Now, as the Atlanteans carried on an immense commerce with all the
countries of Europe and Western Asia, they doubtless inquired and traded
for gold and silver for the adornment of their temples, and they thus
produced a demand for and gave a value to the two metals otherwise
comparatively useless to man--a value higher than any other commodity
which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the
reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the
manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the
smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand
for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal
sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of
the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans designated gold
was the Sanscrit word karat, which means, "the color of the sun." Among
the Assyrians gold and silver were respectively consecrated to the and
moon precisely as they were in Peru. A pyramid belonging to the palace
of Nineveh is referred to repeatedly in the inscriptions. It was
composed of seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller in area
than the one beneath it; each stage was covered with stucco of different
colors, "a different color representing each of the heavenly bodies, the
least important being at the base: white (Venus); black (Saturn); purple
(Jupiter); blue (Mercury); vermillion (Mars); silver (the Moon); and
gold (the Sun).
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