DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0130
120
the Persian invasion, when it was the garden of ll:e world. This is
a period sufficient, but not more than sufficient, for the accomplish-
ment of such vast revolutions, both natural and artificial; and, as it
is supported by such credible testimony, there does not appear to
be any solid room for suspecting it to have been less : for, as to the
modern systems of chronology, deduced from doubtful passages
of Scripture, and genealogies, of which a great part were probably
lost during the captivity of the Jews, they bear nothing of the autho-
rity of the sacred sources from which they have been drawn. Nei-
ther let it be imagined that either Herodotus, or the priest who
informed him, could have confounded symbolical figures with por-
traits: for all the ancient artists, even those of iEgypt, were so
accurate in discriminating between ideal and real characters, that
the difference is at once discernible by any experienced observer,
even in the wrecks and fragments of their works that are now
extant.
152. But, remote as the antiquity of these /Egyptian remains
seems to be, the symbols which adorn them appear not to have
been invented by that, but to have heen copied from those of some
other people, who dwelt on the other side of the Erythraean Ocean.
J3oth the nelumbo, and the hooded snake, which are among those
most frequently repeated, and most accurately represented upon all
their sacred monuments, are, as before observed, natives of the East;
and upon the very ancient /Egyptian temple, near Girge, figures
have been observed exactly resembling those of the Indian deities,
Jaggernaut, Gonnes, and Vishnoo. The iEgyptiaii architecture
appears, however, to have been original and indigenous ; and in this
art only the Greeks seem to have borrowed from them ; the different
orders being only different modifications of the symbolical columns
which the Egyptians formed in imitation of the nelumbo plant.
153. The earliest capital seems to have been the hell, or seed-
vessel, simply copied, without any alteration except a little expan-
sion at bottom, to give it stability.1 The leaves of some other
Denon. pi. lx. 1*2.
the Persian invasion, when it was the garden of ll:e world. This is
a period sufficient, but not more than sufficient, for the accomplish-
ment of such vast revolutions, both natural and artificial; and, as it
is supported by such credible testimony, there does not appear to
be any solid room for suspecting it to have been less : for, as to the
modern systems of chronology, deduced from doubtful passages
of Scripture, and genealogies, of which a great part were probably
lost during the captivity of the Jews, they bear nothing of the autho-
rity of the sacred sources from which they have been drawn. Nei-
ther let it be imagined that either Herodotus, or the priest who
informed him, could have confounded symbolical figures with por-
traits: for all the ancient artists, even those of iEgypt, were so
accurate in discriminating between ideal and real characters, that
the difference is at once discernible by any experienced observer,
even in the wrecks and fragments of their works that are now
extant.
152. But, remote as the antiquity of these /Egyptian remains
seems to be, the symbols which adorn them appear not to have
been invented by that, but to have heen copied from those of some
other people, who dwelt on the other side of the Erythraean Ocean.
J3oth the nelumbo, and the hooded snake, which are among those
most frequently repeated, and most accurately represented upon all
their sacred monuments, are, as before observed, natives of the East;
and upon the very ancient /Egyptian temple, near Girge, figures
have been observed exactly resembling those of the Indian deities,
Jaggernaut, Gonnes, and Vishnoo. The iEgyptiaii architecture
appears, however, to have been original and indigenous ; and in this
art only the Greeks seem to have borrowed from them ; the different
orders being only different modifications of the symbolical columns
which the Egyptians formed in imitation of the nelumbo plant.
153. The earliest capital seems to have been the hell, or seed-
vessel, simply copied, without any alteration except a little expan-
sion at bottom, to give it stability.1 The leaves of some other
Denon. pi. lx. 1*2.