Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
feet, 1 and that the sharp pyramidal peak—which is 12,600 yeards or nearly 7¼ miles
distant from it in a straight line—is nearly 13,000 feet above sea-level. The two peaks
are, therefore, nearly far
enough apart to be called
separate mountains. In
Kitto’s Pic. Bible we have
one of the truest sketches I
have seen of the two mountains,
and from it I have
carefully drawn the small
skeleton section seen in this
fig.156. The characters of
the two hills are very dis-
tinct, the one being clearly the
Adām or Phallus, and the
Fig. 156.—THE PHALLUS AND OMPHE, OR ARKITE IDEAS IN
MOUNTAINS AND ARCHITECTURE..
other the Adāma, womb, Umba, Amba, or Omphe or Creation; and between these
two hills, not only many ancient races, but Jews and Christians—men well versed in
Sivaik lore—believe the Ark of Life rested. The ideas seen in the mountains, more
than any true history connected with them, is I think, the reason which
made them, and others of like shape, so holy. The same cause led the
cognate races to select Athens as their capital, and to build on and around the
Palatine and Capit-o-line hills, the city known to us as ROMA, but the hills are now so
mutilated, flattened, and built upon, as almost to obliterate the conical and ovate forms
which first led to their selection. If the streets of lower Rome are raised as we know
they have been, some 15 or 18 feet over the Rome of the Empire, then we may be certain
that all the prominent points of her hills—which are formed of softish materials—have
been cut down or rounded off, to more than twice this extent. 2 We have plenty of
proof still left, that the particular conformation of the ground, as conveying to the
phallo-solar worshippers ideas of their god or goddess, or of creation generally, led them
first to locate themselvcs at the spot where the Tiber bent towards the Palatine. This
will become clearer when we show what the faiths and predilections of the earliest
settlers were, amongst whom I can trace no historical Romulus or Remus, though there
is much meaning in these names.
The Greek Akro-polis and its adjoining conical hill, especially the latter, must also
have been much more marked in early days, for on the Cone, which is soft (except in
the centre) have stood at various periods Fire-Altars, Temples, Halls of Legislation and
Justice, etc. I give above an outline of the most prominent features of Athens from
the frontispiece of Smith’s Student’s History of Greece, and a sketch made by myself
in 1857. The Greeks of course had an Ala-lat as well as their forefathrs of Bactrian,
1 Anc. Mons., III.3.
2 A correspondent from Rome (Lon. Times, Aug.
12th, 1875), says that an accumulation of 30 metres
has been found over the Collina, near which erring
357
Vestal Virgins were immured alive, and that cuttings
from the Quirinales and Viminal hills have all but
filled up the Vallies.