January 30, 1908] 



NATURE 



291 



PKIMITI VE INTERPRETATIONS. 



(1) Ancient Egypt the Light of the World: a Work 

 of Reclamation and Restitution. In twelve books. 

 By Gerald Massey. Two vols. \o\. i., pp. vi + 

 544; vol. ii., pp. iv + 545-944. (London: T. Fisher 

 Unvvin, 1907.) 



(2) Primitive Traditional History: the Primitive 

 History and Chronology of India, South-Eastern 

 and Sotith-Western Asia, Egypt, and Europe, and 

 the Colonics thence sent forth. By J. F. Hewitt. 

 Two vols. Vol. i., pp. xxviii + 44S; vol. ii., pp. viii 

 + 449-1024. (London : James Parker and Co., 

 1907.) 



(i) /^NE of the recreations of an archaeologist is 

 V^ the reading- of the various remarkable works 

 that are produced by persons of untrained mind who 

 know a little of the subject on which they write and 

 are possessed of violent prejudices either for or against 

 some particular form of religion. The latter element 

 adds spice to the recipe. The peculiar nature of the 

 late Mr. Massey's preface to his present " work of 

 reclamation and restitution in twelve books," as he 

 called it, disarms the critic, however, to some extent. 

 He does not know what he ought to say in the 

 circumstances. jVIr. Massey had in the course of a 

 long life read much and noted much. Unluckily he 

 had not read deeply enough. He never attempted to 

 get his own knowledge, but depended on what others 

 said. Hence in any case his book would be of no 

 value except as a compilation. But, further, he had 

 little idea of what is and what is not permissible in 

 logical argument ; very few of his syllogisms are 

 without a flaw; he had no perception of what is 

 possible or impossible in respect of philological com- 

 parisons, and he was dominated by a fanatical belief 

 with regard to the origin of Christianity which at 

 once takes his book out of the realm of science. 



It is no use collecting anthropological data if all 

 that one wishes to do with it is to prove that Christ 

 and the evangelists and disciples were ancient 

 Egyptian gods, whose names are twisted to suit the 

 argument. For Mr. Massey, Jesus Christ is the 

 deified scribe Imouthes or lemhetep (why, we are not 

 told), Thomas is the god Tum, Matthew is Maati 

 (" The two Truths "), while for John he makes out an 

 Egyptian equivalent called Aan. " The Ritual," he 

 says (p. 905), 



" preserves the sayings of the Egyptian Jesus who 

 was lu the Su, or Sa of Atum-Rei [? meaning] and 

 lusaas [she was a goddess!] at Ou, and who was 

 otherwise known as the Lord in different Egyptian 

 religions. . . . This is the original Evangelinni 

 Veritas [sic : Mr. Massey's Latin was usually unin- 

 flected : of. jus prima noctis] : the Gospel ac- 

 cording to Mati = Matthew; to Aan = John; or Tum = 

 Thomas," and so forth. 



On p. 41 Mr. Massey says, 



" In that [i.e. the Egyptian language] we find the 

 word Ba signifies to be, Ba therefore is a form of 

 to be. Also it is .the name for the Ram and the Goat, 

 both of whom are types of the Ba-er or Be-ing, both 

 of whom say ' Ba.'' The Cow says Moo. Mu (e.g.) 

 means the mother, and the mvthical mother was 

 represented as a moo-cow." 



NO. IQ96, VOL. 77] 



Mr. Massey does not tell us the fact, which rather 

 upsets his theory, that the Egyptians did not call a 

 cow mu, but ahu. Apart from this, his statement 

 that in Egyptian ba means " to be " is contrary to 

 fact; in Egyptian "to be" is un or iu, and " to 

 become " is kheper; there is no such word as ha 

 meaning " to be." The word for mother was m-t: 

 what the vowel was we do not know, probably au 

 (maut). Mr. Massey goes on to say, 



" The Ibis was one of the self-namers with its 

 cry of ' Aah-Aah,' consequently Aah-aah is one name 

 of the bird in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and also 

 of the moon which the Ibis represented." 



Mr. Massey did not know that, though the word 

 for " moon " (not for " ibis," which is tekhen or 

 hib) is written conventionally aali, it was probably 

 pronounced something like " ioh." Do ibises say 

 " ioh-ioh "? 



These are simple misconceptions as to matters of 

 fact, and they give us reason to doubt whether Mr. 

 Massey has any right to speak patronisingly of the 

 work of an anthropologist like Mr. Frazer, as he 

 does on p. 672 : — 



" Here we may say in passing, that the Golden 

 Bough contains a learned, large, and serviceable col- 

 lection of data, but the theories of interpretation 

 derived from the writings of Mannhardt are futile. 

 Besides which, mythology is not to be fathomed in 

 or by a folk-tale, and the Golden Bough is but a twig 

 of the great tree of mythology and sign language — a 

 twig without its root. The reception of the work in 

 England served to show how prevalent and profound 

 is the current ignorance of the subject-matter. It 

 was hailed as if it had plumbed the depths instead of 

 merely e.xtending the superficies." 



The last remark may be rather a point, but we can 

 assure the Gallio, who may say, " How these 

 anthropologists love one another," that Mr. Massey 

 was no anthropologist, but a somewhat peculiar kind 

 of mystic, and had no right whatever to criticise Mr. 

 Frazer. 



(2) Mr. Hewitt has unaccountably omitted China, 

 Mexico, Peru, and Australia from his title. His work 

 is comprehensive : it covers the whole world. And 

 what it is all about it is difficult to discover. 

 "History" it is not; there is no history known to 

 science in it. But doubtless there is much known 

 to Mr. Hewitt, and his Indian confidants, alone. The 

 fact that Mr. Hewitt regards avatars of the Buddha 

 " about 10,700 B.C.," and from " about 6700 to 4500 

 B.C.," as historical personages (p. 45) is enough to 

 stamp him as a peculiar "historian." His book is 

 an omnium-gatherum of primitive traditions truly, and 

 from them Mr. Hewitt, the believer in the historical 

 character of avatars of Buddha, essays to disinter the 

 early history of the human race by the help of an 

 astronomical key. The astronomy we leave to the 

 astronomers; of the "history" the following excerpt 

 may suffice as a specimen : — 



" The worship of the left thigh was succeeded by 

 the worship of the right thigh of the independent 

 sun-god, who took his own path sun-wise through 

 the heavens, in whose ritual the right thigh of the 

 sacrifice was given as their perquisite to the Jewish 

 priests of the house of Kohath, the wearers of the 



