took his title from a hill of that name; probably the same as Salmon in the Psalms, which must have been a high hill; for the Psalmist mentions the whiteness of its snow, and his camels were adorned with golden images of the moon. In the same manner the Xinnoo of China may be recognised in Sinai, which was very proper to represent the diluvial mountain; for it stands in a fork formed by two gulphs of the Red Sea, and possesses two horns or peaks higher than the neighbouring ridge, the one called Sinai, the other Horeb.2

410

CHAP. XII.

THE RELATION OF THE EGYPTIANS TO MIZRAIM DIFFERENT FROM THEIR RELATION TO PHUT. - THE DESCENDANTS OF THE FORMER WERE CONQUERED, AND FOR SOME TIME KEPT IN SUBJECTION BY THE DESCENDANTS AND VOTARIES OF THE LATTER UNDER THE NAME OF PALLI.

- HYESOS.

SHEPHERDS.

BERBERS.

CONFUSION INTRODUCED BY DIFFERENT FAMILIES APPROPRIATING DIVINE HONOURS TO THEIR OWN IM

MEDIATE ANCESTORS. -NO AMON. -THEBES.

MENES

BUS. ANUBIS.

MANNUS.- EXPLANATION OF ISAIAH

LXV. 11.-GAD IN GADES. -HERMES.

MERCURY, WHO

IS ALSO HERCULES. -STORY OF IO.-PICUS.- HORUS. ORION. MEANING OF PELEIADES AND CUON, AND OSIRIS AND OGYGES.

It has now been shown that Phut, the son of Ham, was regarded by the most ancient nations as the head of their religion, the author of their religious rites, and that the names of Fo in China, of Vo in Japan, of Bo, and Woden, and Thor in Scandinavia, of the Celtic Bud, and the Hindoo Budha, and the Egyptian Phtha, and Tho, and Thoyth, and Athor, are all so many traces of a popular veneration for their first ancestors indistinctly seen through the dimness of antiquity, so that the grand

RELATION OF EGYPTIANS TO MIZRAIM, ETC.

411

son was confounded with the son, and the son with the Patriarch himself. Of his descendants, however, and their place of settlement, nothing seems to be known. It is not, therefore, improbable (with Mr. Bryant's leave') that they formed a separate caste of priests, like the Brahmins, who carried the rites of their religion into all their kindred tribes ; and this is the most reasonable explanation of his name, being so widely spread throughout the ancient world; but though Phut was the father of religious rites in Egypt, Mizraim, his brother, was the father of its inhabitants, and the most ancient of all historians, Moses, constantly designates it by his name. It was natural, therefore, that the bulk of the people should transfer the titles, to which most veneration was attached, to their own immediate ancestor; and accordingly we learn from Champollion, that "in the monument of Dakkeh, Thoth is found in connexion with Harhat, the great Hermes Trismegistus, his primordial form, and of which he is only the last transformation, i. e. his incarnation on earth after Amon-Ra, and Mouth incarnate in Osiris and Isis."2 What are we to gather from this, but that the spirit of the great first legislator passed first into his son Ammon,

1 Jacob Bryant claims the priesthood for the Cuthites. It would seem, however, from the example of Nimrod, that they were rather warriors than priests. Yet their haughtiness and impatience of rule may have induced them to combine both characters in their own person; and from this usurpation, they may have derived the name of Rajpoots, Lords and Priests.

2 Eleventh Letter of Champollion.

or Ham', whose inferior title was Osiris, and subsequently into his son Mizraim? for if it be possible to separate the earliest history of the Egyptians from the tangled web of their theology, we may suppose, that when the first repairer of the world after the deluge was exalted as a deity into the obscure heaven of their imagination, his first incarnation on earth would be the first ruler of their land, and the next his immediate successor.2 Now, two of the oldest chronologers of Egypt concur in affirming, that Mines was the first king, and Athothis the second; and Manetho adds, that the latter was the son of the former. It is true that he also mentions sixteen deities, or titles of deity before; but his dynasties begin with Menes, and thus he himself has drawn the boundary line which separates that part which is theological from that which is historical. But what sort of deities he intended, we may learn out of an old Egyptian creed, which Iamblichus transcribed out of the Hermetic books.3

1 Banier admits that Jupiter Ammon was probably Ham, deified by his son Misraim, whom he identifies with Menes and Osiris. La Mythol. ii. 13. Cairo is called in Coptic MSS. both Xu, and Moτpau; by the Arabs, Misr. — Quatremère, i. 50.

2 A Mohammedan sectary of the eighth century, named by the Arabs Al Mokanah affirmed a transmigration or successive manifestation of the divinity through and in certain prophets and holy men from Adam to the time in which he lived. Sale's Koran. Prelim. Dis. p. 234. The Gholaites, too, a sect of Shiites, or adherents of Ali, held a Metempsychosis, or the descent of God upon his creatures their Imans. Ibid. p. 234. If then so recently this opinion has prevailed so strongly, it is no wonder, that, in ages of still greater darkness, the deity of the genius of the flood should be supposed to have passed through several successive incarnations among the ancestors of mankind.

3 Cory's Fragments, p. 45.

In this profession of faith, a great first cause is acknowledged, a God antecedent to the first popular god and king, which is utterly unintelligible, unless it be conceded that the first king, or Noah, was a divinity too; but the first local king, the first founder of the nation, the well-spring, from which the population flowed, was Ham, and hence, in the Psalms, God is said to have done wondrous things things in the land of Ham'; but the conclusion, that he is the Mines or Menes of the Egyptian annals, is still further confirmed by the manner in which he is mentioned by Eratosthenes in his canon of the Theban kings.2 The first in his catalogue is Mines, whom he denominates the Thebinite, and Thebæan; and lest it should be supposed, that these names are merely equivalent to Theban, he adds the received interpretation in the language of the country, as far as he could represent the sound in Grecian characters, that is to say, "Dionius." 3 Now, there can scarcely be a doubt, that this is the same word, which was also moulded by the Greeks into the form of Dionusus, the Deo Naush 4,of the Hindoos, the deity of the ship, which is Naus in Greek, and Thebe in Hebrew. Mines, therefore, was certainly one of those who were embarked in in the ark. Herodotus calls him Meen, and re

1 Psalm lxxviii. 51. cv. 23. cvi. 22. 2 Syncelli Chronicon. 3 Θηβινίτης. Θηβαιος, ὁ ἑρμηνευεται Διονιος.

4 It is said that Naush was at first a mortal; but on Mount Meru, i. e. Ararat, he became a Deva, or god. Devanaush becomes in the vulgar dialects Deonaush. ·As. Res. v. 293.

5 Lib. ii.