or from one extremity of the civilized world to the other.  It is seen in the treatment of the ash Yggdrasill of the Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of the Buddhists.  The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for the oval or sphere above it.  With the Gnostics, who occupied the debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized death as well as life.  In every heathen mythology it was the universal emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, by whatsoever name she was addressed—­whether as Mylitta, Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Mata, or Venus; and the several eminences consecrated to her worship were, like those upon which Jupiter was originally adored, of a conical or pyramidal shape.  This, too, is the ordinary form of the altars dedicated to the Assyrian god of fertility.  In exceptional instances the cone is introduced upon one or the other of the sides, or is distinguishable in the always accompanying mystical tree.” (Edinburgh Review, July, 1870.)

If the reader will again turn to page 104 of this work he will see that the tree appears on the top of the pyramid or mountain in both the Aztec representations of Aztlan, the original island-home of the Central American races.

The writer just quoted believes that Mr. Faber is correct in his opinion that the pyramid is a transcript of the sacred mountain which stood in the midst of Eden, the Olympus of Atlantis.  He adds: 

“Thomas Maurice, who is no mean authority, held the same view.  He conceived the use to which pyramids in particular were anciently applied to have been threefold-namely, as tombs, temples, and observatories; and this view he labors to establish in the third volume of his ’Indian Antiquities.’  Now, whatever may be their actual date, or with whatsoever people they may have originated, whether in Africa or Asia, in the lower valley of the Nile or in the plains of Chaldea, the pyramids of Egypt were unquestionably destined to very opposite purposes.  According, to Herodotus, they were introduced by the Hyksos; and Proclus, the Platonic philosopher, connects them with the science of astronomy—­a science which, he adds, the Egyptians derived from the Chaldeans.  Hence we may reasonably infer that they served as well for temples for planetary worship as for observatories.  Subsequently to the descent of the shepherds, their hallowed precincts were invaded by royalty, from motives of pride and superstition; and the principal chamber in each was used as tombs.”

The pyramidal imitations, dear to the hearts of colonists of the sacred mountain upon which their gods dwelt, was devoted, as perhaps the mountain itself was, to sun and fire worship.  The same writer says: