Who were the builders of the everlasting pyramids, catacombs, and sculptors of the sphinxes? Were they Europeans or Caucasians, Asiatics or Mongolians? Will it be at once conceded that the authors of the symbolic mythology and hieroglyphic science are identical? Upon this point there is but one opinion. The inventors or authors of the one were the builders or architects of the other.
Among what race of men, and what country of the globe, do we find traces of these singular productions, but the African and Africa? None whatever. It is in Africa the pyramids, sphinxes, and catacombs are found; here the hieroglyphics still remain. Among the living Africans traces of their beautiful philosophy and symbolic mythology still exist. In the interior their architecture and hieroglyphics are still the subjects of their art. Through all time the arts of a people have been among the clearest evidences of identity.
Asia has her several peculiar orders of architecture, the Chinese and Japan being identical; that among the Hindoos the type of the others. Europe has her Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, with Gothic, and other modifications of modern orders.
If the originators and builders of the pyramids and sphinxes had been Asiatics, is it not certain that the same architecture would have been found in Asia? of Europeans, in Europe? There is nothing more certain than it would; and the entire absence of all traces of the purely African architecture, arts, and symbolic religion and mythology among other races and in other countries than the Africans and Africa, makes it simply preposterous for the white race to claim these as productions of their own.
Would the Asiatic or the European, who had erected the architectural monuments in Africa, have lost their arts? Would they not have originated another as they returned to their original homes? Do the fixed, especially original, arts of a people leave them simply by a change of countries? Certainly not; as among the greatest advantages to be gained by emigration is the arts that are taken by the people to a country. And had the architectures of Africa been an importation, originated by or among any other people than themselves, is it not one of the most striking known to history by ages of experience, that it would have been found in some other country among the descendants of the originators and authors, and not been found in Africa alone, and peculiar to the African race? Were they Persians who had succeeded by conquest in Africa? Were they Greeks under Alexander? Were they Greeks and Romans who made their advent into Egypt with Antony? or those who fled in dismay under Pompey, after the famous defeat of Pharsalia? or Jews under tetrarch governments? Certainly not; as all of them, from the Persian to the Jewish advent, found these arts and sciences there. And is it not known to history that Egypt was the “cradle of the earliest civilization,” propagating the arts and sciences, when the Grecians were an uncivilized people, covering their persons with skins and clothing, anterior to the existence of the she-wolf with Romulus the founder of Rome?