Did Science originate in India ? 53 



means the Ethiopians were somewhat civilized, and learnt the 

 manners of Egypt. Ought we to admit a vague tradition, com- 

 mitted to writing only at a much later period, in opposition to 

 tliis circumstantial evidence of the progress of civilization from 

 below upwards, instead of its coming in the contrary direction ? 

 Or can we be even entitled to set in opposition to it the opinion 

 of Diodorus Siculus, who lived 400 years after the time of He- 

 rodotus ? 



The other proofs of a derivation from India will stand us in 

 no better stead for supporting its reality, or even that of the 

 derivation of the Egyptian religion from Meroe. Granting 

 that much of the low part of Egypt was a gift of the Nile, 

 p. 331, and that the land which is now the Delta was at an 

 early period either a marsh or a lake, we must still remember, 

 that the simplest reference to the order of nature, in such cases, 

 leads to the certain conclusion, that on the margins of these 

 there must always have existed a stripe of rich land, however 

 narrow, watered yearly by a fresh- water river, and admitting a 

 continuous population down to the neighbourhood of Palestine. 

 We have thus a road always open for the introduction of the 

 arts from that side, and are not reduced to the necessity of 

 bringing them down through Meroe. Let us see the amount of 

 probability that the architecture of Egypt, on which much stress 

 is laid as being similar to that of India and Chaldea, was intro- 

 duced through the lower or upper road. The Baron himself 

 allows that the monuments of India, of gigantic proportions, 

 may be judged to be posterior to the age of Alexander and the 

 Ptolemies, p. 332. This at once cuts off all derivation of the 

 Egyptian forms from India, and we are reduced to Meroe itself 

 for their origin, if they came from the south. But the first 

 time that the architecture of Egypt is presented to our notice, 

 which is in the time of Moses, we find the buildings composed 

 of bricks, evidently implying that it had its origin in the clay 

 lands of the Delta or its neighbourhood. 



It is allowed also by the Baron, p. 338, that most of the edi- 

 fices of Egypt, which we know, must have been built from the 

 year 1000 to the year 550 before Christ. But 500 years earlier 

 than this, we find the inhabitants of Palestine possessing an ar- 



