Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/414

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ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

vians and the ancient European races; I will again briefly refer to a few of them:

1. They worshipped the sun, moon, and planets.

2. They believed in the immortality of the soul.

3. They believed in the resurrection of the body, and accordingly embalmed their dead.

4. The priest examined the entrails of the animals offered in sacrifice, and, like the Roman augurs, divined the future from their appearance.

5. They had an order of women vowed to celibacy—vestal virgins—nuns; and a violation of their vow was punished, in both continents, by their being buried alive.

6. They divided the year into twelve months.

7. Their enumeration was by tens; the people were divided into decades and hundreds, like the Anglo-Saxons; and the whole nation into bodies of 500, 1000, and 10,000, with a governor over each.

8. They possessed castes; and the trade of the father descended to the son, as in India.

9. They had bards and minstrels, who sung at the great festivals.

10. Their weapons were the same as those of the Old World, and made after the same pattern.

11. They drank toasts and invoked blessings.

12. They built triumphal arches for their returning heroes, and strewed the road before them with leaves and flowers.

13. They used sedan-chairs.

14. They regarded agriculture as the principal interest of the nation, and held great agricultural fairs and festivals for the interchange of the productions of the farmers.

15. The king opened the agricultural season by a great celebration, and, like the kings of Egypt, he put his hand to the plough, and ploughed the first furrow.

16. They had an order of knighthood, in which the candidate knelt before the king; his sandals were put on by a no-