332 Baron Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. 



Now, Diodorus Siculus, and all those who have written on the 

 religion of Egypt, derive that religion from Ethiopia, or Upper 

 Nubia. Thebes itself was but an island, a colony of Meroe, 

 which was the sacerdotal city of the Ethiopians. Thus, then, 

 civilization came from India into Nubia, and from Nubia into 

 Egypt. From the latter country it might even be traced to 

 Babylon, since, according to Diodorus, the Chaldeans, who 

 formed the sacred caste in Babylonia, were originally nothing 

 but a colony of Egyptian priests. 



We might naturally expect to find much information re- 

 specting the history of the sciences among the Indians, who 

 were the first to cultivate them, and who, notwithstanding va- 

 rious conquests, have kept themselves so unaltered, that, at this 

 very day, we find them just what Alexander found them. Yet 

 among the Indians we hardly obtain any accounts of this nature. 

 It is not that they have not written much, and that from the 

 eai'liest times, but they do not possess a single historical book. 

 Perhaps the Brahmins, to make their caste be held in more es- 

 timation, might have withheld the knowledge of the events 

 which would have also borne testimony to the origin of the 

 others. This at least is certain, that they hold it as a doctrinal 

 point that history should not be written. The fourth age, say 

 they, the age in which we live, is too miserable, all that takes place 

 is too low, to be worthy of having the recollection of it perpe- 

 tuated. The traces of the efforts of civilization have not there- 

 fore been preserved by them, and the only hope which we have, 

 in the absence of annals, is that of deriving some indirect state- 

 ments from their other books, or their monuments. 



The monuments cannot afford us much assistance. Al- 

 though they bear no date, it may be judged that they are pos- 

 terior to the time of Alexander and the Ptolomies. If they 

 had existed at that period, some Greek writers would not have 

 failed to speak of them, as their gigantic proportions must have 

 rendered them remarkable in all times. Besides, we can in some 

 measure judge of their age by the emblems which are repre- 

 sented on them. These emblems all belong to the religion of 

 the present day. Now, the mythological notions to which they 

 refer are found developed only in treatises posterior to the Ve- 

 das, since the pantheism of the vedas is entirely metaphysical. 



