America, or has some ancient wizard, by magic art, suddenly transported us to the south of the Asiatic peninsula, in Cambodia, in the old city of Angor-Thom? There also we find similar altars, figures of serpents, and the bird-headed god. This bird, symbol of the principal female divinity, is met with in every country where Maya civilization can be traced -in Polynesia,1 Japan, India, Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, as in Mayach and the ancient city of Tiahuanuco on the high plateaus of the Peruvian Andes. In Egypt the vulture formed SCULPTURE IN ANCIENT CITY OF ANGOR-THOM, CAMBODIA. the headdress of the Goddess Isis, or Mau, whose vestments were dyed with a variety of colors imitating feather work. Everywhere it is a myth. In Mayach only we may perhaps 'When Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook in his first voyage, visited the great Morai at O-Taheite, he saw on the summit of the pyramid a representation of a bird, carved in wood (the Creator). John Watson, The Lost Solar System, vol. ii., p. 232. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii., p. 375. |