LOOKING BACKWARD.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 3, 1 June 1903, Page 177

LOOKING BACKWARD.

By JOHN PENNELL

Illustrated by photos kinily lent by Mrs. Biss, Auckland,

fUR interest in ancient history, our desire to forecast the Future by discovering the Past, has increased during recent years by leaps and bounds. The passion for antiquities has grown upon us. Beneath our pride in our new country, and the new race sprung up upon our shores, lies the silent, subtle lowliness, the unconfessed humiliation of the National Parvenu— we can only claim our share in the mighty Past by the blood of our forefathers — by slipping the moorings that bind us to the very land of our birth.

Yet that is an unsatisfactory process. We long for some mightytangible past, some older civilization in which New Zealand and her people should have figured. The semi-real , semi-legendary tales of Maori history, plucked with infinite care and pains from the withered lips and uncertain memories of ancient tohunga, and wrinkled crone, fail to fill the void — always, they come back to a mere record of man's primal passions and achievements. We admit with ready pride and sympathy that the Maori race stood pre-eminent among savage people for intelligence and nobility —but

What of that mythical land of far Hawaiki of which his legends tell vs — could we but find it and identify it, might we not take hold of a wonderful chain of ancient history which should prove the Maori race to have been bound up with some of the oldest civilizations of the world ? A paper on the gigantic statues,

buildings, and ancient quarries of Easter Island, appeared in a recent number of the " Pall Mall Magazine." The illustrations were the first I had seen of these most interesting relics, and fully explained the evident inclination of the writer to regard Easter Island as the real " Hawaiki/' with which readers of Maori legends and folk-lore, are familiar. That this weird island, seamed with lava, half buried beneath scoria and ashes, guarded by its group of sullen extinct volcanoes and rearing its great cliff walls from the breakers, lies a thousand miles from the nearest land, and nearly four thousand miles from New Zealand, is no bar to probability. "We know how far and wide traces of Maori migrations are scattered, evidencing the wonderful love of adventure, the fearlessness which induced Maories to trust themselves along the water highways in their great canoes, bent on finding new lands in which to plant their colonies ; fleeing from some terrific volcanic convulsion, or driven forth by victorious enemies, or by the needs of sustenance.

There are graves on the banks of the Rio Negro, in Patagonia, with remains that are distinctly Polynesian : " Maori stone implements have been discovered at Cuzco, in Peru, and, even more wonderful, far inland, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, near; Santiago del Estero, in Argentina." These tremendous journeyings then of tlie Ancient Maoris, do away with any improbability in the sea voyage of close upon four thousand miles between Easter Island and New Zealand,

especially if we take into consideration the fact that the voyage could be broken at several groups of islands. In the Auckland Museum is a small stone image, some sixteen inches high, carved from a red volcanic stone entirely strange to New Zealand. A strange but quite authenticated Maori tradition relates that this stone image was brought from Hawaiki by the crew of the canoe " Arawa." It was deposited for safe keeping on the Island of Mokoia, Lake Rotorua, lest any accident should befall the sacred relic,, and the " Mana " of the tribe be thus impaired or perhaps destroyed. In the course of that trust and friendship which grew up between the Maoris and the late Sir George Grey, the little statuette of " Hoa-Haka-Nana-ia/' was first shown to him, and later on, given to him : hence its possession by the Auckland Museum. At Easter Island are abundant evidences of a red volcanic rock exactly similar to that from whiuh this little statuette is carved. It is indeed a weird and mysterious place, this island devoid of human life, devastated in turn by each of the grim extinct volcanoes which dominate its sea-washed cliffs, yet teeming with evidences of a numerous and intelligent population, possessing both ability and leisure to devote to their own conception of Art. Scattered over the island are gigantic statues, hewn from a single stone, sometimes over fifty feet in height, and wide in proportion A better idea of the enormous ■scale on which the figures are planned, may be gained by the remembrance'- that it is only the upper part of the body which is represented, in many instances only the torso. Curiously enough these statues are all so alike that they would all seem to be of the same individual. The face alone is finely finished, and is described as " A stern, determined countenance,

slightly upturned, with a contemptuous, scornful expression. The eyes are deeply sunk close under massive brows, the ears are long enough to be frequently ornamented with carving." The top of the head is flat, and was capped with a large cylinder of red volcanic stone, long since displaced by the ravages of time, or some of those vfolent volcanic convulsions which have devastated the island, and in all probability buried half of it beneath the ocean. For, since over five hundred more or less perfect images have been counted on the island, some of them weighing something like 250 tons, it is safe to assume an enormous population, whose primitive jade chisels, and whose unlimited labour, achieved these strange memorials. Scarcely less wonderful are the great platforms upon which these gigantic statues once stood, and on which the early navigators found them — the silent evidences of vanished people — gazing Sphinx-like, from a desolate land, over a lonely ocean. These platforms are built of huge stones with well-dressed faces, some of them weighing as much as Jive tons, without either mortar or cement, and they are of varying sizes. Behind the front elevation, which is sometimes twenty-four feet in height, runs a parallel wall of rougher workmanship, and between the two are rough cross walls dividing the space into small chambers. When the platforms were roofed with their tons of flat overlapping stones, there was no means of egress from these little chambers, in which, however, human bones have frequently been found. Thus we may conclude that they were death chambers ; designed as mortuary chapels for the chiefs or priests, or more probable still, as tombs for living victims, immured here as sacrifices to propitiate the personality whose huge image in all its monotonous duplication, should presently be hoisted on to the platform where a number already stood,

eqiii-distant, along the platform which in some instances was 500 feet in length.

In addition to the pictorial signs or writings which are inscribed on the flattened back of the head and shoulders of these images, and which signs, by the way, are different in every instance, despite the remarkable similarity of the features, there are, in various parts of the island, great masses of similarly sculptured rock. The illustrations in these pages are reproductions from a series of photos kindly lent for the purpose.

On the cliffs near the southern end of the Island, there are a number of these picture ciphers, to whose meaning, alas ! the key is wanting. On this desolate land in which nothing larger than a good sized rat now exists, are pictorial records cf strange birds, fishes, " an animal with a cat-like head, which might be a wide representation of the South American Puma, as well us the crude outlines of human faces, canoes, paddles, fishes and hieroglyphics. Nor does this exhaust the wonders of the Island. Among its antiquities are the remains of numerous dwellings which, being solidly built of stone with walls often ten feet thick, have withstood the ravages of time and weather. On the northern side of the Island quite; a village of these curious ruins exists, and in such excellent preservation that one can speak with certainty of the house plan of their ancient architects. Of oval shape, rarely more than five feet in height, these dwellings are divided into several rooms of about twelve by six. The tiny doorway of about two feet sq.uare, is the sole means of entrance, and the tunnel-like passages connecting the chambers, are of the same dimensions as the doorway. The floors are of beaten earth and " the walls of the rooms lined with smooth slabs of basalt, covered with quaint hieroglyphics, and occasionally with modern drawings with red and white clay. In each of the dwellings there is a ro-

cess in the wall, that appears tohave been designed for the reception of the household valuables." Roofed with great slabs of basaltic stone, which overlap in rows until they meet, and are then covered with earth, these buildings can scarcely be regarded ,as mere ordinary dwellings. Captain Barclay suggests that they were most probably used as places of refuge in time of war, or as shelters during the violent volcanic outbursts of which the whole Island bears evidence. The style of workmanship pointsto the builders being identical with the statue-makers, one of whose well-shaped jade chisels, was found by an officer of H.M.S./' Topaze, "' among chips surrounding a hugestatue, partly finished, at tilequarry, but not yet detached from its parent rock. Now, concerning further records of the former inhabitants of Easter Island, Captain Barclay speaks of a number of similar tablets having been found within these ancient dwellings. Clear and deeply-in-cised carvings, pictographs and hieroglyphics, similar to those .>n the statues and rocks, covered these tablets, of whose ultimate fate, however, he appears ignorant. He also refers to the statement often made that the earliest Missionaries to New Zealand found the Maoris in possession of similar incised stones or tablets, records of a former generation and an earlier home. These tablets, it is said, some ignorant and misguided Missionary, look' ing on them as a species of Fetish, persuaded his new converts to destroy, and thereby prove their zeal ! However this may be, a sufficiently strong link of coincidence remains to bind the red volcanic stone of the little image of " Hoa-haka-Nana-ia," to the fallen cylindrical head ornaments which once crowned the huge statues of Easter Island : and to link the legends of violent and supernatural convulsions of sea and land which are so inwoven with the Mnori legends of

far Hawaiki, with the terrific catastrophies which have rendered the once busy and populous Easter Island a desolate and most pathetic wilderness.

Our interest in the slowly accumulating knowledge of ancient civilization grows with what it feeds on — our plea to establish a ' little link of our own with the mighty Past is but a detail.

Still " Looking Backwards/" we may turn to the pictured rocks of Californian Canons, the remains of those numerous earthworks extending in a line of route as far as Lake Superior— and until recently looked upon as traces of a people whom we had dubbed " Mound-Builders "— and the ruins of great cities in Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala and other parts of Central America. Archaeologists place the date of these Central American occupations at about 10,000 years ago ; considering that at that time the slowly melting boreal ice-sheet, reached as far South as the site of the present St. Louis and Philadelphia. Naturally then, humanity clustered about the equatorial regions, and only spread Northward as the glaciers slowly receded at the rate of twelve miles in a hundred years. If only we were able to decipher with any certainty the records left by these ancient peoples, we should possess, in the painted rocks and pictographs which, to the number of 3000, are " scattered over the country from Massachusetts to the Kern river in California, and from the Florida Cape to the Moose river in Manitoba/ A complete account of their migrations, wars, and perhaps the history of those strange cataclysms and convulsions of nature which determined their movements and history.

Many things, relics, mortuary customs, primitive, industrial and mechanical arts which have remained unbroken through ages, point to the American Indian of to-day as the descendants of these ancient peoples who, having attained a high state of civilization in the

favourable climatic and other conditions of the Equatorial regions, degenerated and deteriorated in their fatal struggle with the merciless processes of nature, their constant hampering by the unfriendly hordes which from century to century poured in upon them, and from many other causes.

In the same way that the Indian, or " Indigenes " of to-day, are linked to the city builders of Central America with their barbaric pomp and Sun worship, their temples and sacrifices of 10,000 years ago ; so these in their turn may be associated with the ancient civilization of Egypt and Asia. The cliff-dwellers of Walpi, Arizona, are considered to have been contemporaneous with ancient Babylon. And it has been remarked by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, that there are certain well-defined identities between the hieroglyphics of the American inscriptions, and those of Egypt and the East.

It is interesting to note that the pictographs on those weird and inaccessible rock cliffs and walls of Canons, " were made from canoes when the permanent height of the water at all points was • twenty-five feet higher than now. This is illustrated at Red Rock on Lake Superior, the level of all the great lakes being at one time in the past, that much higher than at present.''

To turn, then, from the traces of ancient civilization in America to recent discoveries in Egypt, we shall find much to interest us.

A great Egyptologist made a statement which at the time electrified the world : Egypt/ he said, " had 2000 years, start, before Europe awoke." But now we know that "at least 4000 years before our era, the Egyptians were accomplished architects and builders, and possessed ripe astronomical knowledge." The world has never seen such a triumph of architecture as the great Pyramid, nor is there any other instance of scientific principles applied so skilfully to the treatment of

absolutely enormous masses, which are totally devoid of decoration. But later on in the Twelfth Dynasty when the people had lost the desire for such vast structures, as the pyramids, and instead of monumental tombs being the prerogative •of Kings, every great man had his tomb ; decorative art began to assert its attractiveness. The Eock tombs at Beni Hassan are the best, preserved of this date (about 2778 8.C.) and here we find the tomb of Ameny, who was a great Viceroy under King Usertesen I. On the rock walls of the Viceroy's tomb the following statement is proudly made. "In years of famine I made the people live, I ploughed the fields for them, there was not a hungry man in the land. . . . When the Nile rose, producing wheat and barley and all things, arrears were not •exacted." The words are almost the samei as in Lord Cromer's 'Reports of the Irrigation Department ■during late years of " Bad Niles."

Under what widely different circumstances does history repeat itsself !

This was indeed the Golden Age of Egypt. Under the Twelbh Dynasty not only did decorative art advance in architecture, but " ornamental woven fabrics came into use/ and personal jewellery and scarabs were much worn by all ■classes, while literature was cultivated and fostered. Dr. Petrie has published some of these ancient romances under the title of "Egyptian Tales," and the same great authority has rescued for us some fragments of the poetry of the time. One, a hymn of praise to Usertesen 111., one of the oldest poems in the world, was written nearly two thousand years before " the sweet singer of Israel " penned his immortal verse. * * The writer of a recent paper in the " Monthly Review " then goes on to say, " Not only was this the Golden Age of Art and Literature, but the Kings seem to have really cared for their people : rich and poor alike received encouragement and protec-

tion. These beneficent rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty were also great Irrigation Engineers. The development of the Fayoam pumice, an oasis won from the desert, was their work, and possibly the great canal, two hundred miles long, which still performs its useful office, was made by them/ The district of Fayoum, still one of the most fertile parts of Upper Egypt, was converted by the ancient irrigation works into a new province, thus forming an outlet for the overflowing population of Egypt. This canal called by the Arabs " Bahr Yusuf," or " Water of Joseph/ was probably repaired by the Hebrew Viceroy, but it was certainly in existence more than 1500 years before his time.

Usertesen 1., is one of those Kings of the Twelfth Dynasty of whom many memorials have been discovered, even to the finding of his gold signet ring, as fresh and perfect as the day it was finished for its royal wearer, whose beneficent reign was 2778 B.C. It was this king who either founded or restored the great temple of the University of Heliopolis— called " On," in the Bible— of which the Rev. Haskett Smith gave such a delightful account and illustrations in his lectures in New Zealand some years ago. According to Dr. Petrie there is an ancient leathern roll, which narrates how the King himself held the cord in laying out the foundations. It was here that Moses learnt all the wisdom of the Egyptians ; it was here that Plato studied for some time, showing that the teaching work of the great University had been carried on unbroken through all these years. " Every vestige of the temple buildings .has long disappeared, the stone having, been carried off to build Eoman Babylon, Arab Tostat, or modern Cairo. Nought remains of the once great University town save the Obelisk of Usertesen I. still bearing his name and titles in excellent carved relief. Its proportions are beautiful, and the great shaft of

seventy feet, is cut in one solid block. It is the oldest obelisk, and at the same time, the most ancient inscribed royal monument in the world. It was perfect, with its golden Apex flashing in the Sun, in 1200 A.D., as described by El Latig, the Arab Chronicler." Many examples of personal trinkets and splendidly decorated jewellery belonging to later Kings of this Dynasty have been discovered. For example there are Gold Pectorals of Usertesen 111., and Amersemhat 111., in high relief, and inlaid with sapphire., torquoise, cornelian, and lapis lazuli. But of the earlier period of Usertesen I. with the exception of the king's signet ring already mentioned, and discovered only last year, only one other find has been made. This, however, was a most interesting as well as important one, and a thousand dreams of long dead romance weave themselves about its treasures. In 1894, in the

royal cemetery at Dahshur whose hundreds of tombs had been violated and plundered again and again, De Morgan found two which had escaped robbery. They were the tombs of two young princesses of the Twelfth Dynasty, and the contents of their jewel caskets, valued at £70,000, shew how wealthy and how lavish must have, been their Court ! " The workmanship of these articles," says the writer from whom I quote, "is superb. They show the most refined taste, inlaid precious stones being so skillfully inserted, that at first sight the colors seem to be enamel work/ With which fragment of antiquity 1 had better, perhaps, let the veil of the past fall once more, its mysterious folds shutting off a past so brilliant, so full of achievement, and withal so sad in the lesson of " Sic transit gloria Mundi/' that we stand humbled before the tremendous reality of that inexorable past.

Yol. VIII.— No. 3 —IS.