and  in  1948  the  complete  series  was  at  last  identified. 
It  dates  back  to  1400  B.C.  and  is  the  world's  most  ancient  alphabet. 
We  shall  never  know  the  name  of  the  man  who  invented  it,  but  he 
was  certainly  a  Phoenician.  As  Virolleaud  points  out,  the  race  that 
produced  such  a  marvel  merits  our  highest  respect  and  must  be 
allotted  a  special  place  in  the  history  of  mankind. 


SYRIA  •  37 

The  ancient  Canaanite  alphabet  of  Ugarit  consists  of  28  separate 
letters  of  which  26  are  consonants.  The  Hebrew  alphabet  has  23  and 
the  later,  classical  Phoenician  22.  Our  own  alphabet  consists  of  26 
letters,  the  Russian  of  33.  Today,  any  text  written  in  the  Canaanite 
cuneiform  alphabet  which  has  not  been  destroyed  by  time  can  be 
read  with  accuracy. 

Two  kinds  of  clay  tablets  have  been  found,  the  larger  containing 
legends  and  myths  and  the  smaller  bearing  letters,  inventories, 
accounts,  instructions,  hsts  of  merchandise  such  as  oil,  wine  and 
purple,  and  legal  contracts  such  as  of  adoption,  gift  and  sale. 

It  is  fascinating  to  gain  a  glimpse  of  life  in  a  city  which  bequeathed 
us  one  of  the  most  ingenious  of  all  human  devices  but  subsequently, 
some  three  thousand  years  ago,  was  lost  to  view.  For  instance,  a 
man  named  Yasiranu  had  legally  adopted  a  youth  called  Ilkuya  in 


A  text  written  in  mankind's  oldest  alphabet.  Written  symbols  existed  in  Sumer 
at  an  earlier  date,  but  they  expressed  complete  syllables  or  words.  The  Ca- 
naanites  were  the  first  to  devise  an  alphabet  as  such.  The  text  illustrated  here 
deals  with  the  legal  relationship  of  Yasiranu  to  his  adoptive  son  Ilkuya.  The 
hatching  indicates  where  the  tablets  have  been  damaged. 


38  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  presence  of  the  King  of  Ugarit.  It  was  stipulated  in  writing  that 
neither  party  might  sever  the  relationship  without  due  notice. 
Should  the  adoptive  father  ever  wish  to  break  the  bond,  he  had 
to  give  his  adoptive  son  loo  shekels  of  silver  before  sending  him  on 
his  way.  Should  the  son  take  it  into  his  head  to  leave  the  father, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  had  to  raise  his  hands  above  his  head  and  walk 
out  into  the  street.  This  reveals  the  exemplary  fashion  in  which 
contracts  were  drawn  up  in  those  days.  The  raised  hands  are  a 
graphic  indication  that  a  disloyal  son  was  not  permitted  to  take 
anything  with  him  when  he  left  the  paternal  abode. 

We  learn  of  royal  gifts,  of  transactions  by  barter,  sale  and  pur- 
chase. Owners  exchanged  houses,  olive  plantations,  cattle,  donkeys 
and  sheep.  Tlie  entire  inventory  of  Queen  Ahatmilku's  dowry  has 
survived.  It  includes  four  pairs  of  gold  pendants  set  with  precious 
stones,  gold  rings  and  bracelets,  golden  cups,  bowls  and  pitchers, 
two  gold  belts,  twenty  robes  of  fine  Hurritic  material  and  an  equal 
number  of  Amurritic,  numerous  capes  and  cloaks,  seat  covers,  three 
beds  inlaid  with  ivory,  gold-plated  chairs,  basins,  jugs,  crucibles, 
beakers  and  pitch-burning  bronze  torches,  vessels  "filled  with  sweet 
oil,"  twenty  small  rouge  boxes  and  a  large  number  of  other  items. 
Queen  Ahatmilku  appears  to  have  been  a  wealthy,  fastidious  and 
pampered  woman f 

Reading  of  the  slave  trade,  we  are  told  that  slaves  were  some- 
times repurchased.  In  one  instance  the  purchaser  could  not  raise 
the  necessary  400  silver  shekels  and  arranged  an  advance  of  140 
shekels  from  his  principal.  However,  the  purchase  price  had  to  be 
paid  in  full  upon  delivery  of  the  slaves.  Since  a  shekel  weighed  just 
over  half  an  ounce,  the  slaves  cost  about  fifteen  pounds  of  silver- 
not  very  much  by  modern  standards,  although  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  silver  was  much  rarer  and  thus  more  valuable  than  it 
is  today.  The  charger  which  was  sold  to  the  King  of  Ugarit  by  the 
King  of  Carchemish's  master  of  horse  was  very  expensive  by  com- 
parison. The  clay  tablet  classified  as  No.  16.180  tells  us  that  this 
horse,  probably  a  fine  thoroughbred,  cost  200  shekels,  or  half  as 
much  as  the  whole  consignment  of  slaves. 

We  also  read  how  Ulmi,  a  woman  of  the  highest  rank,  begged 
her  daughter,  who  was  Queen  of  Ugarit,  for  help:  "May  the  gods 
of  Ugarit  and  the  gods  of  Amurru  preserve  you  in  the  best  of 
health.  Is  it  well  with  the  King  of  Ugarit  and  yourself?  Answer!" 


SYRIA  39 

The  writer  of  the  letter  went  on  to  say  that  her  house  had  been 
burned  down,  that  all  her  possessions  had  been  destroyed  and  that 
she  was  in  urgent  need  of  assistance.  It  seems  apparent  that  the 
Queen  of  Ugarit  and  her  mother  hailed  from  Amurru,  hence  the 
latter's  reference  to  the  gods  of  that  place.  She  was  able  to  mention 
them  because  of  the  tolerant  and  liberal  atmosphere  in  Ugarit 
(which  perhaps  explains  why  the  Canaanites'  own  gods  disappeared 
in  so  far  as  they  were  not  absorbed  into  later  religions). 

The  deciphering  of  the  clay  tablets  of  Ras  Shamra  has  meant  that 
for  the  past  thirty  years  our  knowledge  of  Canaanite  mythology 
has  been  steadily  increasing.  The  French  scholars  Virolleaud, 
Dussaud  and  Nougayrol  have  shed  light  on  the  hidden  secrets  of 
this  amazing  people's  religious  faith.  The  main  interest  and  im- 
portance of  their  findings  lie  in  the  fact  that  although  the  writings 
date  from  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.  their  content  is  very  much 
older.  This  information  must  either  have  been  passed  on  verbally 
from  generation  to  generation  or  transmitted  through  the  medium 
of  a  very  ancient  and  as  yet  nonalphabetical  system  of  written 
characters.  Since  Canaanites  and  Israelites  inhabited  the  same 
country,  led  a  similar  life,  were  familiar  with  the  same  legends  and 
worshiped  the  same  god,  we  are  forced  to  assume  that  both  peoples 
had  a  common  origin.  Thus  the  Ugarit  tablets  take  us  back  into  the 
earliest  history  of  the  Israelite  people,  and  their  discovery  is  one  of 
the  most  important  events  to  have  occurred  in  the  field  of  Biblical 
research. 

The  Canaanites'  religion  was  anything  but  primitive.  A  tightly 
organized  priesthood  served  regular  spells  of  duty  in  the  temples, 
which  were  numerous.  The  supreme  deity  was  known  as  El,  a 
word  which  means  "god"  in  the  Phoenician  as  well  as  in  all  other 
Semitic  languages.  The  Canaanites'  El  is  also  the  origin  of  Elohim, 
the  Old  Testament's  term  for  the  Almighty. 

El  stood  high  above  the  dealings  and  activities  of  mere  mortals 
and  was  far  removed  from  mundane  affairs.  He  was  the  "father 
of  the  years"  and  his  hand  was  "as  great  as  the  sea."  He  did,  however, 
live  on  earth,  somewhere  on  the  coast  "where  the  rivers  flow  into 
the  sea."  The  Canaanites  probably  regarded  their  supreme  being 
much  as  do  many  races  surviving  today,  particularly  those  of  the 
circumpolar  regions.  The  deeper  we  probe  into  early  history  and 
prehistory  the  more  clearly  we  recognize  that  the  supreme  being 


40  THE  SILENT  PAST 

was  little  concerned  with  the  petty  affairs  of  mankind  and,  more 
especially,  that  he  was  not  a  distributor  of  punishment.  An  upright 
stone  or  stele  found  in  Ugarit  marked  the  place  where  El  sat 
enthroned  and  where  the  kings  of  Ugarit  made  sacrifice  to  him. 

El's  female  consort  was  Asherat,  whom  we  rediscover  many 
centuries  later  as  the  Ashera  of  the  Bible.  There  her  symbol  is 
described  as  a  sacred  tree  or  pole— still  an  object  of  worship  among 
certain  primitive  peoples  today  and  one  with  a  tradition  going  far 
back  into  the  Stone  Age. 

The  god  who  was  most  involved  with  the  Canaanites'  daily  life 
was  Baal,  the  hero  of  a  great  mythological  epic  preserved  for  us 
in  the  Ugarit  tablets.  We  know  that  this  Baal,  against  whom  the 
prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  preached  so  stubbornly,  represented 
a  great  danger  to  the  Israelites,  who  repeatedly  threatened  to  defect 
and  embrace  the  Canaanite  religion.  Baal  exercised  such  a  hold  over 
the  life  of  the  Canaanites  that  he  was  still  worshiped  long  after 
their  cities  had  been  captured  by  the  Israelites.  The  two  largest 
temples  in  Ugarit  were  dedicated  to  the  god  Baal  and  to  his  father, 
Dagon.  Final  testimony  to  the  Jewish  religion's  bitter  struggle 
against  a  slowly  dying  but  tenacious  adversary  is  their  name  for 
the  devil,  Beelzebub.  Bad  means  "owner,"  "husband"  or  "devouring" 
and  zebub  is  the  Hebrew  for  "fly." 

The  age-old  myths  about  this  god  were  first  disclosed  by  the 
Ras  Shamra-Ugarit  finds,  so  our  knowledge  of  the  background 
behind  all  Biblical  references  to  Baal  is  only  thirty  years  old. 

The  clay  tablets  tell  us  that  the  sister  of  the  god  Baal  was  called 
Anat  and  that,  as  was  so  often  the  case  in  the  East  and  in  Egypt,  in 
particular,  brother  and  sister  were  married.  Virginity,  fertility  and 
savagery  were  strangely  combined  in  this  goddess.  From  time  im- 
memorial, therefore,  a  close  association  existed  between  innocence, 
sacred  birth,  perversion  and  devotion  to  orgiastic  cults. 

When  men  started  to  forget  Baal  and  their  religious  zeal  dwindled, 
Anat  instituted  a  great  bloodbath  among  the  apostates.  In  the  north 
of  the  country  there  was,  we  are  told,  a  mountain  of  gold.  Anat 
made  her  way  to  this  mountain  and  there  recounted  her  victories. 
She  had  slain  an  enormous  snake  called  Litan  or  Lotan,  the  Leviathan 
of  our  Bible.  Ugarit  is  the  only  place  where  we  find  a  reference  to 
the  name  Leviathan  prior  to  its  introduction  into  the  Book  of  Job. 


SYRIA  4( 

This  shows  the  great  antiquity  of  the  myths  of  a  gold-guarding 
dragon  or  treasure-guarding  snake. 

The  famous  cedars  of  Lebanon  were  also  mentioned  in  the 
Ugarit  tablets  long  before  the  Old  Testament's  Books  of  Kings 
came  to  be  written.  When  Anat  complained  to  the  supreme  god 
El  that  her  brother  and  husband  Baal  possessed  no  temple  like  other 
gods,  celestial  architects  were  bidden  to  build  a  temple  of  brick 
and  wood  from  the  cedars  of  Lebanon.  I  Kings:  vi,  9  records  that 
Solomon,  too,  "covered  the  house  with  beams  and  boards  of  cedar.'" 
The  wise  king's  collaborator  in  building  this  temple  was  no  less  ai 
person  than  the  Canaanite  king  Hiram  of  Tyre.  Hiram  reigned 
from  969  until  936  b.c.  and  Solomon  from  972  to  932,  but  the  clay 
tablets  of  Ugarit  tell  of  the  building  of  a  temple  to  Baal  five 
hundred  years  earlier,  and  the  story  is  probably  much  older  still. 

The  library  of  Ugarit  also  tells  us  of  men's  eternal  wish  to  bring 
their  nearest  and  dearest  back  from  the  world  of  the  dead.  While 
out  hunting,  Baal  was  lured  into  an  ambush  by  his  enemies  and 
killed,  together  with  his  son  Aleyn.  Anat  descended  into  the  under- 
world and  mourned  her  loved  ones,  sacrificing  seventy  oxen, 
seventy  buffalo,  seventy  sheep,  seventy  rams,  seventy  ibex  and 
seventy  antelopes.  This  sacrifice  was  not  only  a  funerary  offering 
but  was  intended  to  provide  her  son  and  husband  with  food  in  the 
world  hereafter.  None  of  this,  however,  brought  them  back  to  life. 

The  person  responsible  for  Baal's  murder  was  Mot,  or  death 
itself.  Anat  alone  knew  of  Mot's  abode,  and  with  the  aid  of  the 
sun-goddess  she  slew  him  with  a  sickle.  Only  then  did  Baal  and 
Aleyn  return  to  the  light  of  day.  The  same  theme  recurs  in  Greek 
myths  of  a  later  age,  in  which  Heracles  snatches  Alcestis  from 
death. 

Long  before  the  first  clay  tablets  of  Ugarit  were  written,  its 
inhabitants— like  the  Christians  long  after  them— had  ceased  to  believe 
in  the  finality  of  death.  Charles  ViroUeaud  stresses  that  the  Canaan- 
ites  were  never  quite  sure  whether  spring  would  really  follo^v 
winter.  Their  uncertainty  may  have  stemmed  from  an  ancient 
remembrance  of  the  last  Ice  Age,  which  ended  about  8000  b.c.  At 
all  events,  the  Canaanites  fell  prey  to  a  short  spell  of  disquiet  and 
anxiety  each  year,  especially  when  the  first  rains  were  late  in 
arriving,  for  each  year  might  mean  the  end  of  the  world.  This  was 


42  THE  SILENT  PAST 

why  they  held  Anat  responsible  for  the  reappearance  of  spring  and 
the  victory  of  life  over  death. 

The  souls  of  the  dead,  known  in  the  Canaanite  and  Hebrew 
tongues  as  rephaim,  were  invited  to  a  feast  prepared  by  the  goddess 
Anat.  To  quote  the  words  of  one  clay  tablet:  "Today  and  tomorrow 
eat  ye,  O  Rephaim,  and  drink . . .  and  do  the  same  until  the  seventh 
day."  The  feast  of  the  dead  lasted  for  a  week,  after  which  the 
supreme  god  El  called  the  souls  and  said:  "Go  now,  ye  Rephaim, 
into  my  house;  enter  ye  the  palace." 

Who,  then,  was  Anat,  the  goddess  who  rescued  Baal,  vanquished 
the  dragon  and  feasted  the  souls  of  the  dead?  She  was  the  same 
Astarte  to  whom  Pharaoh  Thutmosis  III  erected  a  temple  at 
Thebes  in  the  fifteenth  century  b.c.  She  was  the  same  goddess 
Asterot  whom  the  children  of  Israel  worshiped  from  time  to  time 
when  their  faith  in  Yahweh  faltered. 

The  clay  tablets  of  Ugarit  were  not  deciphered  until  thirty  years 
ago,  so  we  are  much  more  familiar  with  the  Greek  version  of  the 
name,  Astarte,  whereas  the  original  name,  Anat,  lay  buried  for  more 
than  three  thousand  years  beneath  the  hill  of  Ras  Shamra. 

The  Canaanite  goddess  Anat  may  well  have  affected  the  Greeks' 
ideas  about  Aphrodite,  their  goddess  of  love.  It  is  certainly  note- 
worthy that  on  the  island  of  Cyprus,  which  was  inhabited  by 
Canaanite  seafarers  and  boasted  the  Phoenician  city  of  Alasia,  there 
were  two  world-renowned  temples  dedicated  to  Aphrodite,  those 
of  Paphos  and  Amathus.  And  also  that  to  Homer,  Aphrodite  was 
a  Cyprian  goddess.  The  Greeks'  tradition  undoubtedly  shows  symp- 
toms of  an  eastern  and  Semitic  origin,  for  to  them  Aphrodite  was 
the  goddess  of  fertility  and  love  just  as  Anat  was  to  the  Canaanites. 

We  can  see,  therefore,  that  a  considerable  number  of  mythological 
and  cultural  ideas  from  the  Canaanite-Phoenician  world  insinuated 
themselves  into  ancient  Greece  and  into  our  own  religious  concep- 
tions. It  is  one  of  the  world's  great  mysteries  that  a  mutual  rela- 
tionsliip  exists  not  only  between  all  cultures  but  between  all  gods. 


LEBANON 


TYRE  AND  SIDON 

The  conquest  of  the  sea  is  marHs  most  important  feat.  New 
horizo?is,  new  stars  have  always  held  an  irresistible  attraction  for 
the  imagination  of  man.  The  sea  enabled  unknown  island  races  to 
conquer  immense  areas  and  establish  lasting  sovereignty  oji  foreign 
soil.  In  a  remote  time  when  no  one  had  yet  founded  any  proper 
trading  colonies  or  established  a  navy,  a  S7nall  people  living  on  the 
eastern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  discovered  the  art  of  navigating 
by  the  Vole  Star  aiid,  over  a  period  of  about  a  thousaiid  years, 
built  up  a  Tnaritime  empire,  a  thalassocracy,  which  was  safe  from 
the  clutches  of  any  land-based  army.  1,200  years  before  the 
Christian  era,  when  the  power  of  Egypt  was  wa?7ing,  the  Phoeni- 
cians gradually  debouched  upon  the  Mediterranean  scene,  where 
for  many  centuries  they  dictated  the  cozirse  of  other  nations'" 
economic  activity  in  their  capacity  as  veritable  7nerchant  pri?2ces 
and  grands  seigneurs.  And  all  this  happened  while  Italy  was  still 
waiting  for  the  dawn. 

—A.  PoiDEBARD  AND  J.  Lauffray,  Sidon, 
Beirut,  195 1 

PHARAOH  Rameses  II  was  a  high-spirited  king.  No  Egyptian  ruler 
made  a  stronger  impact  on  posterity  than  this  unusual  man  whose 
insatiable  lust  for  building  devoured  such  huge  sums  of  money. 
He  erected  dozens  of  temples  and  obelisks,  completed  his  father's 
famous  funerary  temple  at  Thebes,  and  set  aside  the  temple  now 
known  as  the  Ramaseum  for  the  use  of  his  own  death  cult.  At 
Luxor  he  ordered  the  completion  of  the  huge  Hall  of  Pillars  in  the 
Temple  of  Karnak.  No  Pharaoh  erected  larger  statues,  some  of 
them  hewn  from  a  single  block  of  stone.  His  statue  at  Tanis  was 
nearly  90  feet  high  and  had  to  be  sculpted  from  a  monolith  weighing 
900  tons.  (A  large  modern  truck  can  haul  between  50  and  60  tons.) 
Rameses  II  may  have  desired  to  immortalize  his  fame  in  stone,  but 
he  also  sought  to  enjoy  his  days  on  earth.  Looking  at  his  features 
portrayed  in  the  colossal  relief  at  the  great  Temple  of  Abu  Simbel 
or  in  the  granite  statue  in  the  Temple  of  Karnak,  we  can  see  a 
subtle,  vivacious  smile  playing  about  his  mouth.  We  can  also  sense 
that  he  was  a  pampered  and  pleasure-loving  man.  His  numerous 
marriages  brought  him  79  sons  and  59  daughters  whom  he  proudly 
depicted  in  long  reliefs  on  the  walls  of  his  temples.  He  ruled  for 

43 


44  THE  SILENT  PAST 

67  years,  from  1290  until  1223  e.g.,  and  died  at  the  age  of  ninety. 
Even  death  has  failed  to  conquer  his  body,  for  his  mummy  still 
survives  today. 

It  is  scarcely  surprising  that  it  was  this  Pharaoh  who  caused  the 
Israelites  to  perform  such  feats  of  forced  labor  in  Egypt,  and  still 
less  surprising  that  Moses  and  Aaron  one  day  presented  themselves 
before  Rameses  II  and  asked  him  to  allow  their  people  to  set  off  into 
the  desert.  Inquking  ironically  what  god  it  was  whose  voice  he  was 
supposed  to  obey,  the  Pharaoh  dismissed  them  with  the  words:  "I 
know  not  the  Lord,  neither  will  I  let  Israel  go."  Since  his  urge  to 
build  was  all-consuming  and  he  knew  that  large  numbers  of  Israelites 
lived  in  Egypt,  he  refused  to  sacrifice  such  a  valuable  source  of  man- 
power. On  the  contrary,  he  ordered  them  to  step  up  their  production 
of  bricks.  With  all  the  delights  of  the  world  at  his  fingertips,  he  was 
still  anxious  to  preserve  his  memory  in  stone  for  all  eternity,  so 
he  commanded  them  to  redouble  their  efforts.  "Let  there  be  more 
work  laid  upon  the  men . . .  and  let  them  not  regard  vain  words." 
The  Israelite  overseers,  who  were  in  turn  appointed  by  Egyptian 
taskmasters,  were  beaten  and  abused  if  they  failed  to  produce  their 
daily  quota.  They  protested,  but  the  Pharaoh's  reply  to  all  en- 
treaties was:  "Ye  are  idle,  ye  are  idle!" 

We  learn  these  historical  facts  from  the  fifth  chapter  of  Exodus. 
Not  until  his  country  had  been  ravaged  by  the  ten  plagues  did  the 
Pharaoh  reconsider  his  decision  and  leave  the  children  of  Israel  free 
to  make  their  exodus  from  Egypt.  This  took  place  about  1300  e.g., 
or  some  3,300  years  ago.  Later  on  in  Exodus  we  read  that  Rameses  II 
regretted  his  decision  to  let  the  children  of  Israel  go  and  sent  six 
hundred  of  his  best  chariots  in  pursuit  of  Moses  and  his  people. 

There  is  still  extant  a  letter  from  a  man  called  Hori,  a  senior 
officer  in  Pharaoh's  cavalry,  to  a  colleague  of  his,  Aman-appag,  one 
of  the  Egyptian  army  commanders.  Its  interest  lies  in  the  fact  that 
it  dates  from  a  time  when  Rameses  was  still  seeking  to  set  the  stamp 
of  his  mind  and  liis  race  upon  the  world,  a  time  when  Moses 
was  conducting  one  of  the  largest  and  most  hazardous  emigrations 
in  history.  The  document,  which  now  reposes  in  the  British  Museum 
under  the  name  Papyrus  Anastasi  I,  also  mentions  some  of  the 
thriving  Canaanite  cities  which  were  later  captured  by  the  Israelites. 

The  Pharaonic  master  of  horse  addresses  his  correspondent  as 
Alahir,  a  Canaanite  word  used  to  describe  a  skillful  writer  or  gen- 


LEBANON  45 

erally  erudite  individual.  Mahir  has  apparently  traveled  through 
Syria  and  seen  the  Canaanite-Phoenician  cities.  Hori  pokes  fun  at 
him  in  his  letter,  and  it  is  not  uninteresting  to  read  how  friends 
corresponded  3,300  years  ago.  "When  you  halt  in  the  evening  your 
body  is  quite  pulverized  and  your  limbs  in  pieces.  You  have  to 
harness  your  horses  by  yourself  because  no  one  comes  to  help  you. 
Then  people  break  into  the  camp  and  untie  your  horse,  pilfering 
and  stealing  your  clothes.  Your  groom  appropriates  what  is  left  and 
goes  off  with  the  thieves.  When  you  wake  up  you  cannot  find  their 
tracks.  They  have  carried  off  your  possessions.  You  tug  at  your 
ear."  What  more  graphic  and  striking  description  of  a  rueful  gesture 
could  the  Egyptian  have  given? 

The  letter  goes  on  to  imply  that  Mahir  has  been  sadly  un- 
observant during  his  travels.  "I  wrote  to  you  about  a  city,  Byblos 
by  name.  What  does  it  look  like?  Did  you  not  visit  it?  Tell  me  about 
Berytos  and  Sidon  and  Sarepta.  What  does  Uz  look  like?  There  is 
talk  of  another  city  which  stands  in  the  sea,  Tyre  by  name.  Water 
is  brought  to  it  by  ship,  and  it  is  richer  in  fish  than  sand." 

It  is  immensely  informative  to  draw  back  the  veil  and  look  into 
past  millennia.  Paul  Claudel  has  said  that  the  past  is  even  more 
unattainable  than  the  future— but  is  not  the  past  a  part  of  the 
present  and  the  present  a  part  of  the  future?  The  life  of  the  world's 
peoples,  especially  the  unspoiled  races  who  live  much  as  their 
ancestors  did,  the  discoveries  made  by  archaeology  and  the  informa- 
tion about  advanced  civilizations  transmitted  in  their  writing  can 
all  teach  us  much  about  the  past.  Hori's  sarcasm  brings  us  close  to 
the  Egyptian  tourist  in  Syria.  "Tremors  seize  you,  and  your  hair 
stands  on  end.  Your  heart  is  in  your  mouth.  The  chasm  lies  on 
one  side,  the  mountain  on  the  other.  You  continue,  you  walk  beside 
your  carriage  and  are  afraid.  Your  heart  thumps.  You  walk  on  foot. 
The  sky  is  open.  You  imagine  that  the  enemy  is  behind  you.  You 
tremble. . . ."  Seldom  has  a  lonely  traveler's  fear  been  more  graphi- 
cally portrayed. 

"When  you  come  to  Joppa  you  find  a  field  of  verdure.  You  enter 
an  unwalled  vineyard,  where  you  find  a  lovely  girl  guarding  the 
grapes.  She  takes  you  as  her  companion  and  grants  you  delightful 
tokens  of  her  favor.  You  are  caught,  and  confess.  They  upbraid  you, 
and  you  hastily  surrender  your  apron  of  fine  Upper  Egyptian  hnen. 
Once  more  you  sleep  and  do  nothing.  They  steal  your  bow,  your 


46  THE  SILENT  PAST 

dagger,  your  quiver.  Your  horse  crosses  boggy  ground.  The  road 
is  long.  Your  carriage  falls  to  pieces.  You  lose  your  weapons  in 
the  sand.  'Give  me  food  and  water,'  you  say,  'for  I  have  arrived.' 
But  they  pretend  to  be  deaf  and  do  not  listen." 

Has  there  ever  been  a  letter  which  described  a  disastrous  journey 
by  a  government  official  more  vividly,  more  observantly  or  with 
more  delicate  sarcasm?  Men  have  changed  little  since  Rameses,  Moses 
and  the  golden  age  of  Syrian  culture. 

When  Mahir  roamed  through  the  Phoenician  cities,  the  maritime 
fortresses  already  had  a  history  of  thousands  of  years  behind  them. 
They  had  felt  the  influence  of  Asia,  Egypt  and  Crete.  That  the 
Egyptians  maintained  good  relations  with  a  city  like  Byblos  is 
proved  by  the  excavations  carried  out  by  Montet  (1921-1924)  and 
Dunand  (1925-1957).  It  was  at  Byblos  in  1923  that  Pierre  Montet 
made  one  of  the  most  interesting  finds  of  the  century  by  dis- 
covering the  sarcophagus  of  King  Ahiram  in  a  burial  chamber  there. 
In  its  interior,  among  other  funerary  gifts,  were  two  Rameses  II 
alabaster  vases.  King  Ahiram  was  a  contemporary  of  the  great 
builder  and  Byblos  was  at  that  time  the  most  important  city  in 
Phoenicia,  although  strongly  under  the  influence  of  Egypt  in 
politics,  trade  and  art.  One  side  of  the  stone  sarcophagus  depicts  a 
bearded  King  Ahiram  seated  on  a  sphinx  throne,  his  feet  on  a  stool, 
a  lotus  blossom  in  his  left  hand  and  a  cup  in  his  right.  Seven  men 
stand  before  the  king.  The  first  is  brushing  flies  from  the  sacrificial 
table  with  a  swat.  Two  others  are  carrying  in  dishes  and  cups, 
while  the  other  four  are  saluting  the  king  with  raised  arms,  palms 
facing  forward.  The  other  side  of  the  sarcophagus  depicts  eight 
mourning  figures:  two  women,  two  porters  with  pitchers  on  their 
shoulders,  a  man  leading  a  billy  goat  and,  finally,  three  bearded 
servants  with  their  hands  raised  in  greeting.  The  lid  of  the  sar- 
cophagus bears  a  life-size  figure  of  the  great  king  and— something 
of  inestimable  importance— an  engraved  inscription  running  along 
both  its  sides.  It  is  the  earliest  Phoenician  text  in  existence  and 
antedates  the  alphabetical  mode  of  writing,  proving  that  even  in 
1300  B.C.  the  Phoenicians  were  on  the  way  to  that  most  important 
invention  in  human  history:  the  alphabet.  The  find  was  important 
because  it  solved  a  mystery  which  had  been  puzzling  scholars.  It 
had  long  been  assumed  that  the  Greeks  adopted  their  written 
characters  from  a  foreign  people,  probably  as  early  as  the  tenth 


LEBANON  47 

century  b.c.  But  unless  it  could  be  proved  that  the  Phoenicians  pos- 
sessed written  characters  several  centuries  previously,  the  theory  of 
the  take-over  was  open  to  doubt.  Dussaud  attributed  Ahiram's 
sarcophagus  to  the  thirteenth  century.  If  this  is  correct,  the  Phoeni- 
cians already  possessed  the  rudiments  of  written  characters  at  that 
time  and  the  dead  king  has  bequeathed  us  an  immensely  important 
piece  of  information. 

Thieves  had  removed  the  most  valuable  objects  from  the  burial 
chamber  and  the  king's  corpse  was  no  longer  there,  but  the  sar- 
cophagus itself  now  reposes  in  the  National  Museum  at  Beirut. 

Because  the  coastal  city  of  Byblos  was  renowned  for  processing 
Egyptian  papyrus,  biblos  became  the  Greek  term  for  book,  and 
our  Bible  owes  its  name  to  the  same  source. 

One  of  the  most  famous  Phoenicians  cities  was  Tyre,  an  island 
fortress  possessed  of  two  harbors,  the  Sidonian  in  the  north  and 
the  Egyptian  in  the  south.  The  Sidonian  harbor  is  not  only  still  in 
existence  today  but  is  still  in  use.  The  Egyptian,  however,  has  dis- 
appeared. Since  1934  the  French  archaeologist  Poidebard  has  been 
conducting  explorations  on  the  site  of  the  former  Egyptian  harbor 
under  the  aegis  of  the  Academic  des  Inscriptions  et  Belles-Lettres 
of  Paris. 

Research  in  the  past  twenty  years  has  shown  that  many  vanished 
cities,  both  on  land  and  beneath  the  sea,  are  discernible  only  from 
a  great  altitude  where  their  general  outlines  emerge  more  clearly- 
Poidebard  exploited  this  knowledge  by  taking  aerial  photographs 
before  sending  his  divers  down.  When  they  reached  the  sea  bed  the 
submerged  walls  of  ancient  Tyre  unfolded  before  their  astonished 
eyes.  On  the  southern  side  of  the  city  they  discovered  a  mole  half 
a  mile  long  and  some  twenty-five  feet  wide  with  a  well-fortified 
entrance  at  its  center.  The  Egyptian  harbor  had  not  been  created 
by  nature  but  wrung  from  the  sea  by  human  endeavor,  and  was 
complete  with  quays,  breakwaters,  loading  sheds  and  every  other 
prerequisite  of  a  thriving  maritime  metropolis. 

The  city  stood  on  an  island.  According  to  information  given  by 
the  historian  Arrian,  who  lived  in  the  second  century  a.d.,  it  had 
walls  more  than  160  feet  high  and  was  built  on  rocky  ground.  Since 
the  surface  area  was  small,  the  inhabitants  lived  in  multistoried 
houses.  Opposite  the  city  on  the  mainland  stood  Palaityros,  a  large 
metropolis  which  stretched  for  eight  miles  along  the  coast.  Today, 


48  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Tyre  (now  called  Sur)  forms  the  tip  of  a  tongue  of  land  projecting 
into  the  sea,  testimony  to  the  fact  that  Alexander  the  Great  not 
only  conquered  the  world  but  altered  geography  itself.  While  pre- 
paring to  capture  Tyre  in  332  b.c.  he  built  a  causeway  out  to  the 
island  city,  which  lay  650  yards  from  the  mainland.  Using  rubble 
from  the  ruins  of  mainland  Tyre,  he  pushed  a  wall  of  stone  nearly 
two  hundred  feet  wide  out  into  the  sea.  We  can  only  guess  how 
:manv  thousands  of  laborers  must  have  worked  to  realize  Alexander's 
grand  design.  In  the  course  of  more  than  2,000  years  silt  has 
gradually  increased  the  width  of  the  dike  until  today  one  can  only 
imagine  what  the  mightiest  maritime  fortress  in  human  history  must 
have  looked  like  when  it  was  still  an  island.  Only  about  6,000  people 
now  live  in  Sur,  whereas  the  former  island  was  once  the  fulcrum  of 
a  great  sea  power  and  accommodated  25,000  inhabitants  within  its 
walls. 

The  coastal  strip  opposite  the  island  belonged  to  the  kings  of 
Tyre  and  supplied  the  seagirt  city  with  grain,  fruit  and  vegetables. 
Fantastic  as  it  sounds,  the  Phoenicians  installed  an  excellent  system 
of  water  supply  here  over  3,000  years  ago.  On  the  mainland,  nearly 
five  miles  south  of  Tyre,  was— and  still  is— the  spring  of  Ras  el-ain. 
Leading  its  waters  northward  to  a  point  almost  opposite  the  island, 
the  Phoenicians  used  them  to  irrigate  the  fields  that  supplied  them 
with  food.  They  also  set  up  a  regular  ferry  service  to  carry  water 
from  the  canal  to  the  island  and  so  provide  a  source  of  drinking 
water  for  its  25,000  inhabitants.  In  time  of  siege,  a  water  ration  was 
distributed  from  the  city's  storage  cisterns,  and  the  system's  efficiency 
is  vouched  for  by  the  fact  that  Nebuchadnezzar  besieged  Tyre  in 
vain  for  thirteen  years,  from  585  to  572  b.c. 

In  the  coastal  plain  and  the  hilly  country  that  rises  to  the  north, 
all  of  which  once  belonged  to  Tyre,  modern  archaelogists  have 
discovered  widespread  traces  of  habitation,  among  them  graves, 
sarcophagi,  remnants  of  houses,  oil  presses,  cisterns  and  stone  reliefs. 
The  imagination  boggles  at  the  antiquity  of  Tyre.  When  Herodotus 
visited  the  place  about  450  b.c.  he  was  told  that  the  Temple  of 
Heracles  Melkert  was  already  2,300  years  old.  But  the  city  itself 
was  far  older.  Who  knows  when  the  god  Melkert  ordered  the  first 
purple  robe  for  his  beloved,  the  nymph  Tyro,  from  the  purple 
refiners   of  Tyre?    Weaving,   glass   manufacture,   metalwork   and, 


LEBANON  49 

above  all,  purple  dye— all  these  things  contributed  to  the  city's 
wealth. 

Tyre  is  a  place  where  the  beginnings  of  Christianity  go  back  to  the 
time  of  Jesus'  presence  on  earth.  A  Christian  community  existed 
there  in  the  middle  of  the  first  century  a.d.,  and  it  was  through  the 
narrow  alleyways  of  Tyre  that  Paul  passed  on  the  way  back  from 
his  third  missionary  journey.  Even  earlier,  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  who 
fought  against  the  Phoenicians'  gods,  foresaw  disaster:  "How  art 
thou  destroyed,  that  wast  inhabited  of  seafaring  men,  the  renowned 
city,  which  wast  strong  in  the  sea. . . ."  He  even  predicted  that  the 
southern  harbor  was  destined  to  collapse  into  the  sea,  for  he  went 
on:  "...  I  shall  bring  up  the  deep  upon  thee,  and  great  waters  shall 
cover  thee."  We  can  also  read  in  Ezekiel's  prophecies  something  of 
the  pride  and  arrogance  that  must  have  inspired  the  Phoenicians  at 
the  height  of  their  power.  ". . .  Thou  [the  prince  of  Tyre]  hast  said, 
I  am  a  God,  I  sit  in  the  seat  of  God,  in  the  midst  of  the  seas." 

This  mysterious  race  survived  many  vicissitudes  in  the  course  of 
its  long  history.  At  the  beginning  of  the  third  millennium  b.c.  forty 
ships  arrived  in  Egypt  laden  with  cedarwood  from  Lebanon,  ex- 
ported from  Byblos.  The  walls  of  Pharaoh  Sahure's  funerary  temple 
at  Abusir  illustrate  the  items  which  his  war  fleet  brought  back  from 
Phoenicia  in  2700  b.c:  bears,  numerous  other  beasts,  prisoners  and, 
last  but  not  least,  slaves  without  number.  While  Pharaoh  Thutmosis 
III  occupied  the  throne  between  1504  and  1450  b.c.  the  Phoenicians' 
great  maritime  cities  played,  as  so  often  in  their  history,  the  role 
of  shrewd  vassals.  Tyre,  Sidon,  Berytos  and  Byblos  sent  the  king 
of  Egypt  corn,  oil  and  incense  and  placed  ships  at  his  disposal.  Then 
the  "sea  peoples"  invaded  Syria,  and  between  1200  and  750  b.c.  the 
maritime  cities  fell  upon  hard  times,  Sidon  being  almost  destroyed. 
Later  they  were  forced  to  pay  huge  tributes  to  the  kings  of  Assyria. 
In  Tyre  we  see  King  Hiram— not  to  be  confused  with  Ahiram  of 
Byblos— augmenting  the  surface  of  his  island  city  by  reclamation 
work,  building  new  temples  to  Melkert  and  Astarte  and  erecting 
a  golden  pillar  in  the  shrine  of  Baal.  As  we  have  already  heard, 
this  king  was  a  friend  of  King  Solomon  and  had  probably  met 
his  father  David  in  person. 

The  walls  of  Tyre  witnessed  dramatic  scenes  of  hope,  love  and 
hatred— not  to  mention  numberless  royal  assassinations.  Abdastartos, 
who  reigned  from  918  to  910  b.c,  was  a  victim  of  one  such  plot, 


50  THE  SILENT  PAST 

and  it  is  symptomatic  that  the  murderers  were  the  four  sons  of  his 
own  wet  nurse. 

The  Phoenicians  were  descendants  of  the  Canaanites  and  called 
their  country  Canaan.  This  much  we  know,  but  we  do  not  know 
what  instilled  in  them  their  unique  yearning  for  travel.  Perhaps 
they  had  inherited  it  from  their  predecessors,  the  seafarers  of  Crete. 
At  all  events,  their  questing,  roving,  restless  love  of  the  open  sea 
drove  them  to  Spain,  to  the  city  of  Tarshish  (Tartessus)  in  the 
estuary  of  the  Guadalquivir;  and  the  merchants  of  Tartessus.  in 
their  turn,  plied  their  trade  as  far  afield  as  England  and  the  Baltic 
Sea.  Tarshish  was  probably  not  a  Phoenician  city,  but  the  Israelites 
had  learned  the  name  from  Phoenician  sailors  and  so  they  called 
any  large  galleys  "ships  of  Tarshish."  The  ships  which  Solomon  and 
Hiram  I  of  Tyre  jointly  sent  to  Ophir,  the  land  of  gold,  were  so 
described,  although  they  sailed  nowhere  near  Tarshish.  The  Phoe- 
nicians planted  colonies  everywhere:  on  the  islands  of  Thasos, 
Cythera,  Melos,  Rhodes,  Malta  and  Sicily,  and  on  the  North  African 
coast.  Their  last  colony,  founded  in  814  B.C.,  was  Carthage,  where 
the  Phoenician  or  "Punic"  way  of  life  survived  long  after  the 
mother  cities  had  been  submerged  in  the  Graeco-Roman  world. 

The  Phoenicians  bequeathed  the  ancient  world  the  invention  of 
purple.  Small  wide-meshed  nets  were  baited  with  mussels  to  attract 
the  purple-bearing  mollusks  which  preyed  on  them.  Then,  when 
the  snails  had  attached  their  long  suckers  firmly,  the  nets  were  raised 
and  the  valuable  harvest  reaped.  The  mollusks,  the  largest  of  which 
could  weigh  twelve  pounds  or  more,  were  then  smashed  and  their 
purple  glands  extracted.  These  were  salted  down  and  left  to  stand 
for  three  days,  after  which  the  mass  was  tipped  into  a  leaden 
caldron  and  diluted  in  the  proportion  of  4V2  gallons  of  water  to  4 
hundredweight  of  purple.  The  caldron  was  heated  to  an  even 
temperature  by  steam,  which  was  introduced— 3,000  years  ago,  it 
must  be  remembered— through  a  long  pipe  leading  from  the  furnace. 
When  the  caldron  began  to  simmer,  the  fragments  of  flesh  which 
rose  to  the  surface  were  skimmed  off.  After  about  ten  days  the 
solution  was  clear  and  ready  to  be  tested  on  wool  which  had 
previously  been  steeped  in  lye.  If  the  initial  test  proved  satisfactory 
the  wool  was  immersed  in  purple  for  five  hours. 

Exposure  to  the  rays  of  the  sun  enhanced  the  wool's  glowing 
color  but  also  gave  off  a  revolting  stench.  The  Papyrus  Sallier  2, 


LEBANON  51 

which  was  written  in  the  time  of  Rameses  II,  gives  us  some  idea 
of  the  purple  dyer's  unpleasant  working  conditions.  "The  hands 
of  the  dyer  stink  like  rotten  fish,  and  the  man  eventually  comes  to 
detest  any  cloth." 

Sunlight  turned  the  dye  first  dark  green  and  then  violet  or 
sometimes  mauve.  Generally  speaking,  however,  the  purple  of  the 
ancient  world  was  almost  always  violet  in  shade.  The  Jews,  who  may 
have  learned  the  art  of  purple  refining  during  their  sojourn  in 
Egypt,  became  skilled  in  the  technique  of  purple  manufacture. 
In  later  years  the  curtain  which  hung  before  their  Holy  of  Holies 
was  purple,  and  purple  came  to  be  used  in  religious  ceremonies— 
hence  the  four  liturgical  colors:  white,  violet,  crimson  and  scarlet. 
Sacrificial  tables  and  other  sacred  objects  were  draped  in  purple, 
too.  The  Egyptians,  who  imported  purple  from  nearby  Phoenicia, 
not  only  swathed  the  mummies  of  distinguished  men  in  purple 
bandages  and  robed  their  dead  in  purple  shrouds  but  also  used  purple 
on  papyrus  as  a  form  of  ink.  In  order  to  make  clothes  wear  better, 
the  ancients  mixed  purple  with  honey.  Among  the  Lydians,  purple 
was  worth  its  weight  in  silver.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  who  was  born 
in  150  B.C.,  tells  us  that  a  certain  Egyptian  courtesan  paid  10,000 
talents  for  a  purple  robe  although  she  only  charged  1,000  Attic 
drachmas  for  her  services.  This  meant,  in  modern  terms,  that  her 
dress  cost  her  about  $250  while  her  regular  fee  was  only  fifty  cents. 

However,  nothing  in  life— not  even  purple— endures  forever,  and 
the  genuine  purple  of  antiquity  finally  disappeared  for  good.  When 
the  Mohammedans  took  Constantinople  in  1453,  purple  refining  was 
discontinued. 

Is  man  intended  to  unearth  the  past?  Reading  the  inscription  on 
the  sarcophagus  of  a  Sidonian  king,  one  is  smitten  by  a  strange 
feeling:  "I  adjure  every  king  and  every  man  not  to  open  this 
resting  place  or  search  for  jewels,  for  I  have  none  with  me.  Let  no 
one  take  my  couch  away  nor  carry  me  off  elsewhere.  I  adjure  kings 
and  men  not  to  uncover  me  nor  lay  me  bare." 

The  sarcophagus,  which  anyone  can  inspect  in  the  Louvre  in 
Paris,  is  empty. 


NORTH  AFRICA 


QUEEN  OF  THE  SEAS 

/  shall  describe  the  most  notable  of  all  wars,  the  war  which  the 
Carthaginia7is  waged  against  the  Roman  people  imder  HamiibaFs 
command.  Never  did  7nore  powerful  states  and  nations  engage  in 
arined  conflict.  The  fortunes  of  war  were  so  changeable  and  the 
struggle  so  arduous  that  those  who  won  were  in  the  greater  dan- 
ger. Indeed,  they  fought  with  almost  more  embitterment  than 
strength:  the  Komans  from  displeasure  that  they,  the  victors,  had 
been  attacked  by  the  vanquished;  the  Punians  because  they  believed 
that  Rome  had  often  behaved  toward  them,  the  vanquished,  like  an 
arrogant  and  covetous  overlord. 

—Titus  Livius,  History  of  Ro?ne,  xxi,  i 

FEW  cities  in  antiquity  were  as  wealthy  as  Carthage,  and  few  of 
them  met  as  tragic  an  end.  Her  inhabitants  sat  in  their  six-storied 
houses  drinking  the  best  Greek  wine  while  their  ships  sailed  to  every 
quarter  of  the  world. 

Carthage  was  founded  by  the  Phoenicians  who  from  their  base 
at  Tyre  set  sail  for  the  west,  founding  colonies  and  establishing 
trading  posts  and  cities  as  far  afield  as  Gibraltar  and,  beyond 
Gibraltar,  Gadir,  known  to  the  Romans  as  Gades  and  to  us  as  the 
Spanish  town  of  Cadiz.  In  the  Phoenician  tongue  Carthage  was 
called  Kart-Hadasht,  which  meant  "new  city."  Presumably  the 
Tyrians  regarded  Carthage  as  their  most  important  daughter  city 
and,  consequently,  as  a  new  Tyre  (see  map  p.  54). 

Carthage  is  reputed  to  have  been  founded  in  814  b.c,  38  years 
before  the  first  Olympiad.  The  story  of  its  founding  is  generally 
regarded  as  a  legend,  but  such  legends  usually  contain  a  grain  of 
historical  truth.  Timaeus,  who  lived  between  356  and  260  b.c.  and 
wrote  a  history  in  38  volumes,  gives  us  some  details  of  the  city's 
founding.  We  glean  further  information  from  the  foremost  and 
most  celebrated  poet  of  the  Augustan  age,  Publius  Virgilius  Maro 
(Virgil),  who  spent  the  eleven  years  before  his  death  working  on 
his  great  poem  the  Aeneid,  a  national  epic  which  chronicled  the 
wanderings  of  Aeneas. 

Elissa  was  the  daughter  of  the  king  of  Tyre.  Her  husband 
Sychaeus  was  murdered  by  his  brother  Pygmalion,  who  made  him- 
self king  of  Tyre  and  forced  Elissa  to  flee  the  country,  accom- 

52 


NORTH  AFRICA  53 

panied  by  a  number  of  native  Tyrians.  The  emigrants,  whose  first 
port  of  call  was  Cyprus,  included  a  high  priest  of  the  goddess 
Astarte,  who  had  stipulated  that  his  family  should  supply  the  priest- 
hood in  any  future  colony.  Also  among  the  fugitives  were  eighty 
virgins  who  were  to  be  at  the  disposal  of  emigrants  and  foreigners 
in  the  temples  of  Astarte.  Eventually,  at  the  point  where  the  North 
African  coast  juts  closest  to  the  island  of  Sicily,  the  Tyrian  refugees 
founded  Carthage,  having  secured  the  land  peacefully  by  paying 
the  indigenous  population  an  agreed  rent.  The  king  of  Libya  tried 
to  force  Elissa  into  marriage,  but  she  built  a  pyre  as  though  intend- 
ing to  do  sacrifice  and  then  leaped  into  the  flames.  Elissa's  Carthaginian 
name  was  Dido. 

In  Virgil's  version  of  the  story,  Aeneas  was  wrecked  on  the 
Libyan  coast  and  brought  to  Dido's  palace.  She  fell  in  love  with 
him  and  later,  when  he  deserted  her,  committed  suicide  by  leaping 
onto  a  pyre. 

Elissa's  story  is  really  the  story  of  Carthage,  for  it  follows  the  same 
pattern  and  ends  in  the  same  manner. 

The  Carthaginians,  known  to  the  Romans  as  Poeni  and  to  us  as 
Punians,  forfeited  their  Mediterranean  supremacy  as  a  result  of 
the  three  Punic  Wars  which  were  fought  between  264  and  146  b.c. 
Although  their  city  was  ultimately  annihilated,  their  greatest  leader, 
Hannibal,  merits  comparison  with  Alexander  the  Great,  Julius  Caesar 
and  Napoleon  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  military  commanders  in 
history. 

Carthage  stood  by  the  sea  only  about  six  miles  from  modern 
Tunis.  Slightly  inland  is  the  hill  of  Byrsa,  and  at  its  summit  stood 
a  temple  dedicated  to  the  Punic  god  Eshmun.  The  Carthaginians  had 
built  a  wall  around  the  sacred  hill,  turning  it  into  a  citadel.  Today 
the  heights  are  occupied  by  the  monastery  of  the  White  Fathers 
and  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Louis.  It  is  no  accident  that  the  richest 
place  in  the  ancient  world  not  only  gave  its  name  to  some  of  the 
world's  most  famous  stock  exchanges,  notably  the  Paris  Bourse,  but 
also  to  that  humbler  article  of  use,  the  purse. 

Carthage  had  two  harbors,  one  rectangular  and  the  other  round. 
These  harbors  were  linked,  leaving  only  one  egress  to  the  sea.  The 
rectangular  outer  harbor  was  used  for  merchant  ships  and  the 
circular  inner  harbor  served  as  a  naval  base.  In  the  center  of  the 
naval  harbor  lay  an  island  on  which  was  situated  the  headquarters 


L'Ariana^ 


Tunis 


La  Marsa/ 
Sidi-Bou-SaVd^ 

"EAncie 


Tunis— Carthage 


NORTH  AFRICA  55 

of  the  fleet.  Facilities  included  berths  for  220  warships,  arsenals, 
wharfs,  quays  and  warehouses.  The  only  exit  could,  when  necessary, 
be  barred  with  iron  chains  and  the  whole  city  was  protected  by  walls 
with  a  total  length  of  over  twenty  miles. 

From  this  secure  base,  Carthage  dominated  the  North  African 
coast  from  Egypt  to  Gibraltar  and  sent  forth  her  five-tiered  galleys 
to  southern  Spain,  to  the  islands  of  Sardinia  and  Corsica,  and  to 
Sicily,  always  maintaining  contact  with  her  erstwhile  mother  city 
Tyre.  Carthaginian  ships  sailed  far  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  It  is 
likely  that  they  reached  Britain  via  Cadiz,  and  they  may  well  have 
touched  the  Azores. 

Carthage  derived  immense  wealth  from  her  worldwide  trading 
connections,  for  the  shrewd  merchant  princes  of  Byrsa  saw  to  it 
that  foreign  countries  traded  only  with  them  and  never  with  their 
colonies.  Ships  belonging  to  those  who  disregarded  this  rule  were 
ruthlessly  captured  or  sunk. 

The  city  did  a  thriving  trade  in  foodstuffs  from  the  rich  African 
hinterland.  Valuable  metals  such  as  tin,  copper  and  silver  were 
imported  from  Spain  and  England  and  reshipped.  Astute  Punic 
businessmen  sold  textiles,  African  hides  and  thousands  of  slaves  to 
customers  throughout  the  known  world,  thereby  filling  the  coffers 
of  their  countincrhouses  and  swelling  the  revenues  of  their  miraculous 
city  which,  like  some  New  York  of  the  ancient  world,  was  a  place 
of  tireless  activity  and  ultramodern  methods.  Gold,  pearls,  Tyrian 
purple,  ivory,  incense  from  Arabia,  Egyptian  linen,  fine  vases  from 
Greece— all  these  goods  were  displayed  in  the  warehouses  and 
market  places  of  Carthage.  The  world's  first  joint  stock  companies 
originated  there,  and  it  was  Carthage  which  floated  the  first  gov- 
ernment loans,  built  machines  and  invented  the  first  artillery  in 
military  history.  The  strongest  Negro  slaves  and  the  loveliest  dusky 
slave  girls  in  Rome,  Athens,  Spain  and  the  Bosporus  were  all  suppHed 
by  her.  (Some  Carthaginian  aristocrats  owned  as  many  as  20,000 
slaves.) 

Carthage  evolved  a  constitution  which  combined  elements  of 
monarchy,  aristocracy  and  democracy,  a  system  which  certainly 
suited  the  contemporary  world  but  may  well  have  contributed  to 
the  city's  ultimate  downfall.  At  the  head  of  the  city-state  were  two 
men  known  in  Latin  as  suffetes,  from  the  Semitic  shopet.  (The  word 
is  translated  as  "judges"  in  the  Bible.)  These  two  annually  elected 


56  THE  SILENT  PAST 

officials  ruled  in  conjunction  with  a  parliament  consisting  of  three 
hundred  of  the  wealthiest  citizens,  all  of  whom  held  office  for  life. 
In  addition  to  them  there  was  the  "council  of  the  hundred  judges." 
In  reality  there  were  104  of  these  men,  who  controlled  the  courts 
and  exercised  considerable  influence  on  general  policy. 

All  military  matters  were  entrusted  to  a  supreme  commander. 
The  moneyed  aristocracy  of  this  extraordinary  city  had  devised  a 
solution  to  their  military  problems  which  looked  effective  but 
contained  latent  dangers:  the  supreme  commander  had  to  win  every 
war.  If  things  went  awry  he  was  called  to  account  and,  if  necessary, 
crucified.  The  sons  of  wealthy  aristocrats  would  not  deign  to  become 
soldiers  and  Carthaginians  in  general  prided  themselves  on  never 
having  had  to  go  to  war  in  person,  so  the  only  answer  was  to  main- 
tain a  large  and  potentially  dangerous  army  of  mercenaries  recruited 
from  every  land. 

It  is  uncertain  how  many  people  lived  in  the  Carthaginian  metrop- 
olis during  its  prime.  The  Greek  geographer  Strabo  puts  the 
number  at  700,000,  which,  allowing  for  foreign  residents  and  slaves, 
does  not  appear  to  be  an  exaggerated  estimate.  Conditions  in  the 
city  can  be  deduced  from  a  thorough  study  of  ancient  sources. 
Magnificent  marble  temples,  gold  and  silver  pillars,  statues  and 
statuettes  gleamed  in  the  African  sun.  The  goddess  Tanit  was  wor- 
shiped here  in  peculiarly  lavish  style,  for  archaeologists  have  found 
thousands  of  urns  containing  the  charred  bones  of  children  in  the 
ruins  of  her  temple.  It  was  the  practice  in  Carthage  to  sacrifice 
children,  probably  only  those  belonging  to  leading  famiHes.  Diodorus 
tells  us  that  one  such  sacrifice  in  the  year  310  b.c.  cost  the  lives 
of  no  less  than  five  hundred  children.  The  goddess  Tanit  was  con- 
sidered to  be  more  powerful  than  the  god  Baal,  although  the  great 
Carthaginian  generals  incorporated  the  latter's  name  in  their  own. 
Hasdrubal,  for  instance,  means  "Baal  is  my  help,"  and  Hannibal 
"favored  of  Baal." 

Viewed  in  a  contemporary  light,  the  three  Punic  Wars,  which 
covered  a  period  of  119  years,  were  world  wars.  When  Hannibal 
suffered  his  first  defeat  at  Zama,  when  Carthage  was  forced  to  pay 
Rome  the  fantastic  sum  of  10,000  talents  and  her  aristocrats  in  their 
tall  houses  swore  never  to  make  war  again  without  Rome's  per- 
mission, the  downfall  of  one  of  the  most  amazing  sea  powers  in 
history  was  already  sealed.  Rome  waited  another  fifty  years,  and 


NORTH  AFRICA  57 

then  the  city  was  burned,  destroyed  and  smashed,  house  by  house, 
temple  by  temple  and  terrace  by  terrace.  The  walls  were  over- 
thrown, the  quays  demolished,  the  lighthouses  battered  down  and 
any  Carthaginians  who  still  survived  sold  into  slavery  by  the 
Romans. 

Were  the  Carthaginians  cowardly?  This  Semitic  race  of  Phoeni- 
cian stock  sailed  the  seas  of  the  world  more  boldly  than  men  had 
ever  done  before.  The  objects  of  their  voyages  and  explorations 
were  almost  always  unknown  and  unfamiliar  lands,  uncharted  and 
unfriendly  waters.  Only  stout  hearts  could  have  overcome  such  per- 
ils. The  Carthaginians  were  not  artists  or  poets.  They  were  seduced 
neither  by  Greek  nor  Roman  culture,  nor  did  they  live  in  the 
despotic  style  of  the  East.  In  the  end,  they  defended  their  city  and 
their  way  of  life  to  the  last  man. 

They  possessed  something  worth  defending,  for  they  lived  in 
their  metropohs  by  the  sea  in  a  style  unequaled  by  any  other  race 
in  the  contemporary  world. 


WESTERN  EUROPE 


THE  SILENT  STONES  OF  MALTA 

Although  the  artistic  sense  of  the  people  is  not  always  on  a  par 
with  their  ?noral  and  civic  attainments,  it  is  very  probable  that  the 
neolithic  population  of  the  Maltese  islands  had,  m  addition  to  their 
artistic  achievements,  elaborated  a  religious  system  of  a  type  which 
we  usually  attribute  to  much  later  generations. 

—Sir  Themistocles  Zammit,  Prehistoric  Malta, 
p.  i6,  London,  1930 

THE  island  of  Malta  is  small,  and  there  are  few  other  places  in  the 
world  where  so  many  people  live  so  closely  packed  together.  Towns, 
suburbs  and  villages  almost  melt  into  one  another,  and  all  are 
seething  with  people.  The  peasants  of  Malta  hate  stones  because 
they  interfere  with  their  plows— and  there  are  plenty  of  stones  on 
Malta,  stones  so  big  that  they  waste  cultivable  ground,  stones  that 
provide  the  island  with  its  greatest  mystery. 

Seventeen  miles  long  and  nine  miles  wide,  Malta  is  inhabited  by 
the  most  persevering  peasant  farmers  in  the  A/Iediterranean  area,  an 
island  of  innumerable  tiny  fields  surrounded  by  low  stone  walls, 
an  island  breeding  the  finest  and  sturdiest  goats  and  donkeys,  an 
island  which  supplies  the  finest  honey  in  Europe.  The  fossilized 
bones  of  long-extinct  elephants  and  of  rhinoceros  and  various  types 
of  deer  that  have  been  found  there  suggest  that  the  Maltese  group, 
which  includes  the  islands  of  Malta,  Gozo,  Comino  and  Filfla,  is 
all  that  is  left  of  a  land  bridge  which  once  linked  Africa  with  Italy. 
Man  was  living  in  the  area  possibly  as  long  ago  as  100,000  years  or 
even  more.  Six  miles  from  Valletta,  the  capital,  in  Ghar  Dalam,  "the 
cavern  of  darkness,"  eight  human  teeth  were  discovered  with  fossils 
belonging  to  the  extinct  dwarf  rhinoceros.  The  anthropologist 
Arthur  Keith  suggests  that  two  of  these  teeth  belong  to  the 
Neanderthal  people  who  roamed  the  world  between  130,000  and 
30,000  years  ago.  To  ascribe  them  to  the  Neanderthalians  is,  how- 
ever, a  bold  piece  of  conjecture,  for  Neanderthal  traces  have  not 
been  definitely  identified  here. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  still  possible  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  islands 
lived  through  many  of  the  paleolithic  periods  even  though  the 

58 


WESTERN  EUROPE  59 

available  evidence  would  not  take  us  back  30,000  years,  let  alone 
130,000. 

It  was  on  Malta's  shores  that  Paul  the  Apostle  was  wrecked  while 
on  his  way  to  Rome  as  a  prisoner.  "And  when  they  were  escaped, 
then  they  knew  that  the  island  was  called  Melita,"  we  are  told  in 
Acts:  xxviii.  The  anniversary  of  Paul's  landing  is  still  celebrated  by 
the  inhabitants  to  this   day. 

Nowhere  else  in  Europe  can  we  see  such  an  amazing  number  of 
early  buildings  as  on  this  small  group  of  Mediterranean  islands  where, 
over  thousands  of  years,  men  developed  an  architectural  technique 
which  bordered  on  the  miraculous.  In  such  a  densely  populated  place 
every  square  foot  of  ground  is  valuable,  and  A4altese  peasants  have 
been  clearing  away  the  stones  and  stone  buildings  for  thousands  of 
years.  However,  enough  still  remains  to  provide  an  almost  inex- 
haustible archaeological  paradise.  To  catch  a  glimpse  of  this  wonder- 
land is  to  travel  backward  in  time  to  a  period  which  lies  four  or 
five  thousand  years  in  the  past  and  to  speculate  about  people  who 
handled  vast  blocks  of  stone  as  though  they  were  the  legendary 
Titans  of  old. 

A  megalith  is  a  large  stone,  and  megalithic  buildings  are  buildings 
composed  of  huge  individual  blocks  of  stone.  We  shall  never  know 
exactly  what  prompted  men  to  construct  such  immense  megalithic 
buildings  here  in  prehistoric  times.  The  builders  are  no  longer  with 
us  and  we  do  not  even  know  their  precise  race,  although  we  can  at 
least  try  to  gain  an  inkling  of  the  mystery. 

On  July  20,  19 1 5,  Themistocles  Zammit  began  to  excavate  some 
megahthic  buildings  near  the  village  of  Tarxien,  about  two  miles 
south  of  Valletta.  Two  years  later,  the  ruins  of  the  golden  age  of 
these  unknown  builders  had  been  unearthed.  The  superficial  ob- 
server will  not  immediately  discern  any  plan  in  the  immense  jumble 
of  stones,  yet  each  was  laid  with  a  deliberate  intent.  Semioval 
chambers  were  built  in  pairs  with  their  axes  of  length  parallel  to 
one  another  and  a  central  corridor  connecting  them.  The  ground 
plan  can  be  likened  to  two  Ds  set  close  together  but  facing  outward 
in  this  fashion:  QD.  The  entrance  leads  into  the  corridor  dividing 
the  two  oval  chambers,  whose  side  walls  and  floors  consist  of  huge 
stone  slabs,  and  the  whole  arrangement  is  surrounded  by  an  enclosing 
wall. 

For  decades  it  was  thought  that  these  oval  buildings  had  been 


6o 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


Ramta 


Victoria  ,'      ^J9°"li°     W 
"'^SaniaVtrna  Ib^^duf, 


Paul's,'  Cad/ 
Bay  " 
Migiarro  ,'' 


'^     -Zebb^ug.,-.   Hoi/Saf//en,;J  Tarscien     ^ 
Siggiewi^-ADebdiefco-C'Luqa       ^Zejtun,- 

•  HarDa/oijgJ 


--'Bur  Mg/iez 
Hnqiar  Kim    Zurr-eq         '"^^  •      p 
;n  Naduf 


Malta 


erected  by  the  Phoenicians,  but  the  megalithic  buildings  of  Malta 
date  back  to  far  more  ancient  times. 

Archaeologists  have  debated  whether  the  megalithic  buildings 
were  dwelling  places,  palaces,  enormous  graves  or  temples.  The 
layout  of  the  buildings  indicates  that  they  were  used  for  a  religious 
purpose.  The  broad  central  corridor  almost  invariably  leads  to  a 
large  niche  at  the  rear  wliich  appears  to  have  been  the  most  im- 
portant place  in  the  whole  complex,  rather  like  the  apse  of  a 
cathedral.  Other  small  niches,  stone  tables  and  storage  places  for 
animal  bones  also  point  to  the  religious  significance  of  the  oval 
buildings.  Several  monoliths  may  have  been  altars,  and  stone  covers 
have  been  found  which  probably  served  as  water  catchments  or 
fireplaces.  Beneath  a  number  of  stone  blocks  diggers  found  frag- 
ments of  receptacles,  tools  of  stone  or  bone,  shells  and  pebbles,  all 
carefully  placed  there  by  human  agency  before  the  megaUths  were 
superimposed  on  them.  This  indicates  that  the  oval  buildings  were 
neither  dwelling  places  nor  palaces,  but  sanctuaries.  Wherever  in  the 


WESTERN  EUROPE  6i 

world  man  has  erected  his  largest  and  finest  buildings  and  wherever 
he  has  excelled  himself  creatively  and  artistically,  he  has  almost  in- 
variably been  motivated  by  a  religious  impulse.  These  massive  mega- 
lithic  buildings  were  likewise  erected  for  purposes  of  divine  worship. 

In  one  chamber  at  Hal  Tarxien  the  lower  portion  of  a  female 
statue  was  excavated.  The  figure  was  seated  on  a  block  of  stone 
decorated  in  relief  and  was  almost  life-size.  Various  statuettes 
in  clay  and  stone  were  also  discovered,  mostly  female  figures  which 
probably  had  rehgious  significance.  One  thing  we  do  know  is  that 
the  prehistoric  Stone-Age  inhabitants  of  Malta  worshiped  a  female 
deity.  The  director  of  the  Valletta  Museum,  Professor  Sir  Themis- 
tocles  Zammit,  has  also  established  by  dint  of  exhaustive  research 
that  oracles  were  bestowed  in  the  sanctuaries  of  Malta.  Such  de- 
ductions demand  an  extremely  wide  knowledge  of  other  similar 
places  in  all  parts  of  the  Mediterranean  area. 

In  the  interior  of  many  of  the  temples,  rectangular  stone  blocks 
almost  twelve  feet  square  had  been  let  into  the  ground.  These  were 
surrounded  by  walls  on  three  sides  and  bordered  by  a  stone  step. 
Each  block  of  stone  had  five  holes  in  it,  and  in  the  right-hand  corner 
of  the  stone  step  was  a  sixth.  Zammit  has  tried  to  interpret  these 
strange  cavities.  They  may  have  been  used  for  storing  flour  or 
loaves  for  temple  use,  but  it  is  also  conceivable  that  the  oddly 
shaped  blocks  had  something  to  do  with  the  numerous  small  stone 
marbles  which  were  also  found.  Over  a  hundred  little  balls  of 
varying  sizes  were  discovered  some  yards  away.  This  would  suggest 
that  we  are  dealing  with  an  oracle.  Perhaps  the  stone  balls  were 
thrown  at  the  stone  from  a  distance  and  the  purport  of  the  oracle 
depended  on  the  particular  hole  in  which  they  landed. 

Peculiar  stone  chambers  with  niches  and  apertures  unearthed  not 
only  at  Tarxien  but  at  other  sites  such  as  Hagiar  Kim,  Mnaidra  and 
Gigantia,  all  suggest  that  a  system  of  sacrificial  rites  was  practiced 
in  the  megalithic  sanctuaries. 

No  human  skeletons  were  found  in  the  megalithic  buildings,  but 
there  were  many  bones  belonging  to  domesticated  animals,  par- 
ticularly oxen  and  sheep.  Professor  Zammit  considers  these  bones 
to  be  the  remains  of  sacrificial  beasts.  Some  of  the  stone  blocks 
portray  whole  rows  of  goats  wliich  were  undoubtedly  destined  for 
sacrifice. 


62  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  year  1902  saw  the  discovery  of  the  Hypogeum  at  Hal 
Saflieni  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Tarxien  ruins,  and  in  1907  it 
was  opened  to  the  pubhc.  Derived  from  the  Greek  hypogeion,  the 
word  is  used  to  describe  a  subterranean  vault  and  consisted  in  this 
case  of  recesses,  passages  and  small  chambers  hewn  out  of  the  solid 
rock,  together  with  some  external  buildings.  In  order  to  clear  the 
Hypogeum  a  shaft  thirty  feet  deep  had  to  be  driven  into  the  ground. 
Debris  from  the  mysterious  catacombs  ^vas  carried  out  through  this 
tunnel  and  electric  lights  were  later  installed  so  that  the  interior 
could  be  inspected  with  ease. 

In  ancient  times  the  Hypogeum  must  have  been  a  sanctuary.  It 
seems  safe  to  assume  this  because  the  roof  of  one  of  the  vaults  is 
decorated  with  spirals  in  red  ochre,  a  well-known  feature  of  pre- 
historic religious  art.  The  Italian  authority  Luigi  Ugolini  considers 
this  chamber  to  be  the  seat  of  an  oracle.  If  one  speaks  into  one 
of  the  artificial  niches  in  a  deep  voice,  the  words  re-echo  from  ^vall 
to  wall  and  chamber  to  chamber  throughout  the  whole  vault— yet 
another  feature  of  this  astonishing  place. 

In  Zammit's  opinion,  the  Hypogeum  at  Hal  Saflieni  and  the 
temples  of  Tarxien  are  older  than  any  other  known  oracles:  "Yet 
they  filled  the  visitor  with  reverence  and  directed  his  mind  to  the 
mystery  and  power  of  unseen  spirits.  Perhaps  the  Hal  Saflieni  caves 
and  the  Tarxien  temples  attracted  people  of  distant  lands  who 
believed  in  the  power  of  the  oracle  which  could  be  consulted  there." 

Toward  the  close  of  the  Stone  Age  the  Hypogeum  served  as  a 
huge  burial  vault.  Chambers  on  each  of  its  two  levels  were  filled 
with  red  earth  and  the  skeletons  of  over  seven  thousand  people 
placed  inside.  The  absence  of  large  bones  indicates  most  of  them  had 
not  been  buried  in  this  spot  originally,  but  had  presumably  been 
brought  there  from  other  burial  places  and  then  interred  in  the 
Hypogeum.  The  practice  of  waiting  for  bodies  to  decompose  and 
then  burying  them  elsewhere  in  a  common  grave  is  one  which  has 
been  identified  in  other  places  in  the  Mediterranean. 

The  Hypogeum  contained  potsherds  and  fragments  of  statuettes. 
Two  female  clay  figures  wore  strangely  pleated  bell-shaped  skirts. 
One  of  the  women  was  lying  on  her  belly  on  a  couch  and  the  other 
was  sleeping  on  her  side.  This  dormant  and  amply  proportioned 
figure  is  one  of  the  finest  neolithic  sculptures  in  existence.  The 
sculptors  of  Malta,  who  lived  roughly  four  or  five  thousand  years 


WESTERN  EUROPE  63 

ago,  probably  excelled  all  the  other  artists  of  the  western  Mediter- 
ranean, particularly  where  the  human  figure  was  concerned. 

The  whole  complex,  especially  the  hollowing  out  of  the  subter- 
ranean vault,  was  an  astonishing  achievement.  People  who  accom- 
plished such  things  had  undoubtedly  formed  highly  organized  com- 
munities and  were  culturally  very  advanced,  or  they  would  never 
have  been  capable  of  such  feats. 

We  know  that  animals  were  sacrificed  to  a  god  or  gods;  we  also 
know  that  they  were  slaughtered  before  a  sacred  image  and  then 
burned.  Complicated  oracular  rituals  and  the  interpretation  of 
god-sent  dreams,  too,  have  been  inferred— and  all  from  the  silent 
ruins,  the  echoing  chambers  and  broken  statuettes  of  the  Hypogeum 
at  Hal  Saflieni.  What  a  high  degree  of  intellectual  attainment,  what 
an  intricate  system  of  religious  observance  it  summons  up!  The 
Maltese  islands  offer  us  what  is  probably  the  most  interesting  example 
of  man's  quest  for  spirituality  in  pre-metallic  times.  In  the  Mnaidra 
sanctuary,  which  consisted  of  two  massive  oval  buildings,  mountains 
of  neolithic  vessels  were  found.  Seen  from  the  air,  this  veritable 
miracle  in  stone  looks  like  a  half-finished  game  played  by  giants. 

A  similar  impression  is  created  by  the  Gigantia,  which  comprises 
the  ruins  of  two  enormous  temples  on  the  neighboring  island  of 
Gozo.  Blocks  and  slabs  of  stone  must  have  been  brought  there  from 
miles  away,  for  heavy  building  materials  were  not  available  in  the 
immediate  area.  Many  of  the  Gigantia's  upright  stones  are  over 
sixteen  feet  high,  and  one  is  more  than  twenty-six  feet  long  and 
thirteen  feet  wide. 

Equally  astonishing  is  the  size  of  several  monolithic  pillars  and 
slabs  in  the  ruins  of  Hagiar  Kim,  which,  incidentally,  means  "stand- 
ing stones."  One  of  the  pillars  there  is  over  sixteen  feet  high,  and 
one  of  the  slabs  nearly  two  and  a  half  feet  thick,  ten  feet  high  and 
twenty-three  feet  long.  It  would  be  impossible  to  load  such  a 
weight  onto  a  modern  truck  without  using  elaborate  technical 
equipment.  Analyzing  the  remarkable  engineering  feats  of  five 
thousand  years  ago,  we  can  only  assume  that  the  immense  stones 
were  moved  over  a  period  of  months  or  even  years  by  a  whole 
community  employing  levers,  stone  balls  and  wooden  rollers. 

The  almost  incredible  amount  of  energy  expended  by  the  pre- 
historic inhabitants  of  Malta  in  their  timeless  struggle  with  the  huge 
stones  is  manifested  by  deep  tracks  cut  into  the  hard  limestone. 


64  THE  SILENT  PAST 

These  tracks,  which  occur  throughout  the  islands  and  run  in  every 
direction,  are  testimony  to  the  exertions  of  a  large  population,  to 
the  transportation  of  heavy  materials,  perhaps  to  the  first  stone 
wheels  or  to  the  centuries-long  rumbling  of  the  big  stone  balls  which 
have  come  to  light  in  all  Malta's  megalithic  ruins  and  very  probably 
acted  as  rollers  for  transporting  immense  loads. 

Megalithic  culture  was  still  at  its  prime  in  Malta  long  after  other 
places  in  the  Mediterranean  area  had  discovered  metal.  Eventually, 
an  entirely  alien  population  took  over  the  island  and  the  huge 
megalithic  sanctuaries  fell  into  decay.  No  writing,  no  verbal  tradi- 
tions, no  portraits  in  stone  or  paint,  were  left  behind  by  the  people 
who  piled  these  mighty  blocks  of  stone  one  upon  the  other,  nor  is 
it  possible  to  reconstruct  their  appearance  or  tell  their  race  from  the 
formation  of  their  bones  and  skulls. 

The  mute  evidence  is  there.  Once  upon  a  time,  with  endless 
perseverance  and  enormous  effort,  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
men  reared  the  great  rocks  skyward.  The  people  of  Malta  must 
have  devoted  their  whole  energies  to  building  these  sanctuaries  for 
eternity,  but  what  their  motives  were,  what  language  they  spoke 
and  what  gods  they  served  must  forever  remain  a  mystery. 

Only  the  stones  know  the  answer. 


[15]  A  particularly  fine  Punic  gravestone,  now  in  the  Bardo  Museum  at  Tunis.  Some 
historians  assert  that  the  Carthaginians  did  not  beHeve  in  an  afterhfe,  but  it  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  the  creator  of  this  stone  was  not  convinced  of  the  existence  of  a  life 

after  death. 


irjlHISlv 


'1 


[  i6]   Carthaginian  sculptures  are  extraordinarily  rare. 

This  gravestone  depicts  the  face  of  a  Carthaginian 

noblewoman.  It  is  now  in  the  Aluseum  of  the  White 

Fathers  at  Carthage. 

[17]    [i]    The   Bardo   Museum   at   Tunis   displays   a 
number   of  these   strange   ceramic   works   from   the 
mysterious  city  that  was  one  of  the  greatest  com- 
mercial centers  in  the  ancient  world. 

[18]    [2-4]    These   small   heads   in  brightly   colored 

glass  from  the   Museum   of  the   White   Fathers   at 

Carthage  are  only  a  few  centimeters  high  and  may 

have  served  religious  purposes. 


[19]    The    Hypogeum,   a   two-floored,    many-roomed    subterranean   building   carved 
into  the  rock.  The  spirals  painted  on  the  ceiling  in  red  ocher  indicate  that  the  place 

had  religious  associations. 


[2o]  The  "Sleeping  Woman  of 
Malta"  was  found  in  the  Hy- 
pogeum,  and  is  A'lalta's  finest 
neolithic  sculpture.  Four  or  five 
thousand  years  ago,  the  island's 
sculptors  were  the  finest  artists 
to  be  found  in  the  western 
Mediterranean. 


[21]  This  terra-cotta  head  was 

also  found  in  Malta  but  appears 

to  belong  to  a  later  period. 


[ii]  The  huge  complex  of  Hal  Tarxien,  excavated  by  Professor  Themistocles  Zammit 
between  191 5  and  1917.  These  blocks  and  slabs  of  stone  were  cut  by  human  hand  and 
assembled  into  megalithic  buildings,  probably  about  3,000  years  before  the  birth  of 
Christ.  Prehistorian  Karl  J.  Narr,  however,  states  that  in  his  opinion  the  site  is  not 
older  than  the  iMiddle  Minoan  period,  somewhere  between  2100  and  1600  b.c. 


[23]  Overall  plan  of  the  temple  at  Hal 
Tarxien,  showing  the  characteristic  dou- 
ble-oval shape  of  its  buildings.  The  dark 
outlines  indicate  walls  built  of  large  ver- 
tical slabs,  and  the  darkest  gray,  shaded 
portions  represent  the  horizontal  blocks 
composing  the  perimeter  walls.  Filling 
materials  in  the  intervening  spaces  are 
shown  in  lighter  gray,  while  the  lightest 
tint  indicates  the  position  of  large  floor 
slabs. 


.     -«s^ 


ntzjr' 


[24]  Thousands  of  bi- 
zarre constructions  like 
this  can  still  be  seen  on 
the  plains  and  hills  of 
Portugal.  They  are  the 
remains  of  megalithic 
graves. 


[25]  "Tholos  da  Fari- 
osa,"  a  megalithic  grave 
discovered  in  the  west 
of  the  Iberian  Peninsula. 
The  entrance  {back- 
gromid,  center)  can  be 
clearly  distinguished. 


[26]   Stonehenge  is  the  most  celebrated  and  interesting  megalithic  complex  to  have 
survived  from  the  period  between  the  end  of  the  Stone  Age  and  the  beginning  of  the 

Bronze  Age.  It  is  generally  assumed  to  have  had  religious  associations. 

[27]  This  passage  grave,  known  as  Vjalkinge  9,  was  found  in  the  Swedish  province  of 

Schonen.  Folke  Hansen  discovered   forty  humeral  bones  there,  together  with   the 

remains  of  hand  and  foot  bones.  It  is  estimated  that  twenty-five  persons  were  buried 

in  the  grave  during  prehistoric  times. 


^Wm     "^       UpDBw- 


[28]  The  palace  of  Mari  was  decorated  with  splendid  mural  paintings.  Here  we  see  a 

killer  of  sacrificial  beasts  painted  on  the  wall  of  "Courtyard  106"  in  ocher,  red,  black 

and  white.  This  work  of  art  is  some  3,700  years  old. 


WESTERN  EUROPE 


THEIR  FAITH  MOVED  MOUNTAINS 

Avebury  and  Stonehe?ige  are  amo?ig  the  most  astonishing  pre- 
historic monuments,  not  only  in  the  British  Isles  but  in  the  Old 
World.  Each  might  be  fairly  compared  to  a  cathedral. 

—V.  Gordon  Childe,  Prehistoric  Conmmnities  of  the 
British  Isles,  p.  loi,  London,  1949 

WHEN  you  wander  across  a  hill  overgrown  with  grass,  undergrowth 
or  trees  and  get  the  feeling  that  there  is  something  artificial  about 
the  rising  ground,  pause  a  moment.  What  lies  beneath  your  feet 
may  be  a  mass  grave  built  by  man  in  prehistoric  times.  Megas  and 
lithos  are  the  Greek  words  for  "large"  and  "stone,"  so  a  megalith 
is  a  large  stone.  It  was  out  of  large  stones  like  these  that,  between 
roughly  3000  and  1500  b.c,  man  erected  monuments  whose  existence 
has  always  been  known  but  whose  purpose  has  in  many  respects 
remained  a  mystery  for  thousands  of  years.  Sometimes  they  were 
only  dolmens  or  cromlechs,  a  few  massive  stones  topped  by  a 
large  slab;  sometimes  they  took  the  form  of  large  burial  chambers 
or  rings  or  long  avenues  of  stones;  sometimes,  again,  the  men  of 
about  four  thousand  years  ago  placed  a  single  stone  upright  and  so 
left  us  one  of  the  famous  menhirs.  This  term  is  derived  from  the 
Celtic  words  7Jiae7i  and  hir,  meaning  "stone"  and  "long."  All  these 
things— the  single  stones,  the  rings  and  complexes,  coupled  with  the 
creative  impulse  and  the  ideas  that  gave  birth  to  them— together  go 
to  make  up  the  great  and  almost  worldwide  phenomenon  which 
we  call  megalithic  culture.  There  is  a  fascination  in  endeavoring  to 
divine  what  thoughts  animated  the  men  who  sought  eternity  through 
the  medium  of  the  monolith,  or  "single  stone." 

Extending  in  a  huge  arc  from  Norway,  Denmark  and  southern 
Sweden  to  northwest  Germany,  England  and  Ireland,  and  from 
Brittany,  Spain  and  Portugal  to  the  islands  of  the  western  iMedi- 
terranean,  the  relics  of  this  mysterious  culture  include  barrows, 
cairns,  tumuli,  groups  of  monoliths,  stone  rings,  tracks  bordered  by 
vast  blocks  of  sandstone  and  monuments  constructed  of  unhewn 
rock  and  built  to  withstand  the  ages.  Western  Europe  alone  has 
between  forty  and  fifty  thousand  megalithic  graves. 

People  have  wondered  why  all  these  monuments  were  built  either 

65 


66  THE  SILENT  PAST 

in  coastal  regions  or,  if  inland,  not  too  far  from  the  sea.  This  may 
have  been  because  coastal  areas  have  always  held  the  lead  in  cultural 
development.  It  is  as  if  the  sea  and  ships  have  been  mankind's  greatest 
educators;  as  if  sea  travel  enhanced  man's  capabilities,  made  him 
inventive  and  stimulated  his  mind  through  an  exchange  of  ideas  with 
foreign  peoples.  It  should  not  be  surprising,  therefore,  that  some  of 
man's  earliest  advanced  civilizations  came  into  being  around  the  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean,  that  our  alphabet  was  invented  in  the  Near 
East  and  that  the  Mediterranean  was  one  of  the  principal  cradles 
of  architecture  and  religion.  Civilizations  developed  much  more 
slowly  on  the  great  continental  land  masses  than  in  the  maritime 
regions  of  Central  America,  on  the  coasts  of  China,  in  Greece,  Italy, 
Spain  and  the  Mediterranean  islands.  It  was  in  the  Aegean  that  man 
first  learned  how  to  hew  blocks  of  stone,  fit  them  together  in  layers 
and  construct  domed  graves.  In  the  remaining  areas,  in  the  western 
Mediterranean  and  on  the  Atlantic  coasts,  blocks  of  crude  stone 
lying  in  the  fields  were  merely  piled  up  to  form  compartments,  and 
menhirs  were  still  being  erected  there  long  after  the  people  of 
Mesopotamia,  Syria  and  Egypt  had  started  to  hew  stone  into 
squared  blocks. 

What  surprises  one  about  the  earliest  stone  monuments  erected 
by  Europe's  prehistoric  inhabitants  is  the  sheer  size  of  the  building 
materials  used.  Near  the  township  of  Carnac  and  the  village  of 
Locmariaquer,  both  in  Brittany,  lie  the  most  interesting  megalithic 
areas  in  France  and  probably  the  entire  world,  for  they  contain  the 
finest  stone  monuments  ever  discovered. 

The  grouping  of  the  megaliths,  the  three  series  {alignements)  com- 
prising 2,935  nienhirs  and  extending  over  two  and  a  half  miles,  the 
covered  galleries  (galeries  convenes)— 'all  these  bear  witness,  in 
their  arrangement,  planning  and  selection  of  stones,  to  a  once- 
advanced  culture.  Prehistorian  Z.  Le  Rouzic  believes  that  the 
alignements  were  cult  sites  or  open-air  temples  and  that  the  cromlech 
of  Menec  was  the  chief  sanctuary.  Cromlechs  are  megaliths  arranged 
in  a  circle  or  rectangle.  The  alignements  may  have  been  processional 
routes  used  by  a  death  cult.  Certainly,  the  fact  that  the  avenues  of 
stones  usually  lead  to  an  open  space  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  stones 
and  close  to  a  megalithic  grave  suggests  some  connection  with  a 
cult  of  that  nature. 

Research  conducted  by  Commandant  Devoir  has  revealed  that 


WESTERN  EUROPE 


67 


The  black  dots  indicate  German  menhirs. 


68  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  orientation  of  the  rows  in  all  the  aligne?nents  in  Brittany  corre- 
sponds to  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun  at  certain  astronomically 
determinate  points  in  time.  This  would  make  them  a  sort  of  gigantic 
calendar  which  indicated  the  dates  of  a  sun  cult's  religious  festivals 
and  had  a  connection  with  seedtime  and  harvest.  A  similar  as- 
tronomical orientation  has  been  attributed  to  certain  very  ancient 
roads  in  Brittany,  but  there  is  no  scientific  evidence  for  such  a 
theory  and  it  would  seem  to  be  no  more  than  a  product  of  wishful 
thinking. 

The  alignements  of  Menec  extend  for  a  distance  of  some  1,300 
yards,  are  about  100  yards  wide  and  contain  1,099  menhirs.  They 
form  eleven  parallel  rows  running  in  a  west-southwesterly  or  north- 
northwesterly  direction. 

The  alignejnents  of  Kermario  extend  for  some  1,250  yards  at  a 
depth  of  just  over  100  yards  and  consist  of  1,029  menhirs  ranged 
in  ten  rows. 

The  aligneinents  of  Kerlescan  are  just  under  1,000  yards  long  and 
contain  a  total  of  594  menhirs  arranged  in  thirteen  rows. 

Whereas  at  Carnac  it  is  the  sheer  mass  of  the  megaliths  that 
impresses  one,  at  Locmariaquer  it  is  the  vastness  and  dimensions  of 
the  individual  stones.  The  menhir  which  has  been  christened  Mane 
er  H'rolk,  or  "fairy  stone,"  must  have  measured  over  sixty-five  feet 
long  when  it  was  still  intact.  One  day,  we  do  not  know  when,  it  fell 
and  broke  into  four  pieces.  This  monolith  is  between  ten  and  thirteen 
feet  thick  and  its  weight  has  been  estimated  at  350  tons.  Five  of  our 
largest  modern  trucks  would  be  needed  to  transport  such  a  load. 
Not  far  away  stands  a  magnificent  dolmen  called  the  Table  des 
Marchands.  This  enormous  stone  slab  was  part  of  a  subterranean 
chamber  beneath  a  hill.  A  passage  now  leads  into  the  chamber, 
enabling  the  visitor  to  marvel  at  the  elemental  majesty  of  this  simple 
but  breathtakingly  impressive  construction. 

The  mass  and  dimensions  of  the  building  materials  used  in  many 
different  places  are  a  constant  source  of  amazement.  The  largest 
stone  at  Stonehenge  is  almost  thirty  feet  long.  A  stone  in  the  Mount 
Browne  dolmen  in  County  Carlo w,  Ireland,  weighs  over  a  hundred 
tons.  The  megalithic  grave  at  Bagneux  in  the  neighborhood  of  Sau- 
mur,  central  France,  boasts  one  stone  which  is  just  over  sixty  feet 
long  and  about  sixteen  feet  wide  and  a  roof  stone  weighing  some 
ninety  tons.  It  has  never  been  fully  explained  how  the  men  of  4,000 


The  extent  of  megalithic  graves  in  the  west  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula 


70  THE  SILENT  PAST 

years  ago  managed  to  shift  such  immense  weights.  In  1840  one  of 
the  largest  megaliths  at  Saumur  was  used  to  bridge  a  river.  Thirty- 
six  yoked  oxen  and  huge  oaken  rollers  three  feet  in  diameter  had 
to  be  employed  to  move  it.  It  is  certainly  conceivable,  therefore, 
that  even  in  early  days  a  large  number  of  men  using  primitive  devices 
such  as  wooden  rollers  and  towropes  could  have  transported  and 
erected  such  massive  stones. 

A  few  years  ago,  British  archaeologists  undertook  a  further  thor- 
ough examination  of  Stonehenge,  which  stands  on  Salisbury  Plain 
just  over  two  miles  from  the  Wiltshire  village  of  Amesbury.  Some 
of  the  fallen  stones  were  re-erected,  and  the  Institute  of  Atomic 
Research  at  Harwell  ascertained  the  location  of  internal  fissures  by 
using  the  latest  scientific  aids. 

Stonehenge  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  megalithic  complexes 
in  the  world.  Stuart  Piggott  declared  in  1954  that  it  was  the  unique 
and  individual  creation  of  an  architect  whose  sense  of  overall  plan- 
ning and  proportion  far  surpassed  the  general  ability  of  his  con- 
temporaries in  the  barbaric  northwest  regions  of  Europe.  He  went 
on  to  say  that  anyone  on  the  lookout  for  comparisons  would  have 
to  turn  to  the  world  of  the  Aegean.  The  way  in  which  the  stones 
were  fitted  together,  the  ground  plan  and  the  technical  mastery 
displayed  were  things  which  could  not  be  deduced  merely  from  the 
archaeological  findings— but  it  was  at  least  possible  to  elicit  the 
sequence  in  which  the  separate  phases  occurred  and  determine  their 
chronological  boundaries. 

In  the  center  of  the  complex  is  a  longish  stone,  the  so-called  altar 
stone,  whose  exact  significance  cannot  be  gauged.  Around  it  in  a 
horseshoe  arc  stand  stones  ranging  from  six  and  a  half  to  eight  feet 
in  height.  Five  massive  triliths  formed  an  outer  horseshoe,  and  around 
them  stood  a  ring  of  thirty  stones  nearly  fifteen  feet  high  and  linked 
by  horizontal  slabs.  The  whole  arrangement  was  enclosed  by  a 
circular  rampart  measuring  130  yards  in  diameter  and  approached 
by  a  broad  avenue  which  ran  straight  through  the  altar  stone.  Also 
on  the  path's  axis  but  outside  the  whole  circle  and  in  front  of  the 
entrance  stands  the  so-called  "heel  stone,"  the  astronomical  stone, 
surrounded  by  a  small  ditch.  The  slaughter  or  sacrificial  stone  may 
also  have  been  situated  here  at  one  time.  It  has  been  estimated  that 
the  central  axis  is  focused  on  the  exact  point  on  the  horizon  where, 
in  the  second  millennium  b.c,  the  sun  would  have  risen  on  June  2  ist, 


WESTERN  EUROPE  71 

though  even  if  this  were  true  it  would  be  wrong  to  conclude  simply 
that  Stonehenge  was  a  sun  temple.  Most  of  the  world's  holy  places, 
from  prehistoric  graves  to  modern  cathedrals,  face  eastward  because 
birth,  creation,  God  and  the  rising  sun  have  always  been  symbolically 
associated. 

Piggott  tells  us  that  this  edifice  was  built  at  the  beginning  of  the 
second  millennium  b.c.  or,  more  precisely,  that  building  was  begun 
early  in  the  second  millennium  b.c.  The  remains  and  objects  dis- 
covered in  the  graves  are,  he  says,  typical  of  the  so-called  Secondary 
Neolithic  Culture  of  Britain.  Radiocarbon  tests  conducted  on 
charred  remains  which  were  dug  up  here  in  1950  dated  them  some- 
where between  2123  and  1573  b.c. 

Stonehenge  is  partly  built  of  tertiary  sandstone  blocks  which  were 
once  available  on  Salisbury  Plain  itself  and  are  known  in  England 
as  sarsens  or  Saracen  stones.  In  addition,  however,  there  are  the  so- 
called  "bluestones"  which  form  the  inner  circle  and  the  smaller 
horseshoe.  H.  H.  Thomas  has  ascertained  that  these  bluestones  came 
from  the  eastern  end  of  Prescelly  in  South  Wales,  some  130  miles 
from  Stonehenge  as  the  crow  flies.  How  were  they  transported  to 
Salisbury  Plain  from  so  far  away?  By  sea  the  route  would  have 
been  roughly  400  miles  long  and  overland  they  would  have  had 
to  cover  a  distance  of  more  than  170  miles.  As  the  British  archaeol- 
ogist Glyn  Daniel  rightly  says,  the  transportation  of  the  bluestones 
was  an  amazing  technical  achievement  and  covered,  so  far  as  we 
can  ascertain,  the  longest  route  ever  used  by  the  builders  of  any 
megalithic  monument. 

About  two  hundred  stone  rings  have  been  discovered  in  the 
British  Isles,  but  they  are  all  inferior  to  Stonehenge  and  Avebury 
in  grandeur  of  design  and  execution. 

Avebury,  an  even  larger  megalithic  complex  than  Stonehenge, 
lies  only  a  few  miles  away.  Originally,  more  than  650  blocks  of 
stone  were  erected  there  in  circles  and  rows,  but  many  of  the  larger 
boulders  were  removed  at  a  later  date,  some  by  local  builders  in 
search  of  materials  and  others  by  overzealous  medieval  Christians 
who  bore  them  off  and  piously  buried  them. 

Avebury's  general  outlines  are  hard  to  distinguish  today  because 
the  village  of  that  name  nests  immediately  inside  the  ring  of  stones. 
The  level  ground  in  the  center  was  once  crowned  by  a  ring  of 
gigantic  unhewn  slabs.  Each  monolith  measures  about  thirteen  feet 


72  THE  SILENT  PAST 

both  in  height  and  width  and  is  about  two  feet  six  inches  thick.  The 
ring  was  encircled  by  a  rampart  and  ditch,  the  latter  running  inside 
the  former.  Inside  the  large  ring  were  two  nonconcentric  smaller 
rings  whose  edges  almost  touched.  Of  the  stones  which  composed 
them,  five  and  four  have  survived  respectively.  In  the  center  of  the 
southern  inner  ring  stood  a  particularly  tall  stone,  while  the  northern 
ring  contained  three  monoliths. 

What  was  the  object  of  these  ancient  and  gargantuan  creations? 
Obscure  as  the  history  of  the  people  of  the  time  appears,  two  facts 
are  apparent.  Having  been  a  hunter  and  a  collector  of  wild  fruit  for 
a  million  or  six  hundred  thousand  years,  man  began,  in  the  neolithic 
and  megalithic  period,  to  domesticate  animals,  inhabit  a  fixed  abode 
and  cultivate  the  soil.  Concomitantly,  there  arose  a  desire  to  bury 
the  dead  in  a  more  elaborate  and  secure  fashion.  Throughout  the 
entire  European  and  Mediterranean  area  there  came  into  being 
enormous  stone  burial  places,  with  Egypt  leading  the  field  by  a 
considerable  margin.  The  idea  of  building  stone  edifices  for  the  dead 
was  one  that  became  disseminated  throughout  the  regions  mentioned 
above.  Everywhere  save  in  Egypt,  provision  was  normally  made  for 
the  interment  of  a  considerable  number  of  dead— probably  members 
of  one  particular  family  or  tribe.  The  forerunner  of  the  chamber 
constructed  of  boulders  was  probably  the  cave,  and  archaeologists 
have,  in  fact,  discovered  worldwide  evidence  of  cave  burial  going 
back  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years. 

The  infinite  pains  which  men  took  with  the  construction  of  mega- 
lithic graves  indicate  that  they  were  concerned  with  preserving  more 
for  eternity  than  the  mere  physical  remains  of  their  dead.  The  size 
of  the  graves  shows  that  they  also  served  as  cult  sites  and  that  there 
was  a  belief  in  something  which  survived  after  death.  Contact  and 
intercourse  are  practicable  only  with  something  that  is  alive,  so  it 
must  be  assumed  that  one  of  the  driving  forces  of  the  amazing  mega- 
lithic culture  was  a  belief  in  the  soul  and  its  continued  existence 
after  death. 

Many  of  the  later  megalithic  graves  were  sealed  with  stones 
which  had  a  round  or  oval  hole  cut  into  them.  This  "soul  hole" 
was  intended  as  a  means  of  communication  between  the  souls  of  the 
departed  and  the  outside  world,  and  may  also  have  been  used  for 
supplying  the  dead  with  food  and  drink.  Even  today,  one  can  still 
see  "soul  holes"  in  old  French-Swiss  houses  on  the  upper  reaches 


Sites  of  megalithic  buildings  found  in  Skane  Province,  southern  Sweden 


74  THE  SILENT  PAST 

of  the  Rhone,  though  the  local  inhabitants  have  no  inkling  of  their 
age-old  significance. 

Stonehenge,  Avebury,  and  other  megalithic  buildings  cannot  have 
been  only  graves.  Had  that  been  their  sole  function,  their  builders 
would  have  been  guilty  of  needless  overelaboration.  It  is  far  more 
likely  that  these  immense  constructions  were  holy  places,  sanctuaries 
which  had  originated  in  and  were  bound  up  with  the  death  cult  and 
other  religious  conceptions. 

In  the  opinion  of  some  authorities,  the  huge  buildings  on  the 
Maltese  islands  set  the  pattern  for  all  subsequent  megalithic  edifices, 
though  whether  they  really  represent  such  a  point  of  departure 
seems  highly  questionable.  Nevertheless,  since  the  buildings  there 
are  clearly  recognizable  as  temples  they  do  lend  support  to  the 
assumption  that  tribal  sanctuaries  were  planned  and  built  through- 
out western  Europe. 

How  graves  became  cult  sites  and  how  cult  sites— our  own 
churches  included— came  to  include  graves  is  the  material  counter- 
part of  a  great  spiritual  mystery,  for  there  is  fundamental  truth  in 
the  assertion  that  all  death  comes  from  life  and  all  life  from  death. 

The  secret  of  the  menhirs,  too,  can  only  be  elucidated  in  religio- 
magical  terms.  Wherever  these  stones  occur  in  Europe,  people 
living  in  their  vicinity  have  believed  that  miraculous  powers  emanate 
from  or  are  associated  with  them.  Professor  Horst  Kirchner  of 
Berlin  University  has  collected  many  of  these  ancient  traditions. 
A  Breton  peasant  woman  declared  that  a  year  after  touching  the 
Saint  Cado  menhir  she  gave  birth  to  a  fine  healthy  son,  and  a 
number  of  other  women  who  had  visited  the  stone  told  the  same 
story.  In  Germany  the  Long  Stone  at  Tiengen  in  Kreis  Waldshut 
was  formerly  called  the  Chindlistein  ("little  child  stone")  because 
wet  nurses  were  supposed  to  remove  newborn  children  from  it  at 
night.  It  is  said  of  the  Kindstein  at  Unterwiddersheim  in  Kreis 
Biidingen  that  anyone  who  lays  his  ear  against  it  can  hear  children 
crying  inside.  The  Langstein  at  Sulzmatt  in  Upper  Alsace  is  sup- 
posed to  have  revolved  on  its  axis  one  Good  Friday  as  the  midday 
bells  were  ringing,  and  the  young  girls  who  witnessed  the  phe- 
nomenon were  all  married  within  the  year.  The  German  menliirs 
known  as  Brautsteine  ("betrothed"  or  "bride  stones")  are  also  said 
to  ensure  a  happy  marriage.  A4enhirs  are  often  the  object  of 
pilgrimages  by  the  sick.  Some  of  these  stones  once  marked  medieval 


WESTERN  EUROPE  75 

execution  places,  as,  for  instance,  the  Long  Stone  at  Tiengen  im 
Klettgau,  the  Long  Stone  near  Ober-Saulheim  in  Rheinhessen  and 
the  "Flitch  of  Bacon"  near  Aschersleben.  It  is  to  be  assumed  that 
thousands  of  years  ago  people  likewise  believed  that  there  was 
some  vital  force  imprisoned  in  these  stones. 

One  or  two  burial  chambers  of  the  megalithic  period  were 
found  to  contain  a  single  upright  stone.  The  late  Sir  Arthur  Evans, 
who  unearthed  the  Minoan  culture  of  Crete,  suggested  that  the 
Greek  grave-pillar  originally  stood  inside  the  burial  chamber  and 
was  not  erected  over  the  grave  in  the  form  of  a  stele  until  later 
times.  This  indicates  that  it  retained  some  magical  significance  from 
its  "burial-chamber  days"  because  it  was  supposed  to  house  the 
spirits  of  the  departed. 

All  this  encourages  one  to  assume  that  the  menhirs,  too,  were  not 
only  monuments  but  possessed  a  magical  or  religious  significance  as 
well.  When  a  dead  man's  soul  left  his  body  it  went  in  search  of 
another  abode,  and  this  other  abode  was  provided  by  the  menhir. 
It  acted  as  a  receptable  for  the  soul  of  a  person  who  was  buried 
nearby  or  at  some  distance  away,  which  may  be  why  some  menhirs 
were  roughly  hewn  to  represent  the  human  form. 

The  stone  giants  of  Sulzmatt  and  the  Meisenthal  Stone,  incon- 
gruously adorned  with  its  cross  from  a  later  age,  the  menhir  of 
Alberschweiler  and  central  Europe's  largest  upright  megalith  at 
Blieskastel,  the  menhirs  of  Carnac  and  Locmariaquer,  standing  erect 
like  an  army  of  silent  dwellings  for  the  human  soul— all  these  are 
an  irresistible  reminder  that  the  people  of  the  megalithic  cultures 
who  set  up  these  "soul  stones"  four  or  five  thousand  years  ago 
possessed  a  faith  which  almost  literally  moved  mountains. 


WESTERN  EUROPE 


THE  MEGALITHS  OF  MORBIHAN 

It  is  clear  that,  where  the  dolmen  signs  are  concerned,  we  are 
groping  in  the  dark.  We  can  only  rely  on  our  gift  of  observation 
and  draw  certain  conclusions  from  it.  Our  sole  ai?n  is  our  burning 
thirst  for  hiowledge.  Despite  the  imperfections  of  our  7?iethods, 
we  have  attempted  to  probe  the  spiritual  and  mystical  do?nains  of 
our  oldest  ancestors  a?id  grasp  the  thoughts  that  guided  their  hand. 

— Marthe  and  Saint- Just  Pequart  and  Zacharie  Le  ^ 

Rouzic,  Corpus  des  Signes  Graves  des  Monuments 
Megalithiques  du  Morbihan,  p.  92,  Paris,  1927 

THE  greatest  mystery  surrounding  megalithic  monuments  concerns 
the  strange  symbols  engraved  on  them.  The  massive  stone  slabs 
and  supporting  stones  of  dolmens  in  the  region  of  Morbihan  on  the 
southern  coast  of  Brittany  have  long  aroused  particular  interest 
among  archaeologists  the  world  over.  Although  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  marks  on  them  are  genuine  and  actually  date  from  the  mega- 
lithic period,  they  remained  undiscovered  for  centuries  simply  be- 
cause many  of  them  are  extremely  hard  to  see. 

Marthe  and  Saint- Just  Pequart  and  Zacharie  Le  Rouzic  have 
spent  forty  years  working  in  Morbihan,  examining  stones  and 
recording  their  observations,  but  not  even  they  have  managed  to 
catalogue  all  the  symbols.  The  following  story  may  serve  to  show 
how  easily  they  can  escape  the  eye. 

One  year,  the  Pequarts  and  Le  Rouzic  discovered  several  signs 
on  a  stone  in  the  dolmen  known  as  Kerham.  Returning  next  year  to 
photograph  their  discovery  they  found  to  their  great  surprise  that 
the  signs  seemed  to  have  disappeared.  Undeterred,  one  of  the  party 
spent  many  hours  inspecting  the  monolith  until,  suddenly,  the  signs 
sprang  to  view,  seeming  to  become  more  and  more  distinct  as  he 
watched.  It  seems  that  in  the  case  of  some  stones  special  lighting  con- 
ditions are  necessary  before  the  signs  will  emerge.  The  celebrated 
dolmen  known  as  the  Table  des  Marchands  is  adorned  with  a  sun,  but 
its  existence  has  been  denied  and  disputed  in  many  learned  treatises 
because  it  is  clearly  visible  only  between  four  and  five  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  being  indistinguishable  at  any  other  time  of  day. 

Many  marks  have  disappeared  in  the  course  of  time  as  a  result 
of  wind  and  weather,  changes  in  temperature  and  growths  of  moss 

76 


WESTERN  EUROPE 


77 


The  Table  des  Marchands  is  a 
dolmen  a  galerie  or  passage 
grave  at  Locmariaquer  which 
was  first  explored  in  1814.  The 
supporting  stone  (i)  and  the 
undersurface  of  the  tablelike 
slab  (2)  in  the  chamber  bear 
engraved  symbols  which  were 
discovered  by  Le  Rouzic.  This 
sketch  shows  how  such  a 
passage    grave    was    laid    out. 


and  lichen— and  one  day,  no  doubt,  it  will  no  longer  be  possible  to 
discern  what  people  carved  on  these  stones  some  four  thousand 
years  ago. 

These  interesting  signs  appear  on  numerous  menhirs  as  well  as 
on  dolmens,  but  because  menhirs  stand  in  an  isolated  position  and 
are  particularly  exposed  to  the  weather  the  signs  carved  on  them 
have  often  been  entirely  obHterated  by  wind  and  weather.  The 
menhir  of  Alanio,  for  instance,  displays  a  pattern  of  fine  serpentine 
lines,  but  only  where  the  earth  has  been  dug  away  from  around 
its  base.  The  portion  which  protruded  from  the  ground  exhibits 
no  marks  that  could  have  been  made  by  human  hand. 

At  Morbihan  all  the  signs  were  pounded,  not  carved  into  the 
rock  as  they  were  in  the  Magdalenian,  the  paleolithic  cultural  phase 
of  about  20,000  years  ago.  Hammer  blows  produced  uneven  furrows 
in  the  granite  which  normally  provided  the  material  for  these 
stone  monuments  and  the  clarity  of  the  lines  suffered  accordingly, 
but  it  has  been  ascertained  that  decoration  was  usually  applied 
before  the  monoliths  were  placed  in  their  allotted  position. 


78  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  Franco-Cantabrian  artists  of  the  Magdalenian  period  in 
southern  France  and  northwest  Spain  took  great  pains  to  make 
their  mural  paintings  and  sculptures  naturalistic,  so  that  they  would 
achieve  the  greatest  possible  identity  between  them  and  the 
animals  they  portrayed.  Only  in  this  way,  they  reasoned,  could 
they  gain  a  hold  over  their  potential  prey.  The  engravings  on 
megalithic  monuments,  by  contrast,  were  left  behind  by  people 
who  had  succeeded  in  reducing  their  ideas  to  the  simplest  possible 
terms.  They  had  already  abandoned  art  as  a  means  of  expressing 
their  ideas  and  begun  to  evolve  symbols  and  emblemlike  designs. 
The  pronounced  schematization  of  these  symbols  in  itself  shrouds 
them  in  mystery,  and  the  meaning  of  the  ideograms  has  largely 
escaped  our  comprehension. 

Nevertheless,  the  meaning  of  some  signs  is  quite  obvious.  We  can 
recognize  axes,  suns  and  sizable  boats  with  raised  prows  and  sterns. 
Snakes  are  often  clearly  identifiable  in  the  granite,  as  are  oxen, 
geometrical  figures  and  even  insects.  Archaeologists  naturally  diifer 
over  the  interpretation  of  a  number  of  signs.  Cephalopods  or 
marine  mollusks  such  as  the  calamary  or  inkfish  are  very  often 
depicted.  I  believe  that  I  myself  have  identified  the  mollusk 
rondeletiola  minor  or  spirula  spirula  on  one  of  the  stones  in  the 
''^Allee  couverte  du  Lufang.^^  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  mollusks 
occur  only  in  covered  galleries  near  the  sea.  But,  if  dolmens  are 
also  found  not  far  from  the  coast,  we  are  led  to  wonder  why  the 
people  of  the  megalithic  period  never  used  them  to  depict  cephalo- 
pods. This  question  has  never  been  resolved.  No  genuine  portrayal 
of  a  human  form  has  ever  been  found  except  on  the  dolmen  called 
Petit  Mont,  where  two  feet  are  shown.  Perhaps  they  represent  the 
feet  of  the  man  buried  beneath  the  tumulus,  for  they  are  sur- 
rounded by  lines  not  unlike  a  megalithic  ground  plan.  The  Roch 
Priol  bears  the  outlines  of  six  pairs  of  feet,  but  it  is  probably  not 
a  monument  of  the  dolmen  type.  The  Dolmen  de  Mane  Lud  seems 
to  depict  four  standing  figures,  but  it  is  not  certain  that  the  en- 
gravings actually  represent  human  beings  because  they  consist  merely 
of  crosses,  some  of  them  surmounted  by  round  dots  which  may, 
or  may  not,  be  heads. 

We  do  not  know  what  the  people  of  the  megalithic  cultures 
looked  like,  what  race  they  belonged  to  or  whether  they  were 
blond  or  dark,  light-  or  dark-skinned.  Glyn  Daniel  surmises  that 


WESTERN  EUROPE  79 

they  belonged  not  to  an  Indo-European  but  to  one  or  more  Medi- 
terranean linguistic  groups,  but  it  is  just  as  likely  that  they  resembled 
the  present-day  customers  in  the  harbor  cafes  of  Brest  or  the  fisher- 
men of  Saint-Jean-de-Luz  and  San  Sebastian.  The  men  who  drew 
boats  and  cephalopods  must  have  been  skilled  seafarers  or  they  would 
never  have  been  able  to  spread  their  building  methods  and  religious 
ideas  from  coast  to  coast  throughout  western  Europe.  They  must, 
too,  have  had  a  firm  belief  in  a  life  after  death,  or  they  would  never 
have  summoned  up  the  energy  to  handle  gigantic  boulders  as 
though  they  were  playthings. 

Is  there  any  form  of  writing  on  megalithic  monuments,  do  they 
express  language  in  symbolic  terms  and  do  they  bear  alphabetical 
symbols? 

In  1893  the  French  scholar  Letourneau  identified  certain  similar- 
ities between  megalithic  symbols  and  the  earliest  alphabets  known, 
drawing  for  comparison  on  the  neo-Punic,  Phoenician,  Etruscan  and 
Coptic  scripts.  The  Pequarts  and  Le  Rouzic,  however,  decisively 
reject  Letourneau's  assumption  of  "Inscriptions  on  the  Burial  Monu- 
ments of  Morbihan." 

By  and  large  it  is  quite  clear  what  the  megalithic  sculptors,  if 
so  they  can  be  termed,  had  in  mind.  Their  drawings  had  a  ritual 
and  religious  significance  and  may  have  been  instructions  or  notes 
on  religious  observance.  The  details,  however,  remain  obscure,  and 
thousands  of  symbols  will  fade  away  completely  in  the  next  few 
thousand  years  without  ever  having  been  deciphered. 


SYRIA 

MARI,  THE  WONDER  CITY 

The  story  is  told  ?iot  only  by  clay  tablets  but  by  walls  which 
have  been  devoured  by  fire  and  demolished  by  picks,  by  paving 
stones  which  have  been  trodden  by  countless  thousands  of  feet. 
Never  was  ancient  architecture  so  alive. 

—Andre  Parrot,  Le  Palais,  p.  6,  Paris,  1958 

THE  outstanding  archaeological  site  found  in  the  Near  East  during 
the  past  thirty  years  owed  its  discovery  to  a  headless  statuette 
picked  up  by  wandering  Bedouins.  Tell  Hariri  had  lain  lonely  and 
undisturbed  in  its  grave  by  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates  for  thousands 
of  years.  No  one  guessed  that  a  nondescript  hill  in  eastern  Syria, 
five  miles  north  of  Abu  Kemal  and  close  to  the  Iraq  border,  con- 
cealed one  of  the  most  famous  cities  of  the  third  millennium  b.c. 

Excavations  were  organized  at  the  instigation  of  the  distinguished 
orientalist  Rene  Dussaud  and  financed  by  grants  from  the  French 
National  Museums  and  the  Ministry  of  Education. 

Work  began  on  Tell  Hariri  on  December  14,  1933.  Only  a  few 
minutes  after  the  surface  had  been  broken  by  the  first  strokes  of 
the  pick,  some  statuettes  came  to  light.  On  January  23,  1934,  just 
forty  days  after  digging  had  started,  small  sculptures  were  un- 
earthed which  portrayed  three  important  personalities:  Lamgi- 
Mari,  the  king;  Ebih-il,  the  city's  senior  dignitary;  and  Idi-Narum, 
the  man  who  may  have  been  responsible  for  supplying  Mari  with 
grain.  The  statuettes  bore  written  symbols  which  provided  the  key 
to  one  of  the  great  mysteries  in  the  ancient  history  of  the  East.  They 
not  only  made  it  clear  that  the  diggers  had  found  a  temple  dedicated 
to  the  goddess  Ishtar,  but  revealed  something  of  far  greater  import: 
that  beneath  Tell  Hariri  lay  the  lost  and  almost  legendary  city  of 
Mari. 

The  discovery  of  the  statuette  of  King  Lamgi-Mari  was  par- 
ticularly important  because,  in  a  sense,  he  carried  the  name  of  the 
city  on  his  person.  Engraved  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  back 
and  the  reverse  of  the  right  upper  arm  was  the  inscription:  Laingi- 
Mari,  King  of  Mari,  the  great  Patesi  of  Enlil,  has  dedicated  his 
statuette  to  Ishtar. 

From  1934  to  1937  a  large  section  of  the  Temple  of  Ishtar  was 

80 


SYRIA 


8i 


Plan  of  Tell  Hariri.  Beneath  the  hill  on  the  left  (see  arrow)  lay  the  Temple 

of  Ishtar.  Adjoining  it  can  be  seen  residential  quarters.  The  large  rectangle 

represents  the  palace,  and  the  building  adjoining  its  lower  right-hand  corner 

was  a  temple  for  the  god  Dagan. 

laid  bare,  an  operation  which  entailed  clearing  an  area  of  roughly 
5,000  square  yards  to  a  depth  of  twenty  feet.  Excavation  of  ruins 
as  ancient  as  these  has  to  be  carried  out  very  carefully.  The  ground 
is  painstakingly  broken  up,  inch  by  inch,  and  much  of  the  earth 
sieved  and  taken  away  in  baskets.  Considering  how  laborious  this 
process  of  disinterment  is,  it  seems  amazing  that  within  three  years 


82  THE  SILENT  PAST 

more  than  30,000  cubic  yards  of  earth  had  been  removed  from 
Tell  Hariri.  Andre  Parrot,  the  brilliant  French  archaeologist,  has 
labeled  the  various  layers  of  the  miraculous  city  by  different  letters, 
A,  B,  C,  D  and  E,  in  descending  order.  It  could  be  deduced  from 
layer  E  that  the  Temple  of  Ishtar  had  remained  in  existence  for  a 
very  long  time.  It  was  built  of  unbaked  bricks  and  its  floors  were 
laid  with  finely  polished  stucco.  The  temple's  core  consisted  of  a 
"cella"  in  the  form  of  a  hearth  house.  On  the  short  wall  of  the 
chamber  the  altar  was  erected,  while  the  exit  was  situated  in  one 
of  the  long  walls,  as  far  as  possible  from  the  holy  of  hoKes.  Adjoining 
it  were  rooms  for  priests  and  temple  administrators.  The  whole 
sanctuary  resembled  the  typical  inward-facing  Oriental  house  with 
its  central  courtyard.  In  the  temple  courtyard  itself  Parrot  found 
a  number  of  troughs,  the  so-called  "longboats,"  two  to  the  left  of 
the  door  and  five  to  the  right.  These  receptacles  were  used  during 
drink-offering  rites. 

The  main  chamber  or  cella  must  have  occupied  an  exceedingly 
important  position  in  the  temple  and  was  obviously  regarded  with 
great  reverence.  We  know  this  to  be  so  because  Parrot  found  some 
very  peculiar  objects  there.  Bronze  wedges  had  been  driven  into 
the  ground,  their  apexes  topped  by  handles  set  in  bronze  and 
adorned  with  small  rectangular  plates  of  lapis  lazuli,  white  stone  or 
silver.  Just  as  we  lay  foundation  stones  today,  so  the  architects  of 
Mari  used  to  sink  foundation  wedges,  anchoring  them  in  the  ground 
for  tutelary  and  religious  reasons.  Of  the  thirteen  foundation  wedges 
found  within  the  temple  boundaries  seven  were  in  the  cella,  which 
indicates  the  great  sanctity  of  that  room. 

The  citizens  of  Mari  presented  their  deities  with  statuettes,  small 
figures  of  reddish  stone,  limestone  or  white  alabaster  which  the 
priests  arranged  on  shelves.  Most  of  them  were  only  six  or  eight 
inches  high,  but  the  largest  measured  about  twenty  inches. 

Mari's  inhabitants  were  evidently  of  a  pious  disposition,  for  they 
commissioned  these  small  statuettes  as  a  means  of  worshiping  their 
particular  god  or  goddess.  The  figurines  stood  in  the  sanctuary 
where  they  would  receive  any  blessings  the  deity  might  bestow, 
their  hands  folded  in  prayer  as  befitted  true  believers. 

Parrot  has  made  some  interesting  observations  on  the  nature  of 
these  figures.  The  highborn  and  prosperous  citizens  of  Mari  were 
not  content  to  let  themselves  be  personified  by  any  old  sculptures 


fd 


(d 


< 


"JUiw.  ^ 


Mari 


84  THE  SILENT  PAST 

which  could  be  interchanged  at  will.  They  demanded  a  likeness, 
and  it  is  quite  certain  that  they  sat  as  models  for  artists  in  the  city's 
studios.  We  are  confronted,  therefore,  by  the  true  features  of  many 
citizens  of  Mari,  men  with  long  hair  or  cropped  skulls,  bearded  or 
clean-shaven  cheeks,  warriors  and  governors  of  the  city-state  in 
truly  magnificent  robes,  girls  and  women  with  extraordinarily  viva- 
cious expressions— the  standing  or  seated  figures  of  people  who  lived 
at  a  time  which  now  lies  four  or  five  thousand  years  in  the  past, 
captured  forever  in  the  posture  which  they  assumed  before  their 
deity  and  stamped  with  the  sincerity  of  their  fervent  belief.  They 
stare  into  eternity  with  great,  dark-pupiled  eyes.  We  see  their 
elegant  coiffures,  we  admire  their  clothes,  we  notice  their  almost 
invariably  confident  smiles,  and  before  us  is  one  of  the  greatest 
treasures  in  the  world:  the  crystallization  of  the  life  and  artistry 
of  a  Semitic  people  who  evolved  an  amazingly  refined  culture  on 
the  banks  of  the  Euphrates  in  times  beyond  our  ken.  A  man  and 
a  woman  sit  close  together,  his  hand  almost  tenderly  holding  her 
forearm,  just  above  the  wrist.  Although  the  heads  are  missing  we 
can  tell  from  the  living  quality  of  the  stone  that  a  great  love  united 
these  two  people— "lovers  without  face  or  name,"  Andre  Parrot 
calls  them.  The  people  of  Mari  were  not  without  a  sense  of  humor, 
either.  A  clownlike  pair  of  musicians  laugh  at  us  in  the  same  time- 
less way  in  which  the  pious  citizens  of  Mari  carried  their  reverence 
and  their  faith  in  Astarte  with  them  into  eternity. 

The  fact  that  a  Semitic  people  had  so  highly  cultivated  a  way  of 
life  and  such  a  highly  developed  religion  as  early  as  3000  b.c.  is 
remarkable  in  itself.  During  the  first  half  of  the  third  millennium 
B.C.  the  whole  of  Mesopotamia  was  Sumerian  territory,  and  the 
Sumerians  were  not  Semites.  The  beginnings  of  their  culture  go 
back  to  the  fourth  millennium  b.c.  and  their  sphere  of  cultural  in- 
fluence embraced  the  whole  of  southern  Mesopotamia.  It  is  well 
known  what  remarkable  finds  have  been  made  in  Sumerian  cities 
such  as  Ur,  Eridu,  Larsa,  Uruk,  Lagash,  Suruppak,  Kish,  Es-nunna 
and  Upi— to  name  some  of  the  most  celebrated  archaeological  sites  in 
the  area.  Modern  authorities  call  the  first  half  of  the  third  mil- 
lennium the  "early  dynastic  period"  of  Mesopotamian  history.  It 
was  not  until  the  end  of  this  epoch  that  the  Semites  emerged,  and 
even  then  Sumerian  culture  was  far  from  finished.  Spiritually  and 
culturally  the  Sumerians  retained  their  dominance,  but  the  Semites 


SYRIA  85 

possessed  greater  powers  of  resistance  and  a  stronger  temperament. 
About  2600  B.C.  the  Semites  seized  power  under  the  Akkadian 
dynasty.  The  newly  founded  city  became  the  center  of  the  known 
world,  the  Semites  learned  how  to  use  cuneiform  writing  from  the 
Sumerians,  and  the  two  races  became  fused.  The  Semites  con- 
tributed their  greater  vitality,  the  Sumerians  their  artistry,  their 
brilliant  craftsmanship  and  good  taste.  The  whole  of  Babylonian- 
Assyrian  culture  and  the  Semitic  way  of  life  were  permeated  by 
old  Sumerian  elements.  The  Semitic  city-kingdom  of  Mari  had  also 
inherited  much  from  Sumer  but  it  evolved  its  own  individual  style 
as  well.  Three  thousand  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  it  was 
already  far  advanced  in  its  art  and  architecture,  in  its  religion  and 
general  way  of  life. 

Mari's  most  remarkable  feature  was  its  palace,  which  is  the 
grandest  example  of  Near  Eastern  architecture  of  its  period,  the 
beginning  of  the  second  millennium  B.C.  Andre  Parrot,  who  ex- 
cavated this  amazing  building,  unearthed  a  vast  complex  covering 
two  and  a  half  acres  and  containing  corridors,  courtyards  and  three 
hundred  rooms. 

The  palace,  which  probably  took  many  years  to  build,  grew  out 
of  various  courtyard  systems,  for  it  seems  obvious  that  the  architects 
of  A4ari  had  no  fixed  plan  in  mind  when  they  began  their  huge 
undertaking.  The  palace  was  at  once  a  royal  residence,  a  fortress, 
a  granary,  a  seat  of  government,  an  administrative  center  and,  above 
all,  a  symbol  of  regal  authority.  We  even  know  that  it  was  King 
Zimrilim  who  adorned  the  palace  with  its  splendid  murals.  The 
excavations  of  the  past  forty  years  have  shown  that  mural  painting 
was  a  very  ancient  art  in  Mesopotamia,  and  that  even  in  early  times 
artists  had  acquired  a  high  degree  of  technical  proficiency  in  this 
field.  Zimrilim's  frescoes  were  based  on  this  ancient  Mesopotamian 
tradition.  Parrot  emphasizes  that  beneath  the  relics  of  the  mural 
pictures  in  Zimrilim's  palace  there  have  survived  fragments  of 
another  mural  depicting  a  religious  procession  composed  of  people 
whose  physiognomy  and  dress  reveal  alien.  West  Semitic  char- 
acteristics. 

Five  temples  have  so  far  been  excavated  beneath  Tell  Hariri, 
together  with  a  ziggurat  or  terraced  tower  of  the  Babylonian  type. 
Also  found  were  vases  and  ritual  jugs  ornamented  with  lions, 
massive  earthenware  vessels,  a  schoolroom  with  twenty-eight  stone 


86  THE  SILENT  PAST 

benches  and  the  little  plates  of  shell  which  served  the  pupils  as 
slates.  Small  stone  cylinders  depict  ships,  a  banquet,  and  scenes  in 
which  men  fight  with  animals  and  King  Gilgamesh  subdues  some 
rampant  monsters.  The  courtyard  of  the  palace  yielded  the  figure 
of  a  goddess  inhaling  the  scent  of  a  flower  with  evident  delight. 
One  of  the  most  beautiful  statuettes  is  the  water-pouring  goddess 
of  fertility  dating  from  1800  b.c.  Almost  five  feet  high  and  sculpted 
in  white  stone,  this  figure  has  eyes  inlaid  with  precious  stones, 
plaited  reddish  hair,  and  six  rows  of  necklaces. 

Even  if  what  was  discovered  beneath  Tell  Hariri  had  been  con- 
fined merely  to  the  temple,  the  palace,  the  statuettes,  the  houses 
and  the  city  walls,  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  East  would  still 
have  been  immeasurably  enriched.  But  Mari  yielded  up  yet  another 
huge  treasure  which  affords  us  a  profusion  of  information  about 
the  culture,  daily  life  and  history  of  these  unique  people  and  their 
relations  with  other  city-kingdoms  in  the  contemporary  world. 
This  hoard  consists  of  the  twenty  thousand  inscribed  clay  tablets 
which  were  found  in  King  Zimrilim's  palace.  They  represent  the 
state  archives  of  Mari  and  include  the  political  and  private  corre- 
spondence of  the  city's  last  king.  Many  of  the  letters  come  from 
Shamsi-Adad  of  Assyria  and  contain  instructions  to  his  son  Yasmah- 
Adad,  who  ruled  Mari  for  some  time  on  Assyria's  behalf  and  was 
eventually  succeeded  by  Zimrilim,  the  legal  heir  to  the  throne. 

The  tablets  make  it  clear  that  rulers  of  the  time  were  always 
worried  about  war,  that  they  besieged  fortified  towns,  forged 
defensive  alliances  and  carried  off  people  into  slavery.  If  a  city 
resisted  too  stubbornly,  the  conqueror  would  sometimes  enslave 
the  whole  population.  When  the  fortress  of  Sibat  was  taken  the 
victors  acquired  so  many  prisoners  that  even  private  soldiers  received 
an  allotment  of  slaves  to  serve  their  personal  requirements.  On 
capturing  Mari,  King  Shamsi-Adad  decreed  that  the  young  daughters 
of  Yahdunlim  should  be  brought  into  his  son's  house.  There  he  had 
them  trained  as  musicians,  advising  his  son  to  make  them  play 
wherever  and  whenever  he  had  a  mind  to. 

In  another  tablet  Shamsi-Adad  writes  to  his  son  Yasmah-Adad  as 
follows:  "I  had  resolved  that  you  should  keep  the  sons  of  Vilanum 
with  you  against  the  possibility  of  making  a  treaty  with  them  later 
on.  Now  that  I  know  it  will  never  come  to  a  treaty  with  Vilanum, 
have  his  sons  arrested  and  execute  them  the  same  night.  Let  there 


SYRIA  87 

be  no  ceremony  and  no  mourning.  Prepare  their  graves,  kill  them 
and  bury  them.  Take  away  their  head  ornaments  and  their  clothes, 
their  money  and  their  gold,  and  send  me  their  wives.  Keep  the  two 
musicians  yourself,  but  have  Sammetar's  serving-women  brought  to 
me.  This  tablet  I  send  you  in  the  month  of  Tirum,  on  the  evening 
of  the  fifteenth  day." 

God  is  often  mentioned  in  the  tablets.  He  was  a  single  god, 
perhaps  Mari's  senior  deity,  and  was  called  Dagan.  Also  referred 
to  is  a  god  called  Itur-Mer  and,  in  the  neighboring  city  of  Terqa, 
another  called  Ikrub-Il.  So  Mari,  too,  was  familiar  with  the  Semitic 
god  II  or  El  who  later  dominated  the  Old  Testament.  It  was,  how- 
ever, the  goddess  Ishtar  who  bestowed  war  and  peace  and  governed 
the  daily  life  of  Mari's  citizens.  Since  nothing  could  ever  happen 
without  divine  sanction,  attempts  were  made  to  discover  the  will 
of  the  gods  by  reading  auguries  in  the  entrails  of  sacrificial  beasts. 
The  augurs  were  consulted  on  private  matters  and  important  govern- 
ment decisions,  and  were  also  taken  to  war.  As  in  all  the  world's 
most  ancient  civilizations,  the  snake  played  a  role  here.  On  one 
occasion  the  future  could  not  be  foretold  until  a  particular  species 
of  snake  known  as  the  zarzar  had  been  obtained.  King  Shamsi- 
Adad  postponed  a  campaign  because  he  wanted  to  sacrifice  first 
and  because  the  "bath  ritual"  had  to  be  performed  before  war  could 
begin.  He  also  traveled  to  his  home  city  of  Terqa  for  the  sake  of  a 
funerary  sacrifice. 

All  this  we  learn  from  the  twenty  thousand  cuneiform  documents 
which  have  been  found  in  the  palace  at  Mari.  We  know  that 
building  operations  were  not  confined  to  houses,  temples  and  palaces 
but  also  embraced  canals  and  river  embankments.  We  read  of  sheep 
and  cattle  breeding  and  the  danger  of  predatory  animals.  Lions  were 
not  to  be  killed  because  King  Zimrilim  had  a  special  predilection 
for  them.  Once,  when  a  lion  got  into  a  neighboring  town  and  took 
up  its  abode  on  the  roof  of  a  house,  the  townsfolk  had  to  feed  the 
beast  until  the  king  decided  what  was  to  be  done.  Even  when  it  had 
reduced  the  whole  town  to  panic  it  was  still  not  killed.  Eventually 
the  garrison  commander  caught  it  in  a  cage  and  shipped  it  off 
to  Mari. 

Zimrilim's  game  with  the  lions  one  day  came  to  an  abrupt  end. 
Hammurabi,  the  great  king  and  lawgiver  from  Babylon  who  ruled 
from  1728  to  1686  B.C.  and  whose  empire  ultimately  included  the 


88  THE  SILENT  PAST 

whole  of  Babylonia,  Assyria  and  Mesopotamia,  launched  a  fearful 
assault  by  night.  He  defeated  King  Zimrilim  and  in  the  year 
1695  B.C.  devastated  the  city  of  Mari  so  completely  that  it  never 
recovered  from  the  blow.  The  great  artists  of  Mari  ceased  to  sculpt, 
paint  and  build.  The  Paris  of  the  Euphrates  forgot  how  to  tailor 
elegant  clothes,  and  life,  which  had  once  held  such  infinite  charm, 
was  finally  extinguished,  not  to  reappear  until  our  own  century. 
Mari  is  such  an  inexhaustible  site  of  civilization  that  its  remains  are 
still  being  explored  to  this  day. 


SARDINIA 


ISLAND  OF  8,000  TOWERS 

Numerous  sifJiilarities  between  the  Sardinia}!  and  Aegean  cultures 
ijidicate  that  the  Aegean  world  left  disti^ict  traces  on  the  island 
many  centuries  before  the  Flooenicians''  arrival  there. 

—Christian  Zervos,  La  Civilisation  de  la  Sardaigne, 

Paris,  1954 

SARDINIA  is  a  hot  and  barren  island  whose  hills,  mountains  and 
valleys  are  steeped  in  solitude.  Parched  aridity  and  silent  grandeur 
are  the  main  features  of  this  austere  countryside,  where  one  can 
walk  for  miles  without  encountering  a  living  soul. 

At  one  time  merged  with  Corsica  in  a  single  land  mass,  Sardinia 
is  geologically  very  ancient.  Older  than  the  Alps  and  the  whole  of 
Italy,  it  protrudes  from  the  sea  as  a  reminder  of  a  continent  which 
has  largely  sunk  from  view.  This  took  place  several  hundred  million 
years  ago,  long  before  the  Italian  peninsula  emerged.  Indeed,  geog- 
raphers assume  the  existence  of  a  land  called  Tyrrhenis  which  lay 
where  the  Tyrrhenian  Sea  is  now  but  was  eventually  engulfed  by 
water. 

Sardinia,  however,  remained  to  form  a  fragment  of  land  which 
has  survived  from  times  immemorial.  It  is  by  no  means  a  sunny 
southern  land,  but  a  land  pitilessly  scorched  in  summer  by  the 
southern  sun,  which  beats  down  as  though  with  malevolent  intent. 
The  granite  cliffs  and  basalt  crags,  the  lonely  magnificence  of  the 
mountains  and  the  all-pervasive  melancholy  which  seems  to  clothe 
the  whole  island  grip  the  beholder  and  leave  him  with  a  sense  of 
being  far  from  Europe. 

The  winds  of  Africa  prevail  there,  for  no  protective  belt  of 
land  shields  the  island  from  the  Sahara.  The  granite  and  gneiss  cliffs 
in  the  east  of  the  island  tower  steeply  into  the  sky,  often  with 
vertiginous  overhangs.  Deep  blue  water  pounds  thunderously  away 
at  gigantic  natural  walls  so  inhospitable  to  man  that  they  often  stretch 
for  miles  without  offering  a  foothold  to  the  potential  castaway.  The 
sea  has  eroded  them  at  the  base,  leaving  deep  caves  in  which  the 
water  booms  and  roars.  Then,  again,  there  are  deserted  beaches  of 
snow-white  sand,  squat  watchtowers  dating  from  the  time  of  the 
Arab  occupation,  cork  woods,  unfamiliar  flowers,  taciturn  men  with 


90  THE  SILENT  PAST 

smoldering  tempers  and  an  almost  medieval  code  of  chivalry,  women 
who  combine  a  regal  bearing  with  madonnalike  humility,  beautiful 
pitchers  apparently  floating  through  the  countryside  on  the  queenly 
heads  of  girls  who  still  wear  long  skirts  and  white  blouses  and,  on 
Sundays,  bright  peasant  costumes. 

Many  races  have  ruled  here,  but  the  only  permanent  feature  of 
the  place  is  its  prehistory,  its  stones  and  its  age-old  towers,  the 
nuraghi  which  are  the  island's  greatest  mystery. 

Sardinia  is  shaped  like  a  foot  or  a  sandal,  which  is  why  the 
Greeks  called  it  Ichnousa  ("footprint")  or  Sandahotis  ("sandal"). 
The  island  was  certainly  uninhabited  during  the  last  Ice  Age,  which 
lasted  until  about  8000  b.c,  and  no  paleolithic  sites  yielding  human 
relics  have  ever  been  found  there.  Man  did  not  arrive  until  the 
neolithic  period,  which  lasted  here  from  4000  until  2000  b.c.  We 
do  not  know  where  these  early  immigrants  came  from  or  what  they 
looked  like,  but  we  must  assume  that  they  were  not  Indo-Europeans. 
The  islands  of  the  Aiediterranean  had  been  gradually  populated 
from  the  fifth  millennium  b.c.  onward  by  seafarers  from  the  East 
who  had  rowed  or  paddled  their  way  westward.  On  Sardinia  they 
lived  in  caves,  cavities  in  the  rock  or  straw  huts,  mainly  on  level 
ground  and  at  first  always  in  the  vicinity  of  the  sea  or  by  lakes 
and  rivers.  The  island's  many  imposing  caves  have  yielded  relics 
of  these  bold  mariners  and  their  tools. 

A  second  influx,  probably  from  Asia,  peopled  the  island  with 
one  of  the  most  interesting  races  in  the  world  and  one  which,  after 
their  strange  towers,  we  shall  call  Nuraghians.  In  complete  contrast 
to  the  neolithic  inhabitants,  these  people  possessed  a  considerable 
knowledge  of  architecture  and  an  advanced  culture  from  the  very 
start.  The  Nuraghians  landed  on  the  east  coast  during  the  third 
millennium  b.c.  and  began  to  build  the  circular  towers  with  sloping 
walls  of  natural  stone  which  are  their  principal  legacy  to  us. 

Finally,  about  1400  b.c,  a  third  race  arrived,  bringing  an  urban 
culture  with  them.  These  Sardi  or  Shardena  probably  hailed  from 
Asia  also  and  intermarried  with  the  earlier  arrivals. 

Of  the  8,000  nuraghi  which  once  stood  on  the  island  about  6,500 
still  exist  in  a  ruined  and  dilapidated  state.  Only  a  very  small 
proportion  of  these  strange  towers  has  survived  in  good  condition. 

We  do  not  know  what  language  the  Nuraghians  spoke.  They 
left  behind  no  recorded  history  because  they  unfortunately  had 


SARDINIA 


91 


no  form  of  writing.  But  megalithic  towers  of  this  design  and  in 
this  quantity  are  to  be  found  only  on  Sardinia.  The  Sardinians 
themselves  call  them  niirakes,  miraxis,  niiragies  and  other  variants 
of  the  same  name,  according  to  the  dialect  spoken  in  the  particular 
part  of  the  island.  Professor  Giovanni  Lilliu,  the  leading  authority  on 
ancient  Sardinian  architecture,  thinks  that  the  term  derives  from 
a  pre-Indo-European  tongue.  In  the  interior  of  the  island  7mra  or 
7iurra  means  "mound"  or  "hollow,"  and  nur-aghe  means  roughly 
"high  pillar"  or  "hollow  tower." 

The  nuraghe  consists  of  rough  unhewn  stones  piled  layer  on 
layer  to  form  a  tower  with  inward-sloping  walls.  Many  of  the 
nuraghi  are  only  a  few  feet  high,  but  some  soar  more  than  sixty 
feet  into  the  blue  Mediterranean  sky.  Their  walls  are  between  six 
and  sixteen  feet  thick.  The  low  towers  contain  only  one  chamber, 
but  the  tallest  are  divided  into  three  stories. 

What  was  the  purpose  of  these  towers,  and  from  what  part  of 
the  world  was  their  prototype  imported?  Did  the  idea  for  them 
come  from  Spain,  Africa  or  the  East?  We  do  not  know. 


y 


y >--., 


This  reconstruction  of  the  Orrubiu  nuraghe  in  Nuoro,  Sardinia,  shows  the 
ultimate  development  of  this  type  of  defensive  tower.  It  is  the  fruit  of  research 
carried  out  by  Professor  Lilliu  into  this  remarkable  building,  which  is  more 

than  2,000  years  old. 


92  THE  SILENT  PAST 

They  were  neither  sanctuaries  nor  burial  places,  but  seem  rather 
to  have  been  defensive  positions  used  by  people  who  were  exposed 
to  continual  attack.  Sardinia  was  never  politically  united  in  its 
entirety,  and  its  regional  groups  or  tribes  were  ruled  by  chieftains 
who  used  these  towers  as  houses  and  strongholds.  In  the  course  of 
time,  the  towers  were  extended  to  form  larger  fortified  systems 
where  several  hundred  people  could  take  refuge  in  an  emergency. 
The  island  was  repeatedly  attacked  by  Ligurians,  Phoenicians, 
Carthaginians  and,  eventually,  Romans,  so  the  Sardinians  were 
obliged  to  fight  and  fight  again,  even  though  it  was  always  a  losing 
battle. 

Even  if  an  enemy  succeeded  in  penetrating  a  tower,  he  was  still 
in  mortal  danger.  The  buildings  were  provided  with  doors  opening 
on  pitch-black  cul-de-sacs  and  all  manner  of  pitfalls  and  blind  alleys 
from  which  the  lurking  Nuraghians  could  pounce  with  spear  and 
sword  to  cut  down  the  unwary  intruder. 

A  flat  roof  installed  at  the  summit  of  the  tower  for  purposes  of 
observation  and  defense  and  surrounded  by  a  parapet,  probably  of 
wood,  together  with  projecting  attachments  for  the  launching 
of  stones  and  missiles,  made  any  assault  a  perilous  undertaking.  The 
Sardinians'  defensive  bays  were  the  first  military  installations  of 
their  type  in  the  Mediterranean. 

Towers  from  the  earliest  period,  which  came  into  being  about 
1500  B.C.,  can  be  recognized  by  the  pronounced  incline  of  their 
exterior  walls.  Later  nuraghi  were  steeper,  and  between  1000  and 
500  B.C.,  in  the  early  Iron  Age,  nuraghe  construction  reached  its 
prime.  In  the  end  the  Sardinians  erected  fortified  citadels  of  massive 
proportions  to  ward  off  coastal  attacks  by  the  Semitic  Punians. 
Professor  LilHu  remarks  that  the  shepherds  and  warriors  of  the 
island  must  have  shed  a  great  deal  of  blood  in  defense  of  their 
political  autonomy.  A  race  of  simple,  hardy  people,  like  their 
modern  counterparts,  they  were  in  daily  peril  of  losing  their 
freedom,  and  defensive  war  must  have  become  a  sort  of  religion 
to  them.  Being  accustomed  to  an  austere  life,  they  learned  to  be 
tough,  unpretentious  and  mutually  helpful  in  time  of  need.  The 
last  of  the  nuraghi  were  built  between  600  and  250  b.c.  and 
eventually  served  as  hiding  places,  for  by  231  the  Romans  had 
succeeded  in  conquering  the  island.  The  Sardinian  guerrillas  crept 
into  the  most  remote  towers  in  their  wild  countryside,  but  the 


SARDINIA  93 

Romans  ruthlessly  hunted  them  down  with  trained  bloodhounds. 

In  the  province  of  Cagliari,  so  named  after  the  island's  capital, 
a  hill  has  stood  for  more  than  2,000  years  which  is  known  to  the 
Sardinians  as  Su  Nuraxi.  In  1940  a  few  test  diggings  were  made 
there,  and  in  195 1  Professor  Lilliu  started  on  the  planned  excavation 
of  one  of  the  most  interesting  prehistoric  sites  in  Europe. 

I  have  stood  in  the  plain  of  Barumini  and  seen  this  lonely,  deserted 
place  for  myself.  All  is  silent,  all  lies  open  to  the  sky,  a  powerful 
system  of  fortifications  with  an  original  central  tower,  four  corner 
towers  built  subsequently,  massive  external  walls  and,  in  front  of 
them,  a  whole  village  with  ruined  stone  roundhouses. 

I  have  also  visited  Professor  Lilliu,  who  occupies  the  chair  of 
archaeology  at  the  small  but  active  university  which  stands  on  a 
hill  overlooking  the  rest  of  the  capital.  Lilliu  told  me  that  he  had 
spent  five  years,  from  195 1  to  1956,  excavating  the  place.  He  had 
sent  a  fragment  of  wood  from  one  of  the  supporting  beams  in 
the  lower  chamber  of  the  central  tower  to  the  laboratory  of  the 
National  Museum  at  Copenhagen.  Using  the  radiocarbon  method, 
Danish  scientists  established  the  age  of  the  wood  at  about  1270  b.c. 
(A  margin  of  error  of  two  hundred  years  either  way  should  always 
be  allowed  in  such  cases.)  During  the  second  phase  of  construction 
the  four  outer  towers  were  built,  and  during  the  third  all  the  towers 
and  the  walls  were  reinforced.  This  was  probably  done  in  order  to 
withstand  the  battering  rams  used  by  the  Carthaginians.  Lilliu  and 
his  associates  have  also  found  defensive  bays,  fireplaces,  sacrificial 
pits,  large  stone  receptacles  for  kneading  dough,  stone  balls  which 
could  be  launched  at  besiegers,  millstones,  troughlike  receptacles 
for  ground  corn,  stone  seats,  bakery  equipment  and  traces  of  various 
handicrafts  from  the  later  stages  in  the  stronghold's  history. 

When  I  suggested  that  the  excavation  of  the  citadel  and  settlement, 
which  were  covered  by  stones,  debris  and  thousands  of  cubic  yards 
of  earth,  must  have  made  enormous  physical  demands  on  men 
working  in  such  high  temperatures,  Lilliu  merely  looked  down 
modestly  at  the  papers  in  front  of  him  and  did  not  reply.  However, 
anyone  who  has  seen  Barumini  lying  there  in  the  plain,  ringed  by 
the  desolate  hills  which  are  the  sole  surviving  witnesses  of  the 
life  that  once  flourished  there,  and  anyone  who  knows  the  iron-hard 
ground,  the  parching  sirocco,  the  arid,  stubborn  and  unyielding 


94  THE  SILENT  PAST 

nature  of  this  melancholy  land  will  not  underestimate  the  archaeolo- 
gist's achievement. 

In  the  sixth  century  b.c,  after  a  long  siege  by  the  armies  of 
Carthage,  Barumini  was  overwhelmed,  the  nuraghe  fortifications 
dismantled  and  the  population  driven  from  the  burning  village. 
However,  the  tough  and  resilient  Sardinians  returned  in  later 
centuries  to  settle  once  more  amid  the  ruins  and  live  on  in  the 
same  "way  and  with  the  same  customs  as  in  the  golden  age  of  their 
culture  and  renown. 

Because  the  Nuraghians  had  no  script,  scholars  have  attempted 
to  deduce  the  nature  of  their  earliest  language  from  such  expressions 
as  have  remained  unaltered  for  hundreds  if  not  thousands  of  years. 
These  are  largely  place  names  and  names  of  animals,  plants,  moun- 
tains and  rivers.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  Nuraghians  came 
from  Asia,  since  the  island  has  certain  expressions  which  could  have 
originated  in  the  Altai  Range,  Mesopotamia,  Azerbaidzhan,  the 
Caucasus,  Nuristan  (Kafiristan),  Kazakhstan  or  even  in  Tibet  and 
Sinkiang. 

Nevertheless,  the  towers'  interiors  bear  a  certain  resemblance  to 
Aegean  buildings  and,  more  particularly,  to  those  of  Tiryns, 
Mycenae  and  the  Creto-Mycenaean  civilization.  And  the  spiritual 
life  and  many  aspects  of  the  Sardinians'  material  culture  also  corre- 
spond to  the  Aegean  culture  as  exemplified  in  Crete,  Cyprus  and 
Greece. 

In  addition  to  their  towers,  the  Sardinians  bequeathed  us  yet 
another  legacy.  This  unique  and  unrivaled  cultural  heritage  is  the 
magnificent  bronze  art  of  gifted  people  who  were  not  only  warriors 
but  outstanding  exponents  of  the  sculptor's  art. 

The  bronze  statuettes  of  Sardinia  still  have  the  power  to  grip 
and  enthrall  us  today.  They  regard  us  with  expressions  of  vitality 
and  taut  attention,  unique  and  incomparable  figurines  whose  lonely 
beauty  is  2,800  years  old,  yet  immediate  in  its  appeal  and,  in  a 
mysterious  and  inexplicable  way,  almost  uncannily  modern. 


SARDINIA 


A  PRE-CHRISTIAN  MADONNA 

At  the  head  of  the  nuraghi  pantheon  stood  the  Great  Goddess. 
All  figurative  representations  of  her  hark  back  to  fertility  and  to 
water.  She  is  portrayed  sometimes  with  a  basket  of  fruit  on  her 
head,  sometirnes  embracing  a  child;  so7neti?iies,  again,  holding  a 
jug  on  her  head,  and  someti7nes  nursing  the  lifeless  figure  of  a 
young  god,  slain  by  some  hostile  power,  on  her  lap.  The  goddess 
reigns  eternally  over  the  birth  and  growth  of  all  creatures,  over 
the  fertility  of  the  soil,  the  sanctity  of  water  and  the  eternal 
renewal  of  a  lavish  but  inexhaustible  Nature. 

—Christian  Zervos,  La  Civilisation  de  la  Sardaigne, 

Paris,  1954 

THE  mountain,  the  spring  and  the  tree  were  the  first  natural  features 
to  be  associated  with  the  holy  places  of  the  earth.  Rehgion  must 
have  played  a  very  large  part  in  the  lives  of  the  Sardinians  as  early 
as  2000  B.C.  or  even  earlier,  for  archaeologists  have  found  the  re- 
mains of  cult  sites  all  over  the  island.  These  holy  places,  the  great 
majority  of  which  were  probably  open  to  the  sky,  were  situated 
on  cliffs  or  high  ground,  beside  springs  and  in  woods.  The  altars 
stood  on  mountaintops,  on  hills  or  in  caves,  always  close  to  a  source 
of  running  water,  the  symbol  of  fertility.  The  holy  mountain,  the 
nearness  to  God,  the  "high  places"— these  are  ideas  which  human 
beings  have  brought  with  them  from  the  earliest  paleolithic  times, 
via  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  of  prehistory,  into  our  own 
historical  epoch. 

The  "cosmic  mountain"  is  an  age-old  Mesopotamian  idea.  The 
Altaic  peoples  believed  for  many  thousands  of  years  that  certain 
trees  and  poles  led  upward  to  the  supreme  being,  that  they  repre- 
sented the  center  of  the  earth  and  that  the  Pole  Star  stood  above 
them.  The  Greeks  rediscovered  the  cosmic  mountain  in  Olympus, 
the  men  of  the  Old  Testament  in  their  Mount  Sinai.  Tall  mountains 
whose  summits  pierced  the  clouds  were  held  to  be  the  abode  of 
the  gods  in  ancient  China,  Japan,  Finland,  Crete,  Phoenicia  and  the 
entire  Mediterranean  area.  The  Tower  of  Babel  and  the  ziggurats 
of  Mesopotamia  were  nothing  other  than  symbols  of  the  cosmic 
mountain.  The  early  inhabitants  of  Sardinia  or  paleo-Sardinians  also 
dwelled  in  a  world  of  ideas  which  was  dominated  by  the  sanctity  of 

95 


96  THE  SILENT  PAST 

prominent  natural  features,  and,  believing  in  the  religio-magical 
power  which  emanated  from  high  places,  they  sited  their  sanctuaries 
on  remote  hills  or  mountains.  The  sanctuary  of  Alazzani  stands 
nearly  2,300  feet  up  in  the  Villacidro  mountains,  Santa  Vittoria  de 
Serri  at  almost  2,000  feet,  Santa  Lulla  d'Orune  at  1,600.  All  these 
sites  have  a  fountain  or  spring  close  at  hand,  just  as  did  the  Acropolis 
at  Athens,  whose  spring  has  only  recently  been  found.  Christian 
Zervos,  the  distinguished  French  authority  on  Sardinian  culture, 
does  not  think  that  the  spring,  fountain  or  pool  played  so  important 
a  role  on  the  island  merely  because  of  the  scarcity  and  consequent 
importance  of  fresh  water.  Resurrection  via  water,  emergence  from 
water  and  water  as  a  fructifying  force  are  all  ideas  in  which 
humanity  has  believed  from  time  immemorial,  ideas  which  have 
found  their  culmination  in  the  baptism  of  the  Christian  religion. 
Some  springs  on  the  island  of  Sardinia  are  said  to  cure  eye  diseases, 
and  in  the  region  of  Mongolia  known  as  Barga,  far  away  in  east 
Asia,  I  have  personally  visited  a  spring  which,  so  the  nomads  believe, 
can  give  sight  to  the  blind  and  make  cripples  walk.  Thousands  of 
pilgrims  had  stuck  their  crutches  in  the  ground  or  hung  their 
spectacles  on  branches  in  token  of  their  recovery. 

It  is  certainly  apparent  that  there  were  open-air  temples  in 
Sardinia  at  a  very  early  period.  By  the  very  beginning  of  the 
nuraghi  era,  in  the  eleventh  and  tenth  centuries  b.c,  the  Sardinians 
were  already  laying  out  sanctuaries  whose  central  or  focal  point 
was  a  healing  spring  or  source  of  water.  Examples  of  such  places  are 
Sardara,  Mazzani,  Rebeccu,  Lorana  and  Mills.  The  sacred  water 
was  enclosed  by  stone  walls  or  rings,  and  paths  paved  with  blocks 
of  stone  led  to  the  inner  sanctum.  Standing  on  the  heights  of 
Santa  Vittoria  de  Serri  and  looking  down  from  that  mountain 
fortress  on  the  landscape  beneath,  one  can  sense  the  air  of  tranquillity 
and  of  sanctity  that  pervades  the  place.  Serri,  which  was  excavated 
by  the  archaeologist  Taramelli  between  1909  and  1929,  gives  us 
some  idea  of  the  exalted  significance  which  must  have  invested  such 
a  spot  in  600  b.c.  At  the  center  of  the  sanctuary  one  can  see  the 
circular  spring  shaft  and  descend  the  ancient  stone  steps  into  its 
cool  depths.  Above,  one  can  still  make  out  the  stone  blocks  of  the 
enclosing  walls.  Everything  is  in  ruins,  but  it  is  suddenly  borne  in 
on  one  what  great  religious  significance  the  water  from  such  a 
spring  must  once  have  possessed. 


LoiM  ad  dale  fid 


Sardinia 


98  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Is  there  any  chance  of  learning  more  about  the  religion  of  the 
Old  Sardinians?  Their  mythology  will  always  remain  a  closed 
book  to  us,  but  the  nuraghe  bronze  statuettes,  those  enigmatic 
manifestations  of  an  extinct  way  of  life,  may  yet  reveal  something. 
They  are,  at  all  events,  unusual  testimony  to  a  vanished  religion. 
The  large,  heavy-lidded  eyes  and  delicate  construction  of  these 
little  figures  tell  us  of  a  people  whose  art  is  unique  in  the  West. 
Sardinian  art  is  an  unwritten  book  which  discloses  to  us  the  whole 
of  the  island's  ancient  religious  hierarchy.  This  included  senior 
priests,  male  acolytes  of  the  cult  and  even  musicians.  Senior  priests 
wore  a  close-fitting  garment  that  fell  to  the  thigh  and  a  cloak  thrown 
over  one  shoulder.  They  carried  a  staff  or  emblem  of  office  in  the 
left  hand.  Zervos  conjectures  that  tribal  chieftains  of  the  nuraghe 
period  also  acted  as  the  highest  earthly  representatives  of  the  nuraghe 
religion. 

Priestesses  occupied  a  very  important  position.  In  this  respect, 
the  island  of  Sardinia  appears  to  be  one  link  in  a  chain  that  goes 
back  thirty  or  forty  thousand  years.  The  earliest  figurative  por- 
trayals in  the  world,  the  Venus  statuettes  of  the  paleolithic  age 
which  have  been  found  throughout  Europe,  are  presumed  to  be 
goddesses  of  fertility,  and  the  portrayals  of  the  goddesses  and 
priestesses  of  ancient  Sardinia  are  their  latter-day  descendants.  In 
so  far  as  we  can  understand  the  Nuraghians'  religion  and  look  back 
into  the  mists  of  prehistory,  the  first  idea  we  meet  is  always  that 
of  the  Magna  Mater,  or  great  mother,  and  her  fertility  cult.  The 
tall  basalt  statuettes  of  Macomer  are  mother-goddesses  of  this  nature. 
Marble  idols  which  portray  female  symbols  have  been  found  at 
Porto  Ferro  and  in  the  environs  of  Senorbi.  Rarely  has  the  religious 
conception  of  a  female  deity  survived  in  a  simpler,  more  consistent 
or  magnificent  form  than  it  has  here.  From  the  first  wave  of  Asiatic 
immigration  to  the  centuries  preceding  the  Christian  era  and  the 
period  of  Roman  domination,  this  Stone-Age  "Madonna  idea" 
retained  its  essential  vitality.  The  Sardinians  may  have  learned 
the  Romans'  language  (the  inhabitants  of  central  Sardinia  are, 
incidentally,  the  only  people  in  the  world  to  have  preserved  it  to 
this  day)  but  they  rejected  their  religion  and  their  gods. 

The  islanders  began  to  portray  their  deities  at  a  very  early  date, 
the  earliest  such  portrayals  being  long  stones  three  or  four  feet 
high  and  half  buried  in  the  ground.  As  time  passed,  these  stones  were 


SARDINIA  99 

given  human  form,  and  the  ancient  Sardinians  were  already  portray- 
ing divine  figures  before  the  introduction  of  bronze  casting.  Three  of 
the  Perdas  Marmuradas  of  Tamuli,  some  vertical  stones  standing 
near  Macomer,  betray  female  characteristics,  but  the  remainder  do 
not.  From  this  it  can  be  deduced  that  the  stones  represent  male  and 
female  deities.  That  the  Bronze-Age  art  which  later  drew  on  these 
early  religious  ideas  reached  the  remarkable  heights  it  did,  is 
attributable  to  the  fact  that  its  exponents  were  constantly  searching 
for  the  mainsprings  of  life  and  faith.  Unique  examples  of  creative 
artistry,  Sardinia's  bronze  statuettes  first  appeared  about  looo  B.C. 
and  reached  a  peak  of  perfection  in  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  which 
means  that  the  men  who  made  them  were  contemporaries  of 
Homer,  the  world's  greatest  epic  poet.  Bronzes  are  still  found  from 
the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  B.C.,  but  Phoenician  conquest  and 
Punic  colonization  ultimately  brought  their  manufacture  to  an  end. 

The  statuettes  portraying  priestesses  clearly  show  what  their  role 
must  have  been.  Shrouded  in  cloaks,  they  hold  a  bowl— probably 
containing  drink  offerings  or  consecrated  water— in  their  left  hand. 
The  great  significance  of  springwater  in  the  Sardinians'  religious 
cult  is  reflected  in  the  senior  status  of  these  priestesses.  Solemn, 
serious,  distant  and  contemplative,  the  little  figures  stand  in  their 
showcases  in  Cagliari  Museum  and  gaze  into  eternity. 

The  bronze  statuettes  also  tell  us  that  sacrifice  was  performed 
by  male  priests.  One  figure,  now  in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  at 
Paris,  represents  a  man  carrying  sacrificial  animals  in  a  satchel. 
Cagliari  Museum  displays  figures  of  other  sacrificial  priests,  some 
carrying  goats  or  jugs  on  their  backs  or  holding  consecrated  rope 
in  their  hands.  One  priestly  figure,  only  just  over  five  inches  high, 
has  its  right  hand  raised  to  shoulder  height  in  supplication.  Indeed, 
it  seems  to  have  been  a  general  practice  among  the  Nuraghians 
to  pray  with  the  right  hand  raised  and  palm  facing  forward. 

As  in  the  Minoan  culture  of  Crete  and  in  other  parts  of  the 
eastern  Mediterranean,  religious  festivals  were  accompanied  by 
games  and  dances  performed  to  music.  The  musicians  of  ancient 
Sardinia  are  portrayed  with  haunting  realism,  beating  tambourines 
and  blowing  horns  in  a  state  of  orgiastic  ecstasy.  Religious  festivals, 
it  should  be  remembered,  were  also  fertility  rites. 

Like  the  inhabitants  of  Mari  on  the  central  Euphrates,  the  be- 
lievers of  2,500  or  3,000  years  ago  used  to  set  up  statuettes  of  their 


100  THE  SILENT  PAST 

deities  in  the  temples  and  pray  to  them,  believing  that  these  tangible 
embodiments  of  the  divine  would  receive  their  prayers  with 
benevolence.  Had  the  incomparable  Bronze-Age  culture  of  the 
Nuraghians  not  been  sustained  by  these  religious  ideas  it  would 
never  have  attained  such  an  artistic  zenith.  The  fruit  of  this  transla- 
tion of  faith  into  bronze  represents  an  expenditure  of  spiritual  and 
creative  energy  which  would  not  otherwise  have  been  possible. 

Some  statuettes  were  mounted  on  blocks  of  stone  and  others  on 
bronze  spits  or  pins,  the  lower  ends  of  which  were  stuck  into 
metal  blocks  or  pierced  stones.  The  supposition  that  these  strange 
attachments  had  a  rehgious  purpose  is  reinforced  by  their  length, 
their  remarkable  thinness  and  their  fragility.  Apart  from  that,  many 
pins  were  found  on  stone  benches  in  the  vicinity  of  altars,  some- 
times mounted  in  groups  of  three  and  possibly  symbolizing  a  trinity 
composed  of  the  earth-mother  and  two  male  beings  associated 
with  her. 

The  Nuraghians'  bronzes  attained  a  peak  of  perfection  in  their 
portrayals  of  the  goddess  and  her  son.  One  such  statuette  reposes 
in  the  National  Archaeological  Museum  at  Cagliari.  The  divine 
mother's  features  express  deep  sorrow,  and  her  son,  whom  she  is 
cradling  in  her  left  arm,  is  unmistakably  dead.  This  bronze,  which 
was  dug  up  in  the  neighborhood  of  Urzulei,  is  only  four  inches 
tall.  Another  statuette  of  the  mother-goddess  and  the  young  god 
was  found  at  Santa  Vittoria  de  Serri  and  also  stands  four  inches 
high.  The  woman  has  her  right  hand  raised  as  though  in  blessing. 
Her  lips  are  twisted  with  grief  and  her  eyes  swollen  from  weeping. 
A  third  bronze,  this  time  four  and  a  half  inches  high,  gives  the 
mother  an  expression  of  such  sympathy  and  the  son  a  face  so 
deathly  calm  that  no  one  who  sees  the  piece  can  escape  its  dramatic 
impact.  The  same  museum  possesses  a  highly  stylized  mother- 
goddess  in  marble  dating  from  long  before  the  Bronze  Age.  Over 
sixteen  inches  tall,  this  figurine  was  dug  up  at  Senorbi  and  takes 
the  shape  of  a  simple  cross,  the  cross  of  an  age  which  lies  well 
over  three  thousand  years  in  the  past.  It  could  well  serve  as  an 
example  to  many  of  our  modern  sculptors. 

Evidence  of  many  centuries  of  faith  and  suffering,  conflict  and 
daily  toil  has  been  found  on  the  island,  captured  forever  in  bronze. 
Archaeologists  have  unearthed  casting  molds  and  discovered  complete 
treasuries.  Some  of  these  depots  contained  whole  or  fragmentary 


SARDINIA  loi 

copper  ingots,  others  double-  or  single-edged  axes  and  still  others 
blocks  of  metal  and  various  objects  in  bronze.  Seven  hundred  and 
fifty  pieces  were  dug  up  at  the  Abini  depot  and  no  less  than  1,976 
pieces  at  that  of  Portotorres.  Repositories  of  votive  offerings  and 
religious  objects  were  normally  found  near  springs  and  pools  which 
were  probably  cult  sites.  Other  smelters'  and  bronze  workers'  stores 
contained  no  jewelry  or  bronze  figures;  only  tools,  weapons,  casting 
molds  and  fragments  of  objects  which  were  obviously  destined  for 
recasting. 

Of  particular  interest  are  the  copper  ingots  which  were  used 
for  bartering  purposes.  These  copper  plates  were  mad^  in  the  shape 
of  cowhides  and  stamped  with  ancient  Cretan  characters  of  the 
Linear  B  type.  Since  pecus  means  "cattle"  in  Latin,  and  pecimia 
was  the  Romans'  word  for  "money,"  the  Sardinians'  hide-shaped 
copper  plates  are  far  closer  to  the  Latin  expression  than  is  the 
thought  that  hide  was  once  used  as  a  medium  of  exchange  in 
ancient  Rome.  The  Sardinians  were  a  peaceful,  hard-working, 
domestic-minded  people,  as  we  can  see  from  relics  of  their  livestock, 
their  agriculture  and  the  countless  appurtenances  of  their  many- 
sided  daily  life. 

A  total  of  between  four  and  five  hundred  bronze  statuettes  has 
been  found  so  far,  and  fresh  treasures  are  being  brought  to  light 
every  day.  The  value  of  a  single  nuraghe  statuette  is  impossible  to 
assess  because  its  irreplaceability  renders  it  literally  priceless.  Such 
pieces  are  the  material  expression  of  a  race  whose  considerable  pride, 
high  morality  and  deep  religious  faith  are  still  mirrored  today  in 
the  faces  of  Sardinian  women  as  they  emerge  from  Sunday  service 
in  their  superb  peasant  costumes. 


GREECE 


LINEAR  B 

Among  all  the  records  known  to  us  there  is  mention  of  only  a 
single  royal  family  strong  and  rich  enough  to  play  the  role  re- 
quired to  fit  into  the  palace  that  frames  the  scene  at  Englianos. 
That  is  of  course  the  family  of  the  Neleids.  Neleus,  an  invader  from 

Thessaly,  was  the  founder  of  the  dynasty Nestor,  sole  survivor 

of  Neleus^  twelve  sons,  inherited  the  throne  and  through  ^^three 
generations  of  me7i"  he  ruled  over  a  realm  of  nine  cities.  It  is  most 
likely  that  he,  too,  was  a  builder,  adding  perhaps  the  second  of  the 
large  units  of  the  palace,  if  not  more.  As  the  intimate  associate, 
adviser  and  trusted  friend  of  Agame?nnon  he  won  fame  and  uni- 
versal respect  in  the  expedition  against  Troy.  Nestor  returned  from 
the  war  and  continued  to  reign  at  Pylos  where  ten  years  later  he 
received  the  visit  of  Telemachus. 

—Carl  W.  Blegen,  ''The  Palace  of  Nestor," 

American  Journal  of  Archaeology, 

April,  i960,  p.  159 

THE  ruins  of  the  most  famous  citadel  in  ancient  Greece  lie  only 
900  feet  above  sea  level,  but  the  history  of  the  place  has  provided 
an  inexhaustible  source  of  material  for  the  poets,  dramatists  and 
artists  of  Western  civilization  as  a  whole.  No  family  ever  afforded 
the  tragedians  and  playwrights  of  Europe  more  themes  than  the 
lords  of  the  citadel  of  Mycenae.  It  was  Agamemnon,  king  of  this 
city-state,  who  mustered  the  tribes  of  Greece  and  sailed  against 
Paris,  the  Trojan  prince  who  had  abducted  Helen,  the  wife  of  his 
brother  Menelaus. 

Mycenae  stands  on  the  Peloponnesian  peninsula,  which  the  earliest 
Greeks  looked  upon  as  an  island.  The  place  was  named  after  one 
of  Agamemnon's  ancestors  and  means  literally  "Pelops-island."  The 
Iliad  paints  Agamemnon  as  the  principal  antagonist  of  Acliilles, 
whose  fury  forms  the  basic  theme  of  the  poem.  Homer  sang  this 
epic  in  the  eighth  century  b.c,  but  the  golden  age  of  Mycenae  lasted 
from  1400  to  1 150,  and  the  battles  that  raged  around  Troy  occurred 
in  the  ten  years  between  1 194  and  1 184.  It  was  these  centuries  which 
saw  the  building  of  the  great  ramparts  and  Lion  Gate  of  Mycenae, 
the  palace,  the  huge  tomb  and  the  Treasury  of  Atreus,  who  was 
probably  the  king  responsible  for  planning  these  architectural 
marvels. 


GREECE  103 

As  we  all  know,  Heinrich  Schliemann  accepted  the  historical 
authenticity  of  Homer's  accounts  and  proceeded  to  find  tangible 
evidence  of  them  by  unearthing  Troy  not  far  from  the  entrance 
to  the  Dardanelles  in  modern  Turkey,  as  well  as  Tiryns  and  Mycenae 
in  the  Peloponnesus.  Beside  the  remains  of  seventeen  bodies,  Schlie- 
mann found  a  hoard  of  golden  objects  which  weighed  nearly  thirty 
pounds  and  are  now  displayed  in  the  National  Museum  at  Athens. 
His  discovery  unleashed  a  spate  of  archaeological  research  into 
periods  of  Greek  history  which  antedated  Homer  by  many  centuries. 

Agamemnon's  citadel  has  given  its  name  to  the  whole  Greek  way 
of  life  in  the  second  millennium  b.c.  The  most  important  sites  of 
this  pre-Homeric  "Mycenaean"  culture  so  far  discovered  are  the 
fortresses  of  Mycenae  and  Tiryns,  the  ruins  of  Pylos  and  the  palaces 
on  the  island  of  Crete. 

Arthur  John  Evans,  later  Sir  Arthur  Evans,  was  born  at  Nash 
Mills  in  England  in  the  year  185 1.  He  studied  at  Oxford  and 
Gottingen,  traveled  extensively  in  Finland,  Lapland  and  the  Balkans, 
and  was  arrested  by  the  Austrians  in  1882  on  suspicion  of  having 
taken  part  in  an  uprising  in  Dalmatia.  In  1893  Evans  began  to  dig 
on  the  island  of  Crete,  and,  by  unearthing  the  palace  of  Knossos, 
bequeathed  us  our  knowledge  of  the  splendid  Minoan  culture,  which 
represents  the  earliest  advanced  civilization  on  European  soil.  Evans 
was  knighted  in  191 1  and  died,  an  internationally  respected  figure, 
at  the  age  of  ninety,  in  1941,  just  in  time  to  miss  the  news  that 
the  Germans  had  landed  on  his  beloved  island  and  that  the  German 
General  Staff  had  chosen  to  take  up  its  quarters  in,  of  all  places, 
his  Villa  Ariadne  near  Knossos. 

The  palaces  of  Crete  were  built  at  two  separate  periods,  and 
each  period  ended  in  their  almost  total  destruction.  The  first  or 
"great"  palaces  came  into  being  in  Knossos,  Phaistos  and  Malia 
about  2000  B.C.  These  famous  buildings  were  destroyed  after  several 
centuries,  and  it  seems  likely  that  the  first  golden  age  of  Cretan 
architecture  ended  in  1700  b.c.  In  about  1600  b.c.  new  palaces  began 
to  go  up,  though  the  period  is  principally  famous  for  the  "mansions" 
or  personal  residences  of  senior  officials  who  probably  performed 
governmental  and  religious  duties.  Then,  between  1525  and  1520  b.c, 
a  catastrophe  occurred  whose  cause  remains  an  enigma  to  this  day. 
The  mansions  and  the  newly  built  palaces  were,  to  all  appearances, 
violently  and  suddenly   destroyed.   No   one   knows   whether   this 


ro4  THE  SILENT  PAST 

devastation  was  caused  by  foreign  invaders  or  by  some  natural 
agency.  Archaeologists,  historians  and  scientists  have  put  forward 
many  theories  to  explain  the  mystery,  but  none  of  them  has  settled 
the  question  beyond  dispute. 

Just  over  sixty  miles  north  of  Crete  lies  a  small  horseshoe-shaped 
island  known  in  the  ancient  world  as  Thera  and  in  the  Middle  Ages 
as  Santorin,  after  its  patron  saint  Santa  Irini.  About  the  middle  of 
the  second  millennium  b.c.  a  major  volcanic  eruption  destroyed  all 
organic  life  there.  Basing  his  conclusions  on  the  ceramics  of  Knossos 
and  the  fresco  styles  and  mirror  imprints  in  the  palace  there,  the 
Greek  archaeologist  Marinatos  dates  this  upheaval  at  somewhere 
between  1550  and  1500  b.c.  The  eruption  coated  the  slopes  of  the 
Elias  Range  on  Thera  with  a  layer  of  lava  two  hundred  feet  thick 
in  places.  Under  a  similar  layer  on  the  south  coast  of  the  small 
neighboring  island  of  Therasia  were  found  the  remains  of  a  Minoan 
settlement  dating  from  between  1800  and  1500  b.c.  The  eruption 
was  so  immense  that  the  whole  of  the  volcanic  cone  caved  in  and 
seawater  gushed  into  the  crater. 

Marinatos  postulates  that  the  eruption  also  produced  enormous 
tidal  waves  which  caused  widespread  devastation  along  the  coasts  of 
Crete.  He  believes  that  the  outbreak  on  Thera  was  four  times  as 
great  as  the  one  which  killed  36,000  people  on  Krakatoa  in  the  Dutch 
East  Indies  in  1887,  and  calculates  that  there  were  "83  square  kilo- 
meters of  devastated  and  sunken  land  on  Thera  as  opposed  to  23 
square  kilometers  on  Krakatoa." 

The  same  period  also  saw  the  destruction  of  palaces  built  in  the 
Cretan  interior  during  the  second  architectural  phase.  Marinatos 
admits  that  places  like  Knossos,  Phaistos,  Hagia  Triada,  Tylissos 
and  Sklavocampos  could  not  have  been  directly  affected  by  the 
tidal  wave,  but  suggests  that  major  earthquakes  may  have  followed 
the  Thera  eruption,  causing  fire  and  destruction  among  the  build- 
ings of  Crete  itself.  Crete  is,  incidentally,  severely  shaken  by  three 
or  four  earthquakes  each  century. 

The  third  possibility  is  that  the  fire  and  devastation  were  caused 
by  some  human  agency,  namely  an  invasion  by  mainland  Greeks. 

So  much  survived  the  holocaust  that  the  island  continued  to  throb 
with  life  for  another  hundred  years,  until,  about  1400  b.c,  the 
civilization  began  to  wane  and  eventually  all  but  disappeared. 

The  three  types  of  writing  that  have  been  found  in  Crete  include 


GREECE 


105- 


a  very  ancient  picture  script  as  well  as  the  two  linear  scripts  which, 
Evans  christened  Linear  A  and  Linear  B.  The  earliest  or  hieroglyphic 
script  was  used  between  2000  and  1750  b.c.  and  consisted  of  picto- 
grams  such  as  heads,  hands,  stars  and  arrows.  Between  1750  and 
1450  these  pictorial  symbols  were  simphfied  into  the  linear  script 
which  Evans  called  Linear  A.  This  script  has  been  found  at  many 
places  in  the  island  of  Crete,  and  one  palace  a  few  miles  from. 
Phaistos  yielded  no  less  than  150  clay  tablets  inscribed  with  it.  The 
site,  whose  ancient  name  is  unknown,  is  now  called  Hagia  Triada 
after  a  chapel  in  the  vicinity.  It  was  early  recognized,  long  before 
anyone  had  deciphered  Linear  A,  that  these  clay  tablets  were  in- 
scribed with  lists  of  agricultural  products. 

Outside  Crete,  Linear  A  has  been  found  on  the  island  of  Melos 
and,  in  fragmentary  texts,  in  Mycenae  and  Cyprus. 

At  some  point  in  time— probably  about  1400  B.C.— Linear  A  was 
superseded  by  a  new  form  of  writing  which  Evans  designated  as 
Linear  B.  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  Crete  itself  Linear  B  was  found  on 


A  clay  tablet  inscribed 
with  Linear  A  characters 
from  the  palace  of  Pylos. 
Original  tablets  have  been 
photographed  and  traced 
so  as  to  produce  accurate 
line  drawings  like  this 
one.  The  fragment  illus- 
trated here  is  only  one- 
third  smaller  than  the 
original.  Most  tablets 
were  only  inscribed  on 
one  side,  and  fine  lines 
were  drawn  between  the 
separate  rows  of  char- 
acters. The  writing  runs 
from  left  to  right. 


io6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

only  three  or  four  thousand  tablets  in  the  palace  at  Knossos.  The 
explanation  may  be  that  clay  tablets  survive  for  thousands  of  years 
only  if  they  are  baked  hard.  But  the  Minoans  dried  their  tablets  in 
the  sun,  and  sun-  or  air-dried  tablets  are  not  hard  enough  to  with- 
stand the  effects  of  the  passage  of  three  thousand  years  or  more. 
Since  the  palace  of  Knossos  suffered  several  great  conflagrations  the 
clay  tablets  there  were  baked  to  the  consistency  of  stone.  None  of 
this,  however,  explains  why  Evans  found  such  a  quantity  of  Linear  B 
tablets  only  at  Knossos.  Other  palaces  also  went  up  in  flames  and 
any  Linear  B  tablets  which  happened  to  be  on  the  premises  would 
likewise  have  been  hardened  and  preserved,  so  the  burning  of 
Knossos  does  not  alone  account  for  the  fact  that  the  large  majority 
of  Linear  B  tablets  were  found  at  this  one  spot. 

Perhaps  we  shall  come  nearer  the  truth  if,  like  the  men  who 
eventually  solved  the  problem,  we  ask  ourselves  whether  there 
could  have  been  a  special  reason  why  the  strange  script  was  used 
exclusively  in  the  palace  at  Knossos.  In  order  to  answer  that  ques- 
tion, it  is  essential  to  know  what  language  Linear  B  was  devised  to 
express.  What  was  written  on  the  clay  tablets,  and  was  there  any 
means  of  deciphering  them? 

Many  scholars  strove  to  solve  the  enigma,  putting  forward  the 
most  audacious  theories.  Some  attempted  to  find  a  solution  in  the 
ancient  scripts  of  Egypt,  the  Hittites  or  the  Indus  Valley,  while 
others  compared  the  unintelligible  symbols  with  Phoenician  or 
Etruscan  texts.  But  still  the  tablets  refused  to  yield  their  secret. 

Then  Professor  Carl  Blegen  of  Cincinnati  University  set  out  to 
find  and  excavate  the  palace  of  Nestor,  the  ancient  Greek  warrior- 
king  whose  advice  is  repeatedly  sought  by  his  fellow  countrymen 
in  Homer's  Iliad.  Like  Schliemann,  Blegen  proceeded  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  Homeric  figures  must  have  been  historical.  Homer 
tells  us  that  Nestor  lived  in  the  citadel  of  Pylos,  but  no  trace  of  the 
palace  could  be  found  on  the  site  of  the  present  port  of  that  name. 
In  1939  Blegen  began,  in  conjunction  with  the  Greek  archaeologist 
Kourouniotis,  to  dig  at  a  place  called  Epano  Englianos  in  Messenia 
on  the  southwest  side  of  the  Peloponnesus,  nearly  ten  miles  north  of 
modern  Pylos.  During  his  first  year's  work  there  he  discovered  six 
hundred  clay  tablets  bearing  the  same  Linear  B  script  which  had 
been  found  far  away  in  the  palace  of  Knossos  on  Crete.  The  Pylos 
tablets  date  from  a  period  later  than  1300  B.C.  Tablets  with  Linear  B 


GREECE 


107 


The  Aegean  area 


inscriptions  were  also  found  in  the  citadels  of  Mycenae  and  Tiryns. 
Of  these  the  so-called  "spice  tablets"  found  by  Wace  in  1954  in 
the  House  of  the  Wine  Merchant  at  Mycenae  are  of  especial  in- 
terest. These  listed  varying  quantities  of  spices  such  as  might  have 
been  sold  to  individual  customers,  including  red  and  white  safflower, 
caraway,  sesame,  coriander,  mint,  fennel  and  a  medicinal  plant 
called  polei. 


io8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

It  was  known,  therefore,  that  a  mysterious  script  already  existed 
in  Greece  about  1300  b.c,  long  before  the  Greeks  adopted  their 
more  familiar  alphabet  from  the  Phoenicians  at  about  the  time  of 
the  first  Olympic  Games  in  776  b.c.  and  began  to  record  their  own 
history. 

Since  clay  tablets  inscribed  with  Linear  B  had  been  found  at 
three  places  in  the  Peloponnesus  and  since  on  Crete  examples  of 
similarly  inscribed  tablets  had  been  discovered  only  in  the  palace  at 
Knossos,  it  seemed  natural  to  suppose  that  the  script  had  been 
brought  to  the  Cretan  palace  from  Greece,  either  by  visiting 
sailors  or  by  invaders.  This,  however,  was  most  improbable  since 
the  Knossos  tablets  were  a  hundred  years  older  than  the  first 
examples  of  such  tablets  found  in  Greece. 

Or  are  we  so  sure?  Is  it  possible  that  Evans  and  his  collaborator 
Mackenzie  dated  the  Knossos  strata  inaccurately  and  that  Knossos 
was  destroyed  a  hundred  years  or  more  after  1400? 

A  third  theory  also  seems  possible.  This  holds  that  after  the 
widespread  devastation  of  Crete,  Knossos  was  occupied  by  Achaeans 
—that  is  to  say,  Greeks  of  the  second  millennium  e.g.— who  ordered 
the  palace  scribes  to  adapt  the  Cretan  script  to  the  Greek  language. 
If  it  seems  odd  that  the  Greeks  should  have  gone  to  Crete  for  their 
script  when  others  were  available,  Ave  must  remember  that  the 
cuneiform  script  of  Mesopotamia  required  a  knowledge  of  about 
300  symbols  and  that  anyone  who  wanted  to  read  and  write 
Egyptian  hieroglyphs  had  to  master  at  least  350.  Linear  B,  on  the 
other  hand,  comprised  only  80  syllabic  symbols  and  a  few  abbrevia- 
tions. It  was  a  kind  of  shorthand,  and  particularly  suitable  for  com- 
mercial transactions,  bookkeeping  and  inventories. 

So  the  palace  scribes  of  Knossos  modified  Linear  A  into  Linear  B, 
and  it  was  then  introduced  into  Greece,  though  only  for  the  lords 
and  masters  of  great  palaces  and  fortresses  such  as  those  at  Pylos, 
Mycenae,  Tiryns  and  Thebes.  Evans  himself  had  noticed  that 
several  cups  in  the  Palace  of  Cadmus  at  Thebes  bore  similar  pre- 
Hellenic  symbols  and  assumed  that  during  the  pre-Hellenic  period 
the  same  language  was  spoken  there  as  in  Crete— though  precisely 
what  language  no  one  yet  knew. 

Blegen's  excavations  at  Pylos  had  yielded  great  scientific  dividends. 
So  many  clay  tablets  in  Linear  B  were  now  available  that  there 
were  far  more  opportunities  for  comparative  study  than  before. 


GREECE  109 

However,  the  characters  had  been  scratched  on  the  clay  by  many 
different  hands  and  exhibited  countless  slight  variations.  The  de- 
ciphering of  a  modern  secret  code  would  have  presented  less 
difficulty  because  the  expert  at  least  knows  what  language  it  dis- 
guises, whereas  with  Linear  B  neither  script  nor  language  was 
known. 

In  1952  Michael  Ventris,  an  Englishman,  succeeded  in  identifying 
a  number  of  the  mysterious  symbols  and  realized  that  the  language 
behind  Linear  B  was  Greek.  Ventris  was  an  architect,  not  a  philol- 
ogist, but  he  carefully  established  contact  with  all  the  scholars 
who  had  studied  the  problem  hitherto.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to 
gain  access  to  the  clay  tablets  of  Pylos,  he  had  complete  command 
of  the  Greek  language,  and  he  possessed  imagination  and  ingenuity. 
Above  all,  he  found  an  experienced  adviser  in  John  Chadwick,  the 
Cambridge  philologist  who  collaborated  so  effectively  in  the  young 
architect's  publications  and— a  most  important  point— provided  the 
requisite  scientific  pull. 

For  years  beforehand,  Ventris  had  mistakenly  assumed  that  the 
language  disguised  by  the  mysterious  symbols  was  that  of  the 
Etruscans,  and  this  had  put  him  off  the  track.  It  was  now  known, 
however,  that  what  lay  behind  the  clay  tablets  not  only  of  Pylos, 
Tiryns  and  Mycenae  but  also  of  Knossos  was  an  ancient  form  of 
Greek,  and  in  the  course  of  the  intervening  years  all  the  characters 
have  been  identified.  It  is  a  truly  remarkable  scientific  achievement 
and  one,  moreover,  in  which  many  scholars  have  collaborated, 
notably  the  Americans  Alice  Kober  and  Emmett  L.  Bennett  (the 
leading  authority  on  Linear  B),  A.  Furumark  of  Sweden,  Chantraine 
and  Lejeune  of  France,  Ernst  Sittig  and  Hans  Stoltenberg  of  Ger- 
many, Fritz  Schachermeyr  of  Austria,  B.  R.  Palmer,  E.  G.  Turner 
and  A.  P.  Treweek  of  Great  Britain,  P.  Meriggi,  V.  Pisani  and 
C.  Cappovilla  of  Italy  and  K.  Ktistopoulos  of  Greece. 

Professor  Fritz  Schachermeyr,  the  Austrian  authority  on  ancient 
history,  has  recently  explained  in  an  extremely  interesting  paper 
why  Linear  B  texts  are  not  easy  to  understand  even  now  that  the 
script  in  which  they  are  written  has  been  deciphered.  The  tablets 
of  Knossos  and  Pylos  contain  virtually  nothing  but  inventories  and 
book  entries  designed  to  help  administrators  keep  their  accounts. 
Just  as  many  a  modern  businessman's  jottings  can  only  be  under- 
stood by  people  with  specialized  commercial  training,  so  the  mean- 


no  THE  SILENT  PAST 

ing  of  the  clay  tablets  must  remain  partially  obscure  because  they 
were  only  an  aide-?nemoire  containing  commercial  terms  which 
would  have  seemed  quite  unexceptional  to  literate  businessmen  of 
the  time.  Schachermeyr  describes  the  Greek  language  of  the  Linear 
B  texts  as  a  "language  of  bookkeepers  and  specialists."  He  assumes 
not  that  Linear  B  was  commissioned  by  the  Greeks  but  that,  as  a 
variant  of  Linear  A,  it  was  already  used  for  an  ancient  Cretan  lan- 
guage and  was  subsequently  adapted  for  Greek.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  the  finds  at  Knossos  do  not  permit  us  to  date  the  origins  of 
Linear  B  with  any  accuracy. 

The  tablets  contain  particulars  of  herds  of  rams  and  ewes,  he- 
goats  and  she-goats,  wild  boar,  bulls  and  cows.  Bronzesmiths  are 
mentioned  by  name,  together  with  the  weight  of  the  metal  they 
worked  in.  We  find  inventories  of  tableware,  furniture,  utensils  of 
all  kinds,  wine  and  many  types  of  foodstuffs,  memoranda  on  war 
chariots,  entries  deaUng  with  sales  and  purchases  of  male  and  fe- 
male slaves.  The  Pylos  tablets  even  record  the  quantities  of  oil  and 
scent  used  by  two  groups  of  royal  servingmen  and  serving-women. 

History  invariably  begins  with  writing.  The  knowledge  that  the 
Greek  language  could  be  recorded  in  writing  as  early  as  1400  b.c. 
has  pushed  back  the  frontiers  of  Greek  history  by  six  hundred  years; 
from  Homer,  as  it  were,  to  Nestor  and  the  men  who  constructed 
the  fabulous  fortresses  and  palaces  at  Mycenae,  Tiryns  and  Pylos. 

And  so  there  unfolds  before  us  a  remarkably  colorful  and  lively 
picture  of  people  whose  existence  we  could  only  guess  at,  until 
recently,  from  the  mute  ruins  of  their  buildings  and  the  relics  of 
their  art. 


GREECE 

LIFE  IN  THE  MYCENAEAN  AGE 

/  should  like  to  say  that  I  believe  Agamenmon  to  have  been  a 
historical  character  who  flourished  at  Mycenae  about  1200  b.c. 

—Alan  J.  B.  Wage,  Mycenae, 
p.  I,  Princeton,  N.J.,  1949 

IT  IS  always  fascinating  to  explore  a  people's  origins,  even  though 
we  can  rarely  see  very  far  into  the  depths  of  prehistory. 

The  Greeks  are  an  Indo-European  race.  Before  their  arrival, 
Greece  was  inhabited  by  quite  a  different  people,  a  pre-Indo-Euro- 
pean  population  classified  by  ethnologists  as  Aegean.  The  Aegeans 
were  resident  not  only  in  Greece  but  in  the  islands  of  the  eastern 
Mediterranean,  in  Crete  and  southwest  Asia  Minor.  The  later  Greeks 
called  the  original  population  Leleges,  Carians  and  Pelasgi. 

We  know  that  an  Indo-European  race  migrated  to  the  territories 
and  islands  of  the  Aegean  because  there  is  evidence  that  the  whole  of 
southern  Europe  was  swept  by  an  influx  of  Indo-Europeans.  The 
Greek  language  is  the  end  product  of  a  development  in  age-old 
Indo-European  tongues  and  originated  in  the  great  plains  that 
stretch  between  Poland  and  Turkestan.  Greek  also  contains  many 
relics  of  pre-Greek  language.  For  example,  place  names  ending  in 
nthos  and  ssos  are  un-Indo-European  and  cannot  be  reconciled  with 
Greek  linguistic  conventions.  Many  names  for  plants,  rivers,  moun- 
tains and  islands  were  obviously  adopted  by  the  Greeks  from  the 
aboriginal  population. 

Crete  was  a  repository  of  "Aegeandom."  The  Minoan  language 
hails  from  the  Aegean  world  and  the  texts  written  in  the  ancient 
Cretan  script  known  as  Linear  A  seem  to  have  been  composed  in  that 
tongue,  although  it  is  also  possible  a  Semitic  language  was  employed. 
We  also  know  from  Homer's  Odyssey  that  Crete  was  inhabited  by 
"true  Cretans,  Sidonians,  Dorians  and  Pelasgians."  It  is  almost  cer- 
tain that  the  Pelasgians  spoke  a  "barbaric"  or  non-Greek  language, 
as  we  are  told  by  Herodotus. 

Towns  and  the  concept  of  urban  life  were  introduced  into  Greece 
between  3200  and  2500  b.c,  imported  from  the  East  by  the  Aegean 
pioneering  spirit,  and  because  the  idea  of  the  city  took  root  in  the 
Aegean  domain,  Crete  became  the  first  advanced  civilization  in 


112  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Europe.  Fritz  Schachermeyr  has  demonstrated  that  the  Hellenic 
polis  or  city-state,  that  foremost  cultural  and  political  achievement 
of  the  ancient  world,  was  based  on  the  early  penetration  of  Greece 
by  the  Aegeans'  city  idea.  The  Greek  talent  for  sculpture,  the  genre 
portrayal  which  reached  perfection  on  Greek  vases,  and  many  other 
fundamental  ideas— notably  that  of  the  heroine  in  Greek  myth— all 
these  things  sprang  from  sources  that  originated  in  the  dawn  of  the 
Aegean  age. 

Those  who  visit  Greece  should,  therefore,  remember  that  at  the 
back  of  Greek  culture  and  the  Greek  people  stands  the  ancient  spirit 
of  Aegeandom. 

The  first  Greek  migration  took  place  between  2000  and  1900  b.c. 
and  came  from  the  north.  It  is  interesting  to  examine  the  surviving 
skulls  of  people  who  lived  in  the  early  dawn  of  Greek  history. 
Twenty-seven  skulls  found  at  Asine  and  dating  from  between  1900 
and  1580  B.C.  prove  that  the  population  there  was  a  mixture  of 
Aegean  and  Indo-European.  Twenty-one  skulls  were  dug  up  at 
Kalkani  in  a  burial  place  almost  4,000  years  old.  The  men  belonged 
to  the  Indo-European  race,  the  women  to  the  Aegean,  so  anthropol- 
ogy, too,  confirms  that  a  mingHng  of  two  racial  groups  was  tak- 
ing place.  Presumably  the  Greek  immigrants  took  native-born 
wives,  a  common  practice  in  eras  of  conquest. 

We  do  not  know  if  Agamemnon,  Odysseus,  Telemachus  or  Nestor 
could  read  and  write,  but  the  clay  tablets  written  in  Linear  B  and 
dating  from  between  1300  and  iioo  e.g.  found  by  Professor  Blegen 
at  Pylos  and  Professor  Wace  at  Mycenae  make  it  probable  that 
Nestor  did,  in  fact,  sit  in  his  palace  at  Pylos  and  read  his  stewards' 
reports.  The  same  may  go  for  Agamemnon,  king  of  Mycenae.  At  all 
events,  the  Homeric  heroes  were  Greek  in  language,  religion  and 
way  of  life,  and  it  is  becoming  ever  clearer  that  they  were  historical 
figures  who  lived  in  a  sort  of  Viking  epoch  distinguished  for  its 
long  voyages  and  seaborne  raids,  its  love  of  adventure  and  thirst  for 
booty.  By  the  time  the  great  age  of  the  Mycenaean  heroes  began  and 
the  massive  domed  grave— the  Treasury  of  Atreus— and  the  Lion 
Gate  were  built  at  Mycenae,  about  1350  e.g.,  the  burgeoning  strength 
•of  that  seat  of  power  had  already  made  itself  felt  throughout  the 
eastern  Mediterranean. 

Shortly  before  this,  about  1400  B.C.,  the  palaces  of  Knossos  col- 
lapsed in  ruins  for  the  last  time.  This  third  and  final  destruction  of 


Crete 


iVIinoan  culture  was,  in  the  opinion  of  many  scholars,  the  work  of 
Greeks.  No  nation  senses  the  waning  of  its  strength,  of  its  intellectual 
interests  or  of  its  art  while  it  still  survives,  but  in  retrospect  we 
know  that  about  1400  b.c.  Crete  began  to  lose  its  vitahty  and  crea- 
tive energy,  whereas  the  Peloponnesus  was  witnessing  the  birth  of 
magnificent  and  richly  appointed  palaces  destined  for  the  rulers  of 
Pylos,  Mycenae,  Tiryns  and  Orchomenos.  The  relationship  between 
the  Greeks'  Mycenaean  culture  and  the  Cretans'  Minoan  culture  is 
by  no  means  as  obvious  as  is  generally  supposed.  The  whole  of  the 
pre-Homeric  way  of  life  has  taken  its  name  from  the  citadel  of 
Mycenae  because  Schliemann  discovered  six  shaft  graves  there  in 
1876,  royal  graves  unopened  since  the  sixteenth  century  b.c.  and 
containing  the  now  celebrated  hoard  of  gold  vessels  and  funerary 
gifts.  It  is  assumed  that  the  nine  men,  eight  women  and  two  children 
buried  there  were  members  of  a  great  ruling  dynasty,  for  five  of 
the  men  wore  golden  masks.  Wace,  who  followed  Schliemann's 
example  by  unearthing  large  areas  of  Mycenae,  inquires  on  page  1 14 
of  his  book  Mycenae,  published  in  1949,  as  to  the  real  source  of  this 
fortified  city's  wealth.  Why  was  it  so  powerful,  large  and  prosperous 
that  Homer  himself  extolled  its  wealth?  The  countryside  around 
Mycenae  is  not  overabundantly  endowed  with  agricultural  products. 
On  the  other  hand,  not  far  north  of  Mycenae,  in  the  vicinity  of 
Nemea,  an  old  copper  mine  has  been  discovered.  Wace  thinks  that 
the  Argive  Hills  behind  Mycenae  have  not  yet  been  explored  suffi- 
ciently and  that  it  is  possible  that  they  conceal  other  ancient  copper 
mines  which  were  exploited  by  the  lords  of  Mycenae.  Copper,  one 
need  hardly  add,  was  an  excellent  basis  for  power  and  wealth  during 


114  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  Bronze  Age.  The  gold  that  was  found  at  Mycenae  undoubtedly 
came  from  far  away,  for  Argolis  itself  possessed  none. 

Did  the  Greeks  carry  their  Mycenaean  culture  to  Crete  or  did 
they,  as  it  were,  import  elements  of  culture  from  that  island?  There 
is  even  a  vague  possibility  that  the  Cretans  themselves  brought  their 
art  and  way  of  life  to  Greece. 

Most  authorities  now  assume  that  the  Greeks  adopted  Minoan 
culture  as  a  result  of  raids,  wars  and  commercial  dealings  with  the 
island.  It  is  known  that  a  refined  way  of  life  always  held  a  con- 
siderable attraction  for  Indo-Europeans  and  that,  in  general,  a  high 
standard  of  living  has  always  been  the  magic  door  at  which  races 
with  harder  beds  and  ruder  customs  one  day  come  knocking. 

In  the  opinion  of  the  late  Sir  Arthur  Evans,  the  distinguished 
British  archaeologist  who  excavated  Knossos,  it  was  the  Minoans 
themselves  who  carried  their  cultural  assets  northward  to  Greece. 
If,  however,  the  Minoans  had  really  crossed  from  Crete  to  the  main- 
land, colonized  the  Peloponnesus  and  introduced  Minoan  culture 
into  the  peninsula,  the  palaces  of  the  early  Greeks  would  probably 
have  been  more  labyrinthine  in  character,  like  that  of  Knossos,  and 
would  not  have  exhibited  the  clean-cut  outlines  of  Pylos  and  Tiryns. 

Many  things  are  common  to  both  the  Minoan  and  Mycenaean 
cultures:  brightly  painted  murals  and  vases,  the  secondary  role  of 
sculpture,  ivory  carvings,  long  sea  voyages,  and  a  pleasure-loving  and 
wealthy  aristocracy. 

It  is  probably  nearer  the  truth  to  assume  that,  while  Greece  was 
permeated  by  the  culture  of  ancient  Crete,  the  Greeks  themselves 
brought  a  great  many  things  with  them  when  they  migrated  from 
the  north.  All  these  things  differentiate  their  culture  from  that  of 
Crete.  For  example,  they  brought  their  mode  of  dress  with  them. 
Warriors  and  hunters  wore  the  short-sleeved  chiton  or  brief  shirt, 
and  women  depicted  driving  a  wagon  in  a  wall  painting  at  Tiryns 
are  similarly  dressed.  Cretan  costumes,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
much  more  elaborate  and  much  more  finely  and  artistically  made. 
The  fibula  or  safety  pin  did  not  exist  in  Crete,  whereas  the  Greeks 
used  it  widely,  as  witness  the  fact  that  fourteen  examples  of  this 
type  of  pin  were  found  at  Mycenae,  four  at  Thebes,  one  at  Tiryns 
and  several  at  various  other  pre-Homeric  sites.  Amber,  too,  was  very 
probably  brought  from  the  north  by  the  Greeks:  in  Crete  it  was  a 
rarity.  The  horse  was  known  in  Greece  far  earlier  than  in  Crete. 


GREECE  115 

A^ycenaean  graves  yielded  numerous  female  statuettes,  iMinoan 
graves  very  few.  Wars  were  conducted  on  the  mainland,  hence  the 
fortresses  and  citadels  there,  strongholds  so  stoutly  built  that  only 
starvation  could  reduce  them;  life  in  Crete  was  far  more  peaceable. 
It  was  from  the  north  that  the  Greeks  brousfht  the  idea  of  the 
megaron,  the  main  hall  found  in  large  houses  of  the  second  millen- 
nium B.C.,  a  throne  room  heated  by  a  fire  burning  in  a  central  hearth. 
(The  term  viegaron  is  derived  from  the  Greek  word  ?negas,  mean- 
ing "large.") 

Almost  all  the  early  Indo-European  religions  have  the  same  su- 
preme deity,  a  being  known  to  Indians,  Greeks,  lUyrians  and  Romans 
alike  as  Dyaus,  Zeus,  Jovis  and  similar  variants.  The  Romans'  Jupiter 
was  derived  from  the  additional  title  "father"  which  both  the  In- 
dians and  Greeks  appended  in  very  early  times  to  the  original  name, 
making  Dyaus  pitar.  This  ancient  tradition  also  gave  rise  to  the  idea 
of  the  tribal  father  or  patriarch,  a  feature  of  the  social  order  among 
all  Indo-European  peoples.  Also  associated  with  this  was  the  cult  of 
the  hearth,  the  sanctity  of  which  was  a  conception  hailing  from  pre- 
Greek  times.  Anyone  who  inspects  the  fireplace  in  one  of  the 
Mycenaean  palaces  will  grasp  the  profound  relationship  between 
paterfamilias,  God  and  hearth,  symbolized  in  these  ruins  by  the 
proximity  of  the  throne  to  the  large  circular  fireplace. 

During  their  golden  age— between,  say,  the  building  of  the  old 
palaces  about  2000  b.c.  and  the  decline  of  their  civilization  about 
1400  B.C.— the  Cretans  lived  a  life  of  almost  unimaginable  luxury. 
The  palaces  of  Knossos,  Phaistos,  Hagia  Triada  and  Aiallia,  the 
family  seats  and  villas,  the  amazing  frescoes,  the  cups,  bowls,  jugs 
and  vessels  with  their  splendid,  inimitable  colors,  all  bear  witness 
to  what  were  probably  the  most  cultivated  tastes  of  the  age. 

It  is  also  worthy  of  note  that  in  ancient  Cretan  society  the  woman's 
status  equaled  that  of  man  and  that  her  appearance  was  enhanced  by 
clothing,  jewelry  and  various  beauty  treatments  to  a  degree  unrivaled 
until  the  present  day.  It  is  no  coincidence  that  a  fragment  from  a 
circa  1500  b.c.  fresco  in  the  six-pillared  chamber  of  state  in  the 
west  wing  of  the  palace  at  Knossos  has  been  christened  "the  Pari- 
sienne."  It  depicts  the  head  of  a  woman  with  large  dark  eyes,  long 
braided  hair  falling  to  her  shoulders,  a  red-tinted  mouth  and  very 
elegant  clothes.  Cretan  women's  dresses  create  such  a  modern 
impression  that  they  might  well  have  originated  in  our  own  day. 


ii6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Skirts  varied  according  to  the  prevailing  fashion.  Sometimes  bell- 
shaped  skirts  were  in  vogue,  sometimes  crinolines,  sometimes  the 
Cretan  version  of  the  "princess  line."  Waists  were  invariably  slim 
and  tightly  laced.  Clothes  were  always  sewn,  never  pinned,  draped 
or  held  by  clasps  as  were  those  of  Greek  women.  The  Cretans  of 
3,500  years  ago  lived  in  an  age  of  haute  couture  and  must  have  kept 
a  veritable  army  of  professional  dressmakers  fully  occupied.  They 
also  lived  in  an  age  which  boasted  fine  cosmetics,  perfumes  and  hair 
preparations.  On  Mochlos  archaeologists  even  found  tweezers  for 
plucking  out  superfluous  hair! 

The  subterranean  treasure  chambers  in  the  central  sanctum  of  the 
palace  at  Knossos  have  yielded  a  female  statuette  in  faience.  This 
small  figure,  which  dates  from  between  1600  and  1580  b.c.  and  is 
only  eleven  and  a  half  inches  tall,  portrays  a  girl  holding  a  snake 
in  either  hand.  A  talented  modern  fashion  designer  might  find  it  a 
rich  source  of  inspiration.  Minoan  tiaras,  earrings,  necklaces,  brace- 
lets, pendants  and  rings  all  display  the  most  intricate  workmanship. 
One  is  continually  struck  by  the  white  skin  and  lustrous  dark  eyes 
and  hair  of  the  Cretan  women.  It  is  noteworthy  that  they  left  their 
breasts  uncovered,  and  that  one  of  the  frescoes  at  Tiryns  also  shows 
a  lady-in-waiting  with  her  breasts  exposed  by  a  short  jacket. 

We  can  tell  from  murals,  statuettes  and  the  famous  Poros  sar- 
cophagus, which  was  found  in  a  burial  chamber  near  the  palace  at 
Hagia  Triada,  that  Cretan  women  were  extremely  graceful  in  their 
movements.  The  same  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from  our  knowledge 
of  the  acrobatic  "bullfights"— probably  a  form  of  sacred  cult— 
in  which  young  girls  were  obliged  to  participate.  In  these,  female 
acrobats  used  to  seize  a  charging  bull  by  the  horns,  vault  onto  its 
back  and  then  leap  off.  Slave  girls  were  probably  schooled  from  a 
very  early  age  in  this  technique,  which  presents  so  much  danger  and 
difficulty  that  it  has  not  since  been  imitated  in  any  other  country 
or  period. 

Women  set  the  tone  in  Minoan  society.  They  attended  religious 
festivals  and  games  unescorted.  They  were  dancers,  priestesses  and 
spectators.  They  played  a  predominant  role  at  all  religious  functions, 
and  it  seems  likely  that  the  fervent,  indeed  passionate,  character  of 
Cretan  religion  stemmed  from  feminine  influence. 

We  are  ignorant  of  the  true  nature  of  the  Cretan  faith.  We  only 
know  that  there  were  no  temples  in  Crete  and  that  holy  places  con- 


GREECE  117 

sisted  of  caves,  sacred  groves  and  mountains.  Important  religious 
rites  were  conducted  in  the  royal  palace,  as  evidenced  by  the  altars, 
sacrificial  tables,  shelves,  rhytons  and  sacrificial  jugs  which  have 
been  found  there.  The  king  himself  was  also  a  priest.  Sacred  emblems 
included  the  tree,  the  pillar  and  the  snake,  but  the  symbol  of  the 
double-edged  ax  and  the  horns  has  never  yet  been  explained  satis- 
factorily. Crete  also  had  a  Mistress  of  Animals,  a  goddess  whose 
origins  lie  deep  in  European  prehistory. 

Since  the  Linear  B  tablets  of  Knossos,  Pylos,  Mycenae  and  Tiryns 
were  deciphered,  we  have  been  able  to  catch  glimpses  of  everyday 
life  in  1400  b.c.  and  after,  reading  between  the  lines  of  the  Homeric 
epics  and  glimpsing  something  of  the  remarkable  administrative 
organization  of  the  time.  The  businesslike  tone  of  the  text  of  the 
clay  tablets  almost  savors  of  the  East. 

With  the  scientific  publication  of  about  three  hundred  of  these 
tablets.  Dr.  John  Chadwick  of  Cambridge  University  and  the  late 
Michael  Ventris,  who  lost  his  life  in  an  untimely  automobile  ac- 
cident, opened  up  an  almost  unknown  world.  We  know  that 
princes  ruled  at  Knossos  in  Crete  just  as  they  did  at  Pylos  in 
the  southeastern  Peloponnesus.  A  tablet  from  Pylos  may  even  have 
supplied  us  with  the  name  of  one  of  these  princes  or  kings: 
Ekhelawon.  There  were  princes  and  retainers,  feudal  lords,  mayors 
and  slaves.  There  were  also  officials  who  governed  towns  on  behalf 
of  Pylos  and  Knossos,  and  were  called  pa-si-re-ii,  a  title  which  we 
rediscover  in  the  Homeric  basileiis  and  the  Christian  basilica. 

Work  was  strictly  apportioned  among  specialist  craftsmen.  Many 
types  of  craftsmen  are  mentioned  in  the  tablets,  including  wood 
carvers,  masons,  carpenters,  bronzesmiths,  bowyers,  cabinetmakers 
and  potters.  Shepherds,  goatherds  and  hunters  are  also  listed,  and 
there  seem  to  have  been  professional  incense  burners,  too.  Women 
ground  corn,  made  cloth,  did  the  spinning,  weaving  and  wool  card- 
ing, performed  sundry  duties  in  the  palace  and  acted  as  bath 
attendants.  Cloth  fulling  was  a  male  occupation,  and  clothes  were 
probably  made  by  men  as  well  as  women.  There  is  also  an  allusion 
to  a  doctor. 

Slavery  undoubtedly  existed.  The  children  of  unemancipated 
parents  became  slaves  by  birth,  a  rule  which  applied  even  if  only 
one  parent  was  a  slave.  The  huge  labor  force  needed  to  build  palaces 
was  provided  by  prisoners  taken  in  raids,  and  their  womenfolk  and 


ii8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

children  were  taught  a  trade.  The  majority  of  the  Pylos  slaves  were 
called  slaves  or  slave  women  of  the  god  or  goddess,  as  the  case  might 
be,  but  it  is  not  known  what  their  precise  duties  were. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  by  Mycenaean  times,  or  about  1300 
B.C.,  almost  all  the  Greek  gods  figure  in  the  clay  tablets:  Zeus,  Hera, 
Poseidon,  Ares,  Hermes,  Athene,  Artemis,  Dionysus  and  Hephaestus. 
Ventris  and  Blegen  meticulously  give  the  scientific  designation  of 
each  tablet  in  which  the  name  of  a  particular  deity  appears.  Sacrifices 
were  probably  confined  to  wheat,  barley,  flour,  oil,  wine,  figs  and 
honey,  and  did  not  include  human  beings  or  animals.  Tablet  G  866 
indicates  that  even  wool  was  presented  to  the  gods.  The  priest-king 
was  assisted  by  a  large  number  of  auxiliary  priests. 

The  tablets  have  no  direct  historical  or  literary  value  and  the 
texts  are  brief  and  meager,  it  is  true,  but  a  great  deal  of  information 
can  be  derived  from  them  if  one  is  prepared  to  read  between  the 
lines.  One  tablet,  for  instance,  bears  the  note:  ^8  girl-children,  55 
girls,  16  boys.  Another  remarks:  8  women,  2  girls,  5  boys,  and  goes 
on  to  list  the  foodstuffs  that  were  evidently  allotted  to  them:  ^00 
quarts  of  grain  and  ^00  quarts  of  figs.  Yet  another  tablet  runs:  In 
Pylos,  57  female  bath  attendants,  i^  girls,  /j  boys;  i,i']o  quarts  of 
grain,  1,110  quarts  of  figs.  Tablet  Ad  686  reports:  In  Ke-re-za,  Pylos, 
/J  prisoners^  sons;  Alkawon  did  not  appear  or  did  not  report.  On 
tablet  Eo  02  we  find  a  woman  called  E-ra-ta-ra  and  the  description 
slave  woman  of  the  priestess.  Tablet  Ae  04  tells  us  that  Ke-ro-wo,  the 
herdsman  in  A-si-ja-ti-ja,  tends  the  ox  of  Thalamatas.  Tablet  An  18 
mentions:  16  fire  makers,  10  me-ri-du-ma-te  (?),  5  mi-ka-ta  (?),  4 
tackle  makers,  5  weaponsmiths,  5  bakers.  We  do  not  know  the 
meaning  of  me-ri-du-ma-te  and  mi-ka-ta,  but  they  were  obviously 
trades— perhaps  of  a  kind  which  no  longer  exists  today.  Several  tablets 
list  coast-guard  commanders  and  their  subordinates  by  name.  There 
are  tablets  containing  notes  on  landed  property  and  seed  planting, 
tablets  listing  tributes  and  sacrifices,  tablets  referring  to  textiles, 
vessels  and  furniture.  Tn  996  mentions:  5  tubs  for  bath  water  with 
outlet,  5  water  contai?iers,  5  cooking  vessels,  2  amphorae,  i  hydria 
and  7  bronze  jugs.  Tablet  7 1 3  refers  to  stone  tables  and  ivory  inlays, 
ivory  tables  with  feather  patterns  and  small  ebony  tables,  likewise 
richly  decorated. 

The  Dorian  migration— or  the  return  of  Heracles'  descendants  to 
the  land  of  Argolis— set  the  seal  on  the  flourishing  Mycenaean  culture 


GREECE  119 

and  destroyed  the  old  citadels  and  palaces.  What  remained  was  the 
Cretans'  great  artistic  contribution  to  Mycenaean  culture  and  their 
lasting  influence  on  every  aspect  of  the  plastic  and  graphic  arts 
throughout  the  Greek  world.  What  remained,  too,  was  their  almost 
unrivaled  proficiency  in  handicrafts,  the  idea  of  the  fortified  city  (a 
conception  which  survived  until  the  Middle  Ages),  their  sense  of 
style,  their  creative  impetus,  the  many  facets  of  their  mythology  and 
religion,  and  their  general  quest  for  spirituality. 

The  effects  of  the  Mycenaean  way  of  life  are  still  felt  in  our  own 
age,  for  it  was  not  only  the  first  but  one  of  the  strongest  cultural 
impulses  that  Europe  ever  received. 


GREECE 


THE  CULT  OF  APOLLO 

From  its  earliest  beginnings,  Delphi  was  always  the  world^s  fore- 
most seat  of  divinatio77.  The  god  and  adviser  of  inaiikiiid  who  came 
to  Delphi  had  of  necessity  to  bestow  oracles  there  or  have  them 
bestowed  in  his  name.  He  came  there  less  in  order  to  de?nand 
and  receive  worship  than  to  keep  a  personal  watch  over  the 
oracle.  His  spirit  pervaded  the  oracle  far  more  than  the  saiictuary. 
. . .  As  lord  of  the  place,  Apollo  chose  to  reveal  his  thoughts 
neither  through  the  ainbigiious  rustlifig  of  leaves  nor  the  hum  of 
swarming  bees.  He  rejected  the  cojifused  pictures  which  rufi 
through  dreams  or  mirror  themselves  in  the  surface  of  springs. 
When  speaking  to  mankind  he  used  the  speech  of  man. 

—Pierre  de  La  Coste-Messeliere,  Delphes, 
pp.  17  and  20,  Paris,  1957 

Ma7iy  different  things  are  related  of  Delphi  itself  and  of  the 
oracle  of  Apollo.  In  earliest  times,  for  instance,  the  seat  of  divi?ia- 
tion  is  said  to  have  belonged  to  Ge. 

— Pausanias  (circa  a.d.  150) 
Description  of  Greece,  Book  x 


THE  ultimate  realization  of  the  Hellenic  world  might  be  said  to  be 
embodied  in  two  words  which  express  the  summit  of  knowledge 
attained  by  mankind  in  its  struggle  for  wisdom.  Preserved  for  us 
in  an  inscription  on  the  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi,  they  read: 

KNOW  THYSELF. 

There  is  an  infinity  of  meaning  in  these  two  words.  They  mean 
that  God  can  be  found  only  in  the  innermost  recesses  of  the  human 
mind.  They  mean  that  man  comes  closest  to  the  truth  when  he 
barkens  to  his  inner  voice.  They  cry  out  for  the  thing  most  urgently 
needed  by  a  civilization  sated  with  the  marvels  of  science:  modera- 
tion. They  warn  man  to  know  his  limitations  and  acknowledge  his 
mortality,  but  they  also  demand  that  he  give  freely  of  what  lies 
within  him  and  so  fulfill  his  destiny. 

"Know  thyself"  was  one  of  the  maxims  attributed  to  the  Seven 
Sages,  as  the  seven  most  prominent  figures  in  the  first  half  of  the 
sixth  century  b.c.  were  called.  These  were:  the  aristocrat  Solon, 
who  gave  his  native  city  of  Athens  its  first  constitution;  the  tyrant 


GREECE  121 

Periander  of  Corinth,  who  founded  cities,  sponsored  Delphi  and 
Olympia,  ushered  in  a  golden  age  in  art,  handicrafts  and  trade  and 
prohibited  idleness  and  luxury;  Bias  of  Priene  in  Ionia,  who,  when 
forced  to  flee  his  native  city  empty-handed,  remarked,  "I  am  taking 
with  me  all  that  is  mine";  the  statesman  Pittacus  of  Mytilene,  who 
enacted  a  law  by  which  any  crime  committed  in  a  state  of  intoxica- 
tion incurred  a  double  penalty;  Thales  of  A4iletus,  who  accurately 
predicted  the  solar  echpse  of  May  28,  585  b.c;  Chilon,  a  Spartan 
hero;  and  the  poet  Cleobulus  of  Lindus,  who  also  composed  riddles. 
The  distilled  experience  of  these  seven  great  minds  was  embodied 
in  aphorisms  engraved  on  the  Temple  of  Delphi. 

Before  anyone  was  permitted  to  approach  the  Delphic  god  or 
question  him,  therefore,  the  god  demanded  the  utmost  that  any 
human  being  can  undertake:  a  completely  frank  examination  of  his 
own  conscience.  The  admonition  "Know  thyself"  serves  to  show 
what  sort  of  spirit  ruled  the  place  and  to  convey  the  unfathomable 
wisdom,  infinite  truth  and  human  understanding  of  the  Greek  god. 

Delphi  stands  on  the  lower  southern  slopes  of  Parnassus,  almost 
two  thousand  feet  above  the  Gulf  of  Corinth.  Here  in  the  lonely 
splendor  of  the  mountain  scenery,  the  mind  is  impelled  irresistibly 
toward  God,  eternity  and  the  supernatural. 

The  site  is  one  of  the  great  enigmas  in  human  history.  It  is  as 
though  the  god  who  ruled  there  withdrew  before  the  downfall  of 
ancient  Greece  and  the  victory  of  alien  religions  were  complete,  to 
ensure  that  no  one  should  degrade  him,  approach  him  or  measure  him 
by  petty,  human  standards  for  all  eternity  to  come.  Poets  and 
scholars,  ancient  historians,  students  of  religion  and  archaeologists 
have  tried  for  two  thousand  years  to  discover  the  secret  of  the 
Delphic  god,  but  Delphi  has  never  raised  the  veil  of  its  exalted 
sanctity.  Despite  all  human  endeavor,  it  has  remained  sealed  and 
silent  in  the  face  of  research  and  excavation.  It  speaks  no  more,  nor 
will  it  ever  give  voice  again. 

The  name  Delphi  conjures  up  before  our  eyes  a  nebulous  and 
impalpable  vision  of  the  Pythia.  Actually  Pythia  was  not  a  proper 
name  but  a  title  or  designation  signifying  roughly  "priestess  of  the 
Pythian  cult."  We  tend  to  think  of  the  oracle  alone,  but  who  was 
the  god  that  dwelt  and  spoke  there?  Delphi  was  a  holy  place,  not 
merely  a  source  of  opportune  and  practical  advice.  It  was  the  largest 
and  most  important  sanctuary  in  the  Greek  world,  and  the  god  who 


122  THE  SILENT  PAST 

owned  it  was  Apollo.  Even  though  we  are  the  spiritual  descendants 
of  the  Hellenes  and  so  of  their  god,  even  though  we  still  are  in- 
fluenced by  the  culture  of  Greece  in  all  we  do  and  think,  we  know 
less  about  this  god  than  about  great  religious  figures  of  the  East 
such  as  Buddha,  Zarathustra  and  Mohammed.  Of  all  the  gods  of 
mankind  Apollo  is  the  hardest  to  comprehend,  yet  from  time  im- 
memorial his  oracle  provided  an  abundant  source  of  religious  energy. 

Delphi  was  world-famous  as  early  as  i6oo  B.C.,  although  people 
of  that  time  knew  it  not  as  Delphi  but  Pytho,  a  name  probably 
derived  from  Python,  a  being  that  guarded  the  sacred  place.  Python 
was  a  large  male  snake  and  was  the  son  of  Gaea  or  Ge,  a  goddess  who 
symbolized  the  earth,  the  abyss  or  subterranean  realm.  She  and  her 
kinswoman  Themis  were  the  first  and  earliest  prophetesses  to  utter 
oracles  on  the  slopes  of  Parnassus. 

This  is  yet  another  version  of  the  ancient  myth  of  the  snake  that 
represents  God's  eternal  adversary.  The  snake  symbolizes  not  only 
the  earth,  demonic  powers  and  dark  forces  but  also  healing,  which 
is  why  it  has  become  the  emblem  of  medicine.  It  is  the  monster 
that,  like  the  Midgard  Serpent,  embraces  the  earth  and  causes  earth- 
quakes. It  is  all-knowing  as  well,  and  thus  responsible  for  introducing 
sin  into  the  world.  Many  races  have  regarded  it  as  an  oracular  crea- 
ture. Just  as  the  snake  in  Genesis :iii  brought  about  the  Fall,  so 
Apollo  became  guilty  of  sin  when  he  killed  the  Python.  He  then 
went  to  Crete,  where  he  underwent  a  form  of  purification  or  atone- 
ment for  the  murder.  Religious  ceremonies  of  peculiar  sanctity  were 
performed  in  ancient  Crete  while  the  embers  of  the  once-great 
Minoan  religion  still  glowed. 

Snakes  were  not  only  feared  and  respected  for  their  omniscience: 
the  people  of  the  ancient  world  kept  them  as  domestic  animals  and 
used  them,  like  weasels,  to  keep  down  mice.  Children  played  with 
them  and  women  used  them  to  cool  their  necks  and  bosoms  when 
the  weather  was  particularly  hot. 

At  Delphi,  however.  Python  the  snake  and  Ge  the  earth  formed 
the  origin  of  the  world's  most  famous  oracular  site.  It  was  there 
that  the  spirit  of  the  earth  gave  voice  long  ago,  speaking  to  those 
in  need  of  help  and  divine  guidance. 

The  French  archaeologist  de  La  Coste  found  traces  of  pre-Greek 
sacrifices  in  Delphi.  It  is  probable  that  the  earliest  form  of  divina- 
tion involved  casting  lots,  and  that  the  future  was  interpreted  from 


GREECE  123 

small  stones  lying  in  a  basin  supported  on  a  tripod.  Archaeologists 
found  the  spout  of  a  Minoan  fountain  in  the  shape  of  a  lioness's 
head  among  the  ruins  of  the  Temple  of  Apollo,  a  piece  dating  from 
a  period  fourteen,  fifteen  or  sixteen  hundred  years  before  Christ's 
birth.  At  the  spot  where  the  altar  once  stood,  the  soil  was  found  to 
contain  traces  of  many  organic  substances  and  ash  from  burnt  bones 
interspersed  with  fragments  of  Mycenaean  pottery,  ample  proof  that 
sacrifice  was  made  there  in  Mycenaean  times,  or  in  approximately 
1500  B.C.  A  still  more  important  find  was  a  small  Minoan  terracotta 
figure  of  a  nude  woman  sitting  in  a  three-legged  chair.  Since  the 
Pythia  does  not  go  back  as  far  as  that,  one  is  led  to  wonder  if  it 
portrays  Themis  or  the  earth-goddess  Ge. 

With  the  decipherment  of  Linear  B,  the  relationship  between 
ancient  Greece  and  Crete  has  become  much  clearer.  It  is  probable 
that  the  priesthood  of  the  Delphic  oracle  was  yet  another  importa- 
tion from  the  world  of  Minoan  culture— that  is  to  say,  from  Crete. 
The  Homeric  Hymn  to  Apollo  dating  from  the  seventh  century  b.c. 
tells  us  that  as  the  god  was  looking  about  him  for  priests  he  saw  in 
the  distance  a  shipload  of  Cretans  outward  bound  from  Knossos. 
Assuming  the  shape  of  a  dolphin,  Apollo  lured  the  ship  to  Crissa, 
where  the  sailors  built  an  altar  to  Apollo  Delphinios.  And  this,  so 
legend  has  it,  was  the  origin  of  the  name  Delphi. 

We  cannot  tell  when  Apollo  became  the  god  of  Delphi,  but  the 
oracle  was  undoubtedly  in  existence  long  before  Apollo  took  up 
his  abode  there.  Apollo  was  the  most  "Greek"  of  all  gods,  wor- 
shiped at  many  places  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor,  but  particularly 
in  Sparta  and  other  Doric  cities.  He  was  the  most  radiant  and 
splendid  figure  in  the  Greek  heavens  and  in  the  dwelhng  place  of 
the  gods  that  lay  above  Olympus,  at  9,570  feet  the  highest  peak  in 
the  Greek  peninsula  and  the  massif  whose  isolated  bulk  separates 
Macedonia  from  Thessaly.  Apollo  was  the  supreme  ideal  of  young 
masculine  beauty. 

We  do  not  know  what  Apollo  was  originally,  although  most  prob- 
ably he  was  the  sun-god.  But  we  know  what  the  Greeks  made  of 
him.  He  was  the  guardian  of  herds  and  god  of  herdsmen,  reminding 
us  that  throughout  Greece  and  the  Near  East  and  from  Bethlehem 
to  Persia,  herdsmen  have  always  been  close  to  God.  Apollo  was  the 
healer  of  the  sick,  the  preserver  of  crops  and  the  patron  of  music, 
spiritual  life  and  philosophy.  He  was  the  coordinator  of  measure- 


124  THE  SILENT  PAST 

ment  and  time,  the  friend  of  planned  activity,  the  custodian  of  high 
morality  and,  above  all,  the  god  of  the  oracle. 

Apollo  possessed  oracles  at  many  places  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor, 
and  the  methods  of  obtaining  an  oracle  were  very  varied.  In  Argos, 
the  priestess  sought  inspiration  by  drinking  the  blood  of  slaughtered 
lambs.  At  Hysiae,  Apollo's  decision  was  ascertained  by  drinking  from 
a  sacred  spring.  At  Thebes,  soothsayers  read  the  future  by  inspecting 
the  entrails  of  sacrificial  beasts.  At  Colophon,  in  the  oracle  of  the 
Apollo  of  Claros,  soothsaying  was  performed  not  by  a  woman,  as 
in  Delphi,  but  by  a  priest  who  was  told  only  the  name  of  the  oracle 
seeker.  He  would  then  descend  into  a  cave  and,  having  drunk  water 
from  a  sacred  spring,  give  advice  in  verse  form  on  the  unspoken 
problems  of  the  applicant.  This  we  learn  in  Tacitus's  Amials,  II,  liv. 

At  Patara  in  Lycia  the  priestess  was  locked  up  in  the  temple  at 
night  "whenever  Apollo  came,"  so  Herodotus  tells  us  in  his  His- 
tories, II,  clxxxii.  Patara  was,  so  to  speak,  Apollo's  winter  quarters. 
He  visited  Delphi  only  in  summertime. 

It  is  hard  to  say  where  the  name  Apollo  came  from.  It  could  have 
come  from  the  Doric  word  apella,  meaning  "herd,"  which  would 
suggest  that  he  was  originally  a  herdsmen's  god.  Wilamowitz  asserts 
that  it  came  from  the  Lycian  tongue,  which  would  make  him  not 
Greek  but  foreign.  On  the  other  hand,  Ernst  Sittig,  the  leading 
authority  on  the  Lycian  language,  has  demonstrated  that  the  god's 
Lycian  name  was  borrowed  from  the  Greeks,  and  that  Apollo  must 
therefore  have  been  a  Greek  god  in  earlier  times.  But  in  Homer's 
Iliad  Apollo  is  always  on  the  Trojan  side,  never  on  the  Greeks'. 
Since  Troy  stood  not  far  from  the  Dardanelles  in  what  is  no\s" 
Turkey,  we  can  deduce  that  Apollo  at  one  time  belonged  not  to 
Greece  but  to  Asia  Minor. 

There  are  two  more  very  interesting  indications  that  Apollo  was 
Asiatic  in  origin.  The  Greeks  got  their  lunisolar  calendar  from 
Delphi,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  Delphic  Temple  of  Apollo,  in  the 
second  half  of  the  seventh  century  b.c.  The  oldest  and  most  renowned 
center  of  astronomical  study  was  Babylon,  where  a  lunisolar  calendar 
had  been  astronomically  determined  long  before  that.  The  Swedish 
historian  and  authority  on  Greek  religion  Martin  P.  Nilsson  points 
out  that  festivals  of  Apollo  fell  on  the  seventh  day  of  the  month. 
The  especial  significance  attributed  to  the  seventh  day  or  sibiitii 
is  purely  Babylonian.  (Our  own  Sunday  has  a  similar  origin.)  The 


GREECE  125 

Greeks,  however,  divided  their  month  into  three  spans  of  ten  days, 
each  decade  corresponding  to  our  week.  Thus  the  seventh  day  is  a 
totally  alien  element  in  such  a  decimal  system,  and  the  fact  that 
seven  was  Apollo's  sacred  number  is  yet  another  indication  that 
he  originated  in  Asia  Minor.  His  mother's  name,  too,  is  of  similar 
origin,  for  Leto  was  worshiped  as  a  goddess  in  her  own  right  prin- 
cipally on  the  southwest  coast  of  Asia  Minor.  Nilsson  thinks  that 
Apollo  came  from  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor,  from  the  Kingdom 
of  the  Hittites,  which  owed  a  great  deal  to  Babylonian  culture. 

If  this  is  so,  we  can  only  wonder  at  what  the  Greeks  made  of 
their  once  foreign  god.  Thev  based  a  great  process  of  spiritual 
evolution  on  him,  developed  his  morality  to  encompass  the  limits 
of  human  understanding  and  forgiveness,  and  made  of  him  a  god 
who  substituted  purification  by  atonement  for  the  traditional  blood 
feud,  a  god  who  demanded  repentance  and  granted  divine  forgive- 
ness even  to  the  tormented  murderer— once  he  had  submitted  to 
purification  and  reconciliation.  If  Apollo  came  from  the  East,  he 
must  once  have  been  a  god  of  vengeance.  The  Greeks  turned  him 
into  what  Pindar  described  as  "the  most  friendly  of  the  gods,"  a 
European  god  and  a  true  healer  of  the  soul. 

But,  whatever  his  origins,  Apollo  was  endowed  from  the  very 
first  with  the  power  to  interpret  all  manner  of  signs  and  occurrences. 
Homer  himself  calls  him  "the  seer."  He  was  a  god  who  not  only 
accepted  prayer  but  answered  it,  although  ecstatic  prophecy  became 
one  of  his  attributes  only  at  a  later  stage.  We  do  not  know  when 
this  form  of  soothsaying,  which  was  performed  in  a  state  known  as 
"mantic  ecstasy,"  was  first  ascribed  to  him,  but  it,  too,  probably 
hailed  from  Asia  Minor,  an  area  famous  for  its  oracles. 


GREECE 

THE  DELPHIC  ORACLE 

After  Theophile  Homolle  and  Emile  Bourgiiet,  neither  of  ivho?n 
is  with  us  any  longer,  it  was  Pierre  de  La  Coste-Messeliere,  artist 
and  scholar,  who  devoted  the  better  part  of  a  lifetime's  research 
to  the  sa?7ctuary.  He  was  forttmate  in  his  digging  and  lived  for  a 
long  time  on  very  close  terms  with  the  ancient  stone  ruins. 

Charles  Picard,  Delphes,  Paris,  1957 

DELPHI,  sanctuary  of  the  god  Apollo,  was  the  religious  fulcrum 
and  most  important  seat  of  divination  in  Greece.  It  was  regarded  as 
the  center  of  the  earth  or  "navel  of  the  world."  The  Greek  word 
for  navel  was  omphalos,  and  in  the  holy  of  holies,  the  adyton  or 
cella  of  the  temple  of  Apollo,  near  the  golden  statue  of  the  god, 
there  was  a  stone  which  actually  symbolized  the  navel  of  the  world. 
Apollo  was  more  closely  associated  with  the  cult  of  stones  than  any 
other  god,  and  a  kindly  fate  has  preserved  this  particular  stone  for 
us.  Shaped  like  a  small  mound,  the  ancient  design  of  heroic  graves, 
it  is  only  1 1  inches  high  and  1 5  inches  in  diameter.  This  ancient  and 
sacred  object  was  found  against  the  southern  wall  of  the  cella  by 
the  French  archaeologist  F.  Courby,  who  identified  it  as  the  famous 
Omphalos.  The  stone  not  only  represented  the  center  of  the  world 
but  marked  the  grave  of  the  murdered  Python.  Three  letters  from 
an  archaic  alphabet  have  been  deciphered  on  the  Omphalos:  the 
letters  GA,  signifying  the  name  of  the  earth-mother  who  gave  birth 
to  the  Python,  and  the  mystic  E  of  Delphi,  whose  meaning  not  even 
Plutarch  knew. 

The  Omphalos  may  once  have  stood  over  a  crevice  in  the  rock 
which  emitted  steam,  fumes  or  sweet-smelling  vapors.  These  vapors, 
which  were  assumed  to  emanate  from  the  sacred  snake  or  other 
subterranean  gods,  were  said  to  send  the  Pythia  into  prophetic 
ecstasies.  She  used  to  wash  herself  at  the  Castalian  Spring,  burn  a 
little  laurel  and  barley  meal,  and  then  ascend  into  the  main  chamber 
or  adyton  of  the  temple.  There,  seating  herself  on  a  tripod  in  front 
of  the  Omphalos,  she  drank  water  from  the  spring  of  Massotis,  and 
plunged  into  a  divinely  inspired  state  of  "mantic  ecstasy." 

And  here  we  come  to  Delphi's  greatest  enigma.  The  cleft  in  the 
rock  and  the  steam  that  issued  from  it  are  mentioned  in  many  ancient 

126 


GREECE 


127 


\  1 


Amphlssa\    j 


Delphi 


texts,  none  of  which,  however,  is  really  old.  Do  they  prove  that  such 
a  thing  existed— a  subterraneous  breath  or  pneiima  which  sent  the 
Pythia  into  ecstasies  and  rendered  prophecy  possible?  It  is  extremely 
interesting  to  study  the  tradition  in  the  original  texts  rather  than 
hear  them  at  second  hand. 

Writing  between  60  and  30  B.C.,  Diodorus  reported  that  the 
Delphic  oracle  was  discovered  in  ancient  times  by  some  goats.  (The 
herdsman  who  found  Edessa,  the  ancient  capital  of  Macedonia,  was 
likewise  led  to  the  spot  by  goats.)  In  the  most  sacred  part  of  the 
Delphic  oracle,  Diodorus  continued,  there  once  yawned  a  cleft  in 
the  ground.  Whenever  one  of  the  goats  approached  this  cleft  it 
would  leap  miraculously  and  utter  strange  cries.  Seeing  this,  the 
goatherd  went  up  to  the  cleft  and,  as  he  approached  it,  underwent 
the  same  experience.  He  lost  his  senses,  became  "enraptured"  and 


128  THE  SILENT  PAST 

began  to  have  visions  of  the  future.  Reports  of  this  natural  phenom- 
enon and  its  effects  spread  rapidly,  and  many  people  came  to  inspect 
the  place  and  experience  the  strange  delirium.  However,  after  the 
ground  had  swallowed  up  a  large  number  of  those  who  ventured  too 
near  the  crevice,  the  inhabitants  of  the  region  decided  to  appoint  a 
virgin  to  be  sole  prophetess  and  distribute  oracles  on  behalf  of  all, 
building  her  a  three-legged  contrivance  or  tripod  which  she  could 
mount  in  order  to  prophesy  in  safety. 

Justin  tells  us  in  Book  xxiv  of  his  Philippic  Histories  that  roughly 
in  the  middle  of  the  heights  of  Parnassus  there  was  a  patch  of  level 
ground  with  a  deep  hole  running  down  into  the  earth.  A  cold  vapor 
rose  from  it  as  though  borne  upward  by  a  strong  wind.  This  vapor 
from  the  interior  of  the  earth  roused  the  souls  of  female  soothsayers 
to  frenzy  and  impelled  them,  inspired  by  the  deity,  to  bestow  an- 
swers upon  people  who  had  consulted  the  oracle. 

The  famous  geographer  Strabo,  who  lived  between  63  b.c.  and 
A.D.  19,  is  our  earliest  source  of  information  on  the  opening  in  the 
ground,  but  unfortunately  Strabo  never  visited  Delphi  in  person 
and  could  only  base  his  reports  on  hearsay.  "They  relate  that  the 
sanctuary  is  an  antron,  a  deep  cavity  with  a  narrow  opening  from 
which  the  breath  of  inspiration  ascends.  Above  the  opening  stands 
the  tall  tripod  which  the  Pythia  mounts  in  order  to  inhale  the  vapor 
and  give  the  oracle  in  verse  or  prose." 

One  of  our  best  witnesses  is  Plutarch  (a.d.  46-120),  who  knew 
the  oracle  well  because  he  was  himself  a  priest  at  Delphi  for  some 
time.  He  wrote:  "The  Oikos  or  room  in  which  those  who  consult 
the  god  are  seated  becomes  filled  with  a  sweet-smelling  vapor.  This 
happens  neither  often  nor  regularly,  but  at  varying  intervals.  The 
adyton  allows  this  vapor  to  stream  forth  like  a  spring,  comparable 
with  the  sweetest  and  most  costly  of  perfumes."  Plutarch  speaks  of 
a  vapor,  therefore,  but  does  not  mention  any  opening  in  the  ground. 

Lucan,  a  Roman  author  who  lived  between  a.d.  39  and  6^  and 
whose  only  surviving  work  is  an  epic  poem  about  the  civil  war 
between  Pompey  and  Caesar,  gives  in  it  (v,  169-174)  a  dramatic 
description  of  a  Pythia  who  becomes  crazed  with  excitement  and 
eventually  falls  prey  to  her  divinely  inspired  frenzy. 

Interesting  though  they  are,  all  these  accounts  date  from  the  post- 
classical  period.  Justin's  Philippic  Histories  did  not  appear  until  the 
third  century  a.d.,  and  even  the  earlier  sources  fall  within  a  hundred 


"^  *• 


[29]  A  fertility  goddess  from  the  palace  of  Mari,  found  in  several  pieces  and 

later  reconstructed.  In  her  hands  she  holds  a  vessel  from  vi^hich  flowed  the 

"water  of  life."  The  water  was  conveyed  to  the  jug  through  a  pipe  ingeniously 

situated  inside  the  statue  itself.  Height:  34". 


[30]  Statue  with  folded  hands  por- 
traying the  city  administrator  of 
Mari,  Ebih-Il,  and  placed  in  the 
temple  at  his  behest.  On  his  back 
are  engraved  the  words:  Ebih-ll, 
the  administrator,  dedicated  to  the 
goddess  Ishtar. 


/y 


•  .'  1-  ■'  J 


[31]  Clay  bathtubs  still  survive  in 
the  palace  bathroom  at  Mari.  On 
the  left,  the  somewhat  primitive 
W.C.  Waste  water  drained  off  into 
a  cesspool  located  over  50  feet 
below  ground. 


'^'y^.^M^!%: 


[32I  Looking  up  through  the  interior  of  a  nuraghe.  These  austere  buildings  provided 
Sardinian  chieftains  with  living  quarters  and  their  warriors  with  an  almost  impregnable 

stronghold. 


'% 


«r  1^ 


*£A 


[33]  A  typical  nuraghe,  a 
massive  circular  tower  with 
inward-sloping  walls,  born 
of  a  people's  love  for  liberty 
about  3,500  years  ago. 


[34]  These  ruins  were  once 
inhabited  by  simple  but 
staunchly  courageous  people. 
Each  ring  of  stones  repre- 
sents one  of  the  numerous 
houses  that  were  built  close 
together  by  the  shelter  of 
the  Barumini  fortress  about 
1270  B.C. 


[35]  Weeping  goddess  with 
her  right  hand  raised  in 
prayer  and  her  young  son  on 
her  lap— a  pre-Christian  "Ala- 
donna"  of  800-500  B.C. 


-J 


[36]  A  bronze  statuette  of 
an  archer,  standing  with 
hand  upraised  as  though  in 
prayer,  dug  up  at  Abini, 
Sardinia.  He  wears  a  coat 
of  mail,  greaves  and  a 
horned  helmet  and  carries 
a  quiver. 


[37]  The  priestesses  of  the  nu- 
raghe  culture,  circa  800  b.c, 
played  an  important  role  in  the 
religion  of  the  ancient  Sardinians. 
This  priestess  is  holding  a  drink 
offering  in  her  left  hand.  The 
bronze  statuette,  which  is  only  4 
inches  tall,  was  found  at  S.  Vit- 
toria  de  Serri  and  is  now  in 
Cagliari  Museum. 


mmf^ 


[38]  We  shall  never  know  what 
this  strange  bronze  sculpture  por- 
trays, but  it  probably  represents  a 
symbolic  religious  struggle.  Six 
inches  long  and  4  inches  high, 
it  is  one  of  the  showpieces  of 
the  Archaeological  Museum  at 
Cagliari. 


[39]  Gold  death  mask  of  a  Mycenaean  prince,  found  by  Schliemann  in 
Grave  V  in  the  citadel  of  Mycenae  and  designated  as  "Agamemnon."  The 
remains   of   the   man   whose   face   the   mask   had   covered   were   also   found. 


GREECE  129 

years  either  side  of  the  beginning  of  our  era.  The  Pythia,  on  the 
other  hand,  had  been  soothsaying  since  about  700  b.c.  and  Delphi 
was  radiating  its  greatest  spiritual  influence  in  the  sixth  century, 
a  period  when  the  treasuries  of  Corinth,  Sicyon  and  Siphnos  were 
built  and  the  kings  of  Lydia  sent  costly  votive  offerings. 

Classical  authors  such  as  Herodotus  (c.  468  b.c),  Euripides 
(c.  450  B.C.),  Plato  (c.  400  B.C.)  and  others  tell  us  much  about  the 
oracle,  the  Pythia,  the  priests  and  the  questions  and  answers,  it  is 
true,  but  they  never  mention  the  cleft  in  the  rock.  Was  there  a 
crevice  in  the  rock  or  the  ground,  and  was  there  any  prophetic 
vapor,  any  mysterious  pneuma,  air  or  breath  from  the  earth's  interior? 

Let  us  hear  what  modern  science  has  to  say.  The  French  archaeol- 
ogist Emil  Bourguet,  who  participated  in  the  excavation  of  Delphi, 
tells  us  that  he  had  expected  the  unearthed  ruins  to  disclose  the 
oracle's  inner  construction,  i.e.  its  mode  of  operation,  but  adds 
resignedly  that  "what  used  to  go  on  in  the  most  important  part  of 
the  prophetic  sanctuary  remains  a  mystery  to  us,  too."  The  archaeol- 
ogists were  constantly  pursued  by  one  thought  as  they  worked: 
"It  seemed  as  though  we  were  confronted  by  the  products  of 
systematic  destruction."  What  was  responsible  for  it— heathendom 
on  the  retreat,  or  a  youthful  Christianity  anxious  to  wipe  out  the 
heathen  god  once  and  for  all?  The  last  Pythia  took  the  secret  to  her 
grave. 

If  there  ever  were  a  fissure  in  the  rock,  signs  of  it  should  still  be 
apparent  today,  Delphi  was  not  built  on  the  limestone  of  the  moun- 
tain itself  but  stood  on  a  sort  of  terrace  composed  of  shale.  This  shale 
could  not,  in  the  opinion  of  A.  P.  Oppe,  have  been  eroded  by  water, 
but  he  concedes  that  a  cavity  might  have  been  formed  at  the  place 
where  the  shale  reposed  on  the  limestone  and  that  this  could  have 
been  the  source  of  rising  vapors.  Oppe  himself  believes  that  the 
fabled  cleft  in  the  rock  was  really  the  Castalian  Spring,  which  can 
still  be  seen  between  two  walls  of  rock  quite  close  to  the  sacred 
precincts  of  Delphi,  and  dismisses  the  vapor  and  the  hole  in  the 
ground  beneath  the  Temple  of  Apollo  as  fabrications  by  the  priests 
and  historians  of  antiquity. 

In  19 1 3  another  French  archaeologist,  F.  Courby,  conducted  a 
careful  examination  of  the  floor  of  the  cella,  where  the  stomioji  or 
cleft  was  assumed  to  have  been.  He  reached  the  conclusion  that  the 
ground  beneath  was  undisturbed  and  declared  that  there  had  never 


I30  THE  SILENT  PAST 

been  a  fissure,  natural  or  artificial,  in  the  stone.  He  found  no  trace 
of  an  opening  and  could  not  see  signs  of  any  former  geological 
subsidences. 

Robert  Flaceliere,  on  the  other  hand,  thinks  that  the  tradition  is 
so  unambiguous  that  there  are  no  grounds  for  doubting  the  existence 
of  the  vapors  and  the  cleft,  and  holds  that  landslides  or  earthquakes 
could  have  effectively  changed  everything.  It  may  be  added  that 
Delphi  is  no  stranger  to  earth  tremors. 

Massive  fragments  fell  from  the  Phaidriades  or  Shining  Rocks 
and  badly  damaged  the  northern  part  of  the  temple  terrace  as  long 
ago  as  the  sixth  century.  Flaceliere  suggests  that  the  opening  in 
the  ground  may  already  have  ceased  to  play  its  role  in  the  oracle 
by  Plutarch's  time,  or  about  a.d.  ioo,  and  that  this  would  account 
for  his  silence  on  the  subject.  I  would  certainly  agree  that  a  biog- 
rapher's or  historian's  silence  is  not  always  evidence  for  the  non- 
existence of  a  phenomenon.  Herodotus  visited  the  Pyramids  at  Gizeh 
but  did  not  mention  the  Sphinx— yet  it  was  there.  In  fact,  when 
Herodotus  was  in  the  area  the  enormous  lion  couchant  had  already 
been  there  for  two  thousand  years!  Plutarch  may  possibly  have  had 
religious  scruples  about  disclosing  the  mysteries  of  the  pnezima, 
since  he  was  at  one  period  a  Delphic  priest  himself  and,  as  such,  had 
to  keep  certain  secrets. 

Finally,  E.  Bourguet  states  flatly  that  there  must  have  been  a  cleft 
in  the  rock  which  emitted  stimulating  vapors,  and  that  we  should 
not  dismiss  the  phenomenon  even  if  proof  of  it  is  no  longer  forth- 
coming. 

Two  facts,  neither  of  which  has  received  sufficient  attention 
hitherto,  seem  to  be  of  the  utmost  importance.  In  the  year  373  b.c. 
the  entire  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi  collapsed.  The  cause  may 
have  been  either  an  enormous  conflagration  or— as  Homolle  thinks— 
an  earthquake.  The  fact  that  apart  from  small  quantities  of  ash  no 
traces  of  fire  have  been  found  supports  the  earthquake  theory,  espe- 
cially as  the  whole  Parnassus  massif  lies  in  a  traditional  earthquake 
area.  The  effects  of  a  violent  earthquake  might  well  have  closed  a 
narrow  fissure  in  such  a  way  that  no  trace  of  the  opening  would  be 
visible  after  more  than  two  thousand  years. 

One  more  thing:  in  the  whole  of  the  literature  on  Delphi  I  have 
found  not  a  single  reference  to  research  carried  out  by  a  trained 
modern  geologist  who  had  a  thorough  acquaintanceship  with  the 


GREECE  131 

limestone  and  shale  formation  of  Parnassus.  To  my  knowledge,  the 
only  geologist  to  ever  work  there  was  Professor  Philippson.  Admit- 
tedly, he  thought  that  the  famous  cleft  was  nonexistent  and  that 
the  whole  tradition  was  a  "priestly  fraud,"  but  his  findings  are  too 
old  to  carry  weight  today.  Writing  as  long  ago  as  1938,  Flaceliere 
says  that  it  would  be  interesting  to  consult  a  modern  geologist.  The 
fact  that  no  one  has  done  so  is  one  more  mystery  surrounding  Delphi 
—just  as  the  history  of  mankind  in  general  is  more  a  story  of  omis- 
sion than  discovery. 

Another  interesting  theory  was  put  forward  and  argued  with  great 
acumen  by  the  American  authority  Leicester  B.  Holland  in  1933. 
The  Omphalos  or  mound-shaped  stone  over  which  the  Pythia's 
tripod  stood  displayed  one  unusual  feature:  it  had  been  pierced  from 
top  to  bottom,  and  thus  had  a  small  channel  running  through  its 
center.  Since  the  stone  pedestal  on  which  it  reposed  was  similarly 
pierced,  Holland  thinks  that  this  channel  or  pipelike  aperture  was 
used  to  convey  the  vapor  to  the  foot  of  the  Pythia's  tripod,  and 
that  the  sweet-smelling  smoke  was  artificially  produced  somewhere 
beneath  the  stone  floor  and  the  Omphalos. 

The  idea  of  a  pipe  is  an  enlightening  one.  Holland  does  not,  how- 
ever, explain  why  the  vapor  must  have  been  an  artificial  device 
rather  than  a  natural  phenomenon,  but  relies  solely  on  statements 
by  other  authorities  that  there  was  no  natural  opening  in  the  rock. 

But,  even  if  he  is  right,  Delphi  was  certainly  not  a  place  devoted 
to  trickery  and  witchcraft.  However  her  ecstasy  was  induced,  the 
Pythia  herself  was  no  fraud.  Plato  calls  her  condition  "mania,"  an 
apt  expression  because  it  described  a  state  of  divine  inspiration  which 
had  no  psychopathic  element. 

The  Pythia's  words  were  inspired  by  Apollo  but  recorded  and 
announced  in  verse  form  by  priests,  who  molded  and  interpreted 
them  as  it  seemed  politic  to  do.  The  Delphic  god  had  many  temple 
slaves,  some  of  them  prisoners  taken  in  holy  wars  and  others  gifts 
from  various  cities  and  private  citizens.  It  received  a  constant  flow 
of  foreigners  from  every  part  of  the  known  world,  laden  with 
veritable  fortunes  in  votive  offerings,  since  the  more  they  gave  the 
sooner  they  got  a  chance  to  consult  the  oracle. 

The  Panhellenic  Pythian  Games  (founded  circa  590  b.c.)  trans- 
formed Delphi  into  a  seat  of  artistic  activity  and  competitions 
devoted  to  the  Muses.  The  crowds  of  visitors  from  distant  lands 


132  THE  SILENT  PAST 

also  made  it  a  scene  of  bustling  commercial  activity  from  which 
the  Hellenic  language  and  way  of  thought  spread  throughout  the 
world.  The  priests  plied  their  sacrificial  knives  diligently,  and 
Plutarch  tells  us  that  their  victims  had  to  tremble  from  head  to  tail 
during  sacrifice  or  no  oracle  could  be  pronounced.  Sacrificial  feasts 
were  not  uncommon. 

During  the  oracle's  prime,  three  virgins  took  turns  in  performing 
the  duties  of  Pythia.  Chosen  from  among  girls  of  Delphi  itself,  they 
had  to  live  a  life  of  absolute  chastity  and  were  held  under  strict 
surveillance  in  a  "house  of  the  Pythia"  inside  the  sanctuary  of 
Apollo,  cut  off  from  all  human  contact.  Xenophon  says  that  a 
Pythia  had  to  be  completely  inexperienced  and  must  have  seen 
and  heard  nothing,  so  that  she  could  confront  her  god  with  a  truly 
virginal  soul.  The  office  was  not  without  its  dangers,  since  the 
vapors  induced  such  an  abnormal  state  of  excitement  and  the  Pythia 
had  to  expose  herself  constantly  to  such  abnormal  forces  that  several 
priestesses  lost  their  lives  in  the  course  of  their  duties. 


GREECE 


THE  PYTHIA  REPLIES 

Just  as  171  ancient  times  there  were  people  who  complained  of 
the  oracle's  obscurity  and  equivocation,  so  now  there  are  some 
who  criticize  it  for  excessive  clarity— an  attitude  which  is  extremely 
unjust  ofid  stupid.  People  of  this  kind  are  like  children  who  take 
far  ?nore  delight  iii  rainbows,  comets  and  mock  suns  than  in  the 
sun  mid  moon  themselves. 

—Plutarch,  De  Pythiae  oracidis 


OF  ALL  the  seats  of  religion  in  Greece,  the  Delphic  oracle  had  the 
greatest  spiritual  influence.  There  was  no  important  occurrence,  no 
momentous  undertaking,  no  war  nor  state  of  peace  in  which  Delphi 
did  not  play  a  part.  Forms  of  prayer,  sacrifice,  atonement,  dedica- 
tion and  divine  service  were  all  prescribed  by  Delphi.  Each  individual 
Pythia  was  not  only  endowed  with  religious  and  civil  power  but 
was  the  supreme  authority  on  ethics  and  morality  in  general.  Delphi's 
influence  radiated  far  into  Asia.  Even  the  Lydians  consulted  the 
Delphic  oracles  as  to  whom  they  should  choose  as  their  king,  Gyges 
or  a  member  of  the  former  dynasty.  The  Pythia  advised  on  Gyges, 
who  lived  circa  670  B.C.  and  was  the  first  ruler  to  be  given  the 
name  "tyrant"— probably  a  Lydian  word.  Naturally  enough,  the 
rulers  who  succeeded  this  king  were  among  the  most  devoted 
adherents  of  Pythian  Apollo. 

The  priest  who  recorded  and  passed  on  the  Pythia's  words  was 
known  as  the  prophetes.  This  individual  did  not  foretell  the  future 
but  was  simply  the  god's  mouthpiece  or  medium  of  communication. 
The  relationship  between  the  prophetes  and  the  Pythia  is  obscure. 
If  his  sole  function  was  to  formulate  the  Pythia's  answers  in  intel- 
ligible terms,  her  wide  knowledge  of  human,  political  and  even 
geographical  questions  bordered  on  the  miraculous.  Nilsson's  view 
is  that  the  prophetes  either  elaborated  the  Pythia's  utterances  and 
put  them  into  plain  speech  or  actually  gave  her  guidance  on  her 
answers.  There  is  no  full  solution  to  the  problem,  but  we  know  that 
the  oracular  priests  were  anything  but  charlatans  and  frauds.  They 
were  excellent  judges  of  human  nature  and  men  of  wide  knowledge. 
They  were  brilliant  astronomers,  as  the  Delphic  calendar  proves. 
They  knew  the  history  of  the  various  city-states,  were  well  informed 

133 


134  THE  SILENT  PAST 

on  geography,  had  a  working  knowledge  of  commercial  practice 
and  were  acquainted  with  the  burial  places  of  all  the  heroes. 

The  priests  found  it  easy  to  solve  run-of-the-mill  problems,  but 
if  a  question  was  vague  or  too  skillfully  framed  the  questioner 
received  a  vague  answer.  Exceptionally  difficult  or  ambiguous  an- 
swers could  be  laid  before  the  exegetes,  who  examined  them  and 
offered  their  considered  and  often  valuable  advice.  The  exegetes 
remained  in  office  for  life,  which  was  a  measure  of  the  importance 
attached  to  their  duties. 

The  original  temple,  a  small  and  unpretentious  building,  was 
destroyed  by  fire  in  548  b.c.  In  1939  archaeologists  found  several 
works  of  art  which  had  been  saved  from  the  fire  and  concealed 
beneath  a  stone  in  the  sacred  path.  The  second  temple  was  com- 
pleted in  the  year  510,  having  been  financed  by  voluntary  contribu- 
tions of  which  one  of  the  biggest  came  from  the  Alcmaeonid  familv, 
who  had  been  banished  from  Athens  and  lived  at  Delphi  in  exile. 
Croesus  and  the  Egyptian  king  Amasis  also  lent  their  support. 

During  the  reign  of  King  Amasis  there  lived  in  Thrace  a  girl 
called  Rhodopis,  who  was  a  slave  belonging  to  a  certain  ladmon. 
(Strangely  enough,  the  celebrated  fabulist  Aesop  was  a  fellow  slave 
of  hers  in  ladmon's  establishment.)  Apparently,  Rhodopis  was  pur- 
chased from  ladmon  by  a  wealthy  slave  trader  from  Samos  known 
as  Xantos.  Being  a  shrewd  salesman,  he  took  the  girl  to  the  place 
where  she  would  fetch  most,  in  this  case  the  famous  trading  settle- 
ment of  Naucratis  in  Egypt.  Before  long  a  man  from  Adytilene  called 
Charaxos  fell  in  love  with  the  delectable  piece  of  human  merchandise 
and  bought  her  at  a  very  high  price.  Having  done  so,  Charaxos  gave 
her  her  freedom,  thereby  incurring  the  mockery  of  the  famous 
poetess  Sappho,  who  happened  to  be  his  sister. 

Rhodopis  used  her  new-found  freedom  to  become  the  talk  of  the 
town  not  only  in  Naucratis,  which  lay  between  Alexandria  and 
present-day  Cairo,  but  throughout  the  Hellenic  world.  Her  grace 
and  charm  became  a  byword  on  every  coast  and  she  earned  a  large 
fortune  for  a  girl  of  her  sort— though  nothing  like  enough  to  build 
the  Pyramid  of  Mycerinus  at  Gizeh,  as  the  Hellenes  loved  to  boast. 
Herodotus  tells  us  that  although  Rhodopis's  fortune  would  not  run 
to  a  pyramid  she  was  extremely  ambitious  and  wanted  to  leave  the 
Greeks  some  souvenir  which  would  always  remind  them  of  her. 
She  accordingly  made  the  Delphic  sanctuary  a  strange  bequest  com- 


GREECE  135 

prising  a  large  number  of  spits,  each  so  big  that  it  could  accommodate 
a  whole  ox.  The  value  of  the  gift  represented  a  tenth  of  her  entire 
capital.  Herodotus  says  that  these  spits  could  still  be  seen  in  his  own 
day  (c.  450  B.C.),  lying  behind  the  altar  dedicated  to  Apollo  by  the 
inhabitants  of  Chios. 

The  significance  of  this  bequest  was  not  understood  until  the 
German  scholar  Waldstein  found  a  bundle  of  iron  spits  of  equal 
length,  tightly  bound  by  iron  bands  at  either  end,  in  the  Heraeum  at 
Argos.  This  peculiar  object  found  its  way  into  the  National  A4useum 
in  Athens  and  remained  there  unnoticed  for  years,  until  the  Greek 
archaeologist  Svoronos  made  a  detailed  examination  of  the  dusty 
relic.  Thirty-two  spits,  each  nearly  four  feet  long,  had  survived 
intact,  but  the  original  bundle  had  contained  180.  It  was  a  heavy 
bundle  of  iron  like  this,  weighing  several  hundredweight,  which  the 
industrious  Rhodopis  had  once  sent  from  Naucratis  to  Delphi.  Like 
the  1,000  talents'  worth  of  alum  sent  by  King  Amasis  and  the  20 
minas  sent  by  the  Greeks  of  Egypt,  this  was  a  contribution  toward 
the  building  of  the  temple.  Thus,  the  answer  to  the  enigma  is  that 
these  spits  were  a  very  ancient  form  of  money  which  the  Delphians 
found  they  could  not  use  and  so  stacked  away  behind  the  altar. 

In  the  year  373,  as  we  have  already  heard,  an  earthquake  caused 
the  temple  to  collapse,  only  to  be  replaced  by  yet  another  Temple 
of  Apollo,  also  financed  by  voluntary  contributions.  This  temple 
survived  the  coming  of  the  Romans  and  was  repaired  by  Emperor 
Domitian,  the  bulk  of  the  Delphic  treasury  having  previously  been 
seized  by  Sulla.  Emperor  Hadrian  tried  to  restore  the  sanctuary's 
ancient  status  and  Emperor  Julian  attempted  to  instill  new  life  into 
the  place  after  his  abandonment  of  Christianity.  However,  the 
oracle's  sole  prediction  to  Julian  was  that  its  own  end  was  nigh,  and 
in  the  year  390  Theodosius  closed  it  down  in  the  name  of  Christian- 
ity. The  Pythia  spoke  no  more,  and  rubble  and  earth  marked  the 
former  site  of  a  place  whose  fame  had  spread  throughout  Greece  and 
the  contemporary  world,  a  place  to  which  kings,  statesmen  and 
sages  from  every  quarter  of  the  earth  had  once  made  pilgrimage. 
On  the  ruins  of  Delphi  there  arose  a  small  and  wretched  village 
called  Kastri.  The  Greek  government  bought  it  up  and  demolished 
the  houses,  and  the  French  built  the  inhabitants  new  houses  in  a 
different  spot.  Then,  after  years  of  work  by  the  French  School  of 
Archaeology  at  Athens  under  the  direction  of  Professor  Homolle, 


136  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Delphi  re-emerged  and  its  temples,  treasure  chambers,  sculptures 
and  over  five  thousand  inscriptions  saw  the  light  of  day  once  more. 

Why  did  the  Greeks'  most  sacred  place  meet  its  downfall?  The 
waning  of  the  ancient  faith,  the  loss  of  former  convictions,  the 
relaxation  of  traditional  morahty,  the  growth  of  enUghtenment  and 
the  Peloponnesian  War  between  Athens  and  Sparta— all  these  things 
helped  to  undermine  the  oracle's  reputation.  During  the  latter  con- 
flict Delphi  took  the  Peloponnesians'  side  and  assisted  Sparta  with 
grants  of  money,  thereby  winning  the  Athenians'  distrust  for  the 
first  time— an  attitude  which  Pericles  did  everything  to  foster.  As 
time  passed,  the  oracle  fell  prey  to  the  general  disunity  of  the  period, 
the  mockery  of  the  comic  dramatists  who  have  always  been  quick 
to  seize  their  chance  in  any  age— in  short,  skepticism.  Here,  as  in 
Egypt  so  long  before,  disbelief  and  doubt  proved  to  be  harbingers 
of  doom;  for  a  civilization  survives  only  for  as  long  as  its  members 
are  still  prepared  to  build  pyramids,  temples  or  cathedrals  to  the 
god  of  that  civilization. 

The  veneration  accorded  to  the  Delphic  Apollo  during  the  oracle's 
prime  can  be  assessed  by  the  treasures  assembled  there  by  all  the 
tribes  and  cities  of  Greece— indeed,  of  the  whole  world.  These 
included  vast  numbers  of  the  three-legged  bronze  caldrons  which 
were  sacred  to  Apollo,  and  a  multitude  of  sculptures  erected  in 
Delphi  by  the  various  competing  clans  and  states.  Although  the 
Roman  emperor  Nero  confiscated  five  hundred  of  them  he  left  more 
than  three  thousand  behind. 

Most  of  the  questions  addressed  to  the  deity  at  Delphi  were  really 
requests  for  advice.  Very  few  of  them  concerned  the  future.  The 
Delphic  oracle  was  consulted,  for  instance,  as  to  when  a  new  city 
should  be  founded  or  a  devastated  city  rebuilt.  The  Pythia  was 
questioned  about  the  outcome  of  wars,  about  illnesses,  physical 
infirmities  and  dire  disasters  such  as  crop  failures,  famines,  epidemics 
and  wartime  defeats. 

Above  all,  the  Delphic  Apollo  was,  through  his  mouthpiece  the 
Pythia,  the  divine  authority  and  supreme  arbiter  in  all  religious 
matters.  People  went  to  the  god  of  Delphi  and  consulted  the  virgin 
seated  on  her  tripod  at  the  center  of  the  world  to  learn  the  will  of 
the  gods  on  subjects  such  as  the  founding  of  temples,  the  offering  of 
sacrifice,  dedicatory  gifts  to  the  dead,  graves,  cults,  demons  and 
heroes. 


GREECE  137 

Thus  there  existed  a  single  regulating  and  arbitrating  authority 
equipped  to  deal  with  all  the  crucial  problems,  disputes  and  emer- 
gencies in  the  contemporary  world:  a  god  who  did  not  remain  dumb 
in  the  face  of  every  request  and  every  entreaty  but  had  a  mouthpiece 
through  which  he  spoke  directly  to  mankind. 

The  citizens  of  the  wealthy  gold-  and  silver-mining  island  of 
Syphnos  in  the  Cyclades  once  asked  the  oracle  how  long  their  good 
fortune  would  last.  The  Pythia  answered  that  they  should  "secure 
themselves  against  the  wooden  horde  and  the  red  herald  when  their 
council  house  and  market  glimmered  white."  The  Syphnians  had 
decorated  their  market  and  council  house  with  Persian  marble,  but 
they  did  not  understand  the  oracle  until  the  day  when  the  ships 
of  Samos  (the  wooden  horde),  painted  with  red  lead,  lay  moored 
off  their  coasts.  When  the  Syphnians  refused  the  Samian  envoy 
(the  red  herald)  a  loan,  the  Samians  devastated  the  island. 

In  common  with  all  the  Greek  oracles,  Delphi  predicted  a  victory 
for  Croesus,  the  fabulously  rich  and  fortunate  Lydian  king  who 
reigned  from  560  to  546  b.c.  In  the  autumn  of  546  both  King  Croesus 
and  his  capital,  Sardis,  fell  into  the  hands  of  Cyrus  of  Persia.  The 
downfall  of  this  noble  and  philhellene  ruler  and  his  kingdom  exer- 
cised a  decisive  influence  on  the  attitude  adopted  by  every  subsequent 
generation  of  Greeks  toward  the  fickleness  of  fortune,  the  impar- 
tiality of  fate  and  the  envy  of  the  gods.  Having  erred  in  the  case  of 
Croesus,  the  Delphic  oracle  tried  a  hundred  years  later  to  reinterpret 
history  and  so  eradicate  the  poor  impression  made  by  its  inaccurate 
prediction.  By  then  convinced  that  the  Persians  were  invincible, 
Delphi  counseled  the  Greeks,  through  the  Pythia,  not  to  offer  them 
armed  resistance.  The  oracle  was  guilty  neither  of  timidity  nor 
pusillanimity  nor  Persian  bias.  As  Nilsson  so  aptly  puts  it,  this  was 
one  case  where  the  god  knew  a  httle  too  much  about  the  future! 

Having  been  defeated  by  the  Tegeans,  the  Spartans  sent  religious 
emissaries  to  Delphi  to  ask  what  they  had  to  do  in  order  to  conquer 
them.  The  Pythia  advised  them  to  find  the  remains  of  Orestes.  Not 
knowing  where  Orestes'  burial  place  was  located,  the  Spartans  asked 
the  god  where  Orestes  lay  buried.  The  Pythia  answered:  "At  Tegea 
in  Arcadia  there  is  a  large  fallow  field  where  two  winds  rage.  There 
is  blow  and  counterblow.  That  is  where  the  earth  harbors  Agamem- 
non's son  Orestes."  The  Lacedaemonians  failed  to  solve  this  riddle, 
but  Lichas  eventually  found  the  grave  in  a  blacksmith's  yard  com- 


138  THE  SILENT  PAST 

plete  with  two  bellows  (the  raging  winds)  and  hammer  and  anvil 
(blow  and  counterblow). 

Perhaps  the  Pythia's  most  bewildering  pronouncement  was  made 
in  response  to  a  question  from  Chaerephon,  a  devoted  pupil  and 
follower  of  Socrates  who  went  to  Delphi  and  asked  the  oracle  if 
any  man  were  wiser  than  Socrates.  The  Pythia's  unqualified  reply 
was:  "No  one  is  wiser."  The  man  most  amazed  by  this  answer  was 
Socrates  himself.  Being  fully  aware  how  little  he  knew,  he  inferred 
from  the  oracle  that  other  men  who  seemed  to  be  extremely  clever 
or  erudite  must  know  even  less  than  he  did.  Accordingly,  he  exam- 
ined the  foremost  of  his  contemporaries  in  the  gymnasium,  in  the 
academy,  in  the  Lyceum,  in  the  market  place  and  craftsmen's  work- 
shops, and  refuted  their  belief  in  their  own  infallibility.  "God  alone 
is  wise,"  said  Socrates.  "If  the  oracle  declares  that  I,  who  know 
nothing,  am  the  wisest,  it  means  that  human  knowledge  is  a  cipher. 
But  the  most  fearful  thing  of  all  is  to  believe  that  one  is  learned  in 
things  of  which  one  understands  nothing." 

What  sort  of  answer  would  Chaerephon  receive  today?  No  mod- 
ern institution  could  name  the  wisest  man  alive— not  because  there 
are  no  wise  men  left,  but  because  it  is  virtually  impossible  for  the 
present  to  assess  or  truly  apprehend  the  present  and  simultaneously 
take  the  future  into  consideration. 

The  god  who  expressed  himself  so  clearly  on  the  subject  of 
Socrates  sat  enthroned  high  above  all  earthly  standards  and  criteria. 
He  recognized  Socrates  for  what  he  was,  whereas  men  in  their 
pettiness  forced  Athens'  greatest  son  to  drink  the  poisoned  cup. 


GREECE 


OLYMPIAS,  ZEUS  AND  ALEXANDER 

It  is  said  that  during  his  youthful  years,  wheji  Philip  was  initiated 
ii2to  the  Mysteries  in  SaTnothrace  in  co?npany  with  Olympias,  he 
fell  in  love  with  that  princess,  who  was  likewise  still  very  yotmg 
and  an  orphan,  and  took  her,  with  her  uncle  Arymbas''  consent,  as 
his  wife.  The  night  before,  when  she  was  locked  7ip  in  the  bridal 
chaniber,  the  bride  dreamed  that  a  shaft  of  lightning  pierced  her 
body  during  a  storm,  and  that  fro?fz  the  stroke  there  arose  a 
raging  fire  which  burst  into  bright  flames  on  every  side  and  then 
was  suddenly  quenched. 

—Plutarch,  Lives,  Alexander,  ii 


THERE  was  once  a  woman  who  decisively  affected  the  course  of 
human  history  not  by  taking  a  personal  part  in  international  affairs 
but  by  exerting  her  influence  in  the  secret  and  mysterious  way  that 
is  woman's  alone. 

This  unique  figure  on  the  sidelines  of  world  history  was  Olympias, 
daughter  of  King  Neoptolemus,  wife  of  Phihp  of  Macedon  and 
mother  of  that  brilliant  and  cometlike  apparition,  Alexander  the 
Great.  Although  Alexander's  grand  design,  a  political  amalgamation 
of  Europe  and  Asia,  was  frustrated  by  his  untimely  death  at  the 
age  of  thirty-three,  Hellenism,  the  spirit  of  Greece,  followed  in 
the  train  of  his  armies  and  found  its  way  to  the  Far  East.  To  this 
day  every  image  of  Buddha  betrays  the  influence  of  the  Greek 
artists  of  Gandhara. 

In  her  girlhood,  Olympias  was  known  as  Myrtale.  She  was  born 
in  the  Kingdom  of  Epirus,  probably  at  Passaron,  the  ancient  city 
where  the  kings  of  the  Molossians  used  to  be  crowned.  It  is  set 
in  an  imposing  region  of  rugged  mountain  chains  interspersed  with 
deep  and  narrow  but  partially  fertile  valleys.  The  Gulfs  of  Avlona, 
Butrinto  and  Arta  bite  deep  into  the  land  there,  and  the  mountains 
are  not  far  from  the  Albanian  border.  The  wind  that  blows  there 
is  quite  different  from  the  winds  of  Athens  or  the  Peloponnesus. 

I  have  seen  the  village  of  Gardiki,  the  district  where  Olympias 
was  born.  There  is  an  ineffable  stillness  about  the  place.  Nothing 
can  be  seen  of  the  former  royal  city  of  the  Epirotes  save  a  circular 
grass-grown  hill  which  marks  the  spot  where  the  citadel  or  acropolis 

139 


I40  THE  SILENT  PAST 

of  Passaron  once  dominated  the  surrounding  countryside.  Its  ruins 
still  await  the  archaeologist's  attentions. 

The  importance  of  Olympias  is  that  her  ardent  soul  and  strong  be- 
lief in  the  supersensual  world  convinced  her  that  her  son  Alexander 
was  the  offspring  of  her  association  with  Zeus,  and  therefore  a  son 
of  God.  Olympias'  belief  in  Alexander's  divinity  took  root  and 
.lived  on  in  him  after  her  death. 

So  we  are  confronted,  350  years  before  Christ's  birth,  by  another 
man  who  claimed  to  be  the  son  of  God.  His  father  Philip  avoided 
Olympias  because  of  her  association  with  the  supreme  being,  and 
this  sense  of  immediate  nearness  to  God  filled  and  obsessed  Alexander 
throughout  his  life.  If  it  is  not  generally  known  that  Alexander  was 
obsessed  by  the  belief  that  he  was  the  son  of  God,  it  is  because 
history  is  written  by  historians  and  not  psychologists! 

There  is  no  other  possible  explanation  of  the  fact  that  a  young 
man  who  lived  only  thirty-three  years  should  have  transmitted  the 
spirit  of  Greece  to  the  entire  Orient,  should  first  have  subjugated 
whole  nations  and  empires  and  then  made  them  thrive  under  the 
impact  of  his  genius  for  organization,  should  have  blazed  a  trail  to 
the  Indus  and  deep  into  the  wastes  of  Africa,  should  have  given 
mankind  a  totally  different  conception  of  the  world  and,  finally, 
should  have  been  indirectly  responsible  for  the  subsequent  clothing 
of  Christ's  teachings  in  the  Greek  language,  on  whose  wings  they 
conquered  the  world. 

To  anyone  who  stands  on  the  lonely  hill  above  Passaron  and 
reflects  that  Alexander's  mother  Olympias  grew  up  there,  such 
thoughts  seem  inconceivable.  There  is  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the 
open  sky,  an  expanse  of  grass  and  marshland,  and  an  apparently 
meaningless  jumble  of  time-worn  stones. 

Have  we  any  means  of  discovering  how  Olympias  came  to 
believe  in  her  son's  divinity? 

As  a  child  Princess  Myrtale  was  taken  to  the  island  of  Samothrace, 
which  lies  in  the  northeast  corner  of  the  Aegean  Sea,  there  to 
undergo  religious  instruction.  Samothrace  was  well  known  for  its 
Mystery  Cult,  and  the  island  was  the  site  of  a  mysterious  sanctuary 
dedicated  to  the  Cabiri,  who  were  probably  gods  of  Asiatic- 
Phrygian  origin.  Mystic  and  orphic  rites  were  performed  there  and 
sacrifice  was  done  in  their  honor. 

Little  is  known  about  these  secret  cults  because  initiates  were 


GREECE  141 

forbidden  to  speak  of  the  sacred  mysteries  during  their  lifetime. 
Men  also  took  part  in  the  religious  ceremonies,  which  is  how  the 
young  Macedonian  prince  came  to  meet  his  princess.  He  im- 
mediately fell  head  over  heels  in  love  with  her.  Myrtale  was  still 
very  young,  but  her  eyes  and  lips  seemed  to  have  partaken  of 
the  wild  beauty  and  solitude  of  the  countryside  of  Epirus,  and 
she  devoted  herself  to  the  Mysteries  and  the  gods  of  Samothrace 
with  passionate  intensity. 

There  was  much  that  was  unusual  about  young  Myrtale.  She  was 
a  hypersensitive  girl  who  had  the  gift  of  finding  her  way  to  the 
unseen  gods  and  communing  with  them  spiritually,  as  though  in  a 
dream.  It  was  a  faculty  which  must  have  exercised  a  great  fascination 
over  Philip,  a  gifted  boy  who  had  just  come  into  contact  with  the 
supernatural  for  the  first  time  in  his  impressionable  young  life. 

Myrtale's  father  Neoptolemus  had  died  in  360  e.g.,  leaving  her 
in  the  care  of  her  uncle  Arrybas,  who  had  meanwhile  succeeded  to 
the  throne  of  Epirus.  Arrybas  agreed  without  demur  when  Philip 
asked  for  his  niece's  hand  in  marriage.  He  was  pleased,  for  he  saw 
in  Philip  the  future  king  of  his  large  but  chaotic  neighbor,  Macedon, 
and  probably  recognized  his  statesmanlike  qualities  even  at  that 
early  stage. 

On  the  night  before  her  marriage,  Myrtale  was  shut  up  in  the 
bridal  chamber  in  accordance  with  Greek  custom,  and  there  she 
had  a  dream  which  was  to  change  her  whole  life.  She  saw  a  storm 
and  in  it  a  shaft  of  lightning  that  struck  her  body  and  caused  bright 
flames  to  burst  forth.  Then,  so  Plutarch  tells  us,  the  fire  was  sud- 
denly extinguished.  What  did  the  portent  mean?  To  the  Greeks 
there  could  be  only  one  answer:  a  storm,  a  flash  of  lightning  and 
peals  of  thunder  signified  the  presence  of  no  less  a  god  than  Zeus 
himself. 

Just  under  twenty  miles  south  of  Passaron  lies  the  lovely  valley 
of  Dramissos,  site  of  the  oracle  of  Dodona,  a  famous  sanctuary 
dedicated  to  the  Greeks'  supreme  god  and,  so  we  are  told  in  Homer, 
Herodotus  and  Plato's  Phaednis,  the  oldest  oracle  in  Greece.  It 
was  the  abode  of  heathen  Europe's  most  important  deity,  Zeus, 
whom  the  Romans  called  Jupiter.  Ju  is  Zeus,  and  piter  or  pater  means 
father.  Zeus  is  the  Greek  equivalent  of  the  Indo-European  Dieus. 
The  Latin  word  for  God,  deus,  and  the  French  dieu  are  derived 
from  Dios,  the  genitival  form  of  Zeus.  Zeus  was  also  the  origin  of 


142 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


Dodona 


the  Latin  word  for  day,  dies.  The  Germanic  god  Ziu,  the  Lithuanian 
Diewas,  the  Lettish  Dews,  the  Gothic  Tius  and  the  Enghsh  Tuesday 
are  all  derived  from  the  name  of  the  Indo-Europeans'  supreme  god. 

The  question  of  Zeus's  origins  has  never  been  settled  beyond 
dispute,  but  there  is  considerable  evidence  to  suggest  that  the  idea 
of  this  god  arrived  from  the  north  and  became  disseminated  through- 
out central  Greece  before  finding  its  way  to  Dodona.  It  seems  likely 
that  the  god  also  touched  the  Mycenaean  world  during  his  travels, 
for  the  Mycenaean  double  ax  became  one  of  his  emblems. 

Zeus  never  created  any  human  or  divine  beings,  but  he  was  the 
paterfamihas  and  patriarchal  chieftain  of  all  Olympus.  His  daughter 
Athena  and  his  son  Apollo,  the  god  of  the  Delphic  oracle,  were 


GREECE  143 

intimately  associated  with  him,  and  most  of  the  other  gods  were 
children  of  his. 

The  oracle  of  Dodona  was  spreading  the  spirit  of  Zeus  abroad 
even  in  early  heroic  times,  and  was  visited  by  some  of  the  most 
illustrious  people  in  the  ancient  world  despite  the  long  and  fatiguing 
journey  involved.  The  wealthy  King  Croesus  consulted  this  oracle 
as  well  as  that  of  Delphi.  Pindar  composed  a  paean  to  Dodonaean 
Zeus.  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  spoke  of  the  sanctuary  with  the 
greatest  veneration,  and  even  the  Spartans  turned  to  Dodona  in 
cases  of  especial  importance. 

Those  who  travel  from  Passaron  to  Dodona  and  stand  in  the 
valley  of  the  oracle  looking  up  at  the  summit  of  the  Tomarus  can 
visualize  what  Olympias  must  have  seen  there  as  a  child:  the 
throngs  of  pilgrims  arriving  from  all  over  the  world  to  consult  the 
oracle,  the  echoing  caldrons  on  their  tripods,  the  priests  going  about 
their  duties.  As  for  Princess  Myrtale,  she  must  have  watched  all  this 
with  wondering  eyes  and  sensed  the  omnipresence  of  Zeus.  The 
god  was  no  stranger  to  her.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  by  her  side 
day  and  night.  And  her  dream  held  an  extraordinary  significance 
not  only  for  the  subsequent  careers  of  Philip  and  Alexander  but  for 
the  history  of  mankind  as  a  whole.  Without  it,  Alexander  might 
never  have  become  "the  Great"  nor  his  kingdom  a  far-flung  empire. 

Epirus  is  truly  a  land  of  kings  and  gods,  a  land  where  the 
mountains  still  converse  secretly  with  the  sky.  It  was  the  proper 
site  for  a  place  which,  like  Dodona,  mediated  between  earth  and 
heaven. 

Has  everything  really  vanished,  and  is  nothing  left  of  Dodona? 
Two  such  distinguished  scholars  as  Ernst  Kirsten  and  Wilhelm 
Kraiker  included  the  following  note  in  a  report  on  Dodona  pub- 
lished as  recently  as  1957:  "No  trace  of  temple  or  sacred  oak  grove." 
Yet  the  oracle  is  a  reality  and  can  still  be  seen,  even  though  Zeus 
speaks  no  more  and  his  cult  is  extinct,  even  though  the  god  who 
once  dominated  Europe  has  retreated  forever  into  the  past. 

The  correct  location  of  Dodona  was  long  ago  predicted  by  the 
Frenchman  Gaultier  de  Claubry,  and  Christopher  Wordsworth  men- 
tioned in  1868  that  the  ruins  of  Palaeokastrion  were  connected  with 
the  former  sanctuary  of  Dodonaean  Zeus.  Palaeokastrion,  which 
means  "old  citadel,"  was  the  name  given  in  more  recent  times  to 


144  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  walled  city  complete  with  acropolis  which  stood  at  the  summit 
of  the  hill  overlooking  the  sanctuary  of  Zeus. 

In  1876  the  Greek  archaeologist  Constantin  Carapanos  began  to 
dig  in  the  area  of  the  Dodona  sanctuary  and  unearthed  various 
objects,  notably  inscribed  plaquettes  of  lead  and  bronze,  which 
indicated  that  he  had  probably  found  the  actual  site  of  the  oracle. 
When  deciphered,  the  inscriptions  on  the  small  lead  tablets  proved  to 
be  written  questions  addressed  to  the  oracle  by  pilgrims.  They 
covered  a  wide  range  of  subjects.  One,  put  by  a  certain  Lysanias, 
inquired  whether  the  child  which  his  wife  was  expecting  was  really 
his.  Another  man  wanted  to  know  whether  the  purchase  of  some 
land  was  likely  to  be  advantageous.  Although  the  priests'  answers 
were  mostly  given  orally,  they  were  sometimes  written  on  the 
reverse  of  the  tablets.  Such  tablets  are  of  great  value  because  they 
give  us  an  inkling  of  the  actual  nature  of  an  oracular  pronouncement. 
Answers  were  given  in  a  form  of  officialese.  One  tablet,  for  instance, 
bore  the  words:  Reference  plot  of  land:  the  matter  is  profitable. 
Someone  who  was  obviously  worried  about  his  health  received  the 
reply:  Reference  health:  sacrifice  to  Zeus.  Other  sample  questions 
concerned  missing  articles  and  whether  it  was  expedient  to  let 
the  upper  floor  of  a  house. 

Although  Carapanos  had  found  the  actual  sanctuary,  he  did  not 
identify  it  correctly.  The  small  finds  made  round  about  were  im- 
portant enough  in  themselves,  but  Carapanos  had  partially  un- 
earthed the  ruins  of  a  Christian  basilica  and,  since  he  found  votive 
offerings  dating  from  pre-Christian  times  in  an  annex  belonging  to 
the  church,  concluded  that  he  had  found  the  Temple  of  Dodona 
itself. 

It  was  not  until  between  1929  and  1935  that  the  mystery  of 
Dodona  moved  closer  to  solution.  Professor  Evangelides  unearthed 
three  small  temples,  two  Roman  buildings,  a  grave  and  numerous 
votive  pedestals.  He  also  found  copper  statuettes,  handmade  pottery, 
fragmentary  copper  vessels  and  other  votive  offerings,  all  of  which 
offered  evidence  that  the  origins  of  Dodona  went  back  to  the 
second  millennium  B.C. 

Digging  was  discontinued  in  1935  and  was  not  recommenced 
until  a  short  time  ago.  The  man  in  charge  was  Sotiris  Dakaris, 
a  young  and  talented  archaeologist  who  was  born  in  the  district 


GREECE  145 

and  has  known  every  stone,  every  hill  and  valley  of  his  native 
district  since  childhood. 

In  order  to  gauge  the  significance  of  these  ancient  buildings  we 
must  examine  the  relationship  between  Zeus  and  his  sacred  tree,  the 
oak.  The  cult  of  the  oak  hails  from  a  very  early  period  during 
which  the  tree  was  sacred  to  many  Indo-European  peoples. 

The  Swedish  authority  on  Greek  religion,  Martin  Nilsson,  in- 
terprets the  significance  of  the  oak  in  religious  history  by  suggesting 
that  its  fruit  provided  mankind's  first  food.  Edible  acorns  were 
described  by  Hesiod  circa  700  b.c.  and  by  Ovid  at  the  time  of 
Christ's  birth  as  the  food  of  the  "Golden  Age."  They  were  no 
doubt  thinking  of  the  sweet  acorns  that  supplied  the  whole  of  the 
northern  hemisphere  with  its  principal  source  of  vegetable  nourish- 
ment before  the  age  of  grain  cultivation.  The  oak  was  reputed  to 
be  the  world's  first  tree.  Pliny,  who  lived  from  a.d.  23  to  a.d.  79, 
referred  in  his  work  on  natural  history  to  oaks  that  were  as  old  as 
the  earth  and  mentioned  the  ancient  tradition  that  human  beings 
sprang  from  oaks. 

There  are,  however,  far  more  intelligible  grounds  for  this  belief 
in  the  sanctity  of  the  oak  tree.  Oaks  can  attain  a  very  advanced  age. 
One  oak  tree  at  Schwanheim,  near  Frankfurt,  displayed  630  well- 
defined  annual  circles.  With  a  diameter  over  9  feet,  the  oak  of 
Bischofswald,  ten  miles  east  of  Helmstedt,  is  estimated  to  be  1,190 
years  old.  When  the  colonists  arrived  in  America  they  found  ancient 
oaks  which  had  long  been  held  in  veneration  by  the  Indians  as  land- 
marks and  meeting  places.  Two  such  oaks  played  a  role  in  American 
history— the  famous  Charter  Oak  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  the 
Wadsworth  Oak  near  Genesee,  New  York,  a  venerable  tree  27  feet 
in  circumference,  under  whose  lofty  branches  Robert  Morris  and 
the  Seneca  Indians  signed  a  peace  treaty. 

Another  thing:  perhaps  because  of  their  greater  height,  oaks  are 
struck  by  lightning  more  frequently  than  other  trees,  and  the 
linking  of  sky  and  oak  tree  through  that  medium  was  recognized 
very  early.  In  one  wood  near  Lippe-Detmold  composed  of  70 
percent  birch,  1 3  percent  spruce,  1 1  percent  oak,  and  6  percent 
pine,  it  is  recorded  that  the  numbers  of  trees  struck  by  lightning 
over  a  period  of  sixteen  years  were  as  follows:  310  oaks,  108  pines, 
34  spruces  and  33  birches.  Subsequent  inspection  brought  to  light 
a  further  34  oaks  struck  by  hghtning  as  compared  with  12  other 


146  THE  SILENT  PAST 

deciduous  trees,  9  coniferous  trees  and  a  single  beech  tree.  The 
oak's  abnormal  susceptibility  to  damage  by  lightning  did  not,  how- 
ever, detract  from  its  reputation  in  prehistoric  times,  for  trees  struck 
by  lightning  were  regarded  as  sacred. 

The  most  renowned  of  all  sacred  oaks  stood  in  the  grove  at 
Dodona  in  Epirus.  Since  we  know  that  the  cult  of  the  oak  was  an 
ancient  Indo-European  conception,  we  must  assume  that  the  first 
Greeks  to  migrate  to  Epirus  brought  this  cult  with  them  from  their 
original  home.  Writing  about  450  b.c,  Herodotus  mentioned  that 
Dodona  was  regarded  as  the  oldest  oracle  of  the  Hellenes. 

Religions  are  composed  of  many  overlapping  cultural  strata  and 
often  represent  an  amalgam  of  the  very  old  and  the  more  recent, 
just  as  Christianity  contains  relics  of  many  ancient  heathen  practices. 
The  oak  tree  is  intimately  associated  with  the  earth.  Since  Gaea 
or  Ge,  the  earliest  earth-goddess,  was  worshiped  at  Dodona,  the 
priests  in  the  sanctuary  there  slept  on  the  bare  earth  in  order  to 
maintain  the  closest  possible  contact  with  her.  Another  strange 
custom  of  theirs  was  never  to  remove  dust  or  earth  from  their  feet, 
on  the  grounds  that  it  would  be  desecration. 

Thus,  oak  and  earth  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  earliest  cult  at 
Dodona,  which  lasted  until  about  the  thirteenth  century  b.c.  Zeus  did 
not  arrive  there  until  after  the  oak,  but  he  was  the  newer  god  and 
stronger,  greater  and  more  powerful  than  the  earth-goddess  Gaea 
and  her  sacred  tree.  His  female  consort  Dione,  who  accompanied 
him,  became  the  new  earth-goddess  in  place  of  Gaea.  (Dione  is 
the  feminine  version  of  the  name  Dios.) 

At  Dodona  the  new  god  received  the  additional  name  Naios, 
possibly  an  abbreviation  for  "he  who  lives  in  the  oak  tree."  For 
the  idea  that  Zeus  and  his  consort  Dione  dwelt  in  the  tree  was  con- 
stantly stressed,  and  it  was  held  that  the  god  manifested  his  will 
through  the  tossing  of  its  massive  branches.  Dodona  must  already 
have  been  very  ancient  when  Homer  composed  his  epics  about 
750  B.C.,  for  he  mentions  in  Book  XIV  of  the  Odyssey  that  Odysseus 
asked  the  sacred  foliage  of  the  great  oak  of  Zeus  Dodonaeus  for 
advice  as  to  how  he  was  to  journey  home  to  Ithaca. 

But  how  did  the  holy  place  come  into  being  in  the  first  place? 

Herodotus  of  Halicarnassus,  ever  an  inquisitive  student  of  early 
Western  history,  visited  Dodona  in  person  and  questioned  the  sooth- 


GREECE 


H7 


Dodona 


According  to  Herodotus,  these 
were  the  routes  taken  by  the 
black  doves  that  flew  from 
Egyptian  Thebes  to  Dodona 
and  Siwa. 


saying  priestesses  about  the  origins  of  the  oracle.  They  told  him 
that  once  upon  a  time  two  black  doves  had  flown  from  Egyptian 
Thebes,  one  to  Libya  and  the  other  to  Dodona.  The  latter,  it  was 
said,  had  perched  on  an  oak  in  Dodona  and  demanded  in  human 
tones  that  an  oracle  sacred  to  Zeus  be  established  there.  The  oracle 
was  duly  founded  and  the  branches  of  the  oak  became  a  favorite 
haunt  of  the  sacred  doves  of  Zeus.  The  other  bird,  which  had  flown 
to  Libya,  commanded  the  Libyans  to  found  an  oracle  sacred  to 
Ammon,  and  the  Libyans  likewise  complied.  The  oracle  of  Ammon 
at  the  oasis  of  Siwa  in  northwest  Egypt  was  also  dedicated  to  Zeus, 
as  we  read  in  Herodotus's  Histories  (II,  Iv).  It  was  no  mere  coin- 
cidence that  Alexander  the  Great  had  it  in  mind  to  bestow  upon 
the  sanctuary  of  Dodona  the  enormous  sum  of  1,500  talents  (the 
equivalent  of  9  million  Attic  drachmas  or  between  fifteen  and 
sixteen  million  dollars),  and  that  he  undertook  the  perilous  march 
to  the  oasis  of  Siwa  in  order  to  visit  his  "father"  Zeus-Ammon. 
Alexander  also  planned  to  build  a  huge  Temple  of  Zeus  at  Dodona, 
but  his  premature  death  put  an  end  to  the  project. 

At  Dodona,  as  in  the  Parthenon  on  the  Athenian  Acropolis,  one 
forgets  only  too  easily  that  this  is  a  holy  place  and  that  one  is 
standing  on  holy  ground.  The  ancient  abode  of  the  earth-goddess 


148  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Gaia  and  the  oak  became  the  abode  of  Zeus  and  Dione.  Zeus  held 
sway  there  for  twenty  centuries  until,  about  a.d.  350,  he  forfeited 
his  sovereignty.  Yet  even  today  an  aura  of  sanctity  permeates  the 
silent  ruins  in  the  bright  and  open  valley,  and  even  now  they  tell 
the  story  of  their  strange  and  fascinating  past. 


GREECE 


LATEST  NEWS  OF  DODONA 

At  first,  so  I  was  told  at  Dodona,  the  Pelasgians  used  to  offer  all 
sacrifice  and  prayer  to  the  gods  without  giving  any  one  of  them  a 
7iame  because  they  had  not  yet  heard  of  one. . . .  After  a  long 
tiffie  had  elapsed  they  learned  the  naynes  of  the  gods  from  Egypt. 
. . .  Then,  after  a  further  period,  they  sought  a  divine  decision 
about  the  na?jies  at  Dodona,  for  that  oracle  is  held  to  be  the  oldest 
oracle  of  the  Hellenes  and  was  at  that  time  the  only  one.  When, 
therefore,  the  Felasgians  sought  a  decision  at  Dodona  as  to  whether 
they  should  use  the  names  which  they  had  got  from  the  barbarians, 
the  oracle  gave  voice:  ''Use  ye  them!'"  So  from  thenceforth  they 
used  the  names  of  the  gods  when  sacrificing,  and  the  Hellenes  in 
turn  received  them  frofn  the  Pelasgians. 

—Herodotus,  Histories,  I,  Hi 


soTiRis  DAKARis,  who  has  dcvotcd  his  life  to  a  study  of  the 
Greeks'  most  mysterious  sanctuary,  conducted  me  through  the 
whole  district  of  Dodona.  It  is  a  place  where  life  has  long  since 
ebbed.  It  is  one  of  mankind's  earliest  and  most  important  sites  of 
religious  activity,  yet  few  people  visit  it. 

Dodona  boasts  one  of  the  finest  and  most  imposing  amphitheatres 
in  the  world.  Next  to  it  is  a  building  whose  significance  has  not  yet 
been  determined.  Its  perimeter  walls  have  already  been  laid  bare, 
but  only  test  diggings  have  been  carried  out  so  far.  It  may  have  been 
an  adyton  or  cult  chamber  corresponding  to  the  holy  of  holies,  or 
it  may,  alternatively,  have  been  the  enkomitirion  used  by  pilgrims 
for  the  "temple  sleep"  in  which  they  were  visited  by  oracular  dreams. 
There  is  a  pilgrimage  site  of  this  type  at  Epidaurus.  Only  a  few  yards 
away  from  the  building  can  be  seen  the  foundation  walls  of  the  sanc- 
tuary itself,  the  oracle  of  the  Greeks'  oldest  god,  around  which  are 
scattered  the  ruins  of  several  smaller  temples  together  with  the 
remains  of  a  much  more  recent  Christian  basilica. 

It  is  a  scene  that  effectively  conveys  the  impermanence  of  human 
handiwork  and  the  remoteness  of  God  from  all  human  considera- 
tions. At  some  stage,  probably  between  a.d.  360  and  370,  the 
Christians  dethroned  Zeus,  destroyed  his  temple  and  silenced  the 
sacred  oak  forever.  Then  they  built  the  basilica  to  their  own 
god,  only  to  see  life  in  the  valley  extinguished  for  a  second  time 

149 


I50  THE  SILENT  PAST 

by  the  constant  depradations  of  warlike  tribes.  About  550  the 
church  was  destroyed,  although  its  walls  continued  to  point  at 
the  sky,  lonely  and  neglected,  until  at  long  last  even  they  collapsed. 
Torrents  gnawed  at  the  stones,  earth  clothed  the  ruins,  and  ulti- 
mately everything  was  blotted  out. 

The  sacred  oak,  of  course,  was  not  enclosed  in  a  temple.  The 
earliest  rites  of  Zeus  were  performed  in  the  open  air  around  the 
tree,  which  was  surrounded  by  bronze  tripods  supporting  caldrons. 
When  the  caldrons  brushed  together  or  were  struck  by  hand  the 
vibrations  were  taken  up  by  each  in  turn,  filling  the  air  with  sound. 

The  Greek  expression  dodona'wn  chalkeion,  meaning  "Dodonaean 
bronze,"  was  used  to  describe  loquacity  because  these  caldrons 
continued  to  reverberate  for  a  long  time  after  being  struck.  The 
metal  drums  did  not  always  make  the  same  sound,  however.  Their 
tone  varied  with  the  way  they  were  struck,  with  the  wind,  and 
with  the  temperature  and  humidity  of  the  air,  and  it  was  from  the 
nature  of  the  reverberations  that  priests  and  priestesses  interpreted 
the  oracle  and  translated  it  into  words. 

This,  at  least,  is  how  we  think  the  oracle  of  Dodona  functioned, 
although  we  cannot  be  certain  because  Aristotle,  writing  between 
335  and  323  B.C.,  declared  that  there  were  not  as  many  tripods 
in  the  sanctuary  as  one  might  suppose.  Aristotle  described 
a  votive  offering  from  Corfu  which  consisted  of  two  pillars.  On 
one  of  them  stood  a  caldron  and  on  the  other  a  bronze  statue  of  a 
boy  with  a  whip  in  his  hand.  The  chains  suspended  from  the  whip 
hung  free,  so  that  with  every  breath  of  wind  they  touched  the 
caldron,  producing  a  sound  which  was  interpreted  as  an  oracle. 
Korkyraion  mast'ix  or  "whip  of  the  Corcyrans"  was  yet  another 
idiomatic  expression  for  loquacity. 

Numerous  fragments  of  bronze  tripods  were  found  during  ex- 
cavations at  Dodona.  These  pieces  of  bronze  date  from  the  eighth 
century  b.c,  and  Dakaris  infers  from  them  that  the  sanctuary  was 
surrounded  by  bronze  vessels  at  that  period.  This  would  correspond 
with  a  report  by  the  Athenian  historian  Demon  (circa  330  e.g.), 
who  related  that  the  sanctuary  of  Zeus  originally  had  no  walls  but 
was  fenced  in  with  tripods. 

Homer's  references  to  Dodona  are  based  on  conditions  prevailing 
in  the  thirteenth  century  b.c,  the  time  of  Mycenae.  Once  again, 
archaeology  confirms  the  truth  of  what  used  to  be  regarded  as  the 


GREECE 


151 


Plan  of  Dodona 


product  of  poetic  imagination,  for  many  of  the  objects  dug  up  at 
Dodona  date  from  that  period.  They  are  principally  votive  offerings 
such  as  pots,  stone  mattocks  and  Mycenaean  weapons.  But  Dodona 
goes  back  even  further  into  the  mists  of  prehistory.  Excavation  has 
brought  to  light  even  older  finds,  and  it  is  now  recognized  that  the 
sacred  precincts  were  already  the  home  of  a  religious  cult  as  early 
as  1900  or  2100  B.C. 

All  these  finds  are  cult  objects  of  varying  sizes.  Where  archi- 


152  THE  SILENT  PAST 

tectural  remains  are  concerned,  on  the  other  hand,  nothing  earlier 
than  the  fourth  century  b.c.  has  been  found.  Nevertheless,  what  has 
been  discovered— and  above  all  the  holy  of  holies,  the  temple  itself — 
is  breathtaking  enough. 

The  oldest  temple,  built  in  the  fourth  century  b.c,  measured 
only  2  1  feet  by  igYz-  It  consisted  of  a  cella  and  a  small  projecting 
structure  without  pillars.  Between  350  and  325  b.c.  a  low  wall  of 
uniform  stones  was  built,  forming  a  largish  courtyard  enclosing  the 
sacred  precincts  once  occupied  by  the  tripods.  On  its  southeast 
side  a  sensational  discovery  was  made— perhaps  the  most  sensational 
of  all  the  revelations  of  Dodona.  Sotiris  Dakaris  came  upon  a  deep 
pit  in  the  natural  rock  containing  hewn  stones  which  had  evidently 
belonged  to  an  altar,  and  a  few  votive  offerings.  It  was  the  cavity 
that  had  once  housed  the  mighty  roots  of  the  sacred  oak!  The  oak 
must,  therefore,  have  existed,  and  the  Christians  were  so  anxious  to 
eradicate  it  that  they  removed  the  roots  that  represented  the  vital 
link  between  the  abode  of  Zeus  and  the  earth  itself.  So  Dakaris 
has  positively  identified  the  exact  location  of  the  oak  which  was 
until  recently  often  dismissed  as  a  fable,  and  we  now  possess,  through 
the  medium  of  his  published  findings  in  the  great  Pyrsos  Encyclo- 
pedia, an  idea  of  this  mysterious  cult  site  dedicated  to  the  supreme 
god  of  ancient  Greece. 

Pyrrhus  of  Epirus,  the  famous  Molossian  king  who  ruled  from 
297  to  272  B.C.  and  was  the  last  Greek  leader  to  resist  the  Romans 
successfully,  replaced  the  enclosure  around  the  oak  with  a  much 
larger  wall  forming  a  rectangular  courtyard  measuring  68  feet  by 
62.  This  courtyard,  whose  eastern  side  was  left  free  for  the  sacred 
tree,  incorporated  a  hall  with  Ionic  pillars  in  its  interior. 

A  small  Doric  temple  with  four  pillars  was  erected  at  about  the 
same  time,  probably  for  the  cult  of  Heracles,  together  with  another, 
Ionic  temple  with  vestibule  dedicated  to  the  cult  of  Dione,  wife  of 
Zeus  Dodonaeus. 

On  a  hill  to  the  north  of  the  sanctuary  stood  the  old  city,  today 
known  as  Palaeokastrion,  crowned  by  an  acropolis  built  of  uniform 
stones.  This  fortress  was  fortified  by  ten  wall  turrets  and  two  corner 
towers.  The  wall  of  the  acropolis  that  faced  the  temples  had  only 
one  rectangular  tower  built  into  it  to  enhance  its  appearance  when 
seen  from  the  sacred  buildings  in  the  valley  100  feet  below. 

Like  the  acropolis,  the  theatre  also  came  into  being  during  the 


GREECE  153 

reign  of  King  Pyrrhus.  It  is  a  true  architectural  masterpiece,  larger 
than  that  of  Epidaurus  and  the  best-preserved  edifice  of  its  kind 
in  Greece. 

The  builders  carved  the  enormous  semicircle  out  of  the  solid 
rock,  displaying  an  almost  frightening  disregard  of  practical  diffi- 
culties. The  theatre  is  divided  by  two  precipitous  gangways  into 
three  levels  containing  21,  16  and  21  tiers  of  stone  seats  respectively 
—58  in  all.  The  lowest  semicircle  in  the  theatre,  known  as  the 
proedria,  was  reserved  for  privileged  spectators.  Between  the  lowest 
semicircle  and  the  orchestra,  or  stage,  was  a  narrow  gangway  3  Yz 
feet  wide  with  a  groove  running  along  it.  This  was  a  channel  for 
the  rainwater  that  accumulated  there  from  all  over  the  theatre,  in- 
cluding the  orchestra,  and  unobtrusively  drained  away.  Beneath 
the  gutter  in  the  drainage  cavity  were  found  stalactites  up  to  8 
inches  long,  evidence  of  2,200  years'  growth. 

Ten  steps  led  from  the  orchestra  to  the  spectators'  seats.  The 
theatre  held  18,000  spectators,  and  if  all  its  seats  were  placed  side 
by  side  they  would  stretch  for  nearly  4/2  miles.  The  audience 
could  gaze  down  at  the  orchestra  or  past  it  into  the  blue  vistas 
of  one  of  the  most  beautiful  valleys  in  the  world.  The  stage  itself 
was  backed  by  a  wide  hall  supported  by  thirteen  octagonal  pillars. 
A  stone  proscenium  or  antestage  was  added  later,  supported  by 
eighteen  Ionic  half  pillars.  In  the  center  of  the  orchestra  stood 
the  foundation  stone  of  the  altar  or  tymele,  which  still  survives 
today.  It  should  be  remembered  that  the  twin  origins  of  the 
theatre  were  drama  and  religion,  and  that  dances  and  songs  used  to 
be  performed  around  the  altar.  Choros  was,  in  fact,  the  Greek  word 
for  "dance." 

During  the  reign  of  Augustus  the  Romans  modified  the  theatre's 
shape  and  turned  it,  typically  enough,  into  a  circus.  They  did  not, 
however,  succeed  in  destroying  the  building's  chiseled  beauty  and 
strength.  To  increase  the  size  of  the  orchestra  they  removed  the 
first  five  tiers  of  seats  and  built  a  nine-foot-high  wall  between  the 
orchestra  and  the  crescent-shaped  auditorium  to  protect  the  specta- 
tors. This  made  it  possible  to  stage  duels,  gladiatorial  contests  and 
fights  with  wild  animals.  At  the  extremities  of  the  arena  one  can 
still  make  out  the  stone  cells  where  trained  or  savage  beasts  were 
kept  in  preparation  for  the  slaughter  to  follow.  Large  quantities 
of  bones  have  been  found  there.  In  addition,  the  layer  of  chalk 


154  THE  SILENT  PAST 

beneath  the  orchestra  was  threaded  with  natural  cavities,  though 
it  is  impossible  to  say  for  what  they  were  used. 

The  huge  semicircle  of  the  theatre  is  bounded  at  either  end  by 
massive  buttresses  and  further  strengthened  by  three  monumental 
towers.  A  flight  of  steps  leads  up  through  the  first  tower  to  the 
middle  and  upper  sections  of  the  crescent,  the  latter  being  on  the 
same  level  as  the  acropolis.  Acropolis,  theatre  and  sanctuary  thus 
formed  a  unified  and  magnificent  complex  of  buildings  protected 
by  an  immense  exterior  courtyard.  It  was  a  fortified  area  of  vast 
proportions  and  one  that  must  have  evoked  the  admiration  and 
envy  of  the  entire  ^vorld  in  the  third  century  b.c. 

I  have  looked  down  on  the  theatre  from  above  and  felt  my  head 
swim  with  vertigo.  I  have  also  sat  in  the  extreme  corner  of  one 
of  the  highest  tiers.  Wherever  the  eye  turns,  there  is  a  harmony  and 
elegance  about  the  theatre's  lines  and  perspectives.  Looking  up  from 
the  stage,  one  can  see  the  seats  towering  up  and  away  into  the 
brightness  of  the  sky.  It  is  a  breathtakingly  beautiful  spectacle. 

For  some  reason— probably  a  violent  earthquake— the  massive  stone 
blocks  composing  the  spectators'  benches  had  been  thrown  into 
disorder.  Dakaris  has  restored  them  to  their  original  position,  a  very 
laborious  task  even  with  the  help  of  modern  engineering  equipment. 

Dodona's  amphitheatre  fills  the  puny  mortals  who  stand  before 
its  massive  bulk  with  a  sense  of  wonder  and  admiration.  It  helps  us 
to  understand  why  the  dramatists  of  the  West  are  still  feeding  on 
the  unquenchable  source  of  inspiration  provided  by  a  small  nation 
which,  two  and  a  half  thousand  years  ago,  evolved  all  the  basic 
themes  that  are  still  in  use  today.  Far  from  increasing  in  beauty 
since  then,  stages  and  theatres  have  become  no  more  than  wretched 
little  huts  in  comparison  with  their  grandiose  predecessors. 

When  Pausanias,  the  Greek  traveler  and  geographer,  visited 
Dodona  about  a.d.  150,  the  great  oak  was  still  standing,  the  oracle 
was  still  giving  voice  and  the  Roman  emperors  had  rebuilt  all  that 
their  own  legions  had  destroyed  during  the  conquest  of  Epirus. 
Two  hundred  years  later,  the  world's  earliest  place  of  pilgrimage 
stood  desolate  and  forlorn,  and  the  people  who  lived  on  the  hill 
above  the  sanctuary  had  fled  to  loannina. 

loannina  stands  dreaming  by  the  lake  a  few  miles  northeast  of 
Dodona,  a  small  and  remote  Balkan  township  with  white  walls  and 
gray  roofs.  Expert  craftsmen,  carpet  knotters,  weavers,  embroiderers 


GREECE  155 

and  probably  the  best  silversmiths  in  Greece  live  in  this  rugged, 
industrious,  garrulous  and  congenial  place.  Anyone  who  ascends 
the  hill  overlooking  the  town  and  visits  the  Asian  Aga  mosque,  now 
a  museum,  can  discover  in  the  relics  displayed  there  the  wonder 
that  was  once  Dodona. 

If  we  could  only  look  down  on  our  little  world  in  a  godlike  and 
timeless  fashion  we  should  see  that  life  crawls  across  it  at  an  almost 
imperceptible  pace.  Abandoning  Dodona,  it  moved  on  to  loannina 
and  soared  to  a  splendid  prime  there.  loannina  became  the  capital 
of  Epirus  and  the  seat  of  venerable  archbishops.  It  was  annexed  to 
Serbia,  was  conquered  by  sultans  and  witnessed  desperate  Christian 
uprisings.  Under  Ali  of  Tepeleni  it  became  a  world-famous  center 
of  learning  whose  schools  taught  Greek  literature,  Latin,  French 
and  other  branches  of  knowledge.  Pressing  onward,  history  left  the 
town  in  its  wake.  loannina  struggled  for  mastery  over  the  whole  of 
Greece.  Emissaries  from  France,  England  and  Russia  met  there  and 
shared  Lord  Byron's  admiration  for  the  place. 

Growing  apprehensive  that  one  pasha  should  command  so  much 
power,  the  Turkish  government  besieged  Ali  in  the  fortress  above 
the  town.  Finally  he  surrendered,  and  on  February  22,  1822,  was 
treacherously  assassinated  on  an  island  in  the  lake,  ordering  with 
his  last  breath  that  his  wife  should  be  killed  to  prevent  her  falling 
into  the  hands  of  his  enemies.  His  severed  head  \\'as  publicly  dis- 
played in  loannina,  and  the  inhabitants  filed  silently  past  their 
former  master.  Ninety-one  years  later,  on  the  anniversary  of  his 
murder,  loannina  was  recaptured  by  the  Greeks. 

loannina  weaves  the  tapestry  of  its  life  from  timeless  threads, 
but  twelve  miles  away  in  the  lonely  valley  of  Dramissos  the  bare 
brown  mountains  face  the  sky  in  mute  inquiry.  Who  tore  the 
ancient  oak  from  the  bosom  of  its  mother  earth?  Why  was  the 
plaintive  voice  of  the  bronze  caldrons  stilled?  Where  did  the  priests 
go,  and  how  did  the  priestesses  meet  their  end?  And  why  did  Zeus, 
the  god  in  whose  language  our  New  Testament  was  composed,  leave 
heaven  and  earth  forever  without  hope  of  resurrection? 


SPAIN 

ATLANTIS,  FACT  OR  FICTION? 

Thus  the  muddy  shallows  and  the  estuary  show  that  Plato 
visualized  his  island  of  Atlantis  on  the  coast  of  the  Western  Ocea^i, 
and  he  is  ki?id  enough  to  satisfy  our  curiosity  as  to  whether  it 
was  the  Libyan  or  the  Iberian  or  the  Celtic  coast.  He  says  that 
PoseidoTj's  second  son  Eiimelos  was  also  called  Gadeiros  and  that 
Gadeiros's  allotted  (eastern)  end  of  the  island  of  Atlantis  lay  near 
the  Pillars  of  Heracles  and  extended  into  the  region  of  Gades. 
That  is  his  sole  fairly  precise  topographical  allusion  to  Atlajitis,  but 
it  is  of  inestimable  value. 

—Adolf  Schulten,  Tartessos, 
p.  98,  Hamburg,  1950 

OF  ALL  the  vanished  civihzations  of  man,  Atlantis  is  possibly  the 
most  intriguing.  The  question  of  whether  Atlantis  is  only  a  legend 
or  whether  the  story  of  the  remote  island  is  based  on  fact  was  a 
bone  of  contention  even  in  antiquity.  Aristotle,  for  example,  re- 
garded all  the  accounts  of  Atlantis  as  pure  fiction,  whereas  Posidonius 
took  it  for  granted  that  Atlantis  actually  existed  at  one  time. 

The  fascination  which  Atlantis  has  always  exercised  over  men's 
minds  originated  in  their  yearning  for  a  climatically  mild,  fertile 
land  of  the  unknown,  in  their  escapist  longing  for  a  better  world 
untroubled  by  mundane  cares.  The  Greek  poet  Hesiod,  who  lived 
about  700  B.C.,  was  the  first  to  write  of  the  Islands  of  the  Blest. 
Sickened  by  years  of  civil  strife,  the  famous  Roman  poet  Horace 
counseled  his  fellow  men  to  go  in  search  of  the  arva  beata  or 
"blessed  fields."  Sertorius,  who  served  as  a  praetor  in  Spain  in 
83  B.C.,  heard  master  mariners  from  Gades,  the  present-day  Cadiz, 
tell  of  "fortunate  isles"  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean— probably  Madeira 
and  the  Canary  group.  The  Sicilian  writer  Diodorus  went  so  far  as 
to  give  a  glowing  description  of  Madeira,  probably  based  on  reports 
by  the  explorer  Pytheas  of  Massiha  (Marseilles),  who  toured 
northern  Europe  about  325  B.C.  and  reached  the  Shetland  and  Orkney 
islands.  As  the  author  of  a  book  entitled  The  Ocean  (unfortunately 
not  extant)  Pytheas  probably  gave  an  account  of  Madeira's  wonder- 
fully mild  and  temperate  climate  and  its  extremely  fertile  soil.  From 
Homer  to  Daniel  Defoe  and  Thor  Heyerdahl,  poets,  explorers  and 
sailors  have  always  dreamed— in  company  with  their  readers— of 
faraway  islands,  perilous  or  paradisiac. 

156 


SPAIN  157 

Was  Atlantis  an  island,  a  distant  continent,  or  a  mainland  region 
that  seemed  like  an  island? 

The  world  has  had  to  wait  until  our  own  day  before  seeing  a 
ray  of  light  shed  on  the  mystery  surrounding  the  country  and  its 
inhabitants.  Ever  since  Columbus  discovered  a  new  continent  in 
the  Atlantic  Ocean  in  1492,  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  equate 
America  with  Atlantis.  Despite  the  hundreds  of  volumes  devoted  to 
solving  the  riddle  of  Atlantis,  recent  scientific  research  into  the 
subject  justifies  yet  another  attempt  to  define  the  Atlantides  and 
their  culture  geographically,  for  there  is  abundant  evidence  that 
Atlantis  existed.  Troy,  too,  would  have  been  an  "Atlantis"  had  no 
one  dug  it  up! 

The  most  celebrated  reference  to  the  city  and  island  of  Atlantis 
is  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  Plato,  who  was  born  in  May  of 
the  year  427  b.c.  The  son  of  an  aristocratic  Athenian  family,  he 
received  a  first-rate  and  comprehensive  education.  He  might  well 
have  become  a  great  statesman,  but  a  study  of  political  events  in 
Greece  convinced  him  of  a  truth  which  was  destined  never  to  lose 
its  validity:  that  the  social  and  political  conditions  of  a  country 
will  never  improve  until  politicians  become  philosophers  or  the 
destinies  of  a  nation  are  controlled  by  philosophers  with  statesman- 
like qualities.  The  word  "philosopher"  is  not,  of  course,  used  here 
in  the  strictly  technical  sense.  We  are  dealing  with  the  well-proved 
fact  that  politics  and  statesmanship  are  not  merely  special  branches 
of  knowledge  but  rooted  in  human  wisdom. 

Plato  wrote  poems,  epigrams,  dithyrambs  and  tragedies,  but  his 
true  immortality  arose  out  of  his  friendship  with  Socrates,  the  unique 
genius  whose  teachings  he  enriched  with  the  fruits  of  a  deeper  and 
more  widely  based  education.  After  Socrates'  execution  in  the  year 
399  B.C.,  Plato  traveled  to  Megara,  southern  Italy  and  Syracuse, 
where,  at  the  court  of  the  tyrant  Dionysius  I,  he  formed  an  intimate 
friendship  with  that  ruler  which  endured  until  the  latter's  death. 

Plato  was  the  originator  of  higher  education  in  western  Europe, 
for  with  his  Academy,  a  school  of  philosophy  outside  the  gates  of 
Athens  named  after  the  hero  Academos,  he  laid  the  foundations  of 
all  future  universities.  He  taught  there  without  fee  until  his  death 
in  the  year  347  b.c,  displaying  true  charity  and  self-sacrifice  in  his 
constant  quest  for  the  truth.  Plato  was,  to  put  it  crudely,  the  in- 
ventor of  the  "idea."  He  realized  that  human  life  and  endeavor  are 


158  THE  SILENT  PAST 

focused  far  more  on  the  ideal  than  the  material,  and  recognized  the 
existence  of  "ideals"  as  such.  This  was  Plato's  extremely  simple  but 
grandiose  discovery.  He  had  faith  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
and  strove  to  find  evidence  for  that  faith.  His  assertion  that  virtue 
was  something  real  and  imperishable  was  not  a  universally  accepted 
truism  four  hundred  years  before  Christ's  birth,  but  he  realized 
that  material  things  perish  while  only  what  is  intangible  and  ideal 
survives.  He  also  knew  that  eternal  moral  values  are  not  determined 
simply  by  the  arbitrary  whim  of  the  individual  but  denote  the 
existence  of  a  more  perfect  world  divorced  from  the  specious  reality 
of  material  objects.  Thus  Socrates  and  Plato  must  be  numbered 
with  men  like  Confucius,  Buddha,  Mohammed  and  Paul  among  the 
truly  great  geniuses  of  history,  overshadowed  only  by  the  incom- 
parable figure  of  Christ. 

In  addition  to  his  passionate  defense  of  Socrates,  his  Protagoras, 
a  book  on  the  communicability  of  virtue,  his  works  on  piety,  love 
and  immortality,  Plato  wrote  two  treatises  which  convey  an  idea 
of  the  lost  island,  vanished  city  or  country  of  Atlantis.  They  are 
entitled  Timaeiis  and  Critias. 

The  work  was  really  intended  to  be  a  trilogy,  but  for  reasons 
unknown  to  us  the  philosopher  never  came  to  write  the  third  or 
concluding  volume,  and  even  the  second,  Critias,  remained  un- 
completed. Plato  wrote  these  essays  while  Athens  was  going  through 
a  critical  period,  probably  intending  to  console  his  fellow  mortals 
with  the  picture  of  a  remote  and  better  world.  It  was  a  bold  under- 
taking. He  recounted  the  story  of  mankind's  earliest  beginnings 
and  described  the  nature  of  man  and  his  physical  and  moral  con- 
stitution—a colossal  and  all-embracing  design.  Timaeiis  and  Critias 
cannot  be  compared  to  his  most  brilliant  works,  as,  for  example,  the 
Symposiimi.  They  are  not  purely  literary  in  conception  and  their 
often  dry  and  didactic  flavor  robs  them  of  any  element  of  drama. 
All  in  all,  there  are  few  more  difficult  books  to  assess  in  the  whole 
of  ancient  literature,  even  though  the  knowledge  and  human  insight 
contained  in  them  is  beyond  praise. 

Generations  of  scholars  have  puzzled  over  the  contents  of  this 
unfinished  work.  Albert  Rivaud,  professor  at  the  Sorbonne,  declared 
in  1956  that  it  embodied  not  only  ancient  traditions  but  also  the 
results  of  the  latest  contemporary  research  carried  out  during  Plato's 
lifetime.  That  a  distinguished  French  scholar  who  had  spent  decades 


SPAIN  159 

studying  the  Platonic  texts  should  reach  this  conclusion  is  most 
significant  because  it  invests  the  geographical  and  ethnological 
allusions  in  the  two  books  with  greater  weight. 

It  is  possible  that  as  an  old  man  Plato  wanted  what  was  probably 
the  last  literary  work  in  his  prolific  life  to  transport  him  in  advance, 
as  it  were,  to  the  Islands  of  the  Blest. 

Was  Plato's  Atlantis  no  more  than  poetic  fiction?  Was  his  account 
of  a  happy  island  that  ruled  the  world  merely  a  sympathetic  re- 
furbishing of  legends  handed  down  from  the  dawn  of  prehistory? 
Or  did  he  have  factual  knowledge  of  a  vanished  city  and  empire, 
of  a  vanished  Atlantic  civilization?  The  pupils  who  immediately 
succeeded  the  great  philosopher  accepted  the  entire  account  of 
Atlantis  as  fact  rather  than  fiction.  Grantor,  who  lived  between  335 
and  275  B.C.  and  taught  philosophy  at  the  Academy,  was  the  first  to 
write  a  commentary  on  Plato's  Timaeus.  The  philosopher,  scientist 
and  historian  Posidonius  (circa  100  b.c.)  also  tells  us  that  Plato 
probably  based  his  accounts  on  real  knowledge  and  actual  events. 

In  later  times,  scholars  and  adventurers  of  every  nationality  made 
repeated  attempts  to  ascertain  the  location  of  Atlantis.  It  has  been 
sought  in  every  part  of  the  world,  from  America  to  Australia,  from 
Spitsbergen  to  England,  from  Helgoland  to  the  southern  coasts  of 
Africa,  from  India  to  the  Far  East. 

In  161 1  Thomas  Campanella,  an  Italian  Dominican,  described  a 
"sun  city"  composed  of  seven  circles  divided  by  walls  and  ditches— 
an  arrangement  strongly  reminiscent  of  the  capital  of  Plato's  Atlantic 
realm.  Campanella  later  atoned  for  his  "heretical  theories"  by 
spending  thirty  years  in  the  dungeons.  Francis  Bacon  asserted  that 
Plato's  Atlantis  was  none  other  than  America,  but  died  in  1628 
before  he  could  complete  a  book  entitled  Nova  Insula  Atla?Jtis.  The 
Swedish  scholar  Olf  Rudbek  wrote  in  1675  that  Plato's  allusions 
fitted  no  other  place  on  earth  so  accurately  as  Sweden  and,  in 
particular,  Uppsala  and  its  environs.  (Rudbek  was  Rector  of  Uppsala 
University.)  Georg  Caspar  Kirchmaier  suggested  at  Wittenberg  in 
1685  that  Atlantis  lay  in  South  Africa,  while  Jean  Sylvain  Bailly 
declared  in  London  in  1779  that  the  Atlantis  of  antiquity  was  really 
the  Nordic  island  of  Spitsbergen.  Undeterred  by  the  fact  that 
Plato's  island  sank  beneath  the  waves,  Bailly  explained  that  Spits- 
bergen had  only  been  "frozen  up,"  not  engulfed  by  the  sea.  In  the 
same  year  Jean  Baptiste  Claude  Delisle  de  Sales  transposed  Atlantis 


i6o  THE  SILENT  PAST 

to  the  island  of  Sardinia.  In  1762  F.  C.  Bar  found  it  in  Palestine, 
Bartoli  in  Attica.  In  1838  Gottfried  Stallbaum,  author  of  several 
commentaries  on  Plato's  works,  declared  that  the  Egyptians  and 
their  Asian  neighbors  had  an  obscure  tradition  concerning  a  Western 
continent,  namely  America,  and  that  the  latter  was  Atlantis.  The 
French  scholar  Cadet  surmised  that  there  were  traces  of  the  sunken 
island  in  the  Canary  Islands  or  the  Azores. 

One  of  the  wildest  and  most  fantastic  theories  was  put  forward 
by  the  American  Augustus  Le  Plongeon,  who  declared  that  the 
Maya  race  had  recorded  the  downfall  of  Atlantis  as  early  as  2500 
B.C.,  and  that  it  had  taken  place  11,500  years  earlier.  The  famous 
student  of  Africa,  Leo  Frobenius,  concluded  from  the  results  of  his 
scientific  work  and  numerous  travels  that  the  vanished  city  must 
have  stood  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Benin  in  Nigeria.  Pro- 
fessor Dr.  H.  H.  Borchardt  believed  that  Atlantis  once  existed  in 
Tunis.  Professor  Albert  Herrmann  conducted  excavations  in  Shott 
el  Djerid  in  southern  Tunisia  and  found  remains  of  settlements 
"which  are  peculiarly  reminiscent  of  Plato's  city  of  Atlantis." 

Finally,  mention  must  be  made  of  two  Germans,  Professor 
Hermann  Wirth  of  Marburg,  who  identifies  Atlantis  with  a  Stone- 
Age  realm  of  Nordic  civilization  located  near  Iceland,  and  Pastor 
Jiirgen  Spanuth,  who  is  convinced  that  Atlantis  lies  in  the  North 
Sea  near  Helgoland.  Spanuth  believes  that  while  diving  in  the 
shallows  northeast  of  the  island  he  has  seen  ruined  fortifications 
belonging  to  the  ancient  citadel  thirty  or  forty  feet  below  the  sur- 
face. Twelve  of  the  blocks  of  flint  which  Spanuth  brought  up, 
under  the  impression  that  they  revealed  signs  of  human  handiwork, 
were  examined  by  the  Institute  of  Geology  at  Kiel  University.  The 
Department  of  Marine  Geology  found,  however,  that  the  plate- 
shaped  stones  had  been  split  naturally  and  not  by  human  agency. 

Anyone  attempting  to  solve  the  mystery  would  be  well  advised 
to  stick  closely  to  Plato's  text.  While  traveling  in  Egypt,  he  reported, 
Solon  learned  to  his  astonishment  how  far  back  the  Egyptians' 
knowledge  of  history  went.  Apparently  an  Egyptian  priest  had 
confided  certain  secrets  to  him.  We  read  in  Timaeus  (25  and  26): 

In  those  days  one  could  sail  through  this  sea.  In  front  of  the  straits, 
the  Pillars  of  Heracles  [Gibraltar],  there  was  an  island.  This  island  was 
larger  than  Libya  and  Asia  combined.  The  travelers  of  those  times 
could  voyage  from  this  island  to  the  other  islands,  and  from  the  other 


[40]  No  one  will 
ever  know  the  iden- 
tity of  the  man 
buried  in  Shaft 
Grave  IV  at  My- 
cenae, but  he  wore 
this  gold  mask  over 
his  face.  Excavated 
by  Heinrich  Schlie- 
mann,  it  is  now  on 
display  in  the  Na- 
tional Museum  at 
Athens. 


[41]  Solid  gold 
rhyton  in  the  shape 
of  a  lion's  head. 
This  ritual  vessel 
was  beaten  out  of 
a  single  sheet  of 
metal  and  is  a  re- 
markably fine  work 
of  art.  It  was  also 
discovered  in  Shaft 
Grave  IV  in  the 
citadel  of  Mycenae 
and  dates  from  the 
i6th    century    B.C. 


[42]   Head  of  a  bull  vaulter  in  ivory,  found  in  the 
palace  of  Knossos  (circa  1550  B.C.).  This  fragment  is 
part  of  a  complete  bull-vaulting  group,  but  the   re- 
mainder of  the  sculpture  is  lost. 


[43]  Spouted  jug  and  cup  decorated  with  the  double 

ax,    a   sacred    emblem    in   ancient    Crete.    These    fine 

pieces   were   found   in  the   New   Palace   at  Phaistos. 

(Circa  1500  b.c.) 


[44I    This  bronze  statuette  of  a   man  praying  from 

Tylissos,  Crete,  was  made  around  1550  B.C.  and  shows 

the   stance   customarily   adopted   during   prayer.   The 

figurine  is  only  6  inches  tall. 


[45 1  Bull  vaulting  held  a  religious  significance  for  the 
people  of  ancient  Crete,  who  trained  girls  and  boys 
in  the  technique  from  an  early  age.  Since  men  were 
always  painted  in  red  and  women  in  white,  we  can 
tell  that  two  girls  (left  and  right)  and  one  boy  (center) 
were  taking  part  in  the  dangerous  maneuver  illustrated 
here.  (Fresco  in  a  small  courtyard  in  the  east  wmg 
of  the  palace  of  Knossos,  circa  1500  b.c.) 


I  .III!       i.-',i,'*\l**,»^< » IJsrr^ 


...  i  H  ^v'^.¥ii:t<f?^m^ih\\\*Uu 


'V. 


tf 


.  u  III  I  m  1 1 1 1 1 1  i  1 11  11  n   .:   - .   .  1 1 1  i  1 1  i  1 1 1  i  H 1 1 1  n  H  1 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  lYiVi  11 1  ii  1 1 11 1 11 1  mi  1 1  s  i^.*  1 1  n  1  m  1 1 1' 


[46]    The  so-called  temple  grave  at  Knossos,  beneath  which  lies   a   pillared   vault. 

Visible  in  the  background  are  the  forecourt  and  entrance  hall. 
[47]  Throne  room  in  the  palace  of  Knossos.  The  throne  and  benches  are  of  alabaster 
and  the   frescoes   painted   in   vivid   colors.   The    chamber   has    been    restored    with 

complete  accuracy. 


m.' 

r 


^.^^:^<^ 


^^^ 


^-^ 


[48]    The   stadium    at   Delphi,   site    of    the    Pythian    Games.    This   view    shows    the 

track  and  spectators'  benches. 
[49]  On  the  right,  the  massive  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi;  on  the  left,  the  amphi- 
theatre. Built  in  the  2nd  century  B.C.,  it  had  thirty-five  tiers  of  seats  and  could  hold 
5,000    spectators— not    many    compared    with    the    16,000    seats    in    the    Theatre    of 

Dionysus  at  Athens. 


[50]  Caryatid  composed  of  three  young  girls  holding  up  their  short  robes  as  they 
dance.  They  are  wearing  the  polos,  a  hair  style  common  to  priestesses. 

[51]  Figure  of  an  Amazon  on  the  Athenian  Treasury  at  Delphi,  sculpted  about  500  b.c. 

[52]  Portrayed  on  the  frieze  on  the  north  face  of  the  Siphnian  Treasury  are  the  god 

Apollo,  the  goddess  Artemis  and  a  fleeing  giant.  The  treasury  was  dedicated  to  the 

Delphic  sanctuary  by  the  people  of  the  island  of  Siphnos. 


^^ 


[53]  Fivefold  enlargement  of  a  remarkably  fine  seal  dating  from  420  b.c.  (The  original 
is  only  i  Vz  inches  in  diameter.)  It  was  found  south  of  loannina  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  Dodona  oracle.  The  relief  shows  Orestes  and  his  mother  Clytemnestra,  who  has 
been  stabbed  in  the  heart  with  a  dagger  and  is  seeking  refuge  on  the  altar.  Orestes  is 
trying  to  drag  her  from  it  in  order  to  complete  the  revenge  of  his  father  Agamemnon's 

murder. 


i^.. 


[54]  These  stone  mattocks  are  over  3,500  years  old.  They  were  found  in  the  oracle 
of  Dodona  and  offer  evidence  that  the  sanctuary  came  into  existence  before  2000  b.c. 

[55]  An  example  of  the  most  durable  pottery  ever  made  in  Greece,  this  Minyan  bowl 
of  gray  clay  dates  from  the  period  1900- 1700  b.c.  The  Minyans  were  the  people  who 
built  the  domed  graves  at  Orchomenos,  and  whose  culture  immediately  pre-dated  the 
Mycenaean  period.  This  vessel  was  found  in  the  Dodona  district  and  is  now  in  the 
Archaeological  iMuseum  at  loannina. 


• ,'  1-  •  '  •  "  /  •  ' .  •  ' »  »  "  >  *  *^  » 


[56!  This  Phoenician  sculpture  from  circa  500  b.c.  was  discovered  in  San  Fernando, 

not  far  from  Cadiz.  The  features  are  distinctly  Phoenician  with  a  Nubian  admixture, 

and  the  subject  may  have  been  brought  to  Spain  by  the  Carthaginians. 


SPAIN  i6i 

islands  they  could  reach  the  whole  continent  on  the  far  shores  of  the 
sea  which  really  merits  its  name  [Atlantic].  On  the  one  side,  in  the 
interior  of  the  straits  of  which  we  speak,  there  appears  to  be  only  a 
harbor  with  a  narrow  entrance.  On  the  other  side,  without,  there  lies 
this  real  sea.  The  land  which  it  encloses  must  be  described  as  a  continent 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  term.  On  this  island  of  Atlantis  kings  had  founded 
a  large  and  wonderful  empire  which  ruled  the  whole  island  and  many 
other  islands  and  parts  of  the  continent.  It  possessed  in  addition,  on  our 
side,  Libya  [Africa  west  of  Egypt]  and  Europe  down  to  the  Tyrrhenian 
[western  Italy].  In  later  times  there  were  frightful  earthquakes  and 
inundations  in  Atlantis,  and  during  a  single  day  and  a  single  terrible 
night  the  island  of  Atlantis  sank  beneath  the  sea  and  vanished.  Because 
of  obstruction  by  deep  silt,  the  submerged  remnants  of  the  vanished 
island,  the  ocean  there  is  difficult  to  navigate  to  this  day  and  can  hardly 
be  explored. 

In  Critias  (114)  Plato  goes  on  to  say  that  the  island's  earliest  king 
was  called  Atlas  and  that  it  was  he  who  gave  the  island  and  the  whole 
ocean  their  names.  His  twin  brother  was  given  the  extreme  tip  of 
the  island  near  the  Pillars  of  Heracles  and  opposite  the  Gadeiran 
region— hence  Gadeiros,  his  name  in  the  language  of  the  country. 

So  Atlantis  can  only  be  located  somewhere  m  jront  of  the 
Pillars  of  Heracles,  i.e.  to  the  west  of  Gibraltar,  not  in  the  Medi- 
terranean but  on  the  Atlantic  coast  in  the  area  of  Gades,  the  present- 
day  town  of  Cadiz,  and  the  "Gadeiran  region"  must  therefore  be 
assumed  to  be  somewhere  north  of  it. 

The  writers  of  antiquity  rarely  gave  entirely  imaginary  geo- 
graphical details  or  ones  which  were  completely  at  odds  with  the 
facts  because  they  had  a  highly  developed  sense  of  topography. 
From  the  time  Schliemann  excavated  Troy  and  Evans  unearthed 
Knossos,  modern  archaeology  has  repeatedly  supplied  proof  that 
the  directions  of  ancient  writers  can  be  followed,  and  that  even 
poetically  embellished  topographical  allusions  were  not  entirely 
fabricated.  It  is  dangerous  therefore  to  dismiss  Plato's  accounts  as 
pure  fantasy,  especially  in  an  age  when  sensational  archaeological  dis- 
coveries have  been  made  on  the  basis  of  ancient  sources.  Apart 
from  that,  well-known  geographical  details  are  rarely  tacked  onto 
a  purely  imaginary  location.  The  "Gadeiran  region,"  the  Pillars  of 
Heracles  and  the  words  "without,  there  lies  this  real  sea"  are  rela- 
tively precise  directions,  which  is  why  German  scholars  as  meticu- 


1 62  THE  SILENT  PAST 

lous  as  Richard  Henning  and  Adolf  Schulten  have  insisted  that 
Plato's  description  of  Atlantis  is  based  on  concrete  facts. 

The  late  Professor  Schulten  devoted  fifty  years  of  his  life  to  an 
historical  and  archaeological  study  of  Spain.  In  1940,  on  his 
seventieth  birthday,  the  University  of  Barcelona  bestowed  an  honor- 
ary doctorate  on  him.  He  also  received  the  highest  Spanish  decora- 
tion for  cultural  services,  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of 
Alfonso  X. 

While  reading  Appian's  Iberica  one  night  in  Gottingen  during  the 
winter  of  1901-02,  Schulten  was  struck  by  the  detailed  description 
of  the  siege  of  Numantia  by  Publius  Cornelius  Scipio  in  the  year 
133  B.C.  As  soon  as  an  opportunity  presented  itself,  Schulten  set 
off  for  the  Douro,  where  he  carefully  scrutinized  a  hill  near  its 
banks.  At  2  p.m.  on  August  12,  1905,  he  and  his  six  laborers  began 
to  dig,  and  four  hours  later  he  had  discovered  Nurmantia,  the  lost 
Iberian  city  which  people  had  been  vainly  seeking  for  centuries. 
By  autumn  1908  Schulten  had  also  excavated  Scipio's  seven  camps. 
He  published  his  archaeological  findings  in  five  volumes,  wrote  a 
geographical,  ethnographical  and  historical  survey  of  the  Iberian 
Peninsula  and  a  study  of  Iberian  customs,  edited  twelve  volumes 
of  classical  references  to  the  peninsula  complete  with  Spanish  com- 
mentary, and  wrote  a  book  about  the  Etruscan  city  of  Tarragona. 
He  also  identified  Atlantis  with  the  city  of  Tartessus. 

In  order  to  prove  that  Tartessus  and  Atlantis  were  identical,  we 
must  first  examine  what  is  known  of  Tartessus  and  establish  the 
possible  location  of  the  city  or  country  of  that  name. 

All  sources  indicate  that  Tartessus  should  be  sought  in  the  south 
or  southwest  of  Spain;  that  is  to  say,  in  modern  Andalusia.  Andalusia 
has  always  been  and  still  is  to  this  day  the  richest  part  of  the  Iberian 
Peninsula.  Indeed,  classical  authors  regarded  it  as  the  richest  country 
in  the  world.  Baetica,  as  Andalusia  used  to  be  called,  was  praised 
for  its  fertility  by  Pliny  about  a.d.  100.  Posidonius  has  left  us  a 
description  of  Tartessus  preserved  in  the  first  and  second  chapters 
of  Strabo's  third  book, 

Posidonius  tells  us  that  the  banks  of  the  Baetis  (the  Guadalquivir's 
original  name)  were  densely  populated,  and  that  the  river  was 
navigable  for  1,200  stadia  (135  miles),  from  the  sea  to  Cordoba  and 
a  little  beyond.  The  land  near  the  river  was  intensively  cultivated. 
Posidonius  mentions  olive  groves  and  large  plantations,  and  tells 


SPAIN  163 

us  that  "Turdetania"  was  extremely  rich  in  exportable  goods  such 
as  wax,  honey,  pitch  and  ruddle.  Ships  were  built  of  indigenous 
wood,  and  there  was  an  abundance  of  oysters,  mussels  and  fish. 
Turdetania  and  the  adjoining  regions  were  particularly  rich  in 
metals;  in  very  few  places  in  the  ancient  world  were  gold,  silver, 
copper  and  iron  available  in  such  quantity  or  quality.  Posidonius 
goes  on  to  describe  the  extraction  of  gold,  silver,  copper  and  tin. 
Even  though  we  read  his  reports  at  second  hand  in  Strabo,  the 
latter's  pages  are  illuminated  by  the  lively  style  of  the  original.  The 
wealth  of  Tartessus  lay  principally  in  the  mountains  of  Andalusia, 
the  Sierra  Morena,  whose  mineral  resources  are  still  not  exhausted 
at  the  present  day.  Strabo  gives  some  almost  incredible  details  of  the 
Iberian  El  Dorado,  a  place  where  Phoenician  sailors  exchanged  their 
leaden  anchors  for  anchors  of  silver,  and  whose  precious  metals 
found  their  way  into  the  treasuries  at  Olympia  and  Delphi.  Southern 
Spain  is  the  home  of  one  of  the  oldest  mining  industries  in  the 
Western  world.  It  was  probably  in  the  valley  of  the  Baetis,  near  the 
copper  mines  of  Rio  Tinto,  that  copper  was  first  alloyed  with  tin 
to  make  bronze.  And  Tartessus  was  a  metropolis  which  stood  bv  the 
sea  somewhere  in  the  estuary  of  the  Guadalquivir.  It  was  the  prede- 
cessor of  Seville  and  an  international  seaport  like  Lisbon,  Bordeaux, 
Antwerp,  Hamburg  or  London. 

The  city  was  founded  about  1150  B.C.  by  seafarers  from  the 
ancient  Lydian  city  of  Tursa,  which,  incidentally,  is  not  to  be 
confused  with  Tyre,  the  famous  Phoenician  port  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean coast  of  what  is  now  Syria.  Gades,  present-day  Cadiz,  was 
established  by  the  Phoenicians  as  a  trading  station  on  the  southwest 
coast  of  Spain. 

Tursa,  on  the  other  hand,  has  vanished  from  the  face  of  the 
earth.  This  is  a  great  misfortune,  because  if  we  could  find  and  exca- 
vate Tursa  we  miorht  have  a  clearer  idea  of  where  the  Etruscans  came 
from,  for  the  Tyrseni  or  Tyrrheni,  Strabo  tells  us,  were  the  race 
whom  we  know  by  the  later,  Roman,  name  Etruscans.  Strabo  adds 
that  the  Tyrrhenians  were  of  Lydian  stock  and  came  from  Asia 
Minor.  Lydia  occupied  the  center  of  modern  Turkey's  southern 
coast  and  bordered  the  Aegean.  Being  a  Tyrrhenian  colony,  Tartes- 
sus thus  belonged  to  the  Etruscan  world.  One  of  the  kings  of  Tartes- 
sus was  called  Arganthonius,  a  name  which  in  the  late  Professor 
Schulten's  opinion  is  connected  with  the  Etruscan  name  arcnti. 


1 64  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Moreover,  Andalusia  has  a  number  of  Etruscan  place  names  which 
come  from  the  Lydian  home  of  the  Tyrrhenians.  We  read  in  the 
Old  Testament  of  the  kings  of  Tarshish  and  the  ships  of  Tarshish, 
noblest  of  harbors.  "The  ships  of  Tarshish  did  sing  of  thee  in  thy 
market:  and  thou  wast  replenished,  and  made  very  glorious  in  the 
midst  of  the  seas,"  writes  Ezekiel:  xxvii,  25. 

The  year  a.d.  400  saw  the  appearance  of  an  important  work  by 
Rufus  Festus  Avienus,  a  Roman  aristocrat  and  author  who  described, 
for  the  benefit  of  a  friend,  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  from 
Spain  to  the  Black  Sea.  Avienus  was  a  student  of  ancient  geography, 
so  his  picture  of  these  coasts,  countries  and  islands  was  not  a  con- 
temporary one  but  based  as  far  as  possible  on  ancient  sources.  Thus 
for  his  description  of  the  Spanish  coast  he  used  a  report  by  a  Greek 
sailor  from  Massilia  (Marseilles)  who  undertook  a  voyage  from 
Tartessus  to  Massilia  in  530  B.C.  His  account  is  of  inestimable  value, 
for  he  gives  a  description  of  the  west  coast  of  Europe,  then  regarded 
as  the  edge  of  the  world,  from  Gibraltar  to  the  far  north.  In  it  we 
find  the  first  recorded  mention  of  Albion  (England)  and  references 
to  Oestrymnis  (Brittany),  the  island  of  lerne  (Ireland)  and  the 
countries  of  the  North  Sea,  renowned  for  their  amber. 

The  Greek  seaman  from  Massilia  also  described  the  legendary 
city  of  Tartessus,  which  apparently  stood  on  the  west  coast  of 
Spain  somewhere  near  the  place  where  the  Guadalquivir  joins  the 
sea.  There  is  a  description  of  the  Tartessus  River,  i.e.  the  Guadal- 
quivir, from  its  mouth  to  the  "Mountain  of  Silver."  Tartessus  ruled 
large  tracts  of  the  west  coast  of  Spain  and  its  influence  extended 
deep  inland  to  the  metal-rich  Sierra  Morena.  The  inhabitants  of 
Tartessus  evolved  what  was  probably  the  most  advanced  civilization 
in  the  contemporary  Western  world. 

Wandering  through  the  Andalusian  countryside  today,  one  realizes 
how  magnificent  a  past  the  cities  of  southern  Spain  once  enjoyed, 
how  rich  the  country  still  is,  and  with  what  uncanny  clarity  the 
culture  of  Tartessus  still  emerges  from  the  numerous  objects  on 
show  in  museums  there. 

Did  this  ancient  and  still  undiscovered  city  really  stand  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Guadalquivir,  or  is  Tartessus  identical  with  modern 
Seville?  Was  it,  in  any  case,  the  fabulously  wealthy  metropolis 
which  Plato  called  Atlantis? 

In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  endeavor  to  find  out. 


SPAIN 

CITY  BENEATH  THE  SANDS 

And  so,  by  assembling  all  manner  of  riches  in  their  country,  the 
inhabitants  of  Atlantis  built  temples,  palaces  for  kings,  harbors  and 
dry  docks,  and  in  addition  developed  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  the 
country.  They  built  bridges  across  the  curved  inlets  that  enclosed 
their  native  city  and  so  opened  up  a  road  to  the  royal  residence 
and  to  the  outside.  Each  king  inherited  the  palace  from  his  pred- 
ecessor and  enha?7ced  what  his  predecessor  had  already  invested 
with  such  splendor. 

—Plato,  Critias,  115c 

IN  EARLIER  times— and  until  about  500  b.c— there  lay  not  far  from 
the  estuary  of  the  Guadalquivir  a  lake  known  in  the  ancient  world 
as  the  Lacus  Ligustinus.  In  those  days  the  river  flowed  from  the 
lake  in  three  channels,  forming  several  islands  or  one  large  island 
in  the  estuary.  We  learn  from  Strabo  and  from  Pausanias'  works  on 
travel  that  later  on,  between  500  and  100  b.c,  the  river's  outlets 
were  reduced  to  two  in  number  because  the  central  channel  had 
become  silted  up. 

Today  the  old  Lacus  Ligustinus  is  a  marsh  and  the  northern  outlet 
of  the  Guadalquivir  is  also  silted  up  and  unrecognizable  save  as  a 
chain  of  lagoons.  If  the  island  formed  by  the  channels  in  the  estuary 
of  the  Guadalquivir  was  the  Atlantis  described  by  Plato  in  Critias 
and  Tiinaeus,  a  number  of  things  become  clear:  the  floods  mentioned 
by  Plato;  the  fact  that  Atlantis  or  part  of  Atlantis  "vanished  into 
the  sea";  the  "deep  mud"  and  the  "submerged  remnants  of  the 
Island."  We  can  also  understand  why  people  have  been  searching 
vainly  for  the  island  for  two  thousand  years.  The  Guadalquivir 
leaves  the  marsh  by  only  one  channel  now,  so  the  island  no  longer 
exists. 

Professor  Adolf  Schulten  hit  upon  the  brilliant  notion  that  the 
lost  city  of  Tartessus  and  ancient  Atlantis  were  identical.  He 
suggested  that  the  city  lay  on  the  island  formerly  delineated  by  the 
channels  of  the  Guadalquivir— not  on  the  sea  side  but  a  mile  or  two 
inland  in  the  hunting  grounds  now  known  as  the  Goto  de  Dona  Ana. 

Schulten  pointed  to  the  existence  of  a  number  of  parallels  between 
the  city  of  Tartessus  and  the  city  described  by  Plato. 

165 


i66 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


^^s.    M--jJ 


E.v.H. 


Tartessus 


Plato's  Atlantis  extended  as  far  as  Gades,  so  Tartessus  must  have 
been  somewhere  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Cadiz. 

According  to  Critias,  the  Atlantides'  capital  stood  on  an  island 
enclosed  by  a  triple  ring  of  water:  Tartessus  stood  on  an  island 
between  the  three  mouths  of  the  Baetis,  the  modern  Guadalquivir. 

Atlantis  was  not  actually  on  the  coast  but  stood  on  a  connecting 
channel  or  estuary  nearly  six  miles  inland:  Tartessus  stood  on  an 
island  just  over  six  miles  north  of  Sanlucar,  a  town  in  the  estuary 
of  the  Guadalquivir  which  serves  as  an  export  center  for  the  famous 
wine  of  A4anzanilla.  The  former  island  may  have  extended  either 
farther  into  the  Atlantic  or  farther  inland,  but  the  vanished  city 
itself  may  be  assumed  to  have  stood  about  six  miles  from  the  coast 


SPAIN 


167 


in  an  area  which  has  been  greatly  altered  by  the  formation  of 
marshes. 

We  read  in  Critias  that  there  was  a  "moat"  one  stadium  wide 
(roughly  200  yards)  which  split  into  two  arms  enclosing  a  plain 
longer  than  it  was  broad:  the  Guadalquivir,  whose  average  width 
at  this  point  is  220  yards,  flowed  through  a  long  plain,  divided 
at  Tartessus,  and  then  flowed  into  the  sea. 


Tartessus  used  to  stand  on  an  island. 


We  also  read  in  Critias  that  the  plain  was  threaded  with  canals, 
and  Strabo  describes  a  similar  system  of  oblique  canals  in  the  valley 
of  the  Guadalquivir.  Plato's  account  is  extremely  precise  and  for 
that  reason  unlikely  to  be  mere  invention.  The  ancient  river-mouth 
cities  of  the  Mediterranean  seldom  installed  canal  networks  of  this 
kind,  but  many  such  canals  have  been  found  on  the  Atlantic  coast. 

The  wealth  of  Atlantis  was  reputedly  so  great  that  it  has  never 
been  rivaled  before  or  since:  Tartessus  was  not  only  the  wealthiest 
city  in  the  West  but  one  of  the  richest  cities  in  the  whole  of  the 
contemporary  world,  and  its  store  of  precious  metals  must  have 
been  fabulous.  Critias  mentions  that  silver,  gold,  iron  and  copper 
were  the  chief  sources  of  the  Atlantides'  wealth,  a  description  which 


1 68  THE  SILENT  PAST 

would  have  applied  equally  well  to  the  city  on  the  Spanish  coast. 

The  sacred  bulls  mentioned  by  Plato  are  an  equally  consistent 
feature,  for  the  bull  was  a  sacred  animal  in  ancient  Iberia.  The  cult 
of  the  bull  probably  came  to  Spain  from  Crete  and  the  Cretan  art 
of  bull  vaulting  later  became  transformed  into  the  bullfight. 

Atlantis  was  a  great  maritime  empire  whose  influence  extended 
to  Egypt  and  Tyrrhenia,  or  western  Italy:  Tartessus  must  have 
been  the  most  powerful  maritime  power  of  its  day,  for  the  ships 
of  Tarshish  penetrated  deep  into  the  Mediterranean  and  sailed  as 
far  north  as  Scotland  and  perhaps  even  farther. 

According  to  Critias  the  Atlantides  used  the  river  that  linked 
them  with  the  sea  as  a  harbor:  the  inhabitants  of  Tartessus  lived 
on  the  landward  side  of  their  island  and  used  the  Baetis  as  their 
access  to  the  sea,  just  as  the  city  of  Seville,  some  thirty-eight  miles 
up  the  Guadalquivir,  does  today. 

The  people  of  Atlantis  were  in  contact  with  the  "islands  of  the 
ocean"  and,  via  these  islands,  with  the  "mainland  opposite" 
(Timaeus).  We  do  not  know  if  Plato  was  referring  to  the  islands 
of  Brittany  or  to  England  or  even  to  the  American  continent,  but 
sea  voyages  to  continents  and  islands  must  have  been  made  by  the 
ships  of  Tarshish  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament. 

The  Atlantides'  chief  sanctuary  was  a  temple  by  the  sea  dedicated 
to  Poseidon.  In  this  temple  stood  a  pillar  of  oreichalkos  or  brass 
on  which  were  engraved  the  laws  of  Poseidon  and  other  official 
records.  The  geographer  Strabo  tells  us  that  Tartessus  had  prose 
records,  poems  and  laws  which  were  six  thousand  years  old.  Both 
Schulten  and  Niebuhr  before  him  recognized  the  advanced  nature 
of  Tartessus'  civilization.  Its  inhabitants  seem  to  have  been  among  the 
most  intellectually  active  people  in  Europe  between  r  loo  and  500  b.c. 

Atlantis  was  a  kingdom,  a  great  metropolis  whose  industries, 
trade,  bustling  activity,  docks,  large-scale  bronze  industry,  ware- 
houses and  temple  of  Poseidon  made  it  a  jewel  in  the  crown  of  the 
ancient  world.  The  vanished  city  of  Tartessus  must  also  have  been 
ruled  by  kings,  for  we  know  two  of  their  names:  Geron  and 
Arganthonius.  According  to  Avienus,  Tartessus  once  possessed  a 
royal  citadel  known  as  the  Arx  Gerontis,  and  Plato  tells  us  of  a 
similar  fortress. 

Finally,  we  know  from  Timaeus  and  Critias  that  the  island  of 
Atlantis,   having   enjoyed   a   long   prime,   was   suddenly   engulfed 


SPAIN  169 

by  the  sea  during  an  earthquake.  There  are  two  interpretations  of 
Plato's  story.  He  may  have  been  referring  either  to  the  destruction 
of  the  mysterious  city  of  Tartessus  by  the  Carthaginians  in  500  B.C., 
or  to  the  fact  that  the  whole  area  became  waterlogged  and  two  of 
the  three  channels  of  the  Guadalquivir  dried  up. 

Adolf  Schulten  was  convinced  Atlantis  should  be  equated  with 
Tartessus.  When  I  visited  the  elderly  scholar  at  Erlangen  in  1956 
he  advised  me  to  dig,  or  encourage  someone  else  to  dig,  on  the 
former  island  in  the  Goto  de  Dona  Ana.  There  was  sadness  in  his 
voice,  for  his  own  excavations  there  had  been  unsuccessful  and 
although  he  yearned  for  his  beloved  Spain,  he  felt  too  old  at  eighty- 
six  to  travel  and  try  again. 

Between  1922  and  1926  Schulten  explored  the  extensive  Goto  de 
Dona  Ana  hunting  preserves  in  company  with  General  Lammerer. 
At  the  close  of  their  investigations,  Lammerer  wrote:  "There  is  no 
doubt  that  in  early  antiquity  a  sandy  island  some  1 8  kilometers  long 
lay  obliquely  in  front  of  the  estuary  of  the  Guadalquivir,  which  was 
then  wider  and  more  lakelike.  The  banks  of  the  two  arms  through 
which  the  waters  of  the  Guadalquivir  used  to  flow  into  the  sea 
could  be  distinguished  from  the  surrounding  countryside  with  con- 
siderable accuracy." 

Schulten,  who  was  the  first  to  explore  this  area  for  relics  of 
Tartessus,  had  already  spent  some  time  in  19 10  combing  the  shore. 
In  1922  he  discovered  a  Roman  settlement  at  Cerro  de  Trigo,  nearly 
four  miles  north  of  Marismilla,  where  he  unearthed  walls  and  a 
number  of  Roman  amphorae.  More  extensive  excavations  carried  out 
between  1923  and  1926  revealed  that  the  Roman  settlement  covered 
an  area  measuring  about  200  by  750  yards.  On  October  4,  1923, 
Schulten  found  beneath  a  Roman  house  a  stone  on  which  lay  a 
copper  ring  with  a  Greek  inscription  on  its  inner  and  outer  cir- 
cumference. The  inscription  read,  roughly:  Owner,  be  -fortunate! 
or  Guard  the  ring  ivell!  Schulten  concurred  with  Professor  Rehm 
in  assuming  that  the  inscription  was  extremely  ancient  and  dated 
from  the  sixth  or  even  the  seventh  century  B.C.— the  days  of  Greek 
voyages  to  Tartessus. 

The  Roman  settlement  dated  from  a.d.  200-400  and  had  been 
inhabited  by  fishermen.  The  finds  made  there  included  about  twenty 
graves,  late  Roman  pottery  and  amphorae  for  wine  and  oil.  Indeed, 
everything  was  of  Roman  origin  except  the  ring.  Since  ground- 


lyo  THE  SILENT  PAST 

water  starts  at  five  feet  in  this  area,  no  deeper  excavations  could  be 
carried  out.  A  few  boreholes  sunk  to  a  depth  of  twenty  feet  yielded 
no  trace  of  any  older  ruins,  but  Schulten's  view  was  that  the  stones 
of  the  Roman  fishing  village  were  originally  brought  partly  from 
the  district  of  Huelva  and  partly  from  Cadiz.  Considering  that  the 
town  of  Sanlucar  "was  already  in  existence  when  the  Romans  erected 
their  village,  one  is  tempted  to  wonder  why  the  fisherfolk  did  not 
get  their  stones  from  there,  and  this  leads  one  to  infer  that  building 
materials  were  available  nearer  at  hand,  namely  in  the  ruins  of 
Tartessus.  The  people  of  Tartessus  may  have  brought  them  by 
ship  from  the  area  of  Huelva  and  Cadiz,  ultimately  to  be  reused  by 
Roman  fishermen  700  years  after  their  city  had  collapsed  in  ruins! 

Schulten  believed  that  the  fishing  village  was  located  on  the  very 
site  of  ancient  Tartessus,  that  it  was  built  of  materials  taken  from 
the  ruins  of  Tartessus,  and  that  the  latter  have  been  at  least  partly 
absorbed  by  the  village.  It  is  well  known  that  many  ancient  cities 
were  built  of  rubble  taken  from  even  more  ancient  settlements.  At 
any  rate,  what  Plato  says  about  the  location  of  his  Atlantic  city  is 
remarkably  consistent  with  the  site  which  Schulten  excavated  with- 
out success. 

Tartessus  flourished  for  600  years,  from  1 100  B.C.  until  its  destruc- 
tion in  500  B.C.,  yet  people  have  been  searching  for  it  for  two 
thousand  years.  Schulten  told  me  that  he  thought  borings  made 
fifteen  feet  or  more  beneath  the  Roman  settlement  could  well 
prove  informative.  Further  excavations  would  have  to  be  pursued 
with  the  latest  technical  aids,  although  to  clear  an  area  of  any  size 
would  be  a  costly  business  and  powerful  pumps  would  be  needed 
to  drain  off  the  groundwater.  Schulten  insisted  that  Tartessus  lay 
buried  somewhere  beneath  the  dunes  of  the  Marismilla.  If  these 
dunes  were  already  covering— and  therefore  protecting— the  ruined 
city  in  ancient  times  there  was  a  distinct  hope  that  sizable  remnants 
of  Tartessus  might  some  day  be  unearthed. 

There  is  an  eerie  stillness  about  the  place  today.  It  is  a  wilderness 
of  pines,  dunes  and  marshy  tracts  inhabited  by  deer,  boar  and  rabbits, 
a  paradise  for  the  successive  owners  of  the  hunting  rights.  Some- 
where in  the  solitude  of  the  Marismas,  Tartessus  has  slept  for  2,500 
years.  The  broad  ribbon  of  the  Guadalquivir  flows  slowly  down  to 
the  Atlantic  through  an  infinity  of  reddish  dunes  to  mingle  its 
yellow  waters  with  those  of  the  vast  ocean  beyond 


SPAIN  171 

But  Tartessus  is  not  the  only  famous  estuary  city  to  have  vanished. 
Somewhere  on  the  coast  of  Lucania,  for  example,  Sybaris  hes 
buried  beneath  the  alluvial  deposits  of  the  ancient  river  Crathis. 
Digging  is  equally  difficult  there  because  groundwater  begins  at 
a  depth  of  six  feet.  Yet  the  city  was  so  wealthy  and  its  inhabitants 
so  pampered  and  fastidious  that  the  "sybaritic  life"  has  become 
proverbial. 

It  was  tragic  that  Schulten  should  have  failed  in  his  attempt  to 
wrest  Tartessus  from  its  millennial  sleep.  He  was  a  true  scholar, 
not  a  visionary,  as  is  shown  by  his  discovery  and  excavation  of 
Numantia,  Scipio's  camps  and  numerous  other  Spanish  sites. 

But  Tartessus  was  not  just  a  city;  it  was  also  the  capital  of  a 
country  whose  culture  is  the  greatest  single  archaeological  discovery 
of  the  past  twenty  years.  The  kingdom  of  Tartessus  embraced  the 
whole  of  southern  Spain,  notably  Andalusia,  Granada  and  Murcia. 
Professor  Schulten  was  aware  of  this  before  he  died,  and  described 
the  kingdom  and  its  culture  as  "a  marvelous  historical  phenomenon." 

Tartessus  was  the  earliest  city-state  in  the  pre-Roman  West,  and 
ruled  over  towns  inhabited  by  an  Iberian,  that  is  to  say,  pre-Phoeni- 
cian  and  pre-Roman,  population.  The  aristocrats  of  Tartessus  referred 
to  their  Iberian  subjects  as  Turdetanians. 

The  men  of  Tartessus  must  have  been  lordly  beings  not  unlike 
the  Spanish  noblemen  who  live  in  the  region  today.  They  loved 
hunting,  wine  and  sailing,  and  owned  serfs  like  their  Italian  cousins 
the  Etruscans.  We  learn  from  Justin  that  King  Gargoris  of  Tartessus 
was  held  to  be  the  originator  of  beekeeping. 

Traveling  through  the  south  of  Spain,  through  Jerez,  Cadiz, 
Seville,  Cordoba,  Granada  and  Cartagena,  one  can  still  sense  some- 
thing of  the  spirit  of  this  proud  and  ancient  seafaring  race.  Iberians, 
Etruscans,  Phoenicians,  Celts,  Greeks  and  Romans  all  contributed  to 
the  creation  of  a  unique  culture  in  Tartessus.  Its  works  of  art  in- 
variably betray  the  artistic  influence  of  one  or  another  of  these 
races  to  a  greater  or  lesser  degree,  yet  the  characteristically  "Tartes- 
sian"  quality  nearly  always  predominates.  The  cultural  heritage  of 
Tartessus  still  makes  itself  felt  today.  Life  in  the  south  has  a  brisk, 
vital  flavor  born  of  nearness  to  the  sea.  Heir  to  Tartessus,  Seville 
boasts  the  hottest  summers  in  Europe  and  the  loveliest  springs,  warm 
autumns  and  mild  winters,  subtropical  palms  and  magnificent  gar- 
dens that  still  blaze  with  color  in  October,  enchanting  patios  with 


172  THE  SILENT  PAST 

little  fountains  and  drowsy  nooks.  Seville  is  dominated  by  one  of 
the  largest  and  most  elaborate  Gothic  cathedrals  in  existence.  In 
Seville  one  can  see  how  a  minaret  in  the  principal  Moorish  mosque 
has  become  transformed  into  a  Christian  campanile,  the  305-foot- 
high  Giralda,  and  in  Seville  Cathedral  one  can  stand  before  the  tomb 
of  Europe's  greatest  explorer,  the  discoverer  of  the  New  World, 
whose  remains  are  said  to  lie  in  the  sarcophagus  which  was  brought 
back  to  Seville  from  Cuba  after  the  island's  secession  in  1898. 

The  narrow  old  streets  of  southern  Spain  are  lined  with  shops 
and  craftsmen's  establishments  very  like  those  of  ancient  Rome  and 
Carthage.  The  bodegas  and  halls  of  Jerez  still  serve  dry  wines  like 
those  that  were  drunk  there  3,000  years  ago,  and  southern  Spain 
offers  the  finest  lobsters,  cuttlefish,  mussels  and  other  more  exotic 
varieties  of  seafood  prepared  much  as  the  people  of  Tartessus  must 
have  prepared  them  more  than  2,500  years  before. 

The  air  is  filled  with  the  roar  of  the  breakers  as  they  pound  at 
the  jutting  rocks  around  Cadiz,  erstwhile  center  of  the  tin  and 
copper  trade,  whose  walls  tower  as  much  as  fifty  feet  into  the  sky. 
And  if  one  listens,  in  the  thunder  of  the  waves,  one  can  almost  hear 
the  ocean  singing  the  ancient  song  of  vanished  Atlantis. 


SPAIN 


THE  CIVILIZATION  OF  TARTESSUS 

Written  sources  define  the  greatest  incentive  for  the  long 
voyages  made  by  foreign  traders  to  the  Iberian  Peninsula  as  the 
riches  of  the  city  of  Tartessus,  gateway  to  the  whole  of  Southern 
Iberia  from  the  Portuguese  Algarve  to  the  territories  of  the 
Mastians,  where  the  Punians  later  established  the  colony  of  Nova 
Carthago.  Tartessus  was  the  center  of  an  area  rich  in  ?nines,  cattle 
and  agriculture.  The  power  of  attraction  which  Tartessus  must 
once  have  exerted  can  be  inferred  from  the  location  of  the 
Phoefiician  colonies  on  the  Andalusian  coast  and  from  the  Greeks' 
attempt  to  establish  themselves  at  Mainake,  near  present-day 
Malaga.  The  discoveries  of  the  past  few  years— the  Valdegamas  jug, 
the  Carriazo  bronze  and  others— present  us  with  an  enthralling 
problem  whose  solution  coidd  well  coTifirtn  the  picture  of 
Tartessus  given  by  the  authors  of  antiqidty.  hi  the  people  of 
Tartessus  and  the  TurdetaniaJis,  their  successors,  they  saw  a  people 
with  an  old  and  major  civilization  which  had  expressed  itself  in 
their  literature,  urban  life  and  social  order. 

—Antonio  Blanco  Freijeiro,  Madrid 

WRITING  in  the  year  1761,  a  Swedish  scholar  called  Johan  Podolyn 
related  a  strange  experience.  While  staying  in  Madrid  he  had  met 
a  certain  Father  Florez,  a  distinguished  numismatist  with  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  his  subject.  The  priest  showed  Podolyn  some  rare  coins 
which  had  been  found  in  the  Azores  and  went  so  far  as  to  present 
him  with  a  few.  What  Podolyn  learned  subsequently  was  to  shed 
an  interesting  light  on  sea  travel  in  400  b.c. 

One  day  in  November,  1749,  a  violent  Atlantic  storm  was  batter- 
ing the  coasts  of  the  Azores.  On  the  beaches  of  Corvo,  a  small  island 
only  seven  square  miles  in  extent,  the  waves  undermined  a  stone 
building  and  demolished  it,  revealing  a  black  clay  vessel.  It  was 
smashed  to  pieces,  but  among  the  fragments  a  quantity  of  coins  was 
found.  Taken  to  Lisbon,  they  were  later  forwarded  to  Madrid, 
where  Father  Florez  had  already  made  his  name  as  a  numismatist. 

In  those  days,  when  archaeology  was  not  as  well-founded  and 
reputable  a  science  as  it  is  now,  the  majority  of  such  finds  were  lost. 
And,  in  fact,  only  nine  pieces  reached  Madrid:  two  Carthaginian 
gold  coins  and  seven  copper  coins  of  which  five  were  Carthaginian 
and  two  Cyrenaican. 

173 


174  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  Azores  are  generally  supposed  to  have  been  discovered  by 
the  Portuguese  between  1430  and  1460,  but  the  island  group  must 
have  been  known  earlier,  since  we  find  it  sketched  in  on  a  few  early 
medieval  maps.  Certainly,  sailors  had  landed  in  the  Azores  before 
the  reign  of  Alfonso  the  Magnanimous  (14 16-1458).  In  fact,  amaz- 
ing as  it  seems,  Punic  ships  from  Carthage  must  have  reached  the 
islands  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  b.c.  It  is  well  known  that 
the  Phoenicians  were  the  greatest  navigators  of  the  pre-Christian  era. 
Nevertheless,  the  Azores  lie  more  than  1,100  miles  out  in  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  west  of  Gibraltar,  and  the  fact  that  the  primitive  ships  of 
the  time  could  have  made  such  a  voyage  casts  an  entirely  new  light 
on  the  range  of  Phoenician  sea  travel. 

Some  authorities,  notably  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  have  sug- 
gested that  the  coins  were  brought  to  Corvo  in  the  Middle  Ages  by 
Vikings  or  Arabs,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  Vikings  or  Arabs  ever 
put  in  at  the  Azores.  Then,  too,  it  is  far  more  likely  that  the  coins 
were  brought  to  the  islands  when  they  were  still  accepted  currency, 
or  they  would  not  have  been  so  carefully  hidden.  Professor  Richard 
Hennig,  who  wrote  an  interesting  work  on  the  subject  in  1927,  con- 
cluded that  there  was  absolutely  no  doubt  that  the  Azores  were 
visited  by  Carthaginians.  One  strange  feature  is  that  the  Punic- 
Phoenician  mariners  should  have  put  in  at  the  most  remote,  most 
northwesterly,  smallest  and  least  fertile  island  in  the  whole  group. 
It  is  possible  that  they  were  cast  up  on  the  beach  by  a  storm  or  were 
heading  for  countries  even  farther  west— North  or  South  America, 
perhaps.  We  do  not  know,  but  we  can  assume  that  they  either  meant 
to  return  and  collect  their  buried  hoard  or  never  left  the  island  at  all, 
otherwise  they  would  probably  have  taken  the  coins  with  them. 
Since  the  prevailing  current  flows  in  the  direction  of  the  Strait  of 
Gibraltar,  it  is  unlikely  that  a  derelict  would  have  been  cast  up  from 
the  eastern  quarter.  The  ship  which  carried  the  coins  must,  there- 
fore, have  been  manned.  Having  sailed  from  Madeira,  Porto  Santo, 
some  port  on  the  coast  of  southern  Spain,  or  even  from  Carthage 
itself,  it  had  traversed  an  immense  distance,  perhaps  1,250  miles. 
Such,  at  least,  was  the  remarkable  story  told  by  the  nine  mute  and 
abandoned  coins. 

Mysterious  inscriptions  in  an  unknown  tongue  were  said  to  have 
been  found  with  the  coins,  or  so  J.  Mees  reported  at  Ghent  in  1901, 


SPAIN 


175 


Southern  Spain 

but  the  engraved  tablets  have  disappeared,  whereas  Podolyn's  original 
account  at  least  contained  illustrations  of  the  coins. 

In  the  year  1628  a  work  dealing  with  Portuguese  discoveries  in 
the  Azores  was  published  at  Madrid.  The  author,  Manoel  de  Faria 
e  Sousa,  reported  that  the  Portuguese  had  discovered  an  equestrian 
statue  on  a  promontory  on  one  of  the  islands.  The  mounted  figure, 
which  was  pointing  westward,  was  thought  to  be  an  effigy  of  a 
heathen  deity,  and  the  Portuguese  promptly  destroyed  it  in  an 
excess  of  religious  zeal.  Perhaps  the  Carthaginians  had  undertaken 
a  daring  voyage  farther  westward  and  the  statue,  whose  pedestal 
bore  an  inscription,  was  intended  to  commemorate  it. 

We  know  that  the  Phoenician  Tyrians  founded  the  city  of  Gadir 
(modern  Cadiz)  about  iioo  B.C.,  but  no  archaeological  finds  older 
than  circa  700  b.c.  have  been  made  in  the  area.  We  also  know  that 
somewhat  to  the  north  of  Cadiz  was  the  metal-trading  center  of 
Tartessus,  a  place  which  in  those  days  enjoyed  almost  legendary 
renown  and  was  inhabited  by  people  of  great  artistic  ability.  Here 
again,  our  only  relics  of  these  people  go  back  no  farther  than  700 
or  800  B.C.  What  makes  the  location  of  these  two  mysterious  cities 
so  interesting  is  that  Cadiz  was  a  Phoenician  commercial  center, 
whereas  the  vanished  city  of  Tartessus  was  an  Etruscan-Tyrrhenian 
metropolis.  Thus,  two  centers  of  international  trade  belonging  to 


176  THE  SILENT  PAST 

two  very  different  cultures  were  situated  quite  close  together.  Only 
sixty  miles  of  coastline  separates  Cadiz  from  the  estuary  of  the 
Guadalquivir,  where  Tartessus  is  assumed  to  have  stood. 

Until  the  vanished  city,  market  or  harbor  of  Tartessus  is  actually 
located  we  shall  never  know  for  certain  whether  Tartessus  was  only 
a  market  place  or  harbor  at  the  mouth  of  the  Guadalquivir,  whether 
the  real  capital  stood  farther  inland,  or  whether  the  name  Tartessus 
was  applied  to  the  whole  kingdom.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  that  our 
only  evidence  of  the  antiquity  of  the  great  Tartessus  civilization 
consists  of  written  traditions  and  that  archaeological  finds  belonging 
to  that  civilization  are  of  more  recent  date  does  not  disprove  the 
existence  of  the  kingdom  of  Tartessus. 

The  Spanish  authority  Antonio  Garcia  y  Bellido  has  emphasized 
that  written  accounts  given  in  ancient  sources  may  deserve  credence 
even  if  no  archaeological  evidence  is  forthcoming,  and  that  the 
absence  of  such  evidence  is  not  sufficient  reason  to  discount  written 
traditions.  For  instance,  Odysseus'  palace  has  never  been  discovered, 
but  this  does  not  mean  that  Homer's  assertion  that  it  was  in  Ithaca 
is  incorrect.  We  have  found  no  tangible  evidence  of  the  Spaniards' 
march  across  the  Andes,  through  Patagonia  and  the  Amazon  jungle 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  yet  we  know  that  it  took  place.  The  daring 
Spanish  explorers  Loaisa,  Queiros,  Mendaiia  and  Torres  left  nothing 
behind  on  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  but  we  know  that  they  visited 
them.  The  Vikings  who  landed  on  the  Atlantic  coast  of  America 
in  the  eleventh  century  left  few  archaeologically  identifiable  traces, 
but  we  know  that  their  voyages  to  the  west  are  an  historical  fact. 
Any  settlement  has  to  survive  a  number  of  storms,  has  to  thrive 
and  eat  its  way  into  the  ground  if  it  is  not  eventually  to  be  blotted 
out  by  the  passage  of  time.  A  myriad  traces  of  human  existence  have 
been  swallowed  up  by  the  past,  and  where  natural  catastrophes, 
floods,  tidal  waves  and  earthquakes  have  taken  their  toll  the  sites 
of  whole  cities  can  easily  become  lost  beyond  all  hope  of  rediscovery. 

So  it  is  a  reasonable  assumption  that  the  Phoenicians  were  already 
in  the  far  west,  in  Spain  and  perhaps  even  in  the  Azores  before  the 
eighth  or  ninth  century  b.c,  and  that  the  Tyrrhenians  were  living 
in  the  city  and  kingdom  of  Tartessus  at  an  even  earlier  date. 

In  this  connection,  mention  should  be  made  of  some  people  who 
were  in  contact  with  Tartessus  and  whose  domain  extended  far  into 
the  north,  to  Ireland  and  the  fjords  of  Norway.  These  were  the 


SPAIN  177 

Ostimians,  principal  trading  partners  (after  the  Phoenicians)  of  the 
people  of  Tartessus  and  spiritual  ancestors  of  the  Frisians,  Saxons, 
Vikings,  Dutch  and  English.  Avienus  tells  us  that  the  Ostimians  were 
a  seafaring  race  renowned  for  their  hardiness,  daring  and  commercial 
enterprise. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  Ostimians  used  large  leather- 
covered  boats.  This  kind  of  vessel,  which  is  possibly  the  earliest  type 
of  boat  in  the  world,  appears  to  have  been  known  along  the  entire 
Atlantic  coast  from  Portugal  to  the  North  Sea.  The  Celtologist 
Julius  Pokorny  informed  me  that  leather  boats  were  also  used  by 
the  pre-Celtic  inhabitants  of  Ireland  and  that  the  aboriginal  Irish 
were  known  to  the  Celts  as  Fir-bolg,  or  "people  of  the  hide-boats." 
Dio  Cassius,  an  historian  of  the  imperial  age  of  Rome,  stated  that  the 
coastal  peoples  of  the  Western  Ocean  were  using  leather  boats  in 
his  day  (xlvii,  18).  We  do  not  know  if  the  people  of  Tartessus  used 
leather  boats  of  this  kind  because  both  wood  and  leather  would 
have  disintegrated  in  the  course  of  more  than  2,500  years.  Much 
older  boats  have  survived  in  Egypt,  of  course,  but  only  because 
they  were  funerary  ships  carefully  preserved  as  cult  objects  in 
massive  stone  chambers.  The  "ships  of  Tarshish,"  by  contrast, 
formed  a  commercial  link  between  places  hundreds  if  not  thousands 
of  miles  apart  and  have  vanished  into  the  void,  either  sunk  at  sea 
or  burned  or  destroyed  in  unidentified  ports  and  harbors  throughout 
the  ancient  world.  We  are  told  that  vessels  like  these  could  cover 
1,200  stadia  (about  135  miles)  in  twenty-four  hours.  This  not  only 
indicates  that  the  people  of  Tartessus  possessed  sailing  ships  but  is 
consistent  with  Avienus'  reference  to  the  fact  that  a  ship  entering 
Tagus  Bay  needed  first  a  westerly  and  then  a  southerly  wind. 

Such  relics  of  the  Tartessus  culture  as  have  been  found  in  the  past 
few  decades  are  interesting  principally  because  they  are  a  late  reflec- 
tion of  a  rich  and  glorious  past.  Anyone  who  sees  them  will  realize 
that  they  date  from  the  evening  of  a  splendid  civilization. 

On  September  30,  1958,  workmen  on  a  building  site  on  the  hill  of 
El  Carambolo  near  Seville  came  upon  a  priceless  hoard  consisting 
of  necklaces,  armbands,  pendants,  breast  ornaments  and  plates  which 
had  once  formed  a  crown  or  belt.  These  objects,  all  made  of  gold 
and  twenty-one  in  number,  were  evidently  the  product  of  a  highly 
developed  goldsmith's  technique.  Professor  Antonio  Blanco  has 
suggested  that  some  of  the  decorative  motifs  on  these  articles  of 


178  THE  SILENT  PAST 

adornment  correspond  with  those  found  on  Mycenaean  vases,  ivory 
gaming  boards  from  Megiddo  and  mural  paintings  in  the  Assyrian 
and  Syrian  palaces  of  Khorsabad,  Arslan  Tash  and  Tell  Barsib.  Yet 
nowhere  else  in  the  world  have  pieces  of  jewelry  quite  like  these 
come  to  light! 

Kukahn  and  Blanco  believe  that  the  gold  plates  are  more  likely 
to  have  been  components  of  a  crown  than  a  belt.  Similar  pieces 
have  been  found  in  an  ancient  grave  in  Cyprus,  so  it  is  thought  that 
the  idea  of  this  type  of  ornamentation  may  have  come  from  there. 
The  necklace  bears  a  series  of  punched  impressions  reminiscent  of 
the  Phoenician-Punian  culture.  Despite  all  these  influences,  however, 
the  El  Carambolo  cache  is  evidence  of  an  independent  and  creative 
goldsmith's  art  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula,  evidence 
of  a  Tartessus  culture  which,  in  the  words  of  the  eminent  Spanish 
scholar  mentioned  above,  "is  daily  becoming  more  tangible."  The 
articles  of  adornment  found  at  El  Carambolo  are  attributed  to  the 
sixth  century  b.c.  and  were  deliberately  hidden  by  someone  who 
scooped  out  a  cavity  in  the  side  of  the  hill  and  buried  them  in  a 
vessel  of  some  kind.  Another  who  concurs  with  this  view  is  the 
Spanish  professor  J.  Maluquer,  who  thinks  that  in  pre-Christian 
times  a  small  house  or  hut  stood  on  the  site  of  the  discovery  and  that 
it  was  later  destroyed  by  fire. 

1953  saw  the  discovery  near  Don  Benito  of  a  bronze  wine  jug 
which,  once  again  in  the  words  of  Antonio  Blanco,  surpassed  in 
beauty  all  vessels  of  this  type  found  in  the  Iberian  Peninsula  so  far. 
A  farm  laborer  had  turned  up  the  jug  while  plowing  a  field  on  the 
Valdegamas  estate,  which  adjoins  Don  Benito.  Having  no  conception 
of  the  value  of  his  find,  the  peasant  threw  the  jug  onto  a  pile  of 
firewood.  However,  after  further  plowing  had  revealed  the  remains 
of  a  house  with  four  rooms  of  varying  sizes  less  than  eighteen  inches 
beneath  the  soil,  and  after  fragments  of  pottery  had  come  to  light 
among  the  ruined  walls,  it  was  realized  that  the  site  had  once  been 
a  settlement.  The  Donoso  Cortes  family,  who  owns  the  Valdegamas 
estate,  took  the  bronze  jug  into  safekeeping.  Professor  Blanco  has 
identified  its  style  as  part  Greek,  part  Phoenician,  and  attributes  it 
with  a  fair  degree  of  certainty  to  the  sixth  century  b.c.  But  where 
did  it  come  from?  Was  it  manufactured  by  the  Phoenicians  of  Gadir 
or  imported  from  some  center  of  bronze  industry  outside  Spain, 
or  may  the  birthplace  of  such  wine  jugs  have  been  Etruria  in  Italy? 


SPAIN  179 

By  the  Guadalquivir  near  Sanlucar  de  Barrameda  lie  the  fields 
of  Evora.  Some  Spanish  scholars  believe  this  region  to  be  the  site 
of  the  vanished  city  of  Tartessus,  and  we  have  already  heard  that 
Professor  Schulten  of  Erlangen  placed  it  only  six  miles  or  so  to  the 
north  on  the  Goto  de  Dona  Ana.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  fields  of 
Evora  probably  conceal  the  Roman  town  of  Ebora,  which,  like  so 
many  thousands  of  buried  settlements,  remains  unexcavated  to  this 
day.  An  eight-year-old  boy,  Francisco  Bejarano,  found  a  number 
of  gold  ornaments  in  freshly  plowed  soil  there  and  took  them  to 
his  father.  The  articles  were  soon  sold,  but  the  owner  of  the  field 
alerted  the  pohce  and  the  police  confiscated  the  little  hoard  in  the 
interests  of  archaeology.  Unfortunately,  six  of  the  priceless  pieces 
had  already  been  melted  down  and  beaten  into  wedding  rings,  while 
the  remainder  had  been  acquired  by  a  silver  dealer  for  2,565  pesetas. 
The  Spanish  archaeologist  Concepcion  Blanco  de  Torrecillas  reports 
that  the  cache  now  consists  of  forty-seven  pieces,  richly  ornamented 
and  all  of  pure  gold.  A  few  of  them  have  been  bent  by  the  pressure 
of  the  earth  and  most  have  lost  their  inset  stones.  All  of  them— arm- 
bands, earrings,  rings,  diadem  components,  necklace  and  pendants- 
appear  to  date  from  the  fifth  century  b.c.  Once  again  there  is  evi- 
dence of  part-Greek,  part-Oriental-Phoenician  influence,  and  once 
again  it  is  uncertain  whether  these  fine  pieces  were  imported  or  man- 
ufactured by  an  indigenous  goldsmith.  They  may  even,  so  de  Torre- 
cillas believes,  have  originated  at  the  court  of  King  Arganthonius 
of  Tartessus. 

In  the  words  of  de  Torrecillas:  "If  one  knew  for  certain  that 
Tartessus  lay  unrecognized  in  the  heart  of  the  Evora  Estate  one 
would  be  able  to  make  some  extremely  interesting  excavations  there. 
But,  even  though  the  city  still  preserves  its  anonymity,  the  hoard 
recently  found  there  has  brought  fresh  confirmation  of  earlier  sup- 
positions about  the  splendor  and  advanced  culture  of  this  legendary 
metropolis,  whose  walls  cannot  be  far  to  seek." 

On  February  29,  1920,  laborers  found  a  cache  of  jewelry  in  a  jar 
buried  only  three  feet  beneath  the  ground  at  La  Aliseida  on  the 
northern  slopes  of  the  San  Pedro  Range.  They  had  evidently  un- 
covered the  burial  place  of  an  Iberian  noblewoman,  for  the  presence 
of  194  small  dress  ornaments  implied  that  the  dress  itself  was  once 
buried  there.  Among  the  fine  examples  of  goldsmith's  work  in  the 
cache  were  a  gold  headband  used  for  keeping  a  veil  in  place,  a  gold 


i8o  THE  SILENT  PAST 

diadem,  gold  earrings,  armbands,  a  5  3 -piece  necklace  and  a  62- 
piece  belt  of  very  skilled  workmanship— articles  which  would  grace 
the  window  of  a  modern  jeweler. 

De  Torrecillas,  who  is  a  director  of  the  Museum  of  Archaeology 
at  Cadiz,  showed  me  a  sarcophagus  which  has  raised  a  number  of 
archaeological  problems.  It  is  a  marble  coffin  shaped  to  fit  the 
human  body,  and  contained  the  remains  of  a  distinguished  nobleman. 
Coffins  of  this  type  are  known  as  anthropoid  sarcophagi  and  this 
particular  archaeological  relic  is  known  in  Spain  as  the  Sidonian 
Sarcophagus.  P.  Bosch-Gimpera  states  that  it  is  of  genuine  Phoeni- 
cian workmanship  but  betrays  the  stylistic  influences  of  Egypt  and 
ancient  Greece.  The  bearded  and  majestic  features  of  the  prince 
show  him  to  have  been  a  man  of  truly  royal  mien  with  certain 
Semitic  traits.  The  interior  of  the  marble  coffin  still  contained  his 
body.  Was  he  brought  posthumously  from  Phoenicia  in  one  of  the 
famous  ships  of  Tarshish?  Was  he  a  king  of  Gadir  who  wished  to 
be  interred  in  his  native  soil?  We  may  never  know,  but  we  can 
at  least  see  in  this  magnificent  piece  of  fifth-  or  fourth-century  b.c. 
Phoenician  workmanship  the  links  that  once  bound  the  seagirt 
fortress  of  Cadiz  to  the  ancient  Orient. 

The  most  interesting  archaeological  discovery  made  in  southern 
Spain  and  probably  the  most  valuable  work  of  art  found  in  the 
whole  Iberian  Peninsula  is  still  the  so-called  Lady  of  Elche.  Elche 
(the  Ilici  of  ancient  Iberia)  is  near  Alicante  and  has  an  even  warmer 
climate  than  the  latter  town.  The  summers  are  unusually  hot  there, 
even  though  the  place  is  only  ten  miles  from  the  Mediterranean 
coast.  It  is  also  the  site  of  Europe's  largest  palm  grove.  One  hundred 
and  seventy  thousand  of  these  trees,  many  of  them  well  over  100  feet 
high,  stand  "foot  in  water,  head  in  the  fire  of  the  sky,"  as  an  Arabic 
proverb  has  it,  artificially  irrigated  by  water  brought  from  over 
three  miles  away. 

The  Lady  of  Elche  was  unearthed  in  1897.  It  is  a  remarkably 
beautiful  bust  sculpted  in  chalky  limestone,  and  is  twenty  inches 
high.  Traces  of  color  indicate  that  the  figure  was  once  painted  all 
over.  The  pupils  of  the  eyes  were  probably  filled  with  molten  glass. 
Since  the  figure  was  found  in  a  burial  ground,  it  was  at  first  assumed 
that  the  Lady  of  Elche  (also  known  in  Spain  as  the  Reina  Mora) 
was  an  effigy  of  a  dead  woman  decked  out  in  her  ceremonial  finery. 
However,  Professor  Blanco  says  that  "her  expression  reflects  an 


SPAIN  i8i 

encounter  between  the  human  and  the  divine"  and  beUeves  that  the 
unique  figure  may  have  been  a  goddess. 

I  have  inspected  the  sculpture  closely  in  the  little  room  on  the 
lower  floor  of  the  Prado  where  it  has  reappeared  after  being  bought 
by  the  French  and  then  returned  to  the  Spaniards.  The  longer  one 
looks  at  this  pre-Christian  Madonna  the  more  the  beauty  and 
serenity  of  her  features  work  their  uncanny  spell.  The  head  orna- 
ments and  the  heavy  chains  on  her  breast  are,  so  it  is  believed, 
intended  to  represent  metals  such  as  bronze,  silver  or  gold.  I  went 
to  the  Instituto  Valencia  de  Don  Juan,  a  little-frequented  museum 
elsewhere  in  Madrid,  in  order  to  compare  gold  ear  pendants  and 
jewelry  in  a  showcase  there  with  the  sculpted  ornaments  on  the 
Lady  of  Elche.  The  similarity  was  so  striking  that  I  was  left  con- 
vinced that  the  originals  of  the  jewelry  on  the  finest  ancient  sculpture 
in  Spain  were  gold. 

Even  though  both  Greek  and  Punic  stylistic  traits  can  be  discerned 
in  the  figure,  it  still  remains  a  genuinely  Spanish  "Mona  Lisa." 
Sculpted  some  2,500  years  ago,  it  fits  Strabo's  descriptions  of  what 
the  women  of  ancient  Spain  wore  in  the  way  of  jewelry.  The  cir- 
cular ornaments  on  either  side  of  the  head  are,  in  Blanco's  opinion, 
decorative  disks  of  silver  similar  to  fragments  of  other  ornaments 
from  Estremadura  which  he  found  in  the  Museum  of  Archaeology 
at  Madrid.  Since  they  were  of  a  type  worn  in  an  artificially  en- 
hanced coiffure  they  may  have  been  partially  formed  by  the  hair 
itself.  When  the  girls  of  Valencia  turn  out  in  their  old  native  cos- 
tumes today  they  wear  a  similarly  elaborate  hair  style  with  so-called 
"snails"  on  either  side  of  the  head.  Twenty-five  thousand  years  are 
a  mere  drop  in  the  ocean  of  human  history  and  prehistory.  Perhaps 
the  girls  danced  as  passionately  in  the  kingdom  of  Tartessus  more 
than  two  and  a  half  millennia  ago  as  they  do  in  the  south  of  Spain 
today. 


CANARY  ISLANDS 


THE  GUANCHES 

Since  I  wished  to  hioiv  more  about  the  Satyrs  I  talked  of  them 
with  many  people.  Euphenos  of  Caria  told  me  that  on  the  journey 
to  Italy  he  was  blown  off  course  by  a  storm  and  driven  into  the 
outer  sea,  where  no  one  ever  ventures  as  a  rule.  There,  he  said, 
are  many  desert  islands  and  other  islands  inhabited  by  savage 
people.  They  had  not  wanted  to  land  because  they  had  been  there 
and  encojtntered  the  inhabitants  on  a?i  earlier  occasion,  but  once 
again  they  were  forced  to  put  ashore.  These  islands  were  called 
the  ''''Saty rides''''  by  the  sailors.  The  inhabitants  are  fiery  red  and 
have  tails  on  their  hind  quarters  as  big  as  those  of  horses.  They 
came  to  the  ship  when  they  saw  it,  uttering  not  a  sound  but  laying 
hands  on  the  ship^s  wome7ifolk.  hi  their  fear,  the  sailors  eventually 
marooned  a  barbarian  woman,  on  who7n  the  Satyrs  took  their 
pleasure. 

— Pausanias,  I,  xxiii,  5  and  6 

IN  THE  Atlantic,  only  fifty  miles  off  the  coast  of  the  Spanish  Sahara, 
lie  the  Canaries,  a  group  of  islands  formed  by  volcanic  eruption, 
blessed  with  pure  air  and  healthy  northwest  sea  winds,  crowned  by 
mountains  as  high  as  1 1,000  feet,  richly  endowed  with  an  abundance 
of  geraniums,  lilies,  dahlias  and  roses,  figs,  olives,  sugar  cane  and 
bananas,  bathed  in  radiant  sunshine  throughout  most  of  the  year 
and  well  provided  with  pure  springwater.  The  thirteen  small  islands 
lie  scattered  across  the  ocean  for  a  distance  of  more  than  300  miles, 
with  Madeira  another  300  miles  farther  away  to  the  north. 

The  Canary  group  was  known  in  ancient  times  as  the  Islands  of 
the  Blest,  and  the  islands  and  their  fortunate  inhabitants  provided  a 
favorite  theme  for  historians,  geographers  and  poets.  Plutarch  may 
have  described  them  as  the  Atlantides  but  we  do  not  know  if  he 
was  really  referring  to  the  Canary  Islands.  Gains  Plinius  Secundus 
(Pliny  the  Elder),  who  was  born  in  a.d.  23  and  lost  his  life  during 
an  eruption  of  Vesuvius  in  a.d.  79,  mentioned  the  islands  in  his  work 
on  natural  history,  which  he  entitled  Naturalis  Historia.  Plinv  had 
gleaned  his  information  about  these  distant  islands  from  a  certain 
Statius  Sebosus  and  the  works  of  Juba,  the  Numidian  king  of  Maure- 
tania,  who  lived  between  50  b.c.  and  a.d.  23.  Juba  was  brought  to 
Rome  as  a  boy  in  Caesar's  triumphal  procession  after  the  latter's 
campaigns  in  Africa,  and  received  his  education  there.  He  wrote  a 


CANARY  ISLANDS  183 

large  number  of  books  in  the  Greek  language  dealing  with  Libya, 
Arabia,  Syria,  philology,  botanies  and  probably  archaeology  as  well. 

Pomponius  Mela  from  Tingentera  near  Gibraltar,  who  wrote  a 
geography  of  the  inhabited  world  in  three  volumes  about  a.d.  40, 
Ukewise  mentioned  the  Gorgonian  Islands  under  the  name  Hespe- 
rides.  Homer  may  have  visualized  them  as  the  site  of  the  Elysian 
Fields  to  which  souls  retire  after  the  death  of  the  body  to  receive 
suitable  recompense  for  their  behavior  during  their  lifetime.  The 
great  poet  saw  the  Elysian  meadows  as  the  end  of  the  world,  a 
place  where  the  hero  Rhadamanthus  dwelled,  where  people  lived 
in  tranquillity  and  bliss,  where  there  was  no  snow  and  where  mild 
breezes  were  forever  wafted  from  the  ocean  to  cool  the  inhabitants 
with  their  gentle  breath. 

Why  should  the  souls  of  the  dead  have  traveled  westward? 

The  Islands  of  the  Blest  were  formerly  the  Islands  of  the  Dead, 
and  all  the  world's  oldest  races  visualized  them  at  the  western  ex- 
tremity of  the  inhabited  world  because  the  dead  were  thought  to 
follow  the  course  of  the  sun  as  it  sank  to  its  evening  abode  in  the 
west.  The  people  of  the  ancient  world  imagined  the  fields  of  para- 
dise to  be  on  geographically  determinate  islands:  in  the  time  of  Hesiod 
and  Homer,  somewhere  to  the  north  of  Spanish  West  Africa,  i.e.  the 
Rio  de  Oro;  and  toward  the  end  of  the  Roman  Republic  and  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Imperial  era,  on  Madeira  and  the  Canary  group. 

Place  names  often  have  very  ancient  historical  and  ethnological 
associations,  and  the  word  Canaria  is  no  exception.  Some  authorities 
trace  the  name  back  to  Canaan.  Pliny  speaks  in  Book  V,  xv,  of  the 
Canarii  people  in  northern  Rio  de  Oro,  while  the  African  writer 
Arnobius,  who  died  circa  a.d.  330,  extended  the  scope  of  the  name 
to  embrace  the  whole  group,  calling  them  Canariae  hisulae. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  commonest  assumption  is  that  the 
Canary  Islands  derived  their  name  from  the  Latin  word  cams,  "dog," 
because  the  inhabitants  used  to  fatten  hairless  dogs  for  eating  just 
as  people  did  in  certain  of  the  advanced  civilizations  of  Central 
America. 

Canna  meant  tube  or  reed,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  name 
has  nothing  to  do  with  sugar  cane,  which  was  unknown  in  the  ancient 
world.  Sugar  cane  was  introduced  into  southern  Spain  by  the  Arabs 
and  did  not  find  its  way  to  the  Canaries  until  later.  But  when  the 
islands  were  conquered,  sugar  cane  became  their  most  important 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


The  Canary  Islands 

source  of  revenue.  The  conquistadors  made  vast  fortunes  from  their 
cane  plantations  and  mills,  and  it  was  not  until  enterprising  planters 
introduced  sugar  cane  into  the  West  Indies  from  the  Canaries  that 
Canary  sugar  was  ousted  from  the  world  market  by  the  competition 
from  that  new  source  of  supply. 

There  is  probably  no  justification  for  the  theory  that  anyone 
reached  America  from  Europe  before  the  Vikings,  but  a  passage  in 


CANARY  ISLANDS  185 

Pausanias  does  hint  at  the  possibihty  that  someone  may  have  been 
driven  ashore  there  by  a  storm.  Pausanias,  a  Greek  born  in  Asia 
Minor,  wrote  a  ten-volume  Periegesis  of  Greece  circa  a.d.  175, 
which  was  really  a  cultural  history  containing  much  valuable  in- 
formation about  the  life,  religion,  geography  and  art  of  the  ancient 
world.  Where  did  Euphenos,  the  Carian  mentioned  by  Pausanias 
(I,  xxiii,  5  and  6),  actually  land?  A  storm  had  driven  him  through 
the  Strait  of  Gibraltar  and  out  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  to  the 
Satyrides,  islands  inhabited  by  fire-red  savages.  This  sounds  at  first 
as  though  they  may  have  been  American  Indians,  but  it  is  more  likely 
that  Euphenos  had  encountered  the  inhabitants  of  the  Canary  Islands. 
The  islanders  apparently  behaved  in  a  very  hostile  fashion  and 
forced  their  attentions  on  the  women  in  the  stranded  ship  so  that 
the  sailors  got  away  unscathed  only  by  leaving  behind  a  barbarian 
(i.e.  non-Greek)  woman,  whom  the  natives  shamefully  maltreated. 

Probably  the  first  men  to  visit  the  islands  in  more  recent  times 
were  the  Arabs.  Putting  ashore  at  Gando  Bay,  Grand  Canary,  in 
the  year  999,  Admiral  Ben  Farroukh  found  the  local  inhabitants 
willing  to  barter  and  trade.  They  told  him  that  strangers  had  landed 
there  earlier,  but  we  shall  never  know  who  they  were,  nor  do  we 
know  how  the  Arab  sea  captain  managed  to  communicate  with  the 
natives,  although  the  Arab  historian  Ebu  Fathymah  reports  that  he 
visited  several  of  the  other  islands.  The  Arab  geographer  Edrisi,  who 
hved  between  1099  and  11 64,  tells  us  that  observers  on  the  African 
coast  saw  plumes  of  smoke  issuing  from  two  mountain  peaks,  and 
Alexander  von  Humboldt  confirms  the  likehhood  of  this  report. 

The  islands  were  also  visited  by  other  long-forgotten  navigators 
and  explorers,  among  them  the  Genoese,  whose  fleet  landed  there 
in  1 29 1  but  never  returned.  Learning  that  a  French  sailing  ship  had 
reached  the  islands  in  the  year  1330,  Alfonso  IV  of  Portugal  sent 
ships  there  four  years  later,  but  their  crews  were  driven  back  into 
the  sea  by  the  natives  of  the  island  of  Gomera. 

The  Portuguese  visited  the  Canary  Islands  yet  again  in  1341  and 
brought  back  a  great  deal  of  information.  In  1344  Pope  Clement  VI, 
who  resided  at  Avignon,  commissioned  a  French  prince  of  Spanish 
origin,  Louis  de  la  Cerda,  to  sail  to  the  mysterious  islands  and  con- 
vert the  natives  there  to  Christianity  as  best  he  could.  In  1360, 
missionaries  landed  on  Grand  Canary,  converted  a  few  natives  and 
taught  them  one  or  two  handicrafts,  but  most  of  the  worthy  men 


1 86  THE  SILENT  PAST 

of  God  died  a  martyr's  death.  In  the  year  1393  the  Spaniards  dis- 
patched an  expeditionary  force  which  contented  itself  with  plunder- 
ing the  island  of  Lanzarote  and  achieved  little  else  of  consequence. 

The  recent  history  of  the  Canaries  really  begins  with  a  Norman 
nobleman  called  Jean  de  Bethencourt,  who  sailed  off  into  the  Atlantic 
in  1402  with  the  express  intention  of  conquering  the  islands.  Having 
erected  a  fortress  in  the  north  of  Fuerteventura,  he  found  that  his 
crew  was  not  numerically  strong  enough  to  subdue  the  whole  island, 
and  so,  leaving  a  small  garrison  behind,  he  sailed  home  to  ask  Henry 
III  of  Castile  for  more  money  and  sr.ilors.  That  was  how  the  King 
of  Castile  succeeded  in  bringing  Fuerteventura,  Lanzarote,  Gomera 
and  Hierro  under  his  flag. 

As  so  often  in  the  history  of  foreign  conquest,  the  natives  wel- 
comed the  strangers  with  great  hospitality  and  the  best  of  intentions. 
Only  when  they  realized  that  the  white  man  was  chiefly  interested 
in  plunder  did  they  turn  into  "savages."  Bethencourt  was  received 
on  the  island  of  Gomera  with  the  utmost  friendliness,  and  when  he 
sailed  away  the  Canary  Islanders  swam  beside  his  ship  for  miles, 
begging  him  not  to  leave  them. 

An  old  legend  was  still  current  on  the  island  of  Hierro  according 
to  which,  when  the  remains  of  King  Yore  fell  to  dust,  white  houses 
would  come  from  across  the  sea  to  save  the  people.  When  Bethen- 
court's  caravels  approached  the  island  for  the  first  time,  their  sails 
gleaming  white  in  the  distance,  the  archpriest  hurried  to  the  burial 
place  of  King  Yore.  Seeing  that  his  bones  had  crumbled  to  dust,  he 
at  once  declared  that  the  redeemers  from  the  sea  had  arrived.  How- 
ever, the  friendly  attitude  of  the  Hierro  natives  soon  turned  to 
hostility.  In  the  neighborhood  of  the  present  capital,  Valverde,  there 
stood  a  tree  (later  called  El  Garoe)  from  whose  foliage  water  dripped 
in  sufficient  quantity  to  supply  the  whole  island  with  drinking  water. 
The  tree  may  have  stood  by  a  spring.  At  all  events,  the  natives 
camouflaged  the  tree  and  probably  the  spring,  too,  with  twigs  and 
dry  grass  to  give  the  strangers  the  impression  that  there  was  no 
fresh  water  on  the  island.  Inevitably,  one  of  the  island  girls  fell  in 
love  with  a  Spanish  caballero  and  betrayed  the  secret.  Fighting  broke 
out,  many  natives  were  carried  ofl^  as  slaves,  and  the  girl  was  con- 
demned to  death  by  her  own  people. 

The  islanders  of  La  Palma  had  an  old  tradition  that  the  rock 
known  as  Idafe  would  collapse  if  ever  the  island  were  conquered, 


CANARY  ISLANDS  187 

and  one  of  their  prayers  was:  "Idafe  spare  us."  When  the  Spaniards 
were  trying  to  storm  the  interior  of  the  island,  the  islanders  prayed 
that  Idafe  would  fall.  The  crag  duly  broke  off  and  plunged  to  the 
ground,  crushing  the  last  heroic  defenders  of  the  island  and  entomb- 
ing them  forever.  The  native  prince  Tanausu  was  captured  alive 
and  taken  to  Spain,  but  died  of  self-imposed  starvation. 

After  many  bloody  engagements,  during  which  the  inhabitants 
of  various  islands  helped  the  invaders  to  subdue  their  neighbors,  the 
entire  Canary  group  was  conquered  by  the  Spaniards.  The  natives 
were  remarkably  courageous  fighters  and  put  up  some  very  stiff 
resistance,  but  after  sundry  fluctuations  in  the  tide  of  battle  the 
Spanish  conquistadors,  notably  Diego  de  Herrera,  Diego  de  Silva 
and  Don  Alfonso  Fernandez  de  Lugo,  secured  the  Canary  Islands 
for  the  Spanish  crown. 

When  a  large  English  fleet  commanded  by  Sir  Francis  Drake  and 
Sir  John  Hawkins  attacked  the  new  masters  of  the  islands  in  1595 
they  were  repulsed  off  Las  Palmas.  Later  Admiral  Nelson  himself 
lost  one  arm  to  a  cannon  ball  when  his  fleet  tried  to  capture  Santa 
Cruz  on  Tenerife  in  1797. 

The  natives  of  the  Canary  Islands  represent  one  of  the  most  fas- 
cinating and  puzzling  problems  in  the  field  of  anthropology  and  early 
history,  a  problem  which  remains  largely  unsolved  to  this  day. 

It  seems  likely  that  the  average  Guanche  was  tall  and  well  built. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  more  westerly  islands  had  lighter  hair  than 
the  natives  of  the  islands  nearer  Africa,  who  were  dark-haired  and 
thick-lipped.  However,  stories  that  their  womenfolk  were  distin- 
guished for  their  beauty  should  probably  be  attributed  to  the  wild 
imaginings  of  sailors  who  would  have  found  any  girls  attractive 
after  weeks  at  sea!  The  allegedly  abnormal  strength  of  the  Guanches, 
too,  is  probably  one  of  the  exaggerations  so  often  indulged  in  by  the 
explorers  of  olden  times. 

Not  all  the  Guanches  were  massacred.  Most  of  them  died  a 
natural  death,  but  not  until  the  women  had  fraternized  with  the  in- 
vaders and  some  of  the  Guanches  had  married  Spanish  or  Portuguese 
wives.  As  a  result,  although  the  islanders'  racial  characteristics 
became  submerged  in  those  of  their  conquerors,  the  features  of  the 
modern  Spanish  population  often  betray  faint  traces  of  aboriginal 
blood. 

The  islanders'  old  way  of  life,  with  its  primitive  tools  of  wood, 


1 88  THE  SILENT  PAST 

bone  and  stone,  survived  until  the  sixteenth  century,  but  evidence 
of  an  advanced  neolithic  culture  has  also  been  found  in  the  large 
subterranean  buildings  on  Grand  Canary,  which  are  reminiscent  of 
ancient  Mediterranean  cultures,  in  the  ground  plans  of  temples,  in 
ruined  houses,  former  roads  and  elaborate  burial  practices. 

Many  Guanches  lived  in  artificial  caves  carved  into  the  mountain- 
side and  others  lived  in  natural  caves,  but  where  cave  life  was  not 
practicable  they  built  small  circular  houses  and  fortifications. 

Their  clothing  was  made  of  goatskin  or  vegetable  fibers,  materials 
of  which  many  traces  have  been  discovered  on  Grand  Canary. 
Necklaces  and  other  articles  of  adornment  made  of  wood,  bone  and 
mother-of-pearl  were  worn  by  men  as  well  as  women.  The  Guanches 
painted  their  bodies  in  bright  colors,  using  stamplike  implements 
made  of  baked  clay.  Clay  vessels,  either  undecorated  or  with  primi- 
tive finger-impressed  ornamentation,  have  been  dug  up  together 
with  wooden  spears,  clubs,  lances  and  shields.  The  Guanches  were 
unfamiliar  with  iron,  the  potter's  wheel  or  the  bow  and  arrow.  Their 
spear  points  were  either  fire-hardened  or  tipped  with  horn  spikes. 

One  puzzling  feature  is  that  the  Guanches  never  learned  to  sail. 
They  could  often  see  across  from  their  own  island  to  the  next, 
but  the  Spaniards  reported  that  they  had  no  form  of  communication 
with  each  other.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  the  islanders  were  in 
touch  at  lengthy  intervals  and  that  a  raft  or  primitive  boat  occa- 
sionally managed  to  make  the  crossing. 

The  Italian  traveler  Leonardo  Torriani,  a  native  of  Cremona, 
visited  the  Canary  group  in  1585  and  in  1590  wrote  a  most  interesting 
book  on  the  islands  and  their  aboriginal  population.  His  view  was 
that  the  Guanches  possessed  dugout  boats  with  sails  of  matting  and 
palm  leaves.  He  believed  that  these  boats  were  an  indigenous  cul- 
tural asset  and  that  the  islanders  already  knew  how  to  sail  before 
the  Spaniards  arrived.  If  Torriani's  suppositions  are  correct,  it  is 
hard  to  understand  why  no  remnants  of  such  vessels  have  been 
found.  All  in  all,  the  problem  remains  unsolved. 

It  is  a  fact  that  the  Guanches  overcame  the  difKculties  of  verbal 
communication  over  great  distances  by  means  of  a  type  of  birdcall, 
passing  messages  from  hill  to  hill  in  a  "whistle  language."  Curiously 
enough,  a  few  modern  islanders  still  command  the  art  of  transmitting 
various  signals  and  even  names  by  whistling. 

The  Guanches'  wealth  was  based  on  their  herds  of  sheep,  goats, 


CANARY  ISLANDS  189 

dogs  and  rabbits,  all  of  which  animals  were  used  as  food.  Plump 
young  dogs  were  considered  an  especial  delicacy.  All  food  was 
boiled,  the  staple  diet  being  fish  caught  in  the  shallow  water  around 
the  coasts.  Like  many  primitive  peoples,  the  Canary  Islanders  made 
fire  by  drilling  one  stick  with  another  or  rubbing  them  together. 

When  a  Guanche  grew  very  old  or  had  contracted  an  incurable 
disease  and  was  no  longer  fit  for  work,  he  could  ask  for  death. 
Relatives  were  not  permitted  to  refuse  such  a  request,  but  laid  the 
dying  man  to  rest  in  a  remote  cave  with  a  little  food  and  left  him 
to  die  in  solitude. 

The  islanders  tried  to  preserve  the  remains  of  their  dead  for  all 
eternity,  believing  that  the  disintegration  of  the  body  would  auto- 
matically destroy  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Numerous  embalmed 
mummies  have  been  found,  though  mainly  in  a  dilapidated  condition. 
It  is  an  astonishing  fact  that  none  of  them  weighs  more  than  six 
or  seven  pounds. 

The  first  stage  in  the  embalming  process  was  to  gut  the  body  of 
the  deceased,  a  despised  occupation  performed  by  social  outcasts. 
The  actual  embalmers,  on  the  other  hand,  were  normally  priests 
or  priestesses  who  ranked  high  in  public  esteem.  The  dead  were 
embalmed  by  members  of  their  own  sex,  who  preserved  the  bodies 
with  the  dark  red  resin  of  the  dragon's-blood  tree.  Dragon's-blood 
trees  have  always  grown  in  these  islands  and  can  reach  an  age  of 
3,000  years.  The  few  surviving  examples  are  under  official  protec- 
tion. Their  gum  does,  in  fact,  make  an  excellent  preservative,  but 
we  shall  never  know  who  originally  discovered  its  properties. 

Mummies  were  swathed  in  straw  mats  and  as  many  as  six  goatskins 
or  sheepskins,  which  were  sewn  together.  Then,  if  the  dead  man  was 
a  king,  his  corpse  was  hidden  in  an  inaccessible  cave  shaft  or  hur- 
riedly buried  beneath  a  hill.  No  member  of  the  public  was  admitted 
to  such  a  burial  and  the  priests  carefully  guarded  the  position  of  the 
grave. 

Guanche  kings  went  to  eternity  in  a  standing  position,  whereas 
their  wives  were  laid  to  rest  lying  on  their  side.  A  king  often  re- 
mained unburied  for  years  and  was  interred  only  on  the  death  of 
his  successor.  In  this  way  there  were  always  two  kings,  one  living 
and  one  dead,  the  latter  acting  as  adviser  to  the  former! 

Ordinary  mortals  were  embalmed  and  their  mummies  simply 
placed  one  on  top  of  the  other  in  layers,  men  with  their  arms  at 


ipo  THE  SILENT  PAST 

their  sides,  women  with  arms  folded.  The  departed  were  buried  with 
bowls  and  jugs  of  butter  and  milk,  dried  figs  and  other  fruits. 

It  seems  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  custom  of  embalming 
hailed  from  Egypt,  and  some  authorities  have  gone  so  far  as  to 
deduce  that  the  earhest  inhabitants  of  the  islands  were  Egyptians 
who  later  intermarried  with  Nubians.  However,  the  Egyptian  proc- 
ess of  conservation  was  quite  different  from  that  of  the  Canary 
Islands.  Moreover,  when  the  Spaniards  landed  in  the  archipelago 
the  islanders  had  no  form  of  writing.  If  they  had  come  from  Egypt 
they  would  presumably  have  brought  a  system  of  writing  with  them, 
yet  no  linguistic  similarities  have  been  found  either.  On  the  other 
hand,  marriage  between  brother  and  sister  was  not  only  permissible 
on  the  island  of  Hierro  but  customary,  just  as  it  was  among  the 
royal  families  of  ancient  Egypt. 

The  natives  must  have  been  established  on  their  islands  for  a  very 
long  time,  perhaps  since  2000  B.C.  or  even  earlier.  Their  name, 
Guanches  or  Vanches,  may  be  derived  from  Chinet,  the  hill  on 
Tenerife,  and  giiam  or  "man."  Guam-Chinet  would  thus  have  meant 
"people  of  Chinet,"  a  name  subsequently  distorted  by  the  Spaniards 
into  Guanche. 

The  islands  were  certainly  known  to  the  Semitic  sailors  of  the 
southern  and  southeastern  Mediterranean— that  is  to  say,  the  Phoeni- 
cians and  their  Carthaginian  cousins— long  before  the  Romans 
extended  their  sovereignty  to  Spain.  The  Carthaginian  navigator 
Hanno,  who  was  dispatched  t*^  "^^est  Africa  about  480  b.c,  found 
the  archipelago  seemingly  uninnabited  but  discovered  the  ruins  of 
some  large  buildings.  One  cannot  infer  from  the  apparent  absence 
of  human  beings  that  the  aboriginal  population  had  become  extinct 
and  that  new  immigrants  had  not  yet  found  their  way  there.  Hanno 
may  have  landed  on  an  island  that  happened  to  be  uninhabited,  or 
perhaps  he  did  not  look  farther  than  the  beach.  In  any  case,  like 
the  Spaniards  and  Portuguese  in  the  time  of  the  conquistadors,  the 
Carthaginians  kept  the  location  of  many  islands  and  trading  posts 
to  themselves  in  order  to  eliminate  unwelcome  competition.  Thus 
the  world  heard  virtually  nothing  more  of  the  Canaries  for  cen- 
turies, and  there  was  no  further  news  of  the  natives  until  their 
island  home  was  rediscovered  by  the  Arabs, 

Anthropologically,  the  Canary  Islanders  belonged  to  the  Cro- 
Magnon  type  and  were  similar  to  the  begetters  of  the  Aurignacian 


CANARY  ISLANDS  191 

culture  in  continental  Europe  and  Asia,  who  made  the  celebrated 
Venus  statuettes  of  thirty  or  fifty  thousand  years  ago.  In  much 
later  times  they  probably  became  interbred  with  Berbers  from 
North  Africa. 

The  Spanish  invaders  reported  that  the  Guanches  were  a  people 
of  more  than  average  height,  that  some  of  the  men  and  women 
had  blue  eyes  and  blond  hair,  and  that  they  were  endowed  with 
colossal  physical  strength.  These  romantic  descriptions  of  "noble, 
handsome,  courageous  but  culturally  primitive  cave  dwellers"  were 
energetically  impugned  by  Dominik  Josef  Wolf  el  in  1939,  and  it  is 
hard  to  disagree  with  him.  Many  explorers,  even  those  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  had  a  penchant  for  sending  back  highly  colored 
reports  about  unknown  countries. 

The  islanders  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  in  a 
supreme  and  invisible  being  known  on  Grand  Canary  as  Acoran,  on 
Tenerife  as  Achaman,  on  Hierro  as  Eraoranham,  and  on  La  Palma 
as  Abora.  Archaeologists  have  unearthed  the  remains  of  extensive 
temples  protected  by  strong  exterior  walls.  Tradition  had  it  that 
there  were  also  a  male  and  a  female  deity  who  lived  in  the  mountains 
and  came  down  to  hear  the  prayers  of  the  people.  Belief  in  an  evil 
spirit  was  equally  widespread.  This  demon,  who  was  known  on 
Tenerife  as  Guayota,  lived  at  the  summit  of  the  Teide,  a  10,750- 
foot  peak.  In  times  of  extreme  drought  the  Guanches  used  to  drive 
their  herds  to  holy  places  where  they  separated  the  lambs  from  the 
ewes  in  the  hope  that  their  melancholy  bleating  would  melt  the 
heart  of  the  supreme  being.  All  personal  feuds  and  wars  had  to  be 
postponed  during  religious  festivals. 

The  islands  evidently  had  a  sort  of  caste  system  founded  upon  a 
complicated  mythology.  There  were  many  social  strata,  ranging 
from  serfs  to  priests  and  royalty.  On  some  islands  the  king  was  an 
absolute  ruler,  while  on  others  the  chieftains  and  nobility  formed  a 
council  which  controlled  the  decisions  of  the  head  of  state.  Again, 
one  or  two  islands  were  inhabited  by  numerous  small  tribes  who 
owed  allegiance  to  no  single  master.  The  title  of  king  or  prince 
was  handed  down  from  father  to  son.  The  emblem  of  authority  was 
the  armbone  of  a  deceased  king  or,  according  to  other  sources,  a 
dead  king's  skull.  Oaths  were  sworn  on  such  relics  at  coronations, 
and  they  were  also  used  as  scepters  during  councils  of  state. 

Despite  the  existence  of  various  dialects,  the  inhabitants  of  all  the 


192  THE  SILENT  PAST 

seven  islands  formed  a  linguistic  unity.  Some  expressions  and  names 
corresponded  to  Berber  words  and  some  were  common  to  all  the 
islands.  Aemon  meant  "water"  on  Lanzarote,  Hierro  and  probably 
some  of  the  other  islands.  Aho  meant  "milk"  on  Lanzarote,  Grand 
Canary  and  Tenerife. 

On  many  of  the  islands  the  danger  of  overpopulation  was  so 
great  that  men  were  punished  with  death  if  they  so  much  as  ap- 
proached a  strange  woman  or  spoke  to  her  in  the  road.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that,  small  though  the  islands  were,  twin  paths 
were  laid  out  in  the  mountains  of  Tenerife  and  Grand  Canary  for 
just  this  reason,  one  for  men  and  one  for  women.  From  time  to  time, 
when  the  population  reached  a  certain  density,  the  people  received 
a  general  decree  to  kill  all  newborn  babies,  the  only  exceptions  to 
this  inhuman  measure  being  firstborn  children.  All  this  proves  that 
at  the  time  of  the  Spanish  conquest  a  considerable  number  of 
Guanches  lived  on  the  islands  and  that  in  earlier  times  the  islands 
may  well  have  been  even  more  densely  populated. 

On  Lanzarote  there  was  a  pit  into  which  those  who  had  been 
condemned  to  death  were  lowered  and  given  the  choice  of  either 
food  or  water.  However,  the  death  pit  was  abolished  after  one 
prisoner  chose  milk  and  stayed  alive  so  long  that  the  penalty  lost 
its  meaning. 

The  strange  symbols  which  have  been  found  on  the  rocks  of  La 
Palma  and  Hierro  remain  an  unsolved  scientific  mystery.  Scholars 
have  been  unable  to  recognize  any  form  of  writing  in  these  inscrip- 
tions, and,  apart  from  that,  they  seem  to  have  been  made  not  bv 
the  Guanches  but  by  an  older  race  which  had  long  been  extinct 
when  the  islands  were  taken  by  the  Spaniards. 

Only  some  500  years  have  elapsed  since  we  discovered  the  natives 
of  these  lovely,  lonely  islands  in  the  Atlantic,  since  we  tried  to  turn 
them  into  "civilized  beings"  and  so  exterminated  them.  How  much 
"foreign  aid"  primitive  peoples  can  absorb  without  becoming  extinct 
is  a  vital  but  unanswered  question.  It  is  a  symptom  of  primitive  think- 
ing when  advanced  nations  imagine  their  own  way  of  life  to  be  the 
only  one  worth  imitating,  and  insist  on  exporting  their  machine-made 
comforts  at  all  costs.  On  the  Canary  Islands,  so  Leonardo  Torriani 
reported,  people  had  been  living  "healthily  for  a  long  time  without 
serious  illness  or  need  of  a  doctor." 

A  whole  people  has  vanished  from  the  earth  without  our  devoting 


[57]  The  origin  of  this  httle  fig- 
ure is  still  in  doubt.  It  may  have 
been  sculpted  by  a  Greek  artist 
and  brought  to  a  port  on  the 
Atlantic  coast  of  southern  Spain 
or  it  may,  on  the  other  hand,  be 
a  product  of  native  Tartessus  art. 


[58]  Roman  amphorae  exhibiting 
Phoenician  influence,  salvaged 
from  the  sea  off  Cadiz.  The 
bronze  had  been  deeply  eroded 
as  a  result  of  2,000  years'  immer- 
sion in  seawater. 


[59  and  60]  One  of  the  most  interesting  finds  of 
the  Tartessus  era.  The  stone-faced  vaults  and 
burial  pits  discovered  at  Punta  de  la  Vaca,  Cadiz, 
yielded  this  5th  century  b.c.  sarcophagus  complete 
with  original  occupant  and  closely  fitting  lid  (left). 
It  is  assumed  that  the  sarcophagus  was  brought  to 
Cadiz  from  the  Phoenician  city  of  Sidon,  but  we 
shall  never  know  why  the  prince  for  whom  this 
handsome  stone  coffin  was  made  should  have 
found  his  last  resting  place  at  Cadiz. 


[61 1    This   fine    Greek    bowl   was   transported    to 
Tartessus  in  one  of  the  famous  "ships  of  Tarshish" 
which  King  Solomon  knew  so  well,  and  is  prob- 
ably between  2,500  and  2,600  years  old. 


'^ 


V'4 


[62]  Unusual  burial  stele  in  the  Aluseo  Arqucologicu  at  Seville.  The  palm  tree  and 
doe  with  calf  are  reminiscent  of  Tartessus  art  but  probably  hail  from   the  later, 

Roman  period. 


[63]  A  female  mask,  probably 
of  Greek  origin  but  found  in  a 
grave  at  Cadiz.  This  funeral  of- 
fering was  placed  in  the  grave 
to  drive  away  evil  spirits,  and 
dates    from    the    period     500- 

300  B.C. 


[64]  This  handsome  children's 
drinking  vessel  in  the  shape  of 
a  cockerel  belongs  to  the  Tartes- 
sus  culture  and  probably  dates 
from  the  7th  or  6th  century  b.c. 
It  is  now  in  the  Museum  of 
Archaeology,  Cadiz. 


[65]  Well  designed  jewelry  of 
this  sort  was  made  by  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Tartessus  peo- 
ple in  the  4th  century  b.c.  These 
pieces  were  photographed  in 
the  Museum  of  Archaeology  at 
Cadiz.  It  is  possible,  though  nor 
probable,  that  they  were  im- 
ported from  Phoenicia. 


[66]  "The  Lady  of  Elche," 
found  at  Elche  on  the  east  coast 
of  Spain.  This  Mona-Lisa-like 
portrayal  is  a  unique  example 
of  the  artistic  skill  of  the  5th 
century  b.c.  The  head  orna- 
ments, coiffure,  ear  pendants 
and  chains  are  testimony  to  the 
splendor  of  the  vanished  cul- 
ture of  Tartessus. 


[67I  The  celebrated  treasure  of 
El  Carambolo,  which  was  un- 
earthed on  September  30,  1958, 
comprised  twentv-one  articles 
of  solid  gold.  In  Professor 
Blanco's  opinion,  the  plates  are 
not  components  of  a  belt  but 
of  a  crown.  This  valuable  find 
bears  witness  to  the  remarkable 
technique  of  Tartessus  gold- 
smiths. 


'  «*  w.      i   *► 


[681  The  Guanches  are  extinct  as  a  people,  but  this  wooden  bust  of  a  Guanche  girl 
gives  us  some  idea  of  their  racial  type,  which  mav  have  been  related  to  that  of  the 
Berbers  of  North  Africa.  The  Spaniards  described  them   as  tall   and   strong-boned. 


[69]  This  model  of  a  stone  building  erected  by  the  Guanches  shows  how  far  advanced 
their  culture  was.  The  place  was  enclosed  by  a  massive  wall  and  probably  served 

religious  purposes. 
[70]   Stone  pestle  and  mortar  used  by  the  Guanches  for  grinding  corn.  Hand  mills 
of  this  type  have  been  found  on  several  of  the  Canary  Islands.  (House  of  Columbus, 

Las  Palmas.) 


..a.^'! 


[71]  A  tripod  of  this 
type  is  known  as  a  ting. 
T'ao-t'ieh  masks  can  be 
seen  on  each  of  its  three 
sides.  The  probable  age 
of  this  sacrificial  vessel 
is  2,500  years. 


[72]  This  Shang  Dy- 
nasty (1766-1123  B.C.) 
bowl  is  23  Yz  inches  high 
and  has  a  fine  olive- 
green  patina.  The  cen- 
ter of  its  girth  is  occu- 
pied by  a  T'ao-t'ieh 
mask  in  which  the  cres- 
cent moons  have  be- 
come modified  into 
horns.  Top  center,  the 
complete  head  of  a 
horned  beast. 


CANARY  ISLANDS  193 

sufRcient  study  to  them.  Gone  are  the  Guanches'  buildings  in  the 
rock  and  beneath  the  ground,  gone  the  work  of  their  carpenters, 
ropemakers  and  tanners,  gone  their  secret  recipe  for  brewing  an 
elixir  of  life  from  tree  sap,  gone  the  leather  lines  and  goats'  bones, 
the  nets  made  of  grasses  and  palm  leaves  with  which  they  once 
fished  so  skillfully.  Never  again  will  the  world's  best  stone-throwers 
engage  in  mortal  combat  with  the  balls  of  clay  which  they  used  for 
sport  as  well  as  war,  dangerous  missiles  which  only  the  agile  could 
avoid;  never  again  will  spears  quiver  in  the  clear  air,  hurled  by  the 
hand  of  expert  Guanche  spearmen. 

The  people  of  these  islands  loved  life  and  solitude  and  they  be- 
Heved  in  a  supreme  god.  They  made  music  and  their  songs  drifted 
out  across  the  waters  of  the  Atlantic. 

Today  only  the  thunder  of  the  surf  tells  the  story  of  their 
vanished  way  of  life. 


CHINA 

THE  MASK  OF  T'AO-T'IEH 

The  study  of  ancient  bronzes  has  been  industriously  pursued  in 
China  by  generations  of  scholars,  who  have  the  greatest  veneration 
for  the  written  script  and  find  it  better  preserved  on  bronze  than 
on  stone,  while  the  more  perishable  materials  used  in  early  times, 
such  as  tablets  of  wood  and  rolls  of  silk,  have  long  since  dis- 
appeared. 

—Stephen  W.  Bushell,  Chinese  Art, 
p.  6$,  London,  19 14 

ALL  civilizations  are  related.  In  the  six  hundred  thousand  or  more 
years  that  have  elapsed  since  mankind  came  into  being,  the  creature 
Homo  has  transmitted  the  intellectual  and  material  fruits  of  civiliza- 
tion from  continent  to  continent  and  from  one  river  valley  to  the 
next.  This  was  so  even  before  man  learned  how  to  sail  the  seas,  but 
once  he  had  invented  boats  and  ships  the  exchange  of  cultural  bless- 
ings and  evils  became  still  more  widespread. 

One  nation,  however,  has  always  felt  itself  to  be  the  center  of  the 
world  and  has  thus  remained  more  withdrawn  and  self-contained 
than  any  other  advanced  civilization,  namely  the  Chinese— though 
the  men  who  live  in  Sinkiang,  the  Gobi  desert  and  Manchuria  or  by 
the  Hwang  Ho,  Yangtze  and  Canton  rivers  differ  so  widely  in  their 
racial  characteristics  that  they  are  less  a  people  than  a  family  of 
peoples. 

With  its  huge  population  of  nearly  seven  hundred  millions,  China 
has  long  ago  passed  the  danger  mark.  A  nation's  strength  and  ca- 
pabilities cannot  be  equated  simply  with  its  numerical  strength  but 
are  dependent  on  the  foodstuffs  available  per  head  of  population  and 
—above  all— on  what  each  such  head  contains.  In  our  century  a 
country's  technical  progress  can  be  likened  to  a  ship,  which  goes 
no  better  with  a  crew  of  four  thousand  men  than  with  a  complement 
just  large  enough  to  supervise  the  efficient  functioning  of  all  its 
equipment.  Availability  of  food  should  never  be  a  dominant  factor 
in  the  life  of  any  nation.  The  equating  of  manpower  with  military 
strength  ceased  to  be  valid  after  the  end  of  the  Second  World  War. 

The  astonishing  feature  of  the  Chinese  population  is  not  its 
present  size  but  the  rapidity  of  its  recent  growth.  In  166 1,  the  Chinese 

194 


CHINA  195 

numbered  only  105  millions;  in  1766,  182  millions;  in  1872,  some 
330  millions;  and  today,  almost  700  millions. 

This  huge  nation  is  endowed  with  certain  attributes  which  West- 
erners either  consistently  forget  or  simply  refuse  to  take  into  ac- 
count. For  thousands  of  years,  ideas  and  trade  goods  entered  China 
via  endless  caravan  routes  or  by  sea.  The  stratification  of  various 
cultures  throughout  the  world,  and  especially  in  China,  is  so  fan- 
tastically intricate  that  we  shall  have  to  dig  and  explore  for  cen- 
turies to  come  before  we  succeed  in  identifying  even  a  few  of  the 
relationships  in  mankind's  cultural  history.  Yet,  despite  this  many- 
layered  complexity,  it  seems  as  though  China  has  been  permanently 
enclosed  by  visible  or  invisible  walls  for  the  past  four  thousand 
years.  The  reason  may  lie  in  China's  abnormal  creative  vigor  in 
craftsmanship  and  the  arts,  a  vitality  that  has  inspired  her  people 
since  very  early  times  and  particularly  during  the  Han  and  T'ang 
periods,  when  their  numbers  stood  far  below  the  fifty-million  mark. 
The  extraordinary  national  pride  of  the  Chinese  rests  on  their  very 
ancient  and,  despite  outside  influence,  entirely  individual  cultural 
strength,  on  the  inward-facing  attitude  which  prompted  them  to 
concentrate  more  on  their  ancestors  than  on  what  lay  beyond  their 
frontiers,  and  on  an  extremely  refined  culinary  expertise  which 
required  no  alien  importations. 

The  Chinese  have  always  cherished  the  conviction  that  all  the 
races  with  whom  they  have  to  deal  are  inferior  to  themselves.  Every 
Chinese  is  fundamentally  convinced,  for  instance,  that  Tibetans, 
Turkestanis,  the  inhabitants  of  Outer  Mongolia  and  the  primitive 
peoples  of  Siberia  belong  to  his  own  nation.  China  has  never 
acknowledged  another  people  or  country  as  the  center  of  the  world. 
In  fact,  she  has  scarcely  been  surpassed  in  culture  by  any  country 
in  the  world  for  five  thousand  years.  China  was  the  "Kingdom  of 
the  Center,"  and  the  Chinese  have  always  regarded  other  nations 
as  barbarians,  an  attitude  which  still  persists  today.  Racially  and 
culturally,  China  has  always  swallowed  her  neighbors,  conquerors 
and  defeated  enemies,  assimilated  and  absorbed  them.  The  Chinese 
thought  of  their  country  as  the  largest  and  most  powerful  in  the 
world  and  looked  down  on  their  Western  conquerors  with  con- 
tempt. They  despised  the  English,  the  French,  the  Germans  and, 
above  all,  the  Russians,  who  were  always  trying  to  infiltrate  across 
the  Amur  into  Manchuria  and  to  threaten  Outer  MongoUa  and 


196  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Turkestan.  They  despised  the  Japanese,  and  they  despised  the  ad- 
joining peoples  of  the  south. 

Since  the  Chinese  were  not  a  great  seafaring  race  and  their  rela- 
tions with  other  advanced  cultures  were,  in  a  sense,  unconscious, 
it  was  never  in  their  nature  to  belong  to  a  family  of  nations.  This 
fact,  together  with  their  ignorance  of  other  peoples'  cultural  achieve- 
ments, their  thousands  of  years  of  practice  in  their  own  individual 
way  of  life  and  their  innate  sense  of  superiority,  has  always  made 
them  seem  arrogant  in  foreign  eyes.  If  it  is  arrogance,  however,  it 
is  an  ancient  arrogance  unengendered  by  any  sort  of  inferiority 
complex. 

It  has  always  been  difficult  to  conclude  treaties  with  the  Chinese 
and  quite  useless  to  expect  them  to  adhere  to  an  agreement.  Like 
most  river-valley  peoples,  the  inhabitants  of  the  Hwang  Ho  and 
Yangtze  plains  have  been  astute  businessmen  for  thousands  of  years. 
They  produced  great  poets,  talented  writers,  incomparable  painters 
and  some  of  the  world's  foremost  sculptors.  They  were  excellent 
smiths,  fine  weavers  and  silk  manufacturers,  brilliant  architects, 
magnificent  cooks— and  appallingly  bad  cattlemen. 

During  the  first  five  dynasties,  or  from  2205  B.C.  until  a.d.  220, 
this  unusual  people  evolved  a  Bronze-Age  culture  which  ventured 
to  plumb  the  profoundest  secrets  of  light  and  darkness,  sun  and 
moon,  beast,  man  and  god.  Under  the  Shang  and  Chou  dynasties 
(1766-256  B.C.)  bronze  was  in  general  use  and  represented  China's 
most  important  metal. 

Articles  of  bronze  being  as  durable  as  they  are,  the  Chinese  have 
contributed  a  vast  literature  to  the  study  of  this  art.  The  Illustrated 
Description  of  Antiques  in  the  Hsiian-Ho  Palace,  compiled  by 
Wang  Fu  at  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  comprised  thirty 
volumes.  A  study  of  antiques  edited  by  Lii  Ta-lin  in  1092  contained 
ten  volumes.  A  magnificently  illustrated  catalogue  of  the  imperial 
bronze  collections  in  the  palace  at  Peking,  published  in  1751  by 
Emperor  Ch'ien  Lung,  occupied  no  less  than  forty-two  volumes 
and  the  supplementary  catalogue  was  housed  in  a  further  fourteen. 
Thus  there  is  a  veritable  library  of  works  by  Chinese  art  historians 
and  archaeologists  devoted  to  the  rich  and  extensive  subject  of 
bronze  art,  and  modern  students  of  this  extraordinarily  difficult  field 
are  forced  to  refer  repeatedly  to  Chinese  descriptions  and  catalogues 
for  advice. 


CHINA  197 

The  earlier  Chinese  dynasties 

Hsia 2205  B.C-1767  B.C. 

Shang   1766  B.c.-i  123  B.C. 

Chou      1 122    B.C.-    256    B.C. 

Ch'in    255  B.C.-  207  B.C. 

Han    206  B.c.-A.D.  220 

The  "Six  Dynasties"  a.d.  220-A.D,  589 

Sui    A.D.  589-A.D.  618 

T'ang   A.D.  618-A.D.  906 

Five  Dynasties a.d.  907-A.D.  960 

Sung  A.D.  960-A.D.  1279 

During  the  Chou  dynasty  (1122-256  b.c.)  Chinese  writers  com- 
piled a  work  on  contemporary  art,  the  celebrated  K^ao  kung  chi. 
This  book  lists  the  ratios  to  be  used  when  alloying  copper  and  tin 
to  make  various  bronze  articles.  Bells,  gongs,  large  bowls  and  other 
sacred  vessels  and  objects  consisted  of  five  parts  copper  to  one  part 
tin.  Axes  and  mattocks  required  four  parts  copper  to  one  of  tin. 
Double-edged  swords  and  agricultural  implements  were  cast  from 
two  parts  copper  to  one  part  tin.  Yet  another  alloy  was  prescribed 
for  making  arrowheads  and  small  knives,  and  the  famous  Chinese 
mirrors  were  made  of  the  above  two  metals  alloyed  in  equal  pro- 
portions. 

Chinese  bronzes  do  not,  however,  consist  only  of  copper  and  tin, 
but  contain  zinc,  lead,  nickel,  antimony,  silver  and  a  little  gold,  a 
combination  of  metals  which  produces  a  beautiful  patina  when  an 
object  has  lain  in  the  ground  and  been  subjected  to  chemical  changes 
over  a  period  of  hundreds  or  thousands  of  years.  Being  familiar  with 
the  chemical  properties  of  his  country's  soil,  the  Chinese  antiquarian 
knows  how  the  lovely  greens,  turquoises  and  reds  are  conjured  up 
on  bronze  and  can  distinguish  fake  from  genuine  by  patina  alone. 
Patina  is  often  faked,  but  a  spurious  coating  can  usually  be  removed 
with  a  knife  blade  or  boiling  water,  whereas  genuine  patina  pene- 
trates deep  into  the  metal. 

Very  large  articles  have  been  manufactured  from  copper.  Each 
of  the  five  massive  bells  of  Peking,  which  were  cast  on  the  orders 
of  Emperor  Yung  Lo  between  1403  and  1424,  weighs  just  short  of 
60  tons,  is  about  16  feet  high,  has  a  maximum  circumference  of  36 


198  THE  SILENT  PAST 

feet  and  is  about  i  foot  thick.  The  inner  and  outer  surfaces  of  these 
bells  bear  Chinese  versions  of  Buddhist  texts  and  prayers  in  Sanskrit. 
Cast  on  the  spot  where  they  were  destined  to  remain,  they  were 
suspended  on  tree  trunks  mounted  on  massive  wooden  frames.  Then, 
when  the  earth  had  been  dug  away  from  beneath  them,  a  swinging 
wooden  beam  was  hung  inside  to  summon  them  to  sonorous  life. 

The  earliest  bronzes,  which  served  religious  ends,  were  associated 
with  ancestor  worship  and  certain  rites  performed  at  the  imperial 
court.  Special  vessels  were  used  for  offerings  of  meat,  grain,  fruit  and 
wine.  Archaic  inscriptions  discovered  in  many  vessels  and  subse- 
quently deciphered  reveal  the  development  of  Chinese  script  from 
the  earliest  dynasties  onward. 

The  discovery  of  an  old  bronze  vessel  was  regarded  as  a  great 
stroke  of  good  fortune  by  the  Chinese  because  they  thought  that 
the  article's  sanctity  in  some  way  transferred  itself  to  the  finder. 
Thus  it  was  a  sacred  duty  to  keep  bronzes  carefully  and  pass  them 
on  from  one  generation  to  the  next.  In  the  fifth  month  of  the  year 
ii6  B.C.  a  three-legged  caldron  of  the  sort  known  to  the  Chinese 
as  ting  was  unearthed  on  the  southern  bank  of  the  river  Fen  in 
Shansi  Province.  This  happy  event  was  regarded  in  such  an  im- 
portant light  that  the  reign  of  the  emperor  of  the  day,  Wu  Ti,  was 
thereafter  known  as  Yuan  Ting.  In  the  year  a.d.  722,  during  the 
T'ang  dynasty,  a  bronze  caldron  was  discovered  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Yellow  River  in  the  city  of  Yung  Ho.  The  name  of  the 
place  was  forthwith  changed  to  Pao  Ting  Hsien,  or  "City  of  the 
Costly  Tripod."  Not  until  about  a.d,  960,  when  the  Sung  dynasty 
came  to  power,  did  bronzes  lose  their  reputation  for  sanctity.  From 
then  on  they  were  systematically  dug  up  and  placed  in  imperial 
palaces  and  museums,  where  they  were  catalogued  and  their  in- 
scriptions deciphered. 

The  first  items  to  be  mentioned  in  lists  of  old  Chinese  bronzes 
were  chiing  (bells)  and  ting  (bowls).  Bells  were  often  hung  at 
the  entrances  of  banqueting  halls  and  later  in  ancestral  temples, 
where  their  clangorous  voices  could  summon  the  shades  to  funeral 
banquets. 

One  very  famous  example  of  the  tijig  type  of  three-legged  vessel 
dates  from  the  Chou  dynasty  (1122-256  b.c.)  and  now  stands  in 
the  Chiao-Shan  Temple  on  the  Yangtze.  Its  interior  bears  an 
engraved  inscription  running  from  lip  to  base,  of  which  the  follow- 


CHINA  199 

ing  is  an  extract:  "I,  Wu  Chuan,  ventured  to  utter  my  grateful 
recognition  of  the  great  favor  and  honorable  gifts  of  the  Son  of 
Heaven,  I  have  made  vessels  for  wine  and  this  bowl  for  the  pres- 
entation of  sacrificial  meat  to  my  late  deserving  father.  May  I  be 
rewarded  with  a  long  life  of  many  days,  and  may  my  sons  and 
grandsons  continue  to  use  this  vessel  and  hold  it  in  honor  for  ten 
thousand  years." 

From  the  style  of  the  text  and  a  reference  to  the  position  of  the 
moon,  Chinese  scholars  concluded  that  the  vessel  dated  from  812 
B.C.  and  that  it  and  its  inscription  were  the  work  of  a  privy 
councillor  of  Emperor  Hsiian  Wang. 

The  inscriptions  of  the  Shang  dynasty  (1766-1123  B.C.)  are  com- 
posed in  an  archaic  pictographic  script  and  usually  mention  the 
name  of  the  dead  man  to  whom  the  piece  was  dedicated.  No  en- 
graved examples  are  known  to  have  originated  in  the  still  earlier 
Hsia  dynasty  (2205-1767  B.C.).  By  contrast,  the  interior  of  one 
sacrificial  bowl  of  the  Chou  dynasty  (1122-256  b.c.)  bears  more 
than  five  hundred  engraved  and  gilded  characters. 

Bronze  vessels  used  in  the  ritual  worship  of  ancestors  varied  in 
shape  according  to  whether  they  were  employed  as  winejars, 
sacrificial  cups  or  meat  dishes.  There  were  trumpet-shaped  wine 
vases  of  considerable  beauty,  wine  vessels  with  lids,  wine  vessels 
in  animal  form,  and  large  flat  bowls.  All  these  forms  originated 
in  very  early  times.  The  vessels  are  usually  distinguished  for  their 
simplicity  and  expressive  power,  and  possess— if  such  a  metaphor 
is  permissible— an  abundance  of  personality.  They  appear  cumber- 
some at  times,  for  they  changed  little  in  thousands  of  years,  yet  in 
some  strange  and  mysterious  manner  they  convey  their  great  age 
and  hallowed  significance. 

The  decorative  motifs  are  partly  geometrical  patterns  and  partly 
stylized  portrayals  of  natural  phenomena.  The  latter  themes  shed 
light  on  the  earliest  Chinese  interpretation  of  nature.  Human  beings 
are  rarely  depicted,  but  the  surfaces  of  the  vessels  bear  allusive 
representations  of  hills,  clouds,  tigers,  deer  and  other  animals.  They 
also  depict  a  staggering  profusion  of  mythical  creatures,  dragons, 
unicorns,  phoenixes,  toads,  tortoises  and  fabulous  beasts.  The  latter 
presuppose  an  almost  inconceivable  degree  of  imagination  and  sur- 
pass anything  of  their  kind  in  the  West.  Fantastic  monsters  like 


200  THE  SILENT  PAST 

those  conjured  up  by  the  Chinese  mind  were  never  imagined,  let 
alone  portrayed,  by  any  other  people  on  earth. 

Foremost  among  these  mythical  beasts  is  T'ao-t'ieh.  The  two 
Chinese  characters  composing  the  name  stress  only  one  attribute 
of  this  mysterious  creature,  their  literal  translation  being  "the 
Voracious  One."  T'ao-t'ieh  was  either  a  deity  or  the  embodiment 
of  various  characteristics  belonging  to  what  was  probably  the 
supreme  deity,  for  the  so-called  mask  of  T'ao-t'ieh  appears  on  so 
many  vessels  that  it  must  have  been  associated  with  an  important 
god  of  some  kind.  The  design  and  juxtaposition  of  various  masks  of 
this  type  and  of  other  animals  or  beings  were  an  age-old  Chinese 
tradition.  Sacred  representations  of  such  antiquity  that  we  shall 
never  plumb  their  origins,  they  may  at  one  time  have  been  carved 
in  a  perishable  medium  such  as  wood  long  before  the  appearance 
of  the  first  bronze  vessels. 

The  Greek  word  for  effigy  is  eikon,  the  "icon"  which  we  apply 
to  a  sacred  image.  What  we  find  on  Chinese  bronzes  is  an  entire 
iconography,  the  description  of  one  of  mankind's  earliest  worlds 
of  sacred  ideas. 

With  its  double-looped  horns,  the  T'ao-t'ieh  resembles  a  ram, 
but  a  large  fang  often  protrudes  from  the  upper  jaw  of  its  gaping 
mouth,  so  it  must  be  some  form  of  predatory  beast,  perhaps  a  wolf 
or  tiger.  On  the  other  hand,  many  T'ao-t'ieh  masks  suggest  a 
buffalo's  head. 

Careful  scrutiny  is  essential  to  the  discernment  and  interpretation 
of  the  animals  and  mythical  beings  on  the  exterior  surfaces  of  vessels 
and  bells.  Probably  the  most  eminent  authority  on  early  Chinese 
bronzes  and  cult  portrayals  is  Professor  Carl  Hentze,  a  distinguished 
member  of  Ghent  University,  who  has  studied  this  enthralling  field 
of  art  closely,  paying  extraordinary  attention  to  detail.  All  T'ao-t'ieh 
masks  have  crescent-shaped  horns,  and  the  earliest  examples  in- 
corporate half-moons.  The  upper  pair  of  crescents  grew  into  horns, 
while  the  lower  pair  became  the  lower  jaw  of  the  mask.  During  the 
early  bronze  period,  however,  most  of  the  masks  displayed  four 
distinct  crescents.  Hentze  and  Japanese  scholars  before  him  have 
interpreted  these  crescents  as  a  cult  symbol  of  the  moon.  Night 
and  the  moon  go  together,  and  owls  are  creatures  of  the  night, 
hence  the  stylized  coalescence  of  owl  and  t'ao-t'ieh. 

The  central  portion  of  the  mask  is  particularly  important,  al- 


CHINA  201 

though  its  significance  remained  obscure  until  1937,  when  Hentze 
proved  that  it,  too,  corresponded  to  an  iconographic  formula.  He 
interpreted  it  as  a  grasshopper,  and  defined  the  role  of  this  orna- 
ment between  the  horns  of  the  T'ao-t'ieh  as  a  symbol  of  renewal 
or  rebirth.  Fantastic  as  it  may  seem,  this  may  point  to  an  association 
with  the  Indus  culture  of  Mohenjo  Daro.  It,  too,  had  a  deity  with 
crescent  horns,  and  these  horns,  too,  were  separated  by  an  emblem. 
On  the  T'ao-t'ieh  mask  it  is  an  insect,  in  Mohenjo  Daro  a  plant. 
In  both  cases  Hentze  interprets  the  symbol  as  a  renewal  motif. 

Hailing  from  the  obscure  past,  the  portrayals  of  the  T'ao-t'ieh 
masks  are  assumed  to  represent  the  manifestations,  characteristics 
and  functions  of  an  age-old  supreme  deity.  Night  and  darkness  are 
symbolized  by  the  crescent  moons  and  the  owl,  light  and  rebirth 
by  sun  symbols  and  grasshoppers.  Out  of  darkness,  so  we  are  in- 
formed by  the  remarkable  bronzes  of  early  China,  come  light  and 
life.  T'ao-t'ieh,  so  familiar  to  the  Chinese  four  thousand  years  ago 
and  so  mysterious  now,  was  a  demon  of  darkness  and  a  creature 
of  the  moon.  It  was,  as  Professor  Hentze  has  so  brilliantly  demon- 
strated, a  central  deity  during  the  Shang  period  of  1766-1123  b.c. 

Where  did  the  Shang  people  learn  the  art  of  bronze  manufacture? 
This  question  remains  unanswered,  despite  the  fact  that  for  many 
centuries  magnificent  works  of  art  in  bronze  have  been  unearthed 
in  the  An-yang  district  of  central  Honan,  where  the  capital  of  the 
Shang  dynasty  used  to  be. 

There  is  some  evidence  that  the  bronze  culture  of  the  West 
spread  to  China  at  an  early  date.  The  ancient  motif  of  rams  and 
the  tree  of  life,  a  feature  of  Sumerian  culture,  has  been  rediscovered 
in  China.  Nevertheless,  even  if  a  bronze  culture  existed  in  the 
countries  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean  earlier  than  in  China  it  does 
not  necessarily  mean  that  China  inherited  its  bronze  art  from  that 
quarter.  Indeed,  the  unique  characteristics  of  Chinese  bronzes  and 
the  extreme  individuality  of  Shang  religious  culture  are  inconsistent 
with  the  adoption  of  Western  elements,  and  the  predominance  of 
entirely  uninfluenced  Chinese  pieces  indicates  that  the  Far  East 
underwent  an  artistic  evolution  of  its  very  own. 

There  are  apparent  similarities  between  ancient  Chinese  and 
Northwest  American  Indian  art  just  as  there  are  similarities  between 
Shang  iconography  and  some  Maya  and  Aztec  symbols.  But  what 
explanation  can  there  be  for  the  gap  of  two  or  three  thousand 


202  THE  SILENT  PAST 

years  separating  the  extremely  ancient  bronze  art  of  China  and  the 
Maya  and  Aztec  civilizations  of  the  fourth  and  fourteenth  centuries 
A.D.  respectively? 

It  will  never  be  possible  to  grasp  the  origin  and  content  of  the 
Shang  people's  mysterious  symbolism  in  its  entirety.  The  most 
remarkable  feature  of  Chinese  bronze  culture  is  that,  like  Pallas 
Athene,  it  appears  to  have  sprung  abruptly  into  being  four  thousand 
years  ago  and  to  have  attained  a  peak  of  perfection  without  passing 
through  any  preliminary  stages.  W.  C.  White,  a  Canadian  authority 
on  Shang  culture  who  has  lived  in  Honan  for  many  years,  states 
that  there  is  absolutely  no  indication  of  the  origin  or  even  the  back- 
ground of  this  art.  The  bronzes  are  superbly  cast,  carefully  planned 
with  regard  to  strength  and  form,  refined  in  their  ornamentation 
and  unsurpassed  by  any  other  bronzes  in  the  world. 

We  know  that  the  Shang  priests  frequently  made  human  sacrifice, 
we  guess  at  their  cult  animals  and  have  a  vague  idea  of  their  demons, 
we  study  their  fertility  symbols  and  can  handle  the  receptacles  that 
contained  their  food  and  drink  offerings  more  than  three  thousand 
years  ago— but  what  did  they  hiozvF  What  did  they  know  of  the 
whence  and  whither  of  mankind?  What  did  they  know  of  God, 
and  why  did  their  thoughts  revolve  eternally  around  the  mysteries 
of  nature? 

If  the  mute  bronzes  refuse  to  yield  up  all  their  secrets,  we  must 
remember  that  it  is  characteristic  of  the  moon's  pale  crescent  to 
leave  much  in  semidarkness. 


INDIA 


A  MAN  NAMED  SIDDHARTHA 

If  Buddha  is  only  an  apocryphal  -figure  and  the  product  of  sym- 
bolic specidation,  if  he  never  preached,  if  he  never  had  disciples 
who,  united  in  a  common  belief,  regarded  one  another  as  brothers, 
there  is  no  explanation  for  the  sudden  appearance  of  the  com- 
munity which  modeled  itself  on  him  mentally  and  based  itself  on 
his  doctrines,  which  possessed  a  literature  in  which  it  preserved  a 
recollection  of  all  his  daily  doings,  a  recollection  of  his  earthly 
pronounce7nents  and  of  the  people  who  surrounded  him  in  his 
lifetime. 

—  (Jean  Filliozat)  L.  Rendu  and  J.  Filliozat, 
Ulnde  Classique,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  465,  Paris,  1953 

The  venerable  Sariputta  spoke  there  to  the  monks:  "This  nirvana 
is  bliss,  ye  monks.  This  nirvafia  is  bliss,  ye  friends."  And  when  the 
venerable  Sariptitta  had  thus  spoken,  the  venerable  Udayi  spoke 
to  hi?n  as  follows:  ''''But  how,  iny  dear  Sariputta,  can  there  be  bliss 
in  that  condition  if  there  is  no  sensation  therein?''''  ''''The  bliss  of  that 
condition,  7ny  friend,  is  precisely  that  there  is  no  sensation  therein." 

—Maximilian  Kern,  Das  Licht  des  Ostens, 
p.  no,  Leipzig,  1922 

ABOUT  500  B.C.  a  man  was  born  whose  teachings  conquered  the 
whole  of  the  Far  East  and  who  thus  gave  Asia's  most  widely  dis- 
seminated religion  its  name.  Far  fewer  wars  have  been  fought  on 
behalf  of  Buddhism  than  of  Islam  and  Christendom,  yet  those  who 
embrace  Buddha's  ideas  include  Burmese,  Siamese,  Cambodians, 
Laotians,  Tibetans,  Chinese  and  many  millions  of  people  in  Mon- 
golia, Manchuria  and  Japan. 

Buddha  never  wished  to  be  a  monarch,  never  wished  to  found 
or  rule  kingdoms,  yet  this  genius  who  had  no  taste  for  earthly 
power  created  a  realm  of  the  spirit  in  which  hundreds  of  millions 
of  Asiatics  still  live  today.  Buddha  begged  his  daily  food  in  the 
bazaars  of  central  India.  Today,  the  efRgy  of  the  erstwhile  beggar 
stands  in  gilded  and  exalted  tranquillity  in  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  temples.  Clouds  of  incense  wreathe  his  countenance,  and  for 
twenty  centuries  men  have  prayed  and  performed  their  meditations 
in  his  presence. 

Asia  is  the  great  cradle  of  the  world's  religions.  Within  a  period 

203 


204  THE  SILENT  PAST 

of  approximately  two  hundred  years,  it  witnessed  the  appearance 
of  Zarathustra  (circa  600  B.C.),  Confucius  (551-479  b.c.)  and 
Buddha,  All  the  great  sages,  holy  men  and  religious  founders  of  the 
world  have  one  thing  in  common:  the  historical  facts  of  their 
existence  are  to  some  degree  veiled  in  obscurity.  This  baffling  half- 
knowledge,  this  distrust  of  reality  and  quest  for  precise  details  about 
people  who  were  close  to  their  god  are  natural  and  inevitable,  for 
their  existence  has  been  overwhelmed  and  obscured  by  their  teach- 
ings. Nothing  is  left  of  the  great  saints  and  sages  except  their 
spirit.  Details  of  their  private  life  must  remain  lost  to  history 
because  it  is  a  cipher,  merely  an  earthly  accessory  of  immortal 
thoughts.  Sanctification,  deification  and  apotheosis  need  no  bio- 
graphical details. 

Thus  we  have  very  little  precise  information  about  Buddha's  life. 
His  followers  saw  in  him  such  an  intelligence  and  supernatural 
moral  force  that  he  became  in  their  eyes  the  divine  embodiment 
of  everything  spiritual  and  a  symbol  of  liberation  from  a  world  of 
suffering  and  confusion.  They  witnessed  miracles  and  clothed  his 
life  in  legends,  recognizing  him  as  one  of  the  saviors  of  mankind. 

Only  two  hundred  years  after  Buddha's  death,  reports  of  the  man 
and  his  wisdom  had  penetrated  to  every  corner  of  India.  The  nucleus 
of  his  doctrines— his  words— was  faithfully  passed  on  with  a  zeal 
born  of  religious  sincerity.  His  truths  conquered  the  whole  of  the 
East,  but  ideas  of  him  were  so  glamorized  by  bold  flights  of  fancy, 
by  poetic  imagination,  glorification  and  prayer,  that  all  details  of 
the  real  man  were  soon  obscured  by  a  dazzling  aureole  of  legend. 
We  are  told  that  he  converted  the  envious  and  hostile,  ascended 
into  heaven  and  returned  to  earth,  was  revered  by  beasts,  worshiped 
by  human  beings  and  urged  by  the  gods  to  share  his  wisdom  with 
them.  The  gods  themselves  became  his  most  ardent  adherents  and 
kings  humbled  themselves  before  him  and  offered  him  their  treasures. 
And  all  this  was  accomplished  by  the  spiritual  and  moral  force  of 
a  beggar,  a  starving  ascetic!  Huge  libraries  could  be  filled  with 
the  erudite  works  that  have  been  written  about  Buddha,  but  no 
form  of  science  or  research  can  get  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  The 
figure  of  Buddha  remains  in  some  degree  incomprehensible  and 
shrouded  in  mystery. 

Actually  Buddha  is  not  a  proper  name  but  an  honorific  title 
meaning  "the  Enlightened  One."  He  was  the  son  of  Suddhodana, 


INDIA  205 

a  prince  of  the  Sakya  clan,  and  his  wife  Mahamaya,  who  died 
seven  days  after  giving  him  birth.  Mahamaya  reputedly  did  not 
actually  die  in  childbirth,  but  because  she  had  achieved  her  highest 
destiny  and  fulfilled  her  supreme  purpose.  Like  so  much  in  Buddha's 
life,  the  death  of  his  mother  was  at  once  an  historical  fact  and  a 
religious  necessity. 

The  Sakya  lived  at  the  foot  of  the  Himalayas.  In  fact  we  even 
know  that  Buddha's  place  of  birth  was  Kapilavastu  in  modern 
Nepal,  125  miles  from  Katmandu  and  220  miles  from  Mount 
Everest.  The  site  is  marked  by  a  pillar  bearing  an  inscription  by 
King  Asoka. 

Buddha  was  India's  greatest  philosopher,  but  "philosopher"  is  a 
very  European  term,  and  it  is  perhaps  better  to  call  him  India's 
greatest  sage.  Buddha  embodied  the  spirit  of  Asia,  the  multiplicity  of 
its  philosophy  and  the  profundity  of  its  religious  introspection.  He 
is  at  once  the  most  human  figure  and  the  most  remarkable  phe- 
nomenon which  India  has  produced.  No  other  Indian  ever  sur- 
passed him  in  wisdom,  depth  of  thought  or  spiritual  radiance,  yet 
we  have  no  precise  idea  of  the  actual  content  of  the  historical 
Buddha's  original  doctrines.  It  certainly  differed  from  the  Buddhism 
of  today,  and  there  are  some  authorities— C.  A.  F.  Rhys  Davies,  for 
example— who  believe  that  Buddha's  actual  teachings  differed  but 
little  from  the  ethic  of  the  old  Indian  Upanishads. 

Buddha's  adherents  paint  a  very  highly  colored  picture  of  his 
life.  Even  if  Buddha  had  never  existed  and  Asia  possessed  no  more 
than  this  creatively  fashioned  life  story,  she  would  still  be  im- 
mensely rich  in  the  religious  and  spiritual  sphere.  Figures  such  as 
Zarathustra,  Confucius,  Buddha,  Socrates  and  Christ  are  not,  how- 
ever, susceptible  of  invention. 

We  are  told  that  Buddha's  mother,  Princess  Mahamaya,  was 
transported  in  miraculous  fashion  to  a  lake  in  the  Himalayas,  where 
she  was  bathed  by  heavenly  attendants  and  dreamed  that  she  saw 
a  large  white  elephant  holding  a  lotus  blossom  in  its  trunk.  (The 
lotus  blossom  is  one  of  Asia's  most  venerated  symbols  and  is  asso- 
ciated with  birth.)  The  next  day,  sages  interpreted  her  dream  as 
signifying  that  she  was  destined  to  bear  a  son  who  would  be  a  ruler 
of  the  universe  and  a  servant  of  God.  The  child  was  duly  born,  not 
actually  in  Kapilavastu,  the  Sakya  capital,  but  in  its  immediate 
vicinity,  just  as  Mahamaya  was  on  her  way  to  her  parents'  house. 


2o6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

At  the  great  baptismal  ceremony  customarily  held  by  families  of 
high  rank,  the  newborn  child  received  the  name  Siddhartha.  His 
"Gotra"  name  was  Gautama.  Soothsayers  apparently  predicted  that 
the  child  would  be  a  teacher  of  mankind.  His  father,  King  Sud- 
dhodana,  was  determined  to  isolate  him  from  all  the  sorrows  and 
afflictions  of  the  world,  and  we  learn  that  he  grew  up  and  received 
his  education  in  a  magnificent  palace  far  removed  from  such  things 
as  death,  disease,  sorrow  and  suffering.  He  married  a  cousin  of  his 
and  might  well  have  lived  happily  if  he  had  not  had  an  inner 
yearning  for  something  more.  Then  he  saw  the  four  signs  which 
had  figured  in  the  soothsayers'  predictions:  a  very  old  man  in  a 
pitiable  condition,  a  sick  man  covered  in  ulcers  and  shivering  with 
fever,  a  dead  man  being  carried  to  his  funeral  pyre  and,  finally,  a 
pious  beggar  in  a  yellow  robe.  Only  the  fourth  apparition  gave  any 
appearance  of  serenity  or  contentment,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
nine  Siddhartha  decided  to  follow  his  example.  Leaving  home, 
family,  wife  and  child,  he  set  off  on  horseback.  In  his  rejection  of  the 
world  he  abandoned  his  princely  clothes  and  exchanged  them  for 
the  habit  of  a  mendicant  monk. 

The  future  Buddha  visited  the  schools  of  various  celebrated 
ascetics  in  his  search  for  a  solution  to  the  questions  which  were 
troubling  him,  but  in  vain.  Then  he  withdrew  into  solitude. 

Gautama  Buddha  arrived  at  his  philosophy  through  meditation. 
When  he  was  forty-five  years  old  he  sat  down  beneath  a  pipal 
tree  and  swore  not  to  move  from  the  spot  until  he  had  solved  the 
riddle  of  human  suffering,  even  if  his  body  decayed  first. 

For  forty-nine  days  and  nights  he  sat  beneath  the  tree  in  motion- 
less contemplation.  By  the  end  of  that  period,  during  which  he 
withstood  numerous  temptations,  he  had  seen  the  truth  and  under- 
stood the  secret  of  pain  and  suffering.  He  realized  why  the  world 
was  unhappy  and  how  its  unhappiness  could  be  overcome.  Having 
become  a  Buddha,  an  "Enlightened  One,"  he  remained  beneath  the 
Tree  of  Wisdom  or  Bodhitaru  for  another  seven  weeks. 

It  was  not  Siddhartha's  immediate  intention  to  communicate  his 
experience  and  knowledge  to  the  world  at  large,  but  the  god 
Brahma  came  down  from  heaven  and  bade  him  propagate  the 
dharma  or  doctrine.  His  disciples  numbered  first  five  and  then  sixty, 
and  his  name  and  teachings  became  renowned  throughout  the  plain 
of  the  Ganges.  Returning  to  Kapilavastu,  he  converted  his  father, 


INDIA  207 

his  wife,  his  son,  large  numbers  of  courtiers  and  even  his  wicked 
cousin  Devadatta. 

Many  miracles  are  attributed  to  Buddha,  but  the  earliest  accounts 
of  his  life  contain  virtually  no  reference  to  any  miraculous  deeds. 
For  two-thirds  of  the  year  he  roamed  through  the  countryside  with 
his  disciples,  teaching  as  he  went.  The  remaining  months  he  spent  in 
one  of  the  many  groves  which  were  bequeathed  to  the  Buddhists  by 
wealthy  patrons.  Buddha  wandered  through  the  Ganges  valley  for 
forty-five  years,  a  beggar  among  beggars  and  the  poorest  of  the 
poor,  but  never  unhappy. 

Unhke  Christ,  Paul  and  Socrates,  Buddha  was  never  persecuted 
on  account  of  his  teachings.  When  he  was  eighty  he  prepared  his 
followers  for  his  death.  Only  his  doctrine,  the  dhanna,  was  to  sur- 
vive. No  new  master  was  to  step  into  his  shoes.  He  probably  died, 
like  Diogenes,  from  a  type  of  paratyphus  contracted  after  eating 
pork.  Dragging  himself  as  far  as  the  suburb  of  Kusinagara,  he  lay 
down  under  a  tree  at  nightfall  and  died.  Buddha's  death  occurred  by 
Singhalese  reckoning  in  the  year  543  and  according  to  European 
research  in  477  b.c.  His  body  was  burned  on  a  pyre  according  to 
Indian  custom. 

Buddha's  doctrines  and  Christianity  came  into  being  quite  in- 
dependently, even  though  the  Christian  religion  and  Buddhist 
philosophy  both  have  their  origin  in  a  belief  in  a  supreme  god. 
All  attempts  to  correlate  the  Buddhist  sutras  with  the  Christian 
Gospels  are  doomed  to  failure.  There  are  superficial  similarities 
and  very  considerable  divergences,  but  even  the  apparent  similar- 
ities vanish  under  careful  comparative  analysis.  Christianity  and 
Buddhism  are  worlds  apart  in  dogma  and  quite  close  in  their 
morality,  as  Professor  A.  Foucher  of  Paris  University  has  so  clearly 
demonstrated.  "Christian  and  Buddhist  moral  values  are  undoubtedly 
homogeneous,  but  their  doctrinal  basis  and  mental  and  spiritual 
atmosphere  are  entirely  dissimilar." 

The  contrast  between  Buddhism  and  Christianity  is  immediately 
apparent  from  their  attitude  toward  the  soul.  According  to  Christian 
theology  the  soul  originates  with  the  child  and  thereafter  retains 
its  immortality.  It  has  a  beginning,  therefore,  but  no  end.  To 
Indian  philosophers  such  a  notion  is  absurd,  for  in  their  view  any- 
thing which  comes  into  being  at  one  point  in  time  is  susceptible 
to  destruction  at  another  point  in  time.  They  hold  that  the  soul 


2o8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

is  immortal  and  travels  from  body  to  body  during  the  process  of 
rebirth.  Since  it  exists  eternally  it  has  no  beginning  and  can  have 
an  end  only  in  exceptional  cases  when  meritorious  behavior  and 
good  deeds  have  rendered  it  ripe  for  the  supreme  condition,  nirvana, 
from  which  there  is  no  return  to  earth. 

With  only  one  life,  the  Christian  can  receive  eternal  bliss  or 
eternal  damnation  only  once.  "The  Buddhist  has  traveled  far,  and 
has  all  eternity  before  him.  His  life  is  only  a  transient  moment  in 
the  course  of  an  eternal  existence.  He  reaps  the  fruits  of  his  previous 
existences  and  sows  the  seeds  of  his  future  forms  of  existence.  For 
him,  the  death  knell  never  heralds  the  advent  of  everlasting  bliss 
nor  signals  the  hour  of  irreparable  doom.  He  believes  that  his 
approach  to  perfection  is  an  infinitely  slow  process  spanning  thou- 
sands upon  thousands  of  successive  lifetimes,  for  only  thus  can  he 
attain  the  supreme  reward  of  eternal  bliss.  It  is  a  salvation  which 
we,  in  our  Occidental  impatience,  expect  to  receive  after  a  single 
lifetime. 

"The  peoples  of  the  East  have  different  conceptions  of  this 
salvation  from  our  own.  The  Westerner  wants  only  to  live.  Should 
he  fail  to  reach  heaven,  his  thirst  for  immortality  is  such  that  he  is 
prepared  to  accept  the  everlasting  torments  of  purgatory  and  hell. 
The  man  of  the  Far  East  already  has  an  eternity  behind  him.  After 
so  many  existences  he  is  infinitely  weary,  infinitely  fatigued  by  the 
endless  succession  of  deaths  which  he  has  undergone.  In  short,  the 
ambition  of  the  West  is  never  to  die  again:  the  ambition  of  the  East 
is  never  to  be  reborn." 

Like  Christ  and  Socrates,  the  Enlightened  One  of  India  never 
committed  a  word  of  his  doctrine  to  writing.  He  was  not  really 
a  religious  founder  as  such,  nor  did  he  have  any  intention  of 
founding  a  religion.  His  sole  concern  was  to  serve  people  with  his 
teachings  and  help  them  to  escape  from  suffering.  He  was  not  in- 
terested in  solving  theological  questions  such  as  the  essential  nature 
of  the  gods,  the  soul  and  immortality.  All  these  problems  were 
disposed  of  by  his  belief  that  it  was  better  never  to  have  been  born 
at  all  than  to  live  and  so  to  suffer. 

Buddhism  did  not,  however,  remain  merely  a  philosophy;  it 
became  a  world  religion.  Even  though  their  originator's  only  real 
concern  had  been  to  encourage  wisdom  and  rectitude  in  human 
behavior,  the  teachings  of  Buddha  were  being  variously  interpreted 


INDIA  209 

by  no  less  than  eighteen  different  sects  only  two  hundred  years 
after  his  death.  The  two  main  forms  of  Buddhism,  Mahayana  and 
Hinayana,  have  divided  the  Buddhist  world  into  two  separate  camps. 
Those  who  live  in  the  spirit  of  Mahayana,  "the  great  vehicle,"  in- 
clude the  Chinese,  the  Japanese  and  the  Lamaists  of  Tibet,  Bhutan, 
Sikkim,  Nepal  and  Mongolia.  Ceylon  and  Indo-China  follow  the 
Hinayana  or  "little  vehicle." 

Mahayana  entails  a  perpetual  striving,  during  life  and  through 
life,  to  be  reborn  after  death  as  a  future  Buddha  or  Bodhisattva.  The 
adherents  of  Mahayana  accept  rebirth  out  of  sympathy  for  the 
world  and  when  it  is  for  the  salvation  or  happiness  of  the  majority. 
The  adherents  of  the  Hinayana  seek  only  their  personal  salvation. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  Buddhism  is  that  while  its  teach- 
ings still  survive  in  vast  tracts  of  Asia  they  have  all  but  disappeared 
in  the  land  of  Buddha's  birth.  In  India,  Buddhism  has  been  swamped 
by  the  much  more  ancient  Hindu  religion,  and  the  Indian  people 
have  remained  true  to  their  traditional  polytheism,  their  penchant 
for  miracles,  their  splendid  myths  and  peculiar  world  of  magic. 

Nevertheless,  Buddhism  has  adopted  numerous  legends  and  count- 
less rituals  and  deities  from  Hinduism.  The  unadulterated  doctrines 
of  Siddhartha  and  his  world  of  ideas  have  not  remained  entirely 
intact.  Buddhism  did  not  meet  its  end  suddenly  in  India,  it  should  be 
added,  but  survived  there  for  about  a  thousand  years  until  its 
eventual  extinction  circa  a.d.  750.  In  every  other  country  in  the 
Far  East  its  doctrines  still  live  on,  unaffected  by  new  masters,  new 
cure-all  philosophies  and  new  methods. 

A  third  of  mankind  obeys  the  tenets  of  Buddhism.  It  may  not  obey 
them  as  sincerely  as  Buddha's  disciples  once  obeyed  the  words  of 
their  master,  but  Buddhists  are  still  Buddhists. 

Buddhism  has  also  bequeathed  the  world  a  great  legacy,  some- 
thing impermanent,  perhaps,  but  something  engendered  by  faith  and 
therefore  magnificent.  This  is  the  Buddhist  art  which  has  given 
birth  to  statues,  portraits  and  rehefs  of  Buddha  throughout  Asia. 


INDIA 

GANDHARA  AND  THE  BUDDHA  IMAGE 

The  purpose  of  these  sculptures  was  to  glorify  the  Buddha.  This 
they  did  by  recounting  episodes  from  the  story  of  his  life  and  of 
his  previous  births,  or  sometimes,  but  only  rarely,  from  the  sub- 
sequent history  of  the  Buddhist  Church.  In  the  earliest  monuments 
the  stories  of  his  previous  births,  or  Jatakas,  as  they  were  called, 
greatly  predominated.  Later  on,  interest  shifted  to  the  events  of  his 
last  earthly  life,  and  still  later  to  his  image,  which  was  destined  to 
eclipse  all  else  in  Buddhist  art. 

—Sir  John  Marshall,  The  Buddhist  Art  of  Gandhara, 

p.  7,  Cambridge,  i960 

THE  ancient  land  of  Gandhara  was  situated  on  the  northwest 
frontier  of  India,  roughly  between  the  Indus  and  its  large  northern 
tributary,  the  Kabul.  It  occupied  the  northernmost  tip  of  modern 
Pakistan  and  the  region  of  Afghanistan  adjoining  it  in  the  Kabul 
bend.  Of  great  cultural  interest  and  scenic  beauty,  this  area  was 
conquered  by  Alexander  the  Great  in  the  years  327  and  326  b.c. 
Alexander  led  an  army  of  35,000  men  into  Gandhara  from  Sogdiana 
and  Bactria,  which  more  or  less  corresponded  with  the  area  of 
Uzbekistan  (now  in  Soviet  Russia)  southeast  of  the  Aral  Sea.  He 
was  searching  for  the  eastern  and  southern  boundaries  of  the  in- 
habited world.  His  army  had  long  ago  ceased  to  be  solely  Mace- 
donian. A  whole  empire  was  on  the  march,  an  empire  composed  of 
many  nations  and  races,  Macedonians  with  their  wives  and  children, 
scholars,  exponents  of  all  the  sciences,  doctors,  geographers,  engi- 
neers, bridge  builders,  ballistics  experts,  historians,  ethnologists,  and 
in  addition  a  huge  column  of  commissariat  officials,  ancillary  troops, 
seamen  and  even  contingents  lent  by  Indian  princes— a  total  of  about 
120,000  souls. 

Alexander  pushed  onward  into  the  Kabul  valley,  fighting  off  bitter 
attacks  by  tough  mountain  tribes.  He  stormed  their  strongholds  and 
battered  their  towns  with  his  heavy  catapult  artillery  until  he 
eventually  reached  the  banks  of  the  Indus.  The  Macedonian  king 
took  strong  exception  to  the  Indian  philosophers  who  berated,  re- 
viled and  insulted  the  native  princes  who  defected  to  him,  and  hanged 
some  of  them.  The  Gandharan  king  of  Takshashila  (the  modern 
town  of  Taxila  stands  about  23  miles  east  of  the  Indus)  paid  homage 


INDIA  211 

to  the  foreign  invader,  accompanied  by  other  tribal  chieftains. 
Alexander's  army  was  progressively  reinforced  by  renegade  Indian 
troops,  and  in  the  spring  of  326  b.c.  he  crossed  the  Indus.  We  are 
told  that  Prince  Poros  lay  in  wait  for  him  on  the  eastern  bank  of 
the  Hydaspes,  now  the  Jhelum,  but  that  after  his  men  had  put  up 
a  desperate  struggle  Poros  was  wounded,  his  army  annihilated  and 
his  two  sons  captured.  When  Alexander  asked  him  how  he  thought 
he  should  be  treated,  the  royal  captive  replied:  "Like  a  king!" 
Typically,  Alexander  complied.  Poros  became  Alexander's  ally  and 
his  possessions  were  considerably  augmented. 

It  was  not  until  the  King  of  Magadha  advanced  on  Alexander  at 
the  head  of  600,000  infantry,  war  elephants  and  cavalry  that  the 
Macedonian  army's  courage  wavered.  For  Alexander,  the  banks  of 
the  Hyphasis  represented  the  end  of  the  world  and  the  end  of  his 
unique  career  of  conquest.  Considering  the  enormous  distances  and 
the  alien  surroundings,  there  was  nothing  surprising  about  the 
mutiny.  Like  Achilles,  Alexander  withdrew  to  his  tent  for  three 
days  and  waited  for  the  army  to  regain  its  senses,  but  his  men  were 
deathly  tired  of  bold  excursions  to  the  end  of  the  world.  Alexander 
turned  to  the  gods.  Erecting  twelve  altars,  he  ordered  a  general 
retreat.  Only  a  few  years  after  Alexander's  withdrawal  the  Indian 
king  Chandragupta  made  sacrifice  on  one  of  these  altars,  a  sig- 
nificant fact  because  it  illustrates  the  spiritual  contact  between 
Graeco-Hellenistic  culture  and  the  culture  of  India. 

After  the  departure  of  the  invading  army  and  the  great  Mace- 
donian's death,  disorder  broke  out  among  the  Greeks  who  were  left 
behind.  Poros  was  treacherously  assassinated  by  Eudemos,  and 
Alexander's  successors,  the  Diadochi,  quarreled  among  themselves 
over  the  division  of  his  empire.  An  Indian  adventurer  of  inferior 
caste  who  had  won  an  evil  reputation  for  his  intrigues  on  the  lower 
Ganges  now  felt  that  the  hour  had  struck  for  the  fulfillment  of  his 
ambitious  hopes.  Placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Indian  liberation 
movement,  Chandragupta  took  the  field  against  the  foreigners  and 
in  316  B.C.  won  supremacy  over  the  Punjab.  Before  long  he  con- 
trolled an  area  stretching  from  the  estuary  of  the  Indus  to  the 
Ganges  delta.  Seleucus  Nicator,  master  of  Babylonia  and  of  a  vast 
empire,  gave  him  his  daughter's  hand  in  marriage  and  abandoned 
his  designs  on  India.  Envoys  were  sent  by  the  Indians  to  the  court  of 
Babylon  and  by  the  Greeks  to  Pataliputra,  now  Patna.  It  is  to  one 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


Mghanistan  '/ 


HaddojCT^Taxlla        s^j^Nq  / 

^^-Peshav7ar  >S  ■    ,  \    p   s^ - 

'?''dh.a'r<»  Rawalpindi  \A.      -p  •  y. 

Lahore^ 


India 

of  these  Greek  diplomats,  Megasthenes,  that  the  West  owes  its  first 
detailed  and  eyewitness  accounts  of  the  country  and  people  of  India. 
Megasthenes,  who  was  an  Ionian,  wrote  about  Indian  geography, 
religion  and  customs.  His  accounts  are  not  extant,  but  such  details  of 
them  as  have  survived  in  Arrian's  Indica  reflect  the  contemporary 
way  of  life  in  India,  then  known  as  the  Kingdom  of  Maghada. 


INDIA  213 

Megasthenes  found  the  people  sturdy,  honest,  sincere,  temperate 
and  peaceable  at  heart  but  ready  to  fight  when  provoked. 

Chandragupta's  royal  line  was  known  as  the  Maurya  dynasty, 
after  his  mother,  Mura.  His  grandson  Asoka,  who  was  the  most 
powerful  ruler  ancient  India  ever  knew,  controlled  the  greater 
part  of  the  subcontinent.  He  aroused  emotions  of  such  love,  respect 
and  veneration  that  his  name  is  still  held  in  awe  from  the  shores 
of  the  Black  Sea  to  the  islands  of  Japan  and  from  the  borders  of 
the  Polar  region  to  the  equator.  Asoka  was  the  Constantine  of 
India,  a  king  who  embraced  the  teachings  of  Gautama  just  as  some 
580  years  later,  on  May  22,  a.d.  337,  Caesar  Flavins  Valerius  Con- 
stantinus  became  the  first  Roman  emperor  to  receive  Christian 
baptism. 

Once  Asoka  became  an  adherent  of  Buddhism,  the  people  of 
Gandhara  also  embraced  the  teachings  of  Buddha.  Asoka's  religious 
zeal  knew  no  bounds.  In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  reign  he  had 
inscriptions  of  a  religious  nature  engraved  on  rocks,  cave  walls  and 
pillars.  They  are  the  earliest  surviving  Indian  texts  of  any  historical 
value.  Asoka's  ambition  was  to  conquer  the  world  with  the  Buddhist 
rehgion,  not  by  force  of  arms.  A  truly  apostolic  king,  he  brought 
Indian  Buddhism  to  its  zenith  and  gained  his  worldwide  reputation 
not  by  means  of  conquest  or  political  power  but  because  of  the 
spiritual  insight  which  prompted  him  to  follow  Buddha.  Under 
the  Maurya  dynasty  ushered  in  by  Chandragupta,  Gandhara  en- 
joyed its  only  spell  of  autonomy.  Before  that  time  it  had  been 
ruled  by  Achaemenides  and  Greeks,  and  it  was  subsequently  to  be 
dominated  by  Bactrians,  Saka  and  the  notorious  Kushan.  The  latter 
infiltrated  into  Gandhara  from  East  Asia,  from  the  Chinese  province 
of  Kansu,  and  were  a  race  of  Scythian  horsemen  identical  with  the 
Yueh  Chi  of  Chinese  history.  The  most  celebrated  of  the  Kushan 
rulers  was  a  man  called  Kanishka,  who  controlled  a  huge  empire 
which  extended  from  Margiana  to  Khotan  and  from  the  Aral  Sea 
to  Afghanistan,  and  incorporated  almost  the  whole  of  India. 

Like  the  great  Asoka,  Kanishka  was  also  a  Buddhist.  He  founded 
numerous  monasteries,  convened  an  assembly  in  Kashmir  to  re- 
formulate the  Buddhist  doctrines  and  built  some  superb  stupas. 
These  buildings  existed  in  India  at  a  very  early  date  and  were 
originally  burial  mounds  venerated  by  the  local  population.  The 
stupa  cult  was  revitalized  and  expanded  by  Buddhism.  Stupas  were 


214  THE  SILENT  PAST 

like  truncated  cathedral  domes  containing  a  central  chamber.  The 
inner  shell  was  built  of  unbaked  bricks  and  the  exterior  of  baked 
bricks  coated  with  a  thick  layer  of  lime.  The  whole  edifice  was 
capped  by  an  umbrellalike  construction  of  wood  or  stone  and 
enclosed  by  a  wooden  fence  with  massive  gates,  which  was  later 
superseded  in  some  cases  by  a  stone  wall.  Of  all  the  stupas  erected 
by  King  Asoka,  the  only  one  to  have  survived  in  its  original  form 
is  in  Nepal.  The  three  most  interesting  stupas  are  those  of  Bharhut 
in  Madhya  Bharat,  Sanchi  in  the  state  of  Bhopal,  and  Amaravati  at 
the  lower  end  of  the  Kistna  Valley.  The  largest  stupas,  which  are  to 
be  found  in  Ceylon,  sometimes  exceed  three  hundred  feet  in  di- 
ameter. Ever  since  Asoka's  time,  the  inner  chamber  of  a  stupa  has 
been  used  as  a  repository  for  relics  of  Buddha  or  Buddhist  saints. 

Chronological  information  has  been  handed  down  to  us  from  this 
period  and  we  can  date  many  events  with  considerable  accuracy. 
The  Shaka  chronology  of  India  begins  with  the  anointing  of  King 
Kanishka,  which  is  traditionally  supposed  to  have  taken  place  on 
March  15,  a.d.  78.  This  estimate  is  doubtful,  however,  and  is  dis- 
puted by  many  scholars.  Estimates  given  by  various  authorities 
range  between  57  b.c.  and  a.d.  278.  Vincent  A.  Smith  settled  on 
A.D.  120  as  the  year  of  Kanishka's  accession.  Harald  Ingholt,  who 
bases  his  calculations  on  the  Ghirshman  chronology,  puts  it  at 
A.D.  144.  As  we  shall  see,  the  question  of  dates  is  of  vital  importance 
to  any  examination  of  Gandhara  art. 

Kanishka  ruled  the  Kushan  Empire  for  twenty-seven  years.  The 
last  of  his  line,  Vasudeva,  was  defeated  by  the  Sassanian  dynasty  of 
Persia,  and  in  a.d.  241  Ardashir's  son,  Shapur  I,  captured  Gandhara. 
The  Sassanides  left  the  Kushan  ruling  class  to  govern  the  country 
for  most  of  the  time,  occasionally  calling  their  deputies  to  order 
when  they  grew  too  independent  for  safety. 

The  inhabitants  of  central  Asia  are  by  nature  wanderers.  Its 
wide  tracts  of  grassland  and  steppe  and  its  vast,  undulating  hills  and 
highlands  have  always  been  the  cradle  of  races  of  herdsmen  and 
horsemen.  When  the  nomad  left  his  own  world  and  met  lowland 
civilizations  entirely  alien  to  him,  his  usual  reaction  was  to  reach  for 
his  sword. 

In  the  year  a.d.  460  a  great  disaster  occurred.  The  whole  of 
northwest  India,  including  Gandhara,  was  overrun  by  the  con- 
temporary world's  most  dangerous  adversaries,  a  branch  of  the 


INDIA  215 

Hun  race  known  as  "White  Huns"  or  Hephthalites.  The  origins  and 
racial  identity  of  these  horsemen  from  central  Asia  have  never  been 
established,  but  it  was  not  until  a.d.  562  that  the  Turks  and  Persians 
finally  annihilated  the  mounted  hordes.  The  White  Huns  wrought 
frightful  havoc  among  the  adherents  of  Buddhism  and  executed 
those  who  espoused  its  doctrines  in  the  most  inhuman  fashion. 

We  know  when  the  art  of  Gandhara  ended,  but  when  did  it 
begin  and  when  did  men  first  venture  to  portray  Buddha  in  stone? 

The  answer  to  this  question  owes  its  importance  to  the  fact  that 
Gandhara  is  the  birthplace  of  the  Buddha  effigy  and  the  birthplace 
of  all  such  sculptures  in  Asia. 

Buddhism  first  penetrated  to  Gandhara  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
century  B.C.,  from  the  time  of  Asoka  onward,  and  the  begin- 
nings of  Buddhist  religious  sculpture  date  from  the  period  247-232 
B.C.  It  was  evolved  by  Greek  and  Graeco-Persian  sculptors  working 
in  undoubted  conjunction  with  Indian  artists.  However,  the  earhest 
sculptures  of  Buddha  himself  did  not  come  into  being  until  much 
later  on,  under  the  Kushan  dynasty.  Some  scholars  believe  that 
the  first  statues  of  Buddha  were  made  in  the  time  of  Kanishka,  the 
most  prominent  of  the  Kushan  rulers.  Extant  coins  dating  from  the 
Scythian  king's  reign  show  Kanishka  standing  before  an  altar  on 
one  side  and  Buddha  on  the  other.  These  coins  are  thought  to  be 
the  earliest  portrayals  of  Buddha,  but  the  likeness  on  the  coins  must 
have  been  modeled  on  a  statue  of  still  earlier  date.  At  all  events, 
we  have  at  least  an  approximate  idea  of  the  date  of  when  Buddha 
was  first  portrayed.  If  we  are  correct  in  thinking  that  King  Kanishka 
ruled  from  a.d.  144  to  173,  the  earhest  statues  of  Buddha  must  have 
come  into  being  a  little  earlier,  perhaps  between  a.d.  50  and  100. 

Gandhara  submitted  to  a  long  series  of  alien  rulers:  Achaemenides, 
Greeks,  Bactrians,  Saka  and  Kushan.  One  by  one  they  came,  gen- 
erally bringing  misery  and  distress  in  their  wake,  only  to  be  eventu- 
ally obliged  to  withdraw.  The  people  of  Gandhara,  however,  remained 
rooted  in  their  ancient  culture,  in  their  language  and  their  faith 
in  the  Buddhist  doctrine,  which  welded  them  to  one  another  and 
to  other  peoples  of  India. 

Gandhara  had  to  endure  foreign  domination  for  almost  a  thousand 
years,  but  as  a  cultural  area  it  derived  unique  benefits  from  its 
contact  with  foreign  overlords.  From  the  West,  as  a  consequence 
of  Alexander's  conquest  and  of  Greek  and  Graeco-Roman  influence, 


2i6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  country  received  an  artistic  impetus  which  ultimately  gave  the 
world  the  Buddha  effigy.  One  of  the  most  momentous  events  in  the 
artistic  history  of  the  world,  it  was  something  which  sprang  from 
the  religious  faith  of  the  Gandharans  (and  probably,  too,  from  that 
of  the  Indians  in  Mathura,  nearly  loo  miles  south  of  Delhi),  from 
the  honest  workmanship  and  stimulus  of  Western  artists  and,  last 
but  not  least,  from  the  considerable  creative  energy  and  artistic 
genius  of  the  Indians  themselves. 

About  six  hundred  years— roughly  from  the  lifetime  of  Buddha 
until  a  century  after  the  birth  of  Christ— had  to  elapse  before  the 
first  portraits  of  Asia's  greatest  sage  and  saint  came  into  being.  No 
hkenesses  of  Buddha,  not  even  the  most  halfhearted  attempt  to 
portray  the  philosopher  from  Kapilavastu,  existed  in  India  in  pre- 
Christian  times.  Asoka  was,  as  we  have  heard,  an  adherent  of  Buddha, 
but  his  stone  monuments  dating  from  about  the  middle  of  the 
third  century  B.C.  never  venture  to  depict  the  object  of  his  ven- 
eration. 

During  the  first  period  of  Buddhist  art,  or  about  250  years  after 
Buddha's  death,  only  symbolic  references  were  made  to  the  great 
teacher.  One  such  symbol  was  the  "wheel  of  the  doctrine"  which 
the  Buddhist  scriptures  envisaged  as  being  turned  by  Buddha.  In 
fact,  to  regard  the  wheel  as  a  symbol  of  moral  teaching  was  not  a 
conception  peculiar  to  Buddhism  but  dated  from  India's  very 
earliest  cultural  period  and  originated  in  the  Vedic  hymns  of 
fifteen  hundred  years  before.  During  the  Vedic  era  the  wheel  was 
the  religious  symbol  of  the  sun,  whose  rising  and  setting  was  asso- 
ciated with  the  eternal  mutability  of  all  existence.  Thus  the  earliest 
examples  of  Buddhist  art  depict  the  sun  but  not  Buddha  himself. 

Another  symbol  which  occurs  frequently  is  the  lion.  Buddha, 
who  came  from  the  princely  Sakya  family,  was  sometimes  known 
as  Sakyasimha  or  "Sakya  Lion,"  and  Buddhist  scriptures  often  refer 
to  the  simhanada  or  "lion's  call"  of  Buddha. 

At  Sanchi  in  the  State  of  Bhopal  stands  a  large  and  celebrated 
stupa  erected  during  the  second  and  first  centuries  b.c.  One  of  the 
most  beautiful  ancient  monuments  in  India,  it  was  intended  to 
represent  the  universe.  The  four  gates  in  the  wall  enclosing  the 
shrine  are  engraved  with  scenes  from  Buddha's  life,  vet  none  of 
these  reliefs  portrays  Buddha's  features  or  even  his  figure.  The  gates 
date  from  the  close  of  the  first  century  b.c.  On  the  central  architrave 


INDIA  217 

can  be  seen  the  bodhi  tree  beneath  which  Gautama  received  en- 
lightenment. At  the  foot  of  the  tree,  flanked  on  either  side  by 
reverent  figures,  stands  a  throne.  It  is  the  throne  of  the  Master 
himself,  but  it  is  empty!  The  fact  that  Buddhism's  sacred  figure 
was  regarded  with  boundless  awe  and  humility  but  not  portrayed 
makes  an  immediate  impact  on  the  beholder.  Everywhere,  in  every 
monastery,  every  shrine  and  every  stupa  dating  from  before  the 
beginning  of  our  era,  the  figure  and  face  of  the  founder  of  Buddhism 
is  reverently  omitted. 

What  is  the  explanation?  Why  did  India's  most  exalted  religion 
or,  more  properly,  philosophy  wait  until  the  end  of  the  first  century 
A.D.  before  producing  an  effigy  of  Buddha?  Why  was  it  left  to 
foreign  artists  to  bequeath  the  Buddhist  world  an  idealized  picture 
of  its  founder? 

The  answer  is  as  old  as  the  idea  of  God  itself.  No  representation 
of  God  existed  in  the  paleolithic  or  neolithic  era  of  mankind.  In 
fact  man  himself  was  never  depicted  in  the  Aurignacian  culture  of 
the  Cro-Magnids.  The  earliest  human  likenesses  of  that  period  are 
the  Venus  statuettes  dating  from  thirty,  forty  or  fifty  thousand 
years  ago,  but  these  are  probably  only  symbols  of  the  beginning 
and  continuance  of  life  and  emblems  of  immortality.  Divine  effigies 
are  a  relatively  late— one  might  say  heathen— invention  which  first 
originated  when  the  idea  of  the  supreme  being  was  adulterated 
with  polytheistic  elements.  Brahmanism,  the  Indians'  oldest  religion, 
did  not  tolerate  idols  as  cult  objects,  either,  and  likewise  confined 
itself  to  symbols.  This  is  the  principal  reason  why  no  effigies  of 
Buddha  were  made  until  about  six  hundred  years  after  his  death. 

There  is  yet  another  important  factor.  Buddha  was  moved  by 
suffering,  by  the  transience  of  the  flesh  and  the  unreality  of  existence. 
Seeing  the  grief  which  everything  transitory  brings  in  its  wake,  he 
realized  the  quantity  of  tears  mankind  has  shed  on  its  eternal 
journey  from  birth  to  death.  He  saw  the  thirst  for  life,  the  lust  for 
existence  and  the  human  passions  which  have  no  right  of  way  on 
the  paths  of  suffering.  And  so  he  sought  to  abolish  suffering  by 
the  annihilation  and  dulling  of  the  lust  for  existence,  and  thus  to 
demonstrate  a  way  to  abolish  all  suffering.  He  had  tried  complete 
mortification  of  the  flesh  on  his  own  person  in  order  to  find  release 
from  the  evils  of  all  that  is  worldly,  but  he  felt  that  this  over- 
stringent  method  concealed  latent  dangers.  As  the  son  of  a  prince. 


218  THE  SILENT  PAST 

he  knew  the  ways  of  the  world  only  too  well,  so  he  advised  a 
middle  way.  The  stages  of  the  Noble  Eightfold  Path  which  he 
recommended  are:  right  views,  right  intention,  right  speech,  right 
action,  right  livelihood,  right  effort,  right  mindfulness  and  right 
concentration.  It  was  a  philosophy,  a  moral  doctrine  and  form  of 
guidance  which  Buddha  did  not  intend  as  a  religion  because  it  did 
not  demand  a  belief  either  in  a  supreme  being  or  in  himself. 

As  long  as  the  doctrine  retained  its  original  character  it  was  not 
a  religion  but  a  philosophical  edifice.  The  Way  and  the  Doctrine 
were  all  that  mattered  to  Buddha,  which  was  why  symbols  were 
best  suited  to  represent  his  spiritual  legacy.  Symbols  of  the  Master 
himself  were  also  appropriate  in  this  context,  but  he  would  never 
have  wished  his  followers  to  make  likenesses  of  him  calculated  to 
foster  a  religious  cult  of  personality,  for  he  rejected  anything  which 
did  not  pertain  to  the  doctrine  itself.  It  seems  clear  that  Buddha's 
adherents  honored  his  memory  by  respecting  this  wish  for  a  few 
hundred  years,  until,  in  the  first  century  a.d.,  the  artists  of  Gandhara 
evolved  an  idealized  picture  of  him.  With  the  appearance  of  a  figure 
which  could  be  seen  and  worshiped,  Buddha's  philosophy  became 
transformed  into  a  religion. 

The  religious  art  of  Gandhara  served  the  Buddhist  faith.  For 
example,  the  plinth  of  a  stupa  from  Sikri,  now  in  Lahore  Museum, 
is  encircled  by  thirteen  reliefs,  each  illustrating  an  event  in  the  life 
of  Buddha.  They  introduce  us  into  the  contemporary  world  of 
ideas  concerning  Buddha's  life  and  reproduce  in  stone  what  legend 
relates  of  him. 

These  stone  memorials  were  not,  however,  confined  to  his  life 
alone.  Artists  began  to  portray  him  sitting  and  standing,  in  relief 
and  in  the  round.  Still  other  sculptors  saw  him  as  a  Bodhisattva  or 
being  who  declined  nirvana  in  order  to  act  as  a  mediator  on  man- 
kind's behalf. 

The  English  archaeologist  Sir  John  Marshall,  who  excavated  the 
ruins  of  three  towns  dating  from  between  the  seventh  century  B.C. 
and  the  fifth  century  a.d.  in  West  Pakistan,  also  contributed  greatly 
to  research  into  the  Buddhist  art  of  Gandhara.  He  recognized  an 
early  school  of  Gandhara  art  in  the  first  and  second  centuries  a.d. 
and  a  later  school  which  flourished  between  about  a.d.  350  and  500. 
Not  only  was  the  art  of  these  two  schools  diff^erent  in  character, 
but  the  media  used  by  the  sculptors  of  the  two  periods  also  differed. 


INDIA  219 

Stone  was  employed  in  the  first  Gandhara  period,  stucco  in  the 
second.  The  artists  of  the  early  school  worked  in  the  Peshawar 
valley  and  the  countryside  west  of  the  Indus.  The  later  art  covered 
a  much  wider  area  stretching  from  Taxila,  east  of  the  Indus,  to 
ancient  Bactria  and  the  Oxus,  i.e.  Pakistan,  India  and  Afghanistan. 
The  early  school  displays  a  certain  crudeness  and  rigidity,  whereas 
in  the  finest  pieces  of  the  later  school,  matter  has  entirely  given  way 
to  mind. 

Most  pictures  show  Buddha  meditating  with  his  hands  cupped 
one  inside  the  other.  There  are  also  some  celebrated  portrayals  of 
him  teaching,  hands  held  before  his  breast  in  meditation.  The  miidra 
or  hand  positions  of  the  so-called  preaching  Buddha  later  evolved 
into  a  series  of  subtle  and  varied  gestures  symbolizing— among  many 
other  things— concentration,  instruction,  encouragement,  invocation 
and  fearlessness. 

The  Master's  robe,  which  reaches  almost  to  the  ground,  is 
gathered  at  the  waist  and  often  leaves  his  right  shoulder  bare.  It  is 
actually  a  Greek  robe  or,  still  better,  a  Hellenistic  or  even  Roman 
garment.  One  of  the  earliest  known  sculptures  of  Buddha,  a  stand- 
ing figure  in  Peshawar  Museum,  portrays  him  wearing  a  toga  like 
that  of  the  Roman  emperor  Augustus. 

Mahayana  Buddhism  evolved  during  the  early  centuries  of  our 
era,  a  period  when  the  life  of  Alexander  the  Great  was  being 
romantically  embroidered  in  the  Roman  Empire  and  when  the  idea 
of  the  Hellenistic  god-kingdom  had  gained  popularity  throughout 
the  Mediterranean  area  and  far  beyond.  The  deification  of  Oriental 
rulers  who  were  so  absolute,  so  wealthy  and  powerful  that  they 
were  regarded  as  superior  beings,  the  Egyptian  Pharaohs,  who  were 
already  gods  and  sons  of  Ammon  during  their  sojourn  on  earth- 
all  these  strongly  influenced  the  ideas  of  the  Hellenistic  and  Roman 
world.  Lysander,  who  delivered  Greece  from  the  twenty-seven 
years  of  misery  brought  about  by  the  Peloponnesian  War,  was 
officially  promoted  to  the  status  of  divine  hero  during  his  lifetime. 
Alexander  the  Great  was  recognized  in  Egypt  as  Pharaoh  and 
greeted  with  the  title  Son  of  Ammon  by  the  priests  of  Siva.  (To  the 
Greeks,  Ammon  was  the  equivalent  of  Zeus.)  The  Diadochi,  too, 
disseminated  the  idea  of  apotheosis  throughout  Asia  Minor. 

In  the  year  42  B.C.,  the  Romans  pronounced  Caesar  a  god  and 
invested  him  with  the  title  Divus  Julius,  or  "divine  Julius."  Augustus 


220  THE  SILENT  PAST 

was  worshiped  as  a  god  in  the  East  and  by  the  end  of  his  life  enjoyed 
a  status  far  superior  to  that  of  other  mortals  in  the  Roman  Empire. 
Under  his  successors  there  grew  up  an  emperor  cult  which  en- 
couraged Caligula  and  Domitian  to  feel  and  act  like  gods.  In  the 
third  century  Aurelian  officially  decreed  that  he  should  be  addressed 
as  do?n'mus  et  dens,  "lord  and  god."  Virgil  prophesied  the  birth 
of  a  divine  child  in  his  Eclogues,  written  between  42  and  37  b.c. 
Suetonius'  glorification  of  Augustus  and  other  Roman  extravagances 
of  this  nature  all  spoke  in  similar  terms:  a  divine  child,  a  divine 
father,  a  particular  astrological  constellation  present  at  the  time  of 
the  heavenly  birth,  mystic  signs,  miracles,  a  redeemer,  an  age  of 
peace  and  reconciliation.  The  British  authority  H.  Buchthal  com- 
pares many  of  these  phenomena  with  Mahayana  Buddhism.  The 
life  of  Buddha,  too,  was  tricked  out  with  such  a  wealth  of  legendary 
and  miraculous  occurrences  that  his  divine  origin  and  divine  power 
seemed  to  become  ever  more  apparent.  The  resemblance  to  the 
Hellenistic-Roman  cult  of  royalty  is  most  striking. 

During  the  later  phase  of  Gandhara  sculptures  the  similarities 
with  those  of  early  Christianity  become  so  marked  that  the  Christian 
and  Buddhist  works  must  either  have  been  derived  from  a  common 
source  or,  more  probably,  were  directly  linked.  Certainly,  Buchthal 
has  discovered  some  astonishing  resemblances  between  devotional 
sculptures  of  Buddha  in  Lahore  Museum  and  early  Christian  sar- 
cophagi in  the  Louvre  in  Paris  and  the  Lateran  Museum  in  Rome. 
Some  portrayals  of  Buddha  are  undeniably  modeled  on  Christian 
art  and  there  are  parallels  between  Gospel  stories  and  some  events 
described  in  the  Mahayana  scriptures;  for  example,  the  feeding  of 
the  five  thousand  and  Peter  walking  on  the  water.  As  the  American 
scholar  Alexander  C.  Soper  wrote  in  "The  Roman  Style  in  Gan- 
dhara," an  article  published  by  the  American  Journal  of  Archaeology 
in  195 1,  only  one  area  in  the  Western  world  produced  an  art 
comparable  with  the  ideas  and  methods  of  Gandhara  sculpture 
during  the  century  of  its  Kushan  prime:  the  western  Mediterranean 
and  its  focal  point,  Rome.  Links  between  West  and  East  are  dis- 
cernible even  more  clearly  in  the  sculptures  of  Hadda.  Situated  in 
Afghanistan,  five  miles  south  of  Jelalabad,  Hadda  was  a  famed  place 
of  pilgrimage  in  Buddhist  times.  Digging  there  between  1923  and 
1928,  the  French  archaeologists  Foucher,  Godard  and  Barthoux 
unearthed  examples  of  Buddhist  art  dating  from  the  third  to  eighth 


INDIA  221 

centuries  a.d.  which  can  still  be  seen  in  the  monasteries  of  Hadda, 
the  Musee  Guimet  in  Paris,  and  in  Peshawar  Museum.  They  include 
some  very  fine— one  might  almost  say  European— heads  of  Buddha, 
the  head  of  Silenus,  and  horned  monsters,  demons  and  monks  which 
are  all  closely  related  to  French  and  Italian  art  of  the  eighth 
century.  The  famous  demon  of  Hadda,  a  bent  figure  in  cloak  and 
hood  with  features  apparently  contorted  with  pain,  is  a  portrayal 
of  the  Great  Temptation  and  is  reminiscent  less  of  Gandhara  than 
of  the  finest  products  of  our  own  medieval  religious  art. 

The  Gandhara  sculptures  include  not  only  Buddhist  gods  and 
Hindu  gods  such  as  Indra  and  Brahma,  but  also  members  of  the 
Greek  pantheon,  a  Harpocrates,  a  Silenus,  centaurs  and  satyrs.  Apart 
from  these,  Gandhara  produced  countless  portrayals  of  patrons  and 
benefactors,  monks  and  ascetics,  wrestlers  and  warriors,  elephants 
and  lions,  fire  altars  and  architectonic  accessories. 

Who  were  the  foreign  artists  that  gave  the  Indians  their  idealized 
vision  of  Buddha?  What  masters  taught  in  Gandhara  and  probably 
Mathura  as  well?  Who  succeeded  in  giving  visual  expression  to  a 
figure  who  had  become  the  supreme  ideal  of  millions?  What  men 
were  influential  enough  to  set  the  pattern  upon  which  gifted  Indian 
artists  based  the  growing  splendor  of  their  statues,  reliefs  and  paint- 
ings—sacred works  of  art  before  which  all  the  peoples  of  Asia  were 
one  day  destined  to  bow  down  in  devotion? 

Although  we  shall  never  know  their  names,  the  genius  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  the  spirit  of  Hellenism,  the  art  of  Greece  and, 
last  but  not  least,  the  artistry  of  Rome  all  made  themselves  felt  here 
for  centuries.  That  was  how  the  picture  of  Gautama  was  first 
preserved  in  stone  and  how  all  Asia  came  to  revere  his  features  as 
a  living  reminder  of  the  doctrine  of  compassion  and  of  the  road  that 
leads  to  nirvana. 


CENTRAL  ASIA 


THE  CAVE  TEMPLES  OF  TUN-HUANG 

One^s  impression  on  entering  a  chapel  for  the  first  time  is  in- 
describable, as  though  one  had  seen  a  vision.  For  a  devout  Bud- 
dhist, attaining  this  experience  after  a  long  and  trying  journey,  it 
must  be  an  experience  of  i?2tense  exaltatiofi.  Outside,  one^s  very 
eyeballs  have  been  scorched  by  the  glare;  the  colors,  though 
ranging  through  many  subtle  gradations,  are  few;  the  golden 
desert,  green  trees,  the  azure  of  the  sky,  an  immense  inverted 
howl  of  porcelain  over  all.  Within  the  shadow-filled  chapel  it  was 
cool.  The  eye  was  first  caught  by  a  large  statue  of  Buddha  opposite 
the  entry,  which  appeared  to  brood  silently  over  little  clay  dishes 
of  incense  left  by  recent  worshipers.  In  the  quiet  of  this  sejni-dark- 
ness,  which  seemed  steadily  to  dissolve,  the  great  figure  with  its 
maroon  robes  might  have  meditated  here  through  uncounted  ages, 
more  than  a  mere  statue  of  plaster  with  broken  arms.  As  we  be- 
came accustofned  to  the  subdued  light,  the  scenes  on  the  walls 
came  into  focus. 

—Irene  Vongehr  Vincent,  The  Sacred  Oasis, 
p.  67,  London,  1953 

SHiH  HUANG  Ti  was  One  of  the  most  powerful  monarchs  that  ever 
lived.  He  standardized  weights  and  measures,  systems  of  writing, 
calendar  and  laws.  He  decreed  the  proper  width  of  vehicles  and 
built  long  roads  leading  to  his  capital,  Hsien  Yang,  near  modern 
Sian.  He  divided  his  empire  into  thirty-six  provinces  and  put  each 
in  charge  of  a  military  administrator.  He  divided  court  officials 
into  twenty  grades  of  seniority.  He  conducted  major  wars,  extended 
his  dominions  southward  as  far  as  Canton  and  secured  his  northern 
frontiers  against  the  Hsiung-nu  or  Huns  by  building  the  most  mas- 
sive fortified  system  of  all  time,  linking  his  northern  forts  by  means 
of  earthen  ramparts  which  later  became  the  Great  Wall  of  China. 
Such  was  the  drive  and  energy  of  this  absolute  ruler  that  he 
diverted  rivers,  carried  out  vast  irrigation  projects,  redirected  the 
Min  River  through  the  side  of  a  mountain,  constructed  a  network 
of  canals  and  built  himself  an  enormous  mausoleum  patterned  on 
the  universe,  with  rivers,  oceans  and  moving  planets.  The  emperor 
decreed  that  peasants  throughout  the  country  could  have  land  of 
their  own,  but  since  the  vast  government  building  projects  could  be 
implemented  only  by  recourse  to  forced  labor  the  peasants  were 


CENTRAL  ASIA  223 

obliged  to  abandon  their  small  holdings  and  become  little  more  than 
slave  laborers,  a  process  which  has  occurred  again  and  again  in  the 
history  of  China. 

When  this  mighty  autocrat  had  given  his  orders  and  knew  that 
his  flights  of  fancy  had  been  realized  by  the  blood,  sweat  and  tears 
of  his  subjects,  he  entered  his  litter  and  had  himself  carried  through 
the  countryside.  Tax  collection,  government  administration  and 
military  matters  all  came  under  his  personal  supervision.  Shih  Huang 
Ti  wanted  to  obliterate  the  past  and  create  the  impression  that 
nothing  had  existed  before  him.  In  his  anxiety  to  be  supreme 
emperor  of  the  world  and  founder  of  the  Ch'in  dynasty  he  com- 
manded that  all  annals,  records  and  books  by  sages  of  former  times 
should  be  destroyed.  Wood,  bamboo  and  parchment  went  up  in 
flames.  All  criticism  of  the  Chinese  peasants'  benefactor  was  pro- 
hibited, and  swordsmen  were  kept  busy  severing  dissenters'  heads 
from  their  bodies. 

But  Shih  Huang  Ti  reigned  for  only  twelve  years,  from  221 
until  209  B.C.,  and  the  Ch'in  dynasty  soon  met  its  end  under  Shih 
Huang  Ti's  successors  because  the  peasants  rebelled  under  the 
frightful  hardships  of  the  forced  labor  system  and  because,  needless 
to  say,  the  emperor's  own  followers  quarreled  among  themselves. 
The  Ch'in  dynasty  was  succeeded  by  the  famous  Han  dynasty, 
which  lasted  from  206  e.g.  until  a.d.  220.  It  was  a  rich,  great  and 
flourishing  period  during  which  the  two  most  powerful  empires  in 
the  world  were  those  of  Rome  and  China.  The  Han  spirit  left  such 
an  indelible  mark  on  China  that  the  Chinese  still  proudly  call  them- 
selves Han  Yen,  or  Men  of  Han. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  feature  of  the  Han  dynasty  was  the 
introduction  of  the  Buddhist  doctrine.  The  new  world  of  ideas— 
the  divine  world  of  the  Buddhas,  Bodhisattvas  and  ascetic  monks, 
the  religious  world  of  the  Hinayana  and  iVIahayana— all  arrived  in 
China  from  India  at  this  time.  The  first  Indian  missionaries  may 
have  reached  China  as  early  as  217  e.g.,  but  our  information  is  un- 
rehable  on  this  point  and  the  tradition  that  Ming  Ti,  second  emperor 
of  the  eastern  Han,  sent  envoys  to  India  in  a.d.  6 1  to  fetch  Buddhist 
books  and  priests  is  likewise  open  to  doubt.  Nevertheless,  the  foreign 
religion  was  certainly  known  in  China  and  Buddhist  monks  were 
already  living  in  the  Kingdom  of  the  Center  during  Ming  Ti's  reign. 
Before  long,  Buddhist  pictures  were  imported  into  China  along  the 


224  THE  SILENT  PAST 

highroads  of  eastern  Turkestan,  Buddhist  monastic  settlements 
sprang  up  beside  the  age-old  caravan  routes  that  linked  western  Asia 
with  the  Far  East,  and  here  and  there  temples  arose  built  of  wood, 
bricks  and  clay- 

Tun-huang  was  China's  gateway  to  the  West.  A  rectangular 
walled  town  in  an  oasis  in  the  extreme  west  of  Kansu,  it  received  its 
water  from  the  Altyn  Tagh  mountains  and  was  rich  in  fertile  pasture 
and  herds  of  cattle.  Kansu  is  a  country  of  mountains,  arid  steppes 
and  fertile  highland  oases,  oases  spanned  by  the  famous  Silk  Road 
which  linked  the  Far  East  with  the  Far  West.  The  people  who 
lived,  bartered  and  did  business  on  this  route  became  fabulously 
wealthy.  They  saw  caravans  come  and  go,  sold  them  provisions  and 
bought  what  they  needed  for  themselves. 

Ten  miles  north  of  the  town  of  Tun-huang  in  the  extreme  west 
of  Kansu  are  the  Caves  of  the  Thousand  Buddhas,  a  true  wonder 
of  the  world  and  one  which  was  made  possible  because  it  lay  on 
the  caravan  route  from  India,  because  prosperous  travelers  of  the 
Han  dynasty  halted  there  and  because  missionaries  decided  to 
immortalize  their  vision  of  Buddha  there  in  pictures  and  sculptures 
of  dreamlike  beauty.  With  the  advent  of  Buddhism  in  the  extreme 
west  of  China  there  arrived,  too,  the  Indian  idea  of  hewing  temples 
into  the  living  rock  so  that  travelers  between  the  two  worlds  who 
halted  at  this  oasis  could  linger  before  Buddhist  works  of  art  in 
devotion  and  meditation. 

The  first  artificial  grottoes  probably  appeared  between  a.d.  357 
and  3  84.  There  are  several  such  cave  precincts  in  central  Asia,  among 
them  the  caves  of  Yiin  Kang,  the  caves  of  Lung  Men  near  Loyang, 
the  caves  of  Lou  Lan  and  the  caves  of  Qyzyl,  to  name  but  a  few. 

At  Tun-huang,  access  to  the  individual  caves  was  usually  gained 
through  a  corridor  leading  into  an  entrance  hall,  behind  which  lay 
one  or  more  main  halls.  Caves  on  the  same  level  were  connected  by 
a  form  of  balcony  so  that  the  visitor  could  pass  from  one  shrine 
to  the  next,  and  the  walls  of  the  caves  were  covered  with  beautiful 
paintings. 

The  surface  of  the  walls  had  to  be  painted  with  a  layer  of  clay 
followed  by  a  layer  of  kaolin  mixed  with  lime  before  color  could 
be  applied.  None  of  the  cave  murals  of  central  Asia  was  properly 
speaking  a  fresco,  that  is  to  say,  painted  directly  on  top  of  damp 
and  freshly  applied  plaster  without  supplementary  binding  agents. 


[73]  A  Chou  Dynasty  wine  jug  or  hu,  just  over  18  inches  high.  The  ornamentation 

consists  of  intertwined  dragons.  An  inscription  inside  reads:  1  o  be  preserved  forever 

and  with  care  by  sons  and  grandsons. 


[74]    Two   three-legged   sacrificial   wine   cups   of  the    Chou   Dynasty,   of   the   type 
known  as  chio.  These  works  of  art  also  bear  T'ao-t'ieh  masks. 


[75I  A  bronze  stove  from  the  Chou  Dynasty  (1122-256  b.c),  only  5.7  inches  high, 
9.4  inches  wide  and  18.1  inches  long.  A  shallow  vessel  stands  on  each  of  the  two 
circular  apertures  in  its  top.  On  the  left  is  a  vent  to  carry  away  smoke.  Numerous 
ancient  clay  ovens  have  been  found,  but  this  is  perhaps  the  earliest  known  bronze  stove. 


[76]  This  fragment  of  a  dog-headed  demon  was  found  at  Hadda  in  Afghanistan.  It 

is  a  particularly  valuable  example  of  Late   Gandhara  sculpture   and  forms  part  of 

the  collection  in  the  Musee  Guimet,  Paris 

[77]  Hadda,  on  the  northwest  Indian  border  near  the  Khyber  Pass,  was  a  famous 
center  for  late  Gandhara  sculpture.  The  sculptors  there  perfected  the  Graeco-Roman- 
Indian  style  in  the  5th  century  a.d.  Here  a  demon  in  a  fur  coat  is  depicted.  One  of  the 
most  interesting  pieces  from  the  Hadda  excavations,  it  is  now  in  Musee  Guimet,  Paris. 

[78]  The  head  of  Buddha,  as  conceived  by  Graeco-Roman  artists  in  Gandhara  during 
the  ist  century  a.d.,  was  later  "Indianized"  by  native  sculptors,  but  the  Gandhara 
style  is  evident  in  portrayals  of  Buddha  throughout  Asia  and  even  in  the  far  south. 
This  splended  stone  head  comes  from  Borobudur  in  Java  and  now  reposes  in  the 
Musee  Guimet,  Paris.  The  ruins  of  the  Buddhist  temple  at  Borobudur  date  from  the 
7th  and  8th  centuries  and  are  the  world's  finest  example  of  Buddhist  architecture. 


[79]  This  bust  with  flowers  clearly  reveals  the  links  between  Roman  sculpture  and 

the  Buddhist  art  of  Hadda. 


|8o]  Mural  painting  of  Paradise  from  Tun-huang,  showing  Amitabha  enthroned  on  a 
lotus  blossom  between  Avalokitesvara  and  iMahasthame.  To  left  and  right  are  smaller 
Bodhisattvas,  and  in  the  background  a  row  of  pupils.  Extreme  bottom  left,  a 
woman  kneeling  on  a  mat  in  reverential  devotion.  The  painting  dates  from  circa  a.d.  800. 


[8i]  Scene  from  the  life  of  Buddha.  Prince  Gautama, 
on  horseback,  encounters  the  three  evils  of  earthly 
life:  old  age,  disease  and  death.  He  is  riding  away 
from  his  father's  palace,  having  renounced  royal 
life.  Beneath  sits  the  Sakyamuni  addressing  three 
monks  who  kneel  in  an  attitude  of  respectful 
attention. 


"■> 


i 


'^ 


[82]  A  very  small  section  (the  lower  left-hand  cor- 
ner) of  one  of  the  finest  paintings  from  Tun-huang. 
Not  painted  on  silk  like  the  other  pictures,  it  is  a 
piece  of  embroidery  of  the  T'ang  period,  the  golden 
age  of  Chinese  culture.  Sir  Aurel  Stein  estimated 
that  this  remarkably  fine  piece  of  needlework  dated 
from  about  a.d.  800.  Stitched  in  red,  brown  and  dull 
green,  it  depicts  a  group  of  pious  women  kneeling 
on  mats.  A  child  can  be  seen  sitting  beside  the 
woman  in  the  background,  and  the  standing  figure 
on  the  extreme  left  is  a  female  attendant. 


^: 


.  '  ^T 


[83]  Deep  in  the  heart  of  central  Asia,  in  the  Chinese  province  of  Sinkiang,  Sir 
Aurel  Stein's  expedition  came  upon  the  ruined  site  of  Miran.  The  ruins  lie  southwest 
of  the  Lop  Nor,  between  thirty  and  sixty  miles  from  the  Ansi-Khotan  road,  in  a  flat 
region  of  a  desert  that  stretches  away  in  all  directions  as  far  as  the  eve  can  see.  This 
beautifully  modeled  head,  which  was  found  in  an  excavated  temple  there,  is  prob- 
ably a  Bodhisattva.  Parts  of  the  face  still  bear  traces  of  the  original  paint.  Note  the 
remarkably  detailed  treatment  of  eyes  and  hair. 


[84]  The  ancient  burial  places  of  Astana  were  dug  up  at  Kara-Khoja,  nearly  twenty 
miles  from  the  oasis  of  Turfan.  This  clay  figure  was  a  funeral  offering.  The  horse  is 

painted  light  and  dark  brown  and  the  saddle  is  red,  yellow  and  green. 
[85]  Cave  58  of  the  Tun-huang  sanctuaries  contained  this  remarkably  fine  altar  de- 
picting youths  in  prayer  and  good  and  evil  spirits  watching  a  sleeping  Buddha. 


3 


j-'i-. 


Mr; 


h\ 


[86]  A  Bodhisattva  pro- 
jects eerily  from  a  cave 
wall  in  the  light  of  torches, 
and  hundreds  of  other 
sacred  figures  gaze  from 
the  adjoining  wall.  The 
sculptures  in  the  Tun- 
huang  caves  owe  their  ex- 
istence to  artists  and  crafts- 
men whose  influence  trav- 
eled throughout  Asia  along 
the  Silk  Road. 


[87]  Scenic  setting  of  the 
Tun-huang  caves,  artificial 
grottoes  hewn  into  the 
rock.  The  Buddhist  wall 
paintings  and  sculptures 
found  in  their  interior  are 
among  the  finest  art  treas- 
ures in  the  world.  The 
men  principally  responsible 
for  research  into  these 
sacred  places  on  the  Silk 
Road  were  Albert  Griin- 
wedel  of  Germany,  Sir 
Aurel  Stein  of  England  and 
Paul     Pelliot     of     France. 


CENTRAL  ASIA  225 

(The  Italian  expression  a  fresco  here  means  "onto  the  fresh.")  In  this 
case  the  colors  were  blended  with  an  adhesive  binding  medium  and 
applied  on  a  dry  ground. 

The  extreme  durability  of  the  work  done  by  Central  Asian  artists 
is  vouched  for  by  the  fact  that  many  paintings  have  survived  for 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  years.  However,  the  lasting  qualities  of 
so  many  of  these  splendid  murals  is  also  attributable  to  other  factors. 
The  oasis  dwellers  and  their  priests  were  anxious  to  ensure  that  the 
stream  of  pious  pilgrims  never  ran  dry,  so  they  carefully  protected 
their  religious  art  and  restored  any  pictures  which  faded  with  the 
passage  of  time  or  fell  into  decay.  Renovations  of  this  nature  were 
carried  out  at  Tun-huang  under  the  Mongolian  Yiian  dynasty 
( 1 278-1 368).  By  no  means  all  the  walls  were  painted  over,  however. 
The  Mongols  forbade  the  Chinese  to  learn  the  Mongol  tongue  or 
marry  Mongol  women,  persecuted  Chinese  who  owned  weapons 
and  horses,  strangled  China's  trade  and  economy,  abolished  law  and 
order  and  issued  so  much  paper  money  that  galloping  inflation 
ensued,  but  they  did  not  lay  hands  on  the  miraculous  pictures  of 
Tun-huang.  Instead,  they  left  them  in  the  care  of  priests  and  even 
took  steps  to  preserve  their  irreplaceable  artistic  value. 

Nature  itself  can  act  as  a  preservative.  Thousands  upon  thousands 
of  almost  equally  splendid  paintings  housed  in  the  large  and  densely 
populated  cities  of  China  vanished  forever,  but  geographical  loca- 
tion, remoteness  and,  above  all,  climate  have  combined  to  preserve 
the  murals  of  Tun-huang  until  our  own  day.  It  is  abnormally  dry 
there,  and  the  narrowness  of  the  apertures  leading  into  the  interior 
of  the  caves  helped  to  shield  the  pictures  from  the  direct  sunlight. 
Many  entrances  had  collapsed,  cutting  the  pictures  off  from  the 
effects  of  weather,  and  still  others  had  been  blocked  with  sand  by 
the  perpetual  storms  of  central  Asia.  They  have  only  been  cleared 
in  the  last  forty  years.  Basil  Gray,  who  visited  Tun-huang  in  May 
1957  and  submitted  the  caves  to  further  exhaustive  scrutiny,  relates 
that  thousands  of  pilgrims  from  all  over  the  world  had  scratched 
their  names  on  the  walls  in  many  languages,  among  them  Chinese, 
Uigurian,  Japanese  and  even  Russian.  The  cave  murals  originated 
in  the  dynasty  of  the  later  Wei  (385-550)  and  painting  ceased  in  the 
time  of  the  northern  Sung  (560-1127).  Five  hundred  years  of 
superlative  artistry,  the  chief  legacy  of  Chinese  painting  as  a  whole, 
gaze  down  at  us  from  the  walls  of  Tun-huang. 


226  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  caves  were  first  explored  by  Sir  Aurel  Stein,  the  celebrated 
British  archaeologist  and  traveler.  Stein  was  born  in  Budapest  in  1862 
and  died  at  Kabul  in  the  year  1943.  While  visiting  the  Tarim  Basin 
in  Sinkiang  Province  in  1900-01,  he  explored  the  city  of  Khotan 
on  the  Silk  Road  and  unearthed  the  remains  of  a  civilization  that 
had  once  thrived  there  at  4,600  feet  above  sea  level.  Having  ex- 
amined a  number  of  other  important  sites  on  the  edge  of  the  great 
desert,  he  reached  China's  western  frontier  and  eventually  came  to 
Tun-huang  in  the  Chinese  province  of  Kansu.  Stein's  expedition 
left  Kashmir  in  April  1906.  He  did  not  reach  Tun-huang  until 
March  1907. 

It  was  known  that  there  were  hundreds  of  sacred  grottoes  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  oasis,  and  Stein  was  greatly  intrigued  by  stories  of 
the  Caves  of  the  Thousand  Buddhas.  On  arriving  in  Tun-huang,  he 
learned  from  a  Mohammedan  merchant  that  the  many  hundreds 
of  shafts  which  honeycombed  the  cliffs  north  of  the  oasis  contained 
yet  another  hidden  treasure.  In  one  of  the  larger  caves  the  Taoist 
monk  on  duty  there  had  discovered  great  quantities  of  manuscripts. 

The  monk  had  been  trying  to  restore  the  shrine  to  its  former 
splendor,  a  laborious  task  since  sand  had  drifted  in  and  the  entrance 
had  been  blocked  by  fallen  fragments  of  rock  from  the  ceiling. 
When  the  sand  and  rubble  was  removed  a  fissure  became  visible  in 
the  painted  inner  wall  leading  from  the  antechamber  to  the  temple. 
Soon  an  opening  was  found  which  gave  onto  a  side  chamber 
hollowed  out  of  the  rock  behind  the  stucco  wall,  and  this  chamber 
was  filled  from  floor  to  roof  with  rolls  of  manuscript. 

Stein  found  that  access  to  the  hoard  had  been  cut  off  by  a  wooden 
door,  and  by  the  time  he  returned  a  month  later  the  monks  had 
gone  to  the  lengths  of  erecting  a  stone  wall  in  front  of  it.  Patiently, 
Stein  persuaded  the  priest  first  to  show  him  a  few  of  the  manuscripts 
and  then  to  hand  over  the  remainder. 

Having  cautiously  unrolled  one  of  the  bundles  of  manuscript,  the 
British  archaeologist  found  that  it  contained  paintings  on  silk,  most 
of  them  in  a  fragmentary  condition.  It  seemed,  he  said  later,  as 
though  they  had  been  hurriedly  concealed  during  a  sudden  alarm- 
perhaps  a  raid  by  plundering  Tatars  or  Tibetans.  The  manuscripts 
and  pictures  had  certainly  been  deposited  there  shortly  after  the 
close  of  the  tenth  century  a.d. 

A  year  later  the  French  scholar  Paul  Pelliot  arrived  in  Tun-huang, 


CENTRAL  ASIA  227 

inspected  the  caves  and  took  the  rest  of  the  pictures  and  a  consider- 
able number  of  manuscripts  away  with  him.  Tlius  part  of  this  cache, 
whose  value  is  incalculable,  is  now  in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale 
and  the  Louvre  at  Paris,  and  part  in  the  British  Museum  in  London. 

In  London  each  bundle  was  carefully  opened.  The  brittle,  dusty 
silk  had  sometimes  crumbled  into  hundreds  of  pieces,  each  of  which 
had  to  be  cleaned  and  reconstructed,  an  incredibly  laborious  and 
time-consuming  job.  The  colors  had  lost  some  of  their  depth  and 
luster,  the  silk  had  taken  on  a  greenish  tinge  and  many  figures  were 
discernible  only  in  outline  or  had  completely  disappeared,  yet  no 
restoration  work  of  any  kind  was  undertaken. 

Votum  was  the  Latin  term  for  a  sacred  vow  or  votive  offering, 
and  a  votive  picture  is  a  gift  presented  in  token  of  gratitude  and 
respect.  After  reconstruction,  some  of  the  votive  paintings  of  Tun- 
huang  turned  out  to  be  six  or  seven  feet  high.  The  portraits  of  their 
donors  which  can  often  be  seen  at  the  foot  of  these  works  enable 
one  to  date  them  with  some  accuracy  because  their  style  of  dress 
provides  valuable  information  as  to  period. 

One  picture  even  bears  a  date  which,  when  translated  into  our 
own  chronology,  becomes  a.d.  864.  This  takes  us  back  to  China's 
golden  age  of  art,  a  period  when  Chinese  culture  attained  a  zenith, 
the  time  of  the  poets  Li  Po  and  Tu  Fu,  the  golden  age  of  Chinese 
sculpture  and  a  period  of  painting  that  was  destined  to  remain 
unrivaled. 

At  first  sight  the  pictures  seem  to  be  similar  and  almost  monotonous 
in  their  subject  matter  and  execution,  but  closer  study  reveals  their 
great  diversity  and  latent  symbolism. 

Before  the  art  of  Tun-huang  was  discovered,  little  was  known 
about  Buddhist  painting  in  Europe,  which  was  familiar  only  with 
the  famous  Indian  wall  paintings  of  Ajanta  and  the  Buddhist  pictures 
by  great  Japanese  masters  in  the  Horyuji  Temple  at  Nara.  The 
Tun-huang  pictures  included  some  in  Indian  and  Nepalese  style, 
others  which  betrayed  Tibetan  influence,  others  painted  in  typically 
Chinese  style  and  still  others  in  which  Indian,  Chinese  and  Tibetan 
elements  were  all  represented  simultaneously. 

It  was  common  knowledge  that  Buddhism  had  come  to  China 
from  India,  but  until  these  astonishing  discoveries  were  made  noth- 
ing had  been  known  of  the  intermediate  stages  by  way  of  which 
Buddhist  art  journeyed  eastward  through  Turkestan  and  Asia. 


2  28  THE  SILENT  PAST 

During  his  first  expedition  of  1900-01,  Stein  had  found  in  the 
desert  town  of  Khotan  the  remains  of  a  settlement  which  had  been 
abandoned  in  the  third  century  a.d.  and  engulfed  by  the  drifting 
sands  of  the  Takla  Makan.  He  discovered  a  quantity  of  letters  and 
documents  engraved  in  archaic  Indian  script  on  sealed  and  corded 
wooden  tablets.  The  seals  were  of  Greek  design  and  carried  repre- 
sentations of  Athena,  Heracles  and  other  deities. 

On  his  second  expedition,  Stein  discovered  Buddhist  sanctuaries 
with  mural  paintings  in  late  Graeco-Roman  style  dating  from  the 
fourth  century  a.d.  at  Miran,  a  ruined  site  near  Lop  Nor.  These 
evidences  of  Western  influence  in  the  middle  of  the  Asian  desert 
constituted  a  major  find.  Hellenistic  influence  had  not  been  the  sole 
formative  element,  however.  The  culture  of  the  flourishing  oases 
that  extended  through  the  desert  to  the  west  of  China  found  an 
inexhaustible  source  of  inspiration  in  Buddhism  and  Indian  art. 
Persian  influence  is  also  manifest,  and  some  of  the  manuscripts  at 
Tun-huang  were  written  in  the  Iranian  dialect  of  Sogdiana. 

The  art  of  Turkestan  is  interesting  because  it  represents  a  point 
of  contact  between  the  great  religions  of  East  and  West.  There 
was  an  amazing  wealth  of  religious  ideas  both  in  Europe  and  Asia 
in  the  first  century  of  our  era.  Never  before  or  since  has  mankind 
wrestled  so  earnestly  with  the  problems  of  salvation  and  immortality. 
While  Christianity  and  Mithraism  were  competing  for  supremacy 
in  the  Roman  Empire,  Buddhism  was  making  its  way  eastward. 

The  new  doctrine  from  India  had  now  assumed  the  shape  of 
Mahayana  Buddhism,  which  sought  salvation  not  merely  for  the 
individual  but  for  the  whole  world.  That  is  why  pride  of  place 
among  the  paintings  of  Tun-huang  went  to  the  Bodhisattvas,  who 
had  earned  the  right  to  become  Buddhas  but  waived  it  for  suffering 
humanity's  sake.  Aiahayana  Buddhism  was  thus  a  late  development 
of  the  original  creed.  Foremost  among  the  Bodhisattvas  was  Avalo- 
kitesvara,  known  to  the  Chinese  as  Kuan-yin  and  to  the  Japanese  as 
Kwannon.  Curiously  enough,  Mahayana  Buddhism's  principal  recip- 
ients of  devotion  were  portrayed  in  male  as  well  as  female  guise. 

Apart  from  Bodhisattvas,  the  paintings  of  Tun-huang  depict 
jatakas  or  scenes  from  the  life  of  Buddha  and  visions  of  the  "Western 
Paradise."  The  latter,  which  are  distinguished  for  their  amazingly 
intricate  style  and  almost  unrivaled  sense  of  composition,  include 


CENTRAL  ASIA  229 

multitudes  of  figures,  pavilions,  terraces,  oceans  of  lotus  blossoms 
and  other  flowers,  and  heavenly  beings  singing  and  dancing. 

Manichaeism  was  a  gnostic  religion  founded  in  eastern  Turkestan 
in  the  third  century  a.d.  by  a  Persian  named  Mani.  Born  in  the  year 
215  at  Ctesiphon  in  Babylonia,  then  a  Persian  province,  Mani 
preached  in  Persia  and  undertook  long  missionary  journeys  to 
Turkestan  and  India.  He  was  ultimately  persecuted  as  a  heretic  by 
the  Zoroastrian  priesthood,  arrested,  crucified,  cut  into  two  pieces, 
stuffed  with  straw  and  publicly  exposed  in  the  capital  of  the  Jun- 
disabur.  Mani  was  a  genuine  Persian,  but  his  religion  was  a  blend 
of  Christian,  Buddhist  and  Persian  ideas  compounded  with  ancient 
Babylonian  concepts  and  elements  of  gnosticism.  Manichaeans  could 
profess  membership  of  any  religious  sect  they  wished,  according  to 
whether  they  lived  under  Christian  or  Buddhist  rule.  The  basis  of 
Mani's  doctrine  was  a  contest  between  good  and  evil,  light  and 
darkness.  His  inference  was  that  light  generally  loses  the  battle  and 
that  darkness— interspersed  with  a  few  patches  of  light  in  keeping 
with  the  way  of  the  world  and  its  inhabitants— emerges  victorious. 

At  the  oasis  of  Turfan  in  East  Turkestan,  Manichaeans,  Buddhists 
and  Christians  lived  together  in  amity.  Mankind  owes  Sir  Aurel 
Stein  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  saving  the  silk  paintings  of  Tun-huang, 
for  the  examples  that  he  and  Pelliot  brought  back  to  Europe  are  all 
that  remain  of  an  art  that  has  been  lost  on  the  lonely  roads  of 
central  Asia,  stolen  by  marauders  or  scattered  to  the  winds. 


CENTRAL  ASIA 


THE  SILK  ROAD 

The  silk  roads  via  which  China's  goods  were  exchanged  for 
those  of  India,  Persia  and  the  Ro?nan  East  ran  through  the  country- 
side to  north  and  south,  and  the  cities  were  everywhere  inhabited 
by  busy  inerchants  from  all  the  lands  of  the  East.  This  explains 
why  our  second  Turfan-Kara  Khoja  expedition  brought  back  to 
Berlin  a  total  of  seventeen  different  languages  in  twe7ity-four  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  script. 

—Albert  von  Le  Coq,  Auf  Hellas  Spuren 
in  Ostturkistan,  p.  29,  Leipzig,  1926 

IT  WAS  the  longest  road  in  the  world,  an  artery  of  communication 
between  two  vast  empires,  between  people  of  many  tongues,  be- 
tween the  Mediterranean  and  the  Pacific  Ocean.  It  was  a  dream,  a 
fairy  tale,  mankind's  boldest  venture.  It  went  back  to  extremely 
ancient  times  but  was  destined  to  mold  the  future  of  the  Asian 
continent.  It  carried  tidings  of  alien  worlds  and  some  of  the  most 
sumptuous  merchandise  on  earth,  truly  royal  treasures  endowed 
with  the  everlasting  allure  of  the  unattainable. 

The  Silk  Road,  which  ran  from  Sian,  capital  of  the  province  of 
Shensi  in  northwest  China,  to  Palmyra  and  Antioch,  measures  about 
4,700  miles  as  the  crow  flies.  But  the  road  is  not  a  straight  line.  It 
surmounts  the  highest  mountains  in  the  world  and  weaves  its  endless 
way  between  East  and  West  for  more  than  6,000  miles— a  quarter  of 
the  earth's  circumference. 

As  a  trade  route,  it  was  perhaps  the  most  important  channel  of 
communication  in  history,  for  it  made  possible  some  of  the  major 
economic,  cultural  and  religious  contacts  and  upheavals  of  mankind. 
The  men  who  lived  at  one  end  of  the  world  route  had  no  idea 
where  the  goods  in  which  they  traded  had  come  from.  In  Sian  and 
Loyang,  Kalgan  and  Peking,  merchants  all  competed  for  the  rare 
merchandise  which  the  Phoenicians,  Greeks  and  Romans  had  to 
offer,  and  at  the  many  staging  posts  on  the  route  middlemen  com- 
puted the  proceeds  of  international  trade  in  the  coins  of  many 
nations:  Tocharians,  Bactrians,  Parthians,  Medes  and  Syrians. 

Silk  was  the  lifeblood  of  these  interminable  trade  routes.  Several 
kinds  of  silk  and  an  advanced  weaving  technique  existed  in  China 
as  early  as  the  Shang  period.  Finds  made  in  graves  dating  from  be- 

230 


CENTRAL  ASIA  231 

tween  1766  and  1123  b.c— the  period  of  the  Shang  dynasty— show 
that  the  Chinese  used  to  write  on  ivory  and  bronze,  that  they 
obtained  oracles  from  the  fissures  created  in  bone  and  tortoiseshell 
by  the  application  of  heat,  that  they  were  beginning  to  express 
themselves  on  shavings  of  bamboo  and,  above  all,  that  they  bred 
silkworms  on  mulberry  trees. 

Horses,  glass  vessels,  precious  stones,  diamonds,  ivory,  tortoise- 
shell,  asbestos  and  fine  garments  of  wool  and  linen  all  reached  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Center  by  way  of  the  most  arduous  thoroughfare 
in  the  world.  Silk  traveled  westward  along  the  same  interminably 
winding  road,  across  grassland,  sandy  wastes  and  desolate  moun- 
tains, until  it  reached  the  Roman  Empire. 

In  the  year  a.d.  120  some  Roman  conjurers  arrived  in  the  city  of 
Loyang,  accompanied  on  the  last  stage  of  their  journey  by  a  delega- 
tion from  the  countries  on  China's  southern  border.  The  magicians 
announced  that  they  came  from  Ta  Ch'ien,  the  region  of  the 
Western  Sea.  In  the  year  a.d.  166,  more  dust-stained  travelers  from 
Ta  Ch'ien  arrived  in  Loyang,  declaring  that  they  were  envoys  of 
their  king.  The  king  was  no  less  a  person  than  Marcus  Aurelius,  the 
Roman  Emperor.  There  are  some  indications  that  the  Chinese  in 
their  turn  had  reached  the  Roman  Empire  as  early  as  the  lifetime  of 
Christ. 

Threads  of  silk  are  almost  inextricably  interwoven  with  the  history 
of  China.  Its  use  was  prohibited  to  many  classes,  and  at  certain 
periods  even  merchants  were  forbidden  to  deal  in  it.  Certain  pat- 
terns and  colors,  too,  were  regulated  by  law  because  they  were  an 
indication  of  official  rank.  Width,  length  and  quality  were  all  laid 
down  by  imperial  decree.  Silk  was  often  used  in  the  course  of 
Chinese  history  as  a  medium  of  payment,  and  one  of  the  country's 
main  forms  of  taxation  was  collected  in  bales  of  that  material.  The 
collapse  of  Chinese  silk  manufacture  and  the  invention  of  artificial 
silk  are  partially  to  blame  for  the  economic  exigencies  of  modern 
China.  The  quantity  of  silk  paid  in  indemnities  by  China  in  the 
course  of  her  history  is  almost  incredible.  When  the  "Golden  Tatars" 
were  expanding  their  Chin  Kingdom  to  the  south  and  had  reached 
Kaifeng,  capital  of  the  Sung  emperors,  they  demanded  not  only 
five  million  ounces  of  gold,  five  hundred  million  ounces  of  silver 
and  countless  head  of  cattle  and  horses,  but  also  a  consignment  of 
five  million  bales  of  silk.  China  accepted  these  conditions.  On  Jan- 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


The  Silk  Road 

uary  9,  1127,  however,  the  Chin  Tatars  occupied  Kaifeng  and 
carried  Emperor  Hui  Tsung,  the  greatest  painter  who  ever  occupied 
a  throne,  off  with  them  into  the  inhospitable  North.  He  was  accom- 
panied by  senior  officials  and  princes  and  princesses  with  pale  oval 
faces  and  delicate  hands,  all  of  whom  were  forced  to  undertake  the 
endless  march  into  the  remote  wastes  of  Manchuria  in  bitter  wmter 

weather.  . 

For  many  centuries  the  technique  of  silk  manufacture  remamed 
a  well-guarded  secret.  There  were  silk  spies,  fashion  pirates  and 
experimental  laboratories  throughout  the  Mediterranean  area  even 
in  pre-Christian  times.  Silk,  the  queen  of  materials,  was  for  centuries 


CENTRAL  ASIA  233 

the  object  of  almost  alchemistic  attempts  at  imitation.  Korea,  Japan, 
India,  Indo-China  and  West  Indonesia  all  learned  the  imperial  secret 
of  silkworm  breeding  in  due  course. 

The  Silk  Road  survived  every  kind  of  human  endeavor,  greed  and 
vanity.  Bales  of  raw  and  woven  silk  swayed  westward  on  camelback 
to  be  processed  in  Syria.  In  later  times  the  Arabs  became  expert 
tailors  in  silk,  to  be  succeeded  during  their  great  Renaissance  by  the 
Italians. 

In  Rome,  silk  became  fashionable  at  court  from  the  reign  of 
Emperor  Augustus  onward.  Roman  patricians  and  their  elegant 
wives  and  daughters  selected  the  finest  silks  for  their  robes  and 
preened  themselves  in  the  mirrors  which  were  another  Chinese  in- 
vention. Silk  (sericum)  and  silk  cloth  (serica)  were  in  some  mysteri- 
ous way  woven  and  exported  by  a  distant  people  living  somewhere 
far  to  the  east,  but  the  ladies  of  Rome  had  no  idea  of  that  remote 
and  highly  civilized  people's  identity. 

The  Macedonian  merchant  Maes  Titanus  must  have  had  a  com- 
mercial agent  in  the  Far  East.  At  any  rate,  he  received  an  extremely 
accurate  report  of  the  eastern  area  of  the  Indian  Ocean  and  the 
seas  bordering  the  Pacific  from  a  certain  Marinos  of  Tyre.  In  the 
year  a.d.  125,  the  geographer  Claudius  Ptolemaeus  incorporated  this 
report  in  his  map  of  the  world.  It  mentions  a  mysterious  harbor 
called  Cattigara,  but  we  shall  never  know  where  it  lay  or  whether 
it  corresponded  to  Nanking,  Canton,  Singapore  or— as  Albert  Herr- 
mann suggested— Ha  Tinh  in  north  Vietnam. 

The  price  of  silk  was  extraordinarily  high.  In  the  time  of  the 
Roman  emperor  Aurelian  (215-275),  a  pound  of  silk  was  worth  a 
pound  of  gold.  This  in  itself  accounted  for  silk's  extremely  fine 
weave.  The  island  of  Cos  in  the  Sporades  group  exported  not  only 
excellent  wine  in  splendid  amphorae  and  the  fine  salves  known  as 
aiiiaracimnn  and  melinwn  but  also  silken  robes  celebrated  for  their 
lightness  and  transparency,  the  Coae  testes  of  Pliny.  These  garments 
clearly  revealed  the  contours  of  the  body  beneath  and  were  con- 
sequently much  favored  by  rich  and  famous  courtesans.  The  Louvre 
in  Paris  displays  a  statue  of  Aphrodite  dressed  in  a  Coan  robe,  prob- 
ably a  classical  copy  of  the  celebrated  "Aphrodite  in  the  Garden" 
by  the  Greek  sculptor  Alcamenes,  a  pupil  of  Phidias. 

The  clothing,  coverlets,  cushions  and  curtains  of  the  wealthy  were 
all  made  of  silk— an  indescribable  luxury.  Emperors'  wives  wore 


234 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


Asia 


silken  robes,  but  the  fact  that,  despite  a  standing  prohibition,  vain 
and  effeminate  men  also  swathed  themselves  in  silk  was  frowned 
upon.  Emperor  Elagabalus  made  a  practice  of  bedding  all  the  guests 
at  his  orgiastic  summer  fetes  on  silken  cushions. 

Caravan  after  caravan,  long  files  of  tortured  beasts  and  toiling 
men,  filled  with  a  strange  yearning  for  the  unknown,  journeyed 
along  the  Silk  Road  in  each  direction  of  the  compass— yet  another 
epoch-making  Chinese  device.  Amber  from  the  Baltic,  Tyrian  purple, 
incense,  spices  and  gold  were  carried  to  the  Far  East.  Caravans  of 
this  sort  took  four  or  five  months  to  fight  their  way  through  the 
Tarim  Basin.  Death  by  thirst  lurked  in  the  sandy  wastes  and  brack- 
ish marshes.  In  the  high  passes  of  the  Pamirs  the  air  was  so  thin  that 


CENTRAL  ASIA  235 

men  fought  for  breath  as  they  pressed  onward.  However,  silk  was 
a  universal  loadstone.  To  possess  it  was  the  pride  and  joy  of  all 
Europe.  Silk  rustled  and  gleamed  from  Persia  to  Constantinople, 
from  Athens  to  Rome  and  Cadiz  on  the  Atlantic  coast  of  Spain, 
though  thousands  of  priceless  bales  tumbled  into  the  drifting  sands 
to  form  the  funerary  offering  of  caravans  annihilated  by  thirst. 

East  Turkestan,  a  huge  depression  filled  with  drifting  dunes,  con- 
sists partly  of  comfortless  desert,  large  tracts  of  which  are  impassable 
for  lack  of  water.  All  central  Asia  knows  the  buran  or  death-dealing 
sandstorm,  an  eruption  of  nature  which  is  not  only  impressive  to  see 
but  extremely  hazardous.  Abruptly,  with  almost  inconceivable  speed, 
the  sky  grows  dark.  The  sun  shines  blood-red  through  a  curtain  of 
dust.  Then  the  dust  becomes  so  thick  that  even  the  sun  is  extin- 
guished. The  buran  howls  across  the  plain,  unleashed  with  a  fury 
that  forces  every  caravan  to  halt  and  seek  shelter  on  the  ground. 
Huge  masses  of  sand  and  pebbles  are  sucked  up  by  the  storm  to  form 
whirling  funnels.  The  darkness  grows  ever  deeper,  the  piercing  roar 
of  the  storm  ever  louder.  The  strange  clatter  mentioned  in  so  many 
travelers'  tales  is  caused  by  stones  rattling  together  in  the  storm-rent 
sky— a  demoniacal  sound,  even  if  one  does  not  equate  it  with  the 
scream  of  the  ghostly  eagle  which  figures  in  Chinese  legends. 

No  one  has  yet  told  the  epic  story  of  the  men  who  lost  their  lives 
in  such  storms.  Religious  pilgrims,  missionaries,  merchants,  scholars, 
even  refugees  from  the  Japanese  and  Communist  reigns  of  terror 
during  and  since  the  last  World  War,  all  met  their  end  in  the  buran. 
Needless  to  say,  everyone  knows  the  rules.  Men,  horses  and  camels 
have  to  lie  down  and  allow  the  storm  to  rage  over  them  for  hours 
on  end,  but  the  buran  is  merciless.  It  whips  them  and  lashes  them 
with  pebbles,  causing  man  and  beast  to  lose  their  reason  and  plunge 
wildly  into  the  desert  to  die  on  trackless  dunes.  Many  have  been 
found  as  mummified  cadavers,  but,  as  Le  Coq  always  said,  a  sand- 
storm generally  likes  to  bury  its  victims. 

East  Turks,  Dolans,  West  Mongols,  Kalmucks  and  Kirghizes  are 
hospitable,  likable,  greathearted  people,  the  sort  of  people  that  only 
nomadic  life  and  the  country's  untrammeled  vastness  could  have 
bred.  Perhaps  the  only  exceptions  are  the  Chinese-speaking  Moham- 
medans known  as  Tungans.  Nature  is  harsher  and  life  cheaper  than 
in  many  other  parts  of  the  world,  and  numerous  explorers  have 
perished  there,  most  of  them  at  the  hands  of  the  Chinese  or  of 


236  THE  SILENT  PAST 

wandering  nomads.  Adolph  von  Schlagintweit  met  his  end  in  this 
way  at  Kashgar  in  1857.  The  Scotsman  Dalgleish's  thirst  for  knowl- 
edge was  rewarded  with  death.  Hayward  of  England  and  Dutreuil 
of  France  were  also  murdered,  and  in  very  recent  times  there  have 
been  numerous  men  who  bade  farewell  to  civilization  in  Kalgan  or 
Paotou  and  set  off  westward,  never  to  return. 

The  Silk  Road  was  not  merely  a  track.  The  little-known  epic  of 
the  imperial  highway,  as  the  Chinese  called  this  international  thor- 
oughfare, was  a  tale  of  lonely  hostelries  built  of  unhewn  stone  and 
clay,  inns  erected  out  of  camel  dung,  small  forts  garrisoned  to  pro- 
tect passing  traffic,  marching  troops,  mounted  messengers,  coura- 
geous pilgrims.  Consignments  of  water  for  convoys  travehng  through 
the  most  arid  stretches  of  desert,  interpreters,  customs  posts  and 
tollgates— all  these  belonged  to  the  saga  of  the  Road.  Oxcarts  trundled 
painfully  through  the  sand.  Traffic  on  the  road  included  donkeys, 
horses,  camels,  dispatch  riders  and  mounted  couriers.  Mile  after  mile, 
day  after  day,  month  after  month,  year  after  year,  they  passed  by 
at  a  pace  and  in  an  age  far  removed  from  the  split-second  timing  of 
our  own. 

The  Silk  Road  was  so  long  that  people  at  one  end  of  the  world 
scarcely  knew  what  the  places  at  the  other  end  looked  like.  Who 
can  say  whether  the  words  of  Paul  and  Barnabas  did  not  travel  from 
Antioch  to  China  along  this  road  in  the  early  centuries  of  our  era? 
The  noble  ruins  of  Palmyra,  the  Aramaic  Tadmor  and  royal  seat 
of  Queen  Zenobia,  who  for  a  brief  time  ruled  a  world  empire,  still 
reveal  traces  of  Far  Eastern  influence.  Farther  on,  the  road  led  from 
Ctesiphon,  chief  residence  first  of  the  Parthian  kings  and  then  of 
the  Sassanides,  to  Ecbatana,  now  called  Hamadan.  This  was  the 
capital  of  Media,  with  a  fortified  citadel  dominating  the  whole  city 
and  pillared  palaces  with  roofs  of  cedar  and  cypress  wood  on  a  hill 
below  it.  The  Achaemenides  and  Parthians  who  made  it  their  sum- 
mer residence  were  so  rich  that  they  faced  the  woodwork  of  their 
buildings  with  gold  and  silver  foil.  Rhages,  the  Elamite  town  men- 
tioned in  the  Book  of  Tobias,  is  now  called  Rei.  Situated  to  the 
south  of  Teheran,  it  enjoys  magnificent  weather  in  springtime,  and 
one  can  well  understand  why  the  Parthian  kings  chose  to  spend 
the  months  of  March,  April  and  May  there.  Passing  through  Bactra, 
caravans  stopped  to  do  business  in  gold,  for  gold  from  Bactra  was 
as  much  in  demand  in  antiquity  as  silk  from  China.  Eventually,  they 


CENTRAL  ASIA  237 

reached  Kashgar  in  Chinese  Turkestan,  situated  nearly  five  thousand 
feet  above  sea  level  in  a  loess  oasis  watered  by  the  Red  River,  or 
Qyzyl  Su.  From  there  it  was  only  a  few  days'  journey  across  the 
13,000-foot  Terek  Pass  to  the  legendary  town  of  Ferghana.  If 
plenty  of  snow  had  accumulated  in  the  mountains  during  winter, 
the  thaw  provided  sufficient  water  for  irrigation  purposes.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  cold  summer  high  up  in  the  Pamirs  sometimes  delayed 
the  thaw,  and  the  blazing  summer  heat  down  in  Kashgar  brought 
great  hardships  in  its  train. 

Vast  clouds  of  sand  come  racing  westward  from  the  wastes  of 
Takla  Makan,  obscuring  the  Kashgar  oasis  under  a  vast  curtain  of 
dust  for  more  than  two  hundred  days  in  every  year.  Pan  Chao,  the 
famous  Chinese  warrior  of  the  first  century  a.d.,  lies  buried  in  a 
temple  there.  In  the  second  century  a.d.  wine  passed  through  the 
oasis  on  its  way  to  China.  And  it  was  via  Kashgar  that  Buddhism 
reached  the  Far  East.  The  bearers  of  the  new  world  religion,  the 
Yue  Chi,  also  introduced  China  to  the  peach  and  pear.  Genghis  Khan, 
conqueror  of  Asia,  must  have  visited  Kashgar  in  the  year  12 19,  and  in 
1275  Marco  Polo  gazed  in  wonder  at  the  fertility  and  bustUng  com- 
mercial activity  of  the  oasis.  Earthquakes  usually  occur  in  maritime 
regions,  but  reports  of  earthquakes  here  in  the  heart  of  Asia  during 
historical  times  have  been  handed  down  by  word  of  mouth  from 
generation  to  generation.  Passing  Khotan,  4,600  feet  above  sea  level 
in  the  Tarim  Basin,  the  caravans  journey  on  to  Tun-huang,  the 
oasis  famous  for  its  cave  temples.  A  northern  route  leads  through 
Turfan,  where  numerous  ruined  sites  have  been  excavated  fifty  feet 
below  sea  level  in  the  Uigurian  district. 

Digging  in  Chinese  Turkestan  between  1905  and  1907,  Albert 
Griinwedel,  the  celebrated  German  Indologist,  brought  to  light 
archaeological  treasures  which  included  Buddhist  cave  temples  and 
sculptures.  Among  his  other  discoveries  were  the  remains  of  fine 
and  obviously  very  costly  silken  garments  and  silk-faced  hats.  Silk 
was  once  an  outward  and  visible  sign  of  rank  and  splendor  in  the 
monasteries  of  central  Asia,  more  than  fifteen  hundred  miles  from 
Pekingr. 

At  Turfan,  Griinwedel  reported,  the  blazing  sun  made  any  form 
of  activity  extremely  arduous  between  June  and  mid-August;  at 
Quarasahr  there  was  the  additional  annoyance  of  mosquitoes;  and 
in  Qyzyl  there  were  storms  and  earthquakes.  None  of  the  mural 


238  THE  SILENT  PAST 

paintings  in  the  cave  temples  had  survived  intact,  sculpted  figures 
had  been  destroyed  and  inscriptions  scratched  out.  With  endless 
patience,  he  removed  many  of  the  splendid  old  paintings  from  the 
walls,  listed  the  separate  fragments,  packed  them  up  and  sent  them 
off  by  caravan.  Tracings  and  drawings  had  to  be  made  so  that  the 
pictures  could  be  reassembled  later.  In  winter  severe  cold  froze 
India  ink  to  the  brush,  even  when  mixed  with  alcohol.  Work  was 
made  doubly  laborious  by  flying  sand,  which  got  into  brushes  and 
pens,  decomposed  ink  and  ruined  paints.  "Even  when  one  had  suc- 
ceeded in  mixing  the  main  color  a  cloud  of  sand  could  fly  in  and 
change  everything."  Goatherds  had  been  using  the  cave  temples  as 
overnight  shelters  for  centuries,  and  their  campfires  had  blackened 
the  walls.  Other  caves  were  blocked  by  drifting  sand  and  had  to 
be  cleared  one  by  one.  No  one  who  saw  the  splendid  pictures  in, 
say,  the  Museum  of  Ethnology  at  Berlin  would  guess  how  much 
physical  hardship  and  privation  they  had  caused  in  far-off  Turkestan, 
but  no  one,  equally,  would  fail  to  realize  that  the  oases  along  the 
Silk  Road  represent  an  impressive  and  awe-inspiring  composite  of 
the  great  civilizations  of  Asia. 

Berlin's  Museum  of  Ethnology  sent  a  total  of  four  expeditions 
to  central  Asia.  The  first,  under  the  leadership  of  Professor  Griin- 
wedel,  went  to  Turfan  and  worked  there  from  November  1902 
until  March  1903.  This  venture  produced  forty-six  cases,  each  weigh- 
ing over  eighty  pounds  and  containing  dismantled  mural  paintings, 
sculptures  and  other  objects.  A  second  expedition  under  Albert  von 
Le  Coq  lasted  from  September  1904  until  December  1905  and 
carried  out  research  at  the  oasis  of  Turfan  and  in  the  Momul  district. 
The  material  results  were  very  substantial.  A  hundred  and  three 
cases  each  weighing  between  200  and  350  pounds  were  sent  back  to 
Germany  by  slow  and  devious  caravan  routes.  The  third  expedition 
of  1905-07  was  conducted  jointly  by  Griinwedel  and  Le  Coq  and 
worked  in  the  oases  of  Kutsha,  Karashahr,  Turfan  and  Komul.  A 
hundred  and  twenty-eight  cases  weighing  between  150  and  175 
pounds  were  removed.  The  fourth  and  final  expedition,  which  took 
place  between  January  191 3  and  the  end  of  February  19 14,  was 
again  led  by  Le  Coq  and  produced  160  cases  also  weighing  between 
150  and  175  pounds. 

Vast  numbers  of  treasures  were  removed.  (One  cannot  say  stolen, 
for  the  mural  paintings,  reliefs  and  sculptures  were  falling  to  pieces 


CENTRAL  ASIA  239 

in  their  original  abode.)  The  plaster  walls  with  their  Buddhist  murals 
were  regarded  as  an  abomination  by  Mohammedans,  and  whenever 
a  Moslem  saw  one  of  these  pictures  he  did  his  best  to  obliterate 
Buddha's  features.  Apart  from  that,  the  powdered  loess  that  had 
piled  up  in  the  ruins  over  the  centuries  and  now  covered  the 
smashed  and  trampled  statues  was  a  valuable  manure,  so  the  oasis 
dwellers  made  a  practice  of  digging  it  up  and  carrying  it  away. 

Griinwedel  complained  bitterly  about  the  Turks,  who  smashed 
heads  of  Buddha,  dug  out  the  eyes  with  pickaxes  and  demolished 
or  defaced  frescoes.  "The  peasants  carry  off  the  frescoes  as  manure, 
knock  down  walls  so  that  they  can  drive  carts  in  and  out  more  easily 
and  comb  the  ruins  for  firewood,  scraps  of  leather,  jewelry  and 
valuables.  At  Idikuchari,  incidentally,  the  latter  seem  to  have  been 
pretty  well  exhausted.  The  unfortunate  thing  is  that  one  cannot 
stop  them  from  doing  it,  for  the  area  is  too  large  and  accessible  from 
every  direction,  and  control  is  impossible.  The  arrival  of  a  European 
sets  them  all  scurrying  off  to  find  something  they  can  sell.  They  go 
on  grubbing  about  for  some  time  after  the  European  leaves,  but 
treasure  hunting  on  a  grand  scale  eventually  ceases  and  the  peasants 
once  more  set  about  their  demolition  work  for  utilitarian  purposes." 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  successes  of  the  French  scholar 
Paul  Pelhot  and  the  explorations  undertaken  on  behalf  of  the  Indian 
Government  by  the  British  geographer  and  philologist  Sir  Aurel 
Stein.  Professor  Albert  von  Le  Coq,  a  director  of  the  State  Museum 
of  Ethnology  in  Berlin,  wrote  in  1926:  "Since  the  exploration  of 
the  ruins  of  Nineveh  by  Sir  Austen  Layard,  no  other  enterprise  has 
been  carried  out  whose  results  are  comparable  in  importance  with 
these  expeditions  to  central  Asia."  In  fact,  they  revealed  something 
quite  new.  Instead  of  a  "Turkish"  country,  as  the  name  Turkestan 
implies,  explorers  discovered  that  the  Silk  Road  was  occupied  until 
the  middle  of  the  eighth  century  by  people  of  Indo-European  origin 
such  as  Iranians,  Indians  and  even  Europeans.  Of  the  numerous 
manuscripts  found  along  the  route  some  were  in  unfamiliar  tongues 
and  had  to  be  deciphered,  translated  and  scientifically  evaluated  by 
experts  in  London,  Paris  and  Berlin.  Authorities  on  Indo-European 
and  Turkish  had  to  study  and  decipher  no  less  than  seventeen  differ- 
ent languages  written  in  twenty-four  different  sorts  of  script.  Many 
of  the  Sanskrit  manuscripts  revealed  new  and  important  facts  about 
Buddhism.  Quantities  of  liturgical  works  composed  in  Syrian  for 


240  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  Nestorian-Syrian  church  were  also  found.  Many  other  manu- 
scripts of  Nestorian-Christian  content  were  written  in  the  language 
of  Sogdiana. 

Finally,  in  a  waterless  area  near  the  Turfan  oasis  the  German 
expeditions  discovered  a  major  portion  of  the  Manichaean  literature, 
which  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  permanently  lost.  The  texts, 
which  were  beautifully  handwritten  on  excellent  paper  in  inks  of 
various  colors,  gave  some  entirely  new  details  of  this  unique  religion. 
Also  found  were  sheets  from  books  which  had  belonged  to  the 
Manichaean  religious  community.  Composed  in  Middle  Persian  and 
other  Indian  dialects,  though  mainly  in  the  script  of  Sogdiana,  and 
adorned  with  miniatures  of  startling  beauty,  they  were  subsequently 
translated  by  Professor  F.  W.  K.  Miiller  of  Germany.  The  principal 
importance  of  these  Manichaean  texts  lies  in  the  fact  that  almost  all 
other  examples  of  Manichaean  literature  fell  prey  to  Christian  hatred 
or  Mohammedan  religious  zeal. 

Between  Tun-huang  and  Sian,  capital  of  the  Chinese  province  of 
Shensi,  the  Silk  Road  becomes  a  single  track.  Anyone  who  reached 
that  rectangular  walled  metropolis  by  way  of  it  had,  as  the  great 
Swedish  explorer  Sven  Hedin  declared,  a  world  of  unforgettable 
experiences  behind  him. 

The  imperial  highway,  as  the  Chinese  used  to  call  the  Silk  Road, 
cut  a  gigantic  cross  section  through  the  ancient  world.  It  ran  from 
the  seething  plains  of  China,  through  the  oases  of  the  edge  of  the 
Gobi  desert,  through  the  barren  wastes  between  Tun-huang  and  Lou 
Lan— still  the  desolate  habitat  of  the  wild  camel— and  through  the 
fairy-tale  cities  of  the  Medes  until  it  came,  finally,  to  the  metropoli- 
tan cities  of  the  ancient  civilizations  of  Babylon  and  Tyre.  The  Silk 
Road  has  yielded  up  one  secret  after  another.  On  March  28,  1900, 
Sven  Hedin  found  the  ruined  city  of  Lou  Lan  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
former  bed  of  Lake  Lop  Nor. 

A  year  later,  there  came  to  light  in  a  house  built  of  mud  bricks 
a  heap  of  rubble  containing  rags,  sheep's  bones,  the  remains  of  fish 
and,  among  these,  a  few  hundred  sheets  of  manuscript  and  42  wooden 
sticks,  all  covered  with  Chinese  characters.  Sven  Hedin's  rubbish 
dump  was  a  veritable  treasure  trove.  The  fragmentary  manuscripts, 
some  of  which  actually  mentioned  the  name  Lou  Lan,  had  been 
left  behind  by  a  Chinese  garrison  stationed  there  between  a.d.  265 
and  313.  The  results  of  research  into  Lou  Lan  by  Hedin  and  his 


CENTRAL  ASIA  241 

successors  were  not  published  until  1920,  by  which  time  Hedin  was 
dead.  However,  he  had  already  recognized  the  value  of  these  finds. 
"The  documentary  fragments  would  set  the  seal  on  my  painstaking 
investigations.  They  would  tell  when  the  lake— the  Lop  Nor— 
existed,  what  people  lived  there,  what  parts  of  central  Asia  they  were 
in  contact  with  and  what  name  their  country  bore.  A  country 
which  had  been,  as  it  were,  swallowed  up  by  the  earth's  surface,  a 
people  "whose  history  long  ago  passed  into  oblivion  and  whose 
destiny  no  chronicles  relate— all  these  things  would  see  the  light 
of  day.  I  was  confronted  with  a  past  which  I  was  to  bring  to  life 
once  more." 

The  carved  woodwork  of  Lou  Lan  betrayed  Hellenistic  and 
Gandharan  influence  and  so  testified  to  indirect  links  with  west  and 
south.  The  paper  documents,  which  had  crumbled  into  small  pieces, 
displayed  wonderfully  clear  and  legible  Chinese  characters  when 
reassembled.  While  digging  in  the  cemetery  at  Lou  Lan,  Aurel  Stein 
unearthed  human  bodies  whose  clothing  and  facial  expression  had 
survived  intact.  The  ruins  of  a  Buddhist  temple  yielded  some  small 
but  superb  wood  carvings,  figures,  ornaments,  models  of  a  stupa, 
spoons  and  a  child's  mattock.  Other  discoveries  included  coins 
pierced  with  rectangular  holes,  a  red  ring  stone  portraying  Hermes, 
the  remains  of  a  woolen  carpet  with  a  marvelously  lifelike  head  of 
Buddha,  and  pieces  of  finely  patterned  silk. 

Aurel  Stein's  excavation  of  another  burial  place  at  Astana,  nearly 
twenty  miles  southwest  of  the  Turfan  oasis,  brought  to  light  sculp- 
tures of  the  eighth  century  which  are  among  the  finest  extant  pieces 
dating  from  China's  greatest  artistic  period,  the  T'ang  dynasty. 
These  funerary  gifts  comprised  small  human  figures,  camels, 
brightly  painted  horses,  demons'  heads,  horsemen  in  gay  clothing 
and  splendid  figurative  paintings  on  silk. 

Throughout  the  length  of  the  Silk  Road,  hundreds  of  textual  frag- 
ments were  unearthed  dealing  with  the  Prajnaparamita,  or  Maha- 
yana  philosophy  of  the  period.  There  were  also  tenth-century 
Tibetan  texts  on  military  subjects,  medical  treatises,  commercial 
records  and  a  surprising  number  of  texts  on  horse  doctoring. 

In  the  golden  days  of  the  Silk  Road,  the  only  things  that  traveled 
along  it  from  one  side  of  the  world  to  the  other  were  luxuries.  Jade, 
for  instance,  was  not  originally  discovered  in  China  but  reached 
the  Far  East  by  way  of  the  Silk  Road.  Spiritual  treasures  such  as 


24J  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Buddhism  and  the  Manichaeism  of  the  West  met  in  the  oases  along 
the  Silk  Road  and  mutually  enriched  one  another. 

International  trade  in  mass-produced  articles  and  consumer  goods 
is  a  development  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  manifestation  of  an 
age  which  has  forgotten  the  true  meaning  of  luxury.  In  Asia,  wealth 
and  objects  of  real  value  had  an  almost  magical  significance.  The 
Silk  Road  lived,  worked,  and  made  its  influence  felt.  As  they  passed 
along  it,  the  great  thoughts  of  mankind  changed  their  complexion 
and  the  Indian  Buddha  acquired  the  almond-shaped  eyes  of  China. 
Pilgrims  reinterpreted  the  sacred  texts  and  Christian  ideas  were 
introduced  into  Buddhism  by  travelers  from  Europe.  And  all  the 
time  the  natural  magic  of  the  widest  and  most  desolate  landscape  in 
the  world  played  its  part. 

Today  the  Silk  Road  has  reached  its  nadir.  Its  pulsing  life  is 
stilled,  its  trade  a  thing  of  the  past.  Uncertainty,  the  specter  of 
frontiers,  appalling  poverty  and  universal  mistrust  are  doing  their 
best  to  wipe  it  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  And  yet,  stubbornly  im- 
pervious to  change,  it  still  winds  its  serpentine  way  through  the 
heart  of  Asia.  Wars  were  always  continuous  in  the  countries  and 
empires  through  which  the  Silk  Road  passed,  but  they  did  not 
prevent  peaceful  traffic  in  things  of  material  and  spiritual  value 
from  flowing  along  it  without  interruption  from  East  to  West  and 
from  West  to  East. 

Has  the  sound  of  caravan  bells  been  silenced  forever?  Personally, 
I  shall  never  forget  the  images  conjured  up  by  memories  of  my 
travels  in  Asia:  the  shrill  song  of  the  sandstorm,  the  driving  snow 
of  winter  blizzards,  the  encounters  with  solitary  men  on  foot  or  in 
carts,  the  fur-clad  Mongol  horsemen,  the  soft-footed  progress  of 
the  camel  caravans,  their  beasts'  haughty  profiles  silhouetted  starkly 
against  the  bright  infinity  of  the  Asian  sky,  the  tinkle  of  bell  harness 
on  horses'  necks,  the  remote,  mud- walled,  brown  and  yellow  towns 
and,  sometimes,  the  breathless  hush  of  the  desert. 


PERSIA 

THE  TREASURE  OF  THE  OXUS 

The  discovery  of  any  remarkable  treasure  or  hoard  Jtaturally 
arouses  speculation  as  to  the  persons  ivho  may  have  concealed  it, 
and  the  occasion  on  which  the  deposit  was  made.  Archaeological 
curiosity  in  such  cases  is  rarely  satisfied,  and  when  atte?npts  are 
made  to  recoristruct  the  history,  too  great  a  strain  is  often  placed 
upon  the  imagination. 

— O.  M.  Dalton,  The  Treasure  of  the  Oxiis, 
p.  17,  London,  1926 

THE  world  has  produced  large  nations  and  empires  which  have 
bequeathed  us  very  few  relics  of  their  material  culture.  In  some 
cases  they  have  been  engulfed  by  sand,  in  others  the  civilizations 
involved  are  so  hard  to  define  that  we  are  frequently  ignorant  of 
what  does  or  does  not  belong  to  them,  and  in  still  others  luxury 
articles  and  objects  of  a  utilitarian  or  religious  nature  lie  scattered 
over  vast  areas,  either  buried  beneath  the  surface  of  steppes  or 
submerged  by  rivers  and  lakes.  The  things  which  have  been  dug  up 
are  exceeded  a  milHonfold  by  those  which  are  still  harbored  by  the 
soil. 

About  a  century  ago  a  hoard  was  discovered  which  shed  signifi- 
cant light  on  the  intimate  secrets  of  tribes  whose  religions  and  daily 
life  still  present  numerous  problems.  Archaeological  research  has 
not  concerned  itself  until  recently  with  the  valuable  objects,  some- 
times of  solid  gold,  which  were  once  owned  by  tribes  whose  domain 
extended  from  the  Middle  East,  through  the  whole  of  Asia,  to  the 
borders  of  China,  and  which  were  carried  by  them  on  their  inter- 
minable wanderings.  Some  of  them  remain  unidentified  and  many 
more  have  been  scattered  to  the  four  winds.  The  equestrian  civiliza- 
tions of  the  Middle  East,  southern  Russia  and  central  Asia  were  for 
a  long  time  the  neglected  children  of  art-historical  research,  yet 
their  utensils  and  works  of  art  are  among  the  rarest,  most  fascinating 
and  least  easily  comprehended  examples  of  early  craftsmanship. 

Since  the  "Treasure  of  the  Oxus"  was  found  in  the  former  Persian 
satrapy  of  Bactria  and  since  it  probably  dates  from  the  fifth  and 
fourth  centuries  B.C.,  a  glance  at  the  Achaemenian  era  of  Persian 
history  would  not  be  inappropriate. 

243 


244  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  centuries  before  and  after  looo  b.c.  were  a  period  of  great 
migrations.  The  West  and  East  "Indo-European"  speaking  tribes  dis- 
persed the  people  of  the  pre-classical  civilizations.  Indo-European 
tribes  migrated  into  Greece  and  the  territories  of  the  Old  Italians, 
while  the  East  Indo-European  or  Indo-Iranian  Medes  and  Persians 
dispersed  the  former  inhabitants  of  the  Near  and  Middle  East  and 
gained  supremacy  there.  The  word  Aryan  is  derived  from  the 
Sanskrit  arya  and  is  a  term  originally  appHed  to  the  principal  tribe  of 
the  Indo-Iranian  speaking  branch  of  the  Indo-European  speaking 
family.  The  use  of  this  expression  in  the  racial  sense,  combined  with 
the  sort  of  value-judgments  espoused  by  Houston  S.  Chamberlain 
and  preached  with  such  catastrophic  results  by  National  Socialism, 
is  completely  unscientific. 

Repeated  attempts  have  been  made  to  determine  the  site  of  the 
Indo-Iranians'  original  home.  They  may  have  come  from  the  great 
steppes  of  central  Asia,  or  from  the  wide  plains  of  southern  Russia, 
or  even  from  the  shores  of  the  Baltic.  Old  legends  tell  of  a  land 
called  Aryanem-Vaejo  and  of  interminable  migrations  by  nomadic 
tribes  into  Persia  and  India  by  way  of  Bokhara  and  Samarkand. 

The  Persian  empire,  one  of  the  great  political  edifices  in  world 
history,  was  built  upon  the  ruins  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Indo- 
Iranian  people  whom  we  call  the  Medes.  Ecbatana,  now  the  oasis 
of  Hamadan,  was  the  seat  of  Cyaxares,  most  prominent  of  the 
A4edian  kings.  Not  a  single  written  sentence,  not  a  stone  memorial 
or  work  of  art  supplies  us  with  information  about  the  ancient  Medes, 
but  we  know  that  in  company  with  their  Persian  cousins  they 
occupied  the  southwestern  portion  of  modern  Iran  north  of  the 
Persian  Gulf.  The  Persians'  capital  was  Susa  and  their  royal  house 
that  of  the  Achaemenides,  named  after  Achaemenes,  who  ruled 
circa  700-675  B.C. 

The  Persian  empire  literally  owed  its  existence  to  a  dream.  In  the 
year  585  b.c.  the  Median  king  Astyages  succeeded  to  the  throne 
of  his  father  Cyaxares.  Because  interpreters  of  dreams  predicted  at 
Ecbatana  that  the  child  of  his  daughter  Mandane  would  one  day 
rule  the  whole  of  A4edia,  Astyages  devised  what  he  believed  to  be 
an  extremely  cunning  plan.  Unfortunately,  overingenious  plans  of 
this  sort  usually  go  awry.  Astyages  was  determined  at  all  costs  to 
keep  a  future  ruler  of  the  world  under  his  thumb.  Any  Mede  of 
noble  birth  was  a  potential  usurper,  so  instead  of  giving  his  daughter 


PERSIA  245 

to  a  Mede,  who  might  prove  dangerous,  Astyages  decide  to  offer 
Mandane's  hand  to  a  prince  from  a  vassal  state,  reflecting  that  he 
would  be  able  to  get  rid  of  the  potentially  dangerous  offspring  of 
such  a  marriage  without  undue  difficulty. 

The  A4edes  of  this  period  did  not  have  a  very  high  opinion  of 
the  Persians,  who  were  a  small  tribe,  so  Astyages  selected  the  Persian 
prince  Cambyses  as  his  daughter's  consort.  When  Mandane  pre- 
sented the  Persian  with  a  son  named  Cyrus,  Astyages  bade  his 
chancellor  Harpagus  to  kill  the  child  without  delay.  The  commands 
of  such  implacable  tyrants  as  Astyages  were  always  carried  oiit— 
though  not  necessarily  to  the  letter.  Harpagus  carried  off  young 
Cyrus  to  the  highlands,  but  instead  of  killing  him  he  handed  him 
over  to  a  cowherd.  We  shall  not  relate  in  detail  how  the  whole  of 
Media  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  boy  who  was  brought  up  in  the 
wind-swept  highlands  by  a  herdsman,  or  how  the  Median  empire 
became  a  Persian  empire.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  Cyrus  was  a  prince 
of  the  Achaemenian  clan  and  that  the  world  supremacy  of  that  great 
and  renowned  dynasty  began  with  him. 

Susa  now  became  the  Persian  capital,  but  Cyrus  built  a  second 
and  equally  important  stronghold  at  Parsagarda,  or  "Camp  of  the 
Persians."  This  fortress,  which  was  known  to  the  Greeks  as  Pasar- 
gadae,  is  the  site  of  Cyrus'  tomb.  The  great  king  conquered  first 
Ecbatana,  then  the  whole  of  Media,  then  Lydia  and  its  famous  capital 
Sardis,  and  finally  Caria,  Lycia  and  Ionia.  Cyrus'  principal  foes  were 
the  courageous  Saka  tribes  or  Scythians,  a  mysterious  and  still 
largely  unidentified  people  of  whom  we  shall  hear  more.  Bactria, 
Aiargiana  and  Sogdiana  became  Persian  provinces.  In  the  year  539 
B.C.  Cyrus  marched  into  Babylon,  acclaimed  by  the  whole  of  the 
East,  and  by  so  doing  transformed  Persia  into  the  largest  political 
structure  in  pre-Roman  antiquity. 

Cyrus  died  in  battle.  Under  pressure  from  Scythian  tribes,  the 
related  tribe  of  the  Massagetae  had  moved  westward  and  was  pouring 
down  from  the  steppes  of  southern  Russia.  It  was  while  combating 
this  menace  that  the  great  Achaemenid  fell  in  battle  in  the  summer 
of  530  B.C. 

Under  Cyrus'  son  Cambyses  the  Persian  empire  was  extended  to 
the  Nile.  Then,  after  a  period  of  revolution  and  counterrevolution, 
the  throne  passed  to  Darius,  the  king  who  was  defeated  by  the 
Greeks  at  Marathon  in  490  b.c.  Being  bred  in  the  spirit  of  classical 


This  frieze  from  a  corridor  in  the  Hall  of  Xerxes  at  Persepolis  shows  Syrians, 

Bactrians  and  Scythians  presenting  gifts  to  the  Great  King.  The  royal  seat  of 

Persepolis  lies  northeast  of  Shiraz  in  Persia. 


PERSIA  247 

antiquity,  we  only  know  Darius  in  the  hour  of  defeat  and  have 
never  given  him  due  credit  for  his  enduring  achievements  in  the 
East.  Darius  did  great  things  for  the  Persian  empire.  He,  too,  fought 
against  the  Scythians  far  north  of  the  Danube.  He  founded  the 
city  of  PersepoHs  and  died  during  preparations  for  a  vast  expedition 
against  Greece  which  he  hoped  would  wipe  out  the  Persian  defeat 
at  Marathon.  In  520  b.c.  he  had  a  record  of  his  achievements  carved 
into  the  rock  face  at  Behistun,  high  above  the  road  and  thus  beyond 
the  reach  of  would-be  desecrators.  The  mighty  Achaemenid  also 
built  himself  an  eternal  resting  place  in  the  steep  rock  face  at  Naksh- 
i-Rustam,  not  far  from  Persepolis,  where  the  burial  chambers  of 
Darius  the  Great  and  his  successors  can  still  be  seen  to  this  day. 

Darius'  successor,  Xerxes,  was  the  Ahasuerus  of  the  Book  of 
Esther  in  the  Old  Testament,  the  king  who  ruled  at  Susa  and  made 
Queen  Esther  his  consort.  Xerxes  was  defeated  by  the  Greeks  at 
Salamis  and  Plataea,  and  his  armies  were  finally  crushed  on  the 
Mycale  Peninsula.  As  a  result,  Persia  was  banished  to  Asia  for  all 
time  and  never  became  a  European  power.  Under  Xerxes'  successors, 
internal  feuds  and  dissensions  reduced  the  immense  Persian  empire  to 
political  impotence  and  laid  it  low  in  a  welter  of  blood  and  misery. 
Seen  from  the  West,  Alexander's  victories  over  the  Persians  were 
a  gigantic  spectacle,  but  in  reality  they  were  only  the  final  demoli- 
tion of  what  had  already  collapsed. 

The  southern  shores  of  the  Aral  Sea  are  broken  by  the  estuary 
of  the  Amu  Darya,  which  rises  in  the  southern  Pamirs,  threads  its 
way  through  the  mountainous  country  south  of  Bokhara  and  de- 
bouches into  the  Turanian  plain,  where  it  becomes  a  river  of  steppe 
and  desert.  For  some  hundreds  of  miles  it  forms  the  frontier  between 
Afghanistan  and  southern  Russia  and  divides  Turkmenistan  from 
Uzbekistan.  The  river's  course  runs  through  the  former  sites  of 
age-old  civilizations  such  as  the  vanished  realm  of  Chorasmia  and 
the  ancient  land  of  Bactria.  Since  the  Amu  Darya  is  identical  with 
the  renowned  Oxus  of  ancient  history,  it  is  obvious  that  its  waters 
still  conceal  thousands  of  undisclosed  secrets.  Modern  research  has 
indicated  that  in  ancient  times  the  Oxus  flowed  from  the  Aral  Sea, 
along  a  watercourse  now  completely  choked  with  silt,  into  the 
Caspian. 

One  evening  in  May  1880  a  British  political  officer  named  F.  C. 
Burton,  who  also  acted  as  Resident  in  Seh  Baba,  three  days'  journey 


248  THE  SILENT  PAST 

from  Kabul,  the  capital  of  Afghanistan,  was  sitting  in  his  police 
station  in  the  Tezin  Valley.  It  was  nine  o'clock,  and  Captain  Burton 
was  just  resigning  himself  to  a  night  as  uneventful  as  all  the  other 
lonely  nights  when  a  Moslem  burst  into  his  camp  and  raised  the 
alarm. 

Apparently,  three  Mohammedan  merchants  from  Bokhara  had 
been  traveling  along  the  road  from  Kabul  to  Peshawar.  They  were 
in  high  spirits  and,  suspecting  no  danger,  had  unwisely  left  their 
caravans  and  ridden  on  ahead.  The  three  worthy  Moslems  plied 
their  trade  between  Khiva,  Samarkand  and  India,  sometimes  taking 
their  caravans  as  far  as  Amritsar.  Their  intention  had  been,  as  usual,  to 
buy  up  large  quantities  of  tea,  silk  and  other  goods  in  northwest 
India  and  dispose  of  them  in  the  bazaars  along  the  route  between 
Afghanistan  and  southern  Russia.  On  this  occasion,  however,  they 
had  taken  no  money  with  them  on  their  journey  to  Peshawar,  for 
the  very  good  reason  that  Abd-er-Rahman,  later  Amir  of  Afghanis- 
tan, used  to  station  himself  at  Kunduz  in  order  to  search  passing 
caravans  and  confiscate  the  large  sums  of  money  needed  to  maintain 
his  army.  Instead  of  money,  therefore,  the  three  Moslems  had  been 
carrying  articles  of  value  unobtrusively  sewn  into  leather  wallets. 

Suddenly  they  were  attacked  by  bandits,  who  carried  them,  their 
servants  and  merchandise  off  into  the  hills.  Crossing  the  Tesinka 
Kothal,  the  brigands  and  their  prisoners  made  for  the  Karkatcha 
Range,  where  they  halted  in  some  lonely  caves  to  examine  their 
booty  at  leisure  and  divide  it. 

The  man  who  had  stumbled  into  Captain  Burton's  camp  was  one 
of  the  Mohammedans'  retainers,  who  had  escaped  from  his  guards. 
Taking  only  two  soldiers  with  him,  Burton  at  once  set  off  in  the 
darkness.  When,  toward  midnight,  he  came  upon  the  bandits  and 
took  them  by  surprise,  he  found  they  had  quarreled  among  them- 
selves and  four  of  them  lay  wounded  on  the  ground.  The  merchants 
sat  huddled  together,  not  daring  to  move,  and  remnants  of  their 
valuables  lay  scattered  about  the  cave. 

Burton  negotiated  with  the  bandits  and  persuaded  them  to  hand 
over  the  major  part  of  their  loot,  but  he  had  scarcely  left  when  he 
was  warned  that  they  were  planning  to  ambush  him  and  recover  it. 
Hearing  this,  he  lay  low  and  did  not  return  to  his  little  police  sta- 
tion until  six  o'clock  the  following  morning.  He  then  sent  someone 
to  inform  the  bandits  that  he  would  muster  a  force  and  go  after 


PERSIA  249 

them  if  they  did  not  surrender  the  rest  of  their  spoils,  and  was 
rewarded  by  the  return  of  a  further  batch.  Having  recovered  three- 
quarters  of  their  property,  the  merchants  continued  their  journey  to 
Peshawar.  The  three  Moslems  told  Burton  that  they  had  acquired 
most  of  the  contents  of  their  leather  wallets  at  Kabadian.  Kabadian 
or  Kahndian  may  have  been  one  of  the  ancient  townships  which 
were  buried  by  the  Oxus.  It  appeared  that  the  local  inhabitants  used 
to  go  digging  for  hidden  treasure  and  that  they  sometimes  found 
gold  and  valuables  in  the  ruins  of  the  vanished  town,  but  the  exact 
site  of  Kabadian  could  not  be  ehcited.  It  may  conceivably  have  been 
the  place  known  as  Kuad,  a  small  town  situated  not  on  the  Oxus 
but  on  its  tributary  the  Kafirnigan. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  Mohammedan  merchants  had  certainly  in- 
vested in  some  buried  treasure  and  taken  it  to  India  with  them  as 
a  medium  of  payment  instead  of  money.  The  total  value  of  the 
original  treasure  was  80,000  rupees,  an  enormous  sum  of  money  in 
1880,  of  which  52,000  rupees  were  recovered  when  the  remaining 
pieces  were  sold  in  Rawalpindi. 

We  lose  sight  of  the  Oxus  hoard  for  a  time,  but  it  eventually 
came  into  the  hands  of  General  Sir  Alexander  Cunningham,  whose 
collections  were  later  acquired  by  Sir  Augustus  Wollaston  Franks. 
Today,  its  adventurous  career  at  an  end,  the  treasure  reposes  in  the 
British  Museum. 

The  traders  of  northwest  India  who  specialized  in  antiquities 
of  this  type  sometimes  commissioned  reproductions  of  ancient 
bracelets,  bowls,  cylinders  and  animal  figures  in  gold  because 
they  knew  that  Western  archaeologists  were  interested  in  them. 
Franks  immediately  recognized  that  several  original  pieces  had  been 
imitated  in  gold,  but  he  managed  to  acquire  the  originals  as  well, 
and  it  at  once  became  apparent  how  much  finer  the  authentic  pieces 
were  than  the  imitations.  For  all  their  skill,  the  goldsmiths  of  Rawal- 
pindi had  been  unequal  to  the  task  of  imitating  silver  and  bronze 
antiques  in  gold  with  sufficient  perfection  to  disguise  the  fraud. 
It  should,  however,  be  mentioned  that  the  hoard  did  include  some 
magnificent  originals  in  gold. 

Among  other  items  in  the  Treasure  of  the  Oxus  were  1,500  coins 
from  the  Persian  satrapies,  tetradrachmas  from  Athens,  pieces  from 
Acanthus  and  Macedon,  about  two  hundred  gold  pieces  bearing  the 
name  of  Alexander  the  Great  and  coins  struck  by  Seleucus  Nicator, 


250  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Antiochus  I,  II  and  III,  Diodotus  and  Euthydemus.  These  coins 
ranged  in  period  between  the  fifth  and  second  centuries  B.C.,  but 
since  it  was  not  known  if  they  were  originally  found  with  the  other 
articles  and  were  unearthed  at  the  same  spot  and  in  the  same  layer, 
they  were  no  help  in  determining  the  date  of  the  entire  hoard. 
Comparative  research  has  indicated  that  the  Treasure  of  the  Oxus 
belongs  to  the  Achaemenian  period  in  Persian  history,  that  is  to  say, 
that  it  dates  from  the  sixth  to  fifth  centuries  e.g.,  when  the  Persian 
throne  was  occupied  by  King  Cyrus  II,  Darius  I,  Xerxes  I  and  their 
successors. 

There  is  still  no  clue  as  to  who  actually  concealed  the  treasure. 
General  Cunningham  suggested  that  2,000  years  ago  the  valuables 
had  belonged  to  an  old  Bactrian  family  and  that  they  were  hastily 
buried  by  a  member  of  that  family  when  Bactria  was  threatened 
by  internal  unrest  or  foreign  aggression.  As  the  sole  party  to  the 
secret,  he  may  have  meant  to  return  and  retrieve  his  cache,  but  this 
was  destined  never  to  be.  If  the  coins  actually  formed  part  of  the 
hoard,  the  last  owner  must  have  been  alive  in  209  e.g.,  for  the  most 
recent  coins  date  from  the  reign  of  Euthydemus. 

We  know  that  Alexander  the  Great  captured  the  royal  treasuries 
at  Susa,  Persepolis  and  Pasargadae,  together  with  their  immensely 
valuable  contents,  and  that  these  treasures  were  later  dispersed 
among  his  successors.  It  is  quite  possible,  therefore,  that  a  Bactrian 
family  may  have  acquired  a  valuable  nest  egg  of  this  sort. 

The  Treasure  of  the  Oxus  contains  many  objects  which  are  related 
to  early  Scythian  finds  made  in  western  Siberia,  so  the  Scytho- 
Siberian  works  of  art  in  the  Oxus  hoard  represent  a  link  between 
the  goldsmith's  art  of  Persia  under  the  Achaemenides  and  the  arts 
and  crafts  of  western  Siberia. 

Most  of  the  items  in  the  hoard  are  of  religious  significance.  Among 
these  are  gold  bowls  and  jugs,  cult  statuettes  of  gold  and  silver, 
dishes  portraying  Ahura-Mazda,  signet  rings  engraved  with  god- 
desses, lotus  blossoms  and  birds,  Persian  kings  at  sacrifice,  a  fish 
beaten  out  of  gold  leaf  (an  ancient  embodiment  of  magical  or  reli- 
gious ideas),  chariot  horses,  sun  symbols,  gold  plaquettes  bearing 
the  figures  of  bearded  men  wearing  cloaks,  crowns  and  earrings, 
and  others  depicting  a  Median  invention:  the  first  long  trousers  in 
world  history! 

The  religion  to  which  most  of  these  articles  were  dedicated  was 


PERSIA  251 

founded  by  Zarathustra,  who  lived  circa  600  B.C.  Zarathustra,  known 
to  the  Greeks  as  Zoroaster  and  to  the  Persians  as  Zardusht,  was  prob- 
ably born  in  Bactria,  that  is  to  say  in  the  eastern  region  of  Persia 
where  the  Treasure  of  the  Oxus  was  discovered.  Latest  research  puts 
the  year  of  Zarathustra's  birth  at  630  b.c.  His  disciples  incorporated 
doctrines  and  commandments  in  the  "sacred  book"  which  came  to 
be  called  the  Zend-Avesta,  meaning  roughly  "Interpretation  and 
Texts."  The  original  work  was  unfortunately  burned  when  Alex- 
ander the  Great  destroyed  the  palace  at  Persepolis,  and  only  one 
volume  and  a  few  fragments  are  still  extant.  However,  the  surviving 
gathas  of  the  Avesta  preserve  the  hymns  and  meditations  of  the 
prophet  in  their  original  purity. 

The  deeper  we  probe,  the  more  clearly  Zarathustra  emerges  as  one 
of  the  greatest  preachers  of  divine  truth  and  religious  perception. 
Zarathustra  believed  implicitly  in  a  single  supreme  god.  It  is  true  that 
the  old  gods  of  the  Indo-Europeans  were  also  invisible  and  that  the 
Indo-Europeans  of  ancient  India  probably  made  no  images  in  human 
or  animal  shape,  but  when  Zarathustra  started  to  teach  he  railed 
against  the  fact  that  men  were  worshiping  not  only  large  numbers 
of  gods  but  animals  as  well.  His  wrath  did  not  confine  itself  to  these 
"heathen"  practices  but  extended  to  the  Alagi,  the  priests  who  con- 
trolled the  sacrifice,  liturgy  and  half  the  daily  life  of  Media  from 
their  religious  center  at  Raga,  not  far  from  modern  Teheran. 

Zarathustra  alone  was  responsible  for  introducing  the  Persians  to 
the  idea  of  a  single,  all-embracing,  invisible  god.  He  attacked  the  cult 
of  Mithras  and  the  sanguinary  hecatombs  associated  with  it.  For 
Zarathustra,  the  universe  was  divided  into  two  hostile  camps  ruled 
by  two  hostile,  elemental  beings,  Ahura-Mazda  the  good  spmt  and 
Ahriman  the  spirit  of  evil,  forces  that  have  been  competing  for 
mastery  of  the  world  since  all  eternity.  Ahriman,  the  Indo-European 
Devil,  was  endowed  with  creative  power,  which  showed  that  Zara- 
thustra was  well  aware  of  the  perilous  ambiguity  and  diversity  of 
evil  and  of  the  highly  active  and  sometimes,  even,  creative  nature  of 
the  powers  of  darkness. 

Man  is,  however,  free  to  support  the  side  of  his  choice,  and  it  was 
in  order  to  help  him  and  set  him  on  the  right  path  that  Ahura- 
Mazda  made  his  teachings  known  through  Zarathustra.  Three  days 
after  his  death  a  man  comes  before  the  supreme  tribunal,  which  con- 
demns the  evil  and  godless  to  perpetual  torment  and  grants  im- 


252  THE  SILENT  PAST 

mortality  of  the  soul  to  the  righteous.  Zarathustra's  doctrine  is  funda- 
mentally hopeful  because  it  implies  that  the  spirit  of  goodness  will 
some  day  triumph  and  that  mankind  will  be  redeemed. 

The  teachings  of  Zarathustra  had  been  in  circulation  for  some  two 
hundred  years  before  they  were  embraced  by  Darius  I.  But, 
although  the  latter  proclaimed  the  Zoroastrian  faith  as  the  national 
religion  of  Persia,  the  common  people  still  clung  to  their  ancient 
beliefs  and  the  Magi  stubbornly  resisted  extinction. 

Persia's  art  was  fructified  partly  by  Zoroastrianism  and  partly  by 
the  ancient  civilizations  of  Mesopotamia,  the  Hittites,  the  Egyptians 
and  the  Greeks.  The  British  curator  O.  M.  Dalton,  who  wrote  an 
important  work  on  the  Treasure  of  the  Oxus,  pointed  out  that 
Persian  art  served  no  apprenticeship  but  sprang  abruptly  into  being 
when  the  Achaemenides  seized  power. 

Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  architects  and  sculptors 
of  Naksh-i-Rustam,  Persepolis  and  Susa  and  the  artists  of  this  often 
savage  world  of  horsemen  also  achieved  something  imperishable  on 
a  smaller  scale;  nor  can  it  be  asserted  that  their  art,  sometimes 
strangely  close  to  us  and  animated  by  the  perpetual  inspiration  of 
a  great  religion,  is  doomed  to  oblivion. 


EURASIA 


THE  SCYTHIANS 

It  is  only  within  the  last  himdred  years  or  so  that  Southern 
Russia  has  been  definitely  added  to  Europe.  Before  that  time 
Asiatic  tribes  have  been  more  at  home  in  it  than  European. 

—Ellis  H.  Minns,  Scythians  and  Greeks, 
p.  I,  Cambridge,  1913 

"taking  into  account  all  the  characteristics  of  man,  the  Scythians 
occupy  first  place  only  in  one  respect.  Though  I  admire  nothing 
else  in  them,  they  surpass  all  other  peoples  in  the  single  fact  that 
none  who  attacks  them  escapes,  and  if  they  do  not  wish  to  be  found 
no  one  can  lay  hands  on  them." 

Herodotus  had  with  his  own  eyes  seen  the  Scythian  homeland, 
which  lay  by  the  Black  Sea  in  what  is  now  the  Ukraine.  The  famous 
pre-Christian  traveler  and  "father  of  history,"  who  was  born  in 
485  B.C.,  had  visited  the  ancient  Greek  colony  of  Olbia,  now  the 
town  of  Nikolaev  in  the  Black  Sea  estuary  of  the  river  Bug,  and  had 
even  traveled  up  the  Borysthenes.  The  Borysthenes  of  antiquity  was 
the  Dnieper  of  modern  times,  and  ran  through  the  heart  of  the 
Scythian  domain.  Seldom  has  an  eyewitness  explored  and  described 
anything  of  comparable  importance,  for  the  Scythians  were  a 
mysterious  people  who  first  emerged  as  a  recognizable  force  in 
world  history  about  700  B.C.  and  made  their  final  exit  about  200  b.c. 

What  sort  of  people  the  Scythians  were,  where  they  came  from 
and  what  relationship  they  bore  to  other  races  are  all  questions 
that  still  remain  in  doubt.  The  Scythians  had  no  writing  of  their  own 
and  left  behind  no  written  documents  of  any  kind.  It  is  seldom 
realized  how  quickly  people  without  written  traditions  lapse  into 
oblivion  and  to  what  extent  their  real  importance  is  overshadowed  by 
much  smaller  races  with  a  more  substantial  literature  to  bequeath. 
By  about  a.d.  400  the  life,  deeds  and  renown  of  the  Scythians  had 
faded  so  completely  that  they  became  lost  to  contemporary  view 
and  lay  in  their  graves  until  only  a  century  ago  before  being  brought 
to  life  once  more.  Not  until  the  present  has  it  dawned  on  us  that 
the  Scythians'  customs,  material  culture  and  whole  way  of  life 
made  them  one  of  the  more  fascinating  peoples  to  have  walked  the 
earth. 

253 


254  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  great  speculation  surrounding  the  Scythians  is  due  partly  to 
the  fact  that  the  ancient  term  "Scythian"  was  not  a  racial  designa- 
tion and  had  no  purely  ethnological  meaning.  Herodotus  saw  the 
Scythians  as  a  fluctuating  political  force.  There  is,  however,  a  second 
early  source  of  information  about  the  Scythians.  This  was  no  less 
a  person  than  Hippocrates  of  Cos,  a  contemporary  of  Socrates 
and  the  most  celebrated  of  all  Greek  physicians,  who  was  more 
interested  in  the  Scythians'  geographical  location  and  the  way  in 
which  they  were  affected  by  their  natural  environment. 

The  Greeks  called  the  Scythians  Scythae,  a  name  first  mentioned 
by  the  poet  Hesiod  in  the  eighth  century  b.c.  The  Scythians'  own 
name  for  themselves  was  Scoloti,  and  the  Persians  referred  to  them 
as  Sacae.  The  origin  of  the  name  is  unknown,  but  it  may  have  been 
derived  from  the  Indo-European  word  sequ,  meaning  "pursue." 
Again,  the  Greeks'  Scythae  may  have  been  a  modification  of  the 
Hebrew  name  Ashkenaz.  Genesis:  x,  3,  tells  us  that  Ashkenaz  was  a 
grandson  of  Noah,  and  according  to  Jeremiah  the  people  that  bore 
this  name  lived  somewhere  in  the  region  of  Armenia.  The  difficulty 
of  interpreting  even  the  Scythians'  name  and  the  manifold  problems 
raised  by  it  are  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  Jews  of  later  times 
used  Ashkenaz  as  a  name  for  what  is  today  Germany. 

The  Scythians  were  at  once  many  nations  and  one  nation,  visible 
and  invisible.  They  appeared,  only  to  vanish  once  more.  All  refer- 
ences to  them  sound  typically  Asiatic,  but  the  writers  of  classical 
antiquity  used  the  term  Scythian  to  cover  all  the  barbarian  in- 
habitants of  what  is  now  Russia,  and  in  the  fifth  century  b.c.  it  was 
employed  as  a  generic  term  for  the  peoples  of  European  Russia. 
When  Alexander  the  Great  brought  back  news  of  similar  tribes  in 
Asia  the  term  was  extended  to  Asiatic  tribes  as  well.  It  is  clear  from 
a  sentence  in  his  Histories  (IV,  Ixxxi)  that  Herodotus  distinguished 
between  genuine  Scythians  and  the  various  Scythian  tribes:  "I  found 
it  impossible  to  determine  the  Scythians'  numbers.  I  was  given 
very  diverse  estimates  of  the  size  of  their  population,  being  told 
sometimes  that  it  was  very  large  and  then  again  that  there  were 
very  few  genuine  Scythians." 

One  approach  to  the  problem  may  be  to  concentrate  on  Hippoc- 
rates' description  of  what  the  Scythians  looked  hke.  In  his  work 
on  Airs,  Waters  and  Places  he  reported  that  they  were  plump  and 
fleshy,  sluggish  and  flabby,  with  fat  bellies  and  no  visible  joints. 


EURASIA  255 

The  Greek  physician  attributed  this  to  their  not  being  swaddled 
as  babies  and  to  their  habit  of  not  walking  if  they  could  ride.  They 
had  a  reddish  complexion  "because  of  the  great  cold  in  their 
country"  and  their  obesity  rendered  them  unprolific. 

This  description  does  not  match  the  very  precise  details  given  by 
Herodotus.  Why  could  no  one  attack  these  fat  men  unscathed? 
Besides,  Herodotus  paints  the  Scythians  as  tent-dwelling  nomads 
and  mounted  archers.  If  they  really  were  the  most  skillful  horsemen 
in  ancient  history,  as  many  accounts  would  have  us  believe,  they 
could  hardly  have  been  plump  and  flabby. 

Hippocrates  ascribes  their  physical  condition  to  their  uniform 
way  of  life.  The  men  always  traveled  on  horseback,  the  women  in 
carts.  The  country  was  perpetually  cold  and  misty.  The  Scythians' 
reddish  or  reddish-brown  complexion  might  well  have  applied  to 
the  Tatars.  We  know,  for  instance,  that  Kublai  Khan,  who  ruled 
the  Mongol  empire  in  1260,  had  a  red  and  white  complexion.  Marco 
Polo  tells  us  that  Genghis  Khan,  who  brought  the  whole  of  central 
Asia  from  China  to  the  Oxus  under  Mongol  domination,  was  a 
source  of  surprise  to  himself  because  he  was  brown-complexioned 
whereas  most  members  of  his  family  had  reddish  hair  and  blue  eyes. 
The  Mongol  prince  Batu,  who  subjugated  Russia  and  devastated 
Poland,  Silesia  and  Hungary  between  1235  and  1246,  was  said  to 
have  had  a  reddish  face.  The  Flemish  Franciscan  traveler  de  Ruys- 
broeck,  who  undertook  a  mission  to  the  Mongol  emperor's  court 
at  Karakorum  between  1253  and  1255  at  the  behest  of  Pope  Innocent 
IV  and  Louis  IX  of  France,  mentioned  the  reddish  complexion  of 
Batu  Khan  in  his  report,  which  was  written  in  Latin.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  the  vital  sentence  should  be  translated  as  follows: 
"His  face  was  entirely  covered  with  red  patches."  I  myself  have 
seen  Tatars  in  the  Volga  estuary  whose  complexion  appeared  gray 
or  olive-green,  though  it  should  be  remembered  that  complexion 
and  pigmentation  can  change  in  the  course  of  centuries  and  that 
continuous  interbreeding  must  have  taken  place  in  the  past  seven 
hundred  years. 

Hippocrates  tells  us  that  Scythians  were  very  easygoing,  and 
once  more  attributes  this  to  the  time  they  spent  on  horseback.  His 
remarks  are  limited  to  the  ruling  class,  however,  for  the  lower 
orders  were  evidently  not  so  devoid  of  temperament.  In  his  Natural 
History  Pliny  includes  the  Massagetae  among  the  tribes  of  Asiatic 


256 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


The  Black  Sea 


Russia.  He  tells  us  that  each  man  had  a  woman  of  his  own  but 
shared  her  with  his  fellow  tribesmen.  This  was  a  practice  among 
the  Massagetae,  however,  not  the  Scythians,  Marco  Polo  reports 
that  the  Tatars,  who  were  often  identified  with  the  Scythians,  re- 
garded marital  infidelity  as  a  vice  and  thought  it  thoroughly  repre- 
hensible (I,  xlvii).  We  do  not  know  whether  the  Scythians  were 
monogamous  or  polygamous.  In  most  Scythian  graves  the  women 
who  were  obliged  to  keep  men  company  in  death  were  buried  in 
the  same  pit,  but  some  distance  apart.  The  only  instances  where 
women  who  had  shared  death  with  their  menfolk  were  buried  in 
the  same  coffin  are  the  Scythian  graves  of  Pazyryk,  east  of  the 
upper  reaches  of  the  Ob.  Tamara  Talbot  Rice  takes  this  as  an  indica- 
tion that  wives  and  not  concubines  were  involved.  Although  women 
occupied  a  very  subordinate  position  among  the  Scythians,  the  kill- 
ing of  women  after  their  husbands'  death  should  be  regarded  not 
as  a  mark  of  humiliation  but  as  a  signal  honor. 
Among  the  Nile-Hamitic  tribes  of  East  Africa,  and  notably  the 


EURASIA  257 

Nandi,  it  was  customary  for  a  man  who  retired  to  his  hut  with 
another  man's  wife  to  stick  his  spear  into  the  ground  in  front  of 
the  entrance.  Herodotus  describes  a  similar  custom  among  the 
Massagetae,  who  used  to  hang  their  quivers  up  outside  their  covered 
wagons  when  they  wanted  to  spend  an  undisturbed  siesta  with 
another  woman. 

For  all  that,  it  seems  doubtful  that  such  tent-to-tent  dalliance  took 
place  among  the  Scythians.  The  polygamous  Asiatic  tribes  who  keep 
their  womenfolk  in  subjection  insist  that  they  remain  in  purdah 
with  the  other  women  and  make  themselves  available  to  their  own 
husbands  and  no  one  else. 

Many  similarities  have  been  reported  between  the  ancient  Scyth- 
ians and  the  Russians,  probably  because  the  Russians  adopted  a  num- 
ber of  cultural  assets  from  the  Tatars  and  because  intermarriage 
between  Tatars  and  Russians  went  on  for  centuries.  The  apparent 
resemblance  between  Russians  and  Scythians  probably  depends, 
therefore,  on  Tatar  intermediaries.  The  Russians  borrowed  a  great 
deal  from  the  nomadic  tribes  of  their  vast  territories,  notably  via 
the  Cossacks.  The  latter,  in  particular,  borrowed  extensively  from 
their  traditional  foes  in  matters  of  horsemanship  and  dress.  Many 
Russian  expressions  for  articles  of  clothing  are  of  Tatar  origin.  When 
Herodotus  records  that  the  Argippaei,  who  wore  Scythian  clothing, 
had  flat  noses  and  large  chins  (IV,  xxiii),  he  corroborates  informa- 
tion about  central  Asia  given  by  travelers  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
who  say  much  the  same  about  the  Tatars.  Many  of  the  Crimean 
Tatars,  too,  are  squat  men  with  broad  faces,  small  eyes  and  a  tend- 
ency toward  plumpness. 

Like  the  Tatars,  the  nomadic  Scythians  never  planted  crops,  tilled 
the  soil  or  built  houses,  but  carried  their  dwellings  with  them  on 
horse-drawn  carts.  These  abodes  were  rectangular  constructions 
like  large  boxes,  woven  out  of  osiers  and  covered  with  black  felt 
rubbed  with  tallow  or  sheep's  milk  as  a  protection  against  rain. 
Marco  Polo  reports  the  same  thing  of  the  Tatars  and  supplies  the 
additional  information  that  they  lived  exclusively  on  meat  and 
milk  and  never  stayed  long  in  any  one  place  because  they  were 
always  on  the  move  in  search  of  fresh  pasturage. 

Linguistic  research  has  done  little  to  solve  the  problem  of  the 
Scythians'  origin.  Many  authorities  assume  that  they  were  of  Mongol 
extraction,  others  that  they  were  of  Iranian  or  generally  Indo- 


258  THE  SILENT  PAST 

European  stock.  Speaking  in  Moscow  in  1887,  Professor  V.  T.  Miller 
suggested  that  the  Scythic  language  was  related  to  Iranian  but 
strongly  influenced  by  the  Uralo-Altaic  tongues.  Professor  T.  I. 
Mishenko,  the  Russian  translator  of  Herodotus,  espoused  a  similar 
theory,  and  the  British  scholar  Ellis  H.  Minns,  who  wrote  an  ex- 
tremely useful  work  on  the  Scythians  and  Greeks  in  191 3,  also 
recognized  the  presence  in  Scythic  of  Iranian  elements  and  Mongol 
influence. 

Since  we  are  unable  to  distinguish  the  Scythians  from  the  other 
ancient  peoples  of  southern  Russia  either  from  historical  sources, 
linguistic  attributes  or  ethnological  characteristics,  our  sole  re- 
maining hope  of  identifying  them  lies  in  anthropology.  In  fact,  the 
famous  burial  mounds  or  kurgans  of  southern  Russia,  eastern  Europe 
and  western  Siberia  have  yielded  human  remains  which  indubitably 
belonged  to  Scythians.  Were  the  skulls  all  wide  or  all  narrow, 
anthropologists  would  be  able  to  form  conclusions  about  their  racial 
identity,  but  we  are  unfortunately  confronted  by  yet  another 
riddle.  For  instance,  five  skulls  dating  from  the  fourth  century  B.C. 
were  found  in  the  famous  grave  at  Chertomlyk  in  the  valley  of  the 
Dnieper.  Describing  the  find,  K.  E.  von  Baer  stated  that  two  were 
wide,  two  narrow,  and  one  average.  It  is  well  known  that  at  every 
stage  in  history  there  have  been  nations  whose  ruling  class  belonged 
to  one  racial  type  while  the  lower  orders  belonged  to  another,  but 
in  this  case  archaeologists  were  unable  to  tell  which  were  the  masters 
and  which  the  servants.  After  years  of  research,  the  Russian 
authority  Prince  Bobrinskoy  wrote  that  some  of  the  skeletal  remains 
found  in  Scythian  graves  revealed  Mongol  characteristics  while 
others  were  purely  European.  It  is  now  generally  accepted  that  the 
Scythians  were  of  Iranian  stock  and,  as  such,  belonged  to  the 
Indo-European  race.  It  is  also  clear  that  they  all  spoke  the  same 
language,  probably  an  Iranian  dialect. 

Even  though  there  is  no  more  scientifically  reliable  method  of 
defining  the  Scythians'  racial  type,  one  avenue  of  approach  still 
remains  open  to  us:  their  culture.  When  General  Melgunov  opened 
the  first  Scythian  graves  in  southern  Russia  in  1763,  and  men  like 
Clarke,  Pallas,  Dubois  de  Montpereux,  Sumarokov  and  many  others 
followed  his  example  by  uncovering  more  and  more  of  these 
mysterious  burial  mounds  of  2,500  years  ago,  the  outlines  of 
Scythian  culture  began  to  re-emerge  in  the  wide  steppes  of  southern 


EURASIA  259 

Russia,  One  extraordinarily  fortunate  discovery  was  made  in  the 
year  1865  by  Wilhelm  Radloff  at  Katanda  in  the  southern  Altai, 
where  the  largest  grave  of  all  was  found  in  an  enormous  cemetery. 
Born  at  Berlin  in  1837,  Radloff  was  a  student  of  Turkology  and  had 
been  traveling  in  Russia  since  1858  in  his  capacity  as  Inspector  of 
Tatar  Schools,  His  discoveries  made  it  clear  that  Scythian  graves 
were  also  be  to  found  in  the  southern  Altai,  over  1,600  miles  from 
the  sites  on  the  Dnieper,  Don  and  Kuban.  Radloff  had  chanced  upon 
some  graves  that  were  so  well  protected  by  a  thick  layer  of  ice 
that  both  occupants  and  clothing  had  remained  well  preserved  for 
more  than  2,000  years.  Radloff  gazed  in  wonder  at  the  funerary  gifts, 
the  fine  pieces  of  bronze,  the  strangely  garbed  bodies  and  the  color- 
ful Scythian  way  of  life  to  which  they  had  belonged,  once  con- 
signed to  oblivion  but  now  recalled  from  the  dead.  Sadly  enough, 
when  the  ice  melted  and  nature's  most  efficient  preservative  flowed 
away,  part  of  the  find  disintegrated  before  it  could  be  saved. 

Finally,  in  the  Pazyryk  Valley  in  the  Altai,  the  Russian  archaeol- 
ogist S.  I.  Rudenko  came  upon  about  forty  graves  which  had  also 
been  so  well  protected  by  the  layers  of  ice  which  clothe  the  soil 
of  Siberia  that  the  art,  life  and  history  of  the  people  of  the  Eurasian 
steppes  appeared  in  an  entirely  new  light. 

The  Scythian  race  has  been  resurrected  from  the  many  burial 
mounds  that  have,  been  laid  bare.  Let  us  watch  their  mounted 
archers  ride  by  once  more,  enter  the  presence  of  their  kings  and 
tribal  chieftains,  peer  into  the  graves  where  they  were  buried  with 
horses  and  huge  retinues,  examine  their  superbly  ornamented  gold- 
smith's work,  learn  to  know  their  gods,  beasts  and  sacrifices,  hear 
of  the  dangerous  life  their  soothsayers  led  so  long  ago. 


EURASIA 

COMPANY  FOR  THE  KING 

Having  rubbed  and  washed  their  heads,  they  deal  with  their 
bodies  as  follows.  Leaning  three  poles  together,  they  pull  sheets  of 
felt  over  them,  tie  them  up  tightly  and  throw  red-hot  stones  into 
a  tub  within  the  poles  and  sheets.  Now  hemp  grows  in  their 
country.  The  Scythians  take  the  seeds  of  this  heinp,  slip  beneath 
the  felt  sheets  and  scatter  the  seeds  on  the  glowing  stones,  thus 
producing  smoke  and  diffusing  steam  better  than  in  any  Hellenic 
steam-bath.  And  the  Scythians  roar  with  pleasure  in  their  sweat- 
house. 

—Herodotus,  IV,  Ixxiii  and  Ixxv 

ABOUT  1 200  B.C.  Russia  was  invaded  by  a  strange  people  known 
as  the  Cimmerians,  who  were  described  by  the  earliest  Greek 
writers  as  "a  people  by  the  ocean  in  the  extreme  west,  wrapped 
in  darkness  and  mist."  We  do  not  know  the  true  identity  of 
Homer's  "ne'er  sunlit  neighbors  of  Okeanos  close  to  the  entrance 
of  Hades."  At  all  events,  they  were  not  a  Scythian  people,  nor 
under  any  circumstances  should  they  be  confused  with  the  Cimbri 
of  Germany.  In  about  1000  b.c.  the  historical  Cimmerians  lived 
around  the  Strait  of  Kerch,  known  in  the  ancient  world  as  the 
Cimmerian  Bosporus.  Because  Europe  and  Asia  are  always  treated 
as  two  distinct  entities  by  Western  historians,  the  long  but  coherent 
chain  of  events  that  stretches  from  the  Pacific  and  across  the  whole 
of  Asia  and  Europe  does  not  enter  into  our  calculations.  One  event 
has  always  given  rise  to  the  next,  a  reciprocal  action  not  confined 
to  the  Balkans  and  central  Europe  but  also  embracing  the  widely 
separated  areas  of  China,  central  Asia,  Russia,  Greece  and  Rome. 
Enough  has  been  dug  up  in  recent  years  between  the  Dnieper  and 
Yenisey,  the  Urals  and  the  Ordos  desert  to  justify  the  compiling 
of  a  general  history  of  Eurasia.  History  must  continually  be  re- 
written because  the  present  explains  and  reveals  so  much  about 
the  past.  Sometimes  an  interval  of  many  hundreds  of  years  has  to 
elapse  before  the  effects  and,  consequently,  the  true  significance 
of  an  historical  event  can  be  assessed. 

The  interaction  of  Asiatic  peoples  and  the  migrations  into  Europe 
caused  by  their  mutual  impingement  have  promoted  a  new  attitude 
toward  history.  What  happened  in  China  did,  in  fact,  have  very 

260 


EURASIA  261 

considerable  effects  on  central  Europe.  This  form  of  reciprocal 
action  is  destined  to  exercise  a  profound  influence  on  the  future 
course  of  European  history,  too.  One  has  only  to  think  of  China's 
unresolved  relationship  with  Outer  Mongolia! 

The  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  eruption  of  Germanic 
tribes  into  western  Europe,  the  migration  of  Slavic  tribes  into  central 
and  southern  Europe,  the  Renaissance,  the  revival  of  western 
Europe's  interest  in  classical  antiquity  and,  finally,  the  voyages  that 
led  to  the  discovery  of  the  New  World— behind  all  these  gigantic 
upheavals  lurked  the  hordes  of  central  Asia,  as  the  American  Sinol- 
ogist Montgomery  McGovern  so  rightly  pointed  out  in  1939. 

Emperor  Hsiian  Wang,  who  ruled  China  between  827  and  781 
B.C.,  in  this  sense  "made"  European  history.  During  the  time  of  the 
Chou  dynasty  to  which  he  belonged,  the  north  and  northwest  of 
China  was  invaded  by  the  seminomadic  Hsiung-nu.  The  Chinese 
emperor  marched  against  the  invading  Hsiung-nu,  defeated  them  in 
the  region  of  the  modern  provinces  of  Shansi  and  northern  Shensi, 
and  pursued  his  dangerous  adversaries  into  the  mountains  from  which 
they  had  been  making  their  mounted  forays  into  the  fertile  plains 
of  China. 

By  withdrawing  to  more  westerly  grazing  lands  the  Hsiung-nu 
exerted  pressure  on  other  nomads  and  so  sparked  off  a  series  of  mi- 
grations which  ran  through  central  Asia  until  they  impinged  on  the 
Massagetae,  who  lived  in  the  area  between  the  Caspian  and  the 
Aral  Sea.  In  their  quest  for  fresh  grazing  land  for  their  horses, 
these  powerful  nomads,  who  according  to  Strabo  used  to  kill  off  the 
old  men  of  their  tribe  in  order  to  preserve  their  mobility,  attacked 
the  Scythians.  The  Scythians,  who  may  originally  have  roamed 
east  Turkestan,  turned  on  the  East  Cimmerians.  The  tribes  of  the 
endless  Asiatic  steppes  may  also  have  been  set  in  motion  in  this 
way,  as  Ellsworth  Huntington  and  Tamara  Talbot  Rice  suggest, 
due  to  a  sfreat  drought  about  800  B.C.  In  the  ensuing  wars  between 

DO  O 

the  Cimmerians  and  the  Scythians  the  latter  proved  victorious. 

The  secret  of  the  Scythian  success  lay  in  the  way  their  hordes 
charged,  hit  the  enemy  hard  and  then  withdrew  at  lightning  speed. 
The  Scythians  pushed  on  farther  westward,  migrated  into  southern 
Russia  and  settled  there  between  722  and  705  b.c,  partly  as  nomads 
and  partly  as  sedentary  communities. 

This  was  when  the  true  history  of  the  Scythians  began.  They 


6eflionc>f 
Barrow  sir 
Tntnch. 


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e*rtH  UlowTXbemttte  ini 
abo\*'TrencK.Horsti 
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fi^.^i.  Plan  of  Lowest-  Cha>i 


The  Russian  archaeologist  Weselowski  dug  up  an  extremely  interesting  burial 
mound  at  Kostromskaya  in  the  Kuban  region.  This  diagrammatic  illustration 
of  it  shows  how  a  kurgan  was  arranged.  In  the  lowest  chamber  lay  the  dead 
chieftain,  and  above  him  were  buried  the  thirteen  or  more  people  who  ac- 
companied him  into  death.  Around  the  rectangle  of  the  actual  grave  were 
found  the  skeletons  of  twenty-two  horses.  The  famous  golden  stag  on  the  iron 
shield  was  also  discovered  in  this  grave. 


EURASIA  263 

must  have  been  genuinely  dangerous  opponents  in  war,  because  in 
the  year  512  b.c.  they  succeeded  in  repelling  an  invasion  by  the 
Persian  king  Darius  and  in  325  b.c.  they  annihilated  an  expeditionary 
force  under  the  command  of  Alexander's  general  Zopyrion.  They 
were  not  driven  out  of  the  Balkans  and  the  eastern  half  of  central 
Europe  by  the  up-and-coming  Celts  until  after  300  b.c,  but  were 
eventually  crushed  in  southern  Russia  by  the  Sarmatians.  Perhaps 
their  once  tough  and  battle-hardened  way  of  life  had  been  vitiated 
by  a  superabundance  of  slaves,  spoils  and  riches. 

Their  downfall  may,  on  the  other  hand,  have  been  due  to  their 
womenfolk,  who  were  completely  subordinate  to  their  husbands. 
During  the  long  treks  on  which  thousands  of  slave  girls  accom- 
panied the  Scythian  columns,  the  Scythians  were  obviously  unable 
to  treat  their  own  wives  any  differently  from  their  concubines. 
Thus,  both  wives  and  slave  girls  rode  in  carts  the  whole  time,  with 
the  result  that  in  the  long  run  their  health  suffered  in  the  way 
mentioned  by  Hippocrates. 

The  people  who  ultimately  defeated  the  Scythians,  the  Sarmatians, 
had  womenfolk  of  quite  another  caliber.  Sarmatian  women  took 
part  in  war,  rode  about  freely  and  won  such  a  reputation  for  strength 
and  independence  that  they  supphed  a  basis  and  pattern  for  the 
Amazon  stories  of  antiquity.  According  to  legend,  the  Amazons 
were  warlike  women  whose  name  was  derived  from  the  Greek  ex- 
pression "breastless,"  because,  if  we  are  to  believe  Hippocrates, 
they  amputated  their  right  breast  to  help  them  string  bows  more 
easily.  This  derivation  is  probably  erroneous,  and  it  is  more  likely 
that  the  name  is  related  to  jnaza,  which  is  the  Circassian  expression 
for  "moon"  and  would  denote  an  association  with  a  moon  cult.  The 
Scythians  called  the  Sarmatian  Amazons  "Oiorpata,"  from  oior 
(man)  and  pata  (kill).  Amazons  are  said  to  have  lived  on  the 
eastern  and  southern  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  and  in  the  Caucasus, 
notably  in  the  area  of  Trebizond,  now  the  port  of  Trabzon  in  north- 
east Anatolia. 

When  referring  to  Scythians,  the  Greeks  always  meant  nomads. 
According  to  Herodotus  there  were  also  "agricultural  Scythians," 
"royal  Scythians"  and  "plow  Scythians"  in  the  Ukraine,  but  these 
were  probably  tribes  who  merely  plundered  the  earlier  residents 
of  the  black-earth  district  and  disposed  of  their  surplus  production 
of  grain  to  the  Greeks  on  the  Black  Sea  coast,  bartering  it  for 


264  THE  SILENT  PAST 

vessels  and  metalwork  of  Greek  manufacture.  Herodotus  himself 
tells  us  that,  having  always  been  tent  nomads  and  mounted  archers, 
the  Scythians  generally  supported  themselves  bv  cattle  breeding 
rather  than  agriculture  and  that  they  owned  horse-drawn  dwellings 
rather  than  towns  and  fortresses.  Their  homeland,  a  vast  area  of 
plains,  was  rich  in  grass  and  well  irrigated  by  the  many  wide  rivers 
that  flowed  through  it.  The  Scythians  had  inexhaustible  reserves 
of  pasturage  for  their  cattle,  although,  as  the  knowledgeable 
Herodotus  added  darkly,  grass  was  a  sovereign  cause  of  galls. 

We  learn  of  gods  with  strange  names,  of  the  supreme  god 
Pappaeus  and  his  consort  Apia,  of  their  son  Oetosyrus,  of  a 
Scythian  Aphrodite  named  Artimpasa  and  a  Scythian  Neptune 
called  Thamiasadas.  The  Scythians  had  no  idols,  altars  or  temples, 
and  Herodotus  stated  that  the  only  altars  and  efRgies  they  had 
ever  possessed  were  dedicated  to  one  particular  god  who  was  the 
equivalent  of  Ares. 

The  Scythians  did,  however,  sacrifice  to  their  gods.  Having  tied 
the  forelegs  of  the  sacrificial  beast  together,  the  man  in  charge 
tugged  at  the  rope  so  that  the  animal  fell  over.  Then,  calling  upon 
his  god,  he  threw  a  noose  around  its  neck  and  garroted  it  by  insert- 
ing a  stick  in  the  noose  and  twisting  it  to  form  a  tourniquet.  The 
meat  was  cooked  on  the  spot.  Since  the  nomadic  Scythians  in- 
habited plains  which  were  "dreadfully  deficient  in  wood,"  they 
are  reported  to  have  devised  an  interesting  expedient.  Having 
skinned  the  sacrificial  beast  and  removed  the  bones,  they  boiled 
the  meat  in  a  caldron— if  they  owned  one— apparently  using  the 
bones  as  fuel  for  their  fire.  If  they  had  no  caldron  they  threw  all 
the  meat  into  the  animal's  stomach,  added  water,  and  lit  a  fire  of 
bones  beneath  it.  "Bones  burn  wonderfully,"  writes  Herodotus, 
"and  the  animal's  stomach  can  hold  the  meat  cut  off  the  bones 
tolerably  well.  Thus  the  ox  has  to  cook  itself,  as  does  every 
sacrificial  beast."  Horses  were  an  especially  favored  form  of  sacrifice 
among  the  Scythians,  who  used  to  throw  out  the  first  cuts  from 
meat  and  entrails  to  the  accompaniment  of  special  rites. 

Sacrifice  varied  only  in  the  case  of  Ares.  Wherever  the  Scythians 
pitched  camp  they  built  a  shrine  to  him  out  of  bundles  of  brush- 
wood heaped  up  to  form  a  tall  tower.  At  its  summit,  in  front  of  the 
sacred  image  of  Ares,  they  placed  an  ancient  iron  sword  to  which 


EURASIA  265 

they  sacrificed  horses  and  other  grazing  animals.  They  did  not 
stop  there,  however.  Of  all  the  prisoners  taken  during  the  Scythians' 
never-ending  wars,  one  in  every  hundred  was  sacrijficed.  Pouring 
wine  on  their  heads,  the  Scythians  slaughtered  them  over  a  vessel 
and  poured  the  blood  on  the  sword.  Then  they  cut  off  their  victims' 
right  arms  and  hurled  them  into  the  air,  leaving  them  to  lie  where 
they  fell.  Herodotus  stresses  that  pigs  were  never  sacrificed  and 
that  the  Scythians  neither  kept  them  nor  ate  their  meat. 

The  Scythians'  warlike  customs  tended  to  be  extremely  gruesome. 
When  a  Scythian  had  killed  a  man  he  drank  his  blood  and  brought 
his  enemy's  head  to  the  king;  only  then  could  he  share  in  the 
spoils  of  war.  The  victor  hung  his  opponent's  scalp  on  the  reins  of 
his  charger  "as  a  towel"  and  "flaunted  it,"  as  Herodotus  puts  it.  The 
man  who  had  most  scalps  enjoyed  the  highest  reputation.  The 
Scythians  also  made  capes  out  of  their  victims'  skin  or  stuffed  them 
and  led  them  about  on  horseback.  Many  of  the  customs  of  these 
savage  tribesmen  are  too  disgusting  to  mention  here,  but  there  is 
no  doubt  that  they  used  to  cover  their  deadliest  enemies'  skulls 
with  leather  or,  if  they  were  wealthy  enough,  gold  leaf,  and  use 
them  as  drinking  vessels. 

Family  disputes  were  apparently  settled  in  just  as  gruesome  a 
manner.  When  the  king  had  delivered  judgment  on  the  case,  the 
victor  treated  the  skulls  of  his  kinsmen  "according  to  ancient 
custom."  Then,  inviting  guests  to  join  him,  he  placed  the  "drinking 
vessels"  before  them  and  related  how  he  had  got  even  with  his 
kinsmen  for  insulting  him.  "And  that  is  what  they  call  heroic 
virtue,"  adds  Herodotus. 

Once  a  year  each  chieftain  filled  a  large  mixing  bowl  with  wine. 
Any  Scythian  who  had  slain  at  least  one  enemy  was  permitted  to 
drink  from  it,  but  the  "inglorious  ones"  were  not  even  allowed  to 
watch.  Not  to  own  a  scalp  was  a  mark  of  disgrace,  but  those  who 
had  scalped  a  large  number  of  enemies  were  always  poured  two 
cups  of  wine. 

The  Scythians  evidently  had  shamans,  though  it  is  not  clear 
whether  their  necromancers  were  only  soothsayers  or  had  wider 
functions.  They  used  to  collect  large  bundles  of  osiers,  lay  them 
on  the  ground  and  jumble  them  together.  Then,  picking  up  each 
twig  in  turn,  they  interpreted  its  meaning  and  returned  it  to  the 


266  THE  SILENT  PAST 

pile.  When  one  bout  of  soothsaying  was  completed  the  whole 
process  began  again.  Herodotus  also  mentions  the  Scythian  clair- 
voyants or  enares.  The  latter  expression  was  the  Greek  equivalent 
of  an  unknown  Scythic  word  meaning  men  whose  virility  was  on 
the  wane.  These  effeminate  individuals  used  to  forecast  the  future 
from  pieces  of  lime  bark. 

The  wise  men  or  magicians  played  an  important  role  in  the 
community,  especially  if  the  king  fell  sick,  for  on  such  occasions 
the  most  eminent  of  them  were  summoned  to  give  their  advice. 
They  announced  that  such  and  such  a  Scythian  had  committed 
perjury  before  the  king's  hearth,  and  gave  the  guilty  party's  name. 
Important  oaths  were  always  taken  standing  before  the  royal 
hearth.  Even  though  the  Scythians  were  a  nomadic  people,  the 
picture  of  their  kings  seated  on  the  throne  before  the  circular 
fireplace  is  strangely  reminiscent  of  the  Mycenaean  culture  and 
of  Nestor  in  his  palace  at  Pylos. 

A  man  who  had  been  charged  with  perjury  was  seized  and 
dragged  before  the  assembly.  The  soothsayers  then  explained  how  the 
signs  had  convinced  them  that  the  accused  had  forsworn  himself 
before  the  royal  hearth.  When  the  accused  had  denied  the  charge 
and  protested  violently— as  he  usually  did— the  king  called  in  another 
three  magicians.  If  they  also  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
prisoner  was  guilty  of  perjury,  the  unfortunate  man  was  summarily 
decapitated  and  the  first  three  soothsayers  shared  his  personal  effects 
between  them. 

The  process  was  not  devoid  of  danger  even  for  the  Scythian 
sages.  If  the  second  committee  of  three  pronounced  the  accused 
man  innocent,  a  succession  of  soothsayers  was  called  in.  Unlike 
modern  courts,  the  Scythians  did  not  rely  on  the  judgment  of  one 
or  two  experts  alone.  If  the  majority  found  the  accused  not  guilty 
the  first  three  soothsayers  were  themselves  executed  in  a  far  from 
pleasant  manner.  Bound  hand  and  foot  and  gagged,  they  were  placed 
in  carts  loaded  with  brushwood  and  harnessed  to  oxen.  The  brush- 
wood was  set  on  fire,  the  oxen  galloped  off,  and  the  carts  raced 
eerily  across  the  plain  like  huge  flaring  torches.  "Many  oxen  are 
burned  with  the  soothsayers,"  Herodotus  remarks  cheerfully,  "but 
many  of  them  escape  with  a  singeing  when  the  shaft  burns  through." 
(By  "them"  he  means,  of  course,  the  oxen.)  When  the  king  con- 


EURASIA  267 

demned  a  man  to  death  all  the  male  members  of  his  extensive  clan 
suffered  a  like  fate,  only  girls  and  women  being  exempt. 

Since  Herodotus  personally  visited  the  Borysthenes  and  traveled 
through  the  countryside  around  the  Dnieper  where  the  Scythians 
used  to  live,  his  account  of  the  burial  of  Scythian  kings  is  worthy 
of  credence.  An  enormous  rectangular  pit  was  dug,  and  the  king's 
corpse  was  embalmed  by  removing  his  entrails  and  stuffing  him  with 
shredded  spices,  frankincense,  celery  and  dill. 

The  Scythians  cut  off  a  piece  of  their  ear  as  a  small  token  of 
loyalty,  shaved  their  skull,  slashed  their  arms,  scratched  their  brow 
and  nose  and  drove  an  arrow  through  their  left  hand.  Thus  pre- 
pared, they  transported  their  dead  king  on  a  cart  to  a  neighboring 
clan  and  demanded  the  same  visible  manifestations  of  loyalty.  When 
these  were  forthcoming,  the  horrid  procession  moved  on  to  the 
next  tribe,  and  so  on  until  all  the  dead  king's  subjects  had 
demonstrated  their  fidelity  to  him  in  this  simple  but  heartfelt 
manner.  On  reaching  the  burial  place,  the  mourners  placed  the 
corpse  on  a  mat  and  stuck  spears  into  the  ground  on  either  side. 
Poles  were  laid  across  these  and  covered  with  wickerwork.  At 
least  one  of  the  king's  wives  was  strangled  as  a  funerary  offering, 
as  were  his  cupbearer,  cook,  stable  master,  body  servant  and  herald. 
A  suitably  impressive  number  of  horses  was  also  placed  in  the 
king's  grave.  All  these  sacrifices  were  "buried  in  the  ample  space 
remaining  in  the  grave,"  together  with  votive  offerings  and  gold 
bowls.  Then,  when  the  tomb  was  ready  to  be  closed,  everyone 
joined  in  building  a  mound  above  it,  competing  with  one  another 
in  their  efforts  to  make  it  as  tall  and  massive  as  possible. 

Even  that  did  not  end  the  respects  paid  to  the  dead  king.  After 
a  year  had  elapsed  the  rest  of  his  most  favored  young  retainers 
had  the  great  honor  and  good  fortune  to  be  strangled  and  so 
follow  their  former  master  into  death.  These  privileged  persons 
were  not,  however,  allowed  to  exceed  fifty  in  number.  Fifty  of  the 
finest  horses  were  eviscerated,  cleaned,  stuffed  with  chaff  and  sewn 
together  again.  Peculiar  catafalques  were  then  erected.  The  dead 
horses  were  suspended  on  poles  complete  with  bridle,  bit  and  reins. 
Each  of  the  fifty  slaughtered  youths  was  placed  upon  a  horse  and 
the  gruesome  cortege  took  up  its  station  around  the  tumulus.  Only 
then  did  the  Scythians  leave  their  king  in  peace,  consoling  themselves 


268  THE  SILENT  PAST 

with  the  thought  that  they   had   to   some   extent   alleviated   his 
loneliness. 

Anyone  who  thinks  that  the  Greek  historian's  descriptions  of  a 
period  already  three  hundred  years  in  the  past  were  invented  or 
fabricated  by  a  fertile  imagination  can  be  disabused  by  archaeology. 
The  Scythian  graves  of  Russia  and  the  finds  made  in  those  amazing 
cemeteries  have  confirmed  much  of  what  Herodotus  wrote. 


EURASIA 

KINGS,  CONCUBINES  AND  HORSES 

The  account  of  Scythian  fimerals  given  by  Herodotus  agrees  so 
■  well  with  the  archaeological  data,  as  siiirrmarized  in  the  survey  of 

the  prijicipal  Scythian  tombs  of  South  Russia,  that  the  two  sources 
of  iijformation  may  be  used  to  supple?nent  one  another. 

—Ellis  H.  Minns,  Scythians  and  Greeks, 
p.  87,  Cambridge,  191 3 

DESCRIBING  the  funcrals  of  Turko-Tatar  chieftains  in  the  year 
1300,  Marco  Polo  said  that  they  were  carried  to  a  mountain  and 
there  buried.  "Listen  to  this  strange  story,"  wrote  the  Venetian 
explorer.  "When  they  carry  the  corpse  of  a  ruler  to  its  burial 
they  kill  all  the  people  who  pass  the  funeral  procession  on  the  way, 
crying  'Go  and  serve  your  master  in  the  next  world!'  The  same 
applies  to  horses,  for  when  their  ruler  dies  they  slaughter  all  his 
best  chargers  so  that  they  shall  be  at  his  disposal  in  the  world 
hereafter.  I  tell  you  this  as  a  true  fact:  that  when  Alangu  Khan  died 
more  than  twenty  thousand  people  who  chanced  to  meet  his  funeral 
procession  were  slain."  At  the  death  of  Genghis  Khan,  twoscore 
pretty  girls  had  to  accompany  the  emperor  into  his  tomb.  In  1260, 
after  visiting  the  court  of  the  Mongol  prince  at  Karakorum,  Wilhelm 
de  Ruysbroeck  reported:  "They  erect  a  large  burial  mound  over 
their  dead  and  on  it  place  an  effigy  of  the  dead  man  with  a 
drinking  cup  in  its  hand  and  its  face  toward  the  east.  I  saw  the 
freshly  dug  grave  of  a  prince  for  whom  they  had  hung  sixteen 
horsehides  on  tall  scaffolds,  four  for  each  quarter  of  the  earth.  They 
had  also  placed  meat  and  drink  in  his  grave,  yet  they  declared  that 
he  had  been  baptized  a  Christian." 

The  Arab  author  Ibn  Batuta,  who  traveled  widely  in  western  and 
central  Asia,  as  well  as  in  India,  China,  Sumatra  and  North  and 
East  Africa  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  described  the 
obsequies  of  a  khan  who  had  fallen  in  battle.  The  dead  man  was 
laid  on  a  handsome  couch  in  a  large  grave.  All  his  weapons  and  all 
his  gold  and  silver  household  utensils  were  buried  with  him,  as  were 
four  female  slaves  and  six  of  his  favorite  mamelukes  bearing  a 
number  of  drinking  vessels.  They  were  entombed,  and  the  earth  was 

269 


270  THE  SILENT  PAST 

heaped  above  them  to  form  a  tall  mound.  Then  four  horses  were 
slaughtered  and  hung  on  the  mound  in  precisely  the  manner  de- 
scribed by  Herodotus  i,8oo  years  earlier.  The  kinsmen  of  the  khan 
were  likewise  killed  and  buried  with  their  gold  and  silver  vessels. 
Three  horsehides  were  hung  on  the  doors  of  ten  of  his  relatives' 
tombs  and  one  each  on  the  remainder.  This  happened  in  the  Chinese 
province  of  Shensi. 

An  inscription  found  at  Orkhon  and  dated  August  i,  732,  is 
extremely  informative.  It  is  the  earliest  written  tradition  in  the 
Turkish  language  and  was  composed  by  Jolygh  Tigin  as  a  memorial 
to  Bilga  or  Pitkia,  Khan  of  the  Turks.  The  inscription  runs: 

My  father,  the  Khan,  died  on  the  thirty-sLxth  day  of  the  tenth  month 
of  the  Year  of  the  Dog.  On  the  thirty-seventh  day  of  the  fifth  month 
of  the  Year  of  the  Pig  I  decreed  his  obsequies.  Lisiin  tai  Sangiin  came  to 
me  at  the  head  of  five  hundred  men.  They  brought  a  huge  quantity  of 
perfume,  gold  and  silver.  They  brought  musk  for  the  funeral  and  sandal- 
wood. All  these  mourners  had  cut  off  their  hair  and  clipped  their  ears. 
They  gave  up  their  best  horses,  their  black  sables  and  blue  squirrels 
without  number. 


We  also  know  that  the  Huns  mutilated  themselves  at  the  death 
of  Attila,  and  that  this  custom  persisted  among  the  Turkish  tribes 
of  central  Asia  until  the  nineteenth  century.  The  practice  of  sacri- 
ficing horses  to  a  dead  man  as  funerary  gifts  is  recorded  among  the 
Avars,  the  Magyars,  the  ancient  Bulgarians  and  the  Cumans,  an 
extinct  Turkish  people  who  became  completely  Magyarized  during 
the  eighteenth  century.  Stuffed  horses  were  also  presented  to  the 
dead  by  the  Yakuts,  the  Voguls,  the  Ostyaks  and  the  Chuvashes. 
Among  the  Kirghizes  a  horse  is  dedicated  to  the  dead  man  at  his 
funeral  but  not  sacrificed  until  the  first  anniversary  of  his  death. 
It  is  also  known  that  the  Chinese  give  their  dead  a  horse  of  wood, 
cardboard  or  paper  which  is  carried  in  the  funeral  procession  and 
burned  at  the  burial. 

Archaeological  finds,  too,  have  supplied  astonishing  confirmation 
of  what  Herodotus  wrote  about  the  Scythians.  For  the  last  seventy 
years  or  so,  the  Russians  have  taken  the  lead  in  unearthing  kurgans, 
a  Tatar  expression  for  a  burial  mound  which  has  been  adopted  into 
the  Russian  language.  The  Scythian  kurgan  graves  cover  a  huge 


EURASIA  271 

area.  Tombs  of  this  nature  have  been  found  as  far  afield  as  the 
Black  Sea  coast,  the  Kuban  district,  the  lower  reaches  of  the  Volga, 
the  Urals,  the  Don,  the  Dnieper,  the  Bug,  Rumania,  Hungary, 
Bulgaria,  Vettersfelde  in  Brandenburg,  the  Altai  Range  and  Minu- 
sinsk, on  the  river  Yenisey  in  West  Siberia.  All  these  Scythian 
graves  came  into  being  between  the  sixth  and  third  centuries  B.C. 

The  contents  of  such  a  tomb  were  published  in  19 12  and  19 13 
by  the  Russian  archaeologist  N.  J.  Weselowski,  who  excavated  the 
Solocha  kurgan  in  the  valley  of  the  Dnieper.  In  an  undisturbed  side 
grave  there,  he  found  the  Scythian  prince,  his  head  pointing  east- 
ward, complete  with  all  his  weapons  and  finery.  At  his  feet  lay  an 
iron  dagger  with  a  bone  handle,  together  with  three  hundred  pieces 
of  sheet  gold  beaten  into  different  shapes  and  bearing  punched 
decoration.  The  grave  also  yielded  a  gold  neckband,  five  gold 
bracelets  and  an  eighteen-inch  iron  sword  with  a  gold-plated  hilt 
and  scabbard.  To  the  right  of  the  dead  man's  head  lay  a  coat  of 
iron  mail.  His  helmet  and  a  golden  comb  illustrating  Scythians  in 
battle  had  fallen  off  during  his  stay  in  the  tomb.  The  comb  is  one 
of  the  finest  pieces  of  antique  goldsmith's  work  to  have  been  found 
in  south  Russia.  There  were  also  a  second  sword,  six  silver  vessels 
adorned  with  Scythian  scenes,  a  wooden  vessel  plated  with  gold,  a 
gold  bowl,  and  on  it  a  goryt  containing  180  arrows.  This  piece  of 
equipment,  a  case  designed  to  hold  both  bow  and  arrows,  was  used 
by  Scythians,  Saka  and  Persians.  Near  the  north  wall  of  the  burial 
chamber  lay  the  skeleton  of  a  man  who  had  been  given  to  the  dead 
prince  as  a  servant.  He,  too,  was  equipped  for  the  next  world  with  a 
short  sword,  iron  mail,  three  spears  and  some  arrows.  Only  the 
iron  spear  points  and  bronze  arrowheads  were  found,  the  wooden 
shafts  having  completely  disintegrated.  Close  by  was  a  burial  cham- 
ber containing  five  horses. 

Excellent  reviews  of  the  fascinating  discoveries  made  in  the 
kurgans  of  Russia,  Hungary,  Rumania  and  Bulgaria  were  compiled 
by  the  late  Professor  M.  Rostovzev  of  Yale  in  193 1  and  by  Ellis  H. 
Minns  in  the  year  1913- 

Russian  archaeologists  have  classified  the  kurgan  finds  under  the 
following  headings:  the  Kuban  group,  the  Taman  group  (named 
after  the  Taman  Peninsula),  the  Crimean  group,  the  Dnieper  steppe 
group,  and  the  kurgans  of  the  Kiev  area,  Poltava,  the  Don.  the 


Central  Asia 


EURASIA  273 

Volga  and  the  Urals.  Hundreds  if  not  thousands  of  such  kurgans 
have  been  unearthed. 

From  these  graves  have  emerged  a  people  who  can  properly  be 
described  as  Scythians,  together  with  a  culture  whose  Scythian 
elements  can  easily  be  distinguished  from  the  Persian,  Greek, 
Mesopotamian  and  other  influences  which  are  also  in  evidence.  A 
great  and  unique  cultural  domain  extending  to  the  borders  of  China 
has  been  discovered,  and  Eurasia's  diverse  but  individual  style  of 
animal  portrayal  has  become  an  accepted  feature  of  cultural  history. 

The  sites  of  Scythian  culture  disclose  an  art  richer  in  gold  than 
that  of  almost  anywhere  else  on  the  globe.  Even  Mycenae,  "rich  in 
gold,"  as  Homer  described  it,  was  surpassed  by  the  Scythians.  Gold 
could  only  have  been  amassed  in  such  quantities  by  regular  and 
systematic  prospecting  and  mining.  In  fact,  the  principal  sources 
of  the  precious  metal  were  the  Urals  and  the  Altai. 

We  shall  never  know  how  many  undiscovered  treasures  lie 
beneath  the  Siberian  steppes  and  the  black  earth  of  the  Ukraine. 
Thousands  of  graves  were  rifled  by  the  Russians  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  but  the  treasures  on  display  in  The  Hermitage  at  Leningrad 
are  impressive  enough  in  themselves. 

The  custom  of  burying  horses  with  the  dead  and  of  stationing 
a  prince's  chargers  protectively  around  the  four  sides  of  his  tent- 
shaped  tomb  of  wood  or  stone  was  first  devised  by  the  Scythians 
and  died  out— on  this  scale,  at  least— when  they  themselves  became 
extinct. 

For  a  long  time  Scythian  art  remained  incomprehensible.  It  is 
so  rich,  so  personal,  so  "modern,"  so  "impressionistic,"  that  it 
defies  any  form  of  classification.  Taking  its  themes  almost  invariably 
from  life,  it  shows  us  complete  animals,  separate  limbs,  animals' 
heads,  animals'  feet,  stylized  animal  figures  with  subtle  modifications, 
gaping  jaws,  a  kneeling  stag,  horses,  mythical  beasts,  animals  fight- 
ing—all depicted  with  a  wealth  of  ornamentation.  It  is  a  very  ex- 
pressive art,  yet  there  is  always  an  element  of  naivete  in  it.  Wherever 
we  look,  we  are  confronted  by  the  ornamental  contortions  and 
convolutions  of  animals  in  gold,  silver,  bronze,  iron,  wood  and  even 
stone. 

In  1903,  near  the  river  Kelermes  in  the  Kuban  area,  D.  Schulz 
excavated  a  kurgan  which  had  been  partially  looted  by  thieves 
but  still  contained  the  untouched  body  of  the  prince.  He  wore  a 


274  THE  SILENT  PAST 

bronze  helmet  adorned  with  a  gold  band  and  a  diadem  of  rosettes, 
flowers  and  hawks.  The  grave  contained  a  large  number  of  other 
valuable  finds. 

In  1904  Schulz  opened  up  another  mound  in  which  a  man  and 
a  woman  were  buried  together.  Both  had  been  interred  with  a 
veritable  treasure  trove  of  gold  and  silver,  diadems,  mirrors  and 
other  works  of  art. 

In  two  other  kurgans  the  Russian  archaeologist  Weselowski 
found  the  bones  of  human  beings  and  horses,  and  in  one  west  wall 
the  skeletons  of  ten  more  horses.  In  another  spot  in  the  same  grave 
twelve  horses'  skeletons  were  unearthed  complete  with  harness.  The 
harness  of  one  of  these  beasts  was  decorated  in  solid  gold  and  com- 
prised a  headpiece,  cheekpieces,  gold-plated  girths  and  a  whip  with  a 
handle  wound  around  with  spiral  strips  of  the  same  metal.  1898 
saw  the  exploration  of  a  cemetery  in  the  Kuban  group  of  kurgans 
near  the  Ulskiy  Aul.  One  of  the  kurgans  there  was  fifty  feet  high. 
It  is  uncertain  whether  the  horses  were  slaughtered  or  buried  alive, 
but  a  platform  discovered  at  the  summit  of  the  kurgan  carried  the 
remains  of  more  than  fifty  beasts.  The  complexity  of  the  wooden 
structure  indicated  that  sacrifice  was  accompanied  by  equally  com- 
plex rituals.  A  total  of  more  than  360  horses  was  found  in  this 
kurgan. 

An  amazingly  wide  range  of  harness  was  found  in  the  Kuban 
group  of  kurgans.  Ironwork  trappings  ended  in  massive  birds'  and 
griffins'  heads,  and  other  ornamentation  included  lions,  rams,  stags, 
hares,  a  mountain  antelope  and  a  female  elk.  Bronze  bridlepieces 
ornamented  with  expressive  animal  figures,  collars  adorned  with 
bulls'  heads,  superbly  encrusted  headpieces— all  these  were  found 
buried  with  Scythian  princes.  Archaeologists  have  even  found 
bells  and  fragments  of  iron  that  belonged  to  the  original  hearses. 
In  one  grave  in  the  Yelizavetovskaya  and  Marinskaya  Stanziya  group 
of  kurgans  a  corridor  which  must  once  have  been  revetted  with 
wood  was  found  to  contain  two  hearses,  each  harnessed  to  six 
beasts.  One  of  them  has  survived  almost  intact.  The  front  of  the 
wooden  bodywork  was  adorned  with  bone  knobs,  the  four  wheels 
were  faced  with  iron,  the  shaft  was  of  wood,  and  the  horses  were 
wearing  full  harness,  including  iron  bridles  and  copper  trappings. 

One  kurgan  with  walls  more  than  fifty  feet  long  contained  a 


EURASIA  275 

group  of  five  female  skeletons  wearing  bracelets,  rings  and  ear 
pendants.  These  women  were  facing  eastward,  but  two  more  were 
found  facing  to  the  west.  Although  no  human  sacrifice  on  the  scale 
of  the  graves  of  Ur  has  been  discovered,  almost  all  Scythian 
chieftains  were  accompanied  into  death  by  their  wives,  slave  women 
or  concubines. 

Probably  the  richest  grave  of  all  is  situated  at  Chertomlyk  in  the 
Dnieper  area,  where  the  ground  told  a  dramatic  story.  Having  dug  a 
shaft  into  the  interior  of  the  huge  and  complex  kurgan,  thieves 
had  piled  their  loot  in  the  corners  of  one  of  its  burial  chambers, 
ready  for  removal,  when  the  roof  collapsed  at  the  point  where  the 
shaft  entered  the  chamber.  One  of  the  grave  robbers  was  trapped 
and  entombed,  surrounded  by  priceless  treasures,  in  the  grave 
where  archaeologists  eventually  found  him. 

It  is  fortunate  that  this  tomb  was  never  stripped  completely,  for 
it  contained  the  finest  known  examples  of  Scythian  art,  among  them 
the  remains  of  spears,  iron  knives,  traces  of  a  carpet,  gold  plates 
and  gold  bands  once  used  to  adorn  clothing.  The  garments  had  been 
hung  on  iron  hooks  set  into  the  roof  and  walls  of  the  tomb  so  that 
the  dead  could  don  them  in  the  world  hereafter.  Although  the 
clothes  had  disintegrated,  the  ornaments  were  still  there. 

The  people  in  this  grave  were  richly  decked  with  gold  and  silver, 
finely  ornamented  plaquettes,  rings  and  earrings,  bracelets  and 
spiral  gold  necklaces.  On  either  side  of  one  woman's  skull  were 
found  heavy  earrings,  and  on  her  head  twenty-nine  gold  plates 
shaped  like  flowers,  twenty  rosettes  and  seven  buds.  The  head  and 
upper  part  of  the  body  had  been  draped  in  a  purple  veil  decorated 
with  fifty-seven  rectangular  pieces  of  gold  on  which  could  be  seen 
the  figures  of  a  seated  woman  with  a  mirror  and  a  male  Scythian 
standing  before  her.  Lavishly  buried  queens  were  also  discovered 
in  the  graves  of  Kul  Oba  in  the  Crimea  and  of  Karagodinashk, 
south  of  the  Kuban  estuary.  Lying  near  one  of  the  Chertomlyk 
ladies  was  a  bronze  mirror  with  an  ivory  handle  on  which  traces 
of  a  blue  material  could  be  discerned.  Beside  her  lay  a  man  with 
bangles  of  iron  and  bronze  and  a  knife  with  an  ivory  hilt,  and  not 
far  away  were  some  spear  points.  (Knives  were  always  placed  near 
the  left  hand.)  This  warrior  had  probably  been  buried  with  his 
queen  to  guard  her  in  the  world  to  come. 


276  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  same  burial  chamber  yielded  the  famous  Chertomlyk  vase,  a 
masterpiece  of  the  first  rank,  even  when  compared  with  the  finest 
vessels  produced  by  any  other  civilization.  Professor  Adolf  Furt- 
wangler,  the  archaeologist  from  Freiburg,  attributed  it  to  the  end  of 
the  fifth  century,  but  it  is  probably  of  more  recent  date.  The  vase  is 
27V2  inches  high.  Beneath  its  neck  is  an  interesting  frieze  depicting  a 
young  filly  being  broken  in.  The  reins  and  the  men's  lassos  were  made 
of  silver  wire  which  originally  protruded  from  the  relief  but  had 
fallen  off  in  the  course  of  centuries,  leaving  only  the  ends  visible  in 
the  figures'  hands.  The  horses  depicted  are  of  two  different  breeds, 
and  the  Scythian  horsebreakers  are  modeled  with  such  masterly  tech- 
nique that  every  article  of  their  clothing  can  be  clearly  discerned. 

Another  vase,  found  four  miles  west  of  Kerch  at  Kul  Oba,  was 
made  of  electrum,  or  gold  and  silver  alloy.  Its  wide  band  of  relief 
depicts,  among  other  things,  a  Scythian  dentist  at  work  and  a  man 
removing  the  bandages  from  an  obviously  broken  leg.  Here,  too, 
the  Scythian  mode  of  dress  is  discernible  in  detail. 

The  most  recent  finds  come  from  the  Altai  Range,  from  the 
sources  of  the  Ob  and  from  the  Pazyryk  kurgans  in  the  valley  of 
the  Ulagan,  which  is  5,200  feet  high  at  that  point.  Some  of  the 
kurgans  unearthed  there  between  1927  and  1949  were  as  much  as 
200  feet  in  diameter,  and  were  built  of  rocks  and  boulders,  some  of 
which  weighed  two  or  three  tons.  Franz  Hancar,  who  has  studied 
the  Russian  discoveries  made  there,  tells  of  enormous  shafts,  of 
buried  horses,  of  a  huge  larchwood  sarcophagus  sixteen  feet  long 
and  three  feet  high,  and  of  well  preserved  bodies  with  virtually  un- 
damaged skin  which  bore  artistic  and  clearly  visible  designs  tattooed 
on  their  arms,  legs,  backs  and  chests.  The  frozen  ground  had 
preserved  wood,  leather,  felt,  furs,  silk  and  even  human  bodies  in 
a  remarkably  good  condition,  though  whether  the  lords  of  Pazyryk 
were  genuine  Scythians  or  belonged  to  a  related  tribe  is  not  entirely 
clear. 

In  1959  I.  M.  Zamatorin  attempted  to  date  the  Pazyryk  kurgans 
by  comparing  the  annual  rings  in  pieces  of  wood  found  in  the 
various  burial  chambers,  but  came  to  no  definite  conclusion.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  finds  made  in  some  of  the  Pazyryk  tombs  made  it 
possible  to  verify  certain  passages  in  Herodotus  whose  accuracy 
had  previously  been  in  doubt  because  his  reports  had  not  hitherto 
been  confirmed  by  archaeology.  Rarely  has  archaeology  supplied 


EURASIA  277 

so  detailed  an  attestation  of  the  truth  and  reliability  of  a  2,400-year- 
old  account. 

The  kurgans  have  revealed  the  Scythians'  whole  colorful,  hazard- 
ous, barbarous  but  artistic  way  of  life  just  as  Herodotus  described  it. 
After  lying  buried  for  1,700  years,  a  civilization  has  re-emerged 
which  may  well  lead  us  back  to  the  earliest  roots  of  the  Slavic  race. 


ARABIA 


KING  SOLOMON'S  FURNACES 

We  find  it  significant  that  at  the  very  end  of  the  account  in 
1  Kings  9  of  Solomon's  manifold  building  activities  throughout 
Falestine,  there  is  narrated  in  some  detail  the  story  of  the  construc- 
tion of  a  fieet  of  ships  for  him  at  Ezio?i-geber,  which,  manned  by 
Phoenician  sailors,  sailed  to  Ophir  for  gold.  For  some  reason  or 
other,  the  author  of  this  account  failed  to  viention  that  Solomon 
exported  copper  and  iron  ingots  arid  finished  products  on  these 
ships  in  exchange  for  the  gold  and  other  products  obtainable  in 
Ophir,  and  also  failed  to  mention  that  shortly  before,  or  shortly 
after,  or  at  the  same  time  as  the  ships  were  being  constructed,  the 
port-city  and  industrial  town  of  Ezion-geber  I  was  being  built. 

—Nelson  Glueck,  The  Second  Campaign 

at    Tell    el-Kheleifeh,    Bulletin    of    the 

American  School  of  Oriental  Research, 

No.  75,  1939,  pp.  16  and  17 

HISTORIANS  a  hundred  or  two  hundred  years  hence  will  under- 
stand far  better  than  we  do  the  mysterious  interrelationship  of  all 
historical  occurrences,  for  research  is  constantly  disclosing  new 
links  in  the  infinite  chain  of  events  that  not  only  binds  nation  to 
nation  and  continent  to  continent  but  appears  to  encircle  the  entire 
globe. 

Israel's  greatest  king,  David,  who  ruled  circa  1000-960  b.c.  and 
was  renowned  as  a  singer,  psalmist  and  musician,  also  found  time 
to  destroy  Philistine  supremacy,  install  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  in 
Jerusalem  and  usher  in  a  golden  age  in  Jewish  history.  He  was 
a  gifted  politician  and  statesman,  and  it  seems  probable  that  he 
modeled  the  internal  organization  of  his  realm  on  that  of  Egypt. 
After  winning  a  succession  of  victories,  David  found  himself  king 
of  Jerusalem,  king  of  the  lands  of  Israel  and  Judah,  king  of  Ammon, 
ruler  of  the  provinces  of  Aram  (Damascus)  and  Edom  and  lord  of 
the  vassal  kingdom  of  A4oab.  But  only  David's  forceful  personality 
held  this  intricate  political  structure  together.  Finding  a  worthy 
successor  to  a  genius  is  always  a  problem,  and  in  this  respect  David 
failed,  just  as  Augustus  was  to  do  later  when  he  abandoned  the 
Roman  Empire  to  the  not-so-tender  mercies  of  Tiberius. 

David's  firstborn  son  Amnon  was  murdered  by  Absolom,  who 

278 


ARABIA  279 

tried,  even  during  his  father's  lifetime,  to  usurp  the  throne  by  force. 
The  aging  king  was  forced  to  give  ground  before  his  son's  army 
and  withdraw  to  Mahanaim  in  the  east  of  Jordan.  Somewhere  there, 
"in  the  wood  of  Ephraim,"  the  decisive  battle  took  place,  and 
Absolom  was  defeated  and  killed  while  escaping.  Adonia  was  now 
David's  eldest  son,  but  a  clique  of  hostile  courtiers  succeeded  in 
alienating  the  elderly  king  from  his  new  heir.  Foremost  among  the 
women  in  David's  life  was  the  celebrated  Bathsheba,  whose  beauty 
so  captivated  him  that  he  took  her  for  himself  and  arranged  that 
her  husband,  Uriah  the  Hittite,  should  be  killed.  As  the  mother  of 
Solomon,  Bathsheba  began  to  play  an  important  part  in  court 
intrigues.  Working  in  concert  with  the  court  prophet,  Nathan,  she 
managed  to  persuade  David  to  make  her  son  heir  to  the  throne. 
Solomon  was,  in  fact,  publicly  proclaimed  king  at  Jerusalem. 

Like  David,  Solomon  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  figures  in 
world  history,  though  his  genius  lay  perhaps  more  in  the  intellectual 
and  creative  sphere  than  in  the  realm  of  statesmanship.  He  retained 
the  respect  of  his  subjects  but  did  not  augment  it,  perhaps  because 
he  was  not  fond  of  war.  No  one  could  have  hoped  to  surpass  David, 
and  Solomon's  reign  heralded  the  eventual  downfall  of  the  empire 
built  by  his  father.  Nevertheless,  Bathsheba  and  the  palace  intrigues 
did  give  mankind  the  Wise  King,  the  king  of  the  Proverbs  and  the 
author  of  the  Song  of  Solomon.  Oriental  tradition  saw  in  Solomon 
the  ideal  picture  of  a  wise  and  powerful  ruler  whose  very  name, 
Shelemoh,  meant  "man  of  peace"  in  Hebrew. 

King  Solomon  extended  his  frontier  defenses,  maintained  far- 
ranging  diplomatic  relations,  tried  to  guarantee  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  his  empire  by  shrewd  marriages,  and  encouraged  royal 
pomp  and  splendor.  His  harem  included  many  foreign  women, 
among  them  an  Egyptian  princess  who  was  probably  the  daughter 
of  one  of  the  Pharaohs  of  the  21st  Dynasty.  All  this  entailed  heavy 
expenditure  which  could  not  be  met  from  the  scanty  natural 
resources  of  his  own  dominions.  That  was  the  sole  reason  why  such 
an  uncanny  judge  of  human  nature,  such  a  connoisseur  of  human 
weakness,  such  a  seeker  after  wisdom,  should  have  gone  to  such 
lengths  in  his  quest  for  wealth.  His  bold  and  profitable  business 
ventures  did,  in  fact,  amass  him  incalculable  riches. 

The  king's  staggeringly  luxurious  way  of  life  is  described  in  I 
Kings:    X,   which   tells   how   the   Queen   of   Sheba    journeyed    to 


28o  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Jerusalem  with  a  huge  retinue  because  she  had  heard  of  Solomon's 
wisdom  and  his  fabulous  wealth.  She  herself  had  brought  camel 
caravans  laden  with  a  great  quantity  of  gold,  precious  stones  and 
spices.  In  an  attempt  to  find  out  if  Solomon  really  was  the  wise  man 
of  whom  the  whole  world  was  talking,  she  set  him  a  number  of 
riddles  which  she  had  rehearsed  beforehand.  The  record  is  un- 
ambiguous: "And  Solomon  told  her  all  her  questions:  there  was 
not  any  thing  hid  from  the  king,  which  he  told  her  not."  The  queen 
was  overwhelmed  by  Solomon's  splendor,  his  mien  and  intelligence. 
The  palace,  the  tableware,  the  residences  of  his  courtiers  and 
servants,  their  manners  and  dress,  the  magnificent  burnt  offerings- 
all  these  filled  her  with  amazement.  "Howbeit  I  believed  not  the 
words,  until  I  came,  and  mine  eyes  had  seen  it:  and,  behold,  the 
half  was  not  told  unto  me:  thy  wisdom  and  prosperity  exceedeth 
the  fame  which  I  had  heard. . . .  And  she  gave  the  king  an  hundred 
and  twenty  talents  of  gold,  and  of  spices  very  great  store,  and 
precious  stones:  there  came  no  more  such  abundance  of  spices  as 
these  which  the  queen  of  Sheba  gave  to  king  Solomon." 

The  queen  was  not,  however,  the  first  person  to  introduce  gold 
into  Jerusalem,  for  the  Bible  relates  that  the  city  had  long  been  a 
repository  of  immense  wealth.  Where  did  King  Solomon  acquire  his 
vast  treasures  and  his  gold? 

Two  passages  in  the  Old  Testament  shed  light  on  this.  I  Kings: 
ix-x  and  II  Chronicles  :viii-ix  both  mention  that  Solomon  used 
Phoenician  sailors  or  Phoenician  ships  to  reach  Ophir  via  the  Red 
Sea  and  bring  back  immense  quantities  of  gold.  The  round  trip 
apparently  took  three  years.  Solomon  was  backed  in  these  ventures 
by  Hiram,  the  Phoenician  king  of  Tyre,  with  whom  he  maintained 
friendly  relations  as  his  father  David  had  done  before  him.  The  only 
difference  between  the  two  accounts  is  that  in  I  Kings  Hiram  only 
supplied  Solomon  with  sailors  whereas  in  II  Chronicles  he  dis- 
patched the  whole  fleet  on  its  voyage  to  Ophir. 

The  expedition's  point  of  departure  is  clearly  stated  in  the  Bible. 
The  voyage  began  "in  Ezion-geber,  which  is  beside  Elath,  on  the 
shore  of  the  Red  Sea,  in  the  land  of  Edom."  Ezion-geber  was  a 
seaport  at  the  erstwhile  northern  end  of  the  Gulf  of  Aqaba,  now 
twenty-eight  miles  from  the  sea. 

Are  these  accounts  legend  or  reality?  We  received  the  answer 
to  that  question  a  few  years  ago. 


ARABIA  281 

Between  the  months  of  March  and  May,  1938,  the  American 
School  of  Oriental  Research  at  Jerusalem  began  to  excavate  Tell 
el-Kheleifeh.  The  reports  of  this  undertaking  which  the  leader  of 
the  party,  Nelson  Glueck,  was  soon  able  to  publish  exceeded  every- 
one's wildest  imaginings.  The  Americans  proved  virtually  beyond 
question  that  they  had  discovered  the  Ezion-geber  of  the  Bible. 
The  ruins  of  a  whole  town  were  brought  to  light  from  beneath  the 
desert  sand.  King  Solomon's  harbor  had  been  found. 

The  shore  had  always  been  flat  and  sandy,  but  the  small  barks 
of  3,000  years  ago  required  such  a  coastline  because  they  were 
drawn  up  onto  the  beach.  The  Americans  made  a  further  discovery: 
a  whole  system  of  smelting  furnaces.  Occupying  the  most  im- 
portant quarter  of  the  town,  the  skillfully  constructed  smelting 
works  revealed  how  high  a  standard  Solomon's  architects  and 
technicians  had  attained.  Taking  advantage  of  the  winds  that  blow 
incessantly  from  the  direction  of  the  gulf,  the  builders  had  erected 
their  furnaces  so  that  the  air  passed  through  vents  and  fanned  the 
flames  to  produce  great  heat. 

In  the  course  of  time,  structural  alterations  were  carried  out. 
The  air  channels  were  sealed  and  hand  bellows  installed  in  their 
place.  Copper  fumes  and  intense  heat  had  turned  the  furnace  walls 
green,  and  the  stone  had  become  so  hard  that  even  after  thirty 
centuries  and  the  effects  of  excavation  many  of  the  walls  still 
stood  intact.  The  furnaces  were  fed  with  charcoal  obtained  from  the 
palm  forests  in  the  neighborhood. 

Three  years  of  digging  made  it  increasingly  clear  to  the  Americans 
that  only  slaves  could  have  worked  in  this  fiery  hell.  The  smoke  and 
dangerous  vapors  combined  with  the  local  climate  would  have 
precluded  anyone's  spending  a  substantial  length  of  time  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  furnaces  voluntarily.  Slaves  must  have  died  like 
flies  there.  As  an  illustration  of  the  local  conditions,  Nelson  Glueck 
reported  that  by  the  end  of  the  third  year  the  members  of  his  party 
had  reached  the  limit  of  their  physical  endurance.  On  one  occasion 
such  severe  sandstorms  raged  over  Tell  el-Kheleifeh  that  for  ten 
solid  days  visibility  never  exceeded  thirty  yards.  The  rooms  on  the 
northern  side  of  the  site,  which  had  taken  three  years  to  clear,  were 
once  more  choked  with  sand. 

Officers  of  the  guard  and  merchants  presumably  lived  some 
distance  from  the  furnaces  and  smelting  works,  while  the  slaves 


282  THE  SILENT  PAST 

who  had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the  work  were  lodged  inside  a 
stoutly  built  brick  wall  between  three  and  four  feet  thick,  where 
they  were  kept  under  surveillance  by  relays  of  guards  and  soldiers. 
Because  of  the  risk  of  an  insurrection  in  the  heart  of  the  inferno  and 
also  because  of  possible  outside  attack,  Ezion-geber  had  been  trans- 
formed into  a  strong  fortress  and  dominated  the  intersection  of 
the  land  and  sea  routes  between  Arabia,  Sinai  and  Greater  Palestine. 
This  function  is  fulfilled  today  by  the  Jordanian  fortress  of  Aqaba, 
a  far  less  important  place. 

Diggings  have  revealed  that  ore  was  transported  to  Ezion-geber 
to  be  smelted  and  processed,  and  that  it  was  a  thriving  center  of 
metalwork.  Ships,  too,  were  built  at  Ezion-geber  and  dispatched  to 
all  parts  of  the  known  world.  Caravans  visited  the  town  from  Sinai, 
Egypt,  Judah  and  Arabia.  The  town's  most  active  period  was  the 
tenth  century  b.c,  which  included  the  reign  of  Solomon  (965-926). 

Having  worked  for  years  on  this  fascinating  Biblical  site  with  a 
distinguished  team  of  collaborators,  Glueck  asserted  cautiously  that, 
as  far  as  he  knew,  there  was  only  one  man  with  the  energy,  wealth 
and  farsightedness  to  plan  and  carry  out  the  construction  of  an 
industrial  center  like  Ezion-geber,  which  in  its'  first  and  greatest 
period  was  a  highly  complex  and  specialized  installation.  That  man 
was  King  Solomon.  He  alone  of  his  contemporaries  would  have 
had  the  ability,  vision  and  drive  to  build  such  an  important  industrial 
town  and  seaport  so  far  from  Jerusalem.  At  Ezion-geber,  Solomon 
was  able  to  smelt,  refine  and  process  the  ore  which  he  obtained  from 
his  large  copper  and  iron  mines  in  the  Arabah  Valley.  He  exported 
finished  products  by  sea  and  land  and  bartered  them  for  the  spices, 
ivory,  precious  woods  and  gold  of  Arabia  and  Africa.  As  Glueck 
pointed  out,  the  wise  ruler  of  Israel  was  a  copper  baron,  a  shipping 
magnate,  a  merchant  prince  and  a  great  architect  all  in  one.  Yet 
he  was  at  once  the  bane  and  blessing  of  his  country,  for  with  the 
growth  of  his  might  and  wealth  he  developed  an  autocratic  attitude 
and  ruthlessly  rode  roughshod  over  his  people's  democratic  tradi- 
tions. Solomon's  great  network  of  enterprises  stretched  from  the 
Phoenician  ports  of  Spain  to  Arabia,  Syria  and  the  east  coast  of 
Africa,  but  the  town  of  Ezion-geber  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  all 
his  achievements. 

We  know  the  port  from  which  Solomon's  fleets  set  sail  in  their 
quest  for  gold,  but  what  was  their  destination? 


ARABIA  283 

The  location  of  Ophir  has  stimulated  the  imagination  of  many 
generations,  and  a  huge  literature  has  been  devoted  to  the  subject. 
The  legendary  region  or  city  has  been  sought— and  found  in  the 
imagination— on  all  five  continents. 

Augustus  Keane  suggested  in  The  Gold  of  Ophir,  a  book  pub- 
lished in  London  in  1901,  that  Ophir  was  situated  in  the  Arabian 
district  of  Dofar.  R.  F.  Burton  assumed  that  Ophir  was  identical  with 
the  Land  of  Midian  on  the  Gulf  of  Aqaba,  though  if  it  was  so  close 
at  hand  one  wonders  why  there  should  have  been  any  need  for  a 
fleet.  In  1 844  Christian  Lassen  wrote  in  Germany  that  Ophir  was  to 
be  found  in  the  Indus  area  because  a  tribe  called  the  Abhira  lived 
there.  Ophir  has  also  been  identified  with  Africa,  but  this  must  be 
a  fallacy  because  Africa  first  got  its  name  in  Roman  times  from  the 
Afri,  a  North  African  tribe.  R.  Mewes  suggested  Ophir  was  to  be 
found  in  Peru  because  II  Chronicles:  iii  speaks  of  the  "gold  of 
Parvaim."  The  Jewish  historian  Flavins  Josephus  suggested  in  the 
first  century  a.d.  that  Ophir  lay  somewhere  in  India,  while  Alexander 
von  Humboldt  regards  Ophir  as  a  general  geographical  term,  not 
a  particular  place  or  region.  The  man  who  pioneered  the  decipher- 
ment of  Babylonian  cuneiform  script,  Jules  Oppert,  espoused  a 
similar  theory. 

Because  the  Old  Testament  informs  us  that  ships  came  back  from 
Ophir  laden  with  gold,  silver,  ivory,  apes  and  peacocks,  people  have 
tried  to  identify  its  location  from  these  animate  and  inanimate  articles 
of  merchandise.  Richard  Hennig  points  out  that  the  Hebrew  word 
for  apes,  kophim,  was  borrowed  from  the  Sanskrit  kapi  and  that 
peacocks,  too,  could  only  have  been  of  Indian  origin.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Hebrew  word  thukkiyim  was  interpreted  as  parrots  or 
guinea  fowl  by  the  French  scholar  Quatremere  and  by  Karl  Mauch 
as  ostriches.  The  Coptic  name  for  India,  Sophir,  is  another  etymo- 
logical pointer  in  the  direction  of  India. 

There  has  been  commercial  activity  between  India  and  the  east 
coast  of  Africa  since  time  immemorial,  so  it  is  not  surprising  that 
ancient  Indian  names  sometimes  reappear  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Indian  Ocean.  For  example,  there  is  a  Sofala  Coast  in  West  Malabar 
and  a  Sofala  Coast  in  Mozambique.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that 
Columbus,  too,  was  preoccupied  with  the  discovery  of  Ophir  and 
that  he  intended  to  reach  it  on  his  voyage  to  the  west.  "The 
splendor  and  power  of  the  gold  of  Ophir  are  incalculable.  Whoever 


284  THE  SILENT  PAST 

possesses  that  gold  achieves  on  earth  whatsoever  he  desires,"  said 
the  Genoese  explorer. 

In  approaching  this  problem  we  should  reflect  that  gold  is 
produced  in  only  two  areas  in  the  western  half  of  the  Indian  Ocean: 
India,  and  the  country  behind  Mozambique,  i.e.  Southern  Rhodesia. 

India  has  gold  mines  at  Mysore,  Madras  and  Hyderabad,  but  in 
India  Solomon  would  have  had  to  fight  for  his  gold  because  no 
native  prince  would  have  surrendered  it  without  a  struggle.  Besides, 
Richard  Hennig  has  rightly  pointed  out  that  throughout  history 
India  has  always  used  much  more  gold  than  she  could  produce 
herself— hence  her  traditional  nickname  "the  Grave  of  Gold." 

We  are  left  with  the  hinterland  of  the  Sofala  Coast  in  southeast 
Africa.  There  in  Southern  Rhodesia,  west  of  Mozambique  and  more 
than  six  hundred  miles  from  the  sea,  lie  the  richest  goldfields  in  the 
southern  half  of  Africa.  The  theory  that  Ophir  should  be  sought 
in  south  Africa  was  first  broached  by  Karl  Mauch  and  Karl 
Peters.  There  is  no  need  to  assume  that  the  Israelites  maintained 
mines  of  their  own  so  far  from  home  or  that  the  Phoenicians  ever 
penetrated  into  the  richest  gold  areas.  The  natives  would  un- 
doubtedly have  transported  sufficient  gold  from  the  interior  to  the 
coast  if  it  had  been  worth  their  while. 

This  does  not,  however,  explain  how  Solomon  came  into  posses- 
sion of  the  gold.  Professor  Hennig  believed  that  the  Israelites  ob- 
tained gold  from  the  southeast  regions  of  Africa  not  by  trade  or 
from  colonial  mines  but,  as  so  often  in  the  history  of  gold,  by  war 
and  piracy.  He  added  that  one  need  only  think  of  the  Spaniards' 
infiltration  into  Mexico  under  Cortez  and  into  Peru  under  Pizarro, 
This  would  explain  why  the  Phoenicians  voluntarily  took  members 
of  another  race,  the  Israelites,  with  them  on  their  expeditions.  The 
Phoenicians  had  never  been  efficient  soldiers,  Hennig  asserted,  and 
would  not  have  fought  successfully  on  their  own.  Thus,  in  order  to 
carry  out  their  projected  raids,  they  sought  help  from  a  battle- 
seasoned  and  militarily  powerful  race  like  the  Israelites. 

This  theory  seems  artificial.  In  the  first  place,  one  cannot  assume 
that  King  Solomon  only  undertook  one  gold  expedition  to  Ophir. 
The  Bible  implies  that  several  voyages  were  made  and  that  each 
of  them  lasted  three  years.  One  raid  every  three  years?  History 
provides  scarcely  any  instance  where  a  distant  people  was  attacked 
on  such  a  long-term  basis,  and  the  hypothetical  raids  undertaken 


ARABIA 


285 


Zimbabwe,  Southern  Rhodesia 


in  collaboration  with  the  Phoenicians  would  certainly  not  have  gone 
according  to  plan  each  time.  Hennig's  assertion  that  the  Phoenicians 
were  inefficient  soldiers  and  never  represented  a  political  force  is 
flatly  contradicted  by  the  historical  fact  of  the  Punic  Wars,  Han- 
nibal's heroic  feats  and  the  defense  of  Carthage.  The  Semitic 
Carthaginians  defended  their  metropolis  with  a  bravery  unsurpassed 
by  any  race  before  or  since.  We  know  that  the  Phoenicians  were 
not  only  first-rate  seamen,  brilliant  diplomats  and  shrewd  business- 
men, but  also  excellent  fighters. 


286  THE  SILENT  PAST 

No,  the  collaboration  between  Hiram  of  Tyre  and  Solomon  was 
founded  on  something  other  than  war  and  piracy.  The  Phoe- 
nicians were  experienced  navigators,  they  possessed  the  best  ships 
in  the  contemporary  world,  and  they  invariably  knew  the  best 
routes  through  little-known  waters,  navigational  secrets  which  they 
guarded  jealously.  Their  contribution  to  the  great  enterprise  was 
experience  of  the  sea,  ships  and  crews.  King  Solomon  provided 
something  quite  different;  namely,  trade  goods.  Since  the  American 
excavations  have  shown  us  that  Ezion-geber  boasted  what  were 
probably  the  largest  smelting  works  in  the  ancient  world  and  since 
King  Solomon  had  built  up  a  thriving  metalwork  industry  there,  he 
had  something  to  export.  Ships  set  sail  from  Ezion-geber  laden  with 
iron  and,  perhaps,  copper,  and  on  reaching  Ophir  exchanged  these 
much-prized  commodities  for  gold,  slaves,  apes,  ivory,  peacocks  and 
other  rare  merchandise. 

We  are  indebted  to  Nelson  Glueck  for  finding  this  solution  in 
the  course  of  his  excavations  at  Tell  el-Kheleifeh. 


SOUTHERN  RHODESIA 

IN  QUEST  OF  OPHIR 

The  ruins  of  the  Great  Zimbabwe,  as  it  is  sometimes  called  to 
distinguish  it  from  any  others,  are  very  imposing.  They  are  not 
so  extensive  as  those  north  of  Inyanga,  nor  so  beautiful  as  those 
of  the  Insiza  district,  but  it  is  mideniable  that  they  have  a  massive 
grandeur  all  their  ovm.  There  are  three  distinct,  though  connected, 
groups  of  buildings,  viz.  the  ''Elliptical  Te?nple,"  the  ''Valley 
Ruins,"  and  the  "Acropolis.'" 

—David  Randall-MacIver,  Medieval  Rhodesia, 
p.  6i,  London,  1906 

WE  NOW  come  to  one  of  the  most  mysterious  chapters  in  the 
history  of  Black  Africa.  Etienne  Marc  Quatremere,  A.  H.  Heeren 
and  the  German  geologist  Karl  Mauch  have  all  ascribed  the  gold- 
fields  of  Ophir  to  this  area  and  assumed  that  the  source  of  Solomon's 
gold  was  Mashonaland  in  Southern  Rhodesia. 

The  theory  of  a  "Southern  Rhodesian  Ophir"  has  not  yet  been 
proved,  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  Arab  traveler  Ibn  Batuta,  who 
was  born  at  Tangier  in  1304,  referred  to  the  country  behind  the 
Sofala  Coast  under  the  name  Youfi.  Professor  Richard  Hennig,  a 
German  who  devoted  a  lifetime  to  the  study  of  geography  and 
natural  science,  pointed  out  that  Youfi  sounds  very  much  like  Ophir. 
The  passage  of  Ibn  Batuta  runs:  "From  Youfi  they  bring  gold  dust 
to  Sofala." 

The  ruins  of  Zimbabwe  were  discovered  by  Adam  Renders  in 
the  year  1868.  Being  a  hunter,  Renders  did  not  attach  any  great 
importance  to  his  find,  and  it  soon  relapsed  into  oblivion.  On 
September  5,  187 1,  the  German  geologist  Karl  Mauch  examined  the 
ruins  more  thoroughly,  and  at  once  realized  that  these  strange  stone 
buildings  in  the  southern  part  of  Southern  Rhodesia  were  not  merely 
the  remains  of  African  kraals  of  fairly  recent  date.  His  discovery 
came  to  be  associated  with  Ophir,  and  when,  at  the  turn  of  the 
century,  a  belief  sprang  up  that  Zimbabwe  was  the  original  site  of 
King  Solomon's  Mines,  Mashonaland  and  Matabeleland  became  the 
scene  of  a  sort  of  gold  rush.  People  began  to  mine  gold  from  places 
which  had  been  worked  in  ancient  times  and  where  relics  of  smelting 
equipment  still  survived.  It  was  thought  that  a  "Phoenician  gold- 

287 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


Zimbabwe 


mining  town"  had  been  found  in  the  Zimbabwe  ruins,  and  gold- 
hungry  adventurers  rifled  and  destroyed  many  of  the  precious  old 
ruins  and  mining  installations. 

Zimbabwe  is  a  Bantu  name,  probably  compounded  of  zimba 
("houses")  and  mabgi  ("stones").  By  about  the  turn  of  the  century, 
Zimbabwe  had  become  well  known  through  the  work  of  the 
English  traveler  and  archaeologist  J.  T.  Bent,  but  the  theory  that 
its  ruins  were  the  remains  of  an  ancient  Phoenician  colony  or  that 
they  had  been  erected  in  pre-Christian  times  by  members  of  an 
advanced  Mediterranean  civilization  was  not  exactly  beneficial  to 
renewed  archaeological  attempts  to  determine  their  true  origin  and 


i]    Buddhist   altar   in   Cave    iiia   at   Tun-huang,   excavated    by   Paul    Pelliot,    the 
celebrated  French  archaeologist  and  authority  on  central  Asia. 


[89]  Silver  rhyton,  evolved 
from  the  simple  drinking 
horn.  The  vessel  was  held 
above  the  drinker's  head 
and  tilted  so  that  the  wine 
spurted  into  his  mouth 
from  the  beak  of  the 
mythical  beast  without 
touching  his  lips.  Present- 
day  Georgians  have  inher- 
ited this  custom  from 
Persia  of  the  ancient  steppe 
culture  of  southern  Russia. 


[90]  This  solid  gold  jug, 
which  formed  part  of  the 
so-called  Oxus  Hoard, 
dates  from  the  5th  century 
B.C.  and  is  only  5  inches 
high.  It  is  an  example  of 
the  great  metallic  culture 
that  once  extended  from 
Persia  to  the  south  of 
Russia. 


[91]  A  golden  armband  from  the  hoard 
found  in  the  dried-up  bed  of  the  river 
Oxus.  The  winged  monsters  betray  As- 
syrian and  Babylonian  influence,  but  in 
this  particular  form  are  genuinely  Per- 
sian. The  beauty  of  this  piece  of  jewelry 
and  the  uncommonly  delicate  work- 
manship suggest  that  it  was  once  worn 
by   a   woman   of   the   royal   household. 


[92]  This  racing  chariot  drawn  by  a 
team  of  four  horses  is  one  of  the  finest 
pieces  in  the  Oxus  Hoard.  Made  of 
solid  gold,  it  reproduces  details  of  har- 
ness, wheels  and  even  the  clothing  of 
the  drivers.  Vehicles  like  this  were  used 
by  the  Persian  king  Darius,  defeated  by 
the    Greeks    at    Marathon    in    490    b.c. 


[93 1  This  bronze  stag  (6'/:  inches  high)  is  a  typical  example  of  the  kurgan  art  of 
Minusinsk,  which  is  situated  in  the  forest-steppe  region  in  the  upper  reaches  of  the 
Yenisey.  The  beast  is  standing  on  a  bell-shaped  rattle  with  a  ring  on  which  cords 

could  be  hung. 


•*       •«». 


[94]  Scythian  art  traveled  as  far  east  as  Mongolia.  This  piece  of  woven  carpet,  which 

had  remained  miraculously  preserved,  was  found  in  the  grave  of  a  Mongol  prince  at 

Noin  Ula  in  Mongolia  and  dates  from  the    ist  centurv   a.d.  The   portrayal   of   the 

griffin  attacking  the  elk  is  a  fine  example  of  later  Siberian-Scythian  art. 

[95]   This  wooden  coffin  was  dug  up  at  Basadur,  Siberia,  in   1950,  complete  with  its 

original  occupant.  The  manner  in  which  the  tiger  was  carved  into  the  wood,  as  well 

as  the  presence  in  the  grave  of  eighteen  horses  and   other   finds,   indicate   that  the 

dead  man  was  the  chieftain  of  a  Scythian-like  people. 


•^^~^^^^''   «, 


!^^^^^m 


[96  and  97]  This  vase  of  silver-bearing  gold  ore  is  5.5  inches  high  and  reposes  in  the 
Hermitage  Museum  at  Leningrad.  It  was  found  in  Kul  Oba.  The  frieze  depicts  a 
Scythian  "dentist"  at  work  on  a  tooth  and  treatment  being  administered  to  a  man  with 
a  broken  leg.  It  is  noticeable  that  the  Scythians  resembled  early  Russians  both  in 

physiognomy  and  dress. 


[98I    A  monolith  on  the  "acropohs"  of  Zimbabwe.  These  unhewn  stone  buildings 
were  probably  erected  during  the  Middle  Ages  by  an  as  yet  unidentified  African 

people,  perhaps  a  Bantu  tribe. 
[99]  The  "acropolis"  was  approached  by  a  steep  and  narrow  flight  of  steps  running 
between  towering  crags.  The  unknown  designers  of  this  fortress  built  their  citadel 

into  the  living  rock. 


[loo]  The  famous  soapstone  bird  discovered 
in  the  Zimbabwe  ruins  by  R.  N.  Hall  on 
July  27,  1903.  It  has  since  become  the  na- 
tional emblem  of  Southern  Rhodesia.  This 
supreme  example  of  Zimbabwe  art  is  now  in 
Bulawayo  Museum,  Southern  Rhodesia. 


[loi]  The  so-called  "acropolis"  of  Zimbabwe 

was  virtually  impregnable.  This   is  the   west 

wall  of  the  massive  fortress. 


SOUTHERN  RHODESIA  289 

precise  date.  The  British  archaeologist  R.  N.  Hall  defended  the 
Phoenician  theory  with  sound  and  detailed  scientific  arguments.  He 
had  personally  carried  out  diggings  in  Zimbabwe  and  several  other 
ruined  sites  in  Southern  Rhodesia  with  good  results.  It  is  still  hard 
to  resist  the  cogency  and  descriptive  power  of  the  works  which  he 
published  in  1902  and  1907,  but  when  the  Egyptologist  David 
Randall-Maclver  subjected  the  ruins  of  Southern  Rhodesia  to 
further  scrutiny  he  formed  new  conclusions  which  were  completely 
at  odds  with  all  the  arguments  and  "evidence"  previously  adduced. 

In  Maclver's  opinion,  Zimbabwe  was  purely  African  in  origin  and 
built  far  later  than  had  been  supposed  hitherto.  It  came  into  being 
toward  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  continued  to  flourish  until 
about  the  fifteenth  century.  Having  examined  seven  sites,  Maclver 
reported  he  had  nowhere  found  any  object  dating  from  earlier 
than  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  century  a.d.  He  was  equally  unable 
to  discover  any  non-African  features  in  the  architecture  of  Zim- 
babwe or  any  trace  of  European  or  Oriental  style.  The  famous 
"Elliptical  Building,"  the  "Acropolis,"  the  "Valley  Ruins,"  the  forti- 
fications, cult  sites  and  living  quarters— indeed,  the  whole  metropolis 
—were  completely  African  in  character.  Unfortunately,  there  are  no 
inscriptions  of  any  kind  at  Zimbabwe,  whose  master  builders  were 
evidently  unfamiliar  with  the  art  of  writing.  In  addition,  however,  to 
articles  of  African  make,  Maclver  found  works  of  art  and  utensils 
which  had  been  imported  from  India  and  the  Far  East.  In  fact, 
it  was  because  these  articles  were  embedded  in  layers  of  rubble  and 
their  date  of  manufacture  was  known  from  other  sources  that 
Maclver  was  able  to  attribute  the  building  of  the  entire  city  to  the 
medieval  centuries. 

If  Maclver  did  not  succeed  in  solving  the  riddle  of  Zimbabwe  in 
every  detail,  he  did  at  least  write  finis  to  the  supposition  that  it 
belonged  to  a  pre-Christian  Mediterranean  culture. 

In  the  year  1929  the  British  archaeologist  Dr.  Gertrude  Caton- 
Thompson  carried  out  further  excavations  at  Zimbabwe  and  other 
ruined  sites.  She  confirmed  Maclver's  findings  and  established  even 
more  precise  dates  for  the  miraculous  buildings  of  Southern 
Rhodesia. 

No  less  than  five  hundred  ruined  sites  lie  scattered  between  the 
rivers  Zambezi  and  Limpopo.  It  is  both  interesting  and  important 
to  note  that  in  general  these  buildings  were  not  situated  in  the 


290  THE  SILENT  PAST 

direct  vicinity  of  goldfields.  Caton-Thompson  inferred  from  this 
that  they  were  not  associated  with  the  exploitation  of  mineral 
deposits.  In  her  opinion,  the  massive  ruins  were  not  mining  towns 
but  relics  of  urban  development  carried  out  by  the  advanced  Bantu 
tribes  of  central  Africa.  Nevertheless,  there  seems  to  be  a  strong 
possibility  that  Zimbabwe  itself  was  an  important  distribution  center 
for  gold,  for  on  what  else  could  the  power  and  wealth  of  this 
Southern  Rhodesian  metropolis  have  been  founded? 

Al-Masudi,  an  Arab  writer  who  visited  Africa  in  a.d.  916  or  917, 
declared  that  Zimbabwe  had  been  founded  by  a  people  from 
Abyssinia,  that  it  had  been  in  existence  for  some  generations  and  was 
already  a  powerful  kingdom  in  his  day.  To  quote  his  actual  words: 
"It  is  a  land  that  produces  gold  in  quantity  and  other  marvels  as 
well."  It  thus  seems  that  the  modern  Ba  Roswi  and  Ba  Venda  tribes 
may  be  regarded  as  the  direct  descendants  of  the  builders  of  Zim- 
babwe. The  numerous  necklaces  of  Indian  and  Malayan  manufac- 
ture found  there  enabled  the  fantastic  buildings  to  be  dated  with 
even  greater  accuracy.  Caton-Thompson  thinks  that  Zimbabwe  and 
certain  other  towns  flourished  between  the  eighth  and  tenth  centuries 
A.D.  and  may  even  have  done  so  since  the  beginning  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

The  district  is  extremely  rich  in  granite,  a  material  which  lies 
readily  available  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  numerous  build- 
ing sites.  This  natural  granite  could  be  removed  in  slabs  and  needed 
scarcely  any  dressing. 

The  diggings  undertaken  by  Hall,  Randall-Maclver  and  Caton- 
Thompson  have  not  yielded  a  very  rich  harvest  from  the  quantita- 
tive aspect,  but  they  include  iron  arrowheads  and  spear  points,  axes, 
large  quantities  of  bronze  wire,  principally  in  the  form  of  ankle 
rings,  gold  wire,  soapstone  bowls,  rings,  necklaces,  soapstone  and 
earthenware  flywheels  for  spinning  contrivances,  battle-axes,  iron 
swords,  phalli,  bone  tubes  and  jugs  for  water  or  beer.  The  celebrated 
pillars  surmounted  by  a  soapstone  bird  are  of  particular  interest, 
and  a  likeness  of  the  bird  has  since  become  the  national  emblem  of 
Southern  Rhodesia. 


This  British  archaeologist's  ground  plan  of  Zimbabwe  shows    {top  right)    an 

elliptical  building  presumed  to  be  a  temple  and   {top  left)   the  acropolis  hill 

surmounted  by  its  citadel. 


292  THE  SILENT  PAST 

The  place  is  still  shrouded  in  mystery.  Even  the  purpose  of  the 
large  "elliptical  building"  is  unknown,  though  many  scholars  regard 
is  as  a  temple.  The  monoliths  in  this  co-called  Temple  of  Zimbabwe, 
which  are  about  thirteen  feet  high  and  taper  roughly  to  a  point, 
were  probably  connected  with  the  phallus  cult  which  is  still  such 
a  feature  of  the  area. 

It  is  likely  that  the  mysterious  culture  of  Zimbabwe  did  not 
originate  from  one  source  but  was  the  outcome  of  many  varied 
influences.  G.  A.  Wainwright  thinks  that  a  people  from  southern 
Abyssinia,  perhaps  the  Galla,  migrated  to  Southern  Rhodesia  long 
before  a.d.  900  and  that  it  was  they  who  were  responsible  for  the 
megaliths  of  the  Zimbabwe  civilization.  The  racial  identity  of  the 
Galla  aristocracy  probably  became  submerged  in  the  neighboring 
Bantu  population.  Since  the  phallus  cult  happens  to  play  an  im- 
portant role  in  southern  Abyssinia  and  the  abundance  of  phallus 
finds  in  Southern  Rhodesia  indicates  that  the  phallus  cult  was  equally 
important  in  the  Zimbabwe  culture,  we  cannot  overlook  this 
obvious  link. 

When  the  first  Europeans  made  their  way  into  the  southern 
half  of  Africa  450  years  ago,  they  found  themselves  in  a  living 
museum  representing  many  different  cultural  epochs.  Post-Stone- 
Age  cultures  are,  as  we  know,  divided  into  the  Bronze  Age  and  Iron 
Age.  The  bushmen  were  still  living  in  the  Stone  Age.  The  Hottentots 
were  already  using  bronze  and  copper  but  were  unfamiliar  with 
iron.  The  Bantu  of  the  east  coast,  on  the  other  hand,  manufactured 
implements  out  of  iron  and  had  already  entered  the  Iron  Age. 
Indeed,  iron  was  already  known  in  Southern  Rhodesia  before  the 
buildings  of  the  Zimbabwe  culture  came  into  being.  We  are  thus 
confronted  by  a  unique  cultural  transition  from  stone  to  iron. 
Africa  south  of  the  Sahara  was  isolated  from  the  ancient  world 
during  the  fourth,  third  and  second  millennia  b.c.  Only  this  can 
explain  why  many  tribes  in  the  southern  part  of  Africa  never  passed 
through  a  Bronze  Age.  In  Rhodesia  the  Iron  Age  followed  directly 
on  the  heels  of  the  Stone  Age  without,  as  in  North  Africa  and  almost 
everywhere  else  in  the  ancient  world,  going  through  the  inter- 
mediate phases  of  development  known  as  the  Copper  and  Bronze 
Ages. 

Iron  probably  reached  the  regions  of  Africa  south  of  the  Sahara 
from  the  countries  of  the   Mediterranean   as   early   as  the   tenth 


SOUTHERN  RHODESIA  293 

century,  but  by  what  routes?  The  Zimbabwe  culture,  in  so  far  as 
it  has  been  excavated,  belongs  to  the  Iron  Age  but  has  also  yielded 
articles  of  bronze.  Why  has  nothing  earlier  been  found?  Why  are 
there  no  traces  of  Solomon's  ore  consignments?  These  questions 
have  not  as  yet  been  answered. 

Although  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  stress  the  purely  African 
features  of  the  ruins  in  Southern  Rhodesia  ever  since  1906,  when 
reaction  set  in  against  the  first  wild  assumptions  about  mysterious 
Phoenician  colonists,  traces  of  former  cultural  contact  between  the 
Mediterranean  world  and  South  Africa  are  now  being  brought  to 
light.  G.  Mathew,  for  instance,  has  cited  archaeological  evidence  in- 
dicating that  there  were  very  ancient  pre-Islamic  links  between 
southern  Arabia  and  the  east  coast  of  South  Africa.  It  is  not 
beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  the  people  of  Sheba  landed 
there  and  penetrated  into  Southern  Rhodesia,  which  transports  the 
theory  of  a  sea  route  from  Tell  el-Kheleifeh  (formerly  Ezion-geber) 
through  the  Red  Sea,  via  the  land  of  Sheba  and  down  to  the  Sofala 
coast,  from  the  realm  of  legend  to  that  of  reality.  Roger  Summers, 
a  distinguished  student  of  South  African  archaeology  and  culture, 
says  in  this  connection  that  small  pieces  of  evidence  are  coming  to 
light  here  and  there  which  link  Africa  with  the  fringe  of  the 
ancient  world. 

Research  into  the  Zimbabwe  culture  has  not  yet  produced  a 
definite  answer  to  the  Ophir  enigma,  but  everything  indicates  that, 
manned  by  Phoenician  crews,  King  Solomon's  ships  did,  in  fact, 
explore  the  coasts  of  southeast  Africa,  We  know  now  that  Solomon's 
fleet  came  back  from  Ophir  laden  with  vast  quantities  of  gold.  We 
know,  too,  from  the  American  excavations  of  Ezion-geber  at  Tell 
el-Kheleifeh,  that  King  Solomon  refined  iron  and  copper  in  the 
smelting  furnaces  unearthed  there,  commodities  which  possessed 
great  value  as  trade  goods  throughout  the  contemporary  world  and 
particularly  in  the  southern  half  of  Africa. 

Nevertheless,  the  secret  of  Ophir  remains  unsolved,  perhaps  be- 
cause ships  leave  no  perceptible  traces  of  their  passage. 


NIGERIA 


THE  BRONZES  OF  BENIN 

The  ivory  carvings  and,  above  all,  the  bronzes  of  Benin  surpass 
anything  that  Black  Africa  has  produced  in  the  realm  of  art.  The 
purpose  of  many  of  these  objects  remains  a  mystery,  though 
leading  authorities  on  the  cidture  of  Yoruba  and  Benin  have  solved 
many  of  the  secrets  of  those  unusual  civilizations  by  hard  vcork 
and  exhaustive  digging.  The  finest  pieces  from  Benin  novo  repose 
in  the  Museu?n  of  Ethnology,  Berlin,  in  the  British  Museum,  and 
at  Lagos. 


ON  THE  west  coast  of  Africa  at  the  point  where  its  waist  is  pinched 
in  by  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  hes  Nigeria,  melting  pot  of  many  African 
tribes  and  races  and  a  country  of  some  forty  million  inhabitants. 
Among  them  are  the  Ibo,  the  Hausa,  the  Fulbe  and  the  Yoruba,  each 
numbering  about  four  millions. 

Nigeria  is  not  known  to  the  world  for  its  political  history  or  eco- 
nomic resources,  yet  its  culture  is  far  more  interesting  to  the  modern 
world  than  that  of  many  other  far  more  important  nations.  The  city 
and  culture  of  Benin  have  occupied  a  prominent  place  in  the  history 
of  art  ever  since  1897,  when  the  British  opened  up  the  kingdom  of 
the  same  name  in  the  marshes  of  the  Niger  delta  by  force  of  arms, 
and  especially  since  the  ethnologist  and  explorer  Leo  Frobenius 
virtually  revolutionized  our  knowledge  of  the  Negro  civilizations  in 
191 1.  Benin  is  not  only  a  city  but  a  region  that  includes  the  lands 
west  of  the  Niger  delta  and  around  the  Benin  River,  a  country  in- 
habited by  Negroes  of  Sudanese  stock  who  founded  Great  Benin,  a 
once  powerful  and  greatly  feared  kingdom  and  one  of  the  most 
culturally  advanced  districts  in  West  Africa.  Leo  Frobenius  even 
thought  that  in  Benin  he  had  found  the  heirs  and  descendants  of  the 
lost  continent  of  Atlantis. 

The  Benin  coast  was  first  explored  by  the  Portugese  in  1472,  and 
during  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries  became  one  of 
the  chief  centers  of  the  slave  trade.  Between  the  time  of  its  discovery 
by  the  Portuguese  and  the  British  expedition  of  1897,  Europe  almost 
lost  sight  of  the  Negro  kingdom,  and  for  four  centuries  no  precise 
details  of  its  ancient  civilization  emerged.  In  1897,  however,  an  event 
occurred  which  was  to  destroy  Benin's  autonomy.  The  British  Act- 

294 


NIGERIA  295 

ing  Consul-General  for  the  Niger  Coast  Protectorate,  J.  R.  Phillips, 
set  out  on  an  expedition  to  Benin  and  was  unwise  enough  to  approach 
the  capital  just  as  a  memorial  service,  complete  with  ancestor-cult 
sacrifice,  was  being  held  in  honor  of  the  reigning  king's  late  father. 
Phillips  was  murdered  in  the  bush  before  he  could  enter  the  city. 

The  British  immediately  dispatched  a  punitive  force,  and  the 
already  tottering  monarchy  was  completely  destroyed.  With  that, 
Europe  gained  its  first  glimpse  of  the  cultural  history  and  the  blood- 
thirsty but  far  from  primitive  religious  practices  of  the  mysterious 
kingdom  of  Benin.  The  British  caused  a  sensation  by  bringing  back 
bronzes  of  such  artistic  merit  that  experts  racked  their  brains  as  to 
which  European,  Egyptian  or  Islamic  artists  could  have  been  respon- 
sible for  them. 

The  bronzes  of  Benin  attracted  the  attention  they  did  because  they 
represented  a  unique  exception  among  the  sculptures  produced  by 
other  African  Negro  races.  To  those  endowed  with  a  Western  sense 
of  form  they  appeared  more  intelligible  and  less  alien  than  the  Negro 
art  of  the  rest  of  the  Dark  Continent. 

We  now  know  that  the  Yoruba,  a  tribal  group  of  Sudanese  stock 
who  live  northwest  of  Benin,  had  cities  of  more  than  100,000  in- 
habitants before  the  first  European  colonizers  arrived  on  the  scene, 
and  that  they  were  not  only  skilled  hoe-farmers  and  breeders  of 
small  livestock  but  also  traders  on  an  extensive  scale.  Their  highly 
developed  handicrafts,  cotton  weaving,  dyeing,  pottery,  and  bronze- 
and  brass-founding  techniques  spread  beyond  the  borders  of  their 
own  territory. 

Ancient  Yoruba  colonies  still  exist  in  Dahomey  and  Togo,  and  the 
ruling  class  of  Dahomey,  the  Fon,  inherited  great  artistic  gifts  from 
sources  that  are  hard  to  ascertain.  Yoruba  was,  in  fact,  the  mother 
country  of  the  kingdom  of  Benin,  and  Benin  not  only  owed  its 
existence  to  Yoruba  colonists  but  inherited  from  them  rudiments 
of  its  remarkable  art. 

Africa  was  for  thousands  of  years  the  principal  center  of  the 
slave  trade,  and  the  Yoruba  colonies  of  which  Benin  was  one  were 
founded  due  to  the  desire  to  establish  loading  points  for  human 
merchandise.  Between  the  years  i486  and  1641,  it  is  recorded  that 
1,389,000  slaves  were  exported  from  Angola  alone.  On  the  average, 
Brazil  received  shipments  of  10,000  slaves  each  year  from  1580  to 
1680.  Between  1783  and  1793,  no  less  than  900  trips  were  made  from 


296  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Liverpool  by  vessels  carrying  300,000  slaves  to  a  value  of  15  million 
pounds  sterling. 

In  an  Africa  accustomed  to  the  idea  of  slavery  this  was  no  more 
than  a  natural  development,  for,  as  Basil  Davidson  recently  em- 
phasized, it  is  only  a  small  step  from  the  ownership  of  slaves  to  their 
exportation. 

The  chief  center  of  Yoruba  art  was  Ile-Ife,  rehgious  capital,  cul- 
tural center  and  seat  of  the  spiritual  head  of  all  the  Yoruba.  Ile-Ife, 
which  lies  about  fifty  miles  from  Ibadan  in  Nigeria,  means  "land  of 
the  origin"  and  has  a  present  population  of  50,000.  The  only  surviv- 
ing works  of  art  of  the  "Ife  period"  are  made  either  of  stone,  quartz, 
granite,  bronze  or  baked  clay,  because  wood  carvings  have  fallen 
prey  to  the  climate  in  the  course  of  centuries.  Yoruba  sculptures 
found  during  the  past  twenty  years  occupy  a  unique  position  in  the 
art  of  Africa  as  a  whole.  In  1938  and  1939  some  splendid  works  of 
art  were  unearthed  in  the  palace  precincts  of  the  Oni  of  Ife, 
most  of  them  sculptures  in  brass.  Brass  varies  from  red  to  pale  gold 
in  color  according  to  the  proportion  of  copper  employed.  In  this 
case  the  alloy  was  20  percent  zinc.  So  amazingly  hfelike  in  every 
detail  is  one  bronze  male  figure  from  Tada  on  the  Niger  and  so  subtle 
and  expressive  are  the  Negroid  faces  of  the  Ife  finds  that  experts  are 
continually  searching  for  signs  of  extraneous  influence. 

Foreign  artists  may  well  have  taught  in  the  foundries  at  the  court 
of  the  Benin  kings,  and  the  Yoruba  pantheon  of  40 1  deities  is  reminis- 
cent of  the  angelic  communities  of  early  Christianity,  but  it  is  hard 
to  say  whether  the  Graeco-Christian  art  of  late  antiquity  or  the  art 
of  the  Middle  Ages  played  any  part  there.  Eckart  von  Sydow,  an 
outstanding  student  of  primitive  art,  and  especially  of  African  sculp- 
ture, believes  that  Benin's  works  of  art  were  in  some  way  influenced 
during  the  Middle  Ages  by  the  traffic  that  passed  along  the  long 
caravan  routes  running  through  the  Sudan  from  north  to  south  and 
from  east  to  west.  From  the  purely  technical  aspect,  the  brassworks 
of  ancient  Benin  will  stand  comparison  with  the  finest  European 
examples,  for  the  works  of  art  in  bronze  and  brass  that  came  from 
the  hands  of  these  native  artists  were  nothing  short  of  masterpieces. 
Yet  the  inexplicable,  incomprehensible  problem  of  interrelationship 
remains.  None  of  the  numerous  metal  plaques  or  other  surviving 
works  in  bronze  came  from  the  hand  of  a  European  artist.  They  are 
all  completely  African  in  style  and  composition,  even  though  they 


NIGERIA  297 

far  surpass  all  other  African  examples  of  plastic  art.  This  opinion 
was  shared  by  the  distinguished  German  ethnologist  Felix  von 
Luschan  and  by  Professor  Josef  Marquart  of  Berlin,  whose  compre- 
hensive work  on  the  Benin  collections  was  published  at  Leyden  in 
19 1 3.  The  art  as  a  whole  is  characterized  by  the  unusual  proportions 
of  the  statues,  the  short  legs,  the  schematic  treatment  of  physiog- 
nomy, the  partial  neglect  of  hands  and  feet,  the  painstaking  emphasis 
on  details  of  jewelry,  clothing  and  weapons  and,  last  but  not  least,  the 
predilection  for  full-face  portrayals. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  divide  Benin  art  into  periods  because  its 
inhabitants  had  no  form  of  writing  and  used  sculpture  to  express  all 
their  vital  impulses,  all  their  desires  and  aspirations,  all  their  religious 
ideas.  Bernhard  Struck  of  Heidelberg  has,  however,  distinguished 
five  periods  in  the  cultural  history  of  Benin.  They  range  from  1 140 
to  1887  and  cover  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  which 
represented  the  golden  age  of  Benin  art.  Certain  clues  are  afforded 
by  the  strange  bronze  plaques,  some  of  which  depict  Europeans 
whose  clothing,  hats  and  weapons  belong  to  the  years  between  1530 
and  1585.  Except  in  this  respect,  the  bronze  plaques  have  defied  all 
attempts  at  interpretation.  They  are  bet^veen  twelve  and  twenty 
inches  long.  Even  the  most  fragile  and  prominent  portions  of  the 
figures  are  hollow.  The  natives  have  no  recollection  of  their  original- 
purpose,  but  at  one  time  they  were  affixed  to  the  posts  that  supported 
the  roof  of  the  royal  palace,  as  the  nail  holes  in  them  indicate.  Al- 
though this  does  not  explain  why  such  infinite  pains  were  taken  with 
their  manufacture,  they  have  preserved  the  rich  and  varied  life  of 
the  people  of  Benin  in  so  grandiose  a  manner  that  they  compensate 
to  some  extent  for  our  lack  of  written  records. 

We  have  been  left  a  description  of  Benin  by  a  Dutchman  who 
painted  a  vivid  picture  of  the  splendor  of  its  royal  court  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  reported  that  the  city  was  a  very  large 
place  with  broad  streets  and  neat  houses  whose  verandas  were 
swept  clean  by  slaves.  Inside  the  royal  palace  were  rectangular  court- 
yards surrounded  by  galleries.  The  king  kept  horses  in  well-appointed 
stables,  and  the  warriors  and  nobility  were  devoted  to  him. 

The  king  has  very  many  slaves  and  slave  women.  One  often  sees  the 
slave  women  carrying  water  and  yams,  also  palm  oil.  This  is  said  to  be 
for  the  king's  wives.  The  king  has  many  wives  and  holds  two  processions 


298  THE  SILENT  PAST 

a  year,  on  each  of  which  occasions  he  parades  his  power  and  wealth  and 
finery,  accompanied  by  all  his  wives— more  than  six  hundred  in  number. 
The  noblemen  also  have  numerous  wives,  some  of  them  eighty  and 
others  ninety  or  more.  No  man  of  rank  is  so  poor  as  to  own  less  than 
ten  or  twelve  wives.  Thus,  more  women  are  to  be  found  here  than  men. 

According  to  native  tradition,  King  Overami  Eduboa,  who  was 
deposed  by  the  British  in  1897,  "^^^  the  twenty-second  member  of 
his  line.  The  tenth  king,  whose  name  was  Esige  Osawe,  prided  him- 
self on  having  been  born  a  "white  man."  Before  he  died  he  sent 
emissaries  across  the  "great  water"  to  the  land  of  the  whites,  bearing 
gifts  and  an  invitation  to  the  whites  to  visit  him  in  Africa,  but  in 
vain.  They  settled  in  Gwatto  and  carried  on  trade  there.  Apparently, 
they  were  accompanied  by  a  man  called  Ahammangiwa  or  Moham- 
mangiwa  ( "Elephant- A4ohammed").  This  A-Ioslem  was  a  brass 
founder,  perhaps  a  member  of  the  Hausa  tribe.  He  traveled  to  Benin 
and  brought  the  artists  there  fresh  inspiration  with  his  portrayals  of 
Europeans  and  new  styles  of  ornamentation.  He  stayed  with  the 
king  for  a  long  time  and  had  "many  wives  but  no  children."  The 
king  apprenticed  numerous  young  men  to  him.  "We  can  still 
produce  metalwork,"  the  Benin  people  said  later,  "but  we  cannot 
make  it  as  he  made  it  because  he  and  all  his  pupils  are  dead."  Pro- 
fessor Josef  Marquart  of  Berlin,  who  tried  to  solve  the  riddle  of 
Benin's  artistic  origins,  thought  that  the  story  of  Ahammangiwa 
could  have  stemmed  from  an  obscure  recollection  of  the  first 
attempts  at  conversion  by  the  Portuguese,  and  that  the  "many  wives" 
may  have  been  nuns  belonging  to  a  mission  led  by  Ahammangiwa 
himself.  There  is  in  existence  a  fine  ivory  cup  made  by  an  ivory 
carver  from  Sierra  Leone  which  may  point  to  the  presence  of  a 
Catholic  mission  in  West  Africa  as  early  as  this.  The  cup,  together 
with  elephant  tusks  bearing  skillfully  carved  reliefs,  is  now  in  the 
National  Museum  of  Ethnology  in  Holland. 

We  do  not  know  if  the  plaques  and  their  figurative  reliefs  derived 
any  inspiration  from  European  brass-founding  technique,  but  we  do 
know  that  Mohammangiwa  was  alive  during  the  reign  of  the  oba 
(king)  named  Esige  Osawe;  that  is  to  say,  at  the  time  when  the 
Portuguese  navigator  Joao  Afonso  de  Aveiro  first  discovered  Benin. 

It  is  hard  to  ascertain  whether  the  Yoruba  art  of  Ife,  which  rep- 
resented the  cultural  progenitor  of  Benin,  was  very  much  more 


NIGERIA  299 

ancient  than  the  art  of  Benin  itself.  Sculpture  and  foundry  technique 
probably  reached  their  prime  at  Ife  between  the  twelfth  and  four- 
teenth centuries.  Under  the  last  autonomous  ruler  of  Benin,  Oba 
Overami,  brass  founding  was  prohibited  for  some  unknown  reason, 
which  was  why  the  British  were  surprised  to  see  such  magnificent 
bronzes  nailed  up  in  huts.  After  the  conquest  of  1897,  when  the  king 
was  deposed  and  Benin  City  went  up  in  flames,  talented  native  artists 
began  to  ply  their  craft  once  more.  Their  artistic  impulses  and 
abilities  live  on  today,  although  their  art  itself  has  dechned  under 
the  impact  of  industrialization. 

The  British  scholar  Bernard  Fagg  has  demonstrated  the  existence 
of  an  interesting  relationship  between  the  ancient  Nok  culture, 
which  produced  tools  of  iron  as  well  as  stone,  and  the  art  of  later 
Nigerian  tribes.  In  1956  Fagg  published  details  of  a  life-size  terra- 
cotta head  dug  up  in  the  south  of  Zaria  Province  (northern  Nigeria) 
in  1954.  This  find  owes  its  importance  to  the  fact  that  it  dates  from 
pre-Christian  times  and  that  its  finely  detailed  hair,  superbly  modeled 
eyes  and  animated,  expressive  mouth  are  reminiscent  of  the  finest 
pieces  from  Ife  and  Benin.  The  Nok  culture  has  not  yet  been  dated 
precisely,  but  it  probably  flourished  in  the  first  century  B.C.  Fagg 
points  out  that  the  sculpture's  hair  resembles  the  hair  styles  affected 
by  the  modern  Kachichiri  and  Numana  tribes  who  live  about  thirty 
miles  from  Nok,  so  the  first  beginnings  of  Benin  art  may  well  be 
rooted  far  more  deeply  in  the  past  than  we  have  hitherto  supposed. 

What  lay  behind  the  expressive  busts  of  queens,  the  figures,  heads 
and  countless  other  objects?  The  chief  impetus  and  source  of  Benin's 
art  was  the  ancestor  cult.  That  was  the  soil  in  which  the  bronze  art 
of  Benin  thrived  and  the  foundation  on  which  its  royal  families  built 
their  religion.  Altars  to  fathers  and  forefathers,  groups  of  kings  and 
their  retinues,  groups  dominated  by  queen  mothers,  bronze  heads, 
cockerels,  carved  elephants'  tusks— all  these  belonged  to  the  ancestor 
cult. 

For  all  that,  ancestor  worship  was  not  as  highly  spiritualized  here 
as  in  many  of  the  civilizations  of  the  Far  East.  The  relationship 
between  living  and  dead  was  intended  to  bring  practical  advantages. 
The  head  of  the  family  shook  rattles,  pounded  the  floor,  rang  bells 
and  called  loudly  upon  the  spirits  of  his  ancestors,  who  entered  the 
central  head  on  the  altar  and  gave  ear  to  the  family's  prayers.  During 
prayer,  pieces  of  cola  nut  were  crumbled.  Taking  these  in  his  mouth, 


300  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  priest  chewed  them  and  spat  them  onto  the  rattles,  thereby  giving 
the  signal  for  sacrifice.  The  main  sacrificial  beast  was  the  panther, 
which  was  dedicated  to  the  soul  of  the  king  of  Benin  during  his  life- 
time. Sacrifice  was  heralded  by  a  sword  ritual  performed  by  head- 
men. After  a  cockerel,  a  goat  and  a  cow  had  been  slaughtered,  food 
was  placed  before  the  rattles  and  the  altar,  and  the  proceedings  were 
consummated  by  a  feast  in  which  the  whole  family  shared. 

With  the  advent  of  Western  civilization  the  old  spirit  of  Negro 
art  declined,  the  tribes'  links  with  their  ancestors  fell  asunder,  ancient 
tribal  traditions  waned  and  native  artists  began  to  manufacture  curios 
for  the  benefit  of  foreign  collectors.  The  missing  element  in  these 
new  arts  and  crafts  has  been  neatly  defined  by  William  B.  Fagg, 
who  says  that  a  comparison  between  the  traditional  art  of  a  tribe 
and  the  art  produced  for  tourists  discloses  something  much  more 
important  than  mere  external  changes  in  form.  To  him,  the  missing 
element  is  the  vital  force  that  once  provided  tribal  life  with  its  basis 
of  existence  and  philosophical  world  of  ideas. 

That  this  vital  force  existed,  that  it  breathed  life  into  inanimate 
bronze  and  gave  birth  to  sculpture  of  such  unique  beauty  and 
astounding  naturalism  was  due  alone  to  the  spirit  and  faith  of  the 
people  of  Benin. 


NEW  GUINEA 


RIVER  OF  A  THOUSAND  EYES 

The  civilizations  of  the  Sepik  district,  whose  ?nagnifice?ice  is 
due  in  particular  to  their  religio?i  and  art,  are  regrettably  on  the 
verge  of  extinction,  hi  an  outwardly  almost  imtoiiched-seeining 
country  the  natives'  anciejit  and  traditional  way  of  life  has  largely 
disappeared  or  is  rapidly  disintegrating. . . .  All  these  changes  are 
attributable  to  contact  with  modern  civilization.  Confronted  by 
the  superiority  manifest  in  it,  the  77atives  lost  their  inward  and 
often  their  outward  stability  as  well.  That  is  why  their  cultures  are 
dying. 

—Alfred  Buhler,  Sepik,  p.  23, 
Stuttgart-Berne- Vienna,  1958 

LARGER  than  all  the  five  continents  put  together,  the  Pacific  Ocean 
is  encircled  by  a  chain  of  volcanoes,  both  active  and  extinct.  It  is  the 
most  recently  formed  portion  of  the  globe,  and  its  birth  pangs  and 
the  concomitant  appearance  and  disappearance,  advance  and  with- 
drawal of  its  islands  and  shores  are  far  from  complete.  Between 
Hawaii  and  New  Zealand,  New  Guinea  and  Easter  Island,  thirty 
thousand  islets  project  from  the  gleaming,  glittering  waters  of  the 
South  Seas. 

The  present  inhabitants  of  the  South  Pacific  migrated  to  their 
oceanic  world  from  Asiatic  countries  and  islands  in  times  beyond 
our  ken.  Wave  after  wave  of  migrant  peoples  sailed  across  the  sea 
to  find  a  watery  grave  in  the  blue  depths  of  the  Pacific  or  land  on 
some  hospitable  shore  and  make  their  home  there. 

The  vast  expanse  of  the  Pacific  contains  three  worlds,  the  Poly- 
nesian, the  Micronesian  and  the  Melanesian,  each  of  wliich  is  very 
different  in  character.  Their  common  features  are  illiteracy,  lack  of 
metals  and  the  other  raw  materials,  and  the  creeping  death  which 
has  been  continuously  eroding  the  native  population  of  all  three  areas 
—the  Maoris  of  New  Zealand  and  a  few  other  tribes  excepted— ever 
since  the  advent  of  the  European. 

Polynesia  is  a  Greek  word  formation  meaning  "place  of  many 
islands."  The  enormous  triangle  bounded  by  Hawaii,  New  Zealand 
and  Easter  Island  could  contain  whole  continents— Australia  four 
times  over,  the  United  States  and  Canada  three  times  over— yet  the 


302  THE  SILENT  PAST 

thousands  of  islands  within  that  area  are  inhabited  by  only  1,100,000 
people,  of  which  only  100,000  are  genuine  Polynesians. 

The  Polynesians  have  preserved  a  remembrance  of  their  east- 
ward migrations  from  Hawaiki,  the  legendary  land  of  their  fore- 
fathers. Samoa  and  Tonga  were  their  first  main  settlements,  and  they 
reached  the  Society  Islands  about  the  eighth  century  a.d.  From  their 
base  at  Raiatea,  the  political  and  religious  center  of  Polynesia,  they 
then  populated  the  eastern  Pacific  as  far  as  Easter  Island.  The  first 
Polynesians  sailed  off  into  the  Pacific  at  about  the  time  of  Christ's 
birth  or  three  or  four  centuries  earlier.  According  to  the  latest  radio- 
carbon tests,  the  Polynesians  settled  in  Hawaii  during  the  early  cen- 
turies of  our  era,  perhaps  between  a.d.  100  and  200. 

Where  did  the  Polynesians  come  from? 

We  do  not  know  exactly,  but  we  must  assume  that  they  came 
from  Indonesia.  While  the  Polynesian  language  is  more  closely  re- 
lated to  Malay,  it  shows  evidence  of  the  influence  of  the  Indonesian 
tongue.  Since  Sanskrit  arrived  in  Indonesia  from  India  circa  a.d.  350 
and  since  the  Polynesian  languages  contain  no  Sanskrit,  the  Poly- 
nesians must  have  left  their  Indonesian  home  sometime  before  a.d. 
350.  However,  their  main  migrations  took  place  in  the  eleventh, 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  a.d..  New  Zealand  being  populated 
by  migrants  from  the  Society  and  Cook  islands  about  1350.  These 
voyages  across  the  world's  largest  sheet  of  water  in  frail  outriggers 
and  catamarans  with  triangular  woven  sails  were  among  history's 
greatest  feats  of  daring,  even  though  our  only  record  of  them  is 
preserved  in  the  traditions,  myths  and  songs  of  the  island  peoples. 

Bold  hypotheses  and  venturesome  theories  exercising  the  fascina- 
tion over  modern  humanity  that  they  do,  people  have  been  asserting 
for  decades  that  the  Polynesians  came  from  South  America.  This 
pet  fable  has  not  yet  gained  favor  with  most  scientists,  however, 
because  ancient  traditions,  ethnological  facts  and  anthropological 
characteristics  all  tend  to  prove  that  the  Polynesian  migrations  orig- 
inated in  the  west.  "It  is  one  of  the  best  established  findings  of 
ethnological  research  that  this  island  world  was  populated  from  the 
west,  from  Asia.  An  eastern  origin,  i.e.,  from  the  American  continent, 
is  out  of  the  question."  So  says  Herbert  Tischner,  a  leading  authority 
on  the  tribes  of  the  South  Seas,  and  modern  science  in  general  shares 
his  view. 

Micronesia,  the  "place  of  small  islands,"  comprises  1,458  islands, 


NEW  GUINEA  305 

most  of  them  minute,  and  is  inhabited  by  a  total  population  of 
170,000.  The  islands  are  composed  mainly  of  calcareous  coral  and 
the  great  majority  are  atolls.  Only  97,000  Micronesians  still  live  in 
the  Alarianas,  the  Palau  Islands,  the  Carolines,  the  Marshall  Group, 
Nauru  and  the  Gilbert  Islands.  These  Alicronesians  with  their  pecu- 
liar Old  Mongol  admixture  are  doomed,  like  so  many  primitive 
peoples,  to  become  extinct  without  ever  having  been  adequately 
studied.  We  have  only  to  remember  the  Tasmanians,  the  Fuegian 
Indians  and  others. 

The  name  Melanesia  is  compounded  of  the  Greek  words  melas 
("black")  and  nesos  ("island").  Structurally  speaking,  the  region 
belongs  to  Australia  and  used  in  very  ancient  times,  before  the  inter- 
vening land  masses  sank  beneath  the  sea,  to  form  the  outer  rim  of 
Australia.  Situated  in  the  southwest  Pacific,  Melanesia  includes  the 
world's  second  largest  island.  New  Guinea,  the  Bismarck  Archi- 
pelago, the  Solomon  Islands,  Santa  Cruz,  the  New  Hebrides  and  New 
Caledonia. 

Anyone  familiar  with  the  islands  of  the  Pacific  and  their  inhabitants 
knows  that  the  Polynesians  are  distinguished  by  their  tall  and  sturdy 
build,  their  pale  brown  complexion  and  the  long,  smooth  black  hair 
which  they  share  with  their  Japanese  cousins  and  the  Chinese.  The 
Polynesians  do  not  have  naturally  curly  hair,  and  this  immediately 
sets  them  apart  from  the  crinkly-headed  Melanesians.  The  Micro- 
nesians include  both  very  light-skinned  and  dark-skinned  people, 
though  they  are  not  so  dark  as  many  Melanesians,  some  of  whom  are 
completely  black.  The  Solomon  Islanders  are  examples  of  the  latter 
type  of  Melanesian. 

Melanesia  was  the  first  group  to  be  inhabited,  which  is  why  it  is 
the  site  of  the  most  rudimentary  cultures.  Parts  of  the  island  of 
New  Guinea,  for  instance,  form  one  of  the  last  great  open-air 
cultural  and  ethnological  museums  in  the  world.  New  Guinea  is  a 
fascinating  place,  and  the  district  around  the  river  Sepik  has  produced 
what  are  probably  the  finest  works  of  art  in  the  entire  Pacific  area. 

The  riddle  of  New  Guinea  begins  with  its  population.  There  are 
tall,  dolichocephalic  people,  there  are  short,  pygmoid  people,  there 
are  some  other  groups  related  to  the  aboriginals  of  Australia  and 
Tasmania,  and  there  are  natives  who  either  resemble  the  Melanesian 
type  or  are  genuine  Melanesians.  Almost  all  the  coastal  tribes  of 
New  Guinea  are  Melanesian,  as  opposed  to  the  shorter,  Papuan-speak- 


304 


THE  SILENT  PAST 
a         ,  N    o    r 


ing  tribes  of  the  interior.  The  people  are  largely  Negroid,  dark- 
skinned  and  curly-headed,  but  there  are  also  some  tribes  in  New 
Guinea  who  appear  to  be  related  to  the  Mongoloid  races.  Linguisti- 
cally, the  oldest  tribes  belong  to  the  Papuan  group. 

These  dark-skinned  but  heterogeneous  tribes  speak  an  extra- 
ordinary number  of  languages.  The  central  mountain  range  forming 
the  island's  backbone  is  about  1,250  miles  long  and  includes  peaks 
of  up  to  16,000  feet,  some  of  which  carry  glaciers  despite  their 
proximity  to  the  equator.  The  whole  island  is  segmented  by  a  maze 
of  mountain  ranges  and  isolated  mountainous  features,  which  is  why 
its  inhabitants,  separated  as  they  are  by  huge  forests,  rivers  and 
escarpments,  have  retained  their  confusion  of  languages.  It  is  the 
same  with  their  culture.  When  white  men  first  landed  on  New 
Guinea  the  natives  had  no  metal  of  any  kind.  This  situation  persists 


NEW  GUINEA  305 

in  many  parts  of  the  island,  so  some  of  the  inhabitants  of  New 
Guinea  are  still,  in  fact,  living  in  the  Stone  Age. 

Culturally,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  amazingly  advanced,  as  we 
at  once  realize  if  only  we  succeed  in  divesting  ourselves  of  the 
standards  accepted  in  Europe  and  the  West.  This  is,  of  course,  ex- 
ceedingly difficult.  We  are  so  firmly  rooted  in  our  Christian  notions 
of  morality  that  we  regard  cannibalism,  for  example,  as  the  ne  plus 
ultra  of  savagery.  Yet  in  New  Guinea  and  other  Melanesian  islands 
it  was  the  focal  point  of  magical  rites,  possessed  the  most  exalted 
spiritual  significance,  and  was,  viewed  in  terms  of  the  Melanesian 
world,  a  symptom  of  advanced  culture. 

The  island's  principal  river,  the  Sepik,  rises  in  the  central  moun- 
tain chain.  It  is  about  as  long  as  the  Rhine  but  its  volume  is  infinitely 
greater  because  of  the  torrential  tropical  downpours  that  feed  it. 
The  gateway  to  the  island's  interior,  it  weaves  its  serpentine  way 
through  the  northern  plains  to  the  sea  in  a  series  of  wide  curves  and 
intricate  convolutions.  When  the  German  astronomer  Carl  Schrader 
traveled  upstream  in  1886  and  1887,  ^^^  natives  greeted  him  with 
such  hostility  that  he  had  to  abandon  his  expedition  before  reaching 
the  river's  highest  navigable  point.  He  was  followed  by  the  ethnol- 
ogists Poech,  Dorsay  and  Friederici  and,  finally,  in  1908,  by  the 
Hamburg  South  Seas  Expedition,  which  brought  back  an  extremely 
valuable  collection  of  ethnological  data. 

Even  at  that  time,  the  Western  world  was  amazed  at  the  artistic 
sense  of  the  "savages"  of  the  Sepik.  Their  superb  clay  vessels,  beauti- 
ful carvings  and  magnificent  domestic  architecture  all  aroused  great 
admiration.  But  New  Guinea  was  and  still  is  an  explorer's  nightmare. 
This  is  due  to  the  very  nature  of  the  country,  to  its  swamps  and 
tropical  rain  forests,  to  its  warm  and  humid  climate,  to  the  difficulty 
of  obtaining  food  supplies  in  the  interior,  to  the  natives'  determina- 
tion to  persevere  in  their  own  way  of  life  rather  than  adopt  that 
of  the  West  (a  resistance  which  has  been  slow  to  yield),  and  to  a 
thousand  other  obstacles  which  have  for  decades  worn  down  the 
morale,  endurance  and  physique  of  so  many  scientists  and  their 
companions. 

To  see  the  splendid  utensils  and  cult  objects  of  the  Sepik  culture 
in  a  museum  is  to  recognize  the  strength  of  the  spiritual  impetus  that 
engendered  them. 

This  spiritual  force  stemmed  from  the  idea  that  the  world  of  the 


3o6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

supernatural,  the  spirit  world,  is  more  important  and  exercises  a 
more  decisive  influence  on  mankind  than  the  mundane  aspect  of 
existence.  Like  almost  all  primitive  peoples,  the  tribes  of  New 
Guinea  are  unable  to  account  for  occurrences  such  as  natural  disas- 
ters, sickness,  death  or  bad  harvests  in  scientific  terms.  Instead,  they 
seek  the  cause  of  these  events  in  the  supernatural,  thus  securing  a 
means  of  intervening  in  nature,  of  warding  off  mischief  and  disaster 
and,  perhaps,  even  of  erecting  a  prophylactic  barrier  against  them. 
To  the  New  Guineans,  everything  in  their  natural  environment  is 
animate.  There  is  no  thing,  no  living  creature,  which  is  not  instinct 
with  soul  or  vital  force.  This  belief  in  the  ubiquity  of  souls  or 
animism,  so  called  from  anima,  the  Latin  word  for  "soul,"  implies 
that  animals,  human  beings,  plants  and  lifeless  objects  are  all  in- 
vested with  a  power  that  must  be  contacted  and  utilized,  never 
offended  or  provoked.  It  is  a  deeply  religious  faith  because  it  senses 
the  divine,  sacred  and  supersensual  element  in  all  natural  phenomena. 

Life-force  and  souls  are  at  their  strongest  in  human  beingrs.  "When 
a  man  dies,  this  magical  force  only  becomes  intensified,  so  the  dead 
are  not  only  held  in  awe  but  offered  sacrifice  as  a  token  of  love  and 
respect. 

Thus,  the  Papuan  world  is  filled  with  ancestral  spirits— material 
objects  included— because  all  that  man  owns  or  makes  owes  its 
existence  to  his  ancestors.  Articles  of  daily  use,  material  objects  of 
every  kind,  customs  and  cults  all  derive  from  our  ancestors,  and 
every  thing  and  every  contrivance  inherits  something  of  its  creator's 
soul.  If  a  man's  ancestors  are  ill-disposed  toward  him,  for  instance, 
they  can  ensure  that  he  is  never  blessed  with  offspring. 

In  order  to  gain  the  favor  of  the  dead,  the  living  must  provide  their 
souls  with  a  dwelling  place.  The  best  abode  for  the  soul  of  a  dead 
man  is,  of  course,  his  own  head.  Since  the  skull  is  endowed  with 
magic  powers  and  is  the  least  perishable  part  of  the  human  body, 
the  dead  are  exhumed  after  a  certain  length  of  time,  their  skulls 
cleaned  and  their  original  features  reproduced  in  clay. 

Nowhere  in  the  entire  South  Pacific  area  is  this  done  with  such 
artistry  as  in  the  valley  of  the  Sepik.  Clay  is  skillfully  molded  over 
the  skull,  the  eye  sockets  inlaid  with  cowrie  shells,  and  human  hair 
affixed.  One  more  thing:  because  the  most  important  events  in  the 
Hfe  of  the  deceased  were  the  cult  ceremonies  which  he  attended  and 


NEW  GUINEA  307 

the  battles  he  fought,  the  face  is  painted  exactly  as  it  was  on  those 
occasions.  This  done,  the  soul's  abode  is  complete. 

Ancestral  skulls  are  arranged  on  finely  carved  and  decorated 
boards  and  placed  in  the  large  "spirit  houses"  where  tribesmen  meet 
to  conduct  memorial  ceremonies  for  their  ancestors.  If  the  skulls  of 
the  departed  are  not  available  their  place  is  taken  by  wooden  figures 
designed  to  accommodate  their  souls. 

It  was  this  belief  in  a  spiritual  force  residing  in  the  human  head 
which  fostered  cannibalism  and  head-hunting,  because  it  implied  that 
if  life-force  really  dwells  in  a  skull  it  can  be  acquired  from  people 
outside  the  family  circle.  All  one  needs  is  a  head.  Hence  the  New 
Guineans'  raids  on  neighboring  tribes  and  their  villages,  a  practice 
unknown  in  any  part  of  the  Pacific  area  except  Melanesia. 

Anyone  who  acquires  a  man's  head  acquires  his  name  as  well, 
and  it  is  essential  to  know  the  name  of  one's  victim  because  of  the 
power  inherent  in  it.  A  name  obtained  in  this  way  can  be  given 
to  a  child,  thereby  endowing  it  with  the  positive  spiritual  strength 
of  its  original  owner.  That  is  why  head-hunters  try  to  trick  their 
victim  into  revealing  his  name  before  killing  him. 

Paul  Wirz,  who  collected  some  very  interesting  material  during 
his  lengthy  explorations  of  the  Indian  Archipelago  and  New  Guinea, 
has  given  us  a  verbatim  account  of  his  conversation  with  a  head- 
hunter. 

"In  the  middle  of  the  night  we  surrounded  the  settlement  which  we 
had  reconnoitered  the  previous  day  and  challenged  the  sleeping  in- 
habitants to  fight.  Five  of  them  fell  into  our  hands.  I  killed  this  one," 
said  the  man,  proffering  an  armbone  with  flesh  still  adhering  to  it. 
"Rawi  was  his  name.  He  was  still  a  young  man.  My  brother  Monai  held 
him  fast  while  I  asked  what  his  name  was.  He  screamed  as  though 
spitted,  but  it  did  him  no  good.  I  cut  off  his  head  with  my  bamboo 
knife.  The  man  poked  his  tongue  out  like  this,"  continued  the  narrator 
with  a  dreadful  grimace,  and  then  hurried  off  to  his  hut.  After  a  while 
he  reappeared  and  laid  the  freshly  painted  trophy  with  its  long,  plaited 
hair-extensions  at  my  feet.  "You  can  have  it  for  your  child,  if  it  has 
no  name  yet,  as  long  as  you  give  me  two  axes,  ten  knives  and  ten  packets 
of  tobacco.  Take  note  of  his  name,"  he  screeched  at  me.  "Rawi!  Rawi! 
That  was  what  the  man  was  called." 

The  powers  and  forces  inherent  in  every  human  being  are  de- 
scribed in  Melanesian  as  mana.  Codrington  first  identified  this  term 


3o8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

among  the  Solomon  Islanders,  but  it  is  an  idea  prevalent  throughout 
the  Pacific  area  that  the  magical  power  inherent  in  animals,  human 
beings  and  material  objects  can  be  exploited  by  certain  behavior.  The 
more  important  a  man  is,  the  more  vital  force  or  mana  he  contains. 
In  the  view  of  many  tribes  in  the  Melanesian  area,  mana  can  be 
obtained  by  eating  human  flesh.  And  since  the  flesh  of  a  chieftain 
possesses  more  spiritual  energy  than  that  of  a  common  mortal,  people 
of  superior  rank  have  for  centuries  been  hunted  down  with  particular 
zeal. 

Far  from  being  a  cultural  nadir,  cannibalism  is  scarcely  ever 
present  in  the  rudimentary  stages  of  a  civilization.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  at  its  strongest  and  most  widespread  in  Polynesia,  whose  oceanic 
culture  is  of  a  peculiarly  high  standard.  In  Polynesia,  as  in  Melanesia, 
both  men  and  women  were  numbered  among  its  victims,  and  in  the 
former  area  the  victims  might  include  members  of  a  man's  own  tribe 
and  family.  The  chieftain  was  the  first  and  sometimes  the  only  per- 
son to  partake  of  human  flesh.  Prisoners  were  occasionally  fattened 
before  being  devoured. 

A  chieftain's  illness,  the  consecration  of  a  spirit  house,  the  launch- 
ing of  a  boat,  the  termination  of  a  war,  an  initiation  ceremony— any 
one  of  these  things  could  occasion  the  eating  of  human  flesh.  Tischner 
says  that  the  old  Viti  Islanders  of  the  Fiji  group  were  reputed  to  be 
the  most  inveterate  cannibals  in  the  South  Seas.  While  some  of  their 
chiefs  abhorred  the  practice,  many  prominent  headmen  disposed  of 
a  large  number  of  victims  in  their  time.  The  hero  Ra  Unreundre,  for 
instance,  was  supposed  to  have  devoured  nine  hundred  men,  and  in 
Viti  there  were  even  special  forks  and  plates  for  use  at  cannibalistic 
repasts. 

Waiter  Behrmann,  former  Professor  of  Geography  at  Berlin 
University  and  one  of  the  first  to  explore  the  Sepik  area,  stressed 
that  any  assessment  of  the  natives'  way  of  life  should  be  based  on 
how  they  imagine  the  world,  not  on  our  own  conception  of  it.  New 
Guinea  is  badly  off  for  meat,  he  pointed  out,  and  has  no  large  mam- 
mals apart  from  pigs  and  dogs.  "Imagine,  therefore,  that  someone 
has  slain  in  battle  an  opponent  who,  in  the  eyes  of  the  islanders,  is 
indistinguishable  from  an  animal.  Seen  in  this  light,  it  seems  almost 
natural  to  devour  one's  enemy,  for  human  beings  are  not  vegetarians 
and  need  meat  to  eat.  This  is  how  cannibalism  should  be  regarded— 
though  not,  of  course,  condoned."  Behrmann's  theory  that  human 


NEW  GUINEA  309 

beings  were  killed  in  New  Guinea  for  lack  of  meat  does  not, 
however,  accord  with  the  general  view.  The  motives  underlying 
cannibalism  seem  in  every  case  to  be  of  a  religious  rather  than  carniv- 
orous nature,  as  can  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  at  one  feast  in 
New  Guinea,  cannibalism  prevailed  even  though  between  four  and 
five  hundred  pigs  were  slaughtered  for  the  occasion. 

Thus  we  discover  in  the  interior  of  New  Guinea  a  secluded  culture 
characterized  by  head-hunting  and  cannibalism,  by  the  most  beau- 
tiful masks  in  the  South  Seas,  by  colorful  and  skillfully  composed 
articles  of  adornment  and  by  carvings  and  paintings  unexcelled  in 
any  other  part  of  the  Pacific.  Spirit-crocodiles,  tapering  masks,  figure- 
heads for  the  prows  of  dugout  canoes,  amazingly  impressive  spirit 
or  tambaran  houses— all  these  have  a  spiritual,  indeed  a  religious, 
significance. 

The  island's  art— and  particularly  that  of  the  Sepik  people— invari- 
ably emphasizes  the  eyes,  whether  framed  by  the  painting  on  skulls, 
or  staring  from  a  white  or  black  ground  on  masks,  or  peering  from 
shields,  or  looking  down  from  the  gables  or  houses,  or  set  into  the 
prows  of  dugouts.  Wherever  a  surface  has  to  be  filled,  the  eye  motif 
almost  always  predominates.  If  one  pair  of  eyes  is  not  enough  for 
the  purpose,  additional  pairs  are  painted  in.  One  reason  why  these 
eyes  impress  themselves  on  the  beholder  is  that  all  curves  and  orna- 
mentation serve  to  frame  and  stress  them.  Even  the  tall  gable  of  the 
spirit  house  becomes  transformed  into  a  face.  In  the  assembly  hall 
within  lives  the  tambaran  or  spirit.  It  is  his  eyes  that  peer  watchfully 
from  beneath  the  overhanging  eaves  of  the  palm-leaf  roof,  protecting 
the  tribe  and  shielding  it  against  evil  influences. 

It  seems  possible,  even  probable,  that  there  are  hnks  between  the 
T'ao-t'ieh  of  the  Shang  people  of  ancient  China  and  the  eye  motif 
of  New  Guinea.  The  bronze  vessels  with  their  T'ao-t'ieh  masks  were 
used  in  ancestor-worship  rituals.  Perhaps  the  T'ao-t'ieh  of  China 
evolved  from  some  ancient  skull  cult  (compare  the  skulls  found  at 
Chou-k'ou-tien  near  Peking),  just  as  the  eye  motif  of  New  Guinea 
is  associated  with  the  painting  of  ancestral  skulls. 

No  Western  exponent  of  abstract  art  can  compete  with  the  color 
sense  of  the  people  of  the  Sepik  culture.  The  ineffably  beautiful  color 
compositions  embodied  by  the  natives  of  the  central  Sepik  area  in 
their  masks,  painted  spirit  houses,  cult  figures  and  carvings  have 
formed  a  vast  and  inexhaustible  reservoir  of  inspiration  for  the 


3IO  THE  SILENT  PAST 

abstract  artists  of  the  West.  The  people  of  the  Sepik  used  colors  of 
astonishing  delicacy  and  almost  disconcerting  loveliness  in  their 
miraculous  works  of  art. 

The  Sepik  River  area  and  the  highland  regions  of  Washkuk  and 
Maprik  are,  as  Alfred  Biihler,  the  eminent  authority  on  New  Guinea, 
declared,  true  centers  of  advanced  art.  But  although  the  inhabitants 
of  New  Guinea  defended  themselves  against  European  colonization 
more  staunchly  than  other  primitive  peoples,  cultural  infiltration  by 
the  West  spelled  the  downfall  of  their  religious  centers  and  forced 
the  mana.  which  they  had  transformed  into  reality  to  give  way  before 
the  ruthless  god  known  as  Western  technique. 

All  art  springs  from  religion.  In  New  Guinea,  art  was  never  more 
than  a  handmaiden  of  spiritual  ideas  and  a  purveyor  of  spiritual 
strength.  Here,  even  more  clearly  than  in  other  ancient  civilizations, 
we  can  see  how  genuine  art  is  derived  from  the  supersensual  and 
how,  as  soon  as  modern  civilization  topples  the  sublime  edifice  of  the 
mind,  the  soul  and  spiritual  energy,  the  people  that  built  it  are 
doomed  to  extinction. 


GUATEMALA 


MEN  OF  MAIZE 

The  purpose  of  research  in  every  field,  as  Lawrence  Housman 
said,  is  to  set  back  the  frontier  of  darkness.  With  so  many  frontiers 
of  darkness,  even  in  the  study  of  vian,  why  choose  Maya  civiliza- 
tion? To  that,  I  think,  the  answer  mtist  be  that  Maya  civilization 
not  only  produced  geniuses,  but  produced  them  in  an  atmosphere 
which  to  us  seems  incredible.  One  can  never  assume  the  obvious 
when  dealing  with  the  Maya,  who  excelled  in  the  iinpractical  but 
failed  in  the  practical. 

—J.  E.  S.  Thompson,  The  Rise  and  Fall  of 
Maya  Civilization,  p.  13,  Norman,  1954 

THE  Polynesians  must  be  ranked  among  the  great  seafaring  peoples 
of  the  world,  rivaled  in  ancient  times  only  by  the  Phoenicians.  The 
island-studded  waters  of  the  Indo-Pacific  area  tempted  venturesome 
spirits  to  undertake  ocean  voyages  far  earlier  there  than  in  the 
Atlantic.  The  Melanesians,  too,  made  some  notable  journeys  by  sea. 
We  know,  for  instance,  that  the  natives  of  iVIanokwari,  just  below 
the  equator,  sailed  from  west  New  Guinea  to  Ternate  in  the  Moluc- 
cas, a  distance  of  five  hundred  miles.  The  inhabitants  of  New  Guinea 
used  to  navigate  their  largest  river,  the  Sepik,  in  dugouts  more  than 
ninety  feet  long,  but  they  also  made  extensive  trips  along  the  coast. 
The  Polynesians  explored  the  watery  wastes  of  the  Pacific  on  rafts 
and  in  outriggers,  journeying  across  the  ocean  in  their  puny  craft 
for  as  long  as  five  months  on  a  single  voyage,  during  which  time  thev 
survived  on  a  sparse  diet  of  fish  and  rainwater.  If  a  storm  proved 
too  much  for  a  boat  it  was  deliberately  swamped  to  ease  the  strain 
on  the  lashings,  and  the  crew  had  to  survive  in  the  angry  sea. 

The  Polynesians  did  not  confine  themselves  to  island-hopping,  but 
traversed  deep-sea  areas  where  no  land  was  visible  in  any  direction 
for  weeks  at  a  time.  It  has  been  proved  that  they  frequently  made 
journeys  of  up  to  5,000  nautical  miles— roughly  the  distance  between 
Tahiti  and  Hawaii.  They  had  a  wide  knowledge  of  reefs,  shallows, 
currents,  swells  and  winds,  and  their  knowledge  of  astronomy  was 
so  highly  developed  that  they  could  calculate  how  far  currents  had 
carried  them  off  course.  The  Marshall  Islanders  were  probably  the 
first  to  devise  charts  containing  precise  navigational  instructions. 
Their  well-constructed  outriggers  were  so  swift  and  maneuverable 

311 


312  THE  SILENT  PAST 

that  Tischner  described  European  explorers'  ships  as  "clumsy,  slow 
and  awkward"  by  comparison. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  lonely  Chatham  Islands  in  the  South  Pacific 
probably  reached  New  Zealand  on  rafts.  It  should  be  noted  that 
these  Moriori  only  had  rafts  constructed  of  bundles  of  New  Zealand 
flax  held  together  by  a  boxlike  wooden  frame.  Although  New  Zea- 
land is  only  250  miles  from  the  Chatham  group,  it  was  quite  an 
achievement  to  cover  the  distance  in  such  frail  craft.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Polynesians'  catamarans  or  double  canoes  were  often 
90  to  120  feet  long  and  could  carry  two  or  three  hundred  men.  The 
Melanesians  and  Micronesians  were  also  building  large  ocean-going 
vessels  of  this  sort  long  before  the  discoveries  of  Fernao  de  Magal- 
haes,  Francis  Drake  and  Captain  Cook.  Nearly  all  the  seaborne 
migrations  undertaken  by  these  island  peoples  followed  an  eastward 
course.  No  American  tribe  ever  migrated  into  the  Pacific.  The  tribes 
of  South  America  certainly  possessed  rafts  with  sails  and  center- 
boards,  but  these  were  used  exclusively  for  coastal  work.  Alexander 
von  Humboldt  saw  vessels  of  this  type  on  the  Ecuadorian  coast. 
They  were  rafts  constructed  of  balsa,  the  lightest  wood  in  the  world, 
and  were  equipped  with  primitive  sails  and  bamboo  huts. 

It  was  Adalbert  von  Chamisso,  once  a  page  to  the  Queen  of  Prussia 
and  later  an  author  and  scientist,  who  first  theorized  that  the  lan- 
guages of  the  Micronesians  and  Polynesians  were  related  to  the 
Malay  languages  (as  opposed  to  the  American).  Chamisso,  who  sailed 
around  the  world  in  the  Russian  brig  Rurig  between  1 8 1 5  and  1 8 1 8 
and  made  a  special  study  of  the  languages  of  Malaya  and  the  South 
Pacific,  identified  twenty-two  grammatical  systems  in  the  Philippines 
alone.  Recent  comparisons  between  the  sculptures  of  Tiahuanaco 
on  the  southern  shores  of  Lake  Titicaca  in  Bolivia  and  the  stone 
figures  on  Easter  Island  will  not  withstand  serious  scientific  scrutiny. 
There  are  huge  monoliths  in  both  places  which  resemble  each  other 
to  a  considerable  degree,  but  that  is  about  all.  The  Polynesian  dialect 
of  Easter  Island  originated  in  the  Malayan  Archipelago,  not  in  the 
Americas.  An  Easter  Islander  can  communicate  quite  adequately 
with  a  Maori  from  New  Zealand  or  a  Polynesian  from  Mangareva, 
but  the  language  and  culture  of  the  American  Indians  are  entirely 
ahen  to  him,  Hans  Plischke  wrote  in  1957,  "The  origin  of  Polynesian 
culture  is  to  be  found  only  in  southeast  Asia,  not  in  America." 

Abundant    evidence    supports    the    west-east    theory.    Countless 


GUATEMALA 


313 


groups  of  tribes  continued  to  migrate  for  thousands  of  years  across 
the  Bering  Strait  from  northeast  Asia  to  America.  But  these  earliest 
inhabitants  did  not  belong  to  the  Mongol  race  but  were  Europeo- 
Caucasian  in  type.  They  were  followed  at  about  the  close  of  the 
Ice  Age  by  the  Lagoa  Santa  race,  first  identified  by  the  Danish 
archaeologist  Lund.  Mongol  migrations  did  not  take  place  until 
much  later,  perhaps  not  before  2000  b.c.  Even  so,  the  Mongoloid 
tribes  may  not  all  have  come  by  way  of  Siberia,  and  may,  even  at 
that  date,  have  been  capable  of  traversing  the  Pacific.  These  Mongol 
latecomers  were  responsible  for  the  hint  of  Mongol  blood  perceptible 


314  THE  SILENT  PAST 

in  so  many  North  and  South  American  Indian  tribes,  but  this  does 
not  mean  that  the  Indians  can  be  classified  in  the  Mongol  race,  for 
the  Europeo-Caucasian  element  is  stronger  and  considerably  older. 
The  early  inhabitants  of  America  remained  pure-blooded  descendants 
of  the  Old  World  for  several  millennia,  whereas  the  Mongol  in  them 
only  goes  back  four  thousand  years.  Migrations  by  tribes  from  Asia 
occurred  and  continued  to  occur  in  remote  periods  of  prehistory. 
As  research  progresses,  so  the  date  of  man's  first  arrival  in  America 
retreats  step  by  step  into  the  past,  so  that  we  can  now  assume  with 
some  confidence  that  man  first  set  foot  on  American  soil  at  least 
100,000  years  ago,  as  I  tried  to  demonstrate  in  my  book  Ma?i,  God 
and  Magic. 

There  is  evidence,  albeit  it  is  controversial  and  by  no  means  widely 
accepted,  of  contact  between  China  and  Central  America  during  the 
period  circa  2000  b.c.-a.d.  iooo.  Certain  symbols  on  bronze  cult  ves- 
sels of  the  Shang  dynasty  of  the  second  millennium  b.c.  are  reminis- 
cent of  the  religious  symbolism  of  pre-Columbian  Central  America. 
There  are  similar  echoes  in  painted  Peruvian  pottery  and  cloth  de- 
signs. The  Viennese  scholar  Robert  Heine-Geldern  has  for  years 
been  trying  to  unearth  pre-Christian  associations  between  China  and 
Central  America,  and  cites  the  step  pyramid,  the  parasol  as  a  mark 
of  rank,  the  significance  of  the  figure  4  and  many  other  things  as 
evidence.  Nevertheless,  when  the  Spaniards  arrived  in  America  its 
inhabitants  were  ignorant  of  the  wheel,  the  plow,  any  form  of 
vehicle,  the  potter's  wheel,  glass,  stringed  instruments,  wheat,  barley 
and  rice.  If  late  influences  of  the  sort  envisaged  really  did  exist,  it  is 
hard  to  explain  the  absence  of  such  important  cultural  assets. 

Before  the  Spaniards'  arrival  there  were  no  beasts  of  burden  of 
any  kind  save  the  llama  in  Peru  and  no  domestic  animals  except  the 
dog.  The  theory  that  plow,  wheel  and  cart  were  not  adopted  in 
America  because  its  inhabitants  owned  no  draft  animals  will  not, 
however,  hold  water.  The  Americanist  Hans  Dietrich  Disselhoff 
retorts  with  some  logic  that  human  beings  would  have  expended  less 
energy  by  pulling  carts  than  by  carrying  heavy  loads  on  their  backs. 
On  the  other  hand,  Disselhoff  does  mention  a  relief  from  Yucatan  in 
Mexico  and  a  similar  one  from  Amaravati  in  southern  India  whose 
iconographic  resemblance  is  astounding.  The  numerous  features 
common  to  the  world  of  religious  ideas  on  both  sides  of  the  Pacific, 


GUATEMALA  315 

in  the  Asiatic  and  the  ancient  American  civilizations,  can  hardly  be 
mere  accident. 

The  Mayas'  Adam  was  "made  of  maize,"  a  grain  which  they  re- 
garded as  a  gift  of  the  gods  and  held  in  religious  awe.  We  do  not 
know  for  certain  if  maize  and  gourds  originated  in  the  Peruvian 
highlands  or  in  the  Mayas'  homeland,  although  it  is  attested  in  Central 
America  some  eight  hundred  years  before  it  is  in  Peru,  but  maize, 
beans  and  gourds  were  staple  items  of  nourishment  in  Central  Amer- 
ica and  were  grown  there  by  its  culturally  advanced  peoples.  During 
his  Tamaulipas  expedition,  R.  S.  MacNeish  discovered  Mexican  maize 
4,500  years  old  in  the  La  Perra  Cave.  Sylvanus  G.  Morley  of  the 
Carnegie  Foundation  stated  that  years  of  intimate  contact  with  the 
modern  Mayas  had  convinced  him  that  even  today  75  percent  of 
their  thoughts  revolved  around  the  subject  of  maize. 

The  English  word  for  gourds,  "squash,"  is  of  Indian  origin.  Cotton, 
too,  was  developed  in  the  advanced  civilizations  of  Central  America. 
America  has  fifty  species  of  agave,  the  plant  from  which  most  of 
the  Mexicans'  national  drinks  are  manufactured,  e.g.  their  highly 
intoxicating  pulque,  which  is  fermented  in  gourds.  The  agave  was 
widely  used  by  the  Mayas,  who  were  the  first  people  to  manufacture 
sisal  from  it.  The  Mayas  were  probably  also  the  discoverers  of 
cocoa.  The  words  cocoa  and  chocolate  come  from  Aztec,  it  is  true, 
but  their  origin  is  the  iMayan  name  chacau  haa. 

Cocoa  beans  were  used  throughout  Central  America  as  money, 
and  J.  E.  S.  Thompson  hit  upon  the  interesting  notion  that  it  was 
the  Mayas'  habit  of  using  large  quantities  of  beans  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  which  accustomed  them  to  thinking  in  huge  numbers. 

Of  all  the  peoples  in  the  world,  the  Mayas  probably  evolved  the 
most  remarkable  civilization,  much  of  which  seems  baffling,  contra- 
dictory and  inexplicable,  and  almost  all  of  which  strikes  one  as 
alien.  The  Mayas  produced  geniuses  whose  names  we  shall  never 
know  but  whose  astute  brains  exploited  intelligence,  energy  and 
physical  exertion  in  the  service  of  extraordinary  projects.  Yet 
obvious  and  essential  things,  things  which  people  in  every  other  part 
of  the  world  discovered  at  an  early  date,  remained  a  closed  book  to 
them.  They  hauled  and  carried  loads  like  animals,  harnessed  to  them 
by  a  headband,  because  the  idea  of  the  wheel  never  occurred  to 
them.  They  constructed  the  most  magnificent  buildings  in  Central 
America,   buildings   for   priests   and   gods,   architectural    creations 


3i6  THE  SILENT  PAST 

which  necessitated  an  enormous  expenditure  of  effort  but  had  no 
bearing  on  daily  life.  They  could  calculate  in  miUions,  yet  they  were 
incapable  of  weighing  a  few  pounds  of  fruit. 

The  Mayan  area  is  divided  into  three  zones.  The  northern  zone 
embraces  the  Yucatan  Peninsula,  the  major  part  of  Campeche  and 
the  district  of  Quintana  Roo.  The  heart  of  the  central  zone  is  the 
Peten  district  of  Guatemala  and  includes  adjoining  areas  of  Mexico 
and  British  Honduras.  The  southern  zone  comprises  the  Guatemalan 
highlands  and  parts  of  El  Salvador. 

It  is  strange,  as  is  almost  everything  in  the  Mayas'  vanished  way 
of  life,  that  it  was  the  central  zone  which  evolved  the  most  advanced 
civilization.  The  lowlands  are  swathed  in  vast  tropical  forests  con- 
taining giant  trees  which  reach  a  height  of  over  150  feet,  towering 
mahogany  trees,  Spanish  cedars,  ceiba  or  God  trees  (once  sacred  to 
the  Mayas),  innumerable  species  of  palms,  and  the  sapodilla,  which 
during  the  rainy  season  supplies  the  thick  milky  juice  that  forms 
the  basis  of  chewing  gum.  The  hundreds  of  chicleros  who  roam  the 
tropical  forests  collecting  chicle  sap  have  very  often  been  responsible 
for  directing  archaeologists'  attention  to  ruined  sites.  Today,  the 
area  is  almost  uninhabited,  and  Flores,  the  capital  of  the  Peten 
Department,  is  a  small  township  of  only  4,000  inhabitants  lost  in  the 
vastness  of  the  surrounding  forest. 

It  was  in  the  central  zone  that  the  oldest  and  most  important  Mayan 
cities  such  as  Tikal,  Uaxactun,  Copan,  Palenque  and  Piedras  Negras 
once  flourished.  Many  other  former  towns  could  be  listed,  and 
others  still  remain  to  be  wrested  from  the  embrace  of  a  forest  which 
twines  its  giant  fingers  around  palaces,  pyramids  and  terraces,  runs 
riot  across  open  ground  and  erodes  the  stones  of  former  cities,  hid- 
ing them  forever  from  view. 

Mayan  civilization  and  the  Mayas'  way  of  life  depended  princi- 
pally on  agriculture.  When  they  needed  land  they  burned  down  a 
patch  of  forest,  harvested  two  or  three  crops  and  abandoned  their 
fields  as  soon  as  they  became  unproductive,  leaving  the  forest  to 
reclaim  it  once  more.  It  is  incomprehensible  that  Mayan  culture 
should  have  attained  its  zenith  in  an  area  which  is  not  only  con- 
spicuously lacking  in  natural  resources  but  possesses  only  a  thin 
layer  of  cultivable  soil.  The  Mayas'  sole  implements  were  made  of 
wood  and  stone,  and  their  only  additional  aid  was  fire.  Year  after 
year  they  waged  a  laborious  battle  against  the  all-devouring  forest, 


GUATEMALA  317 

yet  it  was  here  that  they  built  their  cities,  evolved  their  complex 
religious  cults  and  wrested  their  food  from  the  reluctant  soil.  In 
his  Study  of  History,  Arnold  Toynbee  claims  to  supply  an  explana- 
tion of  their  behavior  by  suggesting  that  the  conditions  under  which 
the  most  advanced  cultures  evolve  must  be  neither  too  difficult  nor 
too  favorable.  This  explanation  does  not  tell  us  much,  for  the  highest 
cultures  generally  grew  up  in  fertile  river  valleys,  i.e.  under  extremely 
favorable  conditions.  But,  even  if  harsh  conditions  are  regarded  as 
a  prerequisite  of  cultural  development,  Thompson  demurs  that  living 
conditions  in  the  lowland  jungle  were  so  arduous  that  it  is  scarcely 
conceivable  that  Mayan  civilization  evolved  there  at  all. 

In  the  Guatemalan  highlands  south  of  the  central  zone  the  climate 
is  much  kinder  and  never  displays  extremes  of  heat  or  cold.  Wheat, 
sugar  cane  and  beans  flourish  there  today,  just  as  the  main  crops  of 
the  Mayan  period  were  maize,  melons,  sweet  potatoes  and  cocoa. 
The  area  also  yielded  obsidian  for  stone  knives  and  spear  points,  and 
toward  the  close  of  the  Mayan  period  gold  was  washed  from  the 
rivers.  Above  all,  the  northwest  highlands  of  Guatemala  formed 
the  great  hunting  grounds  where  the  Mayas  trapped  quetzals,  the 
trogons  from  whose  long  tail  feathers  and  red  or  yellow  belly 
feathers  they  made  their  celebrated  articles  of  adornment.  The 
quetzal  ultimately  became  the  national  emblem  of  Guatemala. 

Despite  the  wealth  of  the  Mayas'  southern  territories,  the  high- 
land never  gave  birth  to  such  remarkable  cultural  achievements  as 
the  central  lowlands.  On  the  contrary,  sculpture  and  architecture 
were  far  inferior  in  what  was  materially  the  richest  area.  Why  this 
should  have  been  so,  and  whether  the  frequent  earthquakes  exercised 
a  prejudicial  effect,  we  do  not  know,  but  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that 
not  a  single  pillar  bearing  hieroglyphic  inscriptions  has  so  far  been 
discovered  in  the  highland  regions  of  the  south. 

Pillars  or  steles  played  a  very  important  role  in  Mayan  culture. 
These  monoliths  with  their  surfeit  of  inscriptions  can  be  regarded  as 
chronological  records,  for  they  were  used  to  define  sections  of  the 
calendar.  In  addition,  the  steles  carried  rows  of  sacred  symbols, 
reliefs  depicting  priest-princes,  scenes  portraying  prisoners  and 
slaves  (especially  at  Tikal)  and,  later,  whole  groups  of  figures.  The 
Mayas  attempted  to  heighten  the  effect  of  their  reliefs  by  painting 
them,  so  the  steles  must  once  have  glowed  with  color.  Figures  are 


3i8  THE  SILENT  PAST 

normally  carved  in  profile,  and  the  pillars  vary  between  six  and 
twelve  feet  in  height. 

One  stele  in  Quirigua,  dating  from  the  year  a.d.  73  i,  is  over  thirty- 
two  feet  high.  One  hundred  and  three  steles  have  been  counted  at 
Calakmul.  Tikal  boasts  86  steles  of  which  65  bear  no  hieroglyphs, 
though  the  tropical  rains  may  have  washed  them  off.  In  the  year 
A.D.  790,  during  the  period  when  Mayan  culture  was  at  its  zenith, 
nineteen  steles  of  this  type  were  erected  at  various  places  in  the 
Mayas'  domain.  Steles  were  probably  dedicated  at  fixed  intervals, 
and  the  stele  cult  must  have  enjoyed  great  significance  in  a  culture 
which  combined  astronomy  with  religion  in  such  a  unique  manner. 

The  Mayan  cities  served  as  cult  centers  for  religious  ceremonies, 
but  they  were  also  administrative  and  commercial  centers.  Not  much, 
however,  is  discernible  of  the  everyday  life  of  the  townsmen  and 
peasants  who  once  walked  their  streets. 

At  the  summit  of  the  pyramids  in  Mayan  cities  were  temples  with 
exceedingly  thick  walls.  No  one  could  have  lived  in  these  stone 
buildings.  They  had  no  doors,  no  windows,  no  smoke  vents,  and 
they  were  damp  and  ill-lit.  The  only  light  came  from  narrow  door- 
ways, so  the  priests  must  have  performed  their  rites  either  in  semi- 
darkness  or  complete  gloom. 

Unlike  those  of  Egypt,  Mayan  pyramids  were  not  burial  places  but 
cult  buildings.  The  traces  of  burial  which  have  been  found  beneath 
the  floors  of  many  of  them  are  probably  the  remains  of  human 
sacrifices  or  chieftains'  famihes. 

The  very  fact  that  Mayan  pyramids  were  not  tombs  added  to  the 
sensational  nature  of  a  discovery  made  in  1952,  In  1950,  a  grave 
had  been  found  inside  the  Temple  of  Inscriptions  at  Palenque  in 
Chiapas  State,  Mexico.  A  hidden  flight  of  stairs  led  down  through 
the  floor  of  the  temple,  which  stood  on  the  upper  platform  of  the 
pyramid,  into  the  heart  of  the  substructure.  Archaeologists  cleared 
first  forty-six  steps,  then  two  horizontal  air  shafts  which  emerged 
into  the  open  air,  and  finally  a  second  flight  of  thirteen  steps.  These 
led  into  a  tunnel  whose  builders  had  rendered  it  impassable  with 
clay  and  stones.  Alberto  Ruz,  an  archaeologist  employed  by  Mexico's 
National  Institute  of  Anthropology  and  History,  uncovered  eight 
further  steps  during  the  1952  digging  season  and  came  upon  a  passage 
whose  central  section  had  been  blocked  by  a  thick  wall.  Near  the 
end  of  the  vault  Ruz  found  a  stone  kist  containing  sacrificial  offer- 


GUATEMALA  319 

ings  such  as  pottery,  shells  and  jade  pearls.  At  about  the  middle  of 
the  pyramid's  foundations  lay  another  stone  kist  together  with  the 
skeletons  of  five  young  men  and  a  woman.  These  six  people  were 
probably  members  of  a  prince's  retinue  who  had  been  killed  so  that 
they  could  serve  their  master  in  the  world  hereafter.  Removing 
another  stone  slab,  Ruz  found  himself  in  a  vaulted  chamber  75  feet 
beneath  the  floor  of  the  temple  at  the  pyramid's  summit.  On  the 
walls  were  nine  stucco  reliefs  of  gods,  probably  the  nine  gods  of 
the  underworld.  The  vault  contained  a  massive  stone  sarcophagus 
with  a  superbly  ornamented  lid  weighing  five  tons.  Hieroglyphs  on 
the  sarcophagus  revealed  that  the  burial  had  taken  place  about  a.d. 
700,  and  inside  lay  the  skeleton  of  a  Mayan  prince,  richly  adorned 
with  jade  and  other  jewelry.  One  pear-shaped  pearl  was  almost  one 
and  a  quarter  inches  long! 

In  1953,  when  the  pyramid  had  not  yet  surrendered  its  secret. 
Professor  E.  Noguera  wrote:  "Perhaps  the  foundation  on  which  the 
relief-covered  slab  rests  will  prove  to  be  a  large  stone  kist  in  which 
a  person  of  superior  rank  lies  buried."  The  Mexican  scholar  was 
right.  For  the  first  time,  archaeologists  discovered  a  Central  American 
pyramid  which  had  also  served  as  a  royal  tomb. 

However,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  burial  chamber  was  built 
before  the  pyramid  and  probably  during  the  prince's  lifetime,  so 
even  this  remarkable  discovery  has  done  nothing  to  shake  the  theory 
that  Mayan  pyramids  are  temples  rather  than  tombs. 


GUATEMALA 


CITIES  IN  THE  JUNGLE 

The  Maya  monuments  are  the  Sphinxes  of  America.  While  I 
was  in  Copdn  I  was  irresistibly  drawn  each  day  to  these  great 
sculptures,  which  exercise  an  almost  hypnotic  effect.  Contejnplat- 
ing  them,  one  becovies  absorbed  without  knowing  why  or  comifjg 
any  closer  to  a  solution. 

— E.  P.  DiESELDORFF,  Art  and  Religion 

of  the  Maya  Peoples,  Vol.  II,  p.  i, 

Berlin,  193 1 

THE  Mayas,  especially  those  of  Yucatan,  are  among  the  broadest- 
featured  people  in  the  world.  They  augment  their  bullet-headedness 
by  deliberately  distorting  the  shape  of  their  skulls,  an  artificial  proc- 
ess which  the  inhabitants  of  ancient  Teotihuacan  also  regarded  as 
enhancing  physical  beauty  and  effected  by  fitting  a  wooden  frame 
around  the  heads  of  young  children.  The  Mayas'  descendants  in 
Yucatan  and  Guatemala  resemble  portrayals  of  the  ancient  Mayas 
so  strongly  that  we  can  form  a  good  idea  of  their  ancestors'  original 
appearance.  They  were  generally  shorter  than  Europeans  and  broader 
in  the  shoulders  and  chest.  They  had  longer  arms  and  smaller  hands 
and  feet.  Their  teeth  must  always  have  been  good,  but  they  filed 
their  eyeteeth  to  a  point.  The  modern  Mayas  also  have  good  teeth. 
Morley  mentions  that  50  percent  of  them  remain  completely  free  of 
dental  decay  until  the  age  of  twenty,  whereas  in  the  United  States 
90  percent  of  all  children  require  dental  treatment  before  the  age  of 
fourteen.  Smooth  hair  ranging  in  color  from  dark  brown  to  black, 
dark  brown  eyes  and,  often,  decidedly  hooked  noses  are  the  main 
characteristics  of  this  copper-colored  and  far  from  unattractive 
race. 

In  addition,  the  Mayas  retain  the  so-called  Mongol  patch,  a  dis- 
coloration in  the  region  of  the  sacrum  common  to  all  Mongoloid 
peoples  until  the  age  of  ten.  It  is  much  the  same  with  the  Japanese. 
Ninety-nine  percent  of  all  one-year-old  Japanese  children  have  a 
distinct  blue  patch  on  the  sacrum  which  completely  disappears  bv 
the  time  they  reach  ten.  A  similar  sacral  patch  is  found  among 
Malays,  Eskimos  and  most  American  Indians. 

On  the  average,  Mayan  girls  marry  at  sixteen  and  young  men  at 
twenty-one.  Diego  de  Landa  (1524-1579),  the  celebrated  church- 

320 


[i02]  A  particularly  fine  example  of  Benin  art,  this  bronze  depicts  a  native— perhaps 
the  king— on  horseback.  The  plaque  is  now  in  the  Museum  of  Ethnology,  Berlin. 


[103]  One  of  the  famous  bronze  plaques  of  Benin.  The  inhabitants 
of   Nigeria    have    long   since    forgotten    what    their    original    sig- 
nificance was— let  alone  whom  or  what  they  portray.  There  is  a 
possibility  that  they  were  used  in  religious  ceremonies. 


[104]  This  wooden  figure  from  Cokwe  in  Angola  shows  how 
African  artists  used  to  modify  the  proportions  of  limbs  to  lend 
emphasis  to  weapons  and  head  ornaments.  In  this  particular  case 
it  is  evident  that  the  artist  wished  to  stress  the  frontal  view  of 
his  subject. 


[105]    The   people   of  Benin   used   to   wear   hunting   masks   while 
stalking  game.  This  wood  and  leather  mask  comes  from  Loko, 

Nigeria. 


[106]    The   Hausa   are   a   race   of  mixed   Arab   and   Negro   blood 

numbering  about  4  million,  of  which  3  'Z:   million  live  in  northern 

Nigeria.  This  leather  flask  effectively  kept  liquids  cold. 


[loyl  Wooden  drum  from  Calabar,  a  provincial  town  situated  on 
the  estuary  of  the  Cross  River  in  southern  Nigeria.  It  is  a  par- 
ticularly fine  example  of  the  Benin  wood-carver"s  art. 


,/•//»,' 


[io8]  A  mask  from  Balumbo  in. 
Gabon.  Like  Nigeria,  the  coast 
of  Gabon  lies  on  the  Gulf 
of  Guinea.  African  artists  no 
longer  produce  masks  as  hand- 
some   and    impressive    as    this. 


[109!  In  order  to  preserve  a 
relative's  life-force  after  death, 
the  natives  of  New  Guinea  cut 
his  head  off  and  coat  it  with  a 
layer  of  clay  which  they  model 
so  as  to  re-create  the  dead  man's 
facial  expression.  The  head  is 
then  painted  in  the  style  tra- 
ditionally adopted  by  ancestors 
for  cult  purposes  of  war,  and 
the  eye  sockets  are  inlaid  with 
cowrie  shells. 


[no]  The  Alayan  city  of  Chichen-Itza  was  founded  in  the  sixth  century  a.d.  Here  one 
can  see  a  step-pyramid  capped  by  a  massive  temple. 


[ml  The  ruins  of  this  once  mighty  temple  are  to  be  found  at  Uxmal  in  Yucatan. 
This  so-called  "nunnery,"  dating  from  the  tenth  century  a.d.,  is  here  photograplied 

from  a  pyramid. 


112]   This  sculpture   of  a  god  was   found   behind   a   pyramid   ar   Copan.   The   step 
at  the  god's  feet  is  carved  with  iMayan  hieroglyphics. 


[113]  A  sacrificial  Mayan  altar  at 

Copan.  The  relief  shows  a  group 

of    sitting    priests,    identifiable    by 

their  headdress. 


[114]  A  handsome  stele  at  Copan.  Round  altars  are  to  be  seen  on  each  side  of  the 
stele.  Copan,  the  "Athens  of  the  New  World,"  was  the  center  of  Mayan  astronomy. 


[115I  The  "Temple  of  the  Giant  Jaguar"  at  Tikal,  Guatemala,  was  discovered  in 
the  jungle  by  an  American  expedition  from  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  This 
temple  is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  Mayan  architecture;  the  interior  has  to  a  large 

extent  been  restored. 


GUATEMALA  321 

man  whose  history  of  Yucatan,  published  in  1560,  is  a  veritable 
treasury  of  ancient  Mayan  customs,  related  that  girls  used  to  marry 
at  the  age  of  twenty  but  now  (in  his  day)  married  between  the  ages 
of  twelve  and  fourteen,  A  Franciscan  monk,  Landa  arrived  in 
Yucatan  a  few  years  after  the  Spanish  conquest.  We  owe  much  of 
our  information  about  the  Mayas  to  the  fact  that  he  was  subsequently 
brought  to  trial  in  Spain  for  having  exceeded  his  authority  in  the 
New  World  and  defended  himself  against  the  allegation  by  writing 
an  apologia  while  in  prison. 

Human  beings  are  complex  creatures.  Even  the  sketchiest  descrip- 
tion of  them  must  include  a  long  list  of  items.  The  Mayas  are  strong 
family  men.  They  are  equable,  not  particularly  inventive,  and  un- 
perturbed by  the  idea  of  death.  Their  keen  powers  of  observation 
and  retentive  memory  are  such  that  one  can  properly  describe  them 
as  intelhgent.  Several  authorities  have  called  the  Mayas  superstitious, 
and  the  same  applies  to  their  latter-day  descendants,  though  people 
who  devote  the  majority  of  their  thoughts  and  actions  to  a  god 
or  gods  might  equally  be  called  religious.  The  Mayas  certainly  were 
religious,  but  their  character  exhibits  a  marked  streak  of  fatalism, 
probably  inherited  from  remote  epochs  when,  in  order  to  provide 
the  gods  with  sacrifice,  human  beings  had  their  hearts  torn  out  or 
were  drowned— men,  women  and  children  alike— in  sacred  pools,  or, 
later  still,  were  crucified. 

The  Mayas  are  a  thrifty  but  remarkably  honest  people.  There  are 
no  thieves  in  a  land  where  doors  and  windows  are  unknown.  Like  all 
American  Indian  tribes,  they  have  a  regrettable  tendency  toward 
drunkenness,  but  their  womenfolk  keep  their  houses  extremely  tidy, 
they  are  generous  and  hospitable,  and  murderers  and  beggars  do  not 
exist.  One  conspicuous  trait  is  their  extraordinary  personal  clean- 
liness. Like  the  Japanese,  they  bathe  each  night  and  morning. 

Landa,  who  is  painted  sometimes  as  a  saint  and  sometimes  as  a 
ruthless  persecutor  of  the  Indians,  declared  that  the  women  of 
Yucatan  were  generally  better-looking  than  the  women  of  Spain. 
They  were  not  white  but  had  a  yellowish-brown  complexion  occa- 
sioned by  exposure  to  the  sun  and  their  habit  of  bathing  frequently 
in  the  open  air.  Their  breasts  were  bare  and  their  bodies  tattooed 
above  the  waistline  with  finer  and  more  elegant  designs  than  those 
of  their  menfolk.  They  perfumed  and  anointed  themselves  with  red 
resin  and  wore  their  hair  long  or  built  it  into  elaborate  coiffures. 


322  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Mothers  took  great  care  to  see  that  their  daughters  looked  after  their 
hair.  Little  girls  wore  three  or  four  spiky  plaits  like  small  horns,  a 
style  which  Landa  found  extremely  charming.  Women  usually 
dressed  in  the  manta,  a  sacklike  garment  open  at  each  side.  Landa 
noted  with  resignation  that  they  were  good-natured  and  proud— 
and  rightly  so,  "for  before  they  became  acquainted  with  our  nation, 
a  circumstance  bewailed  by  their  old  men,  they  were  wondrously 
chaste."  Captain  Alonso  Lopez  de  Avila,  he  wrote,  once  captured 
a  Mayan  girl  of  great  beauty  and  charm,  but  his  blandishments  were 
in  vain.  The  young  woman  had  sworn  to  be  faithful  to  her  husband 
and  preferred  to  die  rather  than  yield,  so  the  Spaniards  had  her 
torn  to  pieces  by  dogs. 

Mayan  girls  carried  chastity  to  extremes.  They  always  turned 
their  backs  on  men,  even  when  they  were  offering  them  something 
to  drink.  Encountering  a  man  on  a  path,  they  stepped  aside  to  let 
him  pass.  Their  ambition  was  to  have  many  children,  to  which  end 
they  prayed  fervently  to  the  gods  and  made  sacrifice.  Landa  de- 
scribed the  women  as  sensible,  courteous,  very  friendly  to  those  that 
understood  them,  and  extraordinarily  generous.  They  were  pious, 
too,  and  sacrificed  cloth,  food  and  drink  in  token  of  their  devotion 
to  the  gods. 

The  Aiayas  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  In  fact,  said 
Landa,  "They  believed  in  it  more  firmly  than  many  other  races." 
They  also  knew  that  the  soul  was  destined  to  another  and  better 
life  once  it  had  left  the  body. 

The  ancestors  of  the  Mayas  reached  their  new  home  sometime 
between  2000  and  1000  B.C.  J.  E.  Thompson  thinks  that  they  wrested 
supremacy  from  the  indigenous  inhabitants  of  the  area  and  so  con- 
stituted a  superior  caste.  After  about  five  hundred  years  new  tribes 
arrived  who  were  numerically  stronger  than  the  existing  inhabitants. 
They  probably  came  from  Asia,  bringing  with  them  a  knowledge  of 
pottery,  spinning  and  weaving,  and  probably  a  vague  knowledge  of 
agriculture  as  well,  although  they  did  not  introduce  any  seeds  from 
the  old  continent.  The  last  migrants,  who  arrived  at  about  the  time  of 
Christ's  birth,  may  have  transmitted  certain  religious  ideas  from  their 
Asiatic  home,  e.g.  the  celestial  dragon  and  the  four  corners  of  the 
world.  These  are  only  suppositions,  however,  for  the  iVIayas'  actual 
place  of  origin  remains  shrouded  in  mystery. 

Mayan  history  is  divided  into  three  periods:  the  formative  period 


GUATEMALA  32  j 

(circa  500  b.c.-a.d.  325),  the  classical  period  (325-800)  which 
reached  its  zenith  between  625  and  800,  and  the  period  of  decline 
(800-925).  After  that  came  the  Mexican  conquests  of  975-1200  and 
finally  a  period  during  which  Mayan  culture  enjoyed  a  brief  renais- 
sance. 

Important  inventions  are  attributed  to  the  peoples  of  Central 
America.  Although  it  is  not  always  known  precisely  which  American 
tribe  first  implemented  this  or  that  new  idea,  many  inventions 
undoubtedly  stem  from  the  Mayas,  as,  for  instance,  the  manufacture 
of  rubber,  rubber  balls,  rubber  soles  for  sandals,  impregnated  rain- 
proof capes,  "Maya  blue"  (extracted  from  the  mineral  clay  known  as 
beidellite),  indigo,  a  purple  obtained  from  shellfish,  a  type  of  me- 
chanical artillery  catapult  and  "live  wasps'  nests"  for  use  as  ammuni- 
tion against  the  enemy.  The  Mayas  also  cultivated  a  very  large  num- 
ber of  wild  plants  and  were  accomplished  naturalists.  They  were 
excellent  road  builders,  too,  even  though  the  Incas  surpassed  them  in 
that  respect.  For  example,  one  of  their  roads  ran  for  over  sixty  miles 
from  the  town  of  Coba  in  Quintana  Roo  to  Yaxuna,  a  few  miles 
from  Chichen  Itza.  The  road,  which  is  about  thirty  feet  wide,  was 
enclosed  on  either  side  by  primitive  stone  walls  and  had  a  well-laid 
foundation  of  mortar.  In  marshy  areas  it  ran  along  a  raised  embank- 
ment, and  just  outside  Coba  it  was  supported  by  a  platform.  One 
very  interesting  discovery  made  on  the  Coba-Yaxuna  road  was  a 
limestone  roller  about  fifteen  feet  wide  and  five  tons  in  weight.  The 
roller,  which  had  broken  into  two  pieces,  must  have  required  a  team 
of  fifteen  men  to  propel  it.  We  even  know  that  the  road  was  built 
from  east  to  west,  i.e.  from  Coba  to  Yaxuna.  Mayan  roads,  which 
were  mainly  designed  to  carry  processions,  must  have  made  enor- 
mous demands  on  a  people  who  had  no  carts  or  beasts  of  burden. 
They  also  presupposed  considerable  engineering  skill.  How  the 
Mayan  engineers  managed  to  cut  their  way  through  the  dense  rain 
forest  so  unerringly  that  they  arrived  directly  at  their  intended 
destination  is  a  still  unsolved  mystery. 

Architecturally,  the  Mayas  probably  excelled  all  other  ancient 
American  civilizations,  Aztec  and  Inca  included.  Copan  in  Honduras 
was  the  Mayas'  main  scientific  center.  This  was  where  their  finest 
astronomers  worked  and  probably  where  the  200-day  calendar  was 
first  introduced.  It  was  also  the  place  where  a  temple  was  dedicated 
to  the  planet  Venus,  where  the  dates  of  solar  eclipses  were  calculated, 


324  THE  SILENT  PAST 

and  where,  on  the  steps  of  Temple  26,  the  longest  extant  Mayan 
inscription  was  found,  a  series  of  approximately  one  thousand 
hieroglyphs.  The  "Athens  of  the  New  World,"  as  Copan  has  justly 
been  called,  boasted  a  so-called  acropolis,  numerous  pyramids, 
terraces,  temples,  altars  and  steles,  a  large  open  square  and  a  court 
for  the  ball  games  which  the  Mayas  regarded  as  a  form  of  religious 
ceremony.  The  ball-game  court  at  Copan,  with  its  crenellations,  stone 
parrots  and  sunbirds,  was  one  of  the  handsomest  in  the  whole  Mayan 
area. 

Chichen  Itza,  a  sort  of  Mecca,  first  reached  its  prime  under  the 
Mexican  rulers  of  the  eleventh,  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries. 
The  pyramid  temples  there  "were  resplendent  with  pillars  portraying 
the  famous  feathered  serpents  of  Central  America.  There,  as  at 
Piedras  Negras,  a  finely  appointed  steam  bath  was  discovered. 
Chichen  Itza  had  seven  ball-game  courts.  The  natural  rubber  ball 
had  to  pass  through  one  or  other  of  the  stone  rings  set  into  the 
walls  of  the  court,  the  main  difficulty  being  that  the  critical  stroke 
could  not  be  delivered  except  with  the  elbow,  wrist  or  hip.  The 
trick  came  off  so  seldom  that  legend  has  it  that  when  it  did,  all  the 
spectators  had  to  hand  over  their  clothes  and  jewelry  to  the  winner. 
To  evade  this  obligation,  witnesses  of  a  successful  attempt  hurriedly 
left  the  scene,  usually  followed  by  the  winner's  friends,  who  ran 
after  them  to  exact  payment. 

Thrones  were  found  in  the  great  colonnades  of  Chichen  Itza. 
These  colonnades  enclosed  the  so-called  "courtyard  of  a  thousand 
pillars,"  a  huge  open  plaza  which  may  have  been  the  ancient  city's 
market  place.  The  large  circular  building  known  as  the  Observatory 
or,  because  of  its  snail-like  shape,  the  Caracol,  is  over  fifty  feet 
his^h  and  towers  above  two  massive  rectangular  terraces.  The 
numerous  sacrificial  oflFerings  found  in  the  sacred  springs  of  Chichen 
Itza  included  jewelry,  jade,  incense,  and  the  remains  of  about  fifty 
victims  of  drowning,  eight  of  them  women. 

The  cities  of  Palenque,  Yaxchilan  and  Piedras  Negras  likewise 
represent  a  peak  of  achitecture  unequaled  elsewhere  in  ancient 
America.  As  Morley  rightly  says,  the  stucco  works  of  Palenque 
are  unsurpassed  by  any  other  examples  in  the  Mayan  area.  The 
limestone  reliefs  there  are  so  finely  carved  and  so  wonderfully  com- 
posed that  they  merit  comparison  with  the  finest  reliefs  of  ancient 
Egypt.  The  splendid  terraces  and  pyramids,  the  temples,  stairways, 


GUATEMALA  325 

corridors,  subterranean  galleries  and  altars,  the  remarkable  artistic 
ability,  wealth  and  power  of  Palenque  have  overwhelmed  not  only 
the  Spaniards,  whose  first  glimpse  it  was  of  the  ancient  Mayan 
empire,  but  every  visitor  since  the  year  1553.  Frans  Blom,  the 
Danish  archaeologist,  wrote  in  1923  that  "one's  first  visit  to  Palenque 
is  immeasurably  impressive,  and  when  one  has  spent  a  while  there 
the  ruined  city  becomes  a  sort  of  obsession." 

The  four  superb  and  richly  ornamented  temples  at  Yaxchilan  are 
renowned  for  their  twelve  carved  lintels,  two  of  which  bear  sculpted 
reliefs  of  outstanding  beauty.  The  wall  sculptures  of  Piedras  Negras, 
dating  from  a.d.  761  and  chiseled  in  limestone,  are  among  America's 
finest  pre-Columbian  works  of  art. 

At  Piedras  Negras  the  Mayas  observed  and  celebrated  the  end  of 
their  hotims  or  i, 800-day  periods  with  particular  reverence.  Each 
of  the  twenty-two  hotun  periods  between  a.d.  608  and  810  was 
solemnly  commemorated  by  the  erection  of  a  monument  adorned 
with  pictures  in  reUef,  and  all  twenty-two  of  these  have  survived. 

Mayan  astronomy  was  not  only  a  science  but  also  a  means  of 
influencing  the  future.  Inconceivable  as  it  may  sound,  Mayan 
priests  working  with  no  more  equipment  than  the  naked  eye  suc- 
ceeded in  determining  the  orbital  period  of  Venus.  The  astronomers 
of  Copan  tried  to  reconcile  the  calendar  year  of  365  days  with  the 
true  tropical  year  of  365.24  days  and  established  the  duration  of 
the  solar  year  as  early  as  a.d.  700.  The  Mayas  invented  and  used  the 
figure  nought  two  hundred  years  before  any  nation  in  Europe. 
Instead  of  arranging  their  numbers  with  the  smallest  units  on  the 
right,  they  inscribed  them  vertically.  They  had  calculated  the 
mythical  beginning  of  their  calendar  to  be  3 113  e.g.,  but  their 
chronological  system  did  not  come  into  use  until  the  fourth  or 
third  century  b.c. 

It  is  interesting  to  pursue  an  idea  expounded  by  Sylvanus  G. 
Morley,  a  man  who  devoted  his  life  to  a  study  of  the  Mayas.  On 
his  long  journey  through  prehistory  and  history,  Morley  argued, 
man  has  surmounted  five  obstacles:  first  he  mastered  fire,  then  he 
discovered  agriculture,  then  he  domesticated  wild  animals,  then 
he  devised  tools  of  metal,  and  finally  he  discovered  the  principle 
of  the  wheel. 

The  Mayas  had  mastered  fire  and  learned  how  to  sow  and  reap 
in  an  area  inimical  to  agriculture.  They  had,  it  is  true,  domesticated 


326  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  wild  turkey  and  knew  how  to  keep  bees,  but  apart  from  the 
dog  they  possessed  not  a  single  domestic,  farm  or  draft  animal  of 
any  kind.  They  owned  no  metal  implements  and  the  principle  of 
the  wheel  was  unknown  to  them.  Of  the  five  obstacles,  therefore, 
they  had  surmounted  only  two,  whereas  the  Egyptians,  Chaldeans, 
Babylonians,  Assyrians,  Persians,  Chinese,  Phoenicians,  Etruscans, 
Greeks  and  Romans  were  endowed  with  all  five  prerequisites  of 
civilization. 

In  order  to  assess  the  status  of  A4ayan  culture  correctly  and  draw 
the  appropriate  conclusions  we  must  go  far  back  into  the  history  of 
mankind,  to  the  neolithic  age  in  which  the  Mayas,  with  their  stone 
tools,  really  lived.  Comparing  the  Mayas'  many  achievements  with 
the  prehistoric  civilizations  of  the  Old  World,  we  can  say  without 
hesitation  that  no  Stone-Age  people  attained  such  cultural  heights 
as  the  ancient  Mayas  of  Central  America. 


GUATEMALA 


TIKAL,  THE  ENIGMA 

Day  after  day  we  work  among  the  bared  temples  and  monu- 
ments, extending  trenches,  tuTinels,  and  pits  through  floors  and 
stairways,  recording  in  notebooks  and  on  film  the  often  perplexing 
intricacies  of  construction,  de?nolition,  and  rebuilding.  The  tens 
of  thousands  of  potsherds  and  other  objects  recovered  each  season 
beco7ne  laboratory  objects,  to  be  catalogued  and  studied.  All  of 
this  work  contii2ues  with  the  expectation  that  the  time-sequence 
of  related  construe tio?J,  artifacts,  sculpture,  and  iiiscriptions,  as  well 
as  site  ?napping  and  important  studies  of  e7ivironment,  will  col- 
lectively produce  answers. 

—William  R.  Coe,  Tikal  19S9,  Expedition  19^9, 

Vol.  I,  No.  4,  p.  7 

THE  British  expert  J.  E.  S.  Thompson  estimates  that  in  a.d.  800 
the  total  population  of  the  Mayan  area  was  between  two  and  three 
million.  In  contrast  to  so  many  extinct  or  slowly  dying  primitive 
races,  the  descendants  of  the  Mayas  still  survive  in  considerable 
numbers  and  are  in  no  danger  of  dying  out.  Fifty  years  ago  Karl 
Sapper  put  the  Mayan-speaking  population  at  about  1,250,000. 

In  all,  fifteen  Mayan  languages  and  dialects  are  still  in  use,  and 
two  more  became  defunct  a  relatively  short  time  ago.  These 
languages  are  divided  into  two  groups,  highland  and  lowland,  all 
the  remainder  being  classified  as  dialects  of  one  group  or  the  other. 
Oddly  enough,  Mayan  is  not  related  to  any  other  language  in  Mexico 
or  Central  America  as  a  whole. 

Of  all  American  peoples,  only  the  Mayas  devised  a  form  of 
writing  and  used  it.  Their  hieroglyphs  can  be  seen  on  steles,  on 
altars,  on  the  walls  of  ball-game  courts,  on  steps,  on  wall  facings, 
on  posts  of  wood  and  stone,  on  door  frames.  They  are  scratched  on 
stucco  and  jade  jewelry,  painted  on  vessels  and  inscribed  in  books. 
There  are  two  types,  one  head-shaped  and  the  other  symbolic.  Most 
Mayan  glyphs  are  still  undeciphered  because  no  "Rosetta  stone" 
has  been  found  in  the  Mayan  area  and  obviously  no  Mayan  text 
exists  beside  a  parallel  translation  in  another  language.  Yet  we  know 
the  Mayas'  hieroglyphic  script  was  used  to  record  the  passage  of 
time,  list  the  names  and  attributes  of  reigning  gods  and  note  down 
the  findings  and  observations  of  priest-astronomers. 

327 


328 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


The  Mayas  left  behind  whole  books,  the  "paper"  for  which  was 
provided  by  a  species  of  wild  fig  whose  fiber  was  steeped  in  rubber 
and  coated  with  a  layer  of  chalk.  The  Mayas'  volumes  were  folding 
books  rather  like  early  Chinese  manuscripts.  However,  so  many 
Mayan  texts  were  destroyed  because  of  the  religious  fanaticism  of 
the  Spaniards  that  only  three  are  still  in  existence:  the  oldest  and 
rtiost  valuable,  the  Codex  Dresden,  devoted  principally  to  astro- 


CHICCHAN 


Mayan  hieroglyphs  symbolizing  twenty  days.  It  is  noticeable  that  some  days 
were  expressed  by  symbols  of  similar  shape. 


GUATEMALA  329 

nomical  notes;  the  Codex  Madrid,  a  horoscopic  catalogue  used  for 
priestly  prophecies;  and  the  Codex  Paris,  listing  rites  associated 
with  individual  dates  of  the  calendar.  The  books  contain  colored 
pictures  of  gods  and  mythical  occurrences,  series  of  numerals,  and 
hieroglyphs,  all  executed  with  a  very  fine  brush. 

About  a  third  of  the  hieroglyphs  can  now  be  read.  Everything  so 
far  deciphered  relates  to  the  calendar,  the  cardinal  points  of  the 
compass,  astronomical  events,  deities  and  religious  rites.  Fortunately, 
all  the  numerals  have  been  identified.  The  study  of  Mayan  glyphs  is 
far  from  simple,  however,  because  one  glyph  often  possesses  several 
meanings.  The  Mayan  numerals  from  o  to  19  are  simply  heads  in 
profile,  each  with  a  different  face.  This  strange  arithmetical  system 
is  unique,  but  the  hieroglyphs  representing  the  nineteen  Mayan 
months  are  just  as  unusual.  A  figure  seen  in  profile  with  its  knees 
drawn  up  presumably  denotes  a  dead  body.  The  symbols  expressing 
the  nominal  forms  of  gods  are  normally  human  heads.  Other 
hieroglyphs  take  the  form  of  hands,  snails,  birds'  heads,  lizards  and 
sacrificial  offerings  of  many  kinds.  It  was  a  very  considerable  task 
to  decipher  these  enigmatic  symbols,  and  the  men  who  accomplished 
it  deserve  the  highest  praise.  They  include  the  Germans  Paul 
Schellhas,  Ernst  Forstemann,  Eduard  Seler  and,  more  recently, 
Thomas  Barthel  and  Giinter  Zimmermann,  the  Americans  J.  T. 
Goodman,  C.  P.  Bowditch  and  Cyrus  Thomas,  and  in  very  recent 
years  Morley  and  the  British  scholars  Spinden  and  Thompson.  Alto- 
gether they  have  succeeded  in  deciphering  a  third  of  the  hieroglyphs 
—at  least  in  general  purport.  Morley's  five-volume  work  on  the  in- 
scriptions of  Peten  is  a  scientific  achievement  of  the  first  order. 

What  is  the  earliest  authenticated  date  in  Mayan  culture?  For  a 
long  time,  the  oldest  datable  object  bearing  Mayan  hieroglyphs  was 
the  famous  Passion  Plate,  a  piece  of  jade  measuring  21.59  by  7.62 
centimeters  and  found  in  1864  near  the  Caribbean  port  of  Puerto 
Barrios  in  Guatemala.  When  deciphered,  its  date  proved  to  be 
A.D.  320.  This  plaque  so  greatly  resembled  pictures  of  prisoners  on 
monuments  in  the  Mayan  city  of  Tikal  that  Morley  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  piece  was  originally  made  there.  Tikal  stands 
in  the  north  of  central  Peten  and  is  the  largest  of  all  the  Mayas' 
sacred  temple  precincts. 

Another  date  identified  by  Morley  came  to  light  on  May  5,  19 16, 


330 


THE  SILENT  PAST 


on  a  stele  in  Uaxactiin  known  to  archaeologists  as  9.  (Numbers 
like  these  are  based  on  the  sequence  in  which  steles  were  found  at 
the  various  archaeological  sites.)  Uaxactun,  which  is  only  ten  miles 
north  of  Tikal,  was  founded  by  people  from  that  great  cultural 
center,  and  must,  therefore,  have  existed  at  least  since  the  year 
A.D.  328. 

Tikal,  the  largest  and  probably  the  most  interesting  of  all  Mayan 
cities,   is   currently   being   excavated   by   archaeologists   from   the 


KAYAB 


UAYEB 


Mayan  hieroglyphs  for  months.  The  year  was  divided  into  the 
nineteen  periods  whose  names  are  given  here. 


GUATEMALA  331 

University  of  Pennsylvania.  It  is  now  generally  accepted  that  Tikal 
originated  in  the  early  phase  of  Mayan  civilization. 

As  a  religious  center,  Tikal  was  not  only  the  largest  Mayan  city. 
It  also  boasted  the  tallest  pyramids,  fascinating  edifices  of  which 
all  are  over  125  feet  high  and  the  largest  reaches  a  height  of  230 
feet.  Their  massive  proportions  are  emphasized  by  their  slim  lines 
and  steeply  sloping  sides.  Two  large  step  pyramids  of  this  type 
rise  on  either  side  of  the  rectangular  ceremonial  courtyard,  their 
numerous  terraces  crowned  by  temples  with  very  thick  walls. 
These  sacred  shrines  contain  the  gloomy  cult  chambers  typical 
of  the  whole  Mayan  area,  as  well  as  some  walled-up  platforms 
which  may  have  been  altars  used  by  Mayan  priests. 

The  priests  performed  their  duties  garbed  in  great  splendor. 
Their  jade  jewelry,  the  quetzal  feathers  in  their  headdresses,  the 
comings  and  goings  through  doorless  entrances  surmounted  by 
superbly  carved  wooden  lintels,  the  clouds  of  incense  and  the 
atmosphere  of  intense  religious  fervor— all  this  must  have  made  a 
deep  impression  on  the  people  assembled  in  the  courtyard  below  or 
on  the  terraces  of  the  pyramid  itself.  It  should  be  remembered  that 
Mayan  festivals  were  preceded  by  long  periods  of  fasting.  Priests, 
novices  and  perhaps  officials,  too,  gathered  in  the  twilight  of  the 
narrow  stone  chambers  to  fast  in  preparation  for  the  feast  day. 
Water  was  brought  to  them  by  servants,  and  perhaps  also  by  their 
wives  and  mothers,  none  of  whom  was  permitted  to  enter  the  temple 
itself.  They  merely  put  down  the  priests'  scanty  rations  and  with- 
drew, leaving  the  inmates  to  watch  and  wait  in  solitude. 

The  Mayas'  religious  life  was  compounded  of  endless  hours  and 
days  of  fasting,  of  sacred  fires,  of  blood  drawn  from  tongue  and 
ears,  of  sacrifice  and  the  burning  of  copal  incense.  They  were 
searching  for  God,  as  men  have  always  done  throughout  the  history 
of  civilization.  All  material  considerations  were  subordinated  to 
their  spiritual  endeavors,  to  their  building,  their  suffering,  their 
fasting,  their  yearning  and  their  quest  for  the  divine.  Anyone  who 
stands  at  dusk  among  the  ruins  of  these  splendid  buildings  will 
sense  something  of  their  sanctity  and  nearness  to  God. 

On  the  south  side  of  Tikal's  main  plaza  are  some  multichambered 
buildings  whose  purpose,  though  often  debated,  has  not  yet  been 
ascertained.   Were  they   palaces?    Were  they   monasteries?    Were 


332  THE  SILENT  PAST 

they  merely  assembly  rooms?  Tikal  is  still  a  book  with  many  uncut 
pages. 

Tikal  has  water  reservoirs,  paved  streets,  pyramids  with  and  with- 
out buildings  on  their  platforms,  sixteen  temples  on  the  northern 
acropolis,  and  innumerable  steles.  Under  the  leadership  of  Edwin  M. 
Shook,  who  has  already  dug  successfully  at  Uaxactun,  Kaminaljuyu 
and  Mayapan,  excavations  sponsored  jointly  by  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania  and  the  Guatemalan  Government  have  been  revealing 
the  Mayas'  most  important  city  in  ever  greater  detail.  In  1959 
William  R.  Coe,  one  of  the  outstanding  authorities  on  the  Mayas, 
declared  that  Tikal  was  a  unique  manifestation  of  Mayan  culture, 
a  summit  of  achievement  unequaled  elsewhere  in  the  New  World. 
Largely  cut  off  by  the  hot  and  steamy  rain  forest,  Tikal  constituted 
a  vast  study  in  human  development.  Some  might  yearn  to  reach 
Mars  and  discover  what  has  evolved  outside  the  earth,  Coe  wrote, 
but  he  and  his  colleagues  preferred  to  remain  in  Tikal  and  discover 
how  and  why  the  American  Indians  had  met  the  challenge  of  their 
environment,  how  they  built  their  tall  temples,  how  they  managed 
to  think  in  terms  of  five  million  Mayan  years,  how  they  survived 
for  perhaps  two  thousand  years  and  then  fell  silent,  leaving  behind 
the  tangible  legacy  of  sculptures,  hieroglyphs,  potsherds  and  build- 
ing layers  which  are  now  providing  material  for  the  endless  tasks 
of  compilation  and  measurement. 

During  the  diggings  of  1958,  a  temple  was  uncovered.  This 
consisted  of  three  chambers,  each  with  one  central  doorway.  When 
American  archaeologists  gave  orders  to  clear  the  six  feet  of  rubble 
in  the  innermost  chamber,  workmen  came  upon  Stele  26.  Because 
the  stele  still  bore  traces  of  red  paint,  the  whole  building  was 
christened  the  Temple  of  the  Red  Stele.  A  fine  example  of  early 
classical  Mayan  architecture,  it  had  been  deliberately  and  violently 
destroyed  at  some  undetermined  point  in  time,  after  which  priests 
had  apparently  tried  to  appease  the  gods  with  sacrificial  offerings, 
for  their  cult  fires  had  blackened  the  plaster  of  the  altar.  How  long 
the  temple  survived  after  that  we  do  not  know,  but  it  was  eventually 
subjected  to  fresh  devastation.  The  altar  was  partially  ripped  out 
and  the  finely  chiseled,  red-painted  portrayals  of  marine  sacrifices 
and  pieces  of  coral  and  stone  were  destroyed.  In  the  floor  of  the 
chambers  the  Americans  found  circular  cavities  filled  with  huge 
quantities  of  sponges,  coral,  seaweed,  fishbones  and  other  strange 


GUATEMALA  333 

objects  of  marine  origin,  together  with  some  finely  carved  pieces 
of  obsidian.  It  is  hard  to  account  for  these  peculiar  sacrificial  gifts. 
Many  of  the  finds  came  from  the  far-off  Pacific  coast,  while  others 
came  from  the  Atlantic.  It  remains  incomprehensible  that  products 
of  the  sea  should  have  been  sacrificed  at  all,  for  sacrificial  offerings 
of  this  type  have  been  found  nowhere  else  in  the  Mayan  area. 

Probably  the  most  important  discovery  of  all  was  made  by  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  archaeologists  in  1959.  Just  over  two 
hundred  yards  from  the  great  plaza  of  Tikal  there  was  found  a 
broken  stele  which  represented  the  earliest  datable  Mayan  monu- 
ment so  far  discovered  in  the  lowland  jungle  of  Guatemala.  Linton 
Satterthwaite,  Mary  Ricketson  and  Benedicta  Levine  identified  the 
date  of  this  stele,  which  bears  the  number  29,  as  July  6,  292. 
Although  this  is  our  earliest  authenticated  date,  Mayan  culture 
naturally  goes  back  much  farther  into  the  past,  and  there  we  are 
groping  in  the  dark. 

Another  unsolved  mystery  is  when  and  why  Mayan  culture  met 
its  end.  Why  should  cult  places  which  evidently  made  such  enor- 
mous demands  on  the  Mayas'  material  and  human  resources  have 
been  abandoned.^  What  storm  had  broken  over  their  heads? 

All  authorities  on  the  Mayas  have  tried  to  fathom  whv  they  dis- 
appeared so  suddenly  at  the  height  of  their  powers  and  why  all 
building,  scientific  research  and  religious  observance  came  to  such 
an  abrupt  halt.  It  was  long  thought  that  the  Mayas  relinquished 
their  cities  in  the  central  region  and  migrated,  some  to  Yucatan  in 
the  north  and  some  to  the  Guatemalan  highlands  in  the  south,  but 
this  cannot  be  correct  because  during  the  classical  period  all  three 
zones  flourished  concurrently,  not  one  after  the  other.  Many 
theories  have  been  put  forward  to  explain  the  abandonment  of  the 
Mayan  cities.  Perhaps  their  particular  kind  of  plowless  agriculture 
eventually  proved  too  much  of  a  drain  on  the  population's  energy. 
Their  method  of  burning  down  patches  of  forest,  cultivating  the 
soil  for  a  year  or  two  and  then  giving  up  their  fields  and  moving 
to  a  neighboring  area  to  begin  all  over  again  may,  in  the  long  run, 
have  struck  them  as  too  laborious  and  wasteful. 

Malaria,  yellow  fever  and  hookworm  have  all  been  held  re- 
sponsible for  the  abandonment  of  the  Mayan  cities,  but  marsh 
fever  and  jungle  fever,  a  virus  disease,  seem  to  have  been  bequeathed 
to  the  New  World  by  the  Spaniards  and  probably  did  not  exist 


334  THE  SILENT  PAST 

there  before  their  arrival.  The  same  applies  to  hookworm,  reputed 
to  have  caused  the  deaths  of  so  many  Egyptian  Pharaohs. 

Everything  would  be  explained  if  the  Mayas  had  abandoned 
their  holy  places  gradually  and  if  their  culture  had  declined  by  easy 
stages.  We  know,  however,  that  many  Mayan  cities  were  abandoned 
virtually  overnight.  The  city  of  Uaxactun,  for  instance,  was  abruptly 
depopulated  before  many  of  its  buildings  could  be  completed. 

Copan  ceased  to  erect  hieroglyphic  monuments  in  a.d.  800.  At 
Quirigua,  Piedras  Negras  and  Etzna,  life  faded  in  810.  Tila  fell 
silent  in  830,  and  the  last  steles  were  erected  at  Tikal  and  Seibal 
in  869.  Uaxactun,  Xultun,  Xamantun  and  Chichen  Itza  flourished 
only  until  889.  Probably  the  last  date  recorded  by  the  Mayas  is  on  a 
stele  found  at  San  Lorenzo  in  the  vicinity  of  La  Muneca.  It  corre- 
sponds to  our  year  a.d.  928. 

Life  died  away  in  the  great  religious  centers  like  the  fading  tones 
of  a  bell,  leaving  them  silent  and  deserted,  but  we  know  that  many 
of  them  showed  renewed  signs  of  life  in  the  sixteenth  century  and 
thnt  the  Copan  area  became  quite  densely  populated.  People  were 
still  living  in  the  central  region  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish  con- 
quistadors, though  far  fewer  of  them  than  eight  hundred  years  pre- 
viously. The  rain-forest  civilization  dechned  so  abruptly  that  even 
war  cannot  be  held  responsible  for  it.  Furthermore,  except  in  Tikal, 
v<;ry  few  traces  of  wanton  destruction  have  been  found. 

Thompson  thinks  that  the  Mayan  territories  fell  prey  not  to 
foreign  domination  but  to  something  far  more  dangerous;  namely, 
foreign  ideas.  It  is  possible  that  there  were  widespread  insurrections 
by  the  peasants  against  the  priestly  caste.  For  once  the  religious 
faith  of  the  Mayan  people  waned,  their  culture,  like  every  culture 
that  forfeits  its  faith,  was  doomed  to  perish.  Without  faith  the 
peasants  would  have  been  reluctant  to  contribute  their  labor  or 
make  material  sacrifices.  Egypt  and  the  Renaissance  bear  testimony 
that  the  largest  and  most  sublime  works  of  man  were  the  fruit  not  of 
coercion  but  religious  faith.  The  priestly  ruling  class  may  have  been 
massacred  or  hounded  from  one  city  to  the  next,  leaving  peasant 
cliieftains  and  shamans  to  take  its  place.  Building,  the  erection  of 
steles  and  architecture  in  general  came  to  a  standstill,  and  the  tropical 
forest  crept  into  courtyards,  up  steps,  across  terraces  and  onto  the 
roofs  of  buildings. 

The  sudden  abandonment  of  a  residential  area  measuring  375  by 


GUATEMALA  335 

125  miles  and  containing  dozens  of  large,  thriving  religious  centers 
would  seem  to  defy  any  form  of  explanation,  especially  as  it 
occurred  at  a  period  when  Mayan  culture  showed  few  if  any  signs 
of  debility.  The  German  Americanist  Franz  Termer  has,  however, 
pointed  to  one  possibility  which  is  at  least  worthy  of  consideration. 
In  a  religious  state,  spontaneous  abandonment  of  the  homeland  might 
have  taken  place  at  the  behest  of  the  gods.  Seen  in  this  light,  an 
exodus  instigated  by  the  gods  and  supervised  by  the  priests  who 
implemented  their  will  becomes  conceivable. 

The  great  exodus  of  the  ninth  century  is  probably  the  most  out- 
standing of  the  many  mysteries  surrounding  this  mysterious  people. 
Yet  wherever  we  probe  the  civilization  of  the  rain  forest  we  find 
ourselves  confronted  by  unanswered  questions.  We  do  not  know 
what  secrets  lie  hidden  behind  the  Mayan  inscriptions  that  have  not 
yet  been  deciphered;  we  have  little  inkling  of  the  Mayas'  political 
system;  we  are  ignorant  of  whether  the  rain-forest  region  was 
welded  into  a  unified  kingdom  or  consisted  of  city-states;  we  have 
only  a  minimum  of  information  on  the  Mayas'  daily  life,  despite 
the  magnificent  work  done  by  Thompson,  Morley,  Shook  and  so 
many  others;  we  cannot  plumb  the  basic  concepts  of  the  Mayan 
religion;  we  know  virtually  nothing  of  the  Aiayas'  origins  or  ultimate 
destiny;  and  we  can  find  nothing  truly  comparable  with  their 
language. 

Mutely,  the  massive  buildings  of  these  highly  gifted  people  return 
the  beholder's  gaze;  mutely,  their  holy  places  molder  and  decay 
beneath  the  onslaught  of  the  all-devouring  jungle. 


CONCLUSION 


"BEHOLD,  ALL  THINGS 

ARE  BECOME  NEW" 

(II  Corinthians:  v,  17) 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  mail's  artistic  capabilities  are  actually 
any  higher  today  than  they  were  in  late  prehistoric  times,  though 
the  nimiber  of  motifs,  techniques,  and  media  available  to  him 
now  is,  of  course,  immeasurably  greater. 

—William  Foxwell  Albright,  From  the  Stone  Age 
to  Christianity,  pp.  127-8,  Baltimore,  1946 

WHAT  does  the  twilight,  the  deliquescence,  the  often  tragic  finale 
of  all  civilizations,  mean? 

It  is  never  more  than  an  apparent  withdrawal,  an  ebbing  of  some- 
thing which,  at  another  time  and  often  in  another  place,  is  destined 
in  some  mysterious  and  unfathomable  way  to  flare  up  once  more. 
Nothing  in  the  world  vanishes  forever.  The  downfall  of  a  civilization 
is  not  a  natural  phenomenon.  No  form  of  life  ever  dies  without  the 
acquiescence  of  man  and  without  a  voluntarily  engendered  cause. 
All  theories  which  allege  that  the  course  of  events  is  determined  by 
laws  of  nature  or  history,  all  "cyclical  fluctuations"  and  "wave" 
theories  of  history  ultimately  break  down  because  the  future  is 
molded  bv  the  ideas,  decisions  and  actions  of  living  men,  by  their 
works  and  achievements  both  past  and  present.  The  existence  of 
human  freedom  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  things  in  the  world  to 
understand.  All  great  civilizations  have  spiritually  enriched  one 
another  since  time  immemorial,  but  the  longer  a  civilization  remains 
isolated  and  the  longer  it  lives  exclusively  in  its  own  individual  way, 
the  more  specialized  it  becomes  and  the  less  easily  reconciled  with 
another.  It  is  always  the  most  highly  specialized  civilizations  that 
run  the  greatest  risk  of  extinction.  The  principle  is  borne  out  in 
reverse  by  man,  who  has  a  good  chance  of  outliving  the  animals 
of  the  world  because  he  is  the  least  specialized  of  all  creatures. 
Civilizations  which  have  become  unadaptable,  isolated  and  im- 
prisoned in  a  strait]  acket  of  rigid  formulas  and  habits,  are  as 
susceptible  to  external  or  internal  shocks  as  a  delicate  piece  of 
machinery.  External  occurrences  such  as  natural  catastrophes,  epi- 
demics, economic  fluctuations  and  invasions  do  not  necessarily  spell 

336 


CONCLUSION  337 

the  doom  of  a  civilization.  It  will  not  die  until  it  abandons  its  faith 
and  ideals. 

A  grandiose  picture  of  this  process  is  given  in  Genesis.  First 
comes  the  "corruption"  of  the  earth,  and  then  a  vast  inundation 
that  wipes  out  men  and  the  works  of  their  hands.  Something  must 
have  happened  to  the  faith  of  the  antediluvian  inhabitants  of  the 
world,  because  for  some  reason  they  abandoned  their  god  or  gods. 
It  is  no  accident  that  natural  catastrophe  as  a  consequence  of  the 
abandonment  of  exalted  ideals  is  a  theme  common  to  the  traditions 
of  many  different  races.  The  legend  of  the  Great  Flood  recurs  in 
Babylonia,  Assyria  and  Syria,  in  Egypt  and  Greece,  in  Australia  and 
China,  in  the  South  Pacific  and  among  the  tribes  all  over  America. 
The  story  of  the  Flood  has  itself  been  seized  upon  as  evidence  that 
cultural  assets  are  interchangeable  and  that  ideas  which  originate 
in  one  place  are  borrowed  by  others  and  disseminated  throughout 
the  world.  If  the  cataclysm  has  any  basis  in  fact— as  we  must  infer 
from  the  frequency  and  precision  with  which  details  recur  in 
different  descriptions  of  it— the  ubiquitous  nature  of  the  tradition 
must  be  attributable  to  its  basic  truth.  To  account  for  the  existence 
of  parallel  and  identical  thoughts  by  citing  the  homogeneity  of  the 
human  mind  throughout  the  world— in  fact,  to  espouse  the  theory 
of  "basic  ideas"— is  a  pastime  too  often  indulged  in.  The  Flood  does 
not  fit  into  this  theory,  its  only  universal  characteristic  being  a 
realization  of  the  fundamental  truth  embodied  in  it. 

As  we  have  seen  when  reviewing  various  civilizations,  foreign 
invasion  can  often  be  equated  with  the  overwhelming  of  a  weaker 
faith  by  a  stronger.  So  it  was  with  Jericho,  whose  Biblical  walls 
collapsed  between  1375  and  1300  B.C.,  a  city  built  8,000  years  before 
the  birth  of  Christ  at  a  time  when  man  was  ignorant  of  pottery,  the 
earliest  fortress  ever  to  be  unearthed. 

The  realization  that  the  strength  of  every  civilization  and  its 
greatest  art  were  each  born  of  a  marriage  between  the  nararal  and 
the  supernatural  is  perhaps  the  ultimate  realization  reached  by  any 
sensitive  person  who  stands  before  the  ruins  of  ancient  temples,  or 
gazes  at  tablets  thousands  of  years  old,  or  responds  to  the  entreaty 
crystallized  in  stone  by  the  world's  most  compelling  works  of  art. 
All  that  is  enduring,  great  and  artistic  has  been  engendered  by  the 
strongest  of  all  man's  impulses,  not  by  his  craving  for  house  and 
hearth,  food  and  clothing,  but  by  his  far  more  imperious  urge  for 


338  THE  SILENT  PAST 

the  things  of  the  spirit  and  thus  for  eternal  Hfe.  A.  V.  Kidder,  an 
American  scholar  who  devoted  his  life  to  a  study  of  the  Mayas  and 
to  archaeological  research  in  the  southwestern  areas  of  the  United 
States,  asserted  with  justification  that  at  every  stage  in  its  history  the 
human  race  has  sacrificed  almost  everything  for  the  sake  of  culture. 

Wherever  human  strength  has  proved  unequal  to  the  task  in 
hand  it  has  been  supplemented  by  faith,  religion  and  ideals  of  the 
most  exalted  kind.  One  can  feel  this  almost  tangibly  in  the  hallowed 
precincts  of  Nara  in  Japan,  in  the  Chinese  rock  temples  of  Lung 
Men,  Yiin  Kang  and  Tun-huang,  in  the  caves  of  Lu  Lan  and  Qyzil, 
on  the  "spirit  road"  near  Nanking  with  its  gigantic  beasts  and 
tutelary  figures,  in  the  celestial  temples  of  Peking.  One  can  sense 
it  in  the  great  stupas  of  India,  in  the  frescoes  of  Ajanta,  in  the 
reliefs  at  Borobudur  in  Java,  in  the  sphinxes  and  roval  tombs  of 
Egypt  and  the  pyramids  of  the  Mayas.  It  is  not  mere  chance  that  the 
period  at  which  Greece  attained  its  greatest  prime,  470-400  b.c, 
coincided  with  the  lifetime  of  Socrates,  spiritual  father  of  Western 
philosophy  as  a  whole. 

The  less  well-known,  more  obscure  civilizations  also  provide  us 
with  instances  where  the  motivating  force  behind  achievements  of 
great  magnitude  has  been  man's  quest  for  something  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  experience.  What,  for  example,  was  the  Hypogeum  at 
Hal  Saflieni  in  Aialta?  This  immense  subterranean  vault  bears  witness 
to  a  faith  that  literally  moved  mountains  in  its  endeavor  to  realize 
the  highest  of  human  ideals.  Aveburv,  Stonehengre  and  the  other 
vast  buildings  of  the  megalithic  period  were  also  holy  places.  Even 
the  riddle  of  the  menhirs  must  be  solved  in  religious  terms  because 
they  were  invested  with  religio-magical  significance.  The  statuettes 
commissioned  by  the  citizens  of  Mari,  who  lived  on  the  middle 
reaches  of  the  Euphrates  in  3000  b.c,  also  served  as  a  link  with  the 
gods,  as,  hands  folded  in  prayer,  they  watched  and  waited  for 
tokens  of  divine  favor.  The  unique  figurines  produced  by  the 
bronze  culture  of  Sardinia  between  2,500  and  3,000  years  ago  were 
also  born  of  religious  faith  and  destined  for  the  service  of  the  gods, 
as  were  the  bronze  figures  of  the  Benin  culture,  whose  purpose  was 
to  grace  altars  and  serve  God  and  ancestral  spirits.  Only  the  fervent 
belief  of  the  Gandharans  and  the  Indians  of  Mathura,  w^ho  col- 
laborated with  Flellenistic  sculptors,  could  have  bequeathed  the 
effigy  of  Buddha  to  central  Asia  and  the  whole  of  the  Far  East. 


CONCLUSION  339 

The  Silk  Road,  that  gigantic  cross  section  of  all  the  religions  of 
Asia,  owed  its  existence  in  no  small  measure  to  the  missionary  spirit, 
for  its  endless  expanse  was  worn  by  the  sandals  and  caravans 
of  .Manichaeans,  Buddhists,  Mohammedans  and  Christians. 

The  bell  tolls  for  an  advanced  civilization  as  soon  as  images  are 
removed  from  altars  and  works  of  art  find  their  way  into  museums 
and  the  drawing  rooms  of  worthy  but  unbelieving  citizens.  Such  is 
the  funeral  procession  of  all  the  world's  civilizations. 

There  is  something  inexphcable  about  products  of  human  handi- 
work in  which  the  author  of  the  original  motivating  force  is  no 
longer  identifiable.  That  is  why  we  have  attempted  to  explore  some 
of  these  problems,  even  though  so  many  must  necessarily  remain 
obscure.  For  instance,  we  do  not  know  why  the  Bronze-iVge  culture 
of  China  sprang  into  being  about  4,000  years  ago  and  immediately 
reached  a  peak  of  perfection  without  revealing  a  hint  of  its  origins 
or  background.  We  have  no  idea  what  the  people  of  the  megalithic 
civilizations  of  western  Europe  actually  looked  like;  or  how  long 
the  Mayas  took  to  evolve  their  system  of  chronology  and  their 
hieroglyphs;  or  why  the  palace  of  Knossos  in  Crete,  testimony  to 
an  extremely  high  degree  of  culture,  collapsed  in  ruins  in  1400  b.c; 
or  whether  Nestor,  Agamemnon,  Odysseus  and  Telemachus  could 
read;  or  who  were  the  Indo-European  inhabitants  of  Troy;  or  what 
was  the  real  secret  of  the  Delphic  Omphalos;  or  why  the  bronze 
caldrons  of  Dodone  fell  silent;  or  exactly  where  on  the  coast  of 
southwest  Spain  the  city  of  Tartessus  once  stood;  or  exactly  who 
the  Cimmerians  were;  or  who  was  the  chief  deity  of  the  Shang 
period;  or  how  the  moon-being  known  as  T'ao-t'ieh  originated;  or 
what  the  marks  on  the  rocks  of  Las  Palmas  and  Hierro  in  the 
Canary  Islands  mean;  or  who  inhabited  the  islands  before  the 
Guanches  arrived. 

Races  die  out,  towns  and  villages  lie  buried,  and  many  written 
traditions  elude  interpretation.  All  that  remain  are  stones  and  layers 
of  rubble,  ruined  buildings,  myths  and  legends.  Yet  the  times  that 
produced  them  were  not  necessarily  poor  and  devoid  of  culture. 
Where  information  is  plentiful  it  throws  a  period  into  sharp  relief, 
but  the  study  of  less  well-known  and  intelligible  civilizations  is  of 
particular  importance  because  it  sheds  light  on  obscure  intermediate 
periods  which  are  just  as  much  a  part  of  us  and  our  past  and  have 
played  an  equal  part  in  making  us  what  we  are. 


340  THE  SILENT  PAST 

Inaccessible  and  mysterous  civilizations  arouse  especial  interest 
because  all  history,  both  visible  and  invisible,  and  all  civilizations, 
both  buried  and  unearthed,  live  on  in  us.  Our  restless  urge  to  lay 
bare  the  hidden,  strange  and  baffling  features  of  the  past  is  born  of 
a  feeling  that  all  civilizations  are  part  of  us  and  that  we  should  like 
—quite  instinctively— to  track  down  an  unknown  quantity  in  our- 
selves. 

It  is  because  the  future  lends  itself  so  imperfectly  to  accurate 
prediction  that  historians,  archaeologists  and  ethnologists  attempt 
to  cull  information  from  the  past  and  project  it  into  the  future. 
Equally,  it  is  because  all  theories,  all  hypothetical  cultural  cycles 
and  all  assumptions  of  historical  recurrence  are  based  on  natural 
laws  and  not  on  the  human  spirit  that  they  fail  so  dismally.  Despite 
all  our  research  and  accumulated  knowledge,  the  past  has  become 
a  bloodless  thing.  Not  to  re-examine  it  continually  is  to  lose  sight 
of  the  glowing  embers  of  former  civilizations  and  thus  fall  like 
scorched  moths  from  an  ever-burning  flame  that  escapes  our  com- 
prehension. 

But  forebodings  about  the  future  are  born  of  fear,  and  this  fear 
springs  from  the  seldom-voiced  but  dawning  realization  that  purely 
material  progress,  in  so  far  as  it  bears  no  relation  to  life  as  a  whole 
and  ceases  to  serve  any  ends  but  those  of  destruction,  lies  like  a 
deathtrap  in  the  path  of  all  living  civilizations.  It  is  because  our  era 
senses  this  that  there  is  so  much  skepticism,  so  much  pessimism,  so 
much  insecurity  and  so  much  heedless  abuse  of  time. 

Where  superficial  control  of  nature  is  concerned,  man  presses 
forward  indefatigably  and  without  pause,  yet  his  character,  morals 
and  intelligence  show  no  perceptible  signs  of  improvement.  Belief 
in  intellectual  progress  and  the  idea  of  spiritual  evolution  are  merely 
naive  offspring  of  the  technical  and  scientific  marvels  of  our  age. 
Outward  progress  is  counterbalanced  by  a  lack  of  inward  develop- 
ment, for  the  spritual  life  of  modern  man,  his  relationship  to  his 
fellows  and  the  spiritual  and  moral  qualities  of  the  individual  are  all 
in  a  process  of  retrogression.  Our  age  is  epitomized  not  by  atomic 
science  but  by  the  fact  that  religious  values  are  losing  their  force, 
that  modern  man  is  afilicted  by  a  strange  sense  of  guilt,  and  that 
the  spiritual  basis  essential  to  works  of  art  simply  does  not  exist. 

Gone  are  the  days  of  hospitality  in  the  grand  manner,  the  sort 
of  hospitality  practiced  by  all  the  world's  so-called  primitive  peoples 


CONCLUSION  341 

and  by  the  advanced  civilizations  of  the  past;  silent  are  the  voices 
that  once  saluted  the  passing  stranger;  forgotten  is  the  obligation  to 
help  those  in  need,  shelter  travelers  and  show  magnanimity  to  the 
vanquished.  The  great  days  of  divine  sacrifice,  oracles,  religious 
architecture,  preservation  of  the  dead  and  a  belief  in  resurrection 
seem  gone  beyond  recall.  We  are  no  better  than  we  were. 

In  A.D.  58,  Paul  foresaw  a  different  kind  of  world.  He  regarded 
judgment  according  to  material  and  fleshly  standards  as  a  thing  of 
the  past,  and  thought  that  henceforth  the  victory  of  man's  spiritual 
side  was  assured.  Addressed  to  the  Corinthians  from  Macedonia, 
the  most  personal  of  all  his  letters  included  the  words:  "Behold,  all 
things  are  become  new." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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pology, Liverpool  1932,  Vol.  19,  p.  3  sq.,  p.  35  sq.;  1933,  Vol.  20,  p.  3  sq.;  1934-35, 
Vol.  21-22,  p.  99  sq.,  p.  143  sq.;  1936-37,  Vol.  23-24,  p.  67  sq.,  p.  35  sq. -Kenyon, 
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Good  Living  in  U gar  it 
The  World's  First  Alphabet 

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Sprach-  und  Altertumskunde,  Bd.  i,  1902,  Bd.  2,  1904,  Bd.  3,  1908,  Berlin. - 
Seler-Sachs,  C:  Auf  alten  Wegen  in  Mexico  und  Guatemala,  Stuttgart  1925.- 
Shook,  E.  M.:  The  Temple  of  the  Red  Stela,  Expedition  1958,  Vol.  i,  p.  27  sq. 
Tikal  Stela  29,  Expedition  i960.  Vol.  2,  p.  29  sq. -Termer,  P.:  Die  Maya- 
forschung.  Nova  Acta  Leopoldina,  Bd.  15,  Nr.  105,  Leipzig  1952. -Thomp- 
son, J.  E.  S.:  The  Rise  and  Fall  of  Maya  Civilization,  Norman  1954. -Tischner, 
H.  and  Krickeberg,  W.:  Australien/Amerika,  Die  groBe  Volkerkunde,  herg.  v. 
Hugo  A.  Bernatzik,  Leipzig  1939,  p.  187  sq.  -  Tischner,  H.:  Siidsee,  Volker- 
kunde, Fischer  Lexikon,  Frankfurt  a.  M.  1959.  Kulturen  der  Siidsee,  Hamburg 
1958.-T0ZZER,  A.  M.:  A  preliminary  study  of  the  prehistoric  ruins  of  Tikal, 
Guatemala.  A  report  of  the  Peabody  Museum  Expedition  1909-1910,  Cambridge 
1911.  Landa's  Relacion  de  las  Cosas  de  Yucatan,  Papers  of  the  Peabody  Museum 
of  American  Archaeology,  Vol.  18,  Cambridge,  Mass.  1941.-TRIMBORN,  H.: 
Indianische  Welt  in  geschichtlicher  Schau,  Iserlohn  1948. -Zimmermann,  G.: 
Kurze  Formen-  und  Begriffssystematik  der  Hieroglyphen  der  Alayahandschrif- 
ten,  Hamburg,  1953.  Die  Hieroglyphen  der  Mayahandschriften,  Universitat 
Hamburg,  Abhandlungen  aus  dem  Gebiet  der  Auslandskunde,  Bd.  62,  Reihe  B, 
Hamburg  1956. 


SOURCES  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


SOURCES  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


1  Male  head  from  Jericho.  Photo:  Garstang 

2  Skull  sculpture  from  Jericho.  Photo:  Kathleen  Kenyon 

3  Building  in  Jericho.  Photo:  Kathleen  Kenyon 

4  Human  skulls,  Jericho.  Photo:  British  Museum 

5  The  oldest  house  in  the  world,  Jericho.  Photo:  Kathleen  Kenyon 

6  Canaanite  goddess,  Ugarit.  Photo:  Musee  du  Louvre 

7  Copper  statuette,  Ugarit.  Photo:  Service  des  Antiquites,  Paris 

8  The  harbor  of  Ugarit.  Photo:  39e  Escadr.  aer.  du  Levant 

9  Bronze  statuette  of  the  god  Baal,  Ugarit.  Photo:  Musee  du  Louvre 

10  Clay  tablet  from  the  central  archives  of  Ugarit.  Photo:   Service  des  An- 
tiquites, Paris 

11  Clay  vessels,  Ugarit.  Photo:  Service  des  Antiquites,  Paris 

12  Fragment  from  an  ivory  plaque.  Photo:  Service  des  Antiquites,  Paris 

13  Phoenician  man,  terra-cotta  figurine  from  Byblos.  Photo:  Maurice  Dunand 

14  Neck  of  a  Phoenician  vase,  Byblos.  Photo:  Maurice  Dunand 

15  Punic  gravestone.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

16  Statue  of  a  Carthaginian  noblewoman.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

17  Ceramic  head  from  Carthage.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

18  Three  heads  sculptured  in  glass,  Carthage.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

19  The  Hypogeum,  Malta.  Photo:  Luigi  Ugolini 

20  The  "Sleeping  Woman  of  Malta."  Photo:  Luigi  Ugolini 

21  Terra-cotta  head,  Malta.  Photo:  Luigi  Ugolini 

22  Excavations  at  Hal  Tarxien.  Photo:  Luigi  Ugolini 

23  Overall  plan  of  the  temple  at  Hal  Tarxien.  Sketch:  Luigi  Ugolini 

24  Remains  of  megalithic  graves  in  Portugal.  Photo:  Archives 

25  "Tholos  da  Fariosa,"  Portugal.  Photo:  Archives 

26  Stonehenge.  Photo:  Camera  Press,  London 

27  Passage  grave,  Schonen.  Photo:  Archives 

28  Mural  painting  in  the  palace  of  Mari.  Photo:   Mission  Archeologique  de 
Mari 

29  A  fertility  goddess,  Mari.  Photo:  Mission  Archeologique  de  Mari 

30  City  administrator  of  Mari.  Photo:  Mission  Archeologique  de  Mari 

31  Clay  bathtubs,  Mari.  Photo:  Mission  Archeologique  de  Mari 

32  The  interior  of  a  nuraghe,  Sardinia.  Photo:  Christian  Zervos 

33  A  typical  nuraghe,  Sardinia.  Photo:  Enit,  Roma 

34  Ruins  of  houses  of  the  Barumini  fortress.  Photo:  Enit,  Roma 

35  Weeping  goddess,  Sardinia.  Photo:  Christian  Zervos 

36  Bronze  statuette  of  an  archer.  Photo:  Christian  Zervos 

37  Priestess  of  the  nuraghe  culture.  Photo:  Christian  Zervos 

38  Nuraghe  bronze  sculpture.  Photo:  Christian  Zervos 

39  Gold  death  mask,  Aiycenae.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

40  Gold  mask  from  Shaft  Grave  IV,  Mycenae.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

41  Gold  rhyton  in  the  shape  of  a  lion's  head,  Mycenae.  Photo:    Professor 
Hirmer 

42  Head  of  a  bull  vaulter,  Knossos.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

359 


36o  SOURCES  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

43  Spouted  jug  and  cup,  Phaistos.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

44  Cretan  bronze  statuette  of  a  man  praying.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

45  Bull  vaulting,  fresco  at  Knossos.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

46  Temple  grave  at  Knossos.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

47  Throne  room  in  the  palace  of  Knossos.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

48  The  stadium  at  Delphi.  Photo:  Bildarchiv  Foto  A4arburg 

49  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

50  Dancing  girls.  Caryatids,  Delphi.  Photo:  Bildarchiv  Foto  Marburg 

51  Figure  of  an  Amazon  on  the  Athenian  Treasury,  Delphi.  Photo:  Bildarchiv 
Foto  Marburg 

52  Frieze  on  the  Siphnian  Treasury,  Delphi.  Photo:  Professor  Hirmer 

53  Seal  from  Dodona.  Photo:  Professor  Dakaris 

54  Stone  mattocks  from  Dodona.  Photo:  Dr.  Ivar  Lissner 

55  Minyan  bowl  from  Dodona.  Photo:  Dr.  Ivar  Lissner 

56  Phoenician  sculpture,  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

57  Figure  of  a  woman,  Atlantic  Coast.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

58  Roman  amphorae,  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

59  Sarcophagus,  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

60  Lid  of  the  sarcophagus.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

61  Greek  bowl  transported  in  one  of  the  "ships  of  Tarshish."  Photo:   Paul 
Swiridoff 

62  Burial  stele,  Seville.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

63  Female  mask  found  in  a  grave  at  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

64  Children's  drinking  vessel  in  the  shape  of  a  cockerel,  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul 
Swiridoff 

65  Jewelry,  Cadiz.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

(36  "The  Lady  of  Elche."  Photo:  Museo  del  Prado 

67  The  treasure  of  El  Carambolo.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

68  Guanche  girl.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

69  Model  of  a  Guanche  building,  Canaria  Museum,  Las  Palmas 

70  Stone  pestle  and  mortar,  Canary  Islands.  Photo:  Rauchwetter 

71  Chinese  tripod 

72  Shang  Dynasty  bowl 

73  Chou  Dynasty  wine  jug 

74  Sacrificial  wine  cups  of  the  Chou  Dynasty 

75  Bronze  stove  from  the  Chou  Dynasty 

76  Fragment  of  a  dog-headed  demon,  Hadda.  Photo:  Musee  Guimet,  Paris 

77  Demon  in  fur  coat,  Hadda.  Photo:  Musee  Guimet,  Paris 

78  Head  of  Buddha,  Borobudur.  Photo:  Musee  Guimet,  Paris 

79  Bust  with  flowers,  Hadda.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein 

80  Mural  painting  of  Paradise  from  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein 

81  Scene  from  the  life  of  Buddha,  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein 

82  Embroidery,  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein 

83  Bodhisattva,  Miran.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein,  hmermost  Asia 

84  Clay  figure  of  a  horse,  Astana.  Photo:  Sir  Aurel  Stein,  Imierinost  Asia 

85  Altar  with  sleeping  Buddha,  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Mission  Pellot 

86  Bodhisattva  on  a  cave  wall,  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Mission  Pellot 


SOURCES  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  361 

87  Scenic  setting  of  the  Tun-huang  caves.  Photo:  Mission  Pellot 

88  Buddhist  altar,  Tun-huang.  Photo:  Mission  Pellot 

89  Silver  rhyton.  Photo:  British  Museum 

90  Gold  jug  from  the  Oxus  Hoard.  Photo:  British  Museum 

91  Golden  armband  from  the  Oxus  Hoard.  Photo:  British  Museum 

92  Racing  chariot,  Oxus  Hoard.  Photo:  British  Museum 

93  Bronze  stag  typical  of  Kurgan  art.  Photo:   from  Alfred  Salmony,  Sino- 
Siberian  Art 

94  Carpet  from  Noin  Ula.  Photo:  Hermitage,  Leningrad 

95  Wooden  coffin  found  at  Basadur.  Photo:  Hermitage,  Leningrad 

96  Scythian  vase  from  Kul  Oba.  Photo:  Hermitage,  Leningrad,  and  Ellis  H. 
iVIinns,  Scythians  and  Greeks 

97  Relief  on  the  vase.  Photo:    Hermitage,   Leningrad,  and  Ellis  H.    Minns, 
Scythians  and  Greeks 

98  Monolith  on  the  "acropolis"  of  Zimbabwe.  Photo:  Patellani 

99  Steps  leading  to  the  "acropolis."  Photo:  Patellani 
100  Soapstone  bird,  Zimbabwe  art.  Photo:  Patellani 
loi  "Acropolis"  of  Zimbabwe.  Photo:  Patellani 

102  Bronze  relief  of  the  Benin  art,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:   Paul 
Swiridoff 

103  Bronze  plaque  of  Benin,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

104  Wooden  figure  from   Cokwe,   Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:    Paul 
Swiridoff 

105  Hunting  mask  from  Loko,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:  Paul  Swiri- 
doff 

106  Leather  flask  of  the  Hausa,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:  Paul  Swi- 
ridoff 

107  Wooden  drum  from  Calabar,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.   Photo:    Paul 
Swiridoff 

108  Mask  from  Balumbo,  Volkerkundemuseum,  Berlin.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

109  Clay-coated  head.  New  Guinea.  Photo:  Paul  Swiridoff 

no  Mayan  city  of  Chichen-Itza.  Photo:  Deutsche  Presse  Agentur  Miinchcn 

111  Ruins   of  temple   at   Uxmal,   Yucatan.   Photo:    Deutsche    Presse    Agentur 
Miinchen 

112  Sculpture  of  a  God,  Copan.  Photo:  Deutsche  Presse  Agentur  Miinchen 

113  Sacrificial  Mayan  altar,  Copan.  Photo:  Deutsche  Presse  Agentur  Miinchen 

114  Stele  at  Copan.  Photo:  Deutsche  Presse  Agentur  Miinchen 

115  The  "Temple  of  the  Giant  Jaguar"  at  Tikal.  Photo:   University  of  Penn- 
sylvania 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Aaron,  44 

Adbastartos,  48 

Abimilki,  King,  of  Tyre,  32 

Abraham,  15,  22 

Absolom,  278-79 

Achaemenes,  244 

Achilles,   102 

Acropolis,  154 

Aeneas,  53 

Aeschylus,   143 

Aesop,  134 

Agamemnon,  102,  112 

Ahatmilku,  Queen,  38 

Ahiram,  King,  46-47 

Akkadian,  35 

Alasia,  42 

Alberschweiler,  75 

Albright,  William  Foxwell,  22,  23, 

336 
Alexander  the  Great,  48,  139,  140, 

147,   210-11,   215,   219,  247,   249, 

250,  254 
Alfonso  IV,  of  Portugal,  185 
Alfonso  the  Magnanimous,  174 
Ali  of  Tepeleni,  155 
Al-Masudi,  290 
Alphabet,  34-42 
Amasis,  King,  134,  135 
Amazons,  263 

Amenophis  IV,  Pharaoh,  33 
Andalusia,  162,  163,  164 
Antiochus  I,  II  and  III,  250 
Aphrodite,  42 
Apollo,  the  cult  of,  120-25,  126-32, 

136 
Arabia,  278-86 
Arganthonius,  King,  of  Tartessus, 

179 
Aristotle,  150,  156 
Arnobius,   183 
Arrian,  47 


365 


Asoka,  King,  213,  214,  216 

Assyria,  30 

Astarte,  36,  42,  49,  53 

Astyages,  244 

Atlantis,  11,  156-64,  165-72,  294 

Attila,  270 

Augustus,    Emperor,    153,    219-20, 

233_ 
Aurelian,  Emperor,  233 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  231 
Aurignacian  period,    19 
Avebury,  71-72,  74 
Aveiro,  Joao  Alfonse  de,  298 
Avienus,    Rufus    Festus,    164,    168, 

177 
Avila,  Alonso  Lopez  de,  322 
Azores,  55,  173-75,  176 


Baal,  36,  40,  49 

Babylonia,  30,  35 

Bacon,  Francis,  159 

Baer,  K.  E.  von,  258 

Bagneux,  68 

Baillv,  Jean  Sylvain,  159 

Bantu,  292 

Bar,  F.  C,  160 

Barnabas,  236 

Barthel,  Thomas,  329 

Barthoux,  220 

Bartoli,   160 

Bathsheba,  279 

Batu  Khan,  255 

Bauer,  Hans,  36 

Behrmann,  Walter,  308 

Bejarano,  Francisco,   179 

Ben  Farroukh,  Admiral,   185 

Benin,  9,  294-300 

Bennett,  Emmett,  L.,  109 

Bent,  J.  T.,  288 

Berytos,  45,  49 


366 


INDEX 


Bethcncourt,  Jean,  i86 

Bethshean,  28 

Beth-shemesh,  28 

Bias  of  Priene,  121 

Blanco,  Freijeiro  Antonio,  173,  177, 

178,   180 
Blegen,    Carl    W.,    102,    106,    108, 

112 
Blom,  Frans,  325 
Bobrinskoy,  Prince,  258 
Borchardt,  H.  H.,  160 
Bosch-Gimpera,  P.,  180 
Bourguet,  Emile,   126,   129,   130 
Bowditch,  C.  P.,  329 
Brahmanism,  217 
Brassempouy,  19 
Bronze  Age,  11,  22,  33,  114,  196 
Buchthal,  H.,  220 
Buddha,  34,  122,  203-09,  216; 

image  of,  217-21 
Buddhism,  208-09,  213-214,  215-21, 

223-24,  227,  228,  237,  239,  242 
Biihler,  Alfred,  301 
Burton,  F.  C,  247-49 
Burton,  R.  F.,  283 
Bushell,  Stephen  W.,  194 
Byblos,  21,  45,  46,  47,  49 
Byron,  Lord,  155 


Cadet,   160 

Cadiz,  172,  175 

Cadmus,  King,  35 

Caesar,  Julius,  219 

Caligula,  Emperor,  220 

Cambyses,  245 

Campanella,  Thomas,  159 

Canaan  and  the  Canaanites,  22,  23, 

25,  26,  28,  35,  37,  39,  41,  44,  50 
Canary  Islands,  182-93 
Cannibalism,  308-09 
Cappovilla,  C,  109 
Carapanos,  Constantin,   144 


Carnac,  66,  68,  75 
Carthage,  25-26,  52-57,   174 
Cassius,  Dio,   177 
Caton-Thompson,    Gertrude,    289, 

290 
Central  Asia,  222-29,  230-42 
Cerda,  Louis  de  la,  185 
Chad  wick,  John,  109,  117 
Chaerephon,  138 
Chamberlain,  Houston  S.,  244 
Chamisso,  Adalbert  von,  312 
Chandragupta,  211 
Charaxos,  134 
Chichen  Itza,  324,  334 
Ch'ien  Lung,  Emperor,  196 
Childe,  Gordon  V.,  61^ 
Chilon,  121 
China,  194-202 
Ch'in  dynasty,  223 
Chinese  dynasties,  197 
Chou  dynasty,  197,  198,  199,  261 
Cimmerians,  260,  261 
Clarke,  258 
Claudel,  Paul,  45 
Cleobulus  of  Lindus,  121 
Codrington,  307 
Coe,  William  R.,  327,  332 
Colophon,  124 
Confucius,  34,  204,  205 
Constantinus,  Caesar  Flavins 

Valerius,  213 
Cook,  Captain  James,  312 
Copan,   323-24,   334 
"Cosmic  mountain,"  95 
Courby,  F.,  126,  129 
Crantor,   159 
Crete,  102-10,  111-19,  122 
Croesus,  134,  137,  143 
Cunningham,   Sir   Alexander,    249, 

250 
Cyaxares,  244 
Cyprus,  31,  42,  53,  105,  178 
Cyrus  II,  250 


INDEX 


367 


Cyrus  the  Persian,  137,  245 
Cythera,  50 


Dakaris,  150,  152,  154 

Dakaris,  Sotiris,  144,  149 

Dalgleish,  236 

Dalton,  O.  M.,  243,  252 

Daniel,  Glyn,  71,  78 

Darius  I,  245-46,  250,  252,  263 

David,  King,  28,  278-79 

Davidson,  Basil,  296 

Dead  Sea,   16 

Delphi,  120-25,  126-32 

Delphic  oracle,  11,  126-32,  133 

Demon,  150 

Devoir,  Commandant,  66 

Dhorme,  36 

Dido,  53 

Didorus,  56 

Dieseldorff,  E.  P.,  320 

Diodorus,  127,  156 

Diodotus,  250 

Diogenes,  207 

Dione,  146;  cult  of,  152 

Disselhoff,  Hans  Dietrich,  314 

Dodona,    149-55;    oracle    of, 

143-48 
Domitian,  Emperor,  135,  220 
Dorsay,  305 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,   187,   312 
Dramissos,  155 
Dubois  de  Montpereux,  258 
Dussaud,  Rene,  39,  47,  80 
Dutreuil,  236 


Easter  Island,  312 
Ebu  Fathymah,  185 
Edrisi,  185 
Egypt,  22,  31 
Ekhelawon,  117 
Elagabalus,  Emperor,  234 


-38 


141, 


Epirus,  143,  146,  154,  155 

Esau,  22 

Esther,  Queen,  247 

Etruscans,  109,  162,  163,  164 

Eurasia,  253-59,  260-68,  269-77 

Euripides,  34,  129 

Euthydemus,  250 

Evangelides,  Professor,  144 

Evans,  Sir  Arthur,  75,  103,  105,  106, 

108,  144,  161 
Exodus,  the,  44 
Ezekiel,  49,  164 
Ezion-geber,  280,  281-82,  286,  293 


Fagg,  William  Bernard,  299,  300 
Faria  e  Sousa,  Manoel  de,  175 
FilHozat,  J.,  203 
Flaceliere,  Robert,  130,  131 
Florez,  Father,  173 
Forstmann,  Ernst,  329 
Foucher,  A.,  207,  220 
Franks,    Sir   Augustus    WoUaston, 

249 
Friederici,  305 
Frobenius,  Leo,  160,  294 
Furtwangler,  Adolf,  276 
Furumark,  A.,  109 


Gadeiros,   161 

Cades  (Cadiz),  19,  161 

Gaea  or  Ge,  122,  146 

Gagarino,  19 

Gandhara,  139,  210-21 

Garcia  y  Bellido,  Antonio,  1 76 

Gargoris,  King,  of  Tartessus,  1 7 1 

Garstang,  John,  16,  21 

Genghis  Kahn,  237,  255,  269 

Gigantia,  61,  63 

Gilgamesh,  King,  86 

Glueck,  Nelson,  278,  281,  282,  286 

Godard,  220 


368 


INDEX 


Goodman,  J.  T.,  329 
Gordon,  C.  H.  22 

Goshen,  22 

Gozo,  63 

Gray,  Basil,  225 

Great  Wall  of  China,  222 

Greece,  102-10,  111-19,  120-25,  ^^^~ 

32,  133-38,  139-48,  149-55 
Griinwedel,  Albert,  237,  238,  239 
Guanche,  187-93 

Guatemala,   317-19,  320-26,  327-35 
Guy,  P.  L.  O.,  28 


Hadrian,  Emperor,  135 

Hagiar  Kim,  61,  63 

Halicarnassus,  34 

Hall,  R.  N.,  288,  290 

Hal  Saflieni,  62 

Hal  Tarxien,  61 

Hamburg  South  Seas  Expedition, 

305 
Hammurabi,  30,  87 
Hancar,  Franz,  276 
Han  dynasty,  223 
Hannibal,  26,  53 
Hanno,  190 
Harran,  22 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  187 
Hay  ward,  236 
Hazor,  28 

Hedin,  Sven,  240-41 
Heeren,  A.  H.,  287 
Heine-Geldern,  Robert,  314 
Hennig,    Richard,    162,    174,    283, 

284,  285,  287 
Henry  III,  of  Castile,  186 
Hentze,  Carl,  200,  201 
Heracles  Melkert,  48 
Herodotus,  34-35,  48,  124,  129,  130, 

135'  14I'  146,  147'  149'  253'  ^54' 
255,  257,  260,  264,  265,  266,  267, 
268,  270,  276,  277 


Herrera,  Diego  de,  187 
Herrmann,  Albert,  160,  233 
Hesiod,  145,  156,  183,  254 
Hippocrates  of  Cos,  254-55,  263 
Hiram,  King  of  Tyre,  41,  49,  50, 

280,  286 
Holland,  Leicester  B.,  131 
Homer,  42,  99,  102,  103,  106,  iii, 

113,  124,  125,  141,  146,  150,  176, 

183,  260,  273 
Homolle,  Theophile,  126,  130,  135 
Horace,  156 
Hottentots,  292 
Housman,  Lawrence,  3 1 1 
Hsia  dynasty,  199 
Hsiung-nu,  222,  261 
Hsiian  Wang,  Emperor,  199,  261 
Hui  Tsung,  Emperor,  232 
Humboldt,    Alexander    von,    174, 

185,  283,  312 
Huntington,  Ellsworth,  261 
Hurritic,  35 
Hypogeum,  62-63 
Hysiae,  124 


Ibn  Batuta,  269,  287 

Ice  Age,  15,  41,  90 

Ile-Ife,  296 

Incas,  323 

India,  203-09,  210-21,  284 

Ingholt,  Harald,  214 

Innocent  IV,  Pope,  255 

loannina,   154-55 

Irkutsk,  19 

Iron  Age,  15 

Isaac,  15,  22 

Ishtar,  80-81 

Israelites,  22-23,  39'  44'  5^ 


Jacob,  15,  22 
Jehovah,  23 


INDEX 


369 


Jerez,  172 

Jericho,  15-24,  30 

Jerusalem,  16 

Jesus  the  Christ,  25,  49,  205,  208 

Jordan,  15,  20,  23 

Jordania,    15-24 

Joseph,  22 

Josephus,  Flavius,  283 

Joshua,  23 

Juba,  King  of  Mauretania,  182 

JuHan,  Emperor,  135 

Justin,  128,  171 


Kanishka,  King,  213,  214,  215 

Kanjera,  28 

Kamak,  31 

Kastri,  135 

Keane,  Augustus,  283 

Keith,  Arthur,  58 

Kenyon,  Kathleen,  16,  18,  19-20, 

Kerlescan,  68 

Kermario,  68 

Kern,  Maximilian,  203 

Kidder,  A.  V.,  338 

Kirchmaier,  Georg  Caspar,  159 

Kirchner,  Horst,  74 

Kirsten,  Ernst,  143 

Knossos,    103,    106,    108,    109,    I 

112,  1 14,  1 16,  117 
Kober,  Alice,  109 
Kraiker,  Wilhelm,  143 
Ktistopoulos,  K.,   109 
Kublai  Khan,  255 
Kukahn,  178 


La  Coste-Messeliere,  Pierre  de,  i 

122,  126 
Lacus  Ligustinus,  165 
Landa,  Diego  de,  320-21,  322 
Lammerer,  General,  169 
Lassen,  Christian,  283 


Late  Stone  Age,  15-16 

Lauffray,  J.,  43 

Layard,  Sir  Austen,  239 

Lebanon,  43-51 

Le  Coq,  Albert  von,  230,  235,  238, 

239 

Lejeune,  Chantraine,  109 

Le  Plongeon,  Augustus,  160 

Le  Rouzie,  Zacharie,  66,  76,  79 

Lespugue,  19 

Letourneau,  79 

Levine,  Benedicta,  333 

Lichas,  137 

Lilliu,  Giovanni,  91,  92,  93 

Linear  A.,  105-10,  in 

Linear  B.,  105-10,  112,  117,  123 

Li  Po,  227 

Livius,  Titus,  52 

Locmariaquer,  66,  68,  75 

Loud,  Gordon,  28 
21      Louis  IX,  255 

Lou  Lan,  240-41 

Lucan,  128 

Lugo,  Alfonso  Fernandez  de,  187 

Lund,  313 

Luschan,  Felix  von,  297 

Lii  Ta-lin,  196 

Lydians,  51 
10,      Lysander,  219 


Mackenzie,  108 
MacNeish,  R.  S.,  315 
Madeira,  156 

Magalhaes,  Fernao  de,  312 
Magna  Mater,  98-101 
Mahamaya,  Princess,  205 
20,      Malia,  103 

Malta,  19,  50,  58-64 
Maluquer,  J.,  178 
Manchu  Dynasty,  26 
Mangu  Khan,  269 
Mani,  229 


370 


INDEX 


Manichaeism,  229,  242 

Mari,  30,  80-88 

Marinates,  104 

A4arquart,  Josef,  297,  298 

Marshall,  Sir  John,  210,  218 

Massilia  (Marseilles),  156,  164 

Mathew,  G.,  293 

Mauch,  Karl,  283,  284,  287 

Maurya  dynasty,  213 

Mayas,  315-19,  320-26,  327-35 

McGovern,  Montgomery,  261 

Mees,  J.,  174 

Megaliths  and  monoliths,  63-64,  65- 

75,  76-79,  292,  312 
Megasthenes,  212-13 
Megiddo,  28 
Mela,  Pomponius,  183 
Melanesia,  303 
Melgunov,  General,  258 
Melkert,  49 
Melos,  50,  105 
Menec,  68 
Meriggi,  P.,  109 
Mesopotamia,  22,  30,  31 
Mewes,  R.,  283 
Micronesia,  312 
Middle  Stone  Age,  15 
Miller,  V.  T.,  258 
Miner  el  Beida,  32 
Ming  Ti,  Emperor,  223 
Minns,  Ellis  H.,  253,  258,  269,  271 
Minoan,  30 
Mishenko,  T.  I.,  258 
Mnaidra,  61 
Mochlos,  116 
Mohammed,  122 
Mongols,  225,  255,  258,  313-14 
Montet,  46 
Morbihan,  76,  77 
Morley,  Sylvanus  G.,  315,  320,  324, 

325.  329'  335 
Morris,  Robert,  145 
Moses,  22,  44,  46 


Miiller,  F.  W.  K.,  240 

Mycenae,  102,  105,  107,  111-19,  273 

Mycenaean  Age,  life  in  the,  111-19 

Neanderthal  man,  30,  58 

Nebuchadnezzar,  48 

Neleus,  102 

Nelson,  Admiral  Horatio,  187 

Neoptolemus,  King,  139 

Nero,  Emperor,  136 

Nestor,  102,  106,  112 

New  Guinea,  301-10 

New  Zealand,  312 

Nicator,  Seleucus,  211,  249 

Niebuhr,  168 

Nigeria,   294-300 

Nilsson,  Martin  P.,   124,   125,  131, 

137.   145 
Nineveh,  35 
Noguera,  E.,  319 
Nougayrol,  39 
Numantia,  162,  171 
Nuraghians,  90-94,  99-101 

Odysseus,  112 

Olympias,  139-41 

Omphalos,  126,  131 

Ophir,  50,  283-84,  286,  287-93 

Oppe,  A.  P.,  129 

Oppert,  Jules,  283 

Orestes,  137 

Ostimians,  177 

Ovid,  145 

Oxus,  treasure  of  the,  243-52 


Palenque,  324-25 

Palestine,  22-23 

Pallas,  258 

Palmer,  B.  R.,  109 

Pan  Chao,  237 

Panhellenic  Pythian  Games,  1 3 1 


INDEX  371 

Parrot,  Andre,  30,  80,  82,  84  Poseidon,  168 

Patara,  124  Posidonius,  156,  159,  162-63 

Paul  the  Apostle,  49,  59,  236,  340  Ptolemaeus,  Claudius,  233 

Pausanias,  120,  154,  165,  182,  185  Punic  Wars,  53,  $6 

Peking  man,  30  Pylos,  106,  108,  109,  no,  112,  117 

Pelliot,  Paul,  226,  229,  239  Pyrrhus,  King,  152 

Pequart,  Marthe  and  Saint- Just,  76,  Pyrsos  Encyclopedia,   152 

79  Pytheas,   156 

Periander  of  Corinth,  121  Pythia,  126-32,  133-38 

Pericles,  136  Python,  122,  126 
Persepolis,  247 
Persia,  243-52 

Peters,  Karl,  284  Quatremere,    Etienne    Marc,    283, 
Phaistos,  103  287 

Philip  of  Macedon,  139,  140,  141, 

143 

Philippson,  Professor,  131  Radloff,  Wilhelm,  259 

Phillips,  J.  R.,  295  Radiocarbon  dating,  22,  71,  93 

Phoenicians,  25-26,  35,  46,  47,  48,  Rahab,  23 

49,  50,  60,  174,  176,  284,  285,  286  Rameses  II,  43-44,  46 

Picard,  Charles,  126  Randall-Maclver,  David,  287,  289, 
Piedras  Negras,  325  290 

Piggott,  Stuart,  70-71  Ras  el-ain,  48 

Pillars  of  Heracles,  156,   160,   161;  Ras  Shamra,  28,  30,  35,  39,  40 

see  also  Gibraltar  Rehm,  Professor,  169 

Pilos,  114  Renders,  Adam,  287 

Pindar,  125,  143  Renou,  L.,  203 

Pisani,  V.,  109  Rhodes,  50 

Pittacus  of  Mytilene,  121  Rhodopis,  134-35 

Plato,  129,  131,  141,  156,  157,  158,  Rhys  Davies,  C.  A.  F.,  205 

165,  167,  168,  169,  170  Rice,  Tamara  Talbot,  256,  261 

Pliny  the  Elder,  145,  162,  182,  255  Ricketson,  Mary,  333 

Plischke,  Hans,  312  Rivard,  Albert,  158 

Plutarch,   126,   128,   130,    132,   133,  Rostovzev,  M.,  271 

139,  141,  182  Rudbek,  Olf,  159 

Podolyn,  Johan,  173,  175  Rudenko,  S.  I.,  259 

Poech,  305  Ruysbroeck,  Wilhelm  de,  255,  269 

Poidebard,  A.,  43,  47  Ruz,  Alberto,  318-19 
Pokorny,  Julius,  177 
Polo,  Marco,  237,  255,  256,  257,  269 

Polynesia  and  the  Polynesians,  301-  Sahure,  Pharaoh,  49 

02,  311-12  Sales,  Jean  Baptiste  Claude  Delisle 
Poros,  Prince,  211  de,  159 


372 


INDEX 


Samothrace,  140 

Sapper,  Karl,  327 

Sappho,   1 34 

Sarepta,  45 

Sardi,  11 

Sardinia,   89-94,   95-^01 

Sardis,  137 

Sargon  I,  30 

Sarmatians,  263 

Satterthwaite,  Linton,  333 

Saul,  King,  28 

Saumur,  70 

Schachermeyr,  F,,  109,  no,  112 

Schaeffer,  Claude  F.  A.,  25,  28,  29, 

32,  35 
Schellhas,  Paul,  329 
Schiller,  Friedrich,   10 
Schlagintweit,  Adolph  von,  236 
Schliemann,    Heinrich,     102,     106, 

113,  161 
Schrader,  Carl,  305 
Schulten,  Adolf,  156,  162,  165,  168, 

169,  170,  171,  178 
Schulz,  D.,  273,  274 
Scipio,  Publius  Cornelius,  162 
Scythians,  253-59,  261-68,  269-77 
Seler,  Eduard,  329 
Semites,  85 

Semitic  Akkadians,  30 
Semitic  Hyksos,  22 
Sepik  culture,  305-10 
Serri,  96 
Sertorius,  156 
Seven  Sages,  120-21 
Seville,  172 
Sha'ar  ha  Golan,  2 1 
Shamsi-Adad,  King,  86,  87 
Shang  dynasty,  199,  201,  231 
Shapur  I.,  214 
Sheba,  Queen  of,  279-80 
Shih  Huang-hi,  Emperor,  222-23 
Shnumit,  Princess,  30 
Shook,  Edwin  M.,  332,  335 


Sicily,  50 

Sidon,  25,  45,  49 

Sidonian,  47 

Silk,  231-35 

Silk  Road,  224,  230-42 

Silva,  Diego  de,  187 

Sittig,  Ernst,  109,  124 

Smith,  Vincent  A.,  214 

Socrates,  34,  138,  157,  158,  205,  208 

Solomon,  King,  11,  26,  28,  41,  50, 

278-86,  293 
Solon,  120,  160 
Soper,  Alexander  C,  220 
Sophocles,  143 

Southern  Rhodesia,  284,  287-93 
Spain,  156-64,  165-72,  173-81 
Spanuth,  Jiirgen,  160 
Speiser,  E.  A.,  22 
Spinden,  329 
Stallbaum,  Gottfried,  160 
Stein,  Sir  Aurel,  226,  228,  229,  239, 

241 
Stoltenberg,  Hans,  109 
Stone  Age,  15,  62,  304 
Stonehenge,  68,  70-71,  74 
Strabo,  §6,  128,  162,  163,  165,  167, 

181,  261 
Struck,  Bernhard,   297 
Suetonius,  220 
Sulla,  135 
Sumarokov,  258 
Sumerians,  30,  35,  85 
Summers,  Roger,  293 
Sung  dynasty,  225 
Svoronos,  135 
Sybaris,  171 

Sydow,  Eckart  von,  296 
Syria,  25-33,  34-42 


Taanach,  28 

Table  des  Marchands,  68,  76,  77 

Tacitus,  124 


INDEX 


373 


T'ang  dynasty,  241 

Tank,  ^6 

T'ao-t'ieh,  mask  of,  200-02 

Taramelli,  96 

Tarragona,  162 

Tarshish,  50,  164 

Tartessus,    162,    163,    164,    165-72, 

173-81 
Tarxien,  61,  62 
Telemachus,  112 
Tell  Es-Sultan,  16 
Tell  Hariri,  30,  80-88 
Termer,  Franz,  335 
Thales  of  Miletus,  121 
Thasos,  50 
Thebes,  124 
Themis,   122 

Theodosius,  Emperor,  135 
Thera,  104 
Thomas,  Cyrus,  329 
Thomas,  H.  H.,  71 
Thompson,  J.  E.  S.,  311,  315,  317, 

322,  327,  329,  334,  335 
Thutmosis  III,  Pharaoh,  31,  42,  49 
Tigin,  Jolygh,  270 
Tikal,  327-35 
Timaeus,  52 
Tiryns,  107,  114 

Tischner,  Herbert,  302,  308,  312 
Titanus,  Maes,  233 
Torrecillas,  Concepcion  Blanco  de, 

179,  180 
Torriani,  Leonardo,  188,  192 
Toynbee,  Arnold,  317 
Treweek,  A.  P.,  109 
Troy,  103 

Tyre,  11,  25,  45,  47,  48-49 
Tyrrhenis,  89,  163-64 
Tu  Fu,  227 
Tun-huang,  cave  temples  of,  224- 

29 
Tursa,  163 
"Turdetania,"   163 


Turner,  E.  G.,  109 
Tunguses,  26 


Uaxactun,  330,  334 

Ugarit,  25,  27,  29,  30,  35-36,  37,  40, 

Ugolini,  Luigi,  62 

Uz,  45 


Vasudeva,  214 
Ventris,  Michael,  109,  117 
"Venus"  statuettes,  19,  98,  191 
Virgil,  52,  53,  220 
ViroUeaud,  Charles,  36,  39,  41 


Wace,  Alan  J.  B.,  107,  in,  112,  113 

Wainwright,  G.  A.,  292 

Waldstein,  135 

Wang  Fu,  196 

Wei  dynasty,  225 

Weselowski,  N.  J.,  262,  271,  274 

White,  W.  C,  202 

Wilamowitz,  124 

Willendorf,  19 

Wirth,  Hermann,  160 

Wirz,  Paul,  307 

Wolf  el,  Dominik  Josef,  191 

Wu  Ti,  Emperor,  198 


Xenophon,  132 

Xerxes,  247,  250 


Yaxchilan,  325 
Yoruba,  295-96 
Yiian  dynasty,  225 
Yucatan,  320,  321,  333 
Yung  Lo,  Emperor,  197 


374 


INDEX 


Zama,  ^6 

Zamatorin,  I.  M.,  276 

Zammit,  Sir  Themistocles,   58,  59, 

61 
Zarathustra,  122,  204,  251-52 
Zenobia,   Queen,    236 
Zervos,  Christian,  89,  95,  96,  98 


Zeus,  140,  141-43,  146-48,  150,  152, 

Zeus,  Dodonaeus,  152 
Zimbabwe,  285,  287-93 
Zimmermann,  Giinter,  329 
Zimrilim,  King,  85,  86,  87,  88 
Zopyrion,  General,  263 


Date    Due 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
Due             Returned              Due           Returned 

i  •■' .iXi  .1  '"'C-.'-r-'-'Ts'-  «.-»* 

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Ratselhafle  Kulturen.  main 
901  91L722rEbC.2 


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