see that the previous epochs of the primeval world were supposed to have lasted eight cycles.

Then Noah's life to the flood was 600 years, or the 9th cycle.
"10th cycle.

Shem's

=

600 66

Of the 350 years, Noah is said to have lived after the flood, fifty belong to the period before the flood, where the astronomical calculation is deficient to just that extent. We see, therefore, that all estimates of time, before the removal of the race to Arphaxad, were cyclical. We must now try to discover how the geographical dates which marked the descent from the mountains, changed into eras marked by the life or names of individuals.

Years of Noah after the flood, half a cycle,
Years of Shem,

Cyclical time after the flood,

a cycle,

300 years.
600

2,466 years.

The distinctly historic period begins with Arrapakhitis. In round numbers, this dates back to 5,000 B. C. In Selah, the settlements were pushed forward. In Heber, they crossed the Tigris, and then all the advances are to the Southwest till Abraham crosses the Euphrates. Terah is perhaps a person merged in an epoch. He not only went to Haran, it will be seen, but his son Haran died before he went. Did he name the new land for the dead son? It is evident the record was made when the name had become fixed. After the cyclical period, we have another, evidently indefinable, before the Semites dispersed in the highlands of Asia. Now the history of Chamitic life in Egypt requires 4,000 years before the Aramaic emigration. During this primitive time, can we find any space for the story of Nimrod and Babel? This is either a myth, or the oldest fragment of history in the world. Now, Nimrod, the Kossack (not Cushite, but Koshite,) could not have lived later than 4,000 B. C. The Kossians were an ancient Scythian tribe in the mountains, east of the Tigris. These people lived in the plains. of Shinar, a far older race than the Semitic. It would seem as if the marauding life of Nimrod might have driven them across the Tigris, and started the emigration that followed. If we make the first historical starting point, Babylon, 3,784 B. C., we leave room for Nimrod. His was not a transient

influence; it was as subversive and permanent as the fancied confounding of speech, which followed the destruction of his tower. It is to this day deeply impressed upon the Asiatic continent.

Philo of Byblus said, "Babylon was not built by Semiramis, as Herodotus said, but by Babylon, son of Belas, 2,000 years before." Before the building of Babylon, there was a long line of forgotten Chaldean kings, and in their history that of Nimrod forms the first decisive break. He, the Kossack, invaded their territory and built in their fields a mighty watch tower. Their descendants overthrew his usurped dominion before the building of the city. The consequences of the mixing and scattering of races which ensued, were momentous, and tradition preserved them. The first compiler of the record knew nothing of the Koshite tribe, and misunderstood the reference.

ABRAHAM.

Abraham did not hesitate to adopt or fall into the Phoenician dialect, although he rejected the Phoenician faith. If he preserved his native Aramaic, a mixed family of dependents could not be expected to do so. The old tongue of Tyre and Sidon is pure Hebrew. If he had turned with horror from the idolatry of Aram, that of Phoenicia was far more corrupt; but, in spite of him, and very naturally, many mythological references get mixed in the narrative of his descendants.

Evangelical Christians say that Jesus was crucified on Freya's day, or Friday, and see no impropriety in it. The mixed use of Elohim, Jehovah and Seth, in the narrative, shows that the old Hebrews fell into similar habits. The patriarchs were historical persons, but between Joseph and Moses, many symbols and stories of the Pre-Abramic period got interwoven with the popular Epos. The names of Esau and Israel were mythological, borrowed from Phoenician story, perhaps indignantly applied in retort for claims set up for these false gods. Thus the name of Is-ra-El may have been the proud assertion that their chief was the true and only "Wrestler with God."

In the first pages of this article, we sketched the necessary Egyptian frame-work into which we might fit the Hebrew narrative. We then proceeded to fix the period of the Exodus, and worked backward and forward from it till we outlined the Hebrew story subsequent to Abraham. Then we went back to the Pentateuch and dissected its registers, a work which would have been unintelligible in the beginning, and if undertaken without the light shed on it by the later story. The reader who would profit from what is set before him, must consent to work. Bunsen's pages will never serve to wile away an idle moment.

Having left the Hebrew branch of our great inquiry in a form likely to be interesting and useful to the Biblical student, we proceed to mention some matters purely critical, and to touch upon some others relating to the literature and mythologies of Phoenicia and Egypt, and necessary to the stu

dent who would enquire further. Since the Armenian version of Eusebius the authority of Berosus is undisputed. We may expect still to excavate from Phoenicia some remains of the time of Abraham. The burial of Jacob at Hebron seems attested by the immense ruins there, and whatever shakes the basis of Ottoman power in the Holy Land, will make it possible to investigate that site. While Bunsen was writing, the sarcophagus of Ashmuneser, king of Sidon, was discovered and carried to France. Why could not the walls of the Louvre charm away its secret? Then, perhaps, it could have told us whether Homer was blind, whether Semiramis sent to Sidon for its famous glass mirrors, and who bought the Palais Royal jewelry manufactured there in the Trojan era! Bunsen does not doubt that Philo of Byblus had access to very important records, that the San-Con-Iath was not so much the work of one author as the earliest sacred book of Phoenicia preserved like the Torah of the Jews. Long before the time of Hiram, they must have had permanent records, and that king introduced many changes into the sacred calendar. Access to such records explains why Philo tacked together two different cosmogonies, like the old writer in Genesis. And the fragments he preserves of the San-Con-Iath are a brilliant confirmation of the historical character of the Bible tradition.

As regards the origin of the Semitic name for God, (Sun, Fire) there is no doubt that IAO, the Phoenician name, is the abbreviation of Iabe or Iehovah. Urim and Thummin, Phoenician Light and Truth, beamed from the Hebrew priests' breast-plate. The Kerubim (cherubim) of the garden, were only revolving flames, the tradition of which kept the emigrants from turning back; perhaps because a volcanic agency preceded the overwhelming flood. Seraphim, meant in the beginning running flames, from which it came to be applied to poisonous snakes. The old form of El gave the four eyes to the Kerubim, and the six wings to the Seraphim. Yet the recent title of an article, "The God of Israel once the Sun god," does not convey the truth. The nations of central Asia were the worshippers of an invisible God, like the North American Indians, and it was to that original faith that Abraham returned when surrounding idolatries has corrupted the customs of his people. The oldest authentic name of God is Seth. SetTyphon corresponds to Saturn. The sacred Dog-Star, Sothis, bears the same name. In the Bible, Seth is the father of Enos or Man. Kevan is the name translated Chiun or Keeun (Amos v. 26), which was the idol worshipped in the wilderness. A few points of contact between the Biblical and the Phoenician stories deserve attention. Hercules wrestled with "Typhon" "the meridian sun in the sand," as Jacob wrestled with El-ohim. He was wounded, like Jacob, in the thigh, and, like him, called the Wrestler (Isra Palaimon). Usov, his brother, was a hunter who wore shaggy skins, and, like the Hebrew Esau, went away from home to live. The great pair of Gods were El-ium and Behuth. Adoni and Baalti, Lord and Mistress. The God El sacrifices Jadid his "only begotten" and "well-beloved son,"

and beheads his daughter Zillah. If the God would sacrifice his children, of course the man must, or obversely; if the man did, the God must, and at last the prostitution of womanhood, and the sacrifice of manhood, symbolised by circumcision, were substituted for death. Tauthe or Thoth, is said to have invented the first alphabet made of serpents. Canaan had a brother who added to this Phoenician alphabet three letters. He was called Aram; he was the Syrios of Herodotus, and Bunsen believes that it was Abraham the Syrian who thus completed the alphabet. What relation serpents had earliest letters it is now impossible to say. Philo says that the Greek Theta owed its form to the Egyptian habit of designating the Deity by a ringed serpent, with its head turned inward, the dot representing the eye of God in the world. But the serpent was the name and symbol of the Phoenician letter Tet, which preceded the Greek Theta, and that Greek letter still represents the Deity in abbreviated writing. When knowledge was considered a Divine thing, forbidden to the mass of men, it is not wonderful that letters should grow out of cabalistic signs. The psychical myth was represented by Osiris. His worship is the intellectual centre of the worship of Egypt. The perfect soul is the son of God, Osiris;-Man who having passed through the judgments of the lower world was at last reconciled to his Father.

NOTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.

I. Cosmogonic worship, as of Ptah, or Hephaistos.

II.

III.
IV.

Of the Solar Power, as in Ra, or Helios.

Of Time and Space, as Seb and Nu.

Of Psychical worship or the Divine Rule of Man, as in Osiris.

Ptah is the oldest God, as yet unendowed with the symbols of the Sun. He is an Ideal. Only a Creator. He is the God, who shapes the Cosmic egg on the potter's wheel. Helios and his successors represent the solar power, and bear its symbols. In Osiris, God himself appears as man, the child of Time and Space, a myth which has not yet lost rule over the minds of men. Upper Egypt calls this Divine man Osiris. Lower Egypt calls him Seth. Seth is the Phallic-god, type of the sun, in the rage of the Dog-Star. Osiris is not a deified man, but justified Man, is God as Osiris. The story of Osiris is the story of the circle of the year, of the sun dying away and resuscitating itself again. His name is a riddle. Isis is its first element. It is written Hes-Iri. This means "eye of the world," but it is probable that a better meaning attached to it, as a primitive Aramaic root.

HS. is the name and sign of the Throne of Isis. H. S toreth, or throne of Astarte, indicates this also, but how came the Egyptians to use only the first syllable of this name and what does it mean? Philo says that Astarte found a star which had dropped from Heaven. She picked it up and put it in the temple at Tyre. Now the polar star of the Phoenicians was the brilliant Beta of the Little Bear, which the Arabs still call "The Star."

Three thousand years before Christ this was nearer to the pole than any other conspicuous star. The above story merely tells us that it was sacred to Astarte. The Arabs call the square in the Great and Little Bears, the Bier, or N. HaS. Therefore it is evident that the worship of Astarte was coincident with the period when this star became the Pole-Star. It is not an Aramaic name, it is the word translated Arcturus in Job. ix, 9 and xxxviii, 32. The Edomite colonies driven by the convulsions of the Dead Sea to the Coast, date from 2,800 B. C., which coincides with the suggestions of the above statement. "Hes" has no meaning in the Egyptian. Hathor however meant the "world." The two "Has toreth," were thrown into one about 2,000 B. C. Has meant a bier, but HS. the accented form, meant "throne" or seat, the whole word Hes-Asar expressed the abstract conception of the Divine Power, "Throne of the World." Hesiri is a rebus. Now the date of 2,500 в C. is given as the earliest at which this Beta of the Little Bear, was likely to be used as a pole-star. The Chaldee system of astral symbols, has its date determined in a similar way. The Bull (Tor) indicated the vernal equinox and generative power. This became possible in its actual astral connection 3000 B. c. Here is a Harmony of Names, which shows whence Egypt derived language and religion.

(Ptah) the opener, with seven forces, Pth. Hephaistos.

Yet Renan denies that there is any philological connection between the Phoenician and the Egyptian. The studies of George Rawlinson, Master of Ancient History at Oxford, however, sustain Bunsen, even when Rawlinson is not aware of it himself. Ancient Cushite (Kossite) tribes possessed the central Asiatic plains, and he shows that the ancient sacred Chaldean tongue was the Galla of Ethiopia, the Biblical Cush! Set was an Egyptian Moloch. Egypt soon abolished human sacrifice. Osiris, who suffers like Christ, ruled it with a law of conscience. The Egyptians were the first who made a dogma of the immortality of the soul. (See the Book of the Dead, and the assertions of the Greeks confirmed by the monuments.) The belief in the transmigration of souls was a provincialism of their own. It was because of it, that the Ethiopian animal worship at last conquered Egypt; or had that provincial belief