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 TREASURES IN UGANDA. 
 
 ‘ There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1892. 
 
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 Arcana in the Ruwenzori; 
 
 OK, . , > 
 
 ■1 \ 
 
 TREASURES IN UGANDA. 
 
 ‘ There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of 
 in your philosophy.’ 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
 
 1892. 
 
 [All rights reserved^ 
 
/ 
 
 
 » 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The matter dealt with in these pages has been produced 
 somewhat hastily, because it seemed probable that with the 
 contemplated evacuation of Uganda, all prospect of investi¬ 
 gation in the direction indicated would disappear. Though 
 the precise locality in which the discovery of these ‘treasures ’ 
 may be expected is not in Uganda itself, it is sufficiently 
 near to warrant the title adopted for this pamphlet; and it 
 is certainly the case that in holding this district we hold 
 the key of the position, and in abandoning it we should 
 throw away also all chances of a recovery of these arcana. 
 
 This pamphlet, therefore, is merely intended to show 
 that there may be additional interest for Great Britain in 
 maintaining its present position in Central Africa, and to 
 deprecate a retirement on grounds connected (as it will be 
 seen) with Biblical archaeology. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/arcanainruwenzorOOunse 
 
THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Old Testament, which is in effect a history of mono¬ 
 theism, traces the descent of the Chosen Race from that 
 family which from the first recognised but one God. The 
 subject of religion as such is introduced with the birth of 
 Seth (Gen. iv. 26), introductory to the book of the genera¬ 
 tions of Adam. ‘ Then,’ it says, ‘ began men to call upon 
 the name of the Lord.’ In the list which follows to Noah, 
 where the religious question comes to the front again with 
 the catastrophe of the Deluge, there is little but statistics 
 of genealogy, but a break in the monotony of the list 
 occurs at the name Enoch. ‘ Enoch,’ it says, ‘ walked with 
 God: and he was not; for God took him.’ Then comes 
 the story of the Deluge, where Noah is presented as the 
 only religious man on the whole earth, and then follows 
 another genealogical list to Abraham, the father of modern 
 monotheism, and of God’s ‘chosen people.’ 
 
 The brief notice thus accorded to Enoch is therefore 
 highly significant, and its significance is strengthened by 
 the other references to him which occur in the Bible. St. 
 Paul refers to him pointedly (in his dissertation on Faith), 
 as one of the most remarkable characters in history, and, 
 in fact, singles him out in precisely the same connection 
 which we have already noticed—Enoch, Noah, Abraham— 
 and St. Jude mentions him as the earliest of the prophets. 
 
6 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 We should think, therefore, that there ought to be more 
 information obtainable concerning him, and, in point of 
 fact, there is. 
 
 According to the Jewish Talmud, Enoch was a very 
 peculiar character, and when all the different notices of him 
 are brought together it will be seen he enjoyed a unique 
 position, at once hermit, scientist, king, priest, and prophet, 
 a variety of attributes which the enormous ages with which 
 the children of Seth are credited, could alone fully ex¬ 
 plain. 
 
 And here it is that we seem to be at fault in the esti¬ 
 mates we are wont to make of the capabilities of the old 
 world ‘ heroes.’ The fact is that if we once grant the possi¬ 
 bility of men living to 400 or 800 years, we must acknow¬ 
 ledge that their capabilities, physical and intellectual, are 
 entirely beyond our ken; when it is remembered that modern 
 science may be said to date from the days of Newton, 
 it will be seen how ridiculous it is to argue backwards 
 with such data ; and the difficulty is that there is absolutely 
 nothing to show that this longevity is a myth. The Old 
 Testament itself is one consistent history from beginning to 
 end, into which this question of longevity enters, but which 
 has no apparent bearing on the doctrines inculcated, and it is 
 difficult to understand why it should have been introduced 
 if it had no foundation on fact. On the other hand, if we 
 accept the history as a whole, the details concerning the 
 ages become a consistent and characteristic feature, and 
 similarly with other details thrown in in a manner which 
 denies them any special intention which might militate 
 against their acceptance as facts. 
 
 The great feature of the account in Genesis is the Flood, 
 which is represented as being universal, and it is in con¬ 
 nection with this that the minor details here spoken of 
 become significant as accessories ; if, in accordance with 
 some modern opinions, we cut this down to a local inunda¬ 
 tion embracing only the ‘then known’ world (though how 
 we are to limit the extent of the then known world is not 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 7 
 
 clear), certain details of the account not only lose their 
 significance, but become inexplicable, and one of the most 
 striking of these is the matter of longevity. 
 
 The ages which are given in the genealogy to Abraham 
 are as follows : Adam, 930 ; Seth, 912 ; Enosh, 905 ; Kenan, 
 910 ; Mahalaleel, 895 ; Jared, 962 ; Enoch, 365 (translated); 
 Methuselah, 969; Lamech, 777; Noah, 950; Shem, 602; 
 Arphaxad, 438 ; Selah, 433 ; Eber, 464 ; Peleg, 239 ; Reu, 
 239 ; Serug, 230 ; Nahor, 148 ; Terah, 205 ; Abraham, 175. 
 From which it will be seen that there is a distinct drop 
 immediately after the Flood, and a continued tendency to 
 decrease towards the limit of 120 years, prophetically laid 
 down in chapter vi., in connection with the Flood, but 
 apparently not attained until the time of the children of 
 Israel. Expressed graphically, the curve of age would be 
 as below. 
 
 1000— 
 
 800— 
 
 600— 
 
 400— 
 
 200— 
 
 B.C. 4000 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 3000 
 
 FLOOD 
 
 2000 
 
 I 
 
 Now the question is, in what light are we to regard these 
 dry statistics, and how is it that this symmetrical drop in 
 longevity is recorded as occurring at the period of the 
 Flood ? If we are to suppose it a skilful touch of the 
 romanticist to give colouring to his tale, we are confronted 
 
8 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 by the fact that he has entirely failed to make any capital 
 out of it. The sole reference to the subject occurs in the 
 mysterious passage : ‘ And the Lord said, My spirit shall not 
 strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh ; yet shall 
 his days be an hundred and twenty years,’ which is itself 
 so obscure that many different readings have been pro¬ 
 posed for it. The most that can be made as being in the 
 mind of the historian is that man’s life was to be shortened 
 because he was wicked ; and assuming that he introduced 
 these statistics as illustrations of the Divine power, and 
 made them up out of his head, we should expect to find 
 the prophecy followed by prompt fulfilment. Instead of 
 this, however, there is a due regard to the laws of nature. 
 The decrease in longevity commences at once, it is true; but 
 it is gradual, and it is not till 500 years later that the limit 
 proposed is attained. It is not clear, therefore, at what the 
 supposed romancer is aiming. There is one idea, however, 
 that we cannot by any possibility credit him with from a 
 rationalistic point of view, and that is that subsequent 
 critics, driven to accept the Flood as an historical fact, 
 should discount it as being only a partial one, and yet it is 
 against that idea that the statistics are principally effective. 
 If the Flood caused a marked decrease in longevity, it can 
 ■only have been by reason of altered climatic conditions, 
 and if it was associated with any considerable change of 
 climate, it must have been universal. 
 
 This point has been argued at some length, for two 
 reasons; first, to impress the fact that Old Testament 
 history is innocently consistent; and, secondly, to show 
 that if we accept it at all we must recognise that it implies 
 an antediluvian condition of life in connection with the 
 Noachian deluge, almost as different from that now obtain¬ 
 ing, as we know to have existed in the epoch of the dino- 
 therium. So far as one can judge, the difference is merely 
 a modification of what we know as ‘antediluvian’ condi¬ 
 tions. The Nephiline were in the earth in those days and 
 also after that.^ That these mysterious beings were giants 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWFNZORL 
 
 9 
 
 is clear from Num. xiii., and it is equally clear that they 
 died out contemporaneously with the decrease in longevity. 
 In the days of Moses they were still found in considerable 
 numbers, but as an unpleasant surprise ; in the time of 
 David the giant had become a phenomenon. 
 
 The picture may be completed, so far as the present 
 argument is concerned, by reference to one or two other 
 points in the account. An essential feature of this deluge 
 is the sudden and continuous rain. 
 
 Now a rain lasting uninterruptedly for six weeks un¬ 
 doubtedly implies an abnormal condition of the atmosphere. 
 It must have been loaded with moisture in much the same 
 way, and differing only in degree from that which favoured 
 the enormous growths in flora and fauna with which we are 
 familiar, as having existed in still earlier ages. This reflec¬ 
 tion, again, is consistent with the increased longevity and the 
 human giants; but it also introduces another reflection. 
 One of the points which has been supposed to give an air 
 of fable to the account is the mention of the rainbow, as 
 though it had then appeared for the first time. ‘ If,’ says a 
 well-known writer,* ‘ it ever rained before the Flood, which 
 seems probable, and if the sun ever shone on falling rain, 
 which again seems likely, nothing short of a miracle could 
 have prevented the rainbow from making its appearance 
 before the Flood.’ It does not appear to have occurred to 
 anyone to seriously suggest that it had not rained before 
 the Flood, and yet the whole of the accessories of the 
 account favour this supposition ; it only appears to require 
 the plain statement that there was no rain to make the 
 matter a certainty; and what, in point of fact, is the 
 information given with regard to this } The sole mention 
 of rain before the Flood is contained in Gen. ii. 5, 6, just 
 after the creation of ‘earth ’ and ‘heaven,’ and just before 
 the creation of man ; and here the description of affairs is 
 precisely in accordance with the general supposition of 
 humidity antecedent to the Flood, which was accompanied 
 
 R. A. Proctor. 
 
lO 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 by a sudden and general condensation. ‘ For the Lord 
 God had not caused it to rain upon the earth . . . but there 
 went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face 
 of the ground.’ It is true that the context does not imply 
 that this condition continued after man’s appearance, but 
 on the other hand there is nothing to show that it did not; 
 the compact rain shower which is essential to the production 
 of the rainbow is not necessary to the growth of plants, and 
 therefore the ‘for’ of the translation here cannot have the 
 full consequential meaning it generally conveys. But it is 
 not the intention here to endeavour to expound the passage 
 in full; there it is, and such as it is it is sufficiently signifi¬ 
 cant as the only reference made to the subject of rain, and 
 only to say that there was none. 
 
 On the whole, it is not clear why this view of Noah’s 
 deluge has not already come to be generally accepted. As 
 here pointed out, it is not a mere theory built out of the 
 imagination, but the logical outcome of a consideration of 
 the whole account. It is certain that periodic catastrophes 
 of this nature must have occurred on an ever-cooling earth 
 before the rate of evaporation sank too low for their pro¬ 
 duction, and it merely becomes a question as to whether 
 our present physical data are sufficient to enable us to say 
 definitely that the last catastrophe of this nature could not 
 have occurred so recently as 4,500 years ago. On this 
 point it is not too much to say that no data that w'e 
 can possess from modern observation will afford us any 
 guide. Until a definite law is established in any physical 
 consideration, backward estimates from one end of a curve 
 are utterly and hopelessly futile, and lead to nothing. It is 
 probably owing to estimates of this kind (based on geology 
 mostly), that there has been a tendency to take it for 
 granted that things have been practically at a standstill 
 since the short (.^) period covered by Scripture ; but some 
 of the dry statistics—to a portion of which we have already 
 appealed—throw doubt upon this point, even in regard to 
 periods which may be called historical. The subject is treated 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. ii 
 
 more at length in the Appendix, but just one point may be 
 briefly referred to here. It can hardly fail to strike even 
 the most casual observer, that the limit of age of 120 pro¬ 
 posed in Genesis vi., modest'as it is in reference to what 
 precedes it, is still high from our point of view. The 
 books of the Pentateuch are attributed to Moses, and this 
 in a way explains the figure, for it was undoubtedly a 
 common age at that period ; of the few that are given— 
 not because they were remarkable ages, but because they 
 belonged to remarkable people—we have: Joseph, no; 
 Moses, 120; Aaron, 123; Joshua, no: these are not the 
 ages to which our notabilities commonly attain now, and 
 there is therefore a distinct indication of change of physique, 
 and consequently of surrounding circumstances, even in 
 these sober figures. 
 
 It has been necessary to dwell somewhat on these points, 
 because it will be seen that some such supposition as the 
 foregoing is necessary to an appreciation of the accounts 
 of Enoch. If it was the case that the atmosphere was 
 in a condition of supersaturation, waiting but the merest 
 accident to bring about a general downpour, such a menace 
 could not escape the eye of a scientist, and it requires no 
 appeal to the supernatural, or supposition of divine inspira¬ 
 tion, to picture him predicting a flood; for this it is which 
 is recorded of Enoch and his family, and in a perfectly 
 prosaic matter-of-fact kind of way. They are represented 
 by the Egyptian traditions as having inhabited the Nile 
 country, and in that favourable locality—so far as atmo¬ 
 sphere is concerned—they are said by the Jews* to have 
 devoted their long and peaceful lives to the study of the 
 heavens. Acting doubtless in concert, the six generations 
 of men the descendants of Seth attained a proficiency and 
 exactness of knowledge of which we are just beginning to 
 get an inkling, and which we may shortly be able to fully 
 appreciate, if the subject is properly pursued. That it far 
 surpassed our own goes without saying; modern science is 
 
 * Josephus. 
 
12 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUIVENZORI. 
 
 a babe in years compared to the life of one of these men. 
 One thing seems clear, that the units in which our scientists 
 express their most elaborate and delicate results in physical 
 research owe their existence to the discoveries of these 
 patriarchs, and it is not one of the least interesting parts of 
 the subject to speculate on the transference to Chaldea of 
 the results of labours carried out principally in Egypt. 
 That we owe our units to the Chaldeans there can be no 
 question, but the considerations on which they were based 
 has hitherto been an absolute mystery. 
 
 There is a divergence of opinion as to which individual 
 should be credited with the prediction of the Flood ; one 
 says Adam, another Enoch. They lived for 300 years 
 together, so it might have been either; but on one point 
 all are agreed : it was in the seventh generation (Enoch’s) 
 that the familv council determined to take action in view 
 of the impending calamity. ‘ That their inventions ’ (in 
 ‘ astronomy ’ and ‘ arithmetic ’) ‘ should not be lost,’ they 
 erected two buildings which should survive the Deluge, 
 and carry their knowledge to after ages, and one of these 
 (in stone) was to show that a second building had been 
 erected. 
 
 Now, a little consideration will show that this brief and 
 simple notice has (setting apart the general idea) some 
 very peculiar points about it. First, why two buildings ? 
 The historian, who seems struck by the circumstance, 
 explains that one was of brick and the other of stone, 
 and the stone one was erected in case that of brick should 
 be destroyed by the Flood. This would imply that the 
 builders, dissatisfied with the durability of their first 
 structure, determined to start afresh on sounder principles. 
 This is comprehensible, but it necessitates the supposition 
 that the second was but a replica of the first, and that 
 consequently the first was in effect an abandoned project, 
 and as such would, under ordinary circumstances, be left 
 to take care of itself, or for choice be pulled down as a 
 not altogether worthy representation of ‘ inventiveness.’ 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 13 
 
 Instead of this we are told that the first was not only left 
 standing, but was mutely referred to by the second, which 
 was so ‘ inscribed ’ that it should ‘ also inform ’ mankind 
 ‘ that there was another.’ This gives the relation of the 
 buildings a very peculiar character ; they were independent 
 yet connected ; each contained an account of the ‘ dis¬ 
 coveries,’ yet the first was evidently not considered a 
 failure in any way, only not sufficiently stable to be 
 depended upon to withstand the Flood. 
 
 Now, on the sole assumption that the ‘discoveries ’ were 
 recorded geometrically^ the Great Pyramid satisfies the 
 conditions required for the second building exactly. It 
 is the most indestructible, massive, and carefully built 
 structure in the world* ; it is rigidly geometric and astro¬ 
 nomical in design, and when we come to analyze the 
 design it becomes evident that it was not the first build¬ 
 ing of this nature erected; and then it begins to be apparent 
 as to what the nature of the first building really was. It 
 was the observatory from which the units of measurement 
 were determined, and the Great Pyramid is the record of 
 the results, and an illustration of the methods and reason¬ 
 ing by which the results were arrived at. It will thus be 
 seen that the first building was a necessary step as a pre¬ 
 liminary, and, indeed, was probably existing before the 
 Pyramid was thought of, while the latter was the special 
 outcome of the desire to preserve the knowledge obtained. 
 The preserv^ation of the first building was not an absolute 
 necessity to the record, but it is clear that if we can find 
 but its remains in the position indicated by the geometry 
 of the second, there can be no question that we are on the 
 right track. 
 
 The locality indicated is the equator below the Pyramid, 
 and this brings us to the world-renowned ‘ Mountains of 
 the Moon,’ and the sources of the Nile. This it would 
 seem was Enoch’s favourite resort, and here it was, the 
 
 * Every one of its millions of tons of stone blocks is dovetailed into its 
 neighbour. 
 
14 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 Egyptians tell us, that he built his ' dome,’ the building, 
 doubtless, that we are in search of. The picture pre¬ 
 sented is a striking one, and worth dwelling upon for a 
 brief space, as not altogether in accordance with modern 
 notions. 
 
 First, a race of men of colossal physique and boundless 
 energy, with memories carrying them through the ex¬ 
 periences of close upon a thousand years, and devoting 
 themselves to peaceful vocations, and the study of the 
 Creator and His physical laws. The climate they live in 
 is one of equable temperature, owing to the dense shroud 
 of vapour which hangs above them, and to catch a glimpse 
 of the sun or the starry heavens unclouded they must seek 
 the most arid plains or ascend lofty mountains. The one 
 they may find in the north, the other in the centre of 
 Africa, both localities sufficiently near the home of their 
 birth. So far the picture is directly deducible from Scrip¬ 
 ture history, as already pointed out. Then comes tradition, 
 and the results of modern research. 
 
 The home of the race was undoubtedly in the neigh¬ 
 bourhood of Armenia and the Caucasus; but to such men 
 the earth is but small, and journeys of a few thousand 
 miles are but trifles. They deal not with tracts of land, 
 but whole districts. Accordingly we hear of Adam ‘ be¬ 
 queathing’ to his third son a territory which we should 
 term both remote and extensive, but which to them was 
 simply elbow-room. He bequeathed ‘the Nile,’ and the 
 family took up its position there‘among the mountains,’ 
 the mountains apparently at its soiH'ce. 
 
 Having made but a step of such a journey as this, it is 
 not to be supposed that they remained there quiescent ; 
 extended expeditions were made from time to time in their 
 study of geodesy, and periodical visits paid to the paternal 
 home to confer and compare notes. Thus it is that we 
 hear of them in Chaldea, which lay in their track. They 
 were the men-fish of the Chaldean legends, who appeared 
 periodically out of the Erythrean Sea (Persian Gulf), and 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 IS 
 
 taught the inhabitants ‘ letters, sciences, and every kind of 
 art ... so that from that time no one has invented any¬ 
 thing new they were clad apparently in sealskins, ‘ and 
 their image is preserved to this day.’ This was written 
 300 years before Christ, but their image may be seen in 
 the British Museum now, as it came from the writer’s 
 country. 
 
 It is remarkable how all the oldest legends and myths 
 agree as regards this early civilization, and it is still more 
 striking how simple and consistent the broad facts of 
 ancient history become when we regard this first rapid 
 development of human knowledge and skill as wiped out 
 at the Flood, and everything starting de novo^ with nothing 
 but the memory of the ancient greatness, and greatly 
 reduced powers wherewith to recover it. The history of 
 mankind is divided at once into two distinct periods, with 
 the Flood as the starting-point of all existing conditions, 
 beyond which it is useless to apply them in forming esti¬ 
 mates as to the development of peoples or human know¬ 
 ledge, while the vast difference between the two epochs 
 accounts at once for the heroic qualities attributed to the 
 earliest beings, which in the hands of the secular historians 
 degenerate often into fable, and are preserved only in their 
 true proportions in the sacred writings. 
 
 The date of the Flood, according to the only continuous 
 chronology we possess (or rather the most authentic version 
 of it—the Hebrew Scriptures), was about 2540 B.C.,t and 
 the only countries with any authentic historical or monu¬ 
 mental records extending over this date are Chaldea and 
 Egypt. 
 
 The first of these has the Flood as an essential feature in 
 both its traditional and monumental history, the detailed 
 account being essentially the same as that of the Hebrew, 
 while the archaeological remains show us the practical 
 
 * A saying of old Berosus, which was fraught with deeper meaning than he 
 suspected. 
 
 f Vide Appendix I. 
 
16 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 results of it. The legends contained in the fragments of 
 Berosus which we possess relate mostly to the period before 
 the Flood, and contain the account of the scientific men- 
 fish already alluded to, and tell how certain information was 
 written (on the usual tablets apparently) and ‘ buried in the 
 City of the Sun at Sappara,’ to be unearthed by the sur¬ 
 vivors. The tablets discovered show us an ancient civiliza¬ 
 tion (the ‘ Shumiro-Accadian’) followed by one with a 
 totally different language, but basing itself on the records 
 of the first. In the ‘ City of Books’ was collected the old 
 records with their translations, and grammars, and vocabu¬ 
 laries for translating them into the new language, and the 
 monuments show us that the new order of things—the 
 Assyrio-Babylonian—was fully established about 2000 B.C., 
 and that the change took place about the time of Ur-ea, 
 the first temple-builder of the period, who was ‘ somewhat 
 before’ 2300 B.C. The inscribed bricks of this king of Ur 
 form the very foundations of the existing ruins. The 
 earliest date, however, established from the record of the 
 finding of ‘foundation cylinders,’ is 3800 B.C., that of the 
 Semite Sargon I., ‘the first grand historical figure, dim 
 with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmis¬ 
 takably real.’ 
 
 No such definite dates can be established for Egyptian 
 records, but the histories and monuments are more com¬ 
 plete and continuous, and these give evidence in an equally 
 pointed way of a sudden break from one civilization to 
 another at about this period. Of the histories, that of 
 Herodotus is the most ancient and complete (in itself), and 
 will serve to illustrate. It divides itself naturally into three 
 portions—first, the traditional ; next, the historical sketch ; 
 and last, the strictly accurate history which commences (as 
 Herodotus himself says) with the time at which his country¬ 
 men came into direct communication with the Egyptians. 
 As regards the rulers of the first portion, the first is named, 
 and the remainder (said to consist of a list of 330 princes) 
 are ‘ passed by in silence,’ as none of them ‘ performed any- 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 17 
 
 thing memorable’! The second period opens with a state¬ 
 ment of the leading features and memorable acts of what is 
 known from other sources as the ‘ Xllth Dynasty.’ Turning 
 now to the monuments, we find that as early as the ‘ IVth 
 Dynasty’ there was a civilization which produced the most 
 stupendous works the world possesses ; that this disappeared 
 about the end of the ‘ Vlth Dynasty,’ and from that to 
 the Xlth is an absolute blank of monuments. Monarchy, 
 when it reappears, is in a different locality; its glories are 
 not the display of arts and sciences, but the reclaiming of 
 land from wild beasts and the unruly Nile. The first 
 kings are shown as lovers of the chase (like Nimrod in 
 Chaldea), and another constructs the reservoirs, and under¬ 
 takes the works of irrigation, etc., which gain for him the 
 lasting gratitude of the nation. The date assigned by 
 Prof. Lepsius to the Xlth and Xllth Dynasties is about 
 2400, and the end of the Vlth, 2590 B.c. The Vllth, 
 Vlllth, IXth, and Xth are nothing but a series of names, 
 and this gap is generally referred to as the ‘ dark period ’ 
 of Egyptian history. 
 
 The actual fact, therefore, is that just where in time we 
 are led to expect them, all the natural results for history 
 which such a catastrophe as the Deluge would produce do 
 exist, and the persistence with which this is ignored by 
 modern writers in endeavouring to trace the origins of 
 races, leads only to confusion. The idea that the Flood 
 was but partial is clung to with the same tenacity as the 
 notion, not so very long ago maintained, that the earth 
 was the centre of the solar system, and with very similar 
 results ; in the one case it was planets, in this case it is 
 peoples made to perform the most extraordinary manoeuvres 
 in order to keep in their places as each fresh fact comes to 
 light. The unfortunate ‘Turanians,’ of whom the Chinese 
 are the living embodiment, are even labelled with the special 
 brand of Cain. Yet even with this nation, with all its 
 exclusiveness and pride of antiquity, it is not till 2350 B.c. 
 that ‘ we emerge to some extent from the mist ’ (of 
 
 2 
 
iS 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORL 
 
 the Deluge) ‘ which hangs over the earlier records of 
 China. 
 
 Among the ‘ mythical ’ heroes of Egypt occurs the name 
 Hermes. Of him the ‘ Encyclopaedia Brit. ’ speaks as 
 follows : 
 
 ‘ Hermes—“ Trismegistus” (superlatively greatest), Thoth 
 . ... is identified by the Greeks with their own Hermes, 
 the god of letters and of the reckoning of time ; he is 
 described on the monuments as “ lord of the divine words,” 
 “scribe of truth”; the reputed author of the Egyptian 
 sacred books (said to be forty-two in number), part religious 
 and part scientific, and termed by the Greeks “ Hermetic,” 
 from whence the expression “hermetically sealed.”’ 
 
 ‘ As the deity of Wisdom, he aids Horus, the son of Osiris, 
 in his conflict with Seth, the evil principle.’ 
 
 ‘The epithet Trismegistus is explained by the author of 
 “ Chronicum Alexandrium ” (A.D. 47) as due to the fact that 
 Hermes, while maintaining the unity of God, had also 
 asserted the existence of three supreme or greatest powers.’ 
 
 As the Egyptians appear to have deified every mortal 
 thing from a cat to a king, it is not quite certain whether 
 we are to consider Hermes as really part of the pantheon 
 of divinities, or merely on the same footing as a modern 
 saint; on the whole, it seems he was not considered divine. 
 The name Thoth was given as the personification only of 
 his divine attributes, superior wisdom, and the more modern 
 forms of the Egyptian traditions describe him merely as a 
 ‘prophet’ and the father of science. They also connect 
 him with the biblical Enoch, which tends to render him a 
 little less of a ‘ myth.’ 
 
 The following are some extracts from a MS. in possession 
 of the present Minister of Public Instruction in Egypt— 
 H.E. Ali Moubarek. The MS. purports to be a collection 
 of extracts from ancient historical writers, of which those 
 now quoted are from Mr. Stanley’s last book, in which 
 they are believed to have been published in England for 
 the first time. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 19 
 
 1. ‘ As for the Nile, it starts from the mountains of 
 Gumr, where lies the grave of the great Hermes, and Hermes 
 is the prophet Idrisi. It is said that Idrisi there built a dome.' 
 
 2. ‘ Achmet, son of Ti Farshi, in his book of the 
 description of the Nile, says historians relate that Adam 
 bequeathed the Nile to Seth, his son, and it remained in 
 the possession of these children of prophecy and religion, 
 and they came down to Egypt and dwelt upon the moun¬ 
 tains. After them came a son, Kinaan, then his son 
 Mahaleel, and then his son Yaoud, and then his son Hamu, 
 and his son Hermes, that is, Idrisi the prophet.’ If we 
 compare the names with those in Genesis, viz., Canaan, 
 Mahalaleel, Jared, it is clear that Hamu and Hermes were 
 either brothers of Enoch, or one of them was Enoch. The 
 account goes on : 
 
 ‘ Idrisi began to reduce the land to law and order. The 
 Nile used to come flowing down upon them. Idrisi 
 gathered the people of Egypt together and went with 
 them to the first stream of the Nile, and there adjusted 
 the levelling of the land and of the water according to the 
 science of astronomy and surveying. Idrisi was the first 
 person who spoke and wrote books on these sciences. It 
 is said that in the days of Am Kaam, one of the kings of 
 Egypt, IDRISI WAS TAKEN UP TO HEAVEN, 
 AND HE PROPHESIED THE COMING OF THE 
 
 r 
 
 FLOOD, so he remained the other side of the Equator, 
 and there built a palace on the slopes of Mount Gumr.’ 
 It will be remembered that Enoch is one of the few 
 characters in the Bible who were translated. 
 
 It is really a very curious thing how little most people 
 are disposed nowadays to treat Scripture history seriously 
 —everything is a ‘ myth,’ from the suggestion that Moses 
 took off his shoes to the account of the destruction of 
 Sennacherib’s army. No matter how simple and easily 
 understood a passage may be, it is all ‘ mysterious ’’ and 
 intended to mean anything but what it obviously does 
 mean, and everything is instinctively treated as fabulous. 
 
20 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 Probably there are few educated persons (except those who 
 liave studied the Assyrian monuments) who really look 
 upon Sennacherib and his army as anything but a ‘ myth,’ 
 and even those who study ancient history cannot avoid the 
 tendency to treat all Scripture as hyperbole. It even seems 
 to be necessary, in order to be treated seriously, in these 
 days of pseudo-science to propound some utterly grotesque 
 view of a passage, and provided it is only sufficiently unlike 
 that which anyone in his senses would take the original to 
 mean, the theory will probably meet with general approba¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Here we are making the unpardonable error of taking 
 the Scriptures and other histories to mean what they say 
 and to have some foundation for their statements. We 
 shall also point out the obvious meaning of certain monu¬ 
 ments, knowing full well that they are therefore inad¬ 
 missible. 
 
 We thus see that the Egyptian writer of inspired science, 
 Hermes, is the same as the Biblical Enoch who lived before 
 the Flood and was taken to heaven without dying ‘ because 
 he pleased God.’* It should be observed, however, that we 
 do not commit ourselves to the supposition that he was 
 translated becanse he was a scientist. 
 
 It is particularly noticeable how studiously, not only the 
 Scriptures, but the Jewish commentaries on them, are con¬ 
 fined to the purely religious aspect of things. The Talmud 
 constantly amplifies Biblical accounts with little anecdotes 
 and so forth, but it is always to point the moral, not to 
 adorn the tale. Thus with Enoch. Considerably more is 
 made of him than by the brief notice in Genesis, but it is 
 all as to the religious side of his character. 
 
 ‘ Enoch did not mix with the people, but lived alone as 
 a hermit for many years. 
 
 ‘And it came to pass as he was praying in his apartment 
 that an angel of the Lord called to him, saying: “ Enoch! 
 Enoch !” And he answered : “ Here am I.” 
 
 * The Idrisi of the above quotations is evidently Idris (Enoch) of Moham¬ 
 medan writings. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 21 
 
 ‘ Then the angel said : 
 
 ‘ “ Arise, go forth from thy solitude and walk among the 
 people of the land. Teach them the way they should go, 
 and instruct them in the actions they should perform.’^ 
 
 ‘ And Enoch did as the Lord commanded him. He 
 walked among the people and taught them the ways of 
 the Creator, assembling them together, and addressing 
 them in earnestness and truth. And he charged his 
 followers to proclaim in all places where men dwelt : “ Who 
 is he that desires to know the ways of the Lord, and to 
 do righteously ? Let him seek Enoch.” 
 
 ‘And Enoch reigned over the human race and the people 
 obeyed him; and while Enoch was among them they 
 served God. And princes and rulers came to listen to his 
 words of wisdom, to make obeisance before him. And 
 he made peace through all the land.’ 
 
 And so on. The sketch is a suggestive one, and accords 
 with the traditions already quoted. He wanders about 
 from country to country, a man of enormous influence and 
 greatly respected ; but in all this there is not a hint of any 
 but spiritual qualities. Yet it is perfectly plain that his 
 scientific attainments were well known to the Jews, for 
 Josephus (who wrote from a layman’s point of view) says 
 that the children of Seth ‘ were the inventors of that peculiar 
 sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies 
 and their order;’ but he wasn’t a scientist himself. 
 
 But it is a peculiar fact that all the accounts which 
 specially connect Enoch with the origin of science come 
 from Egypt. Some have already been quoted; here is 
 another. ‘ Cedrenus, a monk, in 1050 A.D., says on the 
 authority of an apocryphal work, ascribed by the Egyptians 
 to Hennes, that Enoch, foreseeing the destruction of the 
 earth, had the science of astronomy inscribed on two’ 
 buildings.* The natural inference from this is that it was 
 in Egypt that he specially made his reputation for science. 
 If so, the question naturally arises, Why have not the 
 
 Dr. Sprenger. Both Josephus and Cedrenus call the buildings ‘ pillars. 
 
22 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 Egyptians more to show for it ? and, above all, if the Great 
 Pyramid is to be attributed to Hermes, why do not the 
 traditions say so ? All that they do say, and in this they are 
 unanimous, is that it dealt with the ‘stars and what they 
 severally operate in their aspects,’ ‘the sciences of arithmetic, 
 astronomy and physics,’ and that it ‘contained the know¬ 
 ledge of the Aryansbut how, and what the knowledge 
 was and who put it in there, they seem to know no more 
 than the man in the moon ! For be it observed that with 
 all their reputation for knowledge not one single element 
 of science is traced to the Egyptians, it all comes from 
 Chaldea. In point of fact, the one solid piece of evidence 
 of scientific knowledge which they possess is the Great 
 Pyramid, and that in effect they disowm. Their ignorance 
 on the subject is sublime. The only rational statement 
 they have to offer is that their ancient system of measures 
 had for its standard the length of the Pyramid’s base ;* but 
 do not ask them why. 
 
 The truth is that all those who could have handed down 
 an intelligible account of this building locally, were swept 
 away; the inhabitants who succeeded them found the 
 Pyramid there and understood it not. These, if we may 
 believe the Bible, were the sons of Ham, the Mizraim of 
 Gen, X., and included in the curse pronounced on their 
 father ; by this they were placed in antagonism to their 
 cousins, the sons of Japhet and Shem, and hence it was that 
 ‘ every shepherd ’ was ‘ an abomination unto the Egyptians;’ 
 and hence it was also that they were kept in ignorance as 
 to the true meaning and origin of this building, and that 
 all the information they did get concerning it came from 
 outside, as we shall proceed presently to show. It is 
 perfectly natural that under the circumstances they should 
 treat it with contempt, and try to make out that this, the 
 grandest monument in the world, of which any nation 
 might well be proud, was nothing but a wicked w'aste of 
 time and energy, for this was uniformly the account given 
 * Vide Moktar Pacha’s ‘ Origine des mesures anciennes egyptiennes.’ 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 23 
 
 of it by the Egyptians themselves. That their account is 
 utterly opposed to reason is shown by every detail of the 
 building itself, and by every true instinct of human nature, 
 if we are to suppose that it was erected by their own fore¬ 
 fathers. And it has been shown that the charge of oppres¬ 
 sion and cruelty supposed to be attached to the erection is 
 not only groundless but untenable. Mr. Flinders Petrie has 
 pointed out how (owing to the enforced idleness of the 
 people during a large part of the year, viz., while the Nile 
 was in flood) such works were probably not only unattended 
 by hardship but henejiciah and it is only necessary to read 
 his descriptions of the exquisite masonry displayed, and 
 surprising care bestowed on the work, to feel at once that 
 such could not have been executed under the rod of the 
 taskmaster. No; the Egyptians are no authorities here. 
 The Great Pyramid is not strictly speaking Egyptian at 
 all. It was conceived by a stranger, executed by a race 
 long since extinct, and the only true information concern¬ 
 ing it comes from the Arabs. These, it seems, either en¬ 
 deavoured to give some idea of it to the Egyptians, or the 
 latter, while pretending to know all about it (as soon as its 
 scientific nature leaked out), picked up some scraps of 
 information and promptly misapplied them, for it is certain 
 that at various times the Egyptians have taken standards 
 of measure from it, but in so promiscuous a way as not 
 only to get their own units into a hopeless muddle, but to 
 lead young nations, who believed in their pretence of 
 knowledge, entirely astray. When the Greeks (then 
 becoming a factor among the nations) came into contact 
 with Egypt, it was in one of the intervals during which 
 these sons of Ham did not happen to be serving some of 
 their brethren; the Assyrians had withdrawn, and the 
 Babylonians had not yet come to take their place in 
 devastating the land of Mizraim. The Egyptian priests 
 were therefore in possession of the field, and free to 
 display to the full their capabilities in the way of conscious 
 ignorance. The base of the Pyramid, as it originally stood. 
 
24 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 did really set forth the standard of measure by which the 
 designer intended that the intricacies of the building should 
 be gauged and its design recovered. With this circum¬ 
 stance the knowing ones were acquainted, but all the 
 Egyptians grasped was the fact that a certain fraction of 
 the base was used as a standard of measure, not what for. 
 They treated it doubtless as they did everything else, with 
 superstition, and we can easily imagine with what gusto, 
 and with how many rites and ceremonies, they went 
 through the solemn and impressive performance (in the 
 absence of anyone who knew anything about it) of dividing 
 up the base for the benefit of the open-mouthed Greeks— 
 these full of awe at the mysterious performance and the 
 imposing authority of the learned men of this ancient 
 nation. It was very pretty, but unfortunately the knowing 
 ones had been there before them and extracted all the 
 virtue. The standard had already been obtained, and the 
 Pyramid reverently completed in accordance with the 
 wishes of the designer; the base was no longer what it had 
 been, and the Greeks carried away with them nothing but 
 a m)dhical religion and a fictitious measure. 
 
 It will now be our purpose to point out who these 
 ‘ knowing ones ’ were, and what they did. 
 
 The building as left by Enoch-Hermes was apparently 
 a solid mass, all but one tubular passage (of marvellous 
 straightness) pointing away up into the sky. The exterior 
 was left in the rough, and the interior sealed ‘ hermeti¬ 
 cally.'’ In this condition it was proof against the Flood, 
 and in the stone chest in the principal chamber were 
 deposited the ‘ Hermetic’ books for safe keeping. In the 
 condition in which it was left it was also proof against the 
 attempts of man, unless he had a key to the arrangement 
 of the passages. Such a key was cut into the solid rock 
 on the plateau alongside the building, but it required some 
 instruction to make use even of that. This instruction, 
 together with the warning of the Deluge, Plnoch handed 
 down as an heirloom to his immediate descendants. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 25 
 
 When the earth came to be again peopled by man, 
 Armenia was again the scene of his first appearance; but 
 he ‘journeyed southward,’ and the centre of ‘dispersion’ 
 was Chaldea. This was the home of the revised human 
 race, and this was the centre of learning due to Enoch^s 
 teaching. There is an interesting account of an archaeo¬ 
 logical find, said to have been made in Egypt some time 
 in the Christian era, which is known as the story of the 
 Abou Hormeis papyrus. It runs as follows : A papyrus 
 in Arabic was found in the monastery of Abou Hormeis, 
 which said it was a translation made by a monk from the 
 Faioum in A.D. 847, of a Coptic papyrus found in the 
 monastery on a mummy. The account was that of a 
 translation made by ‘ two brothers ’ for King Alexander 
 of a gold tablet of great antiquity which had puzzled his 
 savants. The ‘ brothers ’ explained that they were de¬ 
 scended from an ancient inhabitant of Egypt of the time 
 of Noah,* which inhabitant had handed down to his 
 descendants the ancient books of Egypt, and that it 
 was of these that the tablet treated. The books had 
 been produced 1785 years before {i.e., 2117 B.C., taking 
 Alexander as 332 B.C.), and related to ‘what the stars had 
 foretold, and the building of the Pyramids.’ The stars 
 had foretold the Elood, and the Pyramids had been built 
 as a protection against it, and ‘ upon the walls were 
 written the mysteries of science, astronomy, geometry, 
 and physics.’ Limiting this to the first of these buildings 
 (the Great Pyramid), the account appears now to be 
 altogether probable ; but it is to two other points that 
 the desire is to direct attention just here. First, the date 
 of the books, viz., between 2100 and 2200 B.C. ; second, 
 that the tablet could not be translated by the ordinary 
 Egyptians. 
 
 The type of man to whom Noah transmitted Enoch’s 
 science was of vastly inferior intellectual powers and 
 physique ; the world to him was much bigger, and he 
 
 * Noah lived for 350 years after the Flood. 
 
26 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORL 
 
 could not understand the deductions of the ‘ Great 
 Hermes ’ in geodesy. Astronomy, however, he could 
 study where he stood. To this it was, he was told, that 
 the prediction of the Flood was due, and it was therefore 
 as a means of prediction that he viewed it. The Chaldean 
 of the post-diluvian peri9d became an astrologer^ ignorant 
 and superstitious; he had the results of previous observation 
 before him without the intellect to fathom their meaning. 
 
 Now, ‘ in the tenth generation after the Flood there 
 was among the Chaldeans a man, righteous and great and 
 skilful in the celestial science \ * he was one of the great 
 characters 'in the history of monotheism—his name was 
 Abram. In him came (for whatever reason) a revulsion 
 from the unscientific methods and idolatry of the Chal¬ 
 deans ; he argued against their astrology ;t he would not 
 follow their gods,J and he left them.§ He journeyed 
 through Mesopotamia to Syria, and thence to Egypt. 
 There he ‘ taught the Egyptians the science of arithmetic 
 and astronomy,’II as he understood it, formulated a new 
 system, and armed with the instructions handed down in 
 his family he visited the Great Pyramid, gave the neces¬ 
 sary instructions for completing and throwing it open, and 
 then left ; but the people to whom he communicated this 
 information, and who carried out the work, were not 
 Egyptians. 
 
 Who these people were has never been ascertained. 
 All that is known is that at this time the Delta of the 
 Nile fell into the hands of a race of foreigners, whom the 
 Egyptians dubbed the Hyksos, or ‘ Shepherd Kings ’ (and 
 who were therefore of the hated progeny of Shem), and 
 that they ruled in Memphis (near the Pyramids) for a 
 considerable time before they were finally driven out 
 again. According to the monuments they followed the 
 Xllth Dynasty, and their date would therefore be, accord¬ 
 ing to Professor Lepsius, about 2170 B.C., and this was about 
 
 * Berosus. + Josephus. X Judith. 
 
 § Genesis xi. and xii. !! Josephus, Eupolemus, etc. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 27 
 
 the date of Abram’s visit.* It is a date around which a 
 good deal of interest centres, but there is an air of mystery 
 about the whole affair here which is quite wanting in all 
 that has gone before. Enoch appears to have made up 
 his mind that the Pyramid was to be visited at this date, 
 and visited it was; yet we cannot trace any signs of pre¬ 
 concerted action amongst those concerned when the time 
 came. It will be remembered that the building was left 
 with one tubular passage open and pointing upwards. 
 This has long since been recognised as probably pointing 
 to the Pole star of the period, and if so there were two 
 possible dates. We need not trouble ourselves with the 
 first just now (it is somewhat uncertain), but the second 
 was cir. 2170 B.C. Now this was certainly not the date 
 at which the building was erected, but it was the date 
 at which it received its beautiful casing, and at which 
 (apparently) it was thrown open. For this to be done 
 the presence was required of someone understanding the 
 design, and of a king and people both willing and able to 
 execute it. The Egyptians were neither of these; but 
 at this date a scientist comes from Chaldea—a lineal 
 descendant of the designer—and he finds there a strange 
 people in possession, who welcome him with open arms. 
 The one, however, comes because of a famine ; the others 
 come no one knows whence, and no one knows why. The 
 accounts concerning these invaders are most conflicting. 
 According to one it was just a visitation of Providence. 
 ‘ It came to pass, I know not how, that God was averse 
 to us, and there came, after a surprising manner, men of 
 ignoble birth out of Eastern parts, and had boldness 
 enough to make an expedition into our country, and with 
 ease subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a 
 battle with them ;’t and they are credited with having 
 shown great cruelty, and to have devastated the country, 
 laying low all temples and monuments. How far this is 
 
 The chronology of the Hebrew Text (not the marginal chronology) 
 makes it about 2172. 
 
 j Manetho per Josephus. 
 
28 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 justified is not clear, seeing that the Xllth Dynasty was 
 a Theban one, and the monuments there were undisturbed, 
 while all those in the south, due to the earlier kings, 
 must have suffered from the Flood. But one thing is 
 certain : It is in this period that Herodotus, quoting the 
 Egyptian priests, places the Pyramid builders, and the 
 work done there surpasses belief in its beauty of work¬ 
 manship and surprising care. The remains of the casing 
 of the Great Pyramid, which were uncovered in 1880 by 
 Mr. Flinders Petrie, are thus described by him: ‘ The 
 mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight 
 line, and from a true square,’ shows ‘ an amount of 
 accuracy equal to most modern opticians’ straight-edges.’ 
 The ^joints, with an area of some thirty-five square feet 
 each, were not only worked as finely as this, but cemented 
 throughout. The builders managed to bring the stones 
 into contact, and fill the joint with cement, despite the 
 great area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved ; 
 in fact, the means employed for placing and cementing 
 the blocks of soft limestone, weighing a dozen or twenty 
 tons each, are almost inconceivable at present, and the 
 accuracy of the levelling is marvellous.’ Such work as 
 this was certainly not effected by ‘a collection of nomadic 
 hordes,’ and the H3/ksos, therefore, remain for us as mys¬ 
 terious as Melchisedek, ‘ King of Salem,’ introduced into 
 the Biblical history of this time merely to be mentioned 
 as too well-known to need any description, and too sacred 
 in personality to be dwelt upon, who ‘ without father, 
 without mother, without genealogy, having neither begin¬ 
 ning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son 
 of God, abideth a priest continually.’* 
 
 Whatever we may think concerning these invaders, it 
 seems tolerably clear that this is the period to which we 
 must refer the origin of our traditional astronomic nomen¬ 
 clature and system of units (of time, angles, length, and 
 weights). It is perfectly certain*f- that this is the date of 
 
 * Heb. vii. 3. f Vide Proctor’s ‘Origin of the Constellation Figures. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 29 
 
 the naming of the constellations—the fact is established 
 beyond dispute—and it seems that the incidents of the 
 Flood were taken as a foundation for a considerable por¬ 
 tion. The late R. A. Proctor, who ascertained the date, 
 also suggested the latter connection, which, associated (as 
 both of these are) with the general idea of the Pyramid, 
 is very pertinent. He pointed out how many of the old 
 figures had become distorted from their original form— 
 Centaur being originally a man who subsequently had part 
 of the ship Argo tacked on to him and so on—and sums 
 up as follows : ‘ The sequence in which the constellations 
 came above the horizon ’ upright ‘ as the year went round, 
 corresponded very satisfactorily with the theory. . . . First 
 Aquarius pouring streams of water, the three fishes (Pisces 
 and Piscis australis), and the great sea-monster, Cetus, 
 showing how the waters prevailed . . . then the Ark ’ 
 (Argo) ‘sailing on the waters, a little later the Raven 
 (Corvus), the man descending from the Ark and offering a 
 gift on the Altar, and last, the Bow set amid the clouds.’ 
 This writer’s was certainly one of the keenest intellects we 
 have had of late years, but he was essentially a ‘ scientist.’ 
 The theory he put forward, referred to in the above quotation, 
 was not that the constellations were grouped, for reference 
 purposes, to represent the familiar story of the Deluge— 
 no, this would be too obvious a deduction—his suggestion 
 was that the story of the Deluge had its origin in the 
 natural grouping of the stars. This, of course, we now know, 
 from the discovery of the Assyrian ‘ Deluge tablets,^ which 
 place the event antecedent to this date, not to be the 
 correct explanation ; had he only waited a little longer he 
 would have known that the whole thing was only part of 
 the Great Solar Myth, to which everything is now reduced. 
 It is a pity Mr. Proctor considered it necessary to follow 
 the groove which has become traditional for those aspiring 
 to the ranks of the ‘ scientific,’ or he would doubtless have 
 arrived at more truths than he did. Amongst the truths, 
 however, which he did arrive at are the two following : 
 
 First,‘All we know from Herodotus and Manetho, all 
 
30 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 the evidence from the circumstances connected with the 
 religion of the Pyramid-kings, and the astronomical 
 evidence given by the Pyramids themselves, tends to as¬ 
 sure us that members of that particular branch of the 
 Chaldean family which went forth from Ur of the 
 Chaldees, because they would not worship the gods of 
 the Chaldeans, extended their wanderings to Egypt, and 
 eventually superintended the erection of the Great Pyramid, 
 so far as astronomical and mathematical relations were 
 concerned.’ It is only necessary to add to this that the 
 dates indicate that member of the particular branch who is 
 known as Abraham,* and that the erection was not that of 
 the Pyramid itself, but its casing.-|- 
 
 Second, ‘ The date to which all inquiries into the origin 
 of the constellations and the zodiacal signs seem to point 
 —viz., 2170 B.C. —was the date at which the Chaldean 
 astronomers definitely adopted the new system—the luni- 
 solar instead of lunar division of the zodiac and of time. 
 One of the objects which the architects of the Great 
 Pyramid (not the king who built it) may have had was not 
 improbably this—the erection of a building indicating the 
 epoch when the new system was entered upon, and de¬ 
 fining in its proportions, its interior passages, and other 
 features, fundamental elements of the new system. The 
 great difficulty, an overwhelming difficulty it has always 
 seemed to me, in accepting the belief that the year 
 2170 B.C. defined the beginning of exact astronomy, has 
 been this, that several of the circumstances insisted upon 
 as determining that date imply a considerable knowledge 
 of astronomy. Thus astronomers must have made great 
 progress in their science before they could select, as a day 
 for counting from, the epoch when the slow, reeling motion 
 of the earth (the so-called processional motion) brought 
 the Pleiades centrally south, at noon, at the time of the 
 vernal equinox. The construction of the Great Pyramid, 
 Which he foresaw as possible. 
 
 t Which he could not know when he wrote the above, as our information 
 concerning the Pyramid itself was then incomplete. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 again, in all its astronomical features, implies considerable 
 proficiency in astronomical observation. Thus 2170 B.C. 
 may very well be regarded as defining the introduction of 
 a new system of astronomy, but certainly not the begin¬ 
 ning of astronomy itself.’ To this, it should be unnecessary 
 to inform the reader, we have absolutely nothing to add. 
 Though 2170 B.C. {quani proxiine) marks the period when 
 Abraham made his great protest against astrology and 
 superstition, and left a record of his visit and skill on the 
 features of the Great Pyramid, this was neither the begin¬ 
 ning of astronomy nor the date of erection of this remark¬ 
 able structure. If we want to learn more of the real be¬ 
 ginning of these things we must search for Enoch’s second 
 ‘ pillar’ on the Ruwenzori mountains. 
 
 It may be well to state, before closing this brief sketch, 
 that it does not appear that Enoch’s system has been 
 handed down to us through Abraham. This system in¬ 
 cludes the inch-foot units of length, and one particular 
 measure known as the ‘sacred cubit.’ Now, though the 
 latter (which is not a round number of inches) contains the 
 cue to the system, the units intended for general use were 
 the inch and its sexagesimal multiples. The first multiple 
 known—the foot—is a duodecimal;* but after this the 
 rises were sexagesimal, 18, 24, 30, 36. All these are 
 known measures, but they were not employed by the Jews. 
 The ‘sacred cubit ^ (very approximately 25’3 inches) was 
 a ‘ well-known ancient measure of the Egyptians, Assyrians, 
 and Jews’-f- alike, but it was not the common measure of 
 either. The Jews employed a purely Egyptian measure. 
 They came under the influence of this people, like the 
 Greeks, at a time when they themselves were young, and 
 Egypt happened to be free from invaders, and the result 
 (so far as their scientific learning was concerned) was 
 equally disastrous. Their measure was the ‘common 
 
 * Corresponding to the first division of natural time-spaces, the year into 
 twelve months and the day into twelve hours, after which the subdivisions 
 are sexagesimal—sixty minutes and sixty seconds. 
 
 t Flinders Petrie. 
 
32 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 Egyptian cubit,’ obtained, it is true, from the Pyramid, but 
 in a manner which showed almost as hopeless an ignorance 
 of the real design as that which gave the Greeks 1300 
 years later their fictitious cubit.* The only ‘ Hermetic ’ 
 principles we can trace in the Jewish sacred writings is the 
 casual reference to ‘ the sweet influences of Pleiades ’ in 
 Job, and the definition of the sacred cubit in Ezekiel as ‘a 
 cubit and an handbreadth.^ There are indications that 
 they possessed measures of capacity in cubic inches, but 
 whether accidentally or of design is not so clear. Alto¬ 
 gether we must say that though ‘just measures’ was a 
 part of their religious system, it cannot be said that they 
 were those contemplated by Enoch. The inch and foot 
 are now the common property of most European nations, 
 some nearer in value to the original, some more remote, 
 but there they are; the question is, where did they come 
 from Now, it is certainly the fact that the traditions 
 which enable us to recover some of the measures (with 
 very tolerable accuracy) are referred to ‘ the Arabs,’ those 
 wandering sons of the plains, who never weaken their in¬ 
 tellects by the pursuit of gold for the building up of an 
 artificial existence euphoniously known by the name 
 ‘civilization.’ It will hardly be credited by some, that 
 travellers having that peculiar gift of language, etc., 
 which enables them not only to pass themselves off as 
 ‘ natives,’ but understand all they say, have related of cer¬ 
 tain nomads of Central Asia that their favourite amuse¬ 
 ment over the evening pipe is to set one another problems 
 in ‘surds,’ or gravely discuss the meaning of the square 
 root of a minus quantity; yet such is nevertheless the case, 
 and it is quite in keeping with the history we have been 
 discussing. Such as Enoch was, so were his followers in 
 true scientific feeling—‘nomads’—and we are bound to 
 confess that the practical outcome of his studies has de¬ 
 scended to us not through the civilizations of the world, but 
 the Hyksos. 
 
 * The only one, however, properly so called, from its approximation to the 
 length of the fore-arm and cubitus. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 33 
 
 Now that we are in touch again with his meaning, and 
 possess the power of putting it to the test, the question has 
 arisen, Are we going to abandon the district in which 
 Enoch’s second pillar stands ? The Ruwenzori, the moun¬ 
 tains of Oamr, stand close to Uganda, now for the first time 
 in history in the hands of a European race, and that race, 
 curiously enough, the one which has declined to abandon 
 Enoch’s sexagesimal system, and has retained his units of 
 measure unimpaired. According to present arrangements 
 the evacuation of Uganda is fixed for the end of March. 
 So much of these matters depends upon what is generally 
 called ‘chance,’ that one may well wonder whether this 
 district (with its archaeological treasure) will be allowed to 
 slip into other hands (and those the special enemies of 
 this system), or whether Great Britain will decline to 
 abandon this also. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 THE DATE OF ABRAHAM. 
 
 As it has been stated here that the date of Abraham’s visit 
 was about 2170 B.c, which is not that usually assigned, 
 it has been thought advisable to give some of the reasons 
 for this statement. 
 
 The chronology given in the margin of the authorized 
 version of the Hebrew Scriptures is not that of the text in 
 some places. If this is carefully perused, it will be seen 
 that the chronology is wonderfully complete, and obviously 
 intended to be continuous; it is very rarely that broken 
 periods {i.e., fractions of a year) are given. There are one or 
 two places where the continuity is somewhat doubtful, and 
 here extraneous authorities (such as Josephus) are useful 
 in confirming the supposition that there is no hiatus, other¬ 
 wise it does not appear that the sacred writings require any 
 assistance in this matter, and presumably should not be 
 corrected from mere traditions. 
 
 Adhering strictly to the text, it may be seen that the 
 following consecutive intervals occur, and that the periods 
 covered (always according to the text) cannot therefore be 
 less than those assumed, though it is possible in some parts 
 they may be more. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HEBREW TEXT. 
 
 Gen. vii. 6; viii. 13 Flood 
 
 Genesis 
 
 - Adam - 
 
 Mahalaleel 
 Jared - 
 
 Lamech 
 Noah - 
 
 Enoch 
 
 Seth - 
 Enos - 
 Cainan 
 
 Methuselah 
 
 YEARS. B.C. 
 130 - 4196 
 105 - 4066 
 
 90 - 3961 
 70 - 3871 
 65 - 3801 
 
 162 - 3736 
 
 65 - 3574 
 187 - 3509 
 
 182 - 3322 
 
 600 - 3140 
 
 I - 2540 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORL 
 
 35 
 
 Gen. X. lo 
 
 Gen. xii. 4, 10 ; | 
 xvi. 3, 17, 24 i 
 Gen. xxi. 5 
 
 „ XXV. 26 
 „ xlvii. 9 
 Exod. xii. 40 
 Num. ix. I 
 „ xiii. 33 
 Josh. xiv. 7, 10 
 Judges iii. 8 
 
 Shem - - - - 
 
 Arphaxad - . . 
 
 Salah ... - 
 
 Eber - - - - 
 
 Peleg - - - - 
 
 Reu - - - . 
 
 Serug - - - - 
 
 Nahor- 
 
 Terah - - - - 
 
 Abraham 
 
 „ in Egypt - 
 
 Isaac - - - - 
 
 Jacob - - - - 
 
 In Egypt 
 
 Sinai - - - - 
 
 Wanderings - - - 
 
 ‘ Land divided ’ 
 
 ‘ Served Chushan-rishathaim ’ 
 
 XV. 10 
 
 Asa 
 
 YEARS. 
 2 - 
 
 35 - 
 30 - 
 
 34 - 
 
 30 - 
 32 - 
 30 - 
 29 - 
 
 70 - 
 75 - 
 
 25 
 
 60 
 
 130 
 
 430 
 
 I 
 
 40 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 41 
 
 B.C. 
 
 2539 
 
 2537 
 
 2502 
 
 2472 
 
 2438 
 
 2408 
 
 2376 
 
 2346 
 
 2317 
 
 2247 
 
 2172 
 
 2147 
 
 2087 
 
 1957 
 
 1527 
 
 1526 
 
 i486 
 
 1481 
 
 J) 
 
 iii. II 
 
 - 
 
 Judged by Othniel 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 1473 
 
 >? 
 
 iii. 14 
 
 - 
 
 Served Eglon - 
 
 - 
 
 18 - 
 
 1433 
 
 )) 
 
 iii. 30 
 
 - 
 
 Judged by Ehud 
 
 - 
 
 80 - 
 
 1415 
 
 J) 
 
 iv. 3 
 
 - 
 
 Served Jabin - 
 
 - 
 
 20 - 
 
 1335 
 
 5 J 
 
 V. 31 
 
 - 
 
 ‘ Land had rest.’ Deborah 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 1315 
 
 5) 
 
 vi. I 
 
 - 
 
 Served Midian 
 
 - 
 
 7 - 
 
 1275 
 
 55 
 
 viii. 28 
 
 - 
 
 ‘ Country in quiet.’ Gideon 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 1268 
 
 55 
 
 ix. 22 
 
 - 
 
 Reigned over by Abimelech 
 
 - 
 
 0 - 
 
 1228 
 
 55 
 
 X. 2 
 
 - 
 
 Judged by Tola 
 
 - 
 
 23 - 
 
 1225 
 
 55 
 
 X. 3 
 
 - 
 
 „ Jair 
 
 - 
 
 22 - 
 
 1202 
 
 55 
 
 X. 8 
 
 - 
 
 Oppressed by the Philistines 
 
 - 
 
 18 - 
 
 1180 
 
 55 
 
 xii. 7 
 
 - 
 
 Judged by Jephthah - 
 
 - 
 
 6 - 
 
 1162 
 
 55 
 
 xii. 9 
 
 - 
 
 „ Ibzan 
 
 - 
 
 7 - 
 
 1156 
 
 55 
 
 xii. II 
 
 - 
 
 ,, Elon 
 
 - 
 
 10 - 
 
 1149 
 
 55 
 
 xii. 14 
 
 - 
 
 „ Abdon 
 
 - 
 
 8 - 
 
 1139 
 
 55 
 
 xiii. I 
 
 - 
 
 Served the Philistines 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 1131 
 
 I Sam. 
 
 iv. 18 
 
 - 
 
 Eli - 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 1091 
 
 55 
 
 vi. I 
 
 - 
 
 Ark with Philistines - 
 
 - 
 
 07- 
 
 
 55 
 
 vii. 2 
 
 - 
 
 ,, at Kirjath-jearim 
 
 - 
 
 20 - 
 
 1051 
 
 2 Sam. 
 
 V. 5 
 
 - 
 
 David - 
 
 - 
 
 33 - 
 
 1031 
 
 I Kings xi. 42 
 
 - 
 
 Solomon 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 998 
 
 55 
 
 xiv. 21 
 
 - 
 
 Rehoboam 
 
 - 
 
 17 - 
 
 958 
 
 55 
 
 XV. 2 
 
 - 
 
 Abijam 
 
 - 
 
 3 - 
 
 941 
 
 938 
 
 55 
 
 xxii. 42 
 
 - Jehosaphat 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 25 - 
 
 897 
 
 2 Kings viii. 17 
 
 - Jehoram 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 8 - 
 
 872 
 
 55 
 
 viii. 26 
 
 - Ahaziah 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 I - 
 
 864 
 
 55 
 
 xi. 3 
 
 - Athaliah 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 6 - 
 
 863 
 
 
 
 Joash - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 40 - 
 
 857 
 
 55 
 
 xiv. 2 
 
 - Amaziah 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 29 - 
 
 817 
 
 55 
 
 XV. 2 
 
 - Azariah 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 52 - 
 
 788 
 
 55 
 
 XV. 33 
 
 - Jotham 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 16 - 
 
 736 
 
 55 
 
 xvi. 2 
 
 - Ahaz - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 16 - 
 
 720 
 
 55 
 
 xviii. 2 
 
 - Hezekiah 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 29 - 
 
 704 
 
36 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 2 Kings xxi. i 
 
 Manasseh 
 
 YEARS. 
 
 55 - 
 
 B.C. 
 
 675 
 
 „ xxi. 19 
 
 Amon - 
 
 2 - 
 
 620 
 
 ,, xxi. I 
 
 Josiah - 
 
 31 . 
 
 618 
 
 „ xxiii. 31 - 
 
 „ xxiii. 36 - 
 
 Jehoahaz 
 
 Jehoiakim 
 
 1 1 
 
 0 
 
 U) 
 
 1 1 
 
 586 
 
 „ xxiv. 8 
 
 Jehoiakin 
 
 0-3 - 
 
 575 
 
 - 
 
 Zedekiah 
 
 II - 
 
 575 
 
 2 Chron. xxxvi. 20 - 
 
 Captivity 
 
 70 - 
 
 564 
 
 Dan. ix. 1-24 
 
 To Messiah - 
 
 - 490 - 
 
 494 
 
 
 Birth of Christ 
 
 B.C. 4 - 
 
 4196 
 
 4 
 
 It is not proposed to discuss in detail every discrepancy 
 between the margin and text, only to refer to some of the 
 bolder departures, and to show some reasons for supposing 
 that the above list is probably correct. 
 
 I. For independent checks. 
 
 Khudur-Lagamar the Elamite (Chederlaomer), Abra¬ 
 ham’s contemporary, is placed at about 2200 B.C. ; the 
 Marginal Chronology only makes him about 1900. 
 
 The invasion of Shishak in the fifth year of Rehoboam 
 ‘is ordinarily placed B.C. 971, but the Assyrian monuments 
 seem to indicate a reduction of at least twenty-three years.’* 
 The above list requires a reduction of twenty-seven years. 
 
 The going back of the shadow on the dial in the fifteenth 
 year of Hezekiah is thought to mark an eclipse at Jeru- 
 • Salem ; if so, the date would be 689 B.C.,*!* the same as 
 above. 
 
 II. Uncertainties in the text. 
 
 The only real case of doubt as to what is intended 
 (assuming always that there zs an intention of definite 
 chronology throughout, as seems clearly to be the case) is 
 between the books of Judges and Samuel. The chrono¬ 
 logy of the Judges ends with the death of Samson, and no 
 further periods are mentioned till Eli, who commences a 
 fresh book. 
 
 It is clear from Judges xvi. 20 that the twenty years of 
 Samson ran during the forty years of Philistines; the 
 question is. Did Eli follow Samson? 
 
 On this point Josephus is succinct: ‘ Now after the death 
 of Samson, Eli, the high priest, was governor of the Israel¬ 
 ites.’ He also states that Samson brought the forty 
 Mr. Poole: ‘Egypt,’ En. Brit. 
 
 t George Smith and Bosanquet : ‘ Date of the taking of Lachish.’ 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 37 
 
 years of Philistines to an end, and that Eli had forty years 
 of quiet after him, as implied by the text.* The M.C. 
 places the death of Samson twenty years after the death of 
 Eli—sixty years out of its place according to this. 
 
 III. As regards evident departures of the M.C. from 
 the text, there are two notable cases of pure concession 
 to external evidence. 
 
 The first to notice is that which practically ignores the 
 Biblical connection of the Old Testament chronology with 
 the New, viz., the express prophecy of Daniel given for the 
 purpose.*!* It seems to be acknowledged that the interval 
 is intended to mean 490 years (seventy weeks of years), but 
 it is not put in its authorized place, viz., at the end of the 
 seventy years’ captivity, mainly owing, apparently, to the 
 last of the scientific Egyptian muddlers, Ptolemy. The 
 point is not one which it is proposed to argue here ; the 
 interval may be disregarded if the date of Sennacherib’s 
 invasion is fixed. 
 
 The second case, however, is more important, as it affects 
 a larger interval of time, and it is proposed to consider the 
 evidence of the text in detail to show that it is decidedly 
 against the M.C. 
 
 In the 12th chapter of Exodus occurs the following state¬ 
 ment : ‘ Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, which 
 they sojourned in Egypt, was 430 years. And it came to 
 pass at the end of 430 years, even the self-same day it 
 came to pass that all the hosts of the Lord went out from 
 the land of Egypt.’ This would appear sufficiently definite, 
 yet the M.C. makes the interval from the entry of Jacob 
 (Israel) and his family to the Exodus only 215 years. It is 
 a concession to the Jewish traditions, which say that the 
 430 years count from the ‘covenant of the pieces ’ (Gen. xv.), 
 where it was prophesied to Abraham that his seed should 
 ‘ be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve 
 them ; and they shall afflict them 400 years.’ Whatever 
 may have been the original cause of this supposition (and 
 it does not seem far to seek), it is certain that a rigid 
 examination of all the data available from the Scriptures 
 themselves forbids its acceptance, independently of the fact 
 that it is directly opposed to the two passages just quoted. 
 
 It is a well-known argument against the 200 years’ 
 interval, that it would not suffice for the expansion of the 
 
 * This leads us to suppose that it was the catastrophe attending the death of 
 Samson which gained the Israelites a respite, not his contemptuous familiarity 
 and personal quarrels with their enemies. 
 
 f Dan. ix. 
 
38 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORL 
 
 children of Israel into a great nation; but it is not clear 
 that the matter has been figured out in strict accordance 
 with the data, which are very full. 
 
 In the first place, it is certain that we must discard any 
 attempt to argue from known rates of expansion. We are 
 confronted at the outset with the indisputable fact, that the 
 longevity of the period as recorded, though considerably 
 modified since the Flood, is still decidedly greater than that 
 which now obtains; this alone would render any modern 
 data nugatory. Then, in the ordinary conditions govern¬ 
 ing the growth of nations there is always a struggle for 
 existence—the land has to be reclaimed from nature and 
 wild animals, and then held against other marauders ; in 
 this case all these difficulties were absent. In whatever 
 light the Israelites subsequently came to regard the land 
 of their ‘ sojourn,’ it is certain that on the whole they had 
 little cause for complaint. These Children were brought 
 up in a nursery. Handed over the pick district of a fertile 
 land, and under the protection of a powerful nation in 
 which they were not even allowed to perform military 
 service, they had absolutely nothing to do but ‘ increase 
 and multiply.’ 
 
 Two things would result from these considerations. 
 First: as already stated, the rate of expansion would be 
 out of proportion to anything with which we are acquainted. 
 Second : in determining it, there are no uncertain elements 
 to disturb the computation : all that is necessary is to 
 ascertain the normal rate of increase from the internal evi¬ 
 dence ; and given the numbers resulting, the period covered 
 must appear with a certainty depending solely upon the 
 extent of the data for determining the normal rate. In 
 helping us to choose between two such periods as 200 and 
 400 years, there can be no uncertainty. 
 
 The data are as follows : 
 
 The sizes of the tribes at the date of the Exodus are 
 given in Numbers i. From this it appears that the average 
 tribe consisted of about 53,000 men, ‘ from twenty years 
 old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war.’ 
 The question is. How long did it take for one man to expand 
 to this ? 
 
 The main points to determine are : 
 
 1. The average number of sons per man. 
 
 2. The average ages of the father during which these 
 sons were born. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 39 
 
 For (i) there are several instances in r Chron. and else¬ 
 where. In taking these it is necessary to discriminate care¬ 
 fully between those instances in which only one or two of 
 a family are given, and those where it appears clearly 
 intended to enumerate the whole family. Of seventy-five 
 cases thus collected there are three stated to have had no 
 sons, and one (stated to be exceptional) sixteen ; one had 
 eleven; four had seven ; four had six ; six had five, and 
 so on ; the mean of all is 3'5 sons per man. 
 
 For (2) it is necessary to have recourse to the genea¬ 
 logical lists from father to son, covering known periods. 
 There are several such lists, the best of which is the line 
 of twenty-two high priests (i Chron. vi.) from Aaron to 
 Jehozadek, because it is of good length, does not include 
 the disputed period, has two or three points of contact 
 with the chronology of the kings, and belongs to men of 
 peaceful avocations. From this list alone we may conclude 
 that the average for a generation is about fifty years, and 
 the other lists show that it cannot be taken at less, though 
 it may be more. 
 
 These data alone will suffice for a rough estimate of the 
 rate of expansion, thus : 
 
 YEAR. 
 
 0 
 
 . 
 
 
 NO. OF MALES B' 
 
 I 
 
 50 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 3’5 
 
 100 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 12-25 
 
 150 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 43 
 
 200 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 150 
 
 250 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 525 
 
 300 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 1,838 
 
 350 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 6,434 
 
 400 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 22,519 
 
 according to which the time required for one man to 
 expand to over 53,000, must have been more than 400 as 
 stated in the text, not under 300 as the M.C. would have 
 us believe. 
 
 A closer estimate of the period covered can be made by 
 considering the ages between which there was an equal 
 chance that the average man would have a son, and 
 spreading the births evenly over these ages ; and it will be 
 interesting to consider the data for this here, because it 
 leads to an apprehension of the possibilities of the case. 
 
 In the list already quoted, the lowest average for any 
 considerable number (seven generations of priests, from 
 King Uzziah to the Captivity) is twenty-five years per 
 
40 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 generation. If we take this as the lower limit for the 
 ‘ equal chance,’ with fifty as the mean of all, it gives seventy- 
 five for the upper limit of equal chance; and it so happens 
 this is the highest average deducible from the list, viz., four 
 generations (of priests) from David to Uzziah, and the list 
 of David’s own ancestors (to take an example) shows a 
 similar high average. Thus : 
 
 LIST. 
 
 GENERA¬ 
 
 TIONS. 
 
 PERIOD COVERED. 
 YEARS. 
 
 AVERAGE PER GENERATION. 
 YEARS. 
 
 M.C. 
 
 TEXT. 
 
 M.C. j TEXT. 
 
 Judah—David 
 
 10 
 
 671 
 
 951 
 
 1 
 
 67 ! 95 
 
 Now, first, if we have a considerable list with an average 
 of twenty-five, it is clear that some of the intervals included 
 must have been less than this. From what we know of 
 the laws of puberty it will certainly not be under-estimating 
 the lowest probable limit, to put it at fifteen. 
 
 But, next, if we have a still more considerable list with an 
 average of sixty-seven or ninety-five, in which it is probable 
 that as small an interval as fifteen occurs, we jump at once 
 to a possible upper limit of 120 or 180. 
 
 Now the question becomes. Is there any warrant for 
 supposing it possible that men at this period may have had 
 sons born to them when they were 120 or 180 years old 
 Most certainly there is. 
 
 To begin with, there is the case of Abraham : his first 
 son was born at 85, his second at 100, and at 137 (after 
 the death of Sarah) he married again and began a fresh 
 family. It appears that a change in these matters was 
 introduced with him or his father, for up till then (from 
 Noah) the ages at which the first son was born were 
 uniformly between thirty and thirty-five.* The list of 
 ages from Abraham which are given is as follows: 
 
 CHILDREN AT DIED AT 
 
 Abraham - - 85, 100, 137, and over - 185 
 
 Ishmael - - .... 137 
 
 Isaac - - 60 - - - - 180 
 
 Jacob - - 70 to 90 - - - 147 
 
 Joseph - - . - - . no 
 
 * 
 
 We are adhering, of course, to the Authorized Version. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 41 
 
 CHILDREN AT 
 
 DIED AT 
 
 Levi 
 
 1371 
 
 137 rat least. 
 
 133/ 
 
 Kohath 
 
 Amram 
 
 Hezron 
 
 Moses 
 
 Aaron 
 
 Joshua 
 
 60 
 
 120 
 120 
 110 
 
 Tobit 
 
 Tobias 
 
 J Apocrypha. 
 
 But the most striking instance in the way of possibilities, 
 and at the same time the most direct argument against 
 the short period for the ‘ sojourn,’ from the text is the case 
 of Ephraim’s descendants. 
 
 In r Chron. vii. 20, etc., we have from Shuthelah to 
 Shuthelah six generations (‘ his son ’ being obviously equi¬ 
 valent to ‘ begat ^—fiWe chap, vi., verses 4-8 and verses 
 50-53), and then an expedition into Gath. This expedi¬ 
 tion is explained by the Talmud (which the M.C. follows) 
 as being due to a misconception as to the prophecy con¬ 
 cerning the sojourn; that it was, in fact, a premature 
 attempt at an exodus which took place 400 years after the 
 ‘ covenant of the piece.s,’ and 180 after Jacob’s entry. This 
 is a reasonable statement in itself, and, allowing about ten 
 years for the date of Ephraim’s birth before the ‘ entry,’ 
 gives an average of twenty-seven years per generation ; 
 but, accepting this, see what follows. Eirst, Ephraim was 
 still alive; and not only this, but after the failure of the 
 expedition, had another son; so that Ephraim saw his 
 seventh generation, and had a son when he was about 190. 
 Second, there then comes another list of eight generations 
 to Joshua, and, allowing the same average as the first (a 
 low one), this obliges us to add on at least another 200 
 years to the sojourn, as it is here contended we should. 
 
 If these early cases of great longevity and virility are 
 accepted as stated and implied in the text, there are few 
 arguments against the supposition that the ages given in 
 the list from Levi to Moses are chronological, and give the 
 periods at which the respective sons were born, not the ages 
 at death; indeed the circumstances distinctly imply that 
 this is the actual meaning.* 
 
 On this supposition the intervals become : 
 
 * Exodus vi. 16-20. 
 
42 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 Levi - - - - - 137 years. 
 
 Kohath - - - - 133 » 
 
 Amram - - - ■ ^37 » 
 
 Aaron - - - - - 83 „ 
 
 Total: Levi to Exodus - - 490 „ 
 
 which is precisely what it should be. 
 
 There is also an argument from independent sources in 
 favour of the 430 years. 
 
 It is now generally accepted that Joseph’s Pharaoh was 
 the sixth (and last we know of) of the Hyksos, that the 
 Pharaoh who ‘knew not Joseph’ was one of the Theban 
 line of monarchs who expelled the Hyksos, and that the 
 Pharaoh of the Exodus was Menepthah, the son of 
 Rameses II. Now it so happens that one of the few 
 chronological lists of Egyptian kings which we possess 
 from the historians covers this very interval; it is quoted 
 by Josephus from Manetho, and when we compare it with 
 the list as made out from the monuments it is evidently the 
 same, though the order may not be quite the same, and 
 some of the kings have not been identified. Side by side 
 the lists run: 
 
 Manetho. 
 
 Hyksos expelled by 
 
 
 Yrs. 
 
 Ms. 
 
 Tethmosis - reigned 
 (followed by) 
 
 25 
 
 4 
 
 Chebron 
 
 
 13 
 
 0 
 
 Amenophis 
 
 5 > 
 
 20 
 
 7 
 
 His sister Amesses 
 
 )) 
 
 21 
 
 9 
 
 Mephres 
 
 3 ) 
 
 12 
 
 9 
 
 Mephramethosis 
 
 33 
 
 25 
 
 10 
 
 Tethmosis 
 
 33 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 Amenophis 
 
 53 
 
 30 
 
 10 
 
 Orus 
 
 35 
 
 36 
 
 5 
 
 Achencheres - 
 
 33 
 
 12 
 
 I 
 
 Rathotis 
 
 55 
 
 9 
 
 0 
 
 Achencheres - 
 
 33 
 
 12 
 
 5 
 
 Achencheres - 
 
 35 
 
 12 
 
 
 Armais - 
 
 35 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
 Rameses 
 
 35 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 Armesses 
 
 33 
 
 60 
 
 2 
 
 Amenophis 
 
 35 
 
 19 
 
 6 
 
 Sethosis and ) . 
 o > brothers 
 
 Rameses ) 
 
 Monuments. 
 
 Hyksos expelled by Yrs. 
 
 Aahmes 
 
 (who was followed by) 
 Amen-hotep 1 . 
 
 Thothmes I. 
 
 His sister Hatasu. 
 
 Thothmes III. 
 
 Amen-hotep 11 . 
 
 Amen-hotep III. 
 
 Amen-hotep IV. 
 
 Horns. 
 
 {a gap) 
 
 Rameses 1 . (no rela¬ 
 tion of Horus). 
 
 Rameses II. 
 
 Menepthah ... 8 
 
 (his last monumental year) 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 43 
 
 It SO happens that the lengths of reign not given in the 
 list can be completed by the monuments, and we have, 
 therefore, from the expulsion of the Hyksos to the Exodus 
 327 + 75=402 years.* 
 
 Last, it is clear from Herodotus and the monuments that 
 the former placed the Pyramid-builders at the beginning of 
 the Hyksos dynasty, and that the interval assigned by 
 Manetho to the only six Hyksos kings we know of brings 
 the date of Abraham’s visit to the same place. The second 
 portion of Herodotus’ account (that which gives the promi¬ 
 nent features of the reigns) evidently opens with the Xllth 
 Dynasty. The lists run : 
 
 Herodotus. 
 
 Sesostris (‘ claims attention— 
 first who made extended expedi¬ 
 tions,’ etc.). 
 
 Pheron set up the obelisks of 
 the temple of the Sun'^. 
 
 Proteus. 
 
 Rhampsinitus (very rich). 
 
 ‘ Up till now Egypt prosperous, 
 then ’ 
 
 Cheops (‘plunged into all man¬ 
 ner of wickedness and built the 
 first pyramid near Memphis ’). 
 
 The period given by Josephus for the six Hyksos, the 
 last of which is now generally believed to be Joseph’s 
 Pharaoh, is 254 years, so that the whole interval from the 
 Hyksos invasion to the Exodus according to these lists 
 would be 656 years, while from Abraham’s visit to the 
 Exodus according to the text is 646 years, so that Abra¬ 
 ham’s visit would have been about ten years after the 
 Hyksos invasion, and coincident with the period assigned 
 by Herodotus to the Pyramid-builders. 
 
 Amenemhat I. (empire first 
 consolidated under him, etc.). 
 
 Usurtasen I. {set up the obelisks 
 of the temple of the Siui), 
 
 Amenemhat II. 
 
 Usurtasen II. 
 
 Usurtasen III. 
 
 Amenemhat III. (extensive irri¬ 
 gation works). 
 
 Up till now Egypt prosperous 
 and united, then 
 
 Hyksos (invaded the Delta and 
 ruled in Memphis). 
 
 APPENDIX H. 
 
 GEOMETRY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 It is not intended here to rush into a maze of speculations 
 concerning the design of these buildings, but principally to 
 
 * It is to be particularly noted that fonephus thought the Hyksos were the 
 Israelites. 
 
44 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 state one or two facts which are proven beyond a doubt. 
 The history of our knowledge concerning them may be 
 found in Professor Piazzi Smyth’s and Mr. Flinders Petrie’s 
 works on the subject. Even Newton has given us the 
 benefit of his observations (not without result), and though 
 the French academicians confessed themselves beaten and 
 unable to form any theory, there are few with a scientific 
 bent who, having given their attention to the subject, have 
 been so reticent. Curiously enough, however, it is only 
 the last investigator who has enabled us to place the 
 matter on a thoroughly sound footing. In 1880 Mr. 
 Flinders Petrie undertook to ascertain the facts concerning 
 the rock-cut corner sockets of the Great Pyramid’s casing— 
 which, since the days of the Caliphs, had remained buried 
 in the debris of the casing-stones used to build Cairo—and 
 it is to these facts we must appeal before any advance can 
 be made. 
 
 There are two primary postulates resulting from a con¬ 
 sideration of these facts. 
 
 I. The casing is of considerably later date than the main 
 body or ‘ core ’ of the building. 
 
 II . The sockets were cut solely to record a geometric 
 design, and that a complicated one. 
 
 Briefly stated, the main facts as determined by Mr. Petrie 
 are as follows: 
 
 The original Pyramid stood with a square base on a 
 horizontal pavement, to receive which the rock plateau (on 
 which the whole stands) was dressed down for a con¬ 
 siderable distance round the base. The sides of the square 
 faced the four cardinal points, but somewhat away from 
 the present north ; this orientation, however, was identical 
 with that of the second Pyramid. The casing of the first 
 Pyramid also formed a true square on the horizontal pave¬ 
 ment, dut this square faced nearer to the present north, 
 and the corners of this casing were carried down through 
 the pavement to rest at these points on carefully levelled 
 floorings cut in the rock itself, and 710 two of these levels are 
 the same. 
 
 It would probably be impossible to bring home the full 
 significance of the facts to the mind untutored in such 
 matters, without the assistance of a model. Suffice it here 
 to say that the foregoing postulates are in the one case the 
 only satisfactory, and in the other the only possible, outcome 
 of these facts. 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 45 
 
 The date of these buildings (the first three of Gizeh) has 
 for long been a difficulty. All are agreed as to the names 
 of the kings with whom they are associated, but an astro¬ 
 nomical date,* coupled with the fact that one historian 
 places the kings in a position in time different from the 
 others, has thrown a doubt on the matter, so that there 
 arose two schools, one supporting a date of about 2000 B.C. 
 (roughly), the other about 4000 B.C. (roughly). It now 
 appears how the confusion arose. 
 
 Though we may now be in a position to say definitely 
 that the main design of the principal Pyramid was a purely 
 geometric one, it does not by any means follow that the 
 details of this design will appear so readily, nor that this 
 explains all the circumstances of all these buildings. The 
 real crux now is the second Pyramid of Gizeh. The third 
 and all subsequent were mere tombic tumuli, in which the 
 external form of the first was imitated. This necropolis 
 has been at some period reproduced on the plains of 
 Teotihuacan (Mexico), where may be seen the two enor¬ 
 mous structures side by side corresponding to ‘ the pair ’ of 
 Gizeh, with a stream of diminutive imitations trailing 
 away behind them. Here we are informed that the prin¬ 
 cipal edifices were dedicated respectively to the Sun and 
 the Moon ; we may pause, therefore, before calling the 
 second of Gizeh a mere tomb—absolutely nothing is 
 known about it ; but a general consideration of the first, 
 internally and externally, renders it highly probable that 
 the following are some of the details of the design of that. 
 
 The unit of measurement in which the design was laid 
 down was set out in the base of the original building as it 
 stood on the pavement. This unit was the inch,*!* and it 
 was obtained from the base by a sexagesimal subdivision, 
 the original circuit (as we now know) having been 36,000 
 inches^ 1,000 yards, the yard being the standard which 
 has descended to us. According to the Arab traditions 
 now extant in Egypt the subdivision was performed on 
 one side by 500, which gave the ‘Royal’ (18 inches), 
 of which the ‘foot’ was two-thirds (=12 inches). The 
 Greek ‘cubit’ was obtained by the subdivision of the side 
 after the casing had been added, which gave about i8‘2 
 inches—a spurious quantity. 
 
 * First proposed by Sir John Herschel. 
 
 t The value of which as now employed by the great English-speaking races 
 only differs from the original by one in 40,000. 
 
46 
 
 ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 With this (inch) unit to work upon it becomes evident 
 from the proportions of the interior that the ‘ common 
 Egyptian cubit ^ (about 2o| inches) is another false 
 quantity, as it changes its value (intentionally) in passing 
 from one part of the building to another. It is simply the 
 expression in inches of certain numerical qualities inci¬ 
 dent to the design, but at the same time it also becomes 
 clear that such measures are sometimes treated by the 
 designer as separate entities for a specific purpose ; and we 
 are thus led to a recognition of the meaning of the ^sacred 
 cubit,’ the approximate value of which is 25‘30189 inches. 
 
 This measure is simply the expression in inches of 
 a numerical quantity of the first importance in the scheme, 
 and appears in almost every conceivable form and circum¬ 
 stance. One example will suffice : it appears to represent 
 the identity up to which the proportions of the interior 
 mainly lead, and to constitute the essence of the design of 
 the stone ‘ Coffer,’ or box, in the principal chamber. 
 Designating for the nonce the numerical value of the 
 ‘ sacred cubit ’ by the symbol C, the identity runs : 
 
 ~ length in inches of a pendulum beating mean 
 
 solar seconds at latitude C Degrees.^ 
 
 There are reasons for supposing (from the design) that 
 at some period C degrees represented the obliquity of the 
 ecliptic, though this is rather greater than Mr. Stockwell 
 allows as the possible limit by calculation. 
 
 As regards the design of the interior of the Great 
 Pyramid, only a portion of the details have so far been 
 followed out with any degree of probability. Speaking 
 generally, it may be said that those portions which were 
 intended to assist the inquirer to definite conclusions of 
 the first importance, were those over which most care was 
 spent in erection, and that structural hints are added when 
 the required assumptions pass from simple to complicated 
 relations. 
 
 Amongst the most recent discoveries is the fact that the 
 principal displacements (of passages, chambers, etc.) from a 
 central position are measiires of eccentricity in the earth or 
 its orbit. Thus the amount the entrance is placed east of 
 the centre gives the two principal ellipticities of the figure 
 of the earth—the one by the east side of the passages 
 
 * This is established within "05 degree by the ‘ Pendulum Operations. 
 Great Trig. Survey of India.’ 
 
ARCANA IN THE RUWENZORI. 
 
 47 
 
 (coincident with the east ends of the chambers), and the 
 other by the central plane of the passages—the numerical 
 quantities are repeated in the scheme of the casing, though 
 this was of later date. 
 
 The scheme of the casing sockets divides itself into two 
 portions. The first deals with the earth’s orbit, defining 
 the ‘elements’ at the epoch of the casing;* the second deals 
 with the figure and size of the earth itself. 
 
 The geodesic portion again divides itself into two parts. 
 One of these gives the principal dimensions of the earth as 
 we knozv it, the other assigns to it what are apparently 
 hypothetical proportions ; it is in these proportions of un¬ 
 certain origin that the principal interest lies, and some of 
 the figures connected with it may be quoted. 
 
 This portion of the scheme appears to regard the solid 
 earth as possessing a fluid envelope which just covers the 
 poles,t and with a simple integral value:]; to express its 
 ellipticity, which would bring the equatorial surface to about 
 11,000 feet above the sea-level as we know it. On the 
 rotating ellipsoid thus formed, a start appears to be made 
 at the point where the geographic latitude is 6o°, i.e., at 
 that which may be regarded as the first natural division of 
 the circle by its radius into six equal parts. At this point 
 the value C is a measure both of the radius vector of the 
 figure, and of the vectorial angle.§ 
 
 From the four principal dimensions laid down by the 
 corner sockets and from other proportions of the building, 
 it seems tolerably clear that the above is a portion of the 
 design, and it is also the case that in the equivalent sphere 
 of the above imaginary figure the astronomical mile of 
 1.760 yards (the origin of which is obscure like the rest of 
 the sexagesimal system) enters as a clear submultiple of 
 the circumference; II but to endeavour to translate these and 
 similar facts fully at present would be premature. 
 
 The geometric arguments which lead to the supposition 
 that the observatory from which the units were determined 
 was situated in Equatorial Africa are not suited to the pages 
 of a brief sketch of this description. 
 
 ■* Which again implies a date of about 2200 B.c. for this. 
 
 f Assumed radius 20,854,310 ft. J i?£ = 84,000. 
 
 § Equationr==A’(i— f£ + £Cos2 0); 27rr= 60x60 X 36ox4Cft.; Cos^vi^xuT- 
 
 II A = 20,910,310 ft. 
 
 Elliot Slock, 62 , Paternoster Row, London. 
 
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