who reckoned the length of the tropical year within three minutes
of the true time; nor, indeed, were they wrong at all, if a
tradition mentioned by Plutarch be correct."[64]
[64] Drummond, On the Zodiacs, p. 36.
Bailly, Sir W. Jones, Higgins, and Ledwich, as well as many
modern writers, agree in the conclusion that the Indians, the
Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Chinese were simply the
depositaries, not the inventors, of science. The spirit of
inquiry which in later times is directing attention to the almost
buried past is revealing the fact that not merely the germs
whence our present civilization has been developed descended to
us from the dim ages of antiquity, but that a great number of the
actual benefits which go to make up our present state of material
progress have come to us from prehistoric times. The art of
writing, of navigation (including the use of the compass), the
working of metals, astronomy, the telescope, gunpowder,
mathematics, democracy, building, weaving, dyeing, and many of
the appliances of civilized life, have been appropriated by later
ages with no acknowledgment of the source whence they were
derived. When Pythagoras exhibited to the Greeks some beautiful
specimens of ancient architecture which he had brought from Egypt
and Babylon, they simply claimed them as their own, giving no
credit to the people who originated them; and subsequent ages,
copying their example, have refused to acknowledge that anything
of value had been achieved prior to the first Greek Olympiad.
When Philip of Macedon opened the gold mines of Thrace, a country
in which it will be remembered the worship of the Great Mother
Cybele was indigenous, he found that they had been previously
worked "at great expense and with great ingenuity by a people
well versed in mechanics, of whom no monuments whatever are
extant."
The decorations on the breasts of some of the oldest mummies show
that the early Egyptians understood the art of making glass. It
is now known that the lens as a magnifying instrument was in use
among them. Attention has been drawn to the fact that the
astronomical observations of the ancients would have been
impossible without the aid of the telescope. Diodorus Siculus
says there was an island west of the Celtae in which the Druids
brought the sun and moon near them. An instrument has recently
been found in the sands of the Nile, the construction of which
