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It is a well-known fact that history repeats itself. What happened centuries ago in the valley of the Nile happens in our day. European civilization is now being transported full grown to the United States and other countries of the Western Continent. Ten thousand years hence, scholars speaking of the present American civilization may reěcho Renan's words regarding the Egyptian: "It had no known infancy-no archaic period."

We have seen that the Akkadians—that is, the primitive Chaldeans, who dwelt in places enclosed by palisades in the marshy lands at the mouth of the Euphrates-who brought civilization to Mesopotamia, possessed a perfect system of writing; spoke a polished language akin to the Maya; had cosmogonic notions identical with those of the Mayas, and expressed them by means of a diagram similar to, but more complex than, that found in Uxmal, Yucatan.

We have also seen that the Maya-speaking peoples, whose tracks we have followed across the Syrian desert, and who settled in the valley of the Nile, brought there the art of writing, a polished language, and the same cosmogonic notions entertained by the Chaldees, the Hindoos, and the Mayas; that the names of the cities they founded, of the gods they worshipped, were also words belonging to the Maya language. In another work it has been shown that the Maya alphabet, discovered by the author, and the Egyptian hieratic alphabet were identical. Did the limits of this book allow, it could also be proved that the initial letter of the Maya names of the objects representing the letters of the Egyptian alphabet is the very letter so represented in said alphabet, and that several of these signs are contours of localities in the Maya Empire.

1

Le Plongeon, Sacred Mysteries, Introduction, p. xii.

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From these premises may it not be safely asserted, that, if the Mayas and the Egyptians did not teach one another the arts of civilization, they both learned them from the same masters, at the same schools? And if Professor Max Müller's assertion be true, that particularly in the early history of the human intellect there existed the most intimate relationship between language, religion, and nationality,' then there can be no doubt that the Egyptians and the Mayas were branches of one mighty stem firmly

rooted in the soil of the "Land of Kui" in the Western Continent.

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GODDESS UATI (?) MATI.2

Should I give dates, according to the author of the Troano MS. and other Maya historians, many would doubt their accuracy and reply: How do we know that you have correctly interpreted narratives-written in characters that none of the Americanists, who claim to be authorities on American palæography, can decipher? It is well known that they cannot interpret with certainty half a dozen of the Maya signs, much less translate a whole sentence; and they assert that, if they, who have written whole volumes on the subject, do not understand these Maya writings, no one else can.

For this reason I leave to Mr. Bunsen the care of determining the dates, particularly as those calculated by him, strange

'Max Müller, Science of Religion, p. 53.

2 Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, vol. ii., p. 198.

as it may appear, correspond very nearly to those given by the ancient Maya writers.

"The latest date at which the commencement of Egyptian life, the immigration from the Euphrates district,' can have taken place is 9580 B.C., or about 6000 before Menes. But the empire which Menes founded, or the chronological period of the Egyptians as a nation, down to the end of the reign of Nectanebo II., comprised, according to our historical computations, very nearly thirty-three centuries.

"In reality, there were disturbances, especially in those early times, which must be taken into account. We have calculated the lowest possible date to be six thousand years, or one hundred and eighty generations, before Menes. Were this to be doubled, it would assuredly carry us too far. A much higher date, indeed twice that number of years, would certainly be more conceivable than a lower one, considering the vast amount of development and historical deposit which existed prior to Menes. It can be proved that but a few centuries after his time everything had become rigid not only in language but also in writing, which had grown up entirely on Egyptian soil, and which must be called the very latest link in that ancient civilization.

"Now, if instead of six thousand years we reckon four thousand more, or about ten thousand years from the first immigration down to Menes, the date of the Egyptian origines would be about 14000 B.C. 2

1 Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a book written at the beginning of the Christian era, asserts (p. 146) that the first Egyptians were a colony from India.

2

Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. iv., p. 58.

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