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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.

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.

992

'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.

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

V.

WHEN, by their increasing numbers and their superior civilization, the descendants of the emigrants that came from the banks of the Euphrates had become the dominating power in the valley of the Nile, they sent colonists to the land of Kanaan. These, following the coast of the Mediterranean, advanced as far north as Mount Taurus in Asia Minor; and as they progressed they founded settlements, that in time became great and important cities, the sites of mighty nations whose history forms for us, at present, the ancient history of the world.

The names of these cities and nations will be the unerring guide which will lead us on the road followed by these Mayaspeaking colonists, that, starting from Egypt, carried their civilization along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, northward; then, eastward, back again to the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.

On leaving Egypt they had to traverse the sandy desert that forms the Isthmus of Suez, and is the northern limit, the end, of the Sinai peninsula. We have already said that the

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