This line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the
despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the
Rosetta stone: [Figure 1]
After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:
Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all
the temples, this upon pain of death.
That was the twenty-forth translation that had been
furnished by scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a
time. Then doubts began to assail it and undermine it, and the
scholars resumed their labors. Three years of patient work
produced eleven new translations; among them, this, by
Gr:unfeldt, was received with considerable favor:
The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense;
this upon pain of death.
But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by
the learned world with yet greater favor:
The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people,
and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.
Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely
varying renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing.
But now, at last, came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the
scholars, with a translation which was immediately and
universally recognized as being the correct version, and his name
became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that even the
children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the
achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental
political event of that same year--the flight from Elba--was able
to smother it to silence. Rawlinson's version reads as follows:
Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but
turn and follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's
peace, and soften for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of
death.
Here is another difficult text: [Figure 2]
It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of
the language which has perished from the knowledge of all men
twenty-five hundred years before the Christian era.
Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of
pictures, upon our crags and boulders. It has taken our most
gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the
meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there are still two little
lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon the Dighton
Rocks which they have not succeeds in interpreting to their
satisfaction. These: [Figure 3]
The suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they
would fill a book.
Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries;
it is only when we set out to discover the secret of God that our
difficulties disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman
times it was the custom of the Deity to try to conceal His
intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and
hopefully continued century after century, although the attempted
concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance. The
augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read
coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These
strange and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our
admiration. Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery
instantly. If the Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it
would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for
them. Entrails have gone out, now--entrails and dreams. It was
at last found out that as hiding-places for the divine intentions
they were inadequate.
A part of the wall of Valletri in former times been struck
with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native
of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power.--
BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p. 138.
"Some time or other." It looks indefinite, but no matter,
it happened, all the same; one needed only to wait, and be
patient, and keep watch, then he would find out that the thunder-
stroke had Caesar Augustus in mind, and had come to give notice.
There were other advance-advertisements. One of them
appeared just before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most
poetic and touching and romantic in its feelings and aspects.
It was a dream. It was dreamed by Caesar Augustus's mother,
and interpreted at the usual rates:
Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched
to the stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven
and earth.--SUETONIUS, p. 139.
That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no
difficulties, but it would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion
fourteen years to make sure of what it meant, because they would
have been surprised and dizzy. It would have been too late to be
valuable, then, and the bill for service would have been barred
by the statute of limitation.
In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not
complete until he had taken a theological course at the seminary
and learned how to translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's
education received this final polish. All through his life,
whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved the interiors and
kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by exercising upon
those interiors the arts of augury.
In his first consulship, while he was observing the
auguries, twelve vultures presented themselves, as they had done
to Romulus. And when he offered sacrifice, the livers of all
the victims were folded inward in the lower part; a circumstance
which was regarded by those present who had skill in things of
that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great and wonderful
fortune.--SUETONIUS, p. 141.
"Indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was
justified, if the livers were really turned that way. In those
days chicken livers were strangely and delicately sensitive to
coming events, no matter how far off they might be; and they
could never keep still, but would curl and squirm like that,
particularly when vultures came and showed interest in that
approaching great event and in breakfast.
[=]
II
We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years,
which brings us down to enlightened Christian times and the
troubled days of King Stephen of England. The augur has had his
day and has been long ago forgotten; the priest had fallen heir
to his trade.
King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous
person, comes flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from
Henry's daughter. He accomplished his crime, and Henry of
Huntington, a priest of high degree, mourns over it in his
Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated Stephen:
"wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the same judgment
which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the great
priest: he died with a year."
Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait;
not so the Archbishop, apparently.
The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire,
and rapine spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress,
horror, and woe rose in every quarter.
That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable
conditions continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as
comfortably as any man ever did, and was honorably buried. It
makes one pity the poor Archbishop, and with that he, too, could
have been let off as leniently. How did Henry of Huntington know
that the Archbishop was sent to his grave by judgment of God for
consecrating Stephen? He does not explain. Neither does he
explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than he was
entitled to, while the aged King Henry, his predecessor, who had
ruled England thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded
satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances
most distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. His
was probably the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in
history. There is not a detail about it that is attractive. It
seems to have been just the funeral for Stephen, and even at this
far-distant day it is matter of just regret that by an
indiscretion the wrong man got it.
Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why
it was done, and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with
admiration; but when a man has earned punishment, and escapes, he
does not explain. He is evidently puzzled, but he does not say
anything. I think it is often apparent that he is pained by
these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to show it.
When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so marked
that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed
criticism. However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel
contented with the way things go--his book is full of them.
King David of Scotland . . . under color of religion caused
his followers to deal most barbarously with the English. They
ripped open women, tossed children on the points of spears,
butchered priests at the altars, and, cutting off the heads from
the images on crucifixes, placed them on the bodies of the slain,
while in exchange they fixed on the crucifixes the heads of their
victims. Wherever the Scots came, there was the same scene of
horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men lamenting, amid the
groans of the dying and the despair of the living.
But the English got the victory.
Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow,
and all his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was
offended at them and their strength was rent like a cobweb.
Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful
butcheries? No, for that was the common custom on both sides,
and not open to criticism. Then was it for doing the butcheries
"under cover of religion"? No, that was not it; religious
feeling was often expressed in that fervent way all through those
old centuries. The truth is, He was not offended at "them" at all;
He was only offended at their king, who had been false to an oath.
Then why did not He put the punishment upon the king instead of
upon "them"? It is a difficult question. One can see by the
Chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon
the wrong person, but Henry of Huntington does not explain why.
Here is one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction
in it is not hidden:
In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in
a remarkable manner; for two of the nobles who had converted
monasteries into fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin
being the same, met with a similar punishment. Robert Marmion
was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the other. Robert Marmion,
issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under the walls of the
monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was surrounded
by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to death
everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among
his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier.
He made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days,
under excommunication. See here the like judgment of God,
memorable through all ages!
The exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the
men, for they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in
white-hot fire and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not
known more than three men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime,
whom I would rejoice to see writhing in those fires for even a
year, let alone forever. I believe I would relent before the
year was up, and get them out if I could. I think that in
the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not harmed me,
should come crying and pleading, I couldn't stand it; I know I
should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a
monastery. Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and
Marmion for nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I
couldn't do it, I know I couldn't. I am soft and gentle in my
nature, and I should have forgiven them seventy-and-seven times,
long ago. And I think God has; but this is only an opinion,
and not authoritative, like Henry of Huntington's interpretations.
I could learn to interpret, but I have never tried; I get so
little time.
All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the
intentions of God, and with the reasons for his intentions.
Sometimes--very often, in fact--the act follows the intention
after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how Henry
could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention out of a
hundred and get the thing right every time when there was such
abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man
offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty
years later; meantime he was committed a million other crimes:
no matter, Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms.
Worms were generally used in those days for the slaying of
particularly wicked people. This has gone out, now, but in old
times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case of "wrath."
For instance:
. . . the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's
perfidy, a worm grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its
way through his intestines fattened on the abandoned man till,
tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in
bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end.
--(P. 400.)
It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only
know it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath.
Some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is
much doubt.
However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been
due years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once;
he had committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been
permitted--under disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery
had not been forgotten nor forgiven, and the worm came at last.
Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to
be gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts,
or was he only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that
he is only a guesser, and not a good one. The divine wisdom
must surely be of the better quality than he makes it out to be.
Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the
Lord's purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by
certain perfectly trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for
the information of His familiars, that the end of the world was
. . . about to come. But as this end of the world draws
near many things are at hand which have not before happened, as
changes in the air, terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out
of the common order of the seasons, wars, famines, pestilences,
earthquakes in various places; all which will not happen in our
days, but after our days all will come to pass.
Still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before
that we may be careful for our souls and be found prepared
to meet the impending judgment."
That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no
improvement on the work of the Roman augurs.
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