Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
466/530 page 466
![of the nineteenth century have sought for and demanded, “a Chris- tian State, Christian national economy, Christian astronomy,” etc., actually existed in ancient Egypt. Goethe (.Farbenlehre, Zur Geschichte der Urzeit) : “Stationary nations handle their technics with religion.” But it is interesting that in Pliny’s report, five hundred years after Herodotus, the number 365 already appears instead of 360, a silent correction of the legend, which at the same time confirms the above explanation. The two Egyptian measures, called hinn and kiti, were also each divided into 360 parts (Lepsius in the Zeitschrift fur ZEgvftische Sfrache, p. 109, 1865), a mystico-religious arrangement, as the subdivisions were too small for practical use. The art of weaving, where two opposite movements by intercrossing beget a third thing, afforded to the mythic phantasy of the oldest times a picture of two natural powers, one conceptive, the other generative, and their fruitful combination. Note 45, page 134. If the Colchian linen had come by way of the Lydian capital Sardis, the adjective must rather have been Sapdirjvov, 2apdii]vu;6v. As Herodotus says that the Colchians and Egyptians wove in the same manner, Kara ravra, was there in Colchis also a fabric whose threads consisted of 360 finer fibres, and which was called Sardonic after the Lydian and universally Iranic word aapdig, a year? Like Herodotus, a modern naturalist also brings Egyptian and Colchian flax into connexion with each other. Unger (Botanische Streifziige auf dem Gebiet der Kulturgeschichte, Wiener Sitzungsberichte, vol. xxxviii. p. 130) says : “The flax-plant is not indigenous in Egypt, but was introduced there, and indeed, to judge by the nature of the plant, from far more northern lands, probably from Colchis.” Surely not straight from Colchis, but by way of Babylon. Note 46, page 143. A passage in the Odyssey (10, 156) gives us a distinct picture of how the primitive European world procured ropes during the forest-epoch. Ulysses has killed an unusually large stag on Circe’s island, and the question is, how to carry the booty to his companions on the shore. He gathers branches and twigs, put-rag re Xvyovg re, spins them into a rope a fathom long, well twisted at both ends, 7re7apa tvarpapeg aiMportpujQev, with which he ties the animal’s feet together, hangs the latter round his neck, and so carries it down to the black ship. Compare with this the following description of Nesselmann, in his Dictionary of the Lithuanian language, p. 180: “ Kardclus or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0466.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
