especially as to the assumption that Philo's account is a compilation of very different kosmogonies, although in some points I am obliged to differ from him. I have uniformly stated where I am indebted to him.

My main object has been to render the document itself accessible to every reader. Down to the present time, both as to its connexion, and indeed as to most of its details, it has been a sealed book even to students. Our Fifth Volume will contain the text restored, and philologically and critically explained, in doing which I have had the benefit of the rare learning and critical acumen of Bernays.

I have no doubt that Philo had access to very ancient Phoenician works, and I see no reason why there should not have been such registries kept, and indeed collections made of them, long before the time of Hirom, the contemporary of Solomon, who introduced many changes in the festivals of Tyre. This is the only way of explaining his tacking one kosmogony on to the other without any remark. The same thing undoubtedly took place in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in the Shuking of the Chinese. The Theogony of Hesiod, which was originally a connected, serious, and rational poem, the tampering with which Plato and Aristotle discovered and complained of, and which became, at a very early date indeed, a motley patchwork, owing to unskilful interpolations, has not fared much better. The double account of Creation in the first two chapters of Genesis is also an instance of the very natural mode in which compilers who approached their sources of information with respect would proceed. We must not call this falsifying: in the Bible, at least, it is precisely the reverse. The real falsifiers are the ancient and modern theologians who have attempted to make out of two accounts, simply placed in juxtaposition, one originally connected narrative, and, wherever possible, to make them contemporary.

The accounts in Sankhuniathon, corroborated as they are by many other monuments and statements, have a special importance for unravelling the Egyptian Pantheon, and generally for the great question about the connexion between Egyptian and Babylonian traditions. Where they are intelligible, they offer irrefragable proof of the Asiatic origin of Egyptian mythology. When rightly interpreted they are a brilliant confirmation of the historical character of the Biblical tradition about Isaac and Jacob, in spite of our finding in the names, and perhaps even in the stories about Israel and Esau, the primeval names of Semitic Gods and thological reminiscences.

my

We can only arrive at a right understanding of details when we properly understand the whole. In each account of the following names of the Gods I shall endeavour as far as possible to retranslate them, and shall conclude with a summary of the principal points, which will serve as the basis of a comparison with the Egyptian and Greek. In this way I hope to place my readers in a position to form a complete judgment upon the main question, the original meaning and source of the traditions, and so to approximate somewhat nearer to the solution of this enigma of general history. When once we are convinced of the genuineness of the traditions here given with Euhemeristic confusion, and have proposed to explain them in the sense of the old mythology and in their connexion, we cannot shrink from following up the work which was commenced by the two champions of French philology, Scaliger and Bochart, that of reducing the names of the Grecian Gods back to the Phoenician. Sometimes Philo gives the Phoenician names of the Gods themselves, and very frequently with their Greek interpretation: but, even when we find only the Greek names, we shall see that they are transformations or translations of Phoenician, and, in fact, mythological terms.

Starting from this premiss, Joseph Scaliger, and to a far greater extent, and with much better success, Bochart the king of comparative Semitic philology, attempted to discover the Phoenician names of the Gods. They both sought, often in a one-sided manner and necessarily without success, for the names in Jewish tradition; as to the original identity of which with the other Semitic traditions, especially those of Kanaan and Syria, they did not entertain the slightest doubt. It is true that in this research they had not the advantage of that freedom and extensive range of view which we enjoy, owing to the progress of philological and historical criticism. They may even have thought it not justifiable, or at any rate not advisable, to treat the Biblical traditions, especially those of the pre-Abramitic times, as remains and fragments of the very oldest popular traditions and wisdom of those races. At the present day we cannot hesitate to attempt this, and we do so with a clear conviction that we shall thereby pave the way for elucidating the truth. So far are we from thinking that by this process we shall impinge upon the respect due to the Bible histories, that we venture to hope we shall correct some childish and even offensive misunderstandings and errors in modern research, which have caused much doubt and uneasiness to the public at large. But to set up the views of ancient and modern Rabbis against these investigators is a proceeding which appears to me difficult to reconcile with honesty and common sense, and which at all events is calculated to have a very different effect from that which is intended.

As our attempt to carry out this method to the fullest extent is the first of its kind, we may venture to claim the sympathy of our critical colleagues in its

execution.

We shall guard ourselves from mixing up Syriac (i. e. Aramaic) or Babylonian (i. e. Chaldee) names, without

drawing a proper distinction between them, respectively, and the Phoenician or Kanaanitish-Hebrew. But there is abundant authentic evidence that they cannot be excluded altogether.

We have already seen that Philo's account of the Phoenician theogony by no means stands alone. Not to mention the numerous detached supplements to it, some of which are found in Greek authors and lexicographers, some in inscriptions (and we give in our next Volume a Syrian fragment which is only lately discovered), we have in Damascius, the last of the Neo-Platonists, two accounts of that theogony, both of which are worthy of respect, and free from all tinge of Neo-Platonism. One comes from Eudemus, a Peripatetic, celebrated for his deep reading, a pupil of Aristotle; the other is of strictly Phoenician origin, known as the theology of Môkhos, a genuine Phoenician name which we shall meet with again in Philo.

PHILO'S FIRST KOSMOGONY.

B.

THE MATERIALISTIC OR MÔKH DOCTRINE OF THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WORLD AND OF

MAN.

THE whole mythological account contained in Philo consists of three vast kosmogonies. Of these the first only is a connected unity in itself: it is the doctrine of creation accommodated to materialistic ideas. In this respect the two others form a direct contrast to it: they are both split up into several unconnected fragments, especially the one which is probably the most recent, that of Uranos and Kronos. We shall therefore only treat of the first in this Section.

In order to make the survey more clear, we have, in this and the following Sections, kept in the background

as much as possible Eusebius' account and explanations, so as to give prominence to the Phoenician accounts, for which purpose we have printed the former in smaller type and within brackets.

The division into chapters and paragraphs is the same as in the text of the succeeding Volume.

THE MOKH DOCTRINE.

Text of the First Fragment. (Chap. II.)

§ 1. ["The Theology of the Phænicians.-Philo assumes that the beginning of the All was a dark and stormy atmosphere, or a breath of murky air, and thick, unfathomable, black Chaos; but that these had no beginning, and, for ages, no limits.]

§ 2. "Then, [he says,] the Spirit was inflamed with love of the eternal beginnings, and a Penetration took place; and this intermingling was called Desire (Pothos).

"This Desire is the beginning of the creation of all things: but it had itself no consciousness of the creation of the All.

"Out of this intercommunication of Pothos and Spirit, Môкн arose, which some interpret to mean slime, others, putridity of watery secretion.20

20 I have no hesitation in making this emendation, after what we have seen above in Damascius. Here, and in the following sentence, the MSS. have MOTH, a word not met with elsewhere. Movers is quite right in saying that every attempt to explain it—and it has caused much discussion by the Semitic is a failure. He calls upon Egyptologers to help him. Now this is an unreasonable demand; for there is nothing in Egyptian but the very unsuitable word Muth (Mû, mother, with the article). The Phoenician word, however, according to Philo, means slime, or putridity of watery matter. Môkh (MOX instead of MOT) means, in Semitic, putridity; and in fact, dissolution, liquefaction. The ordinary Hebrew word for it is maqaq (PPD); but Mug and Mukh have the same sense (contabescere, putrefieri). Môkhus (Maxoc), who is often mentioned, and supposed to be the author of materialistic kosmogony, means the system itself. We have given in the text the remarks of Strabo and Eudemus. The other passages where Môkhus is mentioned may be seen in Fabricius, Ad Sext. Empir. p. 621.; and in Creuzer, Symbolik,