These alternatives we may shortly consider, though the materials for their full discussion can be furnished only by facts to be subsequently stated. I am not aware that the first of these views has been maintained by any modern writer. Some eminent scientific men are, however, disposed to adopt such an explanation of the ancient Hindoo hymns, as well as of the cosmogony of Pythagoras, which bears evidence of this origin; and it may be an easy step to infer that the Hebrew cosmogony was derived from some similar source. Not many years ago such a supposition would have been regarded as almost insane. Then the science of antiquity was only another name for the philosophy of Greece and Rome. But in recent times we have seen Egypt disclose the ruins of a mighty civilization, more grand and massive though less elegant than that of Greece, and which had reached its acme ere Greece had received its alphabet--a civilization which, according to the Scripture history, is derived from that of the primeval Cushite empire, which extended from the plains of Shinar over all Southeastern Asia, but was crushed at its centre before the dawn of secular history. We have now little reason to doubt that Moses, when he studied the learning of Egypt, held converse with men who saw more clearly and deeply into nature's mysteries than did Thales or Pythagoras, or even Aristotle.[12] Still later the remnants of old Nineveh have been exhumed from their long sepulture, and antiquaries have been astonished by the discovery that knowledge and arts, supposed to belong exclusively to far more recent times, were in the days of the early Hebrew kings, and probably very long previously, firmly established on the banks of the Tigris. Such discoveries, when compared with hints furnished by the Scriptures, tend greatly to exalt our ideas of the state of civilization at the time when they were written; and we shall perceive, in the course of our inquiry, many additional reasons for believing that the ancient Israelites were much farther advanced in natural science than is commonly supposed.