SECTION lY.

Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the Antiquity of Xan.
Millions of years have sunk into Lethe. leaving no more recol- lection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the Origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then Science may be right (argu- vtaiti causa) in basing its present Anthropolog>' — as to the date and mode of origin of Homo sapiens — on the Darwinian theory.* But if the skeletons of man should at any time be discovered in the Eocene strata, while no fossil ape is found there, and the existence of man is thus proved to be prior to that of the anthropoid — then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. Moreover, it is said in well-informed quarters that the twentieth cenluo' will be still in its earliest teens when such undeniable proof of man's priority will be forthcoming.
Even now much ev-idence is being brought forward to prove that the dates hitherto assigned for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to biblical chronolog>\ The well-known Palaeontologist Ed. Lartet writes:
No date is to be found in Genesis, which assigus a time for the birth of primitive humanity.
• It may here be Tcmarlceil Uiat those Dandnians who, with Mr. Grant Allen, place our "hairy arboreal " ancestors so far back as the Eocene aire, arr landed in rather an awk vard dilemma. No foasil aatltropoid ape — much less the fabulovu common ancestor aanKDcd to man and the pithecoid— appears in Qocese ttiata. The Srst presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
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THH SECRET DOCTRINE.
But Chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the sinj date of "Creation/'
And between the extreme variatioas there U a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ. Within the last few years, archaeologists have had also to throw back by uearly 3,000 years the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the foundation cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus — are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his dbcovery of the founda- tion stone that belonged to the original temple built by Naram-Siu, sou of Sargon. of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus. lived 3.200 years before his own time.*
We have shown in hh Unveiled that those who based history' on the chronolog>' of the Jews — a race which had none of its own aud rejected the Western till the twelfth century — would lose their way, for the Jewish account could only be followed through kabalistic computation, and only then with key in hand. We characterized the late George Smithes chronolog>' of the Chaldaeans and Assyrians, which he had made to fit in with thai of Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas George Smith makes Sargon I (the prototype of Moses) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C. — probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 B.C. — we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert Lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1S87. that:
Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have been ma modified !>y recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a great librarj', patronized literature, and ex- tended his conquests across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as B,c. 3,750. . . . The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching hack to about B.C. 4,00a
In other words, to the fourth year of the World's creation agreeabl with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further ex- tended. The well-known Oxford lecturer remarked in his disquisi- tions upou "The Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," that:
f
* Bd. T^rtet, " NoiireUcs Rechcrchcs sur la Coexistence dc ruomme ct dcs Grand* MaminUirv Pouils de la DemUre P^ode G^loglquc." AnnaUs dti Soc. Nat., xr. S56.
BAByV>NlAN DATES.
73»
The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in coils of almost in- superable dilficulty.
That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events "intentionally." is undeniable, and for a ver\' good reason: their writings and records were all Esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor Sayce's remarks are promising. For he explains the diffi- culty by saying that as:
The Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all our difficulties— namely, our being so often lefl in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our materials for history.
Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may- lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year 4,000 B.C., as to make them pre-cosmic in the judgment of ever>* Bible worshipper.
How much more would Palaeontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian Library, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Caesar 48 B.C.. in A.D. 390, and lastly in the year a.d. 640 by the genera! of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again in comparison with the destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty. Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C.? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Im- perial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections, could never have contained such information as one of the aforesaid *' Atlantean" skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian
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THK SECRET I>OCTRXNK.
date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Eg>'pt.* Unfortunately, dynasties and pyramids share the fate of geological periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the whims of the respective men of Science. Archaeologists know now, it is said, that the afore-mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai ; and
They accord in the style of art, and iu the standard of measurement employed. with the similar diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the tbird and fourth Egyptian dynasties. . . . Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of tlie epoch at which the pyramids were built ; aud thus only can we understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive Babrlonian mooTi
This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these dynasties? Sanchuniathon's and Manetho's synchronistic tables — or whatever re- mained of these after holy Eusebius had the handling of them — have been rejected; and still v^e have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years B.C., so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city on the face of the Earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has discovered it. According to Professor Sayce again:
They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth of Uie Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of eclipoes recorded in the great astronomical work called "The Observations of Bel"; and we are also enabled to understand the otherwise perplexing change in the posilion of the vernal equinox, which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian montlis were named, the sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, iu Pisces, or even in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was ia Taurus from about 4,700 years B.C., and wc tlius obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot be impugned.t
It may make our position plainer if we state at once that w^e use Sir