168 THE BIRTHPLACE OF ANCIENT 



are not confined to one nation, but preserve among different peoples 

 the memory of a time when all dwelt within the same illuminated 

 circle.^^ 



Facts connected with literary and scientific institutions attest the 

 same truth. The identity of the four books of Indian and of Egyptian 

 Scripture f^ the similarity between the Ramayana and Mahabharata and 

 the Dionysiacs of Nonnus;" the agreement of the priests of Memphis 

 with the Brahmins of Benares in their division of the earth ;''^ the 

 wide diffusion of the stories of Rhampsinitus and his treasury, of 

 Rhodope, of Midas and the ass's ears, of the mice at Pelusium, of 

 Melampus and the cows, of a partial deluge, &c. f^ the minute coinci- 

 dences in the most arbitrary of astronomical systems;^" all these are 

 worthy of consideration in a cumulative argument. 



I close the testimony to the truth of Faber's premise, and thus of 

 his legitimately drawn conclusion, by citing a few of the authors who 

 have been led from various kinds of evidence to the belief that nations 

 now widely separated were once parts of a single community. Weber 

 thinks that Menu and similar names (Minos, Menes, &c.) arose before 

 the separation of the Indo-European stock.^^ Pococke holds a national 

 unity of Egyptians, G-reeks and Indians.^^ Sozomen speaks of the 

 Ethiopians as Indians,^^ and other ancient writers insist that they are 

 the same people,** a conclusion" to which the historian Alison arrived 

 on hearing of the conduct of the Sepoys in Egypt in 1801.*^ The 

 names of Wilford and Tod are on the side of an Indo-Greek connection.*'' 

 Sir J. G. Wilkinson finds the Egyptians as an Aryan race in Asia f^ 



™ Wheeler, Geog. of Herodotus, 453. Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary, Art. Beltane. 



'6 The four books' of Hermes (Clem. Alex., Strom, vi., 4), and the four Vedas. Asiatic 

 Researches, iii. De Lanoye's Rameses the Great, Appendix, Note 1. 



'f Asiatic Researches, i., 258. Guigniaut, iii., 1016. 



78 Wheeler, Geography of Herodotus, 36. 



'9 Guig. ii., 330. G. W. in Rawlinson's Herod., ii., 121. Smitli, Diet, of Greek and Roman 

 Biography and Mythology, Art. Rhodopis. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi. K'eating's Ireland, 190. 

 Hitzig, die Philistaer, 201. Compare the story of Melampus with that of Sarama in the Rig 

 Veda. Vide Max Miiller's Lecture XT., Second Series, on Science of Language. 



80 Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Bk. ii., eh. 7. 



81 Journal Asiatic Society, Vol. XX., 3 and 4, p. 429. 



82 India in Greece, 122. 



83 Sozomen, ii., oh. 24. 



8* Russell's Connection, by Wheeler, ii., 271. 



85 Alison, History of Europe, 8vo., 1843, Vol. IV., p. 595, note. The Sepoys, finding them- 

 selves in the midst of emblems of their own religion, fell on their faces and worshipped. 



86 Poeocke's India in Greece, 145. 



8' Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians, i., 302. 



