PREHISTORIC MASONRY

CHAPTER XIII
THE LEGEND OF EUCLID
HAING disposed of the establishment of Masonry in Babylon, the Legend of the Craft next proceeds by a rapid transition to narrate the history of its introduction into Egypt. This Egyptian episode, which in reference to the principal action in it has been called the "Legend of Euclid," is found in all the old manuscripts.
It forms the opening feature of the Halliwell poem, being in that document the beginning of the history of Masonry; it is told with circumstantial minuteness in the Cooke MS., and is apparently copied from that into all the later manuscripts, where the important details are essentially the same, although we find a few circumstances related in some which are omitted in others.

Divesting the narrative of the archaic language of the manuscripts, the legend may be given as follows: Once on a time, to use the story-teller's style, Abraham and his wife went to Egypt. Now Abraham was very learned in all the seven arts and sciences, and was accompanied by Euclid, who was his scholar, and to whom he had imparted his knowledge. At that time the lords or rich men of Egypt were in sore distress, because having a very numerous progeny of sons, for whom they could find no occupation, they knew not how they could obtain for them a livelihood.In this strait they held a council and made proclamation that if any one could suggest a remedy, he should lay his plans before them, when he should be suitably rewarded.

Upon this Euclid presented himself and offered to supply these sons with an honest means of living, by teaching them the science of Geometry, provided they should be placed by their fathers under his exclusive control, so that he might have the power of ruling them according to the laws of the Craft. To this proposition the Egyptian nobles gladly consented, and granted Euclid all the power that he had asked, and secured the grant to him by a sealed commission. Euclid then instructed them in the practical part of Geometry, and taught them how to erect churches, castles, towers, and all other kinds of buildings in stone. He also gave them a code of laws for their government. Thus did Euclid found in the land of Egypt the science which he named Geometry, but which has ever since been called Masonry.I have said that while all the manuscripts agree in the prominent circumstances of this legend, there are in some of them a few discrepancies as to some of the minor details.

Thus the Halliwell poem makes no allusion to Abraham, but imputes the founding of Masonry to Euclid alone, and it will be remembered that the title of that poem is, "The Constitutions of the art of Geometry according to Euclid." The Cooke MS. is far more full in details than either the Halliwell poem or the manuscripts that succeeded it. It says that Abraham taught Geometry to the Egyptians, and that Euclid was his scholar. But a few lines after, quoting St. Isidore as its authority, it says that Euclid was one of the first founders of Geometry, and that in his time there was an inundation of the Nile, and he taught them to make dykes and walls to restrain the water, and measured the land by means of Geometry, and divided it among the inhabitants, so that every man could enclose his own property with ditches and walls. In consequence of this the land became fertile, and the population increased to such a degree, that there was found a difficulty in finding for all employment that would enable them to live. Whereupon the nobles gave the government of their children to Euclid, who taught them the art of Geometry, so called because he had with its aid measured the land, (1) when he built the walls and ditches to separate each one's possession.

The needles repetitions and confusion of details in the Cooke MS. show that the author had derived the information on which he constructed his legend from various sources - partly from the authority of St. Isidore, as he is quoted in Higden's Polychronicon, and partly from the tradition of the Craft. (1) Geometry from the Greek ge land and metron measure.

The later manuscripts have copied the details of the Legend as contained in the Cooke codex, but with many omissions, so as to give it the form in which it was known to the Craft in the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus the Dowland MS., whose date is supposed to be about 1550, gives the story almost exactly as it is in the Halliwell poem, except that it adds Abraham and Sarah as dramatis persona, making it in this respect coincide with the Cooke MS., and probably with the form of the original Legend. In this it is followed by the York, No. 1 (1600), the Grand Lodge (1632), the Sloane (1646), the Lodge of Hope (1680), the Alnwick (1701), and even the Papworth MS., as late as 1714.The Landsdowne MS. (1560), and the Antiquity (1686), have the Legend in a very imperfect form, and either did not copy or greatly curtailed the Dowland MS., as they but slightly refer to Egypt and to Euclid, and not at all to Abraham.

As to the reputation for great learning which the legendists have given to Abraham, although the Bible dwells only on his piety, they found their authority in Josephus, as well as in Isidore. Josephus says that among the Egyptians he was esteemed as a very wise man, and that besides reforming their customs, he taught them arithmetic and astronomy. It is evident, as has been already noticed, that the Legend of the Craft has been indebted for much of its materials to the Antiquities of Josephus, and the Etymologies of St. Isidore, and the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden - the first two at second hand, in all probability through the citations of those works which are mdde in the third. The Krause MS., which is said to have been translated from the English into the Latin, and afterward into German, and published by Dr. Krause, (1) gives the Legend in an entirely different form.

Notwithstanding that I have declared my belief that this document is spurious with a date of not earlier than the second decade, or more probably toward the middle of the 18th century, yet, as an indication of the growth and the change of the Legend at that period, it will be worth while to compare its form with that in the (1) "Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden," iii., 59 - 113. older manuscripts, at least so far as relates to the Egyptian episode, which is in the following words:
"Abraham was skilled in all the sciences and continued to teach them to the sons of the freeborn, whence afterwards came the many learned priests and mathematicians who were known by the name of the Chaldean Magi. Afterwards, Abraham continued to propagate these sciences and arts when he came to Egypt, and found there, especially in Hermes, so apt a scholar, that the latter was at length called the Trismegistus of the sciences, for he was at the same time priest and natural philosopher in Egypt; and through him and a scholar of his the Egyptians received the first good laws and all the sciences in which Abraham had instructed him. Afterwards Euclid collected the principal sciences and called them Geometry. But the Greeks and Romans called them altogether Architecture.

"But in consequence of the confusion of languages, the laws and arts and sciences could not formerly be propagated until the people had learned to make comprehensible by signs that which they could not understand by words. Wherefore, Mizraim, the son of Cham, brought the custom of making himself understood by signs with him into Egypt, when he colonized a valley of the Nile. This art was afterwards extended into all distant lands, but only the signs that are given by the hands have remained in architecture; for the signs by figures are as yet known to but few.
"In Egypt the overflowings of the Nile afforded an opportunity to use the art of measurement, which had been introduced by Mizraim, and to build bridges and walls as a protection against the water. They used burnt stone and wood and earth for these purposes. Therefore when the heathen kings had become acquainted with this, they were compelled to prepare stone and lime and bricks and there-with to erect buildings, by which, through God's will, however, they became only the more expeienced artists and were so celebrated that their art spread as far as Persia."
If the reader compares this legend of the Krause manuscript with that which is given by Dr. Anderson in the first edition of his Constitutions, he will be constrained to admit that both documents are derived from the same source, or that one of them is an abridged or an expository copy of the other. It is evident that the statement in Anderson is merely a synopsis of that more detailed narrative contained in the Krause Legend, or that it is an expansion of the statement in the first edition of the Constitutions. If the Krause MS. was written before Anderson compiled his history, it could not have been long anterior, and must have been composed between 1714, the date of the Papworth MS., which contains the Legend in its mediaeval form, and 1723, when Anderson published his work.

Within this period the Masons sought to modify the old Legend of the Craft, so as to deprive it of its apparent absurdities, and to omit its anachronisms so as to give it the appearance of an authentic historical narrative. Instead, therefore, of having the date of 926, which has been ascribed to it by Dr. Krause, his manuscript is, as Bro. Hughan thinks it, "a compilation of the early part of the last century." It is, however, important, as I have said, because it shows how the old Legend was improved and divested of its anachronisms.
It is certainly a very absurd anachronism to make Euclid the contemporary of Abraham, who lived more than two thousand years before him. Nor is it less absurd to suppose that Euclid invented Masonry in Egypt, whence it was carried to India, and practiced by King Solomon, since the great geometrician did not flourish until six centuries and a half after the construction of the Temple.

Considered, then, as an historical narrative, the Legend of Euclid is a failure. And yet it has its value as the symbolical development of certain historical facts.
The prominent points in this Legend being, of course, those on which the old believers of it most strenuously dwelt, are:
1. That Geometry is the groundwork of Masonry;
2. That Euclid was the most distinguished of all geometricians; and,
3. That the esoteric method of teaching this as well as all the other sciences which was pursued by the priests of Egypt, was very analogous to that which was adopted by the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, in imparting to their disciples the geometric and architectural secrets, which constituted what they called the Mystery of the Craft.

The Legend, in fact, symbolizes the well-recognized fact, that in Egypt, in early times - of which there is no historical objection to make Abraham the contemporary - there was a very intimate connection between the science of Geometry and the religious system of the Egyptians; that this religious system embraced also all scientific instruction; that this instruction was secret, and communicated only after an initiation, (1) and that in that way there was a striking analogy between the Egyptian system and that of the mediaeval Masons. And this fact of an analogy, the latter sought to embody in the apparent form of an historical narrative, but really in the spirit of a symbolic picture.Thus considered, the Legend of the Craft, in its episode of Euclid and his marvelous doings in the land of Egypt, is divested of its absurdity, and it is brought somewhat nearer to the limits of historical verity than the too literal reader would be disposed to admit.

(1) Kendrick confirms this statement in his Ancient Egypt," where he says: "When we read of foreigners (in Egypt) being obliged to submit to painful and tedious ceremonies of initiation, it was not that they might learn the secret meaning of the rites of Osiris, or Isis, but that they might partake of the knowledge of astronomy, physick, geometry, and theology."-(Vol. i., p. 383.)