History of Muskingum County, Ohio ; with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent men and pioneers, 1794, Part 3

Author: Everhart, J. F; Graham, A. A., Columbus, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: [Columbus, O.] : F.J. Everhart & Co.
Number of Pages: 600

USA > Ohio > Muskingum County > History of Muskingum County, Ohio ; with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent men and pioneers, 1794 > Part 3

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were by no means Egyptians, but the chosen race, descendants of Shem, in the line of, though preceding Abraham, so early, indeed, as to be closer to Noah than to Abraham-men, at all events, who had been enabled, by Divine favor, to appreciate the appointed idea as to the necessity of a sacrifice and atonement for the sins of man by the Flood and the act of a Divine Mediator-an idea coeval with the contest be- tween Abel and Cain, and which descended through the Flood to certain predestined fam- ilies of mankind, but which idea no one of Egyp- tian born would ever contemplate with a mo- ment's patience ; for every ancient Egyptian, from first to last, and every Pharaoh of them more especially, was a genuine Cainite in thought, act and feeling to the very back bone ; confident of, and- possessing nothing so much, or so constantly, as his own perfect righteousness, and absolute freedom by his own innate purity from every kind of sin.

On this ground it was that Mr. Taylor took his stand, and after disobeying the world's long- formed public opinion of passively obedient accord with profane Egyptian tradition, and set- ting at nought the most time-honored prejudices of polite society so far as to give a full, fair and impartial examination to the whole case from the beginning, announced that he had discovered, in some of the arrangements and measures of the Great Pyramid-when corrected for injuries of intervening time-certain scientific results. which speak of much more than, or rather something quite different from, any human intelligence. For, besides coming forth suddenly in the prim- eval history of its own day, without any child- hood, or known preparation, the actual facts at the Great Pyramid, in the shape of builded proofs of an exact numerical knowledge of the grander cosmical phenomena, of both earth and heavens, not only rise above, and far above, the extremely limited and almost infantine knowledge of sci- ence humanly attained to by any of the Gentile nations of 4000, 3000, 2000-nay, 1000-years ago, but they are also, in whatever of the phys- ical secrets of Nature they chiefly apply to, essen- tially above the best knowledge of man in our own time as well.

This is, indeed, a startling assertion, if true ; but, from its subject, admits of the completest and most positive refutation, if untrue. For the exact science of the present day, compared with that of only a few hundred years ago, is a marvel of development, and is capable of giving out no uncertain sound, both in asserting itself. and stating not only the fact, but the order and time of the invention of the practical means necessary to the minntest steps of all separate discoveries yet made. Much more, then, can it speak with positiveness when comparing its own present extended knowledge against the little that was known to man by his own efforts, and by his school methods, in those early epochs, before accurate and numerical physical science had begin, or could have begun, to be seriously cul- tivated at all ; that is, in the truly primeval day

HISTORY OF MUSKINGUM COUNTY, OHIO.

when the Great Pyramid was built, finished, sealed up, and left as we see it now, dilapidations only excepted."

To fully comprehend the force of Mr. Tay- lor's argument, it will be necessary to read care- fully Mr. Smyth's great work, in which he sub- stantiates Mr. Taylor in the most scientific man- ner .. Let this be kept in remembrance.

In Pre-Historic Nations, by John D. Bald- win, A. M., we read, p. 12: " In Tuscany and in Egypt, in India and in China, and in the South-sea Islands and both Americas, we behold evidences of a civilization, which, in some in- stances, had run its course anterior to the age of Homer."

P. 40: " The Greek race settled around the Ægean Sea, in Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedo- nia. Messaly, Epirus, and throughout the Gre- cian peninsula. The Greek race then consisted of groups of tribes or families also closely re- lated in origin and language, probably as the Scandniavian groups in Northwestern Europe. They inherited the culture of their predecessors, the Phoenicians, or Cushites, and the Pelasgians, who in more ancient times, established the ora- cle of Dodona, made Thrace eminent as a seat of civilization and science, established enlight- ened communities in Asia Minor, and carried their influence into the Grecian peninsula itself." P. 92: " A system of picture writing, which aimed at the communication of ideas through rude representation of natural objects, belonged not only to the tribes who descended the Nile from Ethiopia, but to those also who, perhaps, diverging from the same focus passed eastward to the valley of Euphrates." P. 93: "The ruins of Egypt are covered with hieroglyphics, the perfected Egyptian style of appearing on the oldest monuments. There are not less than six styles of cuniform writing; that found in the Chaldean ruins, seeming to be the oldest. There is nothing to show how many forms of hiero- glyphical writing came into use before this style was perfected in Upper Egypt, and was super- seded elsewhere by Alphabets."

The immigration doubted, p. 135: "Some writers, in discussing what Herodotus says of the Phoenicians, have discredited an immigra- tion as impossible. They have assumed and supposed everybody else would admit, as a mat- ter of course, that all men were ignorant bar- barians " at that remote period," destitute of the arts of civilized life. "That remote per- iod," they are quite sure, was not far from the dreary "Stone Age " in the unwritten history of Western Asia, when the noblest naval struc- ture was a loose raft of logs, and hunting and fishing with the rudest stone and bone imple- ments the most serious undertaking of the peo- ple. The confident critics who raised this ob- jection are not so numerous now. Those who believe there never was any civilization worth taking much account of previous to the time of the Greeks are liable to such magnificent flights in the dark.

Idem, p. 205: " Rawlinson, speaking of

the Cushite character and language of the old Chaldeans, says :" "It can be proved from the inscriptions of the country that between the date of the first establishment of a Chaldean King- dom to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the lan- guage of lower Mesopotamia underwent an en- tire change." "The Cushite tongue disap- peared, and the Aramiac took its place. The influence of this Semitizing transformation pro- ceeded westward, encountering effective resist- ance only where it reached established communi- ties by the Aryans."

P. 402 : "The Chinese and Japanese do not give us any myths ; they tell us what they have actually known for many centuries. The Welsh prince, Madog, about the year 1170, A. D., was just as certain of the existence of America when "he sailed away westward, going south of Ire- land," to find a land of refuge from the civil war of his countrymen. Having made preparations for a settlement he returned to Wales, secured a large company that filled ten ships, then sailed away.again and never returned." In 1660, Rev. Morgan Jones, a Welsh clergyman, seeking to go by land from South Carolina to Roanoke, was captured by the Tuscarawas Indians. He declares that his life was spared because he spoke Welsh, which some of the Indians under- stood ; that he was able to converse with them in Welsh; that he remained with them four months, sometimes preaching to them in Welsh. North Carolina was once settled by Welsh.

Henry R. Schoolcraft, L. L. D. " Informa- tion respecting the History, Condition and Pros- pects of the Indian tribes of the United States." Published by authority of Congress, March 3d, 1847. Vol. I, p. 17: " Considered in every point of view, the Indian appears to be an old- a very old stock. Nothing that we have in the shape of books is ancient enough to recall the period of his origin."

P. 21 : " The Aztecs were not aborogines, or first inhabitants. The Aztecs made offerings to the sun, upon the highest teocalli, and sung hymns to it. Sacrifice was supplied alone by the Priesthood, and was the foundation of their power."

P. 31 : " The disciples of Zoraster, says He- rodotus, rejected the use of temples, of alters, and statues."

P. 36: " Many have supposed that the Orien- tal arts and knowledge were transfered to this continent at early epochs, and have beheld evi- dence of this in the ruins of temples, teocalli and other structures and vestiges of ancient art, scattered over the country. We shall know more of this when we come to find and decipher the inscriptions."

P. 40: " It was an early thought that the manners and customs of the tribes savored of the Mongolic or Samoidean type. The tribes of the East Indies, embracing much of the gen- eric type-physical and moral."

P. 71 : The whole of the western and north- western antiquities of the highest class, em- bracing every monument of the kind north of

CLUB-HEADED STONES.

STONE RELICS.

· HISTORY OF MUSKINGUM COUNTY, OHIO.

Utah and the country north of Gila, to which the Poltec and Aztec civilizations probably reached, may be viewed together by the anti- quarian as forming the second type of American antique civilization. That this type was a trans- ferred Americo-Shemitic character, appears prob- able from renewed inquries on the languages."

P. 114: " The inscription on the Assonet or Dighton Rock :" "On this we observe the spots represented by small holes, signifying so many moons, in which case they are numerals, or, ac- cording to the situation, are prepositions, and then have such significance as harmonizes with the other symbols."

P: 343 : The mode of communicating ideas by the use of symbols of some sort, and with a more or less degree of perfection, was an early and a common trait in the human race. Alpha- betic characters, it is thought, were known in Asia about 3317 years before the discovery of America. We must assign much of the prior era of the world to picture-writing and hiero- glyphics.

P. 346: "It is supposed the mode of hiero- glyphic writing was not laid aside until the third century, A. D. An earlier opinion generally affirms that the enchorial characters had ceased to be employed after the Persian conquest of Cambysses, in 525, B. C. If the Egyptians, on the invasion of the French, were found to have substituted the Arabic alphabet in place of the phonetic hieroglyphic, and installed Mahomet's system in place of the ibis, the calf and the cat, they had completely forgotten the event of this mutilation of their literature, or that the phonetic symbols had ever been employed by them. The discovery was made by Europeans, and made alone by the perpetuating power of the Greek and Roman alphebet.'

P. 347: The Rosetta Stone. [See Denou's Description of Egypt.] This fragment, which I examined in the British Museum in 1842, was dug up on the banks of the Nile by the French, in erecting a fort, in 1799. It was a sculptured mass of black basalt, bearing the lingual inscrip- tions in the hieroglyphic, the demotic, and the ancient Greek characters. Copies of it were multiplied and spread before the scientific minds of England and the continent, for about twenty years before the respective inscriptions were satisfactorily read. It would transcend my pur- pose to give the details of the history of its in- terpretation ; but as it has furnished the key to the subsequent discoveries, and serves to denote the patience with which labors of this kind are to be met, a brief notice of the subject will be added. The Greek inscription, which is the lowermost in position, and like the others imper- fect, was the first made out by the labors of Dr. Heyne, of Germany, Professor Parson, of Lon- don, and by the members of the French Insti- tute. They, at the same time, demonstrated it to be a translation.

The chief attention of the enquirers was di- rected to the middle inscription, which is the most entire, and consists of the demotic or en-

choral character. The first advance was made by DeLacy, in 1802, who found, in the groups of proper names, those of Ptolemy, Arsinoe, and others. This was more satisfactorily dem- onstrated by Dr. Young, in 1814, when he pub- lished the result of his labors on the demotic text. These labors were further extended, and brought forward in separate papers, published by him in 1818 and 1819, in which he is believed to have shed the earliest beam of true light on the mode of annotation. He was not able, how- ever, to apply his principles fully, or at least without error, from an opinion that a syl- labic principle pervaded the system. He car- ried his interpretations, however, much beyond the deciphering of the proper names. It was the idea of this compound character of the pho- netic hieroglyphics that proved the only bar to his full and complete success ; an opinion to which he adhered in 1823, in a paper in which he maintains that the Egyptians did not make use of an alphabet to represent elementary sounds and their connection, prior to to the era of the Grecian and Roman domination. Champol- lion, the younger, himself entertained very much the same opinion, so far, at least, as re- lates to the phonetic signs, in 1812. In 1814, in his "Egypt under the Pharaohs," he first ex- presses a different opinion, and throws out the hope that, " sounds of language and the expres- sions of thought," would yet be disclosed under the garb of "material pictures." This was, indeed, the germ in the thought-work of the real discovery, which he announced to the Royal Academy of Belle Letters, at Paris, in Septem- ber, 1822. By this discovery, of which Dr. Young claims priority in determining the first nine symbols, a new link is added in the com- munication of thought by signs, which connects picture and alphabet writing. Phonetic hiero- glyphics, as thus disclosed, consist of symbols representing sounds of first letters of words. These symbols have the peculiarity, and are restricted to this precise use: that while they depict the ideas of whole objects, as birds, etc .. they represent only the alphabetic value of the initial letter of the name of these objects. Thus the picture may, to give an example in English, denote a man, an ox, an eagle, or a lotus : but their alphabetical value, if these be the words inscribed on a column, would be, respectively, the letters M. O. E. L. These are the phonetic signs or equivalents for the words. It is evident that an inscription could thus be made with con- siderable precision, but not unerring exactitude. and it is by the discovery of this key that so much light has been, within late years, evolved from the Egyptian monuments.

P. 348. "The next step taken by Quatremere. who proved the present Coptic to be identical with the ancient Egyptian. To find this lan- guage then,recorded in the hieroglyphics, was the great object. It is here that the younger Cham- pollion exercised his power of definition and comparison. By the preconception of a pho-

HISTORY OF MUSKINGUM COUNTY, OHIO.

netic hieroglyphical alphabet, as above denoted, he had grasped the truth, which vet lay con- cealed. and he labored at it until he verified his conceptions. It is thus that a theory gives energy to research ; nor is their much hope of success without one, in the investigation of the unknown. The discoveries of Dr. Young, and the injudicious criticisms and wholesale praises of the British press, (particularly the London Quarterly) of his papers on the hieroglyphic literature of Egypt, were calculated to arouse in France and Germany a double feeling of rivalry. It was not only a question between the respec- tive archeological merits of Dr. Young and M. Champollion ; it was also a question of national pride between England, France and Germany. And, for the first time in their fierce and san- guinary history, hieroglyphics were the missives used. Victory decided in favor of Champollion, as displayed in the triumphs of the pure phonetic method elucidated in his "Precis du systeme hieroglyphiques des anciens Egyptiens," pub- ished in 1824.

It is a striking feature in hieroglyphical phon- etic writing, and the great cause of imprecision, that its signs are multiform, often arbitrary, and must be constantly interpreted, not only with an entire familiarity with the language of the people employing them, but with their customs, habits, arts, manners and history. All who have studied the Egyptian hieroglyphic literature have expe- rienced this. P. 349: "There is a manifest tendency at the present day to over-es- timate the civilization, learning and philosophy of the Egyptians and Persians in these depart- ments, chiefly from hieroglyphic and pictorial records. If I mistake not, we are in some dan- ger of falling into this error on this side of the water in relation to the character of the ancient Mexican civilization. The impulsive glow of one of our most chaste and eloquent historians gives this natural tendency to our conceptions. The Aztec semi-civilization was an industrial civilization : the giving up of hunting and rov- ing for agriculture and fixed dwellings. But we must not mistake it. They built teocalli, tem- ples, palaces and gardens ; but the people lived in mere huts. They are still debased. Woman was dreadfully so. The mind of the Aztecs, while the hand had obtained skill and industry, was still barbaric. The horrific character of their religion made it impossible it should be otherwise. Civilization had but little affected the intellect, the morals not at all. They com- memorated events by the striking system of pic- ture writing ; but there is strong reason to sus- pect, since examining the principles of the North American system, as practiced by our Medas and Jossakeeds, that the Mexican manuscripts were also constructed on the mnemonic princi- ple, and always owed much of their value and precision to the memory of the trained writers and painters.

"American Antiquities and Researches into the Origin and History of the Red Race," by Alex- ander W. Bradford. P. 17: "Many of the

tumuli formed of earth, and occasionally 01 stones, are of Indian origin, and they may gen- erally be distinguished by their inferior dimen- sions and isolated situations." P. 22 : "The an- cient remains of the United States bear evident marks of being the production of a people ele- vated far above the savage state. Many of them indicate great elegance of taste, and a high degree of dexterous workmanship and me- chanical skill in their construction ; others be- token the existence of a decided form of religious worship ; while the size and extent of the earthen fortifications and mounds domonstrate the former existence of populous nations, capable of execut- ing works of enormous dimensions, requiring perseverance, time and combination of labor for their erection." Idem, p. 22: "An earthen vessel found at Nashville, Tennessee, twenty feet below the surface, is described as being cir- cular, with a flat bottom rounding upwards, and terminating at the summit in the figure of a fe- male head. The features and face are Asiatic, the head is covered by a conical cap, and the ears are large, extending as low as the chin." P. 32 : The skeletons are mostly decayed, or in such fragments as to render it somewhat difficult to ascertain their size and position." P. 52 : "Many ancient tumuli consist of earth, and others of stone, the composition depending upon natural facilities for obtaining either material ; some of these mounds were thirty-six feet in diameter, but only three feet in height. They are mani- festly of the same character with others found on the Muskingum river, which are unquestionably ancient." P. 53-4: "At Cincinnati a mound eight feet high, sixty feet broad and six hundred and twenty feet long ! One of the first accounts, written in 1794, describes the mound as raised upon the margin of the second bank of the Ohio river, eight feet in height and with a base of about one hundred and twenty by sixty. Upon -its surface were found stumps of oak trees seven feet in diameter. The articles which were found were near a body interred in a horizontal posi- tion, and with the head towards the setting sun. The instruments of stone were smoothly and regularly cut, and of great hardness. The cop-

per was well wrought, and the carved bones were not human remains."

"Transactions of American Phil. Soc.," vol. iv, p. 178: "These, beside articles of jasper, crys- tal, coal, also beads, lead, copper, and mica plates, marine shells of the genus buccinum, cut into domestic utensils, and the sculptured repre- sentation of the head of a voracious bird ; while, as in the mounds before described, human bones appeared, some enclosed in coffins of stone, but all imbedded in ashes and charcoal, the unfailing sign of the burning of the deceased." P. 60: "Their identity of origin .- The general charac- ter of all these remains indicates an origin from the same nation, or from branches of the same people." P. 376: "The Hermaic books pre- served in the Egyptian temples like those of the Aztecs, contained the outlines of their astrology, astronomy, their rituals, the histories of their

HISTORY OF MUSKINGUM COUNTY, OHIO.

mythology, and all, indeed, that was known of the arts and sciences, which were in the posses- sion of the priests alone. The Mexican manu- script painting possessed many of the attributes of real hieroglyphical writing. It did not con- sist of merely mimetic images, such as are often found on the Egyptian tombs, but it was fettered by prescribed forms : nearly all its elements had a fixed meaning, and had thus become, to an ex- tent, conventional signs. The numbers to twenty were were represented by dots or points. There is reason to suspect that the number ten was in- dicated by a straight line, twenty by a flag, four hundred by a feather ; day, night, midnight, the year, the century, the heavens, air, earth and water were all denoted by symbolic characters. The figures for the names of cities, and the as- tronomical representations of the names of the months were also real symbols, which suggested the sounds of those names upon being seen. In- deed, the usual picture writing of the Mexicans resembles that found upon the clothing of the Egyptian mummies. and was of a mixed charac- ter. But beyond all this, there are traces of real phonetic hieroglyphics in those signs which ap- pear upon the monument above the heads of the gods, which, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the names of the gods, were enclosed in an ob- long rectangle. The characters of the Codex Mexicanus at Dresden suggest the existence of even a complete system of phonetic hiero- glyphics."

Studies of Antiquities as the Commentary of Historical Learning, by T. Pownall, London. Printed by J. Dodsley, in "Pall-Mall," 1782. P. 192: Whoever examines the specimen of picture writing, as practiced among the Egyp- tians, and commonly called hieroglyphics, and comes fairly and soberly to the reading of them, without preconceived notions of their mysterious meaning, and takes them as he finds them, mere pictures of birds, beasts, fish, reptiles, and insects ; portraits of the limbs, members, and various parts of the human body ; also of the human body itself in various attitudes of rest and action ; drafts of various instruments, tools, weapons, ensigns, numerals and measures ; also characters of elementary writing mixed with them ; he, I say, that examines these pictures, will perceive, at first view, that they relate merely to human affairs ; that they are either historical memorials, or registered tables of the state of the provinces ; of their lands, people, forces, produce and revenues, or calendars of their seasons, etc., expressed by symbolic characters, determined in their form by law, from the earli- est use of them. What I here say of the Egyp- tian picture writing, I can assert literally as a fact of the Mexican picture writing, which is in three parts: I. Historical Records. II. Register Tables. III. CEconomical Regulations.

" They draw (says Diodorus, going on with the same account) a hawk, for instance, a croci- dile, or a serpent, parts and members of the human body. The hawk, as supposed to be the swiftest of all birds, is made the symbol of

velocity. The sense, then, is transferred by these written metaphors, to everything which has any reference to velocity, nearly as well as if it was spoken in direct terms. The crocidile is made the symbol of everything which is evil. The eye represents watchful guard, and justice. .

. The drawing the right hand open with the fin- gers extended, signifies the supply of human life ; the left hand closed signifies care and custody of the goods of life. Shakespeare uses the same metaphor :

' He had an eye for pity, and a hand Open as day, for melting charity.'

"The like reasoning does in like manner trans- late from the portraits of all other parts of the body, and from all species of instruments. tools and weapons, etc."

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History of Muskingum County, Ohio ; with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent men and pioneers, 1794, Part 3

Author: Everhart, J. F; Graham, A. A., Columbus, Ohio, pub Publication date: 1882 Publisher: [Columbus, O.] : F.J. Everhart & Co. Number of Pages: 600

Author: Everhart, J. F; Graham, A. A., Columbus, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: [Columbus, O.] : F.J. Everhart & Co.
Number of Pages: 600