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the point of the compass where the birthplace of their ancestors was situated, may seem a direct contradiction of the fact that the first Maya settlers in the valley of the Nile came from the banks of the Euphrates; that is, from the east. This seeming discrepancy is, however, easily explained by the other fact, that there were two distinct Maya migrations to Egypt. The second, the more important, coming from the West, direct from Mayach, produced a more lasting impression on the memory of the people.

We have followed step by step the Mayas in their journeys from their homes in the "Lands of the West" across the Pacific, along the shores of the Indian Ocean to the head of the Persian Gulf, then up the Euphrates-on the banks of which they formed settlements that in time became large and important cities-to Babylon. The migration of these Mayaspeaking peoples from the eastern countries, across the Syrian desert, to` Egypt took place centuries before the coming to that country of Queen Móo with her retinue, direct from Mayach, across the Atlantic. Her followers, fresh from the "Lands of the West," naturally brought with them the manners and customs, traditions, religion, arts, and sciences of the mother country they had so recently abandoned. They were aped, and their ways readily adopted, by the descendants of the first Maya settlers, who had become more or less contaminated with the habits, superstitions, religious ideas, of the inhabitants of the various places where they had so long sojourned, or with whom they had been in contact.

If, therefore, we wish to find the cradle of Egyptian civilization, where it had its infancy and developed from a state of barbarism, and why it appeared full grown on the banks of the Nile, we must seek westward whence it was transplanted.

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 reecho 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 work1 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.

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

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

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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

1 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.

'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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